Several good suggestions in the thread. Let me add that the summoning part of gate only works if the caster is on a different plane than the summoned creature. So the adventure could actually be finding a safe extraplanar location for casting gate, and making sure that the prisoner will be able to survive the journey back to the material plane.
D&D 5E Advice on dealing with high level characters.
that restriction actually confuses the heck out of me. I mean I guess it's possible they don't know of any planes that are safe but otherwise they'll just use the gate supposed to go to one of those planes I mean it's kind of unrestricted.
ad_hoc
(they/them)
The immediate issue im dealing with is one of my PC's has the gate spell and the current story arch is calling for them to rescue someone from a dungeon. It seems the gate spell lets him just pull anyone whose name he knows through the portal, aka skip the dungeon. Any advice would be much appreciated.
That sounds like a challenge for level 3 characters.
Think bigger.
At level 15 they should be facing challenges that threaten an entire plane.
At level 17, threats to the entire multi-verse.
transtemporal
Explorer
My advice is: know what the spells do, familiarise yourself with the make-up of your party and have an response appropriate for your adventure ready, but don't automatically negate their actions. For example: you could put a forbiddance spell around the dungeon blocking interplanar travel but consider whether the organisation who built the dungeon has access to that kind of magic and whether it would be fun to do that. Sometimes it's fun for the PCs to hit an easy home run.
hbarsquared
Quantum Chronomancer
Reiterating what others have said...
There are three approaches:
Negation. This can range from DM fiat, with custom dungeons where scry and teleport simply don't function, to more creative situations such as layering forbiddance with sheets of lead along with an unknown truename and the wrong lock of hair. Use sparingly.
Roll with it. Let epic characters be epic and let players take joy in getting past mundane defenses. Use sparingly.
Consequences and Complexity. My favorite, and use often. This is a good direction to follow from 1st level. As othera have suggested, "saving the prisoner" is the easy part. They might be catonic, poisoned with one day to live, dominated, mind erased, double-crossing, were this close to discovering the BBEG's weakness... Or what if the goal was bigger, more further reaching? Rescuing is one thing, proving someone innocent in the eyes of the king, nobility, and masses is quite another. Or the rescue might be easy, but getting them to the church in five hours to complete the ceremony uniting the two warring countries is quite another. Everything has connequences, everything can have more than one layer of complexity. Forcing the PCs to make choices and deal with consequences, to themselves and they're world, is how to challenge epic level characters
There are three approaches:
Negation. This can range from DM fiat, with custom dungeons where scry and teleport simply don't function, to more creative situations such as layering forbiddance with sheets of lead along with an unknown truename and the wrong lock of hair. Use sparingly.
Roll with it. Let epic characters be epic and let players take joy in getting past mundane defenses. Use sparingly.
Consequences and Complexity. My favorite, and use often. This is a good direction to follow from 1st level. As othera have suggested, "saving the prisoner" is the easy part. They might be catonic, poisoned with one day to live, dominated, mind erased, double-crossing, were this close to discovering the BBEG's weakness... Or what if the goal was bigger, more further reaching? Rescuing is one thing, proving someone innocent in the eyes of the king, nobility, and masses is quite another. Or the rescue might be easy, but getting them to the church in five hours to complete the ceremony uniting the two warring countries is quite another. Everything has connequences, everything can have more than one layer of complexity. Forcing the PCs to make choices and deal with consequences, to themselves and they're world, is how to challenge epic level characters
Arnwolf666
Adventurer
be careful, if you are writing a high level adventure just to nerf their high level abilities and not let them use their cool spells and toys and have them be useful for the adventure then you have defeated the purpose of doing a high level adventure.
Dan Chernozub
First Post
Can't wait for my players to survive to become high-level ...
On a more serious note - I don't see much of a qualitative difference in preparing for the higher-level adventures. Your villains still have to have a reasonable plan, brute enemies have to be brutal, intelligent foes should act smart and the story as a whole should make sense. Quantitively, yes, you should take more things into account.
In other words - all the sound advice above this post can and should be applied to low-mid level adventures as well. Even low-level spells are vastly beyond what humanoids can normally do, and if your world is in any way magic abundant, other intelligent cannot afford not to take it into consideration.
And I am not only speaking of adventure hooks - all the world around characters should take into account the presence of magic. Thieves are aware of divination spells. Murderers take steps to prevent speak with dead/raise-dead type spells being cast on their victims. Wealthy traders prefer Teleportation Circles on stable trade routes to the risks of the naval travel etc.
On a more serious note - I don't see much of a qualitative difference in preparing for the higher-level adventures. Your villains still have to have a reasonable plan, brute enemies have to be brutal, intelligent foes should act smart and the story as a whole should make sense. Quantitively, yes, you should take more things into account.
In other words - all the sound advice above this post can and should be applied to low-mid level adventures as well. Even low-level spells are vastly beyond what humanoids can normally do, and if your world is in any way magic abundant, other intelligent cannot afford not to take it into consideration.
And I am not only speaking of adventure hooks - all the world around characters should take into account the presence of magic. Thieves are aware of divination spells. Murderers take steps to prevent speak with dead/raise-dead type spells being cast on their victims. Wealthy traders prefer Teleportation Circles on stable trade routes to the risks of the naval travel etc.
Quartz
Hero
If you do go down the blocking route, make sure you give the players the opportunity to discover the blocks and traps and how to circumvent them. For instance, if they do their research, they might discover an old scroll describing how a previous adventurer fell foul of a teleport trap and learned that bearers of an access token are able to teleport into and out of specific areas.
Igfig
Explorer
One important point about the blocking approach is that it's only fun if
A. it's a well-defined element of the setting, or
B. it's the premise of the adventure.
In the first case, the blocker is just one of the tools in your toolbox, the same way guards, alarms, and locks are. The key considerations are that the blocker has known and accessible countermeasures, and that it's equally available to the PCs.
For example, in my Eberron game every secure facility is protected by a Private Sanctum. The spell has some simple countermeasures: you can't teleport into its area, but there's nothing preventing you from just walking across the barrier, or getting within 120 feet and casting Dispel Magic. The PCs take it into account when they infiltrate government installations, and have one of their own covering their own base.
In the second case, the idea is that the blocker is a weird and unique effect, and the meat of the adventure is interacting with it and learning how to get around it. This could mean turning it off, bypassing it entirely, or developing ways to endure it. The key considerations are that the blocker fits thematically with the rest of the adventure, and that it's something that the PCs can engage with and eventually overcome.
For example, a dungeon where teleportation is blocked needs to have a reason it's blocked; an artifact that projects an anti-planar-travel field when it's positioned over a planar rift, perhaps, or a system of ectoplasmic nets covering a corresponding area in the Astral plane. The PCs should be able to learn the nature of the blocker, figure out the rules that govern it, and eventually exploit a loophole or destroy a keystone to gain entry to the teleport-access-only room that contains their ultimate goal.
The one thing you don't do is just say "oh this place has weird magic, sorry but you can't teleport here."
A. it's a well-defined element of the setting, or
B. it's the premise of the adventure.
In the first case, the blocker is just one of the tools in your toolbox, the same way guards, alarms, and locks are. The key considerations are that the blocker has known and accessible countermeasures, and that it's equally available to the PCs.
For example, in my Eberron game every secure facility is protected by a Private Sanctum. The spell has some simple countermeasures: you can't teleport into its area, but there's nothing preventing you from just walking across the barrier, or getting within 120 feet and casting Dispel Magic. The PCs take it into account when they infiltrate government installations, and have one of their own covering their own base.
In the second case, the idea is that the blocker is a weird and unique effect, and the meat of the adventure is interacting with it and learning how to get around it. This could mean turning it off, bypassing it entirely, or developing ways to endure it. The key considerations are that the blocker fits thematically with the rest of the adventure, and that it's something that the PCs can engage with and eventually overcome.
For example, a dungeon where teleportation is blocked needs to have a reason it's blocked; an artifact that projects an anti-planar-travel field when it's positioned over a planar rift, perhaps, or a system of ectoplasmic nets covering a corresponding area in the Astral plane. The PCs should be able to learn the nature of the blocker, figure out the rules that govern it, and eventually exploit a loophole or destroy a keystone to gain entry to the teleport-access-only room that contains their ultimate goal.
The one thing you don't do is just say "oh this place has weird magic, sorry but you can't teleport here."
To the OP...
My first piece of advice is to end the game and start over at Level 1 because if you are having trouble at level 15, it only gets worse off in your case as the party increases level...especially when 9th level spells come into play.
If you insist on continuing your game, then in my opinion, you need to ask yourself one hard question.... What are you trying to accomplish when you DM?
The answer to that question greatly impacts on how you prepare your game.
If it is continuing a story line then you don't prepare encounters that have a high probability of TPKing the party because a dead party ends the story.
If your game is hack and slash, then you probably need to watch some youtube videos.... Colville has some great advice in challenging the party
If it is some hybrid then you have to weigh how much challenge you want to introduce into the game. Always remember that the party is smarter than what you may give them credit for... what you think is an auto loss encounter, the party will come up with a way to overcome
Good luck.. high level play in my opinion on both sides of the screen is the most fulfilling and exciting from both a mechanical and storyline perspective.
My first piece of advice is to end the game and start over at Level 1 because if you are having trouble at level 15, it only gets worse off in your case as the party increases level...especially when 9th level spells come into play.
If you insist on continuing your game, then in my opinion, you need to ask yourself one hard question.... What are you trying to accomplish when you DM?
The answer to that question greatly impacts on how you prepare your game.
If it is continuing a story line then you don't prepare encounters that have a high probability of TPKing the party because a dead party ends the story.
If your game is hack and slash, then you probably need to watch some youtube videos.... Colville has some great advice in challenging the party
If it is some hybrid then you have to weigh how much challenge you want to introduce into the game. Always remember that the party is smarter than what you may give them credit for... what you think is an auto loss encounter, the party will come up with a way to overcome
Good luck.. high level play in my opinion on both sides of the screen is the most fulfilling and exciting from both a mechanical and storyline perspective.
