How do you deal with Overpowered PCs? [closed]

Question

So i'v been running an Elder-Scrolls themed Dungeon-World game for around 20 ~7 hour sessions now. Over this time, the PCs have leveled up a LOT, and have been deciding to keep their characters and just changing class.I have one PC who has just moved onto his 2nd new class and another who has +3 in 4/6 Stats and +1 in the others, so they rarely fail rolls. There are also 4 Regular player with 7 PCs between them... which does not help.

I have been having trouble with scaling up the difficulty/challenge to keep the game interesting, which has been extra hard as I have added loads of Homebrewed Magic Items, so they usually have the key to most situations they get into.

How would you go about maintaining the challenge of the game? Especially Combat, as they can consistently 1-shot even the most powerful creatures.

Below is a list of things iv done/tried to do, however I have gotten some backlash for even suggesting some of them.

1. Increase the Stats of Monsters (More health, Armor, Damage etc..)
2. Some Monsters have Magic "Wards", which absorb all the damage from a single attack, but break in the process (this was an attempt to prevent them 1-shoting everything)
3. Increase the frequency of Soft Moves, to a point where the PCs rarely have an open opportunity during combat to make a move unhindered.
4. Increase the amount of moves (specifically Defy Danger) that PCs have to make before they even have a chance of making an attack.

EDIT DUE TO UNCLEAR/COMPLICATED QUESTION: I have largely solved this issue in my game by: Doubling down on the measures listed above, which the PCs have reacted positively to, the PCs voluntarily choosing to cut down on moves that have tended to make them OP and by encouraging the players to only have 1 PC, rather than 2+.

Answer 1

A 16 HP Dragon is required reading for anyone in this type of situation. It does a better job than I ever could of demonstrating that monster stats only go so far in Dungeon World when you're trying to maintain the challenge for powerful PCs. When I first read it, the real eye-opener was just how flexible monster moves are in defining challenges.

It sounds from your question that you've already started to consider how soft and hard moves can be used to help your situation. The article takes that a whole lot further. Further certainly than I would have even considered when I read it and was in a similar situation to your own.

PCs that have reached the power levels you're dealing with need these types of challenges to really be tested. The fact that they're shrugging off more mundane threats makes sense.