Looking to add some variety and difficulty in encounters

[Klandare]

The party that I am currently running a campaign with has a tendency to trivialize most combats. The party works extremely well together and plays off of each others strengths and works through weaknesses well. We do use the Feats options (and multi-class although no one has actually multi yet). There are only 3 members in the party (Rogue, Paladin, and Light Cleric) but totally destroyed a Pit Fiend in 2 rounds, they were level 16 at the time.

In the near future we will be starting out a new campaign and one of the things I am looking to do is add some variety in the creatures and hopefully even out some of that difficulty. I am looking to add some sets of creatures with some Feats or abilities from some classes (like adding in Sneak Attack from Rogue line). I think this will help offset some of the combats being a walk in the park. Instead of just having to add HP or more creatures.

I am looking for ideas on how to do this. I found that I can drag a Feat over onto a copy of a creature and it will be added in under the Actions (would have thought it would add to the Traits section). I don't plan on having all creatures of a kind have the added abilities but doing something like having some Goblins which have Sharpshooter trait or given some Sneak Attack. I will look to adjust the XP slightly on these additional ability creatures.

Has anyone done this type of thing themselves? Have you found things which trip you up in doing this?

Any best practices for doing something similar? Would you create separate NPC entries for each new creation (i.e. Goblin Shareshooter, Goblin Rogue, etc.)? Or make something like Goblin Variant and then have all of the abilities added and just use the one as needed?

Something that I am also looking to find a good resolution to is when making creatures like this, I don't want them to necessarily stand out from other creatures on the battlefield. If the CT or the name on the creature token on the map says Goblin Sharpshooter for one and the guy next to him is just Goblin then characters will tend to choose the Sharpshooter to take out. I can use the random function to hide how many creatures are out there but any easy way (outside of having to edit each creature added to the CT) to make it so that they would all show Goblin #. The renames would seem to slow down the flow of the game all the time if it was having to be done all the time.

Any thoughts, ideas, comments?

Thanks in advance.

[LordEntrails]

If the players are metagaming on the names, then change the names when you put them in the encounter. There is also an extension around that will add random qualifiers to the end of the name so they can end up meaning something to you and not the players (i.e. Goblin Red Cap, Goblin Blue Scarf).

But, in general, if the encounters are challenging you have to up the difficulty of the challenges. I have to do this with one of the groups I run, they are level 14 and can take on CR20 fight if they are close to full-up and I run it as a straight fight.

So, I don't run things very often as a straight fight. By now the party has a reputation. This means the bad guys ambush them or prepare for them.
- The terrain is trapped, or otherwise advantageous to the NPC's. (broken terrain if the NPCs have burrow, lava if fire resistant, etc)
- or a few mooks are used to draw the party in where the melee guys can jump out at them and pin them down
- or the NPCs have scrolls to help them out

It means you have to plan the encounters more, plan to the parties weaknesses. When the party is higher level, they are well know. Their tactics and abilities are the tales of legend, smart adversaries plan accordingly.

[Klandare]

I had never done a rename of a creature in the encounters, I have always made a new copy of the creature and did the names. This way seems much better. I think that it will work well for some of what I want as I can drop in a Goblin and a Goblin Sharpshooter and rename them both to be Goblin in the Encounter. Drop them on the map and they would just be random Goblin #. But the stats will show me as the GM which one is the Sharpshooter.

Thanks for the advice.

Do you think it is better to make separate entries for each special version or one with just all of the special feats/etc added?

I am likely going to make a whole module of just these added creature versions so I can more easily reuse them.

[Zacchaeus]

Sounds like you could use this (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?40736-NPC-Engineer-now-with-full-parsing!).

Also don't forget environmental effects; difficult terrain to slow the players down; poisonous gas degrading their health; diseases degrading abilities; lighting conditions; NPCs in cover etc

[damned]

Change how the enemy attack. Send them in waves so that the first AoE spell doesnt hit and damage/kill them all. Have some join late in the battle and target the spell casters, bump up the HP or the damage dealt so that the players are challenged more.