In reply to @chie11:matrix.org

@wolfmunroe:matrix.org: during the last month or two i.ve been approaching things (fights too) a bit differently (thanks to a book). If you always try to make fights challenging, that (frustrated players) is one of the issues you can run into. Another can be a lack of diversity / samey feeling. Always throwing challenging fights also makes your boss fights feel less extraordinary.

If you can streamline playing many mobs, throw groups of lower level mobs at them more often. Often enough they should easily skewer isolated groups (which is pretty "heroic" and feels good). The danger in this case could come from the groups within earshot slowly swarming them if one runs screaming etc. That will have it's own challenges and solutions. The PCs will also have to learn to retreat.

Fights with strong individual creatures will also pop out more since you'd have variety.

We were able to resolve that fight. The CR 2 level 2 flaming skeletal champion, that had been presenting a problem for them, decided they weren't worth his time, and left it to the mindless mythic fire skeleton (CR 1) and one remaining hardened fire skull (CR 1, advanced belching screaming flaming beheaded) to mop them up. He also wanted to really enforce upon them how outmatched they were, so he ordered the mythic fire skeleton to not attack them until they attacked it. (So he gave them a chance to heal-up before attacking it, if they were smart.) He taunted them as he fled the fight, "Let it not be said that Scorch is not magnanimous!" (One of the party members had hurled insults at him when he tried to parley.)

So the party dealt with the hardened fire skull that was still freely attacking (they're super-easy for CR 1), then healed and buffed themselves some for the fire skeleton. They were cocky though and still didn't drink the fire resist potion they had bought--because that potion had cost 300 gp. So the guy holding the fire resist potion went from full health to dying and 1 hp away from death in the fight with the mythic fire skeleton. (It had two attacks, plus melee attacks against it provoked AoO, plus it had a fire aura that dealt 1d6+1 damage.)

Anyway, the one mythic fire skeleton (CR 1) fight alone got two of the three-person party down to dying condition, but they were able to recover and destroy it. And the XP from that encounter got them to level 2.

For the next session, their employer decided to wait on sending them against more fire skeletons because they crawled in from that fight. He sent them after a singular "unkillable" undead instead, with the objective to rob the cache it was guarding, as it had been one of his previous mercenaries that had succumbed to undeath, and he knew it was guarding a stockpile of supplies that it had collected in its previous life. The type of undead was "cadaver" (from Tomb of Horrors Complete), that can only be destroyed with magic weapons, holy water, or positive energy (essentially), and they managed to actually destroy it without knowing how to do so. But they knew it was "unkillable" so their tactic was to beat it to the ground and bind its arms and legs in shackles before it could revive. They also put something over its head to reshape as a muzzle. So they got its loot, and then they weren't so cash-poor after that. Since they were level 2 for that fight, they actually took it down before it even got its turn. They knew it transmitted filth fever, so they had the party member that is immune to filth fever on the front-line for that fight, but it didn't even get to try to transmit the disease.

Since then they have been in one combat encounter in the village that turned into an RP encounter (undead winged monkey and some dhampirs), one RP encounter that would have gone very badly for them if they had decided to make it combat (sentient flesh golem), and they've avoided one combat encounter that would have been a hard fight against a wild beast (owlbear). Oh, and they had one one-undead combat encounter on the road (CR 3). It also was destroyed before it got its turn, but it exploded and exposed two PCs and a riding dog to its disease. One PC and the riding dog were infected.

The flesh golem gave them an absurd amount of a valuable crafting material ("Take as much as you can carry, but do not come back."), and it is normally worth its weight in platinum, so now they're on their way to the city to try to sell it. (They spent like 20 minutes just trying to carry as much as possible between them. Eventually they loaded a bunch of it on a shield and carried it out like a stretcher.)

Unfortunately, and they know this, a previous group also got a bunch of this same material. So there's almost no local market for it right now because the previous group flooded the market. I want to encourage them to sit on it. It will increase in value the longer they hold it (up to its standard value) as the market gradually normalizes. (If they sit on it, it also means I don't have to award as much loot. But if they do want to buy something, they can sell some of it at an undervalued rate, taking the hit to later profits.)

When they made it back to the inn, they talked a bit about their new treasure in the inn, and it became the talk of the inn, so they slipped out of the inn without a word and made for the temple to find rest before heading for the city in the morning.

I should do some more with mobs. I tend to want every encounter to be meaningful in some way, even if it's just to learn about a new monster that they're likely to encounter in mobs later when they're higher level.