High level characters can beat most traps. What to do?
As we established with The Pit Problem, static obstacles are easily circumvented by higher level characters in Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons through a combination of planning, magic, and superhuman skill. The key phrase being "static." A party that has time can overcome most challenges. But a party under duress with multiple threats coming at them at once must plan, coordinate, and use their resources judiciously. For higher level characters, this means throwing a lot of things at them simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the sorcerer and ranger were in freefall. The druid turned into a large flying creature to catch her companions but kept missing her rolls to actually grab them -- the sorcerer cast web to attach herself to the druid, then cast it again to attach the ranger to them both.
Free from its moorings, the rogue flew the escape craft out through the broken docking bay. The warlock teleported onto the escape craft and the flying artificer caught up with them, clinging to the outside.
Now separated into two groups but still in the midst of two massive airships in ship-to-ship combat, the larger airship fired on the escape craft, piercing one of their engines. The rogue had to pilot through a crash landing, while the druid similarly had to land on the nearest flat surface, unable to hold aloft two of her companions and stuck to them with a web.
Throughout, the threat was always crashing and dying from a great height. A party without the ability to cast teleportation spells or flight would have been in much bigger trouble. Similarly, simple issues like breaking chains or picking a lock can be addressed easily if given enough time.
We played fast and loose with the rules but the PCs did great, and it was an epic finale to the session (the adventure isn't quite over yet though).
Your Turn: How do you make simple obstacles a challenge for high level PCs?
Saint Michael parish church in Untergriesbach. Fresco at the ceiling: Last Judgment( 1780 ) by Johann Georg Unruhe Picture courtesy of Wolfgang Sauber - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7015698
As we established with The Pit Problem, static obstacles are easily circumvented by higher level characters in Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons through a combination of planning, magic, and superhuman skill. The key phrase being "static." A party that has time can overcome most challenges. But a party under duress with multiple threats coming at them at once must plan, coordinate, and use their resources judiciously. For higher level characters, this means throwing a lot of things at them simultaneously.
Impossible Missions
A visual example of this is Mission Impossible III, in which the high level character Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must rescue an agent from a warehouse. But it's much more complicated, because...- They escape in a helicopter...
- by flying through a wind turbine farm...
- all while exchanging fire with pursuing enemies...
- and trying to deactive a bomb in the rescued agent's head that will go off any minute.
Impairment
Impairing the PCs can make them vulnerable in ways that complicate other threats. Be it flying a helicopter or just magical flight, what makes navigation of an obstacle easy can just as easily be a vulnerability if nullified at the wrong moment. Winged flight is very different from magical flight, while magical flight (or at least the spell) requires concentration. Being restrained creates disadvantage at every turn, requiring double the checks to succeed. Sometimes this can be simple as making the non-optimized character do a job they'd prefer not to (like a non-proficient pilot fly an airship).Multiple Obstacles
Jumping over a pit is simple enough; jumping over a pit with another pit just past it can be deadly. The obvious threats are not the ones to worry about. A typical example are pit traps that are more than pit traps, with further obstacles at the bottom of the pit (spikes, poisoned spikes, crushing walls, or all of the above) but they can just as easily be multiple traps in different locations so that trying to avoid one trap triggers the other (see Grimtooth's Traps for numerous examples).Pursuit
Carefully exploring a dungeon with a ten-foot pole is a lot easier when there isn't a dragon at your back. PCs lose the luxury of being methodical with pursuers behind them. For this threat to be effective, the pursuer has to be challenging enough to make rushing through obstacles a better choice than simply turning and fighting. This can be cumulative, where increasing number of enemies who catch up with the fleeing PCs make it harder for them to keep fighting.Time Limits
D&D 5E moves in six second increments, so to be relevant to combat (which rarely lasts more than a minute), the deadline needs to be imminent or PCs will take their time to finish important tasks. Like the pursuit option, the risk of not completing the task in time needs to have severe consequences when the time limit is up to create a sense of urgency. The looming threat of a massive explosion usually qualifies (although in the case of magical resurrection, as long as the cleric survives in theory not even this matters).Multiple Threats in Action
The culmination of my most recent adventure involved two massive airships battling it out in the sky, while the PCs fought in hand-to-hand combat on one of the airships. It took a few rounds to figure out what was going on from within the airship (they were below decks), until they started floating toward the ceiling (as the airship's engine was destroyed, the ship began nosediving towards a nearby mountain). Our 9th-level heroes had to:- Fight off waves of grappling clockwork enemies
- Pick three locks to open a locked door to the docking bay
- Snap two chains holding their escape craft down
- Navigate out of the falling larger airship
- Safely land without being struck by the enemy airship
Meanwhile, the sorcerer and ranger were in freefall. The druid turned into a large flying creature to catch her companions but kept missing her rolls to actually grab them -- the sorcerer cast web to attach herself to the druid, then cast it again to attach the ranger to them both.
Free from its moorings, the rogue flew the escape craft out through the broken docking bay. The warlock teleported onto the escape craft and the flying artificer caught up with them, clinging to the outside.
Now separated into two groups but still in the midst of two massive airships in ship-to-ship combat, the larger airship fired on the escape craft, piercing one of their engines. The rogue had to pilot through a crash landing, while the druid similarly had to land on the nearest flat surface, unable to hold aloft two of her companions and stuck to them with a web.
Throughout, the threat was always crashing and dying from a great height. A party without the ability to cast teleportation spells or flight would have been in much bigger trouble. Similarly, simple issues like breaking chains or picking a lock can be addressed easily if given enough time.
We played fast and loose with the rules but the PCs did great, and it was an epic finale to the session (the adventure isn't quite over yet though).
Your Turn: How do you make simple obstacles a challenge for high level PCs?
