Was this encounter too hard

[carnivore]

a good rule of thumb for designing encounters ...... include multiple ways for the party to run away ... if you make encounters that are Win or Die, you will not have as much fun, nor will they

even when fighting the "Boss", there should be some way to get away ..... if the Players are good optimizers, you can reduce the Reatreat options, but dont remove them altogether

"Stormwind Fallacy", she does believe that it is possible to "Role Play" and "Roll Play" ... that they are not exclusive ..... or she thinks you can only do one or the other?

 

[Sinfire Titan]

Carnivore, the only thing that beats your abuse of the ellipses is the mosquito population.

[SiggyDevil]

It's a good encounter for a 3-person party consisting of a Wizard/Sorc, Cleric, and/or Psion... but not the Tier 3-4 choices your group made.

Iajutsu is fun though, especially unarmed.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Repeat after me: I will never again give class levels that don't appear in the stat block to my monsters.

why? Because then its just an arena fight but since the DM is assumably a better optimizer, the party won't be able to keep up the arms race.

[Mushroom]

or she thinks you can only do one or the other?

Bingo

Repeat after me: I will never again give class levels that don't appear in the stat block to my monsters.

why? Because then its just an arena fight but since the DM is assumably a better optimizer, the party won't be able to keep up the arms race.

I like to spice things up

I would like to use this campaign to show them that they suck, if I don't kill them by accident.

[Rymosrac]

Believe me when I say that there's no malice behind this statement,  but that makes you a bit of a dick.

[Mushroom]

but that makes you a bit of a dick.

That it does, it just irks me when they say certain stuff(like blasting) is SO much better than BFC and go to lengths to call such characters "useless". So I wanna show them the error of their ways.

[dna1]

if you want to show them the error of there ways. and also show them that they suck and are weak, then really what is the point of wondering if your encounter was to hard.

i wanted to show my brother that MMA is cool. doesnt mean i pull a flying arm bar on him.... instead i kicked him in the stomache.

that might be a bad example...

anyways my point is..... what was my point here??

ah, ummm. dont be a douche?

[BruceLeeroy]

Do they enjoy the competition between themselves and the DM? Some groups do. Mine does. Some don't. If they aren't having fun competing with you, then you are failing as a DM.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Some groups do

unrelated to the OP, but I daresay this is a small minority. I may however be misunderstanding you.

[ImmortalSoul]

Let me put something first: I'm running a "challenge" for the two guys in my group that actually enjoy optimizing at the moment. I informed them that it was gonna be hard, that we wouldn't spend too much time on character backgrounds and that I expected them to create optimized characters to act as infiltrators/spies/assassins of their church.
Now, they are both level 10, with LA +1 for free, a bonus feat and some extra cash to make up for the fact that they are only 2. For the "challenges" we'll always assume a 007-like situation, where they get told to infiltrate that evil church oder assassinate this guy, which involves a lot of mean traps, one or more difficult combat encounters and them covering their tracks afterwards.

If I now decide to challenge them with an especially difficult encounter (a hangman-golem, say, that may be easy or lethal depending on whether they discover the "vulnerable to fire/rope trick" thing or spot the golem in advance), even one that is in CR above what a party of four should be facing it's perfectly okay as long as I believe that they can actually beat it but have to really try in order to do so.

Why I am telling you this? That I'm doing this with these two players underlines what BruceLeeroy said, namely that the rest of our group just wouldn't enjoy it. If a group creates characters like this shinobi-guy they don't display that they are worse players than you and should thus be told the "error of their ways", but rather that they probably don't enjoy reading through a forum like this for hours and hours to learn new tricks to actually make the most of what you've been given. I certainly do, though, and so does part of my group - just not all of them. One is content playing a dwarf fighter over and over, and why shouldn't he? Clearly more work for the DM to make his role meaningful from time to time, but nothing you couldn't do with the help of the rest of your group.

If you decide that they certainly have to be taught that BFC is so much better than blasting and a straight Druid of their ECL probably beats the crap out of their groupsetup you better choose a different approach, because TPKing a group usually doesn't much help the players' fun. This doesn't mean you shouldn't surprise them with classes and combinations they don't use, but in order to challenge their innovation and not to show them that you win D&D and they don't. And if you see in advance that the group doesn't fit your expectations and they refuse to change the group, then it's up to you to adjust your expectations I guess and not to outright kill them.

[BruceLeeroy]

Some groups do

unrelated to the OP, but I daresay this is a small minority. I may however be misunderstanding you.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't surprise them with classes and combinations they don't use, but in order to challenge their innovation and not to show them that you win D&D and they don't.

Pretty much this. My group optimizes their characters, we're all in our late 20's or early 30's, we've known each other and gamed together for a 3-4 years now. We like a strong challenge, sometimes bordering on unwinnable. A recent game featured a CR 19 encounter ambushing the ECL 13 party while we were missing two players and thus their characters. Most of the party survived and escaped, much fun was had by all. Occasionally we find some trick to surprise the DM with and roll over his encounters with barely a speedbump. It's a strong sense of competition within the ruleset, with plenty of houserules and gentlemen's agreements controlling the most excessive rules exploitations/loopholes/Pun-Pun's.

It works for our group. We're mostly powergamers with a strong mix of roleplaying thrown in. Other groups I've gamed with have been purely about the narrative and had an amiable relationship with their DM; encounters weren't the focus, nor were they exceptionally difficult ones. I had fun with that too, but my current group is more to my preferences.

[Mushroom]

I think my biggest problem is that I and my group have conflicting interests. We sat down and talked about it and we figured out that everyone(but me) enjoys lower levels and doesn't like strong characters. Once again, thanks for all of your critique guys

[ImmortalSoul]

Have you considered playing E6 ?

[Gods_Trick]

I think my biggest problem is that I and my group have conflicting interests. We sat down and talked about it and we figured out that everyone(but me) enjoys lower levels and doesn't like strong characters. Once again, thanks for all of your critique guys

Doesn't like stronger characters purposefully ala' Stormwind fallacy, or intimidated by optimsation? You can still opt' E6, I've seen a build that gets polymorph in E6 that extreme TO in that setting.