While I've been running my campaign, I'm starting to get stumped. I am playing with a party of four, and we recently switched from 3.5 to Pathfinder, but the problem was the same in both situations.
No matter what I throw at the party, they seem to have no problems. Even if I put them up against something that is supposed to be 'Epic' or 'overwhelming' in terms of CR, they make out just fine. The one exception to this is when I had several encounters in one day that taxed them to near death. Usually I have about two encounters a day, but that day I had four encounters, with two of them being APL+1 and the other two being APL+2, and that was challenging. But other than that nothing seems to faze them!
How can I make the game more challenging without making it harder?
Just for reference, the party is fairly standard, and low level (level 4):
- Wizard (tends to resort to mind-affecting spells, or grease if the creature is immune)
- Cleric (heals a lot, but always has spells / healing left over)
- Rogue (sneak attack, of course, which is more potent in Pathfinder)
- Fighter (gets enlarged and in-charge'd)
Best Answer
Make It Harder
This is definitely something I've had happen. I wrote a whole blog post about the exact same thing - while GMing a fourth level Pathfinder party, I found that I had to make bosses eighth level to challenge the PCs. So you're probably going to need to up your CR/EL expectations. Pathfinder PCs have higher damage output therefore old 3.5e wisdom is somewhat out of whack (same with 3.0 to 3.5 - in general for 3.0 CR X you need 3.5 CR+1 and Pathfinder CR+2). You can see this in the encounters in Pathfinder Adventure Paths as well, the CR of capstone encounters is often like APL+5. So I'm afraid you're going to have to go for some "harder." Also, solo opponents in Pathfinder are meat for the beast because it allows the PCs to exert tactics without resistance; give bosses some help even if they are just a wad of mooks.
Play Harder
Now you can also push opponent effectiveness by improving their tactics and not just beefing them up - but I already do this, and it doesn't completely close the gap. But yes, try to come up with effective tactics for the bad guys, especially if they are on their home turf. No one plays too fair when their life is on the line. Random orcs aren't going to be brilliant but they don't just charge lemminglike into the blender either. Look at their preparations from the point of view of "if I were doing this to be effective." I like recruiting actual people to play main bad guys - they are a good 30% more effective than when your attention is split between running them and doing all your other work. Try some of the player-oriented tactical advice from this question on your NPCs/monsters. In a wilderness setting, people who have any warning will use terrain to their advantage - "Shoot at them from up in the trees," "Get in the canyon so they don't see us from far away," or whatever.
Goal Jiujitsu
Also if you're not having many fights a day, consider that challenge doesn't have to be all combat. What is the party's goal? Unless it's "harvest souls because we are serial killers," it's likely their goals involve finding things, saving things, building things, helping people, or whatnot where the challenge is more skill and roleplay oriented and not solved by killing. For example, in the Kingmaker adventure path, the PCs are in the wilderness trying to build a kingdom, and if they slaughter everyone that faces them then they don't have much of a kingdom once the fights are over!