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Have you experienced very high-level (18+) play in 5e? Tell me about it!
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 6987435" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 6987435, member: 19857"] 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.) [/QUOTE]
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Have you experienced very high-level (18+) play in 5e? Tell me about it!
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