Beefing up the Bad Guys

[CrazedGoblin]

what would be the best way to increase the toughness of foes, would it be as simple as increaseing their Armour Class and Attack Bonus??

[Dhavaer]

Adding hit dice, templates or extra equipment.

[Charity]

Or give them some sort of terrain bonus, you can make an encounter much harder (particularly for low level characters) with an envoirnment that favours the enemy.

[Callix]

At low levels, circumstances are the most available means. Put a bunch of stealthy rogues in positions where they can get the drop on PCs if they don't make spot/listen. Give the casters cover and impeding rubble. Treasure also works. A Wand of Sleep can be a real nuisance to lowbies. If they all succumb, they've lost.
At higher levels, giving NPCs better gear can work, but is a bit risky, because you're *hoping* that all those goodies will end up in PC hands. Templates, on the other hand, can really spice up an encounter. A half-red-dragon troll in a room with lava is very effective: take Power Attack/Improved Bull Rush and push people into the lava. He's immune. Similarly, look at the recent wotc articles on templates.
As a side note, look at the CR40 creature he created: the 30-headed Tarrasque. 90 attacks per round, save-or-die crits. The Axiomatic/Anarchic two-headed unicorn rocks too.

[Blackbrrd]

Just adjusting AC/HP/BAB/Stats/Saves works well if you don't overdo it.

Having a Human wizard with 30 AC naked without any spells doesn't make sense. Giving the same wizard 30%-70% more HP because the party has 7 players instead of 4 is quite ok.

Try not to overdo the amount of monsters used, it will slow down combat, besides area of effect spells ignores numbers ;)

If you have 6+ players, don't go with one opponent - it will get swarmed.

Be careful when using casters - it doesn't matter if the party is large if you are using 4x lvl5 wizards blasting away with fireballs (that is a CR9 encounter), but it will give a level 9 party great problems if ambushed - which isn't to hard with the 600' range of fireball...

Who has the terrain advantage?
Players ambushing = -2 EL
Players being ambushed = +2EL

Be careful not to run opponents with extremely high AC compared to the highest attack rating, or opponents with damage reduction the party can't defeat...

[Dausuul]

what would be the best way to increase the toughness of foes, would it be as simple as increaseing their Armour Class and Attack Bonus??

It really depends on the situation.

The "proper" way to do it is by adding Hit Dice or class levels. This has the advantage of increasing the critter's CR in a more-or-less predictable fashion, and keeps all its attributes in balance (hit points, saves, attack bonus, et cetera).

Unfortunately, it's also a lot of work to do it that way, so I often use shortcuts when I'm in a hurry. My most common method is to adjust the creature's hit points, and sometimes its damage output.

A simple guideline I use: Take the factor by which you increase the creature's hit points, and multiply it by the factor by which you increase its damage output. Call this your "boost factor." The boost factor has the following (very approximate) effect on CR:

Boost factor 1.75 -> +1 CR
Boost factor 3 -> +2 CR
Boost factor 5 -> +3 CR
Boost factor 9 -> +4 CR

...and I wouldn't go beyond that if I were you. If you're going more than 4 CR above normal, it's time to find a different "basic monster" to start from, or else advance it properly.

For example, if you triple the monster's hit points and damage output, that makes it about 4 CR higher than it would normally be (3 x 3 = 9). On the other hand, if you increase its hit points 50% and double its damage, that's 2 CR higher than normal (1.5 x 2 = 3).

Keep in mind that this assumes you are changing nothing but the creature's hit points and damage per attack--you're not touching its attack bonus, saves, AC, or anything else. It also assumes that the creature relies mainly on attacks and damage to beat down its foes, and that its foes rely on attacks and damage to beat it down. And it's still just a very rough guide.

And be careful how much you boost damage... usually you should boost hit points first and damage second. Otherwise you're apt to end up with a dead PC or two.

[CASTLEMIKE]

Roll dice behind your screen occassionally when nothing is happening. Just smile and say you don't see or hear anything or that looks interesting. Ask the party what their line up is again or how far apart they are. This will normally put the party on edge and is enjoyable to the DM listening to them start telling you what they are doing.

What levels are you generally talking about? The game isn't normally about the DM really trying to kill the PCs or the NPCs would use pretty much the same general sudden strike death attacks against them. As the DM you should be enjoying yourself to.

Don't just throw primarily NPCs at them as they carry to much treasure for their CR rating compared to other monsters in general. Hide the monster treasure nearby unless the PCs are encountering wandering monsters.

Just use an average intelligence monster or smarter monster with a little common sense. Why is that monster where it is doing what it is doing in your campaign? Not all of them need to be there just to die. Have a bunch of low level orcs or kobolds with their gear as treasure. Most monster NPCs really wouldn't want to die so give them some basic standard tactics like the PCs use.

Let the monsters occassionally get in a first attack or two with ranged missile fire after a failed spot check to notice the ambush and blood the party. Let them break off the attack and split up with escape routes and traps (Running around around a covered pit trap or spiked hole (A few PCs stop barreling off without thought after a fall or two). Let them outrun fighters in heavy armor. Let the monsters have some backup. Their is strength in numbers.

Let the Kobold sorcerer know Silent Image and have the unusually quiet Illusionary Monster(s) attack the party (Two sorcerers and one can use Ghost Sounds). Let them escape down a tunnel warren to small for most of the PCs to follow through immediately and recklessly at full speed.

[CrazedGoblin]

Thanks for the help guys


they are only around level two, but they have been flattening everything in their way without much trouble.

[Blackbrrd]

If you want to scare the characters give them encounters until they are out of resources, it is really scary, and it should make them come up with a good idea to avoid more encounters - like hideing somewhere.

The advantage of this compared to one or two really nasty encounters is that there is little danger of actually killing a PC - except if they do something stupid ;)

Our DM did this to us - we ran out of resources (or close to) and wanted to get away so we could rest. We tried as best we could to hide our tracks, but the bastards had a monster with search/track and managed to find us. We got ambushed in the middle of the night and my knight in shiny armor had AC 11 :P We barely made it through the encounter, the only character going down was my own, but we had NO control the first 3-5 rounds, which is scary like hell.