When You Can No Longer Reasonably Challenge the Party...

[pawsplay]

Evil doppelganger. they can read minds, and look like anybody. Maybe one has infiltrated the resistance. Maybe one pretends to be a human guard. Maybe the lord is a doppelganger, or maybe he hires one that acts as his double.

Since the party can throw a lot at him, make sure the lord is decent level. If you're playing Pathfinder, give him Improved Iron Will and Improved Great Fortitude. Also, a Shield Guardian. And he sleeps in bracers of armor, because he's a paranoid. The floor around his bed is illusory, just to make people trip. And he's a man who's not afraid to don armor hastily. He has a squire who, uh, is an evil doppelganger. And the lord is, um, an insane gold dragon in human form.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Make him a lich.

 

[Cergorach]

I've had similar problems with a 3.5E campaign, the part was only four PCs and their levels where a lot higher. The problem wasn't not being able to challenge the players, the problems was hitting the sweet spot. Aiming between an easy encounter and a deadly encounter. Killing PCs isn't all that fun, but neither is letting them blow through encounters asif they were made from tissue paper. My difficulty lay in having given the players total access to all spells, feats and classes. Especially the spells in combination with the cleric, nor did it help that three of the four players were highly intelligent (I have little trouble with admitting that they were more intelligent then me ;-).

My solution (now) would be to limit resources (spells in my case) and make the interesting encounters not be something they can really prepare for. You should by now know how your party operates give them the setup A, imagine how they prepare for that and use that to build setup B that you will spring upon them when they realize that setup A isn't what it seems.

Make your evil Lords castle everything you would expect from a classic Villain, when they encounter the evil Lord make him pretty scary, moves around insanely quick, immense strength and doesn't seem to bleed. Only when the lord has suffered a significant amount of damage does it become apparent that the lord is actually stuffed with hay and is actually an intelligent puppet, finally defeated he burns to a crisp (no body). His last words "And now they'll come for you...", maybe a single large eye (ala LotR) opens up, blinks a few times and looks at each of the PCs in turn and then disappears (can't be harmed).

The folks that controlled the lord puppet will send (stronger) forces to kill the PCs if they stay at the lords castle (and not flee) and the replacement puppet will be among them (rumors will spread that the lord escaped, the puppet story of the PCs will sound implausible). More fantastic assassins will hunt the PCs, maybe people close to them will be replaced by puppets that will try to kill them, forcing the players to find the force(s) behind the evil overlord...

You could go with the classic doubleganger, but a skin filled with straw sounds so much creepier *grins evily*

 

[DrunkonDuty]

As has been said up thread the heroes reputation has most likely proceeded them. So it is fair to have tactics prepared against them. (Up to a limit of course.) Alarms and guards are basic and should be used in all situations. ANd by used I mean USED. An alarm alerts the whole castle. Everyone loads up for the big fight.

1. Large Party
The basic answer to this is more foes. But more mooks won't be much use unless they're buffed out the wazoo. This due to the PCs high AC. If mooks need a natural 20 to hit then having more of them aint gonna help much. Mooks can be useful for trying other tactics like Grapples and Trips. YEah, not very likely to succeed but if they keep trying they might get lucky.

So you need a few more lieutenant level bad guys, who get buffed out the wazoo. Have a look at the PC's ACs, work out what attack bonus is required to hit them, say, 40% of the time (that's a natural 13 and up on the roll.) Take into account things like flanking bonuses (this is what mooks are for), buff spells and terrain advantages. Make sure there's a place for the fight that is big enough to bring your numbers to bear (Great Hall of the Castle.) Of course you could get some tailored bad guys, ones specifically aimed at exploiting the weaknesses of the party. Again, within limits.

eg: Without knowing your party's actual character classes, let's say there's a big bad barbarian who always leads the charge. The evil lord has gone out and hired his own big barbarian type to fight him. Fights between big bad barbarians are like a return to the state of nature: nasty, brutish and short. PLus players like going up against their opposite number and winning.

2. 2x Dedicated Healers
Healers tend to hang at the back. A rogue of two sneaking up from behind is a good thing here. As the battle is in a castle there should be mulitple ways to move around and the bad guys should know the terrain; they should be able to Run (that's x4 basic move there) through corridors to get at the rear of the party. They'd also be good at distracting fireball-ing mage types. If the spell casters are in the thick of the fighting make use of Attacks of Oportunity to disrupt spells.

3. High HP
With 2 healers and high HP the group should be able to get back up to high HP totals between fights without much problem. So don't give much time between fights. The castle is on alert, that means when alarms go off troops scramble and start looking for the intruders. WHen they find the PCs someone runs off to get reinforcements. The fight should turn into a series of waves of attackers hitting the heroes. Maybe with a round or 2 respite between some waves, but maybe not. Good troops will rush to the sound of the battle and you're map should tell how far away various units are. Work out arrival times based on distance and move speeds. (Again, Run action is x4 move.)

4. Extremely High AC
Tactics can help here: flanking bonuses, higher terrain, trip attacks, surprise atacks to remove dodge bonuses. De-buffing: dispel magic is awesome; fire off a few AoE Dispels and you should start taking down buff spells. And, as said, buff your troops. Maybe not the mooks but lieutenants for sure. If you do want a cheap and easy buff for the mooks, go the Bard. A 1st level bard gives a +1 Hit and Damage to all allies. Takes an 8th level one to give a +2.

5. Specialised Fireball Tosser*
Once again, enemy hitting the heroes' rear echelons. Even just mixing up the bad guys in amongst the heroes so that AoE spells hit the heroes as well as the bad guys can help. And a specialised Abjurerer with loads of Dispel Magics memorised can neutralise a mage. You can counter spell any spell with Dispel Magic.


Caveat: Now of course in all fairness the Heroes should have the chance to learn about some of this stuff. From spies they can be told things like 'The castle is on high alert' and 'The Count has hired a lot of new muscle.' That sort of thing. NOt too much detail but enough to put them on their guard.


Cheers.

*heh heh heh

 

[amerigoV]

Some rust monsters and a few disenchanters aught to "challenge" them. Pets, you know.

 

[Roadkill101]

As already mentioned a few times, I'd have the Lord of the castle aware of something being up thereby having the castle setup with alarm spells.
So once the pc's start to meet resistance (which they should unless the secret entrance leads right to the Lord's private chambers), they can be slowed even further in a nice open area by having enemy spellcaster's equiped with scrolls of Stone to Mud, giving the defenders time to array even more troops against them. Ever try walking through really deep mud (say about knee deep or so)? It ain't easy.
If you're feeling mean, those scrolls can also have the reverse Mud to Stone, while several squads of archers have time to setup and enjoy some target practice (or maybe the forementioned hill giants are set loose for some driving practice depending on exaxtly how deeply the party is mired).
Once the alarms go off the Lord should be moving himself to a safer position through a few secret passages known only to himself (or at least to a very small number of the castle inhabitants). While at the same time several small elite squads try to intercept the party.
And lastly, give the Lord some potions kept on his person, used to counter-act any succesful debuffs the party may throw at him.

 

[grufflehead]

Firstly, be very careful about making it look like you are targetting specific PCs or weaknesses - it may cause bad feeling if someone takes no part in the climactic fight because you have taken them out with an ability/tactic/special move that the bad guy couldn't possibly know. However, as people have pointed out, if the PCs have been the major thorn in the lord's side, it is entirely reasonable for him to have a dossier on them (so he'll know the wizard loves his fireballs) and plan accordingly.

- Speaking from recent experience, you might be surprised what you can do with environmental effects. For example module to look at, see spoiler:

[sblock=Silent Tide spoilers]In the very first PF Society module Silent Tide, there is an encounter in a granary. It is dark, and full of fog so visibility is restricted to 5 feet, and everyone has concealment so miss chances apply, and bad guys can just 5' step away and 'disappear'. On top of that, the monsters - a form of undead - all radiate silence around them, so if the party are moving through the area, one of them might suddenly lose contact with the others. Plus, if you are close enough to see the bad guys, you are in the silence, so no spellcasting unless they have silent spell or there are no V components (rare)[/sblock]

- How do the party get these exorbitant ACs? If the fighters are encased in metal, don't resort to cheesy rust monsters (which never used to affect magic anyway..), make the environment very hot or cold, so the longer they are in it, they start to take non-lethal damage. Use darkness liberally, and look for other things - slippery or uneven floors stop charging, and slow movement down etc.

- A couple of people have mentioned that given the party is 7 strong and therefore almost the equivalent of 2 parties, then rather than double the number of monsters, spilt them up into 2 groups. Use a teleporter (or a simple sliding chute trap if TP is too cheesy) and have 3 of the party go somewhere else. Depending on what their marching order is, this may be a real challenge because you may end up with one group with all the fighters, and one with the two healers - then just ad lib something that will really exploit the weaknesses of each group appropriately.

If you also give them another challenge to deal with at the same time, then they can't concentrate their forces on the bad guy. In the above example, 3 of the party disappear down the chute into a water-filled room. Even if they can swim/breath water (and remember that lovely ACP for swimming), if there are monsters in the water then they'll need freedom of movement to be any use. Unless they can all fly, they'll have to deal with the monsters before getting out - faced with the lord, will the group up top try and kill him, or help their pals who are about to drown/get eaten.

- If you just want a stand-up fight, then make use of miss chances and DR to let the lord stand up for longer. Stoneskin (or equivalent) to take a chunk off each hit, Displacement means a lot of solid shots are going to miss , Mirror Image etc.

- Someone else was laughing about the 'dedicated fireball tosser' (*snicker*). I have to say, an evoker would be the least of my worries. Rooms so small he'll catch most of the party would be one solution, I'd be wary of making the bad guy immune to fire because you've then completely nerfed this character, but if he has 2 levels of Rogue he'll have evasion which is the next best thing...

- Another tactic an old GM of mine applied very successfully: change the scale of encounters. In the example above, if everything is very small, characters have to squeeze (maybe the villain is a midget, or at least a small race so he has all the corridors made 2' wide), the entire party can't be brought to bear at once, spells may blow back, line of sight is blocked by lots of twists and turns (which also stop running and charging).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, our GM made everything huge. Not bigger monsters, but the castle was a mile long, rooms were hundreds of feet across. Now you have lots of space to use missiles, mounted troops, skirmishers with Spring Attack/Shot on the Run/Ride by Attack etc. Spells now cover such 'small' areas that battlefield control is much more difficult, and fireballs are a tiny blip on the battlemap

- Lastly, do you plan on running another game at any stage? Because - and I'll direct you to the final scene in the classic 1980 movie Flash Gordon - even though he's a lord, and has all these minions, maybe he's no more than a 1st or 2nd level character. The PCs kill him in a couple of blows, and then you can have a nice big celebration that they've defeated the big bad and freed the land. They all live happily ever after and you stop the game.

Except he wasn't the big bad at all, he was just the front man for the *real* villain, and while the heroes are off living it up, he's quietly slipped away...until your next campaign which is set 10/20/100 years in the future where the land is being threatened by a dark lord whose MO is strangely familiar...

 

[Someone]

It's not that unreasonable that the evil lord knows they are going after him. Say he hires:

1) A very large mercenary party
2) With two dedicated healers
3) With extremely high ACs (for their level)
4) High HP
5) With two evocation specializing sorcerers who toss out fireballs