Dealing With Enemy Numbers

[GreatWyrmGold]

So, I'm DMing Rise of the Runelords. My group fought a white dragon; we're missing a cleric and a cavalier, but we had the oracle, hunter, alchemist, hunter's animal companion (a giant tiger with good gear, who's the party's most consistent frontliner), and alchemist's animal companion (clone of a barbarian whose player left, and didn't play bright characters). It seems like they had easily handled most encounters, mook and boss alike, elsewhere in the adventure path—including a memorable incident when the alchemist threw together some alchemal items and bomb that almost single-handedly killed Black Magga several levels ago—so I fiddled with the dragon's spell list (in particular giving it greater invisibility to replace its invisibility) and threw them at it.
Thank Gygax the oracle has word of recall. The greater invisibility stopped the alchemist from using bomb-spam (pretty much as intended), but even with the other characters finding ways to target the dragon, they couldn't hit the dang thing or stop it from hitting them. None of the players/animal companions there tonight could hit the dragon without a natural 20 (or a touch attack), the dragon couldn't miss without a natural 1, and its saving throw bonuses were high enough to no-sell the magic players used with a halfway-decent roll (never mind if I remembered the spell resistance).
Sometimes, the players have some trick that lets them trivialize an encounter. (The hunter channeling earth to burrow through rock walls with his tiger is a pretty widely-useful one, and the alchemist was designed to have a bunch of options to let him handle various challenges—when he wasn't invisibly bombing his way through enemy lines or something.) But when those tricks aren't enough, they just can't do it. Their numbers are too low, the enemy's numbers are too high. Sure, this encounter was two CRs above their level and using an incomplete party, but that's just ridiculous.

I'm trying to figure out what's going wrong and how to fix it without breaking the game the other way.
Are the players short on magical gear? The early chapters of Runelords seemed a bit treasure-sparse, but between looting dead characters and increasing the treasure hoards a bit I thought I'd have corrected that by now. Do I just need to get them better gear?
Are their characters built badly? The alchemist is the only player with an eye for (or interest in) charop. Does Pathfinder expect a higher level of character optimization from its players? How could I fix that?
Is the party built badly? Are they missing some skills, overspecialized in some area, too focused on utility and not enough on combat? But then why do they sometimes breeze through combat? How could I fix this without just throwing in a DMPC?
Does Pathfinder expect players to use high-level divinations to scout out enemy encounters beforehand? The players don't have anything like that, though, and that's always seemed like a cheap tactic. Why would anyone design a game around it?
Am I just bad at DMing? Do I just not realize how much trouble the PCs are having until they get crushed? Am I running the enemies in a way that makes them play out wrong somehow?

There doesn't seem to be much middle ground between the PCs handling things with ease and them almost losing until they come back prepared. This seems like a problem, since neither "effortless victory" nor "you can't hit the dragon" seem particularly fun. Is there some way to nudge the game back into a happy medium? Does anyone have any advice on what to do?

[zlefin]

checking whether they're undergeared is the easiest thing to do. Look at their char sheets, and total the purchase price of all the gear they have and compare to the WBL tables. That will quite definitively determine whether they're undergeared in general. If they have enough value in gear, but not the right type of gear (i.e. not enough basic +X items, or ones that are'nt in their most important stats) that's a lot trickier to measure, but shouldn't come up too much.

the described needs a 20 and dragon hitting on 2 problems are surprising, a few typical buff spells should be more than enough to at least enable hitting.

by the description, the party seems diverse enough to be able to handle threats; especially if they adjust. How well will they handle the white dragon if they make a point of adjusting their spell loadouts specifically to combat it, and maybe pick up a few suitable consumables?

pathfinder does not expect or rely on people pre-scouting or divining encounters. not that I'm familiar with that adventure path, but as a general principle it remains true.


generally speaking, it seems like whatever the underlying problem is here is quite complicated, so to solve it we'll probably have to go into a lot more detail about the players char sheets and the white dragon they encountered.

Also, I have a link in my sig to a bunch of pathfinder benchmarking numbers; go to the benchmarking section and find the link that heads to the full list of benchmarks and compare the players pertinent numbers to the benchmarks and see what that tells us, that should be quite fast to do.

[Elkad]

I'm not familiar with the module, and you didn't list character level.
But the obvious thing is 3 characters instead of 5. Putting the party down about 1.5 ECL from normal.

If the encounter was +2CR for the full party, it's +3.5 for the partial one, which is basically an even fight. A bit of unlucky dice and they wipe.

[GreatWyrmGold]

checking whether they're undergeared is the easiest thing to do. Look at their char sheets, and total the purchase price of all the gear they have and compare to the WBL tables. That will quite definitively determine whether they're undergeared in general. If they have enough value in gear, but not the right type of gear (i.e. not enough basic +X items, or ones that are'nt in their most important stats) that's a lot trickier to measure, but shouldn't come up too much.
It might come up here; my group (me included) likes utility items. It probably doesn't help that we also play a lot of 5e, where +numbers magic isn't as important. I haven't been keeping close track of how they spend their gold (aside from looking up specific items they ask about), so I'm not sure exactly how they're spending their cash (especially on things that they wouldn't need to ask about), but I just sent a group text asking about gear value and how much of that is +numbers stuff (my exact words).
Out of curiosity, approximately what percentage of gear value would you suggest spending on +numbers stuff? 30%? 50%? 75%?


the described needs a 20 and dragon hitting on 2 problems are surprising, a few typical buff spells should be more than enough to at least enable hitting.


[quote]generally speaking, it seems like whatever the underlying problem is here is quite complicated, so to solve it we'll probably have to go into a lot more detail about the players char sheets and the white dragon they encountered.
The white dragon was a default ancient white dragon from the Bestiary, with the following spells:
Spells Known (CL 9th, DC SL+13):
4th (4/day, 1 cast)—greater invisibility, dimension door
3rd (7/day)—dispel magic, displacement, lightning bolt (DC 16)
2nd (7/day, 2 cast)—invisibility, fog cloud, resist energy, see invisibility
1st (7/day, 1 cast)—alarm, grease (DC 14), magic aura, shield, true strike
0 (at will)—acid splash, dancing lights, detect magic, ghost sound, mage hand, message, ray of frost, mending
It had cast see invisibility, resist energy, shield, and the aforementioned greater invisibility before combat. It didn't cast spells during combat; it just fired its breath weapon twice and bit a few times in between. Oh, and I gave it a cloak of resistance and belt of giant strength that it had in its hoard, which probably didn't help the numbers issue.
I don't have the characters' sheets on hand, though; my group runs a pretty loose ship. (I'm thinking of changing that now that this problem's come up...which is pretty much the opposite of why you'd normally tighten ship, but whatever.) I've been keeping an adventure log that I've been meaning to write up to the forum for ages now, but I've never gotten around to it. I can dig through that and see if there's anything helpful in there...at the very least, I could give you a list of the alchemist's tricks.


Also, I have a link in my sig to a bunch of pathfinder benchmarking numbers; go to the benchmarking section and find the link that heads to the full list of benchmarks and compare the players pertinent numbers to the benchmarks and see what that tells us, that should be quite fast to do.
Except, as noted, I don't keep a copy of my players' character sheets. (In my defense, half of them are electronic and one uses a program that I don't have. It's a weak defense but I'm sticking to it!)
I've sent my players the spreadsheet, though. I'm hoping I can talk with at least some of them about this situation before the next fight.

Thanks for all of your help!



I'm not familiar with the module, and you didn't list character level.
But the obvious thing is 3 characters instead of 5. Putting the party down about 1.5 ECL from normal.

If the encounter was +2CR for the full party, it's +3.5 for the partial one, which is basically an even fight. A bit of unlucky dice and they wipe.
The luck wasn't really on either side of that fight. Like I said, it looks like it just came down to very, very one-sided numbers.

[Eldaran]

The greater invisibility stopped the alchemist from using bomb-spam (pretty much as intended), but even with the other characters finding ways to target the dragon, they couldn't hit the dang thing or stop it from hitting them.

Can you explain this part? Greater Invis shouldn't stop the alchemist from using his bombs, they'd just have a 50% miss chance, but considering bombs by default do fire damage and the dragon is vulnerable to fire it should still have been pretty effective. Even a miss would likely do splash damage to the dragon.

[Alexvrahr]

You're up into the levels where D&D 3 wasn't playtested and so it (and its descendant PF) works less well than you'd hope. Yes, ACs and attack bonuses can easily go off the d20's range. Sometimes even saves and save DCs. If the group doesn't like doing their own optimisation then it can be handy for them to read guides or ask questions on websites like this one or Paizo.com. If they object to the very concept of optimisation you're going to need to scale back the enemies a bit.

Also worth noting that dragons in particular tend to be under CR-d in PF, to make them unusually impressive opponents when they show up.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Can you explain this part? Greater Invis shouldn't stop the alchemist from using his bombs, they'd just have a 50% miss chance, but considering bombs by default do fire damage and the dragon is vulnerable to fire it should still have been pretty effective. Even a miss would likely do splash damage to the dragon.
Well, to start with, the dragon was flying and a miss would deal splash damage a good 40-50 feet below it. Second, I'm not sure if we were using the invisibility rules wrong, but it's really hard to locate an invisible creature. The dragon's Stealth check after invisibility would be in the 30's, and I'm not sure anyone but the hunter and tiger had Perception to rival that. (If we were running it wrong, then this seems like accidental yet just retribution for how long he was abusing that mistake for the past couple levels.)



If the group doesn't like doing their own optimisation then it can be handy for them to read guides or ask questions on websites like this one or Paizo.com. If they object to the very concept of optimisation you're going to need to scale back the enemies a bit.
I don't think the object to the concept of optimization, so much as it hasn't been an issue before. Heck, one of the players is even good at optimization, he just turns his optimization talents to suboptimal ideas that he thinks sound fun (like "scheming utility alchemist").
I've never been terribly fussed about optimization as player or DM, either, so I'm woefully underequipped to handle this issue on my own. Thank goodness for the Internet, though!

[zlefin]

I'd guess that as long as the +numbers stuff represents at least 30% of wbl, the chars should be fine; especially if the utility items are good ones. I'm not too familiar with the details on which utility items are good and which aren't.


looking at the invisibility rules here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/special-abilities/#TOC-Invisibility
it looks like the default perception DC to target would be 20 to pinpoint the dragon's location (with a base of 20 to notice presence, +20 to pinpoint, -20 for engaging in combat).

but I don't use invisibilty much and am not used to the rules for it.
hmm, I see the dragon does have a stealth of +16 in its entry; that would help it quite a bit; though only when stealth is applicable. whenever the dragon bites it wouldn't be using stealth, so at that point at least it should be quite feasible to pinpoint for readied actions. the sniping rules are only for ranged attacks and wouldn't apply to a bite, though they would to the breath attacks.



I just looked at the monster averages:
http://legacy.aonprd.com/bestiary/monsterCreation.html
and it seems like the white dragons are markedly above the typical stats for a creature of their CR, that probably accounts for a lot of the issue. looking at those numbers it seems like the dragon should be cr 17 or 18 or so.
using the gear in its hoard would put it even further above that.

a comparison with other monsters of CR 15; especially with other dragons at CR 15, likewise seems to show that the white dragon should have a higher CR, as it compares quite favorably with other same CR dragons.


as a tactical note: the dragon's caster level is only 9, so one char with see invisibility + dispel magic could strip away the dragon's buffs fairly reliably, forcing them to buff up again.