Forums of the Megaverse®

Due to things in my life, my creativity is dimmed. But my players still want me to run my game.

Due to a lot of really nasty RL things, I lost a player, and the two groups I was running have combined into one. So I have 5 players.

One is a house OCC psychic warrior.
One is a necromancer.
One is a mutant human, whose (randomly rolled) abilities make her a perfect spy.
One is a house tweaked wampyr.
One is a chinese antiquarian.

Epic level campaign. Current universe is PF.

My games have never really involved much fighting, so I'm not worried about that. What I am worried about is that they are so well-rounded that nothing I throw at them is going to sufficiently challenge them. Everybody just fits so perfectly, filling in all the gaps. It's rare for the party to not have a needed or helpful skill, virtually everthing I ask for, at least someone says "I have that!"

The game has just shifted from the side stuff I've been sending them on back to the main plot (with a ramped up difficulty level), so the player dropping out was at an inopportune time. However, in a way it didn't affect much because I was already struggling and everyone was already complaining about how useless he was (in all the games with the various GMs he was in).

Got any clues for challenging them? I could use a little help.

Off the top of your head Nethel? Wow. Wish my head worked like that! Instead, it works like this....

The party stumbles on an ancient, unidentified temple to a God they have never heard of. There are statues, tapestries and books lying about to describe the various deities and important figures of the religion, but is nothing the characters have ever heard of. (Religion Lore does no good!) While exploring the temple they discover a crypt beneath its marble floors with a solitary sarcophagus at its center. The whole place is creepy, but the group is experienced enough to know that there might be something worth finding in this room. The natural thing to do would be to attempt to sense magic, or perhaps traps. It is the use of either PPE or ISP that awakens the thing in the Crypt and sends it after the group. (Any undead creature from any book should do, just up the power levels a bit. I would recommend LOD 2 if you have it. There are some real nasties in there! ) This creature could come back to plague the group again and again if its played right. Also, they will have the added moral dilemma of having been the ones to release this evil on the world. On top of all this, there is the mystery of the temple and its unknown religion that could lead to a whole adventure in and of itself! If you need some ideas on this, just ask me. This is a twist I've thrown at my own groups a few times, each time with a different outcome so that it didn't seem like the same thing. It was a hit each time.

If the group is doing so good, they could definately come to the attention of other benefactors who will now go out of their way to try and hire the group. This could create some infighting between the various groups vying for the character's attention. It could also anger whatever other groups were around before, who were being relied upon to take care of problems. They might work to sabotage the efforts of the players.

Thank you, definitely helping out.

I especially like the diabolist/summoner bit. I had been planning the main, long-term focus to be magical in nature (sort of a guild war that could escalate into planet-killing if our intrepid heroes completely botch their roles as pawns between the two groups).