D&D 5E Challenging High-Level 5e Characters

[FrogReaver]

I think this is great advice for any GM- but are any of these particular to high level characters? The issue with high level characters is their massive resources and abilities to deal with many threats. Their capabilities don't increase gradually, their power curve gets incredibly steeper.

IMO. At lower levels these things are much less necessary.

Also the kinds of environments that will yield a challenging series of encounters is much different for lower level PCs than for higher level ones.

 

[Quickleaf]

I think this is great advice for any GM- but are any of these particular to high level characters? The issue with high level characters is their massive resources and abilities to deal with many threats. Their capabilities don't increase gradually, their power curve gets incredibly steeper.

My post just a few posts above yours is specific to "massive resources" of high-level PCs: https://www.enworld.org/threads/challenging-high-level-5e-characters.703144/page-3#post-9290452

 

[Scott Christian]

Most combat encounters just won't be challenging, especially if you don't want them to take a long time. Player characters have so many options, and both monsters and player characters have so much hp that combat simply does take time at high levels.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I give all "boss" type monsters complete immunity to all crowd control spells/abilities (and tell the players beforehand so there is no guesswork and frustration on their end). It's not that hard to balance fights if you know your BBEG will actually get to use its actions and legendary actions without being chain stunned / polymorphed / banished. Damage is pretty easy to estimate and keep balanced, it's the variables around how high level spells subvert the action economy that make balancing fights so difficult.

Are there in-universe reasons for the immunity to crowd control effects?

 

[Shardstone]

TL;DR: Play Dark Souls/Elden RIng/Any FromSoft game from 2011 onwards

I pretty much "specialize" in doing big boss battles, and have put a lot of time into playing with them and making them work over the 9 years I've played 5E. In the end, letting multiattack be for ALL actions (not just some), giving the boss multiple turns, reactions, and very high damage have been what's made it possible. I also always use at least two phases, which sometimes is a second healthbar and sometimes triggers when bloodied.

The high damage and multiple turns are the most important things. Bosses need multiple chances to break out of effects and they need to be able to steal a player's attention by hitting them really, really hard. Hard enough to make the player's jaw drop. This is doubly true at high level, because it's easy to bring a PC back from the brink of death (or even back from death period) several times with max resources.

I used to believe you had to wear a party down to challenge them. I no longer believe that. All it takes is a really serious stat block that's played a little tactfully. Give it some bonus moves and abilities to make it interesting and not just a damage contest, as well as a somewhat interesting arena that changes either the phases or independently, and you too can challenge fresh high level parties with solo monsters.

For what it's worth, almost none of 5E's first-party, high CR monsters do the trick IMo unless there's about a gap of 10+ between CR vs Character Level. And you really need methods that can take a party out besides damage too, like threatening them with mutations if they get hit too much, or forcing their attacks to veer and hit other party members, etc.

All this together for a single monster creates a lot of chaos. You're darting around with legendary actions (more then usual), overcoming effects, doing insane damage, and inflicting weird statuses and other abilities on the PCs. It should feel frantic and desperate by the end; many times, even my veteran parties get down to just 1-2 characters with a handful of hit points and no resources left when they win. But, they win.

 

[lolsworth]

TL;DR: Play Dark Souls/Elden RIng/Any FromSoft game from 2011 onwards

I pretty much "specialize" in doing big boss battles, and have put a lot of time into playing with them and making them work over the 9 years I've played 5E. In the end, letting multiattack be for ALL actions (not just some), giving the boss multiple turns, reactions, and very high damage have been what's made it possible. I also always use at least two phases, which sometimes is a second healthbar and sometimes triggers when bloodied.

The high damage and multiple turns are the most important things. Bosses need multiple chances to break out of effects and they need to be able to steal a player's attention by hitting them really, really hard. Hard enough to make the player's jaw drop. This is doubly true at high level, because it's easy to bring a PC back from the brink of death (or even back from death period) several times with max resources.

I used to believe you had to wear a party down to challenge them. I no longer believe that. All it takes is a really serious stat block that's played a little tactfully. Give it some bonus moves and abilities to make it interesting and not just a damage contest, as well as a somewhat interesting arena that changes either the phases or independently, and you too can challenge fresh high level parties with solo monsters.

For what it's worth, almost none of 5E's first-party, high CR monsters do the trick IMo unless there's about a gap of 10+ between CR vs Character Level. And you really need methods that can take a party out besides damage too, like threatening them with mutations if they get hit too much, or forcing their attacks to veer and hit other party members, etc.

All this together for a single monster creates a lot of chaos. You're darting around with legendary actions (more then usual), overcoming effects, doing insane damage, and inflicting weird statuses and other abilities on the PCs. It should feel frantic and desperate by the end; many times, even my veteran parties get down to just 1-2 characters with a handful of hit points and no resources left when they win. But, they win.

How many legendary actions? How much damage? What kinds of effects?

It's all well and good to speak in the general sense but it's a lot more useful and helpful to give an example. Like for the initial question posed, give us an example solo boss statblock for a level 13 party.

 

[Shardstone]

How many legendary actions? How much damage? What kinds of effects?

It's all well and good to speak in the general sense but it's a lot more useful and helpful to give an example. Like for the initial question posed, give us an example solo boss statblock for a level 13 party.

This is a stat block I made for a book I am releasing soonish. Id use this, give it another turn on initiatives 15 and 5, give it legendary resistances (5), and have it regsin hit points at 0 + summon a clone that acts on initiative 20 for stage 2. If my players were tankier classes, Id also do 2/3rds max dmg instead of half. This is for a more standard type of damage dealing boss, If i wanted more weird effects, Id give it the ability to stack a curse on the party members that, at 6 stacks, turns them into an undead minion. Id also place the fight somewhere with battlefield assets or terrain effects, like a radioactive dungeon or a lightning-riddeled laboratory.

 

[tetrasodium]

As happens in my campaigns, the characters in my 12th level Empire of the Ghouls campaign have hit the point where they're able to mitigate a lot of the threat of big battles.

With ten years of D&D 5e behind us – what are your best approaches for keeping up challenging combat encounters for high level characters that don't take two to three hours to run?

What are your favorite tricks that keep the threat high but don't take agency away from the characters or the choices the players made in building them?

Others have mentioned parts of it in the first few posts... Pretty much destroy bounded accuracy with a reverse pf2 type MAP type set of bonuses to AC* and fiat in the old what newer players will feel is calvinball sr: yes/no as appropriate instead of legendary resistance. Unfortunately the math falls apart at those levels unless you rebuild stuff somewhere

*And don't allow sidestepping it by spreading three or four attacks across two or three monsters

 

[mellored]

Waves, like others have said.

But also more set pieces (walls with a batista, catapults, lightning rods), time constraints (they will escape in 2 turns, the room is flooding, enemies get resurrected every other turn), in addition to the monsters.

Give the monk a reason to dash up wall, or a wizard to cast pass wall, or a Barbarian to roll Athletics.

 

[Distracted DM]

View attachment 351929
This is a stat block I made for a book I am releasing soonish. Id use this, give it another turn on initiatives 15 and 5, give it legendary resistances (5), and have it regsin hit points at 0 + summon a clone that acts on initiative 20 for stage 2. If my players were tankier classes, Id also do 2/3rds max dmg instead of half. This is for a more standard type of damage dealing boss, If i wanted more weird effects, Id give it the ability to stack a curse on the party members that, at 6 stacks, turns them into an undead minion. Id also place the fight somewhere with battlefield assets or terrain effects, like a radioactive dungeon or a lightning-riddeled laboratory.

Thanks for sharing- who's done the art? And where can one keep an eye out for this book?