Balancing higher level encounters?

[NewJeffCT]

The way I've been running my campaign, we've generally had big, climactic battles where both sides can prepare, but I usually have monsters and bad guys that are at a higher CR than the party. If you go online to encounter calculators, I usually try to balance them on the edge of "Very Difficult" and "Overpowering" and it's worked out pretty well in terms of in game challenges. (example, when the party was around level 4/5, they faced off with a level 7 evil human cleric as well as a hill giant, which was CR:7 and a level 6 duskblade...)

However, as the game as gotten high in level, it's quite possible them some individual foes that are at, or just above, the party's level can single-handedly TPK the entire party. The group is almost level 18 now and it's a large group (7 PCs, including a psion, sorcerer and a cleric) as well as two NPCs of similar level.

But, in designing some of the final foes of the campaign, I was thinking level 18/19 bad guys, possible level 20. But, then when you're tossing level 9 spells and powers around, you can potentially take out a lot of the party with a bad guy that casts Implosion (continued with Extraordinary Concentration) and then also is casting a powerful level 8/9 spell to follow-up... same with the psion or the sorcerer. Yet, I had my initial thought of having the 3 bad guys together and realize it's a strong possibility of a TPK.

Can you balance out high level encounters the same way you can with low and mid level encounters? Any advice? Thanks

[Corsair]

True Resurrection. If only 2-3 members of your large party survive, that's ok. Death is an inconvenience.

[NewJeffCT]

Originally Posted by Corsair

True Resurrection. If only 2-3 members of your large party survive, that's ok. Death is an inconvenience.

True, but I think if you do too many resurrections, you risk the campaign getting kind of cheesy - I think bringing a PC (or major villain) back from the dead is not something that should be done with abandon.

[Shin Okada]

Well, strength and durability of higher level characters differ largely depend on builds and rules they use.

Also, at higher level (say, CR 15+), CR does not work as reliable at lower level games.

So, for Balancing higher level encounters, you must examine your PC party's stats and tactics, then decide what can be a good challenge and what is too much.

For example, I am also running a game with six 18th-level PCs and a 16th-level cohort. But against that party Implosion or similar save or die spells will not likely to cause TPK as most of the PCs have high Fort/will saves (plus 2 PCs have Steadfast Determination). And Implosion needs concentration and PCs will not allow a villain to continue concentrating on the spell.

Still, I can think of tens of ways to cause TPK which is not even overwhelming on calculation.

Something causes TPK to a party may not cause the same resurrect to the others.

At this level, each DM need to estimate how challenging the encounter carefully, taking the specific PC party's capabilities in account.

And, resurrecting is meant to be mundane in such high level games. Not just True Resurrection. But maybe combination of Gentle Repose + Revivify or Cocoon + raise/resurrect/reincarnate spells.

Basically, once Raise Dead is introduced, all PCs can eventually come back unless TPK'd.

[NewJeffCT]

Originally Posted by Shin Okada

For example, I am also running a game with six 18th-level PCs and a 16th-level cohort. But against that party Implosion or similar save or die spells will not likely to cause TPK as most of the PCs have high Fort/will saves (plus 2 PCs have Steadfast Determination). And Implosion needs concentration and PCs will not allow a villain to continue concentrating on the spell.

True, Implosion needs concentration, but a high level bad guy may have Extraordinary Concentration that will allow it to concentrate on Implosion as either a Move or Swift action. And, Implosion can't be defeated by Death Ward, either, as it's an Evocation effect and not a Death effect.

That said, the group does have pretty good saves overall, and have managed to foil some pretty good spells in the past.

[Runestar]

To be fair, I am not sure if being able to maintain implosion as a move/swift action bypasses the restriction that you cannot cast any other spells while concentrating (is this covered anywhere?)

I suppose this does leave your cleric free to activate a wand/staff or attack though (gave the feat to a balor foe once).

I guess that is the risk of using SoD effects. Either they make their saves and the spell does squat, or they fail their saves and croak. But at this point, their fort saves should be good enough to be able to pass a decent amount of the time.

Alternatively, you could resort to damage. A properly built npc can probably still do enough damage to nearly 1-shot a PC, which should still give them a small window of opportunity to react.

[NewJeffCT]

Originally Posted by Runestar

To be fair, I am not sure if being able to maintain implosion as a move/swift action bypasses the restriction that you cannot cast any other spells while concentrating (is this covered anywhere?)

I suppose this does leave your cleric free to activate a wand/staff or attack though (gave the feat to a balor foe once).

I guess that is the risk of using SoD effects. Either they make their saves and the spell does squat, or they fail their saves and croak. But at this point, their fort saves should be good enough to be able to pass a decent amount of the time.

Alternatively, you could resort to damage. A properly built npc can probably still do enough damage to nearly 1-shot a PC, which should still give them a small window of opportunity to react.

Not sure on Extraordinary Concentration & further spellcasting, but it says you can only maintain concentration on one spell at a time, so the implication is that you can cast another spell, just not one that requires concentration.

And, my last combat against them had the one shot NPC bad guy (frenzied berserker) that took out 2 PCs in one round. So, I'd probably get dice tossed at me if I built another melee tank like that - though, one with a completely different theme might work (charging L/E paladin of tyranny?)

[Shin Okada]

Originally Posted by NewJeffCT

Not sure on Extraordinary Concentration & further spellcasting, but it says you can only maintain concentration on one spell at a time, so the implication is that you can cast another spell, just not one that requires concentration.

From SRD (Emphasis added),

CONCENTRATION (CON)
Check: You must make a Concentration check whenever you might potentially be distracted (by taking damage, by harsh weather, and so on) while engaged in some action that requires your full attention. Such actions include casting a spell, concentrating on an active spell, directing a spell, using a spell-like ability, or using a skill that would provoke an attack of opportunity. In general, if an action wouldn’t normally provoke an attack of opportunity, you need not make a Concentration check to avoid being distracted.

While the feat changes the required action to maintain the concentration for Implosion spell, he is still concentrating on the spell and thus must roll concentration check each time he takes damage.

Concentration DC is 10 + 9 (Implosion's spell level) plus damage taken. If your campaign is at level 18th, you must expect, say, late 30th to 50+, or maybe 3 digits of damage per hit (for example, Orb spells do 15d6=about 50 damage even if they are not empowered or maximized). Unless the said caster is a dragon or a monster cleric with a lot of racial HDs and inhuman Con, he usually can't maintain concentration.

[NewJeffCT]

Oh, I realize that the caster is likely going to fail a concentration check if they are hit and lose the Implosion - but, that is an if. If they use their next full standard action to cast Blasphemy to daze the entire party, or cast Slime Wave to coat people in green slime, things work out a bit differently. Does the slimed PC charge the evil cleric and do their one attack and then take another d6 CON damage next round, or do they spend a round scraping the green slime off? Or, maybe the cleric casts a defensive spell for protection like Repulsion?

[Runestar]

Well, I once saw an encounter involving 3 elder para-elementals, each with 5 lvs of martial adept (each cr16, together EL19). The DM remarked that they seemed tougher than their cr let on, in that they were more than a match for a group of 6 ECL20 outsiders (it was a one-shot). Granted, we know that astral devas are weak for their ECL, but it seems to suggest that mid-cr monsters with a few lvs of martial adept can still make for challenging foes.

They could deal good damage, enough to get your players worrying but not quite enough to 1-shot them. They had excellent defenses (a lot of hp, fair AC, able to circumvent some popular attacks such as forcecage/maze and decent saves - not factoring in diamond mind).

The various MMs have a few high-cr melee foes. Have you ever tried those?

[NewJeffCT]

Originally Posted by Runestar

Well, I once saw an encounter involving 3 elder para-elementals, each with 5 lvs of martial adept (each cr16, together EL19). The DM remarked that they seemed tougher than their cr let on, in that they were more than a match for a group of 6 ECL20 outsiders (it was a one-shot). Granted, we know that astral devas are weak for their ECL, but it seems to suggest that mid-cr monsters with a few lvs of martial adept can still make for challenging foes.

They could deal good damage, enough to get your players worrying but not quite enough to 1-shot them. They had excellent defenses (a lot of hp, fair AC, able to circumvent some popular attacks such as forcecage/maze and decent saves - not factoring in diamond mind).

The various MMs have a few high-cr melee foes. Have you ever tried those?

One problem I have is that I have a large group of PCs, so they have a very diverse ability to deal with foes - the have two melee tanks (dwarf fighter & goliath barbarian) and 3 "spell" casters in a cleric, sorcerer and psion. Plus, a rogue/spellthief and an elf paladin/fighter/champion of Corellon for finesse. Plus, an NPC cleric/paladin that can cause a lot of damage in melee as well and they recently had another high level fighter NPC for melee, too.

So, any single foe is not going to last in melee, but is also threatened at range as well. I was thinking of a dragon that continually hits & runs against them, but they could just teleport away to avoid the encounter (the psion & sorcerer both have teleport, and the cleric has a special teleport item) Unless I make it a psionic dragon & give it Trace Teleport... but, it's also why I'm considering the 3 spellcaster foes at once - a level 19/20 sorcerer, cleric and psion.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, for any boss fight with a party that size, I reccommend several boss enemies in a team, never just one powerful foe or even one guy with much weaker minions.

Even in my last game, gestalt with a 4 person party, I almost never used a single boss NPC. Most of the time, it was 2-4 strong enemies, occasionally with some low levels as extra support. With so many high priority targets, I found IME that the party actually tended to leave the minions alone, allowing them to actually live long enough to do some damage when I used them. Of course, that party was very much geared towards focused fire, too.

For spellcasters and other monsters, go for things to extend their lifespan over the one-shot death abilities. For example, I loved the sorcerer variant in Dungeonscape that lets you burn a spell slot as an immediate action to reduce damage taken. The NPC with that was a gestalt Paladin//Sorcerer with disgustingly high cha and the Pal variant from that same book, fighting with the spirit of healing filling in his wounds each round as well. Even though he only had one moderately powerful ally in that fight, it lasted well over a dozen rounds between the two abilities effictively giving him 100's of hp of damage soak. And...massive saves if they dared to try a save-or-die.
/tangent
Anyway...the great thing about that sorc variant isn't just that it's increasing survivability greatly. It's also costing immediate actions each round. Which in turn means no swift action for extra spellcasting (The C.Mage feat allowing a sorc to apply metamagic at no time increase thus allowing Quicken Spell). Look for things that will annoy and stymie the party rather than kill them really fast.

[Shin Okada]

Originally Posted by StreamOfTheSky

Yeah, for any boss fight with a party that size, I reccommend several boss enemies in a team, never just one powerful foe or even one guy with much weaker minions.

I agree with StreamOfTheSky. For a showdown fight, "Evil Party" is much better than single boss or single boss plus minions. An encounter against single strong opponent (or two) tend to end up as a one-side game. Either straight win by PCs or the opposite. Minions may work. But experienced players tend to find minions to be either ignorable or can be easily nuked.

This is especially true when a PC party is large. No matter how strong the main villain is, all the PCs can concentrate their fire power onto one foe and eliminate it quick.