IcingDragon; "Force Feeding Plots"
Michelle "A Players Guide to DMing"
Jason "Evil Party Cohesion"
Jason "Labor of Love"
Sean "Challenging the Superparty"
Sean "Plot Threads"
Sean "Secret Societies"

Challenging the Super-party by Sean

When you have a party of 4 players level 3-6, challenging them is not really all that difficult. In fact, if those 3 orcs kill a party member, then they were using POOR tactics and should not feel bad. However when you have 6+ players of level 9+, things can be difficult. How do you Challenge the players without killing them or severely depleting their rescources?

First lets consult the natural guide for all things DM, the Dungeon Master's Guide. First, lets talk about Challenge rating. The Dungeon master's Guide tells us that challenge rating "tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge" (dmg, 100). This means a CR 9 monster is a challenging encounter for a 9th level party. It defines 'party' as a group of 4 x-level characters where x is the CR. So, a gnoll, a CR 1 creature is appropriate against a party of four 1st level adventurers.

Now, in the situation we are considering, 6+ characters of 9+ level, this must be modified slightly. First, consult the chart on p. 101 of the Dungeon master's guide. This is your new best friend. This chart allows you to find out exactly how many and of which kind of creature you can challenge a party with. While at low levels, this is an excellent guide. As you get higher, it tends to get party dangerous. For example, according to the chart, a 15th level party of four can handle 5 or 6 CR 9 creatures. Lets look at this. A Dragon Turtle is a CR 9 creature. Now a dragon turtle has a breath weapon which deals 20d6 with a fairly high reflex save. Assuming the rogue makes all of his saves, this means the rest of the party is hit by no less than 100d6 points of damage, save for half from only 5 dragon turtles, and this is only round one. So right off the bat, your sorcerer/wizard is probably dead and your cleric is next to dead. If you have a monk or rogue who failed saves, they're dead. Your fighter(s) are down to at least half their hit points. Assuming everyone still alive drinks a potion of cure serious wounds, that brings it back to the dragon turtles. They can snatch with a successful grapple(+18) and hold on to an opponent to automatically deal bite damage for three rounds, at which point they can use their breath weapon and hit automatically.

Now in the above example there are hundreds of ways this could work out for the better, but it still represents a ludicrous challenge to put a party up against. But a 15th cr creature, for example a glabrezu (cr15) would be challenging for a 4 person level 15 party, but 6+ players would stomp it. So what do you do but make it more challenging. But you must consider what is likely to kill important party members. Disintegrate is a 6th level spell, so a challenge rating 12 wizard (level 12) could cast disintegrate and totally remove a party member from existance. No ressurect here. A vampire permanently drains constitution. That's no fun. Level draining isn't much fun either, nor is a huge dragon no one can hit. The point is, it becomes increasingly more difficult. To challenge a 15th level party with orcs requires 10-12 orcs with 8 fighter levels each. That's 12 +8/+2 attacks coming at the party for 1d8 points of damage each. So you mix, you match, and as a dm, you pray that your party will not get upset when challenging things kill them. It is rough stuff. So use page 101 of the DMG, and try not to kill anyone.