Making a fitting challenge for a broken party?

[Titanium Fox]

Hey everyone!

I'm running a 3.5 campaign, and I'm having a significant amount of problems challenging my players. First, they ended up breaking my economy with the craft skill (there was a three year time-skip in which the players could do anything that they wanted. I allowed one player to make bows, which ended up granting him close to 150k gold.)

In addition, there's the problem that I ended up taking on 10 players (I'm listing the classes below). As it stands, they walked through an encounter with a group of mind flayers, fire elementals, an army of skeletons and zombies, a mature adult red dragon, and a 14th level rogue doppleganger with four displacer beasts accompanying him on a single rest period.

So, I'm starting to run out of ideas on how to challenge them. I tried to have the doppleganger steal some of their things as a way to ret-con the broken economy, but the Ranger's spot check ended up at some ridiculous number over 40.

Does anyone have any tips on how to challenge them? The races / classes are below. All the players are between 9 and 11.

Human: Warmage / Blood Mage
Human: Warmage / Elemental Savant
Human: Tattooed Monk (Has leadership with a second Tattooed Monk and a Black Dragon as followers. Storyline reason for the latter.)
Half Giant: Barbarian
Elf: Cloistered Cleric
Human: Crusader
Human: Wizard
Elf: Ninja / Ranger / Initiate of the Bow
Pixie: (Can't remember the name of the class. Very Tanky, and gives the party bonuses to Initiative, etc).

[Frozen_Feet]

The best advise I can give is "Fight fire with Fire". Craft a party with similar numbers and levels and see what happens. If you can stomach being really cheap, just make them fight a mirror match of themselves and see how that pans out.

[Runestar]

You may want to start adding some ways of controlling the battlefield, to better split up the players and prevent them from focus-firing, or limiting how effectively they can work together.

10 players is way too many. See if you can instead split them up into 2-3 smaller groups, each fighting their own battles, with limited means of aiding the other groups. Say wall of force/forcecage to split up the battlefield or some kind of portcullis trap?

[Amphetryon]

Solid Fog, Evard's Black Tentacles, Vortex of Teeth... you want ways of limiting their actions, or whittling down a bunch of them at once, or both.

[Kaww]

Do you want to kill, maim, or scare them?

For starters their party lvl is about 13. So don't use things that are CR 13 or less. Marut is a fun and challenging foe if you know how to throw him at them. Also Golems, they are banes of parties with lots of casters. Spellwarped Eldrich giant is also nice if you change the feats a bit. With two Greater dispels he ought to end all their buffs and he can do it once per round as a free action. A flight of elder arrowhawks? Those touch attacks sting... That can kill the dragon at the very least.

If you want to kill them just use clockwork horrors from MM2, I think it's MM2. Two adamantine and the rest as the book suggests... WotC writers were drunk when they CRed them...

[TroubleBrewing]

Due to the large proportion of casters, I wouldn't use hordes of weak enemies. Also, due to the HUGE party, I wouldn't use one large foe, either, partially because they could simply overwhelm it, and partially because you could make one small miscalculation and all of a sudden they're dead.

Perhaps a small strike force (5-6 members) of roughly-equivalent level beings would provide a challenge? I personally love the combination of Storm Giants chucking rocks before charging the melee types, while Iron Golems neutralize the casters and a cryohydra makes everyone's day a little worse.

[Chen]

One of the problems with large parties is the number of enemies you need to put onto the field to challenge them. At this point it starts becoming very easy to just drop PCs if not outright kill them, if the monsters are playing smart. The same goes for the PCs though. If they're focusing down targets the targets are going to die VERY fast since there are 10 PCs.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

First of all, the Craft skill thing is entirely dependent on finding buyers. He can make 150k worth of bows, but maybe he can only sell 40k worth of those. That doesn't even recover all of his material costs, and now he has a huge pile of bows and nothing to do with them. If he puts that many bows on the market, the used bow market would also expand, thus further cutting into his future profits. After the first year, anyone would be able to get a used bow for half the cost of a new one, so he'd only be able to sell his for half as much just to stay in business. Plus say he equips an entire (foreign/hobgoblin) army with bows, and that army then pillages nearby towns. Some of them are killed and their weapons recovered, and now the authorities come knocking on his door to arrest him for dealing arms to the nation's enemies. His remaining stockpile and any raw materials get confiscated, and he gets locked up for a few years (or whatever remains of that three year period).

Here's what I would do:
"Most of your bow (and other crafted item) sales went to demihuman raiders and foreign armies. There are now thirty heavily armed elite guards approaching you, carrying warrants for your arrests. They take you in, confiscate your possessions to be sold to make reparations to those killed as a result of your illegal arms dealing, and the high priest Mark of Justices you to prevent you from manufacturing any more weapons." The thirty guards consist of nine level 16 Warblades, nine level 16 Crusaders, six level 16 Wizards, and six level 16 Clerics. All of them have pretty much every buff in the game cast on them. Of course they sold most of the bows and anything else they crafted to people who would use them for crimes, otherwise they still have 80% of those crafted items just sitting around and need to adjust their current gear to account for that.

[bokodasu]

For a minute I thought this was about my gaming group. We're not quite that broken, but we're also higher level, and here are some things our DM does to mess with our heads:

1) Split the party. (I know!) But the way he does it works surprisingly well. For example, we had to plant magical devices in specific areas to stabilize the earth's core, and they all had to be activated at once, so the party splits up and heads to the locations, where they begin their actions. Roll initiative for everyone, set up three battlemats, and run all three encounters at once. (They don't have to be combat. One third of our party ran a diplomatic mission, and they got about 5-10 minutes of talking time each time their turn came up in the initiative.)

2) Intersperse civilians. Yay, now you can't use your AoE spells without killing innocents! Also some of the party will probably have to be involved with getting said innocents out of the path of danger. (Does not work with evil parties. Also may annoy your spellcaster who prepared all these great AoE spells and doesn't get to use them.)

3) Mix creatures with complementary abilities. Beholders using AMF + Undead, for example.

Also, do NOT worry about the broken money situation. Just give them skimpy loot for a few sessions until it evens out. It's better to get less than to have something taken away.

[Edit] Oh, and yeah, don't let it happen in the future, while also letting your player know that you're not going to let it happen in the future. But I don't think earning money is a bad thing to do if you've got a 3-year timeskip. You could do the same thing with craft:winemaking or craft:baking without worrying about flooding the market or arms-dealing difficulties, so just don't give them the free time to do that.

[Chen]

First of all, the Craft skill thing is entirely dependent on finding buyers. He can make 150k worth of bows, but maybe he can only sell 40k worth of those. That doesn't even recover all of his material costs, and now he has a huge pile of bows and nothing to do with them. If he puts that many bows on the market, the used bow market would also expand, thus further cutting into his future profits. After the first year, anyone would be able to get a used bow for half the cost of a new one, so he'd only be able to sell his for half as much just to stay in business. Plus say he equips an entire (foreign/hobgoblin) army with bows, and that army then pillages nearby towns. Some of them are killed and their weapons recovered, and now the authorities come knocking on his door to arrest him for dealing arms to the nation's enemies. His remaining stockpile and any raw materials get confiscated, and he gets locked up for a few years (or whatever remains of that three year period).

Here's what I would do:
"Most of your bow (and other crafted item) sales went to demihuman raiders and foreign armies. There are now thirty heavily armed elite guards approaching you, carrying warrants for your arrests. They take you in, confiscate your possessions to be sold to make reparations to those killed as a result of your illegal arms dealing, and the high priest Mark of Justices you to prevent you from manufacturing any more weapons." The thirty guards consist of nine level 16 Warblades, nine level 16 Crusaders, six level 16 Wizards, and six level 16 Clerics. All of them have pretty much every buff in the game cast on them. Of course they sold most of the bows and anything else they crafted to people who would use them for crimes, otherwise they still have 80% of those crafted items just sitting around and need to adjust their current gear to account for that.

Or you know the simpler and less dickish response of "uh no you weren't able to sell 150k gold worth of bows. You sold maybe X amount" where X is an amount that is reasonable for a 1 year of downtime and won't break the campaign.

Your solution also only really works if there are laws or restrictions on weapon selling. Or you're in a very draconian society (a pretty high powered one where there are that many level 16 characters running around too).

[Tael]

First, they ended up breaking my economy with the craft skill (there was a three year time-skip in which the players could do anything that they wanted. I allowed one player to make bows, which ended up granting him close to 150k gold.)


wat.
Check his math on that.

I'm being extremely generous with my estimates here.
If he is crafting Masterwork Composite longbows (the only way he'd get any sort of decent money) He could probably craft one every other week if he had a decent INT score, maxed out craft and an item that boosted his craft skill (by a lot). So he crafts for 3 years straight with no interruptions. At the end he would have about 80 bows, which he could probably sell for 300 GP each (that's his profit on each bow, the actual gross would be around 400-500 average, but he has to buy materials equal to 1/3 of the value, and then sell it). 80*300 = 24k gold. Still very nice, but not nearly as ridiculous as 150k.

[Achernar]

Hey everyone!

First, they ended up breaking my economy with the craft skill (there was a three year time-skip in which the players could do anything that they wanted. I allowed one player to make bows, which ended up granting him close to 150k gold.)

Whoa! How did he do that? Craft gives you half your check per week in gold, so by my calculation, (3 years)(52 weeks/year)(13ranks maximum in Craft + 20 [all-natural die roll] + 4 Intelligence mod)(1/2) = 2886gp earned in 3 years.

I think you have cause to check this player's character sheet carefully.


In addition, there's the problem that I ended up taking on 10 players

Wow, I don't think I could do that. it might be time to fission the game into separate parties, or start a new one.


As it stands, they walked through an encounter with a group of mind flayers, fire elementals, an army of skeletons and zombies, a mature adult red dragon, and a 14th level rogue doppleganger with four displacer beasts accompanying him on a single rest period.

So, I'm starting to run out of ideas on how to challenge them. I tried to have the doppleganger steal some of their things as a way to ret-con the broken economy, but the Ranger's spot check ended up at some ridiculous number over 40.

Remember CR is a guideline for parties of 4 people. When you hit 6 people, especially with the classes you described, the party level may only read 1.5 times their character level, but it is effectively doubled with all those ToBs and mages....

When you hit 10 people, the normal system of the game breaks down. The party is so powerful that the CR system quits entirely and takes the first bus to Fantasy Mexico. Everything goes squish, simply because there are so many people.

Oh, yeah, a level 10 ranger's spot checks flirt with 40. It happens. Get some greater invisibility and silence to counteract this.


Does anyone have any tips on how to challenge them? The races / classes are below. All the players are between 9 and 11.

Human: Warmage / Blood Mage
Human: Warmage / Elemental Savant
Human: Tattooed Monk (Has leadership with a second Tattooed Monk and a Black Dragon as followers. Storyline reason for the latter.)
Half Giant: Barbarian
Elf: Cloistered Cleric
Human: Crusader
Human: Wizard
Elf: Ninja / Ranger / Initiate of the Bow
Pixie: (Can't remember the name of the class. Very Tanky, and gives the party bonuses to Initiative, etc).

Where's the LA on that Pixie? They have +3 level adjustment, he shouldn't be over level 5 in this party. Pixies are strong (well, not STRONG strong, but... oh bother...) and shouldn't be treated like any other player race.

As far as challenging them, use things with magic immunity. Golems, Demons. Monsters with class levels. NEVER have them fight a single opponent, and always make sure there are lots of tough minions for the melee to chew on, lots of SR for mages to contend with, and use monsters with class levels.

Stick an Arcane Ooze (MM3) under an adamantine grate in the floor while the party fights with the enemy half-dragon conjurer with his iron golem and X summoned outsiders. Stick an rogue in the ceiling to shoot at the mages with Crossbow Sniper and use Dragonsbreath arrows to force concentration checks/put my burning pants out checks. Get creative: simple monster beat-em-ups will always go down easily now.

[Anxe]

Give them the Deck of Many Things and watch them tear themselves apart.

[Titanium Fox]

wat.
Check his math on that.

I'm being quite generous with my estimates here.
If he is crafting Masterwork Composite longbows (the only way he'd get any sort of decent money) He could probably craft one every other week if he had a decent INT score, maxed out craft and an item that boosted his craft skill. So he crafts for 3 years straight with no interruptions. At the end he would have about 80 bows, which he could probably sell for 300 GP each. 80*300 = 24k gold. Still very nice, but not nearly as ridiculous as 150k.

He was taking the increased DC to make one per day, and with his ridiculous bonus to craft, he was making 80% of the rolls. Which ended up equating to 876 bows or so. Being that the nation they hail from has a massive army, and the fact that the bows I initially supplied the mook archers with (Standard Longbows)... He ended up selling most of his stock after I calculated up the size of the standing army.

Two of my party members also came up with a similar idea. Magically enchanted arrows that are hollowed out to contain alchemists fire. They ended up with a butt ton of money on that as well. Again, they took max in their crafts, and made most of the DC 20 checks (less than the Ranger, but most none the less).

EDIT: This may have been a misinterpretation of the rule by myself and the players. In which case, this was my fault, and a mistake I won't be making again.

[Tael]

He was taking the increased DC to make one per day, and with his ridiculous bonus to craft, he was making 80% of the rolls. Which ended up equating to 876 bows or so. Being that the nation they hail from has a massive army, and the fact that the bows I initially supplied the mook archers with (Standard Longbows)... He ended up selling most of his stock after I calculated up the size of the standing army.

Two of my party members also came up with a similar idea. Magically enchanted arrows that are hollowed out to contain alchemists fire. They ended up with a butt ton of money on that as well. Again, they took max in their crafts, and made most of the DC 20 checks (less than the Ranger, but most none the less).

EDIT: This may have been a misinterpretation of the rule by myself and the players. In which case, this was my fault, and a mistake I won't be making again.

Yeah, to make a composite longbow in one day you'd have to have your check * the DC equal the cost in SP times 14. Aka, your total craft check would have to be 1474. To make it masterwork as well, you check total would have to 4200.

[Achernar]

Well, the obvious way to clear up this rules cheese is that making actual items costs you money in raw materials (150gp for masterwork anything plus half the cost of the weapon/item), and the profit is limited to the market's demand. The kingdom doesn't have 150k to spend on bows and arrows! It's more than the king is worth!

Or, alternately, de-cheesing is simple: you can't make and sell items that way under the RAW. A craft check to make money is half your check in gold per week. You may have to retcon the money, though your players might attack you.

Alternately, send in the enemies that break/steal equipment. Your players might attack you if you do it more than once, though... maybe a legendary thieve's order could be your next villains: the reward is getting your most expensive junk back!

[Grelna the Blue]

These guys should feel tough at their level, but they're not all-powerful. You've probably tried some of the following already, but if not:


Use traps to soften them up. They don't seem to have a rogue.
Occasionally have the bad guys cheat by attacking when the party is resting (and probably unbuffed).
Underwater adventures (disables some spells, imposes penalties on combat without Free Action, vision and range penalties, and allows characters to be sometimes be flanked from all directions)
Planar adventures
Having them face casters with Spell Turning (preferably via feats or the spell, not from lootable items)
Have bad guys utilize Greater Dispel Magics in combat or employ it in traps.
Optimized blaster casters with Searing Spell or Piercing Cold.
Monsters with class levels (vampires, outsiders, and dragons work well in this regard)
Opposition with Improved Sunder, Sundering Strike, and adamantine or starmetal weapons (that'll only really hurt the meleers equipment, though)
And the already suggested Mirror Mirror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror,_Mirror_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)) option.

[Kylarra]

It's also worth noting that masterwork components have to be crafted separately from the base item, so that cuts the number of potential items in half since checks can be made only daily.

[Aracor]

Even assuming you allowed him to make bows and sell them at book value for profit, I'll go ahead and be generous with the calculations.

Level 11
14 ranks in craft
+5 int
+2 circumstance from masterwork tools
+10 competence from magic
+4 misc

35
take 10 = 45

which means increase DC of standard composite longbow = 15 + 30 (willingly increasing the craft DC) = 45

Composite Longbow = 100 gp
= 1,000 sp
= 10,000 cp
Progress per day is by copper per the craft rules.

45 * 45 = 2025 = 5 days per longbow

3 years = 219 longbows
This also means raw materials equalling 219 * 100 / 3 = 7300 gold
Sell price: They sell for 100g each
219 * 100 = 21900 - 7300 gold = net profit: 14,600 gold

In order to make a bow in a single day, it would require him to have a craft check of over 100. And that's assuming you're allowed to voluntarily increase the DC to craft faster more than once (which isn't clearly spelled out, but I think is reasonable).

[Dr.Epic]

Throw some CR 17 monster hordes at them.

[randomhero00]

You don't even need to do anything as drastic as some of the above.

Two words: Crowd control.

Make sure there's a couple casters doing nothing but. Throwing up force walls, black tentacles, maze, glitterdust...anything. That will severely slow there action economy down.

Then have a few brutes that do a ton of damage and gang up on the one party member that didn't get CC'd.

Also you could just cheat a bit, give them templates, maybe make a couple dice rolls higher than they should be, etc. I'm of the opinion that its about story not roll-play. So cheating isn't really cheating when you're the DM.

[Moginheden]

I recently took over a campaign with 7 PCs each with 3 ability scores at 20. It took me a bit to figure out how to deal with them but this is what worked for me.

I use CR 8 encounters against my level 6 party and 1/3 extra mobs, (try a CR of 15 or so on yours.)

Give the mobs extra stats and double their hit points. It doesn't matter if your players are more powerful as long as their opponents are too. Don't give the enemies good gear because your players will loot it. Give them better stats that die out when the players kill them. The effect is mostly the same, higher AC, higher saves, more likely to hit, and hit for more when they do.

You are dealing with more than double the number of players the game was designed for. It's really hard to plan encounters for this especially if your players are like mine and one week you have 3 players, the next you have 7. If you can convince one of the other players to DM and split the campaign everyone will probably have more fun. I know in my sessions most of the party is bored waiting for their turn to come up in combat.

[Endarire]

If your group is using tricks from the 3.5 library and you as DM only use stock creatures who pull from a much smaller resource pool, you should know who will win.

At this point, expect to use casters frequently. Don't necessarily engage the party directly. Use agents. Make victory difficult, and not necessarily obvious.

Around this level in my campaign, I gave all NPCs a base 18 in everything and max HP per HD. They did a bit to help.

At some point, you cannot fairly challenge a character. That's when I would be tempted to say out of character, "You take over (as GM). You already have the power!"

[Pigkappa]

You can try to ask one of the players to become a GM, and split the party in two groups, which will work together only in special cases (i.e. epic battles or so)... 10 players can be really difficult to handle imo.

[Tvtyrant]

Okay, here is what I would do:

1. Have them fight a typical dungeon based around a cult to a Demon Lord. They fight a single demon at the end of it.

2. Having defeated the local cult they find themselves being attacked by the global cult, which sends waves of high level demons after them to punish them. The group finds out that the cult is attempting to return Orcus to Tenebrous via the use of an epic level Binder who will bind the two together and restore their mutual divinity.

3. The group is set upon randomly by demons day and night, the groups of demons are lead by high level caster cultists. Hilarity ensues when more then one faction of cultist attack at the same time, and end up fighting each other.

4. A group of Good holy people are attempting to stop the cultists, but actually work for a high ranking cultist who is an epic level Cleric. The group attacks you with Malconvokers and Planar Shepards that believe you are evil.

5. Good times.

[Gorilla2038]

Large battles with huge gap's in between. 10 Highish level adventurers are a small, elite squad of with a mix of artillery, heavy weapons, and air strikes. No one brings an M-16 to a air raid.

Honestly, waves of enemies can be fun, but there just a mobile covering of meat protecting the real killers. A caster covered in a silent image of plate mail(or, even smarter, hide armor) that uses a hide or bluff check after shooting a pc...(aka, make snipers).

Golem with a 80% cover, hollowed out shelter inside it. A blasty wizard inside, or a UMD using rogue armed with a 3 fireball wand wandcannon. (aka, make a tank)

How about a calvary charge? A first level human fighter can have spirited charge, and maybe allow them to power attack with two hands with lances only. Use aid another to add massive bonus's to others to hit, break up the party by stopping in the way. Have a second person on the back that jumps off, and then the chargers can sweep in and out again and again while the party is pinned.

Use Debuffs. Fearful presence is a great one(within reason). Fell drain and such are nice on large radius spells.

[Runestar]

A widened evard's tentacles covers a 8x8 square.

Just saying...:smalltongue:

[Saintheart]

Give them four rounds with Pun-Pun.

It's the only way to be sure. :smallsmile:

[NichG]

I'd agree that the large party size is the biggest factor here. 150kgp is just 15kgp per person in that group, so while it'll be a power boost, it need not be a ridiculous one.

The approach I'd take depends on how much your players care about enemies being by the book. If they don't, just multiply enemy hitpoints by 10 for significant solitary villains (leaving their minions one-shottable so the mages have stuff to clear with their AoEs and so you don't have to track hitpoints for 50 creatures during a fight).

If they care about monsters/villains actually adding up, just give your villains 20-30 generic hitdice and some interesting templates (which can all be flavored as a deal with demons/etc/etc style thing). Avoid giving them the special abilities, AC, or SR that come with (much) higher CR creatures as those risk TPKing a lower-level but overpowered party, or utterly shutting down their abilities. Give them a bit of a consumable magic item budget to play with, so they come in with effects like Displacement, etc.

At this level I'd also give all enemies intended to be serious fights a source of immunity or resistance to paralysis, compulsion (or even mind-affecting), transformation, death effects, and either immunity to ability damage/drain or a good boost to all stats so there's no one-shotting via shivering ray or the like. If these resistances are removable by smart tactics, that can be an interesting element to the fight that also makes it feel less cheap and more satisfying to achieve the eventual one-shot kill.

One thing I do is that solo villains react differently to insta-kill or action-removing effects. A failed save vs death causes a fair chunk of unhealable Constitution drain of a certain amount (say, enough to do 25%-50% of the enemy's total hitpoints in damage); a failed save vs mind control causes Wis drain or Cha drain, etc. That way, those things are not totally nerfed but also can't just end the fight on a single bad roll. In return I tend not to use death effects on the party without some warning at least (i.e. they know they're going up against a necromancer, etc).

Use various sources of miss chances (displacement, mirror image, incorporeality, etc). Have incorporeal enemies attack from solid surfaces, giving them +8 AC due to cover. Have enemies that remote-control other creatures to attack the party and stage their appearance (e.g. party fights a big golem thing first; when they kill it, the main villain pops out of the chest) in order to keep up the combat pace and prevent it from being a one-round kill.

For a party this large, I'd tend to use villains that can break the action economy somewhat. By the book, give them heroic surge or Ebberon action points or something; if your players don't care, just give them 2 full round actions a round or something. That also prevents certain player cheese that makes them unassailable (e.g. spring attack + wings of cover or something). Try to have them use one of their actions to buff or throw AoEs at the party that makes everyone feel threatened, while the other action is used to focus on one party member, thus making them really sweat.

If the PCs have that much gold, don't be afraid to kill them - they can afford the True Res.

Also, ignore the by-the-book experience tables; if the party is overpowered now, they will only become more-so if you use the book to determine awards as their current power level lets them fight things at a higher CR than they normally should be able to. Figure out how fast you want advancement to be and divide games between low-xp games where not much happens and high-xp games where milestones are reached (2x the award of the low-xp games, perhaps).

[Godskook]

1.In a party over 4-5 people, I'd ban leadership, not from a 'balance' point of view, but from a practical one.

2.Metagame* NPCs, after a while, by natural course of the in-game world, are going to start 'reacting' to your PCs, and combat strategies are going to evolve specifically to fight them. Several known spell slingers? A bunch of counterspell and dispel experts start showing up. Seriously, plot counter-strategies that explicitly take your PCs in mind, their builds *and* their tactics.


*I know what you're thinking but there's another meaning to the word than what RP groups are used to. I'm referencing the version that shows up in MtG social circles. "Learn what your opponent plays, and play to beat that"


Those craft shenanigans is why I took ranks in Perform: Dance. Assuming the person who told me is correct, for a DC 20 check I can make 3d10 silver per day. Can someone do the math on how much a person could have gotten assuming they can hit the DC 20 check every time over the 3 year period?

18067.5 gp, or 18kgp to put it in a more perspective amount.

[BrainFreeze]

Run them through the updated 3.5 Tomb of Horrors, it's a published module so they may think they are getting off easly but you will kill a good portion of them off in the progress of the dungeon.

[Myth]

Human: Warmage / Blood Mage
Not broken.
Human: Warmage / Elemental Savant
Not broken.
Human: Tattooed Monk (Has leadership with a second Tattooed Monk and a Black Dragon as followers. Storyline reason for the latter.)
Not broken. apart from the Black Dragon which you gave him.
Half Giant: Barbarian
Average.
Elf: Cloistered Cleric
Broken if played right.
Human: Crusader
Above Average.
Human: Wizard
Broken if played right.
Elf: Ninja / Ranger / Initiate of the Bow
Not broken.
Pixie: (Can't remember the name of the class. Very Tanky, and gives the party bonuses to Initiative, etc)
Not broken probably.

The Cleric, Wizard and Crusader are the only good classes there. The others are pretty much fodder. What I can tell you is debuff the Crussader (empowered twinned Ray of Enfeeblement), cast Burning Blood or similar spell on the Wizard, then start tagging him with Rays of Stupidity just in case (don't overdo it).

Engage the Clerric in melee and sunder his Holy Symbol again and again. If he wasn't that smart (to tattoo one on his body or carry several extras, engraved in shields and armour). Then proceed to whack him with a spell storing weapon that holds nasty spells. Better yet, attack him with a Spellsword who has a spell storing weapon.

For the fodder, summon some evil Outsiders around their CLVL. They'd have their work cut out for them versus a couple of Glabrezu or some such.

Remember: Divide and Conquer. Use wallls of x to hinder the party logsitics. Use Baleful Transposition etc. as well.