Need help to challenge players without feeling dirty

[Adamantly d20]

I am DM for a pathfinder group, they have been playing now for around a year and a half and are level 14.

There are two players in the party;

Half-Orc Barbarian 14
Dwarf Barbarian 4/Cavalier 10

With items, some of which are custom, they have stats that are difficult for relevant CR monsters to challenge them. They don't have magic spells and both players stray away from magic because it is 'too confusing/ time consuming'

They have magic armor/items/weapons etc, but no special magical abilities (since Barbarian/Cavalier etc)

Their stats are similar and are
**[off the top of my head]**
190 HP
AC of 38
Fortitude 18
Reflex 14
Will 14

Attack routine with boots of speed +30/+30/+25/+20 with [2d12+21 damage]

We are at a major capital city, the players have expressed interest in fighting in an arena for a challenge. I need an encounter that will make them excited and bring life to the table. I'm open to ideas

We have a session in 2 days time. Many thanks.

[Kayblis]

So they're just melee brutes? All they can do is charge then full-attack? It's very simple to challenge them, and even turn them useless, so I'd ask you what you call 'feeling dirty' because it's an impotant factor.

Flying; Penalties to attributes; Invisibility; Physical barriers; Concealment and vision obscuring; Annoying conditions like Blind and Nauseated. All of those are availabe to level 1~5 caster, and doesn't include butting heads with the melee brute. Don't play their game if you want to challenge them, straight stat battles are the least interesting challenges. If you don't want to use the GOOD spells(spell lv 5+), you can have half-casters and standard multiclass characters, or even the PrCs that progress spells and have good BAB. That's also if you don't want divine casters, which are great melee characters on their own.

As they don't have any magic, they most likely don't have counters for magic. It's not cheap to use the rest of the system just because they refuse to use it.

[Telonius]

It sounds to me like you're having problems with the high numbers. If you don't want to attack the areas they're weaker (like Kayblis suggests), then it's time to send them some higher-CR melee brutes. CR is only a guideline, and can end up very inappropriate if the players have higher stats than the game "expects" at a given level. In particular, the "send more smaller guys, not one big guy" thing (to deal with action economy) becomes bad advice when none of the smaller guys have any chance of hitting except on a 20.

[Adamantly d20]

Oh, it occurred to me that one of them has a pair of truesight goggles that was gifted to them by someone who is no longer there so invisibility/displacement and such won't work.

[Kayblis]

Oh, it occurred to me that one of them has a pair of truesight goggles that was gifted to them by another player, so invisibility/displacement and such won't work.

Not an issue to most of the tactics mentioned and true sight still doesn't give you special senses, so a fog spell like the lv 1 spell Obscuring Mist still blocks vision. A proper spellcaster of level 9+ could wash them in the arena with flight+debuffs, and there's not much that could change it.

[Adamantly d20]

I guess "feeling dirty" would be like level 7-8 save or suck/save or die, forced planeshift to another plane, etc.

Flesh to stone, etc

[Adamantly d20]

As of right now I am trying for an encounter that uses either something along these lines for rough idea:

Boss is a caster with up to 6 or 7th level spells
Who has displacement, solid fog, and
still spell/silent spell/ quicken spell metamagic rods, probably other metamagic reducer feats/class abilities as well. Deceptive spell metamagic is going to be key in fooling the player with truesight. I don't want the players to recognize them as the caster so they will be dressed in mundane disguise as another class to not appear as a mage.

I want a mix of AOE ability mooks, (breath weapons, alchemist grenades, lesser magic up to 4th level spells, and some cannon fodder melee summoned creatures for the players to mow through and distract from the true caster.

And maybe a fell drain magic missile /+ quickened fell drain magic missile to drop each player 1 level every 1-2 rounds for a feeling of "oh $*!t " we have to find the caster before it's too late.

As part of the distraction, could have a melee npc that would probably be some sort of tome of battle/path of war build that gets the caster's support every other round.

Is this an ok option that sounds like it will provide a decent challenge to the players?

[Kaiwen]

As of right now I am trying for an encounter that uses either something along these lines for rough idea:

Boss is a caster with up to 6 or 7th level spells
Who has displacement, solid fog, and
still spell/silent spell/ quicken spell metamagic rods, probably other metamagic reducer feats/class abilities as well. Deceptive spell metamagic is going to be key in fooling the player with truesight. I don't want the players to recognize them as the caster so they will be dressed in mundane disguise as another class to not appear as a mage.

I want a mix of AOE ability mooks, (breath weapons, alchemist grenades, lesser magic up to 4th level spells, and some cannon fodder melee summoned creatures for the players to mow through and distract from the true caster.

And maybe a fell drain magic missile /+ quickened fell drain magic missile to drop each player 1 level every 1-2 rounds for a feeling of "oh $*!t " we have to find the caster before it's too late.

As part of the distraction, could have a melee npc that would probably be some sort of tome of battle/path of war build that gets the caster's support every other round.

Is this an ok option that sounds like it will provide a decent challenge to the players?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by feeling dirty, but that sounds something close to my definition of it. That sounds massively over-the-top for two melees who do too much damage to single targets they have a clear path to. What's the rest of your party like, or is that it?

You could probably challenge them with just some ToB/PoW stuff alone. Or save-vs-conditions, like entangle, or a bunch of mooks with PF stunning barrier. Or sunderers (if you're playing with Pathfinder broken condition sundering, and not 3.5 lose your 10k gp weapon sundering). Maybe even grappling.

You could also give them noncombat obstacles, like having to communicate with someone who doesn't speak common or literally anything you can't solve by smashing face.

Edit: This has been mentioned earlier, but I just want to bring up again that they can't do anything to a level 3 wizard levitating himself and spamming rays at them.

[Manyasone]

If they want an arena experience enforce some arena rules. Most arena champions after al aren't decked out in custom magical gear. Level the playing field for fair melee combat, or they probably won't even get to fight. After al, if you are an arena owner and some random dude who is positively glowing with magical crap comes forth and challenges your fighters you know he will murderize them with his tactical nuke weapons

[Psyren]

I need an encounter that will make them excited and bring life to the table.

I feel like we're missing a piece of the puzzle; can you elaborate on this? Are they not having fun? Presumably they would ask to play something other than melee brutes if they wanted to do more than pulp their enemies all day, but this reads like they might be getting bored - is that the case?

The answer might not just be in trying to come up with new challenges but also giving them more things to do; For example, letting them retrain from Barbarian into Bloodrager and Cavalier into Ranger. Not only would that give them more to do besides "I roll attack" and "I rage," it would also give them a boatload of abilities they can use in various situations other than the ones where they have to hit something with the business end of a pointy stick.

[Allanimal]

Edit: This has been mentioned earlier, but I just want to bring up again that they can't do anything to a level 3 wizard levitating himself and spamming rays at them.

Wait, barbarians can’t use bows now?

Might not be super effective, but lvl 14 barb with a bow should be able to annoy a levitating lvl 3 Wizard.

Wizards are powerful, but statements like there are hyperbolic.

[martixy]

For your reading pleasure.

[denthor]

Send two t-rex at them. Trust me read the stat block and the feats those dinosaurs have if you stick the book they will have a hard time defeating them. I had a 9th level fighter and a 7th level monk I was an 11th level wizard. The first two went down I teleported away with the bodies.

That bleeding critical is a monster.

[Psyren]

For your reading pleasure.

Bookmarking for later

[Kaiwen]

Wait, barbarians can’t use bows now?

Might not be super effective, but lvl 14 barb with a bow should be able to annoy a levitating lvl 3 Wizard.

Wizards are powerful, but statements like there are hyperbolic.

Correction, any notable element of a chargebarian's build is unlikely to matter against a levitating wizard. Also, maybe I play with unprepared people but I have yet to see any primary melee character buy a ranged weapons outside picking up a sling during character creation.

[Elkad]

Correction, any notable element of a chargebarian's build is unlikely to matter against a levitating wizard. Also, maybe I play with unprepared people but I have yet to see any primary melee character buy a ranged weapons outside picking up a sling during character creation.

Yes. Your people are unprepared.
By L2 my melee types will have crush, pierce, slash covered in both ranged and melee. Cold iron and silver both for all of that as well.

[Manyasone]

Yes. Your people are unprepared.
By L2 my melee types will have crush, pierce, slash covered in both ranged and melee. Cold iron and silver both for all of that as well.

By L2? Your DM must hand out Gold mines then...

[Elkad]

By L2? Your DM must hand out Gold mines then...

A cold iron morningstar is 16gp
Silver is 98gp
You'll pick up a bow off some dead guy, so you just need a few specialty arrows.

[Manyasone]

A cold iron morningstar is 16gp
Silver is 98gp
You'll pick up a bow off some dead guy, so you just need a few specialty arrows.

You're right, the extra 2k gp for Cold Iron weapons I had floating in my head only applies to magical enchanting. My bad

[Allanimal]

they can't do anything to a level 3 wizard levitating himself and spamming rays at them.

Wait, barbarians can’t use bows now?

Correction, any notable element of a chargebarian's build is unlikely to matter against a levitating wizard. Also, maybe I play with unprepared people but I have yet to see any primary melee character buy a ranged weapons outside picking up a sling during character creation.

OK, I've never played with a group of players that didn't have a backup ranged weapon. By level 14, a barbarian could have a whole golf bag of contingency weapons.

I'm still trying to figure out how the 3rd level levitating wizard is going to take out a level 14 barbarian by spamming rays.

Assume: 20 int (18 base +2 racial). At level 3, WBL doesn't allow for a INT item. That means 3 2nd level spells (1 base, 1 bonus from ability, one from specialisation). They spend their entire WBL crafting scrolls of scorching ray (2700 WBL / 75 gp/scroll) = 36 scrolls, for a total of 38 scorching rays (1 2nd level spell is used by levitate)
Assume they also have 18 CON, and they always rolled 4 for HP --> 3*(4+4) HP = 24 HP.

Barbarian Has 25 STR (18 base, +2 racial, +3 level, +2 item) and 18 Con (16 base, +2 item). The they have a composite longbow with with +1 STR. A very modest item.
Barb only rolled 6's for each level on HP so 146 HP.

Assume Barbarian isn't smart enough to go 35 feet away (out of ray range), and gets hit every round with a scorching ray. That's 14 points of damage/round. Barb dies in 11 rounds.
Barb just shoots normal arrows with each of its 3 iterative attacks. Assume only 1 arrow per round hits. That means 5 damage per round. Wizard dies in 5 rounds.

OK, so this is a quick, unoptimized calculation. With like 0 advantages to the Barb and several for the wizard (max HP for wizard, not for barb. Wizard always hits, barb only 33%, etc.).

How does the 3rd level levitating wizard spamming rays beat the lvl 14 barbarian again?

[arkangel111]

I'd build an archer personally. Feels less dirty than specifically throwing something designed against their weaknesses. And is highly likely something you'd find in an arena fight.

Level 14 ranger
either make it a sylph or grab racial heritage sylph.
picking up airy step and wings of air, clustered shots and deadly aim.
for equipment grab a good bow and some unique arrows, and a quick runners shirt.
You'll have a beat stick to charge at the offender, keeping him busy or just harassing him. Launch into the air and fire off a half dozen arrows a round. with clustered shots they count as a single arrow for DR. With instant enemy, bow spirit, haste, invisibility, gravity bow, anticipate peril and enlarge person you can easily bring one down in a single round, or at least make the fight close enough that they feel challenged.

the ranger above is while, semi optimized, not specifically designed against your players. In fact its a carbon copy of my ranger years ago, just happens to do real well at the one thing it does. and utilizes tactics that are quite believable considering he has the ability to fly.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm not sure about the PF elements, but in 3.5, barbarians and mounted builds typically attacking in melee, with liberal use of Power Attack and charges. To counter that in a way that's tricky, how about an Elusive Target flash-stepping warblade and a stealthy spellcaster using Instinctive deeper darkness and wall spells, shaping the battlefield? The truesight goggles will counter the darkness (within range, and not Blend Into Darkness, but still), but they can only be worn by one person at the time, right?


For the warblade, you can just take thirteen warblade levels, with the race just being human. Your feats are Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Elusive Target, Evasive Reflexes, Karmic Strike, Mobility, and Robilar's Gambit. A thirteenth-level warblade has three bonus feats and five regular feats. Unfortunately, the warblade bonus feats are crud (of that list, only Combat Reflexes is a warblade bonus feat), so you'll need to use a flaw. Still, you can pick up Improved Initiative and Stone Power as warblade feats, so they're not all wasted. Theoretically, you could expand into Might of the Hand, but that takes more feats.


For the spellcaster, you go strongheart halfling halfling rogue 1/spellthief 1/psionic rogue 1/SA fighter 1/warlock 1/ur-priest 2/eldritch disciple 6 (requires fractional saves, results in seventh-level spells and Lesser invocations). You take the Darkness and Devil's Sight evocations, the second allowing you to see through the first, and two others--perhaps Fell Flight and Flee the Scene. Your feats are Blend Into Darkness, Darkstalker, Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell), Extend Spell, Instinctive Darkness, Intensify Darkness, Persistent Spell, and Practiced Spellcaster. Like the warblade build, this requires two flaws. You Persist two spells*, which are consumptive field and holy star (this uses up your one seventh-level spell, so you're left with sixths for the day--this is intentional). This will increase your caster level from 11 to 16 (and provides +10 Strength), maxing out the damage on blade barrier and turning holy star into a 1/round 8d6 fire damage attack that can benefit from your 5d6 sneak attack (this is just to whittle down the PCs while you direct their actions with blade barrier, wall of stone, and so on).

The overall plan is that these characters challenge some of the basic requirements of a melee character: free (straight-line) movement towards a target, the ability to see a target, and so on. They're not all that lethal otherwise, though you don't want to get SA-volleyed by the caster, of course. I just hope they're not too annoying.


*You'll likely need a pair of nightsticks to get 14 TU uses. Perhaps another feat. You can always drop one of the SA dips to get the classic Planning Undeath domain cleric dip.

I tried squeezing hunter's eye and sniper's shot into the build, but the first is ranger-only, and it's the one that needs a high caster level, which a ranger dip generally won't have. The second problem is that you really need to Persist these spells to keep your swift action free for Instinctive Darkness, and Divine Metamagic is expensive. If you wanted to go that way, I see a few options:

(1) Mystic Ranger 4 and diviner 3, using Theurgic Specialist to stack the CLs for wizard, MR, and UP. That'll get you CL 21 on UP, and at least 28 for hunter's eye.

(2) Prestige Ranger 1 after the current build. Costs three feats to enter, but "shoud" get you access to ranger spells, using your UP caster level.

(3) Spelldancer instead of Divine Metamagic. Costs four feats to enter, and you save one feat (plus Endurance is a ranger feat, and overlaps with the Prestige Ranger requirements), but you get as many Persistent spells as you want.

(4) Additional turning pools from a cleric dip. Doesn't require as many feats as Spelldancer, and isn't as good.