D&D 5E Have you experienced very high-level (18+) play in 5e? Tell me about it!

[The Crimson Binome]

So are you saying it's not possible to do a deadly encounter at the beginning of the adventuring day? If you have the PCs fight a deadly encounter at the beginning of the day, with the assumption that they fight several more encounters afterwards, how then is it still a deadly encounter?

If you have a Deadly fight at the beginning of the day, and then six more average fights later in that day, then the PCs dying to some random giant still counts as a win for the Demogorgan. The first fight was Deadly, because it caused the PCs to die in the seventh encounter.

If the PCs just stop adventuring for the day, because they've killed the Demogorgan and they have no reason to stick around, then they're playing the game wrong and the game isn't designed to handle that. Their fight was probably not very interesting, either, since they weren't really in any danger.

 

[MonkeyWrench]

The 6-8 med/hard encounters per day (almost always combat encounters, btw) seems to break down with tier 4 adventures. Sure, an assault on a demon lord's stronghold in the Abyss will involve lots of encounters, thus creating the marathon that Flamestrike mentions, but how many demon lords will the party take on in the course of a campaign? How many time-sensitive, cosmic-level threats can a campaign world sustain?

Mechanically the game might work with those assumptions, but I find it increasingly implausible from an in-world perspective to have that many threats just to make sure I'm playing by 5e's mechanical assumptions. I didn't have this problem in high-level 1e or 3e.

 

[Imaro]

The 6-8 med/hard encounters per day (almost always combat encounters, btw) seems to break down with tier 4 adventures. Sure, an assault on a demon lord's stronghold in the Abyss will involve lots of encounters, thus creating the marathon that Flamestrike mentions, but how many demon lords will the party take on in the course of a campaign? How many time-sensitive, cosmic-level threats can a campaign world sustain?

Mechanically the game might work with those assumptions, but I find it increasingly implausible from an in-world perspective to have that many threats just to make sure I'm playing by 5e's mechanical assumptions. I didn't have this problem in high-level 1e or 3e.

How did you get around this issue in high level 3e play? In other words... why didn't the players in your 3e game nova when presented with a small number of encounters if you didn't use the attrition model?

EDIT: Don't have enough experience with 1e to comment about it but was it also based around encounter building guidelines and attrition?

 

[Jer]

Mechanically the game might work with those assumptions, but I find it increasingly implausible from an in-world perspective to have that many threats just to make sure I'm playing by 5e's mechanical assumptions. I didn't have this problem in high-level 1e or 3e.

How did you not have this problem with high-level 3e? I always had to ramp up the threats beyond the suggested "Challenge Rating" if the PCs were going to have only 1-2 encounters in a day. If I stuck to the CR guidelines in the book and they knew that there were only going to be one or two encounters in a particular adventuring day (for plot reasons) then it was a cakewalk for my players.

1e was a different beast. There were no guidelines on how to build encounters so we all had to "wing it" to a large degree. So when you got to high levels you made the encounters harder until it started to feel like you were being mean and then you backed off a bit. Maybe. Depending on whether you felt guilty or not.

I haven't run high level 5e yet, but my suggestion would be that if you are going to have fewer encounters in a day, then take your 6-8 battles worth of resources and split them into 2-3 battles instead. They'll be bigger, nastier battles but if the encounter building guidelines are good for 6-8 battles at high levels then it should work out. You need to be careful with "bounded accuracy" that you aren't sticking in monsters that are fine according to the XP calculations but have ACs that are too high for your party to hit, but at high level this really shouldn't be much of a problem (it's more a problem to worry about if you're trying to scale battles at lower levels like this). I have done this with some success at lower levels, though you have to be ready to admit you made a mistake and made things way too hard if you accidentally throw something overpowered at a group of players who aren't expecting it. (Again, probably less of a problem at higher levels though I don't know for sure.)

 

[werecorpse]

Can you explain how the encounter system breaks down at high level?

Really it's often 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounters, long rest. What additional problems arise at high level to this model?

 

[MonkeyWrench]

How did you get around this issue in high level 3e play? In other words... why didn't the players in your 3e game nova when presented with a small number of encounters if you didn't use the attrition model?

EDIT: Don't have enough experience with 1e to comment about it but was it also based around encounter building guidelines and attrition?

I'm not 100% sure why I didn't have that issue in 3e - we'd usually have 2-3 combats per session, very few instances of PCs going full nova, and avoided rocket tag combats for the most part. I suspect it's mostly group playstyle as my players tended to be very cautious and conservative with their resources when we played 3e. In 5e they go all out every combat and if I cannot stay within the recommended encounter guidelines I find I have to make significant modifications to the standard monsters to keep things fun and interesting. I used to not mind making those modifications, but I also have way less time to tinker with the game now.

For me the biggest issue I have with the 6-8 encounter guidelines is that they impose what I see as an artificial structure on my campaign. I like combat encounters to be a consequence of PC actions and NPC/Monster response and that doesn't always mean 6-8 encounters. I know those are guidelines and that I can use more or less encounters of varying difficulty to mix things up, but for some reason I find 5e remarkably inflexible when it comes to what it takes to have fun and interesting combats.

As for how this relates to high-level play, those times I can include multiple encounters per adventuring day, everything works great. The chief example I would use is my players' assault on a drow household - lots of encounters with variable difficulty, a time constraint factor that kept them moving forward, and a multiple moments where everyone's PC got to shine or standout. What I've found with high-level campaigns is that the party very often has greater resources at their disposal to influence when and where they fight.

 

[Gadget]

How did you not have this problem with high-level 3e? I always had to ramp up the threats beyond the suggested "Challenge Rating" if the PCs were going to have only 1-2 encounters in a day. If I stuck to the CR guidelines in the book and they knew that there were only going to be one or two encounters in a particular adventuring day (for plot reasons) then it was a cakewalk for my players.

I'm not MonkeyWrench, but I would hazard a guess that 3e's vast ability to Min/Max, synergism, and combos made high level CRs very unreliable. While I can't say definitively, and everyone's experience differs, it seems that most people had to custom build high level foes with added class levels, spell-like abilities, templates, etc. When you are already going to that much trouble to run high level adventures, one would almost naturally adjust to the number of encounters the campaign is accustomed to having.

My own limited experience with high level adventures indicates that the stories tend to gravitate towards one massive encounter, rather than more lesser ones, but that may just be my lack of experience at the level range. This indeed would make the more 'nova' classes shine to a greater degree as a result.

I'm also curious to hear more from those who have found magic to 'dominate' at high levels. I don't doubt your word, but could you elaborate on how? Which spells and abilities in particular you find to be out of line?

 

[waxtransient]

The 6-8 med/hard encounters per day (almost always combat encounters, btw) seems to break down with tier 4 adventures. Sure, an assault on a demon lord's stronghold in the Abyss will involve lots of encounters, thus creating the marathon that Flamestrike mentions, but how many demon lords will the party take on in the course of a campaign? How many time-sensitive, cosmic-level threats can a campaign world sustain?

Mechanically the game might work with those assumptions, but I find it increasingly implausible from an in-world perspective to have that many threats just to make sure I'm playing by 5e's mechanical assumptions. I didn't have this problem in high-level 1e or 3e.

This sounds like a very legitimate concern, but it wasn't an issue in my campaign. In our case, the 8 med/hard encounters per day at such high levels just leveled the party so fast that they only needed one time sensitive, cosmic-level threat and its associated encounters to gain a million levels very quickly and have what felt like a complete mini-adventure. I think I read somewhere that the developers did that intentionally: making the xp requirements for 4th tier leveling smaller relative to the xp the party is getting so that things move along faster and don't have time to peter out. The answer to the "how many demon lords" question ends up being 1, at least during the 4th tier.

Of course this just replaces one problem with another, as most DM's don't want their party leveling up every session, which is what happened to my group.

 

[Tony Vargas]

how many demon lords will the party take on in the course of a campaign?

How many have been published for 5e so far?

How many time-sensitive, cosmic-level threats can a campaign world sustain?

As many as the campaign's heroes can successfully foil.

Mechanically the game might work with those assumptions, but I find it increasingly implausible from an in-world perspective to have that many threats just to make sure I'm playing by 5e's mechanical assumptions.

Maybe you could make it more plausible by simply expanding the time scope of the campaign? 5e has some decent downtime stuff, and more could be added. Heck, throw in Temporal Stasis and your high-level party could have their second adventuring 'day' the next time those stars are in alignment for the next cosmic threat.

I didn't have this problem in high-level 1e or 3e.

Edit: it sounds, below, like you did have the problem, you were just OK with solving it back then, and not so OK with it now.
...5e just isn't that different from them. If anything, high-level play seems like it'd be a little less problematic in 5e compared to the glorious crazy of 1e or the sheer brokedness of Tier 1 classes at high level in 3e.

I'm not 100% sure why I didn't have that issue in 3e - we'd usually have 2-3 combats per session, very few instances of PCs going full nova, and avoided rocket tag combats for the most part. I suspect it's mostly group playstyle as my players tended to be very cautious and conservative with their resources when we played 3e. In 5e they go all out every combat

So if they'd gone all-out in 3e and become cautious after adopting 5e you'd have the exact opposite story. :shrug:

I used to not mind making those modifications, but I also have way less time to tinker with the game now.

So, again, it's not that 5e is that different from 3e or 1e, but that you are different from your 3e- and 1e- playing past selves.

I know those are guidelines and that I can use more or less encounters of varying difficulty to mix things up, but for some reason I find 5e remarkably inflexible when it comes to what it takes to have fun and interesting combats.

5e does prioritize fast over 'interesting' when it comes to combat.

As for how this relates to high-level play, those times I can include multiple encounters per adventuring day, everything works great.

Cool.

What I've found with high-level campaigns is that the party very often has greater resources at their disposal to influence when and where they fight.

Certainly true. But, then, their enemies should, too.