I believe my encounters are too easy!

[Krazzman]

Hello playground,

again I come to you with a plea for help. I have problems designing a challenging encounter.

This past year I DM'ed for our group due to my wife running out of motivation/ideas for our SWSE game and one player not feeling well with DMing (he says he isn't comfortable with not really being rules savvy and such stuff).

As thus I DM for them. With only 3 players I made it a Pathfinder Gestalt game.
Characters are:
Human Crossbow Focused Ranger6//Oracle2/Paladin4
Tiefling Slayer6//Eldritch Scion(Magus) 6 [Houseruled to be working of Intelligence instead of charisma]
"Ork" Aasimar Angel-Kin Druid6//Soul Brawler6 (traded stuff out for Ki Powers and Monk AC bonus)

I changed/tweaked a bit with them, especially the Tiefling as the player was a bit too confusing for the player. He built for TWF and since that doesn't really work with spell combat he switched from a double Kukri build to a Scimitar build.

Following Houserules are in place:
Weapon finesse grants Dex to be the to hit and damage bonus.
Spell point variant. Since everyone is at least a tiny bit caster this isn't unfair to anyone except maybe the Oradin who focuses on healing magic + sniping stuff with his Splitting Repeating Crossbow.
Also in place is the "new-ish" Automatic Bonus Progression Variant.

I really have a problem with treasure too as such I thought the last one might help.

To give a few examples of (in my eyes) botched encounter design:
The players hear 3 Elven mage apprentices approaching, the elves don't perceive the players due to bad rolls.
Tiefling goes Invisible, Paladin hides and aims at them, Brawler activates hides.
Since these are 3 3rd level Wizards (it should've been an easy encounter but I underestimated how laughable it would be).
Tiefling drops from ceiling and kills the one in the back. Brawler activates a Ki Power and uses a Full Attack at range. Paldin shoots the last one. That barely withstood the attack of the Brawler.

The whole set up is that those evil elves were experimenting with a "Black Shadow Portal" (tm) and unleashed hell on themselves.
The Players search the room below the Portal and get attacked by the Ooze dripping from the ceiling which forms into 4 Headcrab/Facehugger hybrids and a "Big Screecher".
The Headcrabs are easily dealt with (they deal around a total of 5 damage to the oradin). The "Big Screecher" uses an AoE effect for medium damage and get's uppercutted and "Upside-Down" Spell Combated by Brawler and Tiefling.

The Players tumble through the Portal and get stuck in Paralysing Shadow swamp... not really though as the one who failed the save get's pulled out. Again due to high perception rolls they see another 3 "higher" ranked Elves approaching together with a shadowry Gorrilla (without a Head just a maw and 2 red eyes somewhere in his shouldermuscles). They hide (and manage to pull it off due to sheer luck of the dice...) and wait for the elves to send the Gorilla thing through the portal then again assassinate and interrupt them before one single spell is spoken. (Knockout Maneuver on one, High Damage sneak attack [silent spellstrike shocking grasp = 7d6(5 grasp, 1 scimitar, 1 sneak) + 9 (6 dex, 1 magic and 2 studied)] and a few bolts).
They loot these elves, disable the portal in a way that they can return and do so to find an enraged Shadow Girallon there. Brawler decides to tank it, activates Martial Flexibility to get Improved Bullrush and proceeds to Plyopush that shadowry monstrocity back into the Spelltrapped corridor which just existed to deter them from going further up. Resistance Electricity and Ice 10 saved this one from quite some damage as did the DR5/Silver (which no one has a way to deal with). This thing with 5 attacks a round proceeds to hit exactly twice in the 4 rounds of combat and deal a whooping 12 points of damage before dying. The completion of this section brings the players to level 6 and they haul ass back to the ship waiting for them. While having made some enemies of elves that will probably scry and strike them later in the campaign.

These were the last 3 (or 4 depending on how you count) encounter they faced. And I honestly felt the need to post for help as I really thought these and all other encounter they faced so far were easy. Some were a bit tricky but not really hard enough to get the players on their toes.

So if you have any advice on how to better myself on this or stories of how you plan/prepare an encouter/how you run random encounter (which was something that happened in my old games, random encounter harder than the long planned "boss battle") I would be really happy to hear/read it.

[ComaVision]

Firstly, there's nothing wrong with the party being awesome sometimes. They're heroes, it's what they do.

Now, how exactly did you expect three level 3s against three level 5 gestalted characters to go? The numbers right off tell you that the fight is ridiculously one-sided, then you add on the element of surprise and of course it wasn't challenging.

It sounds like the party is fairly powerful (big surprise, they're gestalt), and is pretty good at using the environment to their advantage. I think a bunch of wizards (high int characters) should have had wayyy better preparations than this so even without changing the level it shouldn't have been so laughable. Not even an Alarm spell, man?

TL;DR Use stronger enemies and have the enemies use intelligent defenses.

[Vhaidara]

Yeah, a lot of this came down to smart play from the players. They had surprise in most of the fights, and used the environment against the girallon.

Oh, and those wizards were so weak I would question if they even counted for xp. 2 levels lower, and non-gestalt? Byebye.

[daremetoidareyo]

Consider gestalting your enemies also. wizard 3//barbarian 3 would have gone a long way towards survivability.

Your PCs are very tactical, so harrying them is a great option. I suggest phase spiders. Make that phase spider only attack at dawn and dusk, followed by a (sometimes temporary) retreat after it takes a single hit.

...or...

2 Goblin fighter 5//totemist 5
kobold bard 5/warblade 5 (with a wand of benign transposition 15 charges or so and dragonfire inspiration)
All riding Blink Worgs, (just move the better blink dog abilities over to worgs) Give them mounted feats, so they can negate hits with a ride check.
Also make those goblins heroic (diving off the saddle on a charge) and smart enough to run away after a single creature on the team is taken down to 0 hp.

[Telonius]

One item that I admit I'm constantly screwing up: "Surprise Round" does not mean a whole round. You only get a standard action, plus free actions. (Pathfinder specifies that it could be a standard or a move action; in 3.5 it doesn't specifically call that out, but you can always use a move action instead of a standard, so it amounts to the same thing). Regular initiative order applies after that. So in a couple of the examples, your players shouldn't have been getting a full attack off in the surprise round, since that's not possible. (It's still perfectly possible for them to beat the other guys in initiative, and full attack during regular combat).

[Krazzman]

Firstly, there's nothing wrong with the party being awesome sometimes. They're heroes, it's what they do.

Now, how exactly did you expect three level 3s against three level 5 gestalted characters to go? The numbers right off tell you that the fight is ridiculously one-sided, then you add on the element of surprise and of course it wasn't challenging.

It sounds like the party is fairly powerful (big surprise, they're gestalt), and is pretty good at using the environment to their advantage. I think a bunch of wizards (high int characters) should have had wayyy better preparations than this so even without changing the level it shouldn't have been so laughable. Not even an Alarm spell, man?

TL;DR Use stronger enemies and have the enemies use intelligent defenses.

Totally with you on this. They are supposed to be heroes. The 3 novices should've been like Alarmbots. Flee/disable/warn. 3 Castings of Vanish/Invisibility followed by expeditious retreat. On seeing them. The other Wizards would've gone: Aquaous Orb, Invisibility Sphere, Darkness. Then spawn stuff via summon monster/disable the group with web, hold person and so on. Then do other stuff.
They already were flying and had Mage Armor and False life up.


Yeah, a lot of this came down to smart play from the players. They had surprise in most of the fights, and used the environment against the girallon.

Oh, and those wizards were so weak I would question if they even counted for xp. 2 levels lower, and non-gestalt? Byebye.

Yes. The whole part about being traps there backfired on me quite heavily. The Group get's XP for finishing "story parts" instead of per encounter/monster or whatever.
But due to that and other parts those elven saw them and began a debate, they will encounter some of them on their cruise back to the ship that will bring them to the mainland.
And a few troops of "elven magic avengers" are now on the random encounter list.

The most challenging part of the campaign so far was the eradication of a small tribe of Kobolds that were slightly blessed with Tucker... which they tricked with Illusions, and Summon Swarm spells...

I should have put a Tag on thread... if I knew how... it's Pathfinder. As such sadly no Totemists or Dragonfire Inspiration. But those Goblin Worgs and the Phase Spider looks nice....


One item that I admit I'm constantly screwing up: "Surprise Round" does not mean a whole round. You only get a standard action, plus free actions. (Pathfinder specifies that it could be a standard or a move action; in 3.5 it doesn't specifically call that out, but you can always use a move action instead of a standard, so it amounts to the same thing). Regular initiative order applies after that. So in a couple of the examples, your players shouldn't have been getting a full attack off in the surprise round, since that's not possible. (It's still perfectly possible for them to beat the other guys in initiative, and full attack during regular combat).

It was Surprise + Full round as everyone beat their Initiative (counted it as +8 due to +2 Dex, +4 Imp Ini and +2 Trait). Like you said I really enforce those Standard and Move action specific rules (since one player is really new and one just slightly new in pathfinder).
Surprise Round Tiefling moved into position, Brawler used her Ki Power, Oradin drew his weapon. First Round Sneak attack, Full attack, Full Attack. Similar on the second wizard encounter... Move into position, then SneakSpellstrike, Knockout, Full Attack.

I will probably start Gestalting more monster/NPC's.