Bullshit players

Its funny how you say that now and nit when they did it to the GM.

Suppose its his job to give them a handy if they are too tired to jerk off in his face too right?

You can't use intelligent enemies if you're not intelligent yourself.

You're full of shit. If you break the rules in order to force the players to lose, you're a shit DM. No excuse. You might as well start your session with "you lose lol end of story" and give up on DMing entirely.

bump the CR level of their encounters accordingly. Throw a standard fight at them just to test the waters, then up the stakes accordingly.

Your players will appreciate the challenge and will advance much more quickly.

>how do you run a challenging campaigns when all your players are all bullshit

Most stories of intelligent enemies like
is just DM fiat in disguise.

Throwing maxlevel archliches and dragons at them is equivalent to
rocks fall you die.

So what do you? You throw at them an evil NPC party, at similar party level

Scale up the challenge of each fight but lower their frequency. Turn it into a more social game.