Attn Pkitty and other DMs of high-level games: encounters on the road at high-level?

RangerWickett · Sep 11, 2007

I recall when reading Piratecat's storyhour that getting his party to stop and fight things in the underdark was a little hard, because the PCs could just wind walk past most foes. I'm looking for suggestions on how to encourage encounters 'on the road' so to speak. I recall there was a cursed staircase in Pkitty's game, and a few ambushes along the way, but I don't remember why the PCs didn't just scysassinate the Pale King.

Help will be greatly appreciated.

Voadam · Sep 11, 2007

My group (one of them) is 16th level and I still have combat random encounters. They teleport, shadow walk, and fly but not wind walk though (spontaneous divine caster variant from UA and the cleric does not know the spell).

Recently journeying through underdark tunnels to a planar gate they got jumped by a shade (whatever the shadow template from Tome of Magic is called) earth elemental roper (a storoper who acquired shadow planar traits). It was a straightforward ambush that got them into a combat.

My group also seems to end miscommunications with non threatening bad guys by provoking violent confrontations often enough for my tastes so lack of combats is not a problem for my group.

Similarly, when they see bad things happening they jump in heroically, like seeing bariaur fighting a chaos incursion giant ooze thing, the paladin decided the ooze thing "looked bad" while the horned centaurs "might not be bad guys" and so they jumped in with ranged archery and spells while the melee brutes flew and teleported into melee range.

My group also never picked up any scrying so they force their way in to the bad guys room by room.

robberbaron · Sep 11, 2007

My group have begun teleporting wherever they want to go. I have helped this along by having their sponsor/employer send them where he wants them to go, leaving them to teleport back.

This means that I don't generally have to think about random travelling encounters and can concentrate on the main event.

Piratecat · Sep 11, 2007

I'm in England at the moment (and will be seeing Morrus tomorrow!), and won't have regular computer time until next Sunday. If you will, bump this then, and I'm happy to spew ideas.

- Kevin

IceFractal · Sep 11, 2007

Portals are a good place to have random encounters. In fact, at high levels, portals are the new hallways/roads.

For instance, while putting a door most places is ineffective, putting a door in front of a portal is still an obstacle, especially if it's integrated with the structure of the portal such that wholesale destruction/incorporeal bypassing isn't an option. Now you could just use your own Teleport spell, but not if you don't know where the portal leads.

I've used this idea for a distributed dungeon. The idea was that astral/divination warding an entire large fortress is prohibitively expensive. However, if you have a series of small towers in extremely obscure locations, it becomes possible to ward them with existing spells, or at least make it suicide to teleport in (Greater Anticipate Teleport means arriving to a sword in the back). Connect the locations with portals, and it allows fairly fast movement of your own forces while making any enemies go wade through the entire thing.

Another idea: as players can be much more proactive at high levels, enemies should do likewise. Random encounters don't necessarily mean you stumble into the foe, it could mean that the foe comes to you. Demons are good for this - as long as the party has pissed off anyone powerful (likely), they could have made an abyssal deal to have the party harassed in a non-specific way. And as the demons that get deployed don't need to know why they're supposed to attack, finding out the source is non-trivial.

Nifft · Sep 11, 2007

IMC, all the big bads are mind blank'd. Always have been.

Also IMC, you can't teleport someplace you haven't visited personally. No scry -> teleport. If you can't find a guide to teleport you somewhere new, you must visit that new place yourself. (This is to compensate for the elimination of teleport mishaps.)

Finally, IMC there are magic devices which can divert non-mundane travelers (astral, ethereal, or teleporting) into ambush traps.

Cheers, -- N

Morrus · Sep 11, 2007

Piratecat said:
I'm in England at the moment (and will be seeing Morrus tomorrow!), and won't have regular computer time until next Sunday. If you will, bump this then, and I'm happy to spew ideas.

If you make it back alive! Bwah ha ha ha!

kigmatzomat · Sep 11, 2007

Windwalk is a pain as DM.

However at high level you can get away with those rare-creature encounters, especially at 15,000 ft. Anything able to challenge windwalkers has to be reasonably be put off by the interlopers' existence as well as powerful enough to do something. Other creatures that might be miffed and able to do something are air elementals, cloud giants, coutls, and most other spell-casting aerial beings.

E.g. my 21st level party was windwalking high in the air and was attacked by a dragon. Quite reasonably the dragon figured anything with access to that level spell was a threat and, making its spellcraft check, it knew that they would have to spend a lot of time turning solid before casting spells to deal with the problem of falling/flying. A dispel magic later dropped 2 PCs out of the Walk and the dragon commenced to ripping and tearing. The druid started canceling the spell for people who could fly (instantly making them solid) but one PC was thoroughly mauled and a second one pretty banged up before the party managed to coalesce on the dragon.

green slime · Sep 11, 2007

Storm giants live in castles on the clouds, and may take a poor view of territorial intrusion by folks carting around large amounts of bling-bling without the correct visas, paying taxes, and supporting the local economy.

Scry and fry has never, ever been a problem in my campaigns. There are just too many ways to foil and fool this tactic. It consumes too many resources for something so unrealiable.

Tarek · Sep 11, 2007

I would like to point out that if the party has gotten to high levels, they should enjoy the fruits of their labor, as it were.

If they want to bypass an encounter by use of Teleport, or want to get "to the dungeon/castle/town" and have a Teleport without Error handy, then let them.

Such relatively mundane means of travel will not help them much in the other-planar, alternate prime, and extra-dimensional realms they should be adventuring in at this point.