I need help challenging my party...

[JackRackham]

....without killing one or more of them outright. So, here's the situation. I've put my party in a situation where they're supposed to assassinate a series of evil clerics. These clerics are part of an order that has trapped a weakened god (Baervan Wildwanderer, if it matters) and are bleeding him, drawing power by ingesting his blood, tears, etc. The party is caught in the midst of a four-way power struggle between this order, an evil king, a guild of (evil) merchants, and a devil prince (Levistus, if it matters). They're playing all four sides. This has made for great role playing, and should continue to do so. But the first combat played like rocket tag.

Essentially, the party is a cleric, wizard, and PF ranger (I'm adopting selectively from PF: the races, skill list, and a couple classes that were too weak in 3.5). They are attacking these clerics at night. The party is level 5 (6 going forward), an the clerics are level 6-8. The first encounter was a level 8 cleric who was dispatched in two rounds. He sound-lanced the ranger into negatives, failed on a bestow curse aimed at the cleric, and went down hard. It's okay (necessary, even) that some of these encounters will be quick and deadly. But I'd like at least one fight to be more interesting.

I could set a trap for them, involve some lower-level assistance or melee help (there are some Paladins in this order), use summons, or use terrain somehow. But given that these clerics can one-shot anyone in the party, and the party can make such quick work of them, I just don't know how to make avoid killing anyone (this is an I opportune time for it) or an anti-climax in the fight.

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This probably isn't relevant to the question, but the party was trapped in a dungeon that had a timeless trait for 2,000 years. In the meantime, several wars between the Gods, fiends, elder evils, etc took place. Most of them were destroyed and much of the world was made a ruin. Surviving Gods and fiends were severely weakened. People lost faith in the Gods and stopped worshipping. The very nature of the planes was altered, connections broken. Divine power now comes from fiends with divine rank 0, trapped Gods, artifacts o power, meteors, and a variety of things too long to list. The world is dark and awful.in this particular town, the Clerics control the source of power, the King is trying to seize it, the merchants would like to control it, to sell it, and Levistus, who controls two nearby towns, wants to destroy it so he can invade (Levistus is now about as powerful as a demigod). The party is trying to gain access to the God in to attempt to free him. The cleric is a worshiper of Odin who mysteriously still has powers (but no domains). Odin has not been seen in 1,000 years. He was thought dead. Enough of the groups interests match up that the party has appeared to be serving each so far.

[ArcturusV]

Well, level 6-8... Hmm.

Here's something I might do, depending on the set up. These are guys who, from the sound of it, have been ingesting pure God Juices and have apparently been on God Steroids, right?

This leads to two things. One is that they get special "divine" bonuses/rules. You might want to avoid something like this if you are worried about players stealing this idea and using it themselves (even though that would mean doing something unspeakably evil). Say each Cleric who's ingested this God Juice has a few random powers. One of them is something like that they have Divine Reflexes. So you got 3 party members. 2 times per round, regardless of Order, status of being Flat-footed, surprised, whatever, the Cleric can interrupt an action in order to counter. Not QUITE a readied action. I mean something like if the Ranger takes a full round action to shoot him. He can use this divine reflexes action to act, and say... make an attack roll against each arrow in flight to knock them out of the sky before they hit him, or parry a blow aimed at him (Attack Roll against their Attack roll, tie or beat, he knocks it aside). Or can use a divine counter spell (Burn a Turn/Rebuke undead to counter), etc. This will draw out the fight a little more. It'll be more awe inspiring depending on how you play it up. And it doesn't really add to his lethality. It'll also make it harder for them to just beat him in a single round by mobbing up on him like a zombie horde.

Second thing I'd do? Divide and conquer. Simple, RAW, less likely to be abused by players. Just have the cleric do something like summon up some fiendish hounds, etc, and raise a Wall of Chains to cut off the party, so that he's fighting only one/two PCs, and the other one/two is fighting the summons. Again, prevents mobbing of him, which prolongs the life. Unlike the above there's no risk that players will do something unspeakably evil for power, as this is just simple "Any full caster can and will do this" sort of territory. Combine with spells like Alarm to give him advance warning that they are approaching.

Third? Evil is cowardly. This one cleric isn't going to face 3 people who have chosen to fight him here and now. He's gonna run like a little girl, with a trail of yellow, the moment the heroes show up. He's also going to drop heavy, nasty things in their way if they chase. Let them just mob up and take him down in one or two rounds if they corner him. They will DESERVE it if they do. Have him cast things like Wall of X, summoned creatures, trap spells, use mundane traps, darkness, escape routes, acolyte cultist speedbumps with Alchemist's Fire, whatever. He just runs and makes them chase him down through a death trap. Minions help. But not really required.

[JackRackham]

Hmmm. Option number three is nice. I wouldn't have thought of that. Option 1: yeah, they have access to the juice. They haven't used it thus far, but I don't want to tempt them (although I'm fine with them going balls-out evil in this world). I've considered option three, but then, once he had them 1-on-1, he'd have to do something silly like engaging them in melee or using his weaker spells.

So, yeah. I'll stew on option three for a while and see what I can come up with. Off-hand, I'm thinking of a phased retreat into his home. He'll, maybe he even has traps or somesuch. I'll need to look into the summon monster chain of spells, I suppose.

[ArcturusV]

I mean, they are evil clerics... so lots of weird things they could do while running. This could be anything from say... if they found a way to get Benign Transposition on their spell list or on an item (Trade places with an ally), they could have the players try to mob him, readied action on an attack, trade places with an undead zombie he created that is set to blow up (Stuff for that in Libris Mortis), dealing minor damage to all the PCs who just tried to swarm and smite the cleric.

Or one of my favorites, there's always a 10 x 10 x 10 room for Jello. They run down a 10 foot wide passage, pull a switch... trap door in the ceiling of the passage, down drops a Gelatinous Cube.

Something weird? Go for a con. Have the Cleric do something like cast Undetectable Alignment on some party members, set up some doubles. Play the "Who is a doppleganger?" game with the party. Particularly since the campaign has involved a lot of backroom deals from the sound of it, and if any time the players have been "Alone" and no one had eyes on them. If you were an evil, evil DM you might even make a habit of passing notes. Even notes that say something like "Tell no one what this note says". It makes players paranoid, which makes the Doppleganger ploy more likely to work. Particularly if you hand them the note after something like the ranger just went off alone to gather food/wood for the camp.

[JackRackham]

So, I just made the first encounter for this next session. I went with a necromancer build for this cleric, with several of the corpsecrafter feats. He's a level 6 cleric.

If the party catches him outside his home, he will retreat inside. The door locks behind him and is trapped (giving him time). Inside are four Troll Skeletons (all he can control). As time allows, he'll cast Silence, Deeper Darkness, Ebon eyes on each (so, four castings), and Mass Aid.

He'll then wait at the foot of the stairs, with a prepared action to cast Divine Interdiction on the cleric. After it's cast, he will retreat up the stairs, closing the door behind him. If I think the party can take another challenging fight, he'll buff himself from scrolls while the party fights the trolls, but they should be able to kill him pretty easily. He will have used most of his spells buffing up his troll-warriors, and preparing their ambush.

Thoughts? I'm slightly concerned that the party will die horribly, since these guys aren't great tactical combatants.

[Blackhawk748]

well, do they know that these guys are necromancers? if they are everyone should have a blunt weapon and a slashing weapon, Troll Skeles go down pretty easy when smacked by a maul.

[JackRackham]

well, do they know that these guys are necromancers? if they are everyone should have a blunt weapon and a slashing weapon, Troll Skeles go down pretty easy when smacked by a maul.

They know nothing about this guy unless they do some inteligence gathering on their own initiative. Also, keep in mind, these particular Troll-skeletons will be beefier due to corpsecrafting (+4 St, +2hp/HD, +2 NA, +4 turn resistance, explode for 4d6 dmg in 10ft spread when destroyed).

I'm mostly concerned at the massive HP damage they can do before they drop. I imagine it will take at least 1 rd apiece for the party to drop them and they could potentially easily 1-shot anyone in the party with a decent roll. They have 54 hp, 16 AC, +11 to hit (2 claws at +11 1d6+8; 1 bite at +6 1d6+4, plus they get rend if both claws hit for an extra 2d6+12), 10ft reach and +7 to initiative.

That's 39-64 damage if everything hits. I think my beefiest PC will be around 50hp. Plus they'll initially be hidden in magical darkness, which they can see in just fine. Hell, if they got really lucky and I didn't fudge anything, they could technically TPK the party in one rd.

[lsfreak]

You could always try playing out the encounter a time or two, provided you have the PC's stats handy. Better than going in completely blind, especially if you have a decent idea about how the PC's are likely to respond.

[JackRackham]

You could always try playing out the encounter a time or two, provided you have the PC's stats handy. Better than going in completely blind, especially if you have a decent idea about how the PC's are likely to respond.

Yeah. Fair enough. I mean, the party's leveling up between sessions (to lvl 6), so I can't even guess which spells they'll have. Mostly, I'm concerned because they don't have a true melee heavy. They have a cleric (NOT clericzilla), a wizard (new to the class), and a PF ranger (I allowed this one PF class because 3.5 rangers are relatively weak). Our SS is away until the session after this.

Everyone pretty much uses blunt weapons anyway, but the ranger is a gnome, so his damage output is not especially high. I don't know that they have especially good crowd control either. The wizard has grease (not great at this level) and the ranger has entangle (?), but that will really only work with foresight. Usually, I trust the PCs to come up with something...idk.

EDIT: I suppose if I'm worried this much about TPK, I should just split this up. Two skeletrolls in the first room, two more in the top room with the cleric. It won't be so difficult, but I guess it accomplishes the goal of making this a memorable endeavor.

[nedz]

Use more Battlefield Control. Now Clerics aren't the best at this so they need some friends who are.

Extending this idea: make an evil party of which the Clerics are the leading members. This should balance up the action economy a little.

BTW I'd be surprised if your Troll skellies are anything more than a one round speed bump, maybe two.

[JackRackham]

BTW I'd be surprised if your Troll skellies are anything more than a one round speed bump, maybe two.

With my past groups, I'd agree. This party is pretty unoptimized, though, and the players haven't shown the best tactical thinking so far.