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

[waxtransient]

My current campaign has one more session left, and I'm sort of doing the DMG suggestion of the party getting epic boons every 30k past level 20, so using that they are levels 25-27 (I’m also allowing multiclassing post-level 20). They started with LMoP, moved into PotA, and they all wanted to get to level 20 since they hadn't done it before, so it's been homebrew ever since.

1. There is a war cleric, a battle master fighter, dragon blood sorcerer, and a character that is my 5e take on a gestalt swashbuckler rogue/ chain warlock (he's getting the gestalt stuff from a unique legendary weapon), although with the weird post-level 20 stuff he now has 5 levels in the revised hunter conclave ranger as well.

2. The Kobold Press Tome of Beasts and the epic monster update thread here at enworld have been invaluable to me, as I feel that the monster manual just doesn't have many monsters that challenge a high level party. From the MM, the party has fought adult and ancient dragons, a super-powered ancient dracolich (I tried to recreate the Ghost King), a small horde of fire giants and iron golems, a lich, and a balor at high levels. From the Tome of Beasts, the party fought eye golems, cambium, Valkyrie, son of Fenris, blood hags, Gug, Gnarljaks, Voidlings, automata devils, mask wights, a mordant snare (controlling young dragons of each chromatic type), the demon lord of night with owl harpies, and horakhs. From the internet, I used Penumbra, lord of nightmares, and Bel (not your average pit fiend). From enworld’s epic monster update thread, I used Ashardalon and will be using Graz’zt.

3. High level play has mostly been a blast. The bulk of the party’s high level encounters took place in a long dungeon in Penumbra’s demi-plane, and I used a few tactics that really enhanced things. First, most of the rooms were also custom lairs I cooked up. These were invaluable because, as others have already pointed out, high level characters can do degenerate things that can turn an otherwise well thought out encounter on its head, and so it is nice to have an effect that essentially functions as a monster that can’t be killed, counterspelled, or otherwise nerfed, that always has a high initiative, that can do exactly what you need it to do to fill in any gaps in the encounter. I should point out that creating lairs is also great because it is just so much easier than creating an entire monster stat block.

I also used the madness tables in the DMG, plus my own custom madness table, and had madness happen to the party A LOT while they were in Penumbra’s realm. This had the effects of weakening the party’s overall combat effectiveness while also taxing the cleric‘s resources by keeping everyone relatively sane using restoration spells. This felt like the high level sweet spot to me, as the madness ended up providing a lot of role play opportunities, which made them a hilarious amount of fun, while also meeting my goals of actually weakening the party. This type of thing is the way to deal with high level encounters, I think, rather than following the advice given upthread of just telling your characters that the hard-earned, high level spells that they cast don’t actually work because reasons.

The final tactic I used was similar to one mentioned upthread: chain subsequent battles together without a chance to long rest, or sometimes even short rest. Allowing high level parties to nova all the time will make all encounters easy.
The result of all of these tactics was creating a feel that resembled that I think good mid-level play feels like: a few trivial encounters, a few fighting-for-their-lives encounters, with the bulk of the encounters falling somewhere in between those extremes.

4. I don’t think any rules of the game need to be changed to make high level play better; it seems to function well as is. However, I didn’t have a power-gaming wizard in my party though, and I could see how that might change things. For me, the lairs have been a lifesaver, as have the 3rd party and home brew high level content.

I know there seems to be a lot of curiosity about high level play around the forums (I had a similar length post written up a couple weeks ago on another thread discussing high level play but my browser ate it; using Word this time) so if anyone has any other questions about high level DM’ing, or how the classes in my game performed at high level, I’m happy to answer!

 

[Aenghus]

Most important things I've noticed from high level play:

1. DM needs to be able to adjust and say No. No, you cannot cast a creative spell that negates everything entirely (Ancient Green Dragon is roflstomped by party that pre-casts Heroes' Feast without DM changing things, etc).

IMO that was the bad old way of handling high level power, which was to negate every problematic high level ability, long lists of stuff that was altered or didn't work at all. Why bother playing a high level game if some or all the high level toys will be taken away?

I understand that anticlimaxes are bad, and I would change things too, not the way you advocate, but by making abilities like Heroes Feast still useful but not a win button. Maybe the lair suspends or negates poison immunity, giving the party a reason to fight the dragon away from their lair. Reward players for making smart choices, don't punish them (and investing high level spell slots into wasted prep can look like punishment, if it happens more than once, and without advance warning).

2. Spell Casters are either completely broken (rest of the party isn't really even needed) or completely useless (players have no idea what high level spells are capable of).

Again, that's why I prefer lower powered spells that are acceptable in the hands of PCs and are designed primarily from that perspective rather than primarily as villain powers in the hands of the DM.

3. Single enemies simply aren't dangerous. DMs prefer single enemies because they are way easier to run mechanically.

DMs need to suck it up and deal with hitting high level parties with more medium level enemies. That is SIGNIFICANTLY deadlier to the party, especially if the enemies are varied in weaknesses/strengths....kind of like how the party is...

Due to action economy this has been true for many editions, possibly from the very start. I noticed a plethora of single monsters in the 3e era , a single big monster was the lazy DM way out due to the complexity of generating and running monsters.

 

[dave2008]

I so I added spells to mariliths and balors to empower their ability to empower the demon hordes they rule. I rebuilt all the demon lords into what I think they should be. I haven't test run the first demon lord, but that is coming shortly.

Any chance you would share your creations. I am especially interested in the demon lords and how they play out for you. I've been trying to upgrade them myself, but I will not have a chance to run them against a real party for some time.

 

[kbrakke]

Currently at level 27, 24 of those are normal class levels and 3 of them are mythic level equivalents, and I gave them the world in magic items.

1. What was the party composition?

Ranger(Spell-less) 19 / Barbarian 5 / Mythic 3
Vorpal Blade, Weapon Of Legacy (Desert Wind), Belt of Fire Giant Strength, Byeshk Armor Plating (Acts like adamantine + spell resistance)

Fighter (Battlemaster) 24 / Mythic 3
Belt of Cloud Giant Strength, Rod of Lordly Might, +2 Plate, Byeshk Armor Plating, Ring of Commanding Fire Elementals

Wizard (Diviniation) 24 / Mythic 3
Robes and Staff of the Archmage,

Bard (Valor) 20 / Fighter 1 / Rogue (Swashbuckler) 3 / Mythic 3
Sunblade, Coutal Soul Shiled (It's a shield with a coutal in it that can cast helpful spells)
True polymorphed himself in to a Solar, and one of his mythic levels allows him to retain half of his spellcasting ability, so he's mostly a bard/solar with 6th level spells.

Monk (Modified Way of 4 Elements) 20 / Mystic 4 / Mythic 3
Bracers of Armor, Ring of Earth Elemental Command, Swordchucks, Holy Avenger Spear, Beyshek covering (Acts like adamantine + limited spell immunity (4th level))

2. What did you fight?

For a while I tried the normal monster manual, things like death knights, pit fiends and balors were proving at least reasonable when backed by hoards of chaff, but after their second mythic level I threw the monster manual out. At this point they don't fail against ordinary enemies, so we mostly just skip those encounters and move on to important e encounters.

3. How did the fight go? Did you enjoy it? Was it too easy or too hard?

From about level 17 onwards (They were level 16 with one mythic level) it was ok, then I made it just right. Once they hit 20 things got too easy again, but after their second mythic level I started getting back on track. The final act of the campaign I hope will be hard again. They are trying to retake massive parts of Khyber, the Eberron underdark, from Beleshyrra. He has had literally months to study the party and his creations should prove to be difficult.

4. What would you change to make very high-level encounters better?

#1 thing is plan your enemies and give them abilities that make sense as a foil to common PC tactics. It should be rare past 17th level that they are fighting something that doesn't know about them, this party has made the enmity of every single group of baddies on Eberron, literally all they do now is plot how to stop the party. As such I build my monsters for this.
#2 Is give half proficiency to weak saves. I want my monsters to have high save DCs when they are impressive spell casters, however doing that properly makes the fighters sit out the fight. We use hero points, and they have advantage on most spell saves, so getting a +4 to weak saves gives them a bad, but possible chance to hit things like DC 25 or so. This lets me threaten the players with high mental saves without completely shutting the other players out.


Some Ramblings on my monster designs: Once I threw out the monster manual I started to think of my monsters in the semi-4e style by thinking of their roles. With the party having ACs ranging from 21 to 25 I ballpark an average monster as +14 to hit. My strikers and Elites go higher and the casters can be slightly lower. I also unilaterally raised monster ACs, the lowest to hit in he party is the monk at +14 and the highest is +18 from the fighters and bard. I start my base AC at 21 and raise it by type. They still usually hit the monsters, but they feel a little bad more often. Right now I have an interesting set of monsters. The Daelkyr are known to be somewhat mysterious and they love to alter living creatures to fit their needs, so in this act I have cast Beleshyrra as an artist looking for feedback on his work. As the lord of eyes he sees everything his creatures do and keeps working on new creations to thwart the party. This gives a very good in world reason for monsters to begin to learn new tactics and gain new abilities.

The players at this level have some crazy immunities, or things like evasion which make my spell considerations change. But this ties back in to designing for your players.
I can't feasibly keep to a 6 - 8 encounter day, unless I just tell them they don't get a long rest until 7 encounters go by. I don't want to do that because I feel such a fundamental change should be discussed before a campaign starts, but I think the structure of this act will keep them constantly moving.

Another thing is, at this level I'm just not afraid to kill them anymore, they have resurrection spells and can pretty much survive any single thing. They can regroup afterwards and try again, but I trust them to know if they're going to die an make pains to escape.

 

[valarmorgulis]

Great answers everyone! I edited the title of the thread to be clear that I'm looking for 5e game experiences.

I particularly like the usage of custom lairs. Every monster I am developing has a lair effect and many have regional effects as well.

It sounds like PCs generally have ACs in the 20-25 range. What AC would a monster need to only get hit about 50% of the time by the DPS folks?

How many HP would a monster need to last 6 rounds against fully prepared PCs? Assuming that melee and ranged attacks hit 50% of the time. I'm guessing something over 1,000?

Never heard of mythic levels. Is that homebrew or UA?

 

[millface]

In my experience (I play with 6-8 players, so this might be pretty different from the norm) regular monsters become sort of old hat after level 13 or so. It's very difficult to actually challenge a party without making the combat incredibly bulky and time consuming at that point. So, for our high level portion of the campaign I homebrewed the Vord race from Jim Butcher's Codex Alera. Accidentally made them TOO powerful, then had to start ramping things up for the party by offering things like vampirism, a minor shard of divinity that was intended to be split among the party to give them a power boost but was taken entirely by one character, so I had to homebrew what the heck that would be like. Things were almost to the point where it was too ridiculous to continue, but we managed to make it fun.

Party ended up being Two Vampires, a demigod druid who had gone pretty crazy from his taking on so much knowledge and power all at once (The shard of divinity came from two gods battling each other, and he took on some of the traits of both, one was good, one evil, so he would randomly shift alignment and saved every day to try to stabilize, he never quite got there, but we made it work and it was hella fun)

So:

Vampire Bladelock
Vampire Shadow Monk/Assassin
Shardmind Pscionicist a fellow GM and I brought up from 4E so he could retain his character
Bard that prioritized ranged combat (oathbow)
Human Wizard
Drow Druid Demigod (I made up the rules for godhood in great detail to make it somewhat fair)

All level 18-19

The final battle took place in the middle of an attack on Silverymoon by the Vord army. The Queen and a former PC that she had corrupted riding on the back of a Vord template Terrasque

Homebrewed things ended up being Divinity and rules for that, the Vord themselves along with a template and several types of them, The Shardmind and Pscionicist

TL;DR: The challenge curve is really difficult to maintain, and I almost screwed everything up trying to make something challenging enough by overshooting, then almost screwed up again by having to homebrew detailed rulesets to expand the party's power, but by the skin of my teeth managed to keep it all together and everyone said it was the most fun they've ever had playing D&D. Verdict? High level play is really flipping difficult to DM, but can be rewarding if you put in the work.

I don't know if anyone cares, but this is the BBEG that I created. This fight was absolutely epic, and I somehow did manage to balance out the powers on both sides to be almost perfectly matched.

The Vord Queen
Medium Aberration (True Neutral)
________________________________________
Armor Class: 24
Hit Points: 335
Speed: 45 ft. (60 ft. fly)
________________________________________
Str 28 (+9) Dex 30 (+10) Con 24 (+7) Int 26 (+8) Wis 28 (+9) Cha 20 (+5)
________________________________________
Skills: Perception + 15, Athletics +15, Acrobatics +16, Deception + 11
Senses: Passive Perception 28, Inhuman Senses, True Seeing
Immunities: Mind Control, Paralyzation, Poison Damage, Cold Damage
Saves: Dex +16, Con +13, Str + 15, Int +12, Wis +12, Cha +11
________________________________________
Inhuman Sense: The Vord Queen’s senses are heightened to supernatural levels, she can effectively see in all forms of light and can detect invisible creatures within a 40 foot radius as long as she can hear or smell.
Perfect Adaptability: Any class ability and any spell or spell-like ability that the Lesser Queen sees used she automatically learns and can subsequently use.
Darwin’s Culmination: The Vord Queen is the pinnacle of carbon based evolution and has resistance to all forms of damage. She regenerates 30 hit points at the start of each of her turns. She is unaffected by spells below 6th Level.
Legendary Resistance (3): Three times per day the Vord Queen can choose to succeed at a failed saving throw.
The True Queen: The Queen’s direct presence inspires the Vord around her. Any Vord unit within 30 feet of the Queen receives a +10 bonus to damage on melee attacks and advantage on saving throws against magic and magical effects.
________________________________________
Actions
Multiattack. The Vord Queen makes 4 attacks, Three with her long sword and one claw attack.
FlameBlade. Melee weapon attack. +17 to hit, 5 ft. reach. Hit (1d8+12/4d6 fire)
Claw. Melee weapon attack. +15 to hit, 5 ft. reach. Hit (1d8+9/4d6 poison) DC 22 paralyzation on hit.
________________________________________
Legendary Actions (5)
Cast an Adapted Spell (2) The Vord Queen casts one of her learned spells or uses one of her learned class abilities.
Move The Vord Queen Moves without provoking an opportunity attack.
Grasping Croach (2) The croach grows rapidly and wraps itself around anyone in a 10’ radius, DC 22 Acrobatics or Athletics or any non-vord in the area is immobile. They may make this check again at the end of each of their turns. This area is difficult terrain.
Genetic Deconstruction (3) The Vord Queen alters the genetic makeup of her target, DC 22 Con Save or the target loses 3D6 in a random statistic and is stunned and prone, writhing on the ground until the end of their next turn. On a save the target loses 2D6 in a random statistic and is not stunned.
Arc Lightning (3 Recharge 2) The Queen extends a hand and a 60 ft. cone of lightning bursts forth, dealing 25D6 (75) damage on a failed Dex save, half that on a successful one.
Attack

 

[Celtavian]

Any chance you would share your creations. I am especially interested in the demon lords and how they play out for you. I've been trying to upgrade them myself, but I will not have a chance to run them against a real party for some time.

I'll post them in my Out of the Abyss Campaign thread.

 

[MonkeyWrench]

1. What was the party composition?
2. What did you fight?
3. How did the fight go? Did you enjoy it? Was it too easy or too hard?
4. What would you change to make very high-level encounters better?

I've run two tier 4 5e campaigns: Tyranny of Dragons until 17th lvl and Out of the Abyss to 20th lvl. Both were heavily modified from the book.

ToD
1) Main party: Frenzy Barbarian, Ancients Paladin, Trickery Cleric, Light Cleric, Assassin/Hunter. Ancillary party members (provided spell support or backup, 11th-14th lvl): Lore Bard, Diviner Wizard, GOO Chainlock, Open Hand Monk, Swashbuckler/Champion, Dragon Sorcerer.

2) biggest fight was the finale of the campaign to stop Tiamat's arrival. Party had 2 Adult Silver dragons and an Ancient Gold Dargon as allies plus support from their ancillary spellcasters. Opponents were 5x Ancient Chromatic Dragon (each color), 1 Ancient Black Shadow Dragon, 6x Mages riding 3x Adult Dragons (blue, green, and white), 12x Frost Giants (mostly ranged support) plus about 20 CR 2-3 cultists and mercanaries providing ranged support from battlements.

3) fight was pretty epic if cumbersome to run. Both the Pally and Barbarian were down to less then 10% hit points by the end and every dragon, including allied dragons, died. Highlight was the Paladin, riding the gold dragon, crit-smiting twice in a row on the Shadow Dragon.

4) I learned that dragons have fallen pretty hard from their heyday as the premier monsters. No spell resistance, no immunity to normal weapons, very limited ability to deal with PC abilities beyond LR. Since then all my dragons have their old color specific SLAs plus a host of resistances and immunities.

OotA
1) Vampire Necromancer (Demonomicon), Lich Death Cleric (Cloak of Invisibility plus some custom SLAs from DI), Oathbreaker Paladin (Axe of Dwarvish Lords), Immortal/Champion (Blackrazor), Fiend Bladelock (Vorpal Blade)

2) mostly masses and masses of drow and demons. During the campaign's final sessions they assaulted the stronghold of House Baenre (after unleashing 4 Earthquake spells in the span of a day to soften up the noble quarter resistance). Fights included:
- running the gauntlet of the Baenre courtyard where 20 Drow Elite Warriors and 5 Assassins sniped away at the party from stalactite arrow slits
- breaking through front gate guarded by a legendary balor, 2 stone golems (max hp), 5 CR 12 Drow Warriors, 2 drow priestesses, and 2 Yochlol
- assaulting the main hall: 30 zombies, 2x Drow priestess, 5x drow elite warriors, CR 18 drow Champion, drow Archmage, CR 15 drow weapon master, CR 18 drow high priestess, 3x drow Mage
- confronting the Matron and her entourage: Matron Baenre, 2x iron golem ( w/ wall of fire), lvl 20 drow bladesinger, 2x drow high priestess, drow Archmage, marilith, 2x CR 12 drow bodyguards

3) most fights were over within 2-3 rounds and with anything less than CR 15+ being basically a speedbump. AoEs, high mobility melee combatants, and counterspells were the real battle winners in these fights. The party went through the above combats plus some lesser fights all in that span of an in-game hour (took about 6 hours playing time) without a short rest. It was basically a blitz as they knew if they let the drow regroup, it was over for them. The goal was to get to the heart of the stronghold, cast double earthquakes, then travel to the ethereal to avoid the worst. Very epic, but they did it without breaking a sweat.

4) this campaign, from start to finish, was meant as a stress test for 5e. We played with all the options plus legendary/artifact level magic items. High powered DnD the way we like it. Our verdict; 5e is not built for this style of gaming and I had to do a lot of prep work to make combat encounters that were challenging. Most fights were over in 1-2 rounds with the Immortal/Champion and Paladin routinely doing 150-200 damage a round between them. Standard monsters need significant boosts to AC, hp, and damage, even with spell support. After this campaign I've considered going back to 2e for my high-powered DnD fix (our group's preferred play style); perhaps it's my rose-colored glasses, but I don't remember having to work so hard to make the system work at those levels.

 

[valarmorgulis]

Interesting. As someone who still plays a bit of 2e now an again, I think you might be right. But primarily because only the wizard class really gains any power after 14th level. Everyone else is just getting slightly more HP and better Thac0. Still, there isn't much in 2e that can challenge a high-level party unless you spam save or die spells since monster HP tends to be really low.

It sounds like a party of PCs can deal about 300-400 hp of damage per round when going full tilt. So an enemy that only is affected 50% of the time needs about 800 hp to last 4-5 rounds. Good to know.

Do you think an AC of 25 is sufficient to stop about 50% of PC attacks?

 

[Ancalagon]

I know it wasn't 5e but I'll elaborate anyway:

what lead to the stalemate was that, in the 2e rules, fiends killed would return to their original plane - and then were re-summonable by their fellow fiends. So as long as the head guy stayed, the hole bunch would just keep returning. On our side we had massive amount of healing available. So it went nowhere and got really frustrating, 3e came out and the whole thing collapsed.

It was really epic, it had potential, but it didn't work.

I also ran a high level warhammer frpg campain, but that system is quite different from D&D so I don't know if my experience is relevant or not...