Common High-Level Tactics

[Warren Okuma]

Druid1: Rock to mud.
Druid2: No, no, no, mud to rock.

 

[Gerion of Mercadia]

Spellcaster top 5:

Horrid Wilting... It's just horrid on most PC's
Moment of Prescience (to win initiative)
Disjunction
Time Stop
Mind control Effects

A Fighter/rogue type:
Seeking Daggers of Returning in combination with TWF Chain /Rapid shot methods. After Perfect Two Weapon Fighting/ Rapid Shot - this is 8-9 flying daggers w sneak attack on potentially each one.

DM Monster beef up... Bring on the templates.

Drow... Paragon Weretiger Vampire - Spellstiched of course.... (Think Underworld)

 

[the Jester]

At high levels, most characters have rings of evasion. Often their other ring is freedom of movement. Expect a lot of use of things that simply negate whole suites of attack forms- those two rings really help a character avoid energy damage, paralysis and- most important of all- grapples. (Gigantic grappling tentacle monsters can do bad things to you.) Mind blank is another common tactic.

A good high to epic level tactic is the accelerated timeframe approach: when you need to rest, go to a plane where time moves faster than it does at home, preferably a lot faster. Then you get a chance to heal up and prep your spells for your enemy in what seems to him to be only an hour or six.

Preparation- divining the enemy's strengths and weaknesses- is another really common tactic in high-level groups. A good diviner (of whatever sort) is perhaps the best single character for enhancing party survival at high levels.

 

[Drowbane]

Last night's High-Level Tactic, stolen from two of the players in the game: Total Concealment.

The Shadow Creature Template, or in the villain's case, the Shadow Body power, grants total concealment. That's a 50% miss chance except when in full daylight.

The best part was, the players couldn't figure out why they couldn't see the villain. Two of them have permanent See Invisibility, so they expected to see more than the general area of where the spells originated.

I guess what's good for the players is good for the DM.

Some of us were too busy trying to not get smashed by Brass Golems (what was there, 8... 12?) to deal with your shadowy villainess!

Drow... Paragon Weretiger Vampire - Spellstiched of course.... (Think Underworld)

you been peeking at my character sheet?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Why doesn't anti-life shell get more love? It completely keeps those pesky enemy fighters from getting all up in your face and grappling you. But your undead minions are free to move in and out of the shell as necessary. Meanwhile, you can sit back and rain down flame strike or firestorm or implosion or whatever.

You're right, it is a hugely overlooked defence. I set up the 14th level cleric evil priest with it - he and his archer specialist cronies were inside, the party were outside and they couldn't work any way around it until someone managed to summon an elemental, but three of the party were already dead by that time to a combination of destruction and blade barriers.

Recently my druid used it in Nightfang Spire to turn the girallons into a turkey shoot.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Some of us were too busy trying to not get smashed by Brass Golems (what was there, 8... 12?) to deal with your shadowy villainess!

I still find it ironic.



Okay, time for the next wave of High-Level Tricks.

Burrowing under the PC's is a great way to get surprise. It's a high Listen DCl to hear monsters coming from over 30 feet away--I don't remember what the modifiers are exactly, but they're good.

/I didn't give the brass golems surprise though. Maybe next time....

 

[Thomas Percy]

For shadowcaster,
Favored Mystery feat changes any mystery into Supernatural Ability, what makes Spell Resistance irrelevant.
Maybe not combo, but useful.

 

[paradox42]

Preparation- divining the enemy's strengths and weaknesses- is another really common tactic in high-level groups. A good diviner (of whatever sort) is perhaps the best single character for enhancing party survival at high levels.

Oh BOY is this true. My Epic party hasn't had a fight in over a year of real time when they didn't heavily divine the area they were going in advance, and use their favorite psionic powers (Hypercognition, Metafaculty) as well as spells (Know Vulnerabilities) to figure out how the enemy planned to withstand assault and then methodically plan how to dismantle/bypass said withstanding. The one exception was the artifact they went after that spontaneously created a guardian golem for itself- that, they honestly were not expecting, and the golem nearly took down the whole party (the psionic artificer character remembered at the last second that his sentient psionic amulet had been given the Damp Power power and had just barely enough manifester levels to use it on every character in the party).

Obviously, ways to negate divination are one way around this, but frustrating to the players and honestly a cop-out for the DM- so they need to be used sparingly except in the most glaringly obvious cases ("What do you mean, Demogorgon warded his treasure vaults against scrying effects? Who would've expected that?"). What's a lot more fun is if you can find ways to fool the divinations without shutting them off completely- get them to give false information rather than none at all (Screen is your friend). Properly used, this can tie a party up in knots, even long after the original use of the falsifying effect. After all, if they were fooled once, can the party ever really be sure they aren't being fooled again?

 

[Darklone]

...
Also, I'm assuming that the energy drain/enervation combo you're using on different foes, because the damage doesn't stack....

Since when do negative levels not stack? They most certainly do. We're not talking about Ray of Enfeeblement here.

 

[frankthedm]

(Gigantic grappling tentacle monsters can do bad things to you.) Mind blank is another common tactic.

They recently published a tentacle monster with an antimagic grapple.