Since we are all discussing the merits of high level adventures ... we are currently breaking new ground as 6 16th level PCs. My PCs appear far out on what they can take on as opposed to what is supposed to challenge them. Is it normal experience that your PCs can walk through 2 CR 16 nightwalkers, several classed hags (green hag SORC 12, green hag BARB 12, green hag CLC 12, 2 green hag ranger 7 archers, some smaller guys) with only a single casualty? This appears to be an ECL what, 25? encounter? Are my PCs out of control, or is this reasonable?
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Why don't more people play high level campaigns? 13th+
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Thornir Alekeg
Albatross!
Emirikol said:
In the longest running campaign I played in (5 years weekly, then another 4 years sporadically), we only reached 12th level.
Since then I have not had a gaming group stay together long enough to get there. Marriage, kids, school, or new jobs have scuttled several groups by 6th or 7th level.
Presto2112
Explorer
Emirikol said:
Two, in fact.
Stormborn
Explorer
Our group always starts DnD at low levels, almost always at 1st. This is becuase the players like to get a feel for their characters, playing higher level PCs overwhelms them with options. So we never start out at a higher level. Then by the time we have gotten to level 10 or 12 we are likely getting tired of the campaign and want to do something a little different, try out new characters, new settigns, etc. We dont play above level 12 simply because we have never wanted to do so.
Old Drew Id
First Post
We have an AoW campaign hitting levels 15-16 now. In recent levels, we've seen combats slow down, not during the actual fighting, but in the prep time. Basically, we almost never get caught in a fight that we do not know is coming, so we are always prepped before the swords come out. Since we are in a party of 4 clerics, there is a **LOT** of buffing that goes on before a fight. I think in the last couple of fights, I've had something like 25 different spells active on my character, each one offering different bonuses or abilities, some of which stacked and some of which did not. The combat itself might liast 6 rounds, which is maybe an hour of game time, but the prep work takes at least an hour by itself, and that is for some very prepared gamers.
The world itself is less of a hindrance at these levels. Our characters are routinely immune to a variety of effects at any given time, and can muster up immunity to any particular effect with a little advance warning. From a cold arctic mountaintop to a lava pool, with a little advance notice, our characters can wade right in.
Distance itself also stops being an issue. We don't camp anymore. Our characters can wind-walk or teleport so often and so far that we are home for supper every night, even if we are off on another plane. Supplies and shops are effectively right next door all the time, because a quick teleport to the big city magic shop can net us whatever specific antidote we need to the problem at hand. Effectively, our little home town just turned into the Hall of Justice, where we reside between adventures.
Money is a big issue. Not the search for money, but trying to explain the disparity. Our PC's might toss out an old magic weapon when a better one comes along, and that old magic weapon is worth more than the entire town where they live. Assuming they just want mundane goods, they can buy up every shop in town, plus the houses, livestock, land, etc. But they are still expected to submit to the will of the aristocracy, if one is present.
The remedy for all of this IMO is not to try to fight it, but to instead revel in it. Really push the Hall of Justice / Leage of Superheroes concept. Those daily scry checks let the mage watch for upcoming adventures, and the heroes gear up and teleport out to take care of them as they occur. In the meantime, the characters hob-knob with the rich and famous, jet around to exotic locations on a whim, and generally lead the life of superheroic characters from myth, because that it what they have become. In between, they deal with politics and sponsor lower-level parties to handle lower-level threats.
Something else that I've noted is that the game world doesn't really match up with how quickly the PC's gain their power. Basically, the RAW will let your PC reach level 20 in a couple of months game time if you can keep finding appropriate challenges. Even for a fighter, that seems discongruous to go from a kid with his first sword to the best warrior on the planet in 2 months. For a spellcaster it is even more so.
One remedy I would suggest, and this is something I used in my d20 Modern campaign for similar reasons: Run the adventure in episodic format. Have a clear beginning and end to each adventure. Insert a "Gap Between Adventures" rule to slow down the game time between adventures. The gap runs a variable amount of time, but at least one month per average level of the party.
So now, the 10th level party just defeated the white dragon that was plaguing the north villages. They go into town to shop and rest and figure out their next move. The town has a party and generally goes into epilogue and rolling the closing credits.
Now, about an hour passes at the table, but ten months pass in game time before the next adventure starts.
The next adventure gets ready to start: What have the PC's been up to in that time? Maybe they have been buying land and getting on the good side of some of the nobles. Maybe they have started a school and attracted their first class of students. Maybe they got married and had a kid. Maybe they have even had other off-screen adventures to which they will make reference later. The main point is that when we return to these heroes, they are a little older, they have more contacts, they have a wider reputation, they have closer to the eventual mythical creature that they might one day become.
If you start that at first level, assuming you have just 1 adventure per level, you would pass 3 years of game time by 9th level, even if the "active adventuring" of the party was only for a couple of weeks during that time. You would use up at least seven and a half years by 14th level in those gaps, and eventually fifteen years by level 20, which is plenty of time for a young lad from a small village to become a seasoned mythical warrior known throughout the land.
The world itself is less of a hindrance at these levels. Our characters are routinely immune to a variety of effects at any given time, and can muster up immunity to any particular effect with a little advance warning. From a cold arctic mountaintop to a lava pool, with a little advance notice, our characters can wade right in.
Distance itself also stops being an issue. We don't camp anymore. Our characters can wind-walk or teleport so often and so far that we are home for supper every night, even if we are off on another plane. Supplies and shops are effectively right next door all the time, because a quick teleport to the big city magic shop can net us whatever specific antidote we need to the problem at hand. Effectively, our little home town just turned into the Hall of Justice, where we reside between adventures.
Money is a big issue. Not the search for money, but trying to explain the disparity. Our PC's might toss out an old magic weapon when a better one comes along, and that old magic weapon is worth more than the entire town where they live. Assuming they just want mundane goods, they can buy up every shop in town, plus the houses, livestock, land, etc. But they are still expected to submit to the will of the aristocracy, if one is present.
The remedy for all of this IMO is not to try to fight it, but to instead revel in it. Really push the Hall of Justice / Leage of Superheroes concept. Those daily scry checks let the mage watch for upcoming adventures, and the heroes gear up and teleport out to take care of them as they occur. In the meantime, the characters hob-knob with the rich and famous, jet around to exotic locations on a whim, and generally lead the life of superheroic characters from myth, because that it what they have become. In between, they deal with politics and sponsor lower-level parties to handle lower-level threats.
Something else that I've noted is that the game world doesn't really match up with how quickly the PC's gain their power. Basically, the RAW will let your PC reach level 20 in a couple of months game time if you can keep finding appropriate challenges. Even for a fighter, that seems discongruous to go from a kid with his first sword to the best warrior on the planet in 2 months. For a spellcaster it is even more so.
One remedy I would suggest, and this is something I used in my d20 Modern campaign for similar reasons: Run the adventure in episodic format. Have a clear beginning and end to each adventure. Insert a "Gap Between Adventures" rule to slow down the game time between adventures. The gap runs a variable amount of time, but at least one month per average level of the party.
So now, the 10th level party just defeated the white dragon that was plaguing the north villages. They go into town to shop and rest and figure out their next move. The town has a party and generally goes into epilogue and rolling the closing credits.
Now, about an hour passes at the table, but ten months pass in game time before the next adventure starts.
The next adventure gets ready to start: What have the PC's been up to in that time? Maybe they have been buying land and getting on the good side of some of the nobles. Maybe they have started a school and attracted their first class of students. Maybe they got married and had a kid. Maybe they have even had other off-screen adventures to which they will make reference later. The main point is that when we return to these heroes, they are a little older, they have more contacts, they have a wider reputation, they have closer to the eventual mythical creature that they might one day become.
If you start that at first level, assuming you have just 1 adventure per level, you would pass 3 years of game time by 9th level, even if the "active adventuring" of the party was only for a couple of weeks during that time. You would use up at least seven and a half years by 14th level in those gaps, and eventually fifteen years by level 20, which is plenty of time for a young lad from a small village to become a seasoned mythical warrior known throughout the land.
Remathilis said:
Well if you're smart and plan ahead, they are introduced and in the campaign well before the PCs are ready to take them on. In Shilsen's campaign, one of the major baddies was a Rakshasa who had been messing with the PCs and poking and prodding them in various directions since about the start of the campaign. Though of course we didn't recognize him in his various disguises and identities until afterwards.
It certianly adds a bit of verisimilitude if you toss in references to other characters saving the day or some threat being averted due to the efforts of one group or another as well.
High Level Campaigns
I've heard folks complain about statting out NPCs in a high level game. That sure is a pain when done via paper and pencil.
When I ran a high level game (7 players, 16th-19th level), I created several template NPCs and different classes and levels and a few iconic high level monsters in PCGen and just edited them to individualize them when needed.
The problems in my game were:
1) The power level reached insane heights. (flying everywhere, teleport, plane shift, instakill spells, insane magic items)
2) It no longer resembled any of the sword and sorcery and fantasy fiction that I was brought up on even remotely. It was like medieval Super Heroes.
3) Class power imbalance: The spellcasters and their ilk took over the game, leaving other PCs feeling frustrated.
4)Designing Encounters: As every encounter had to be scaled to fit the most powerful characters, others less powerful characters were killed routinely. If it was scaled to fit the less powerful classes, it was over in 2 rounds
5)3x combat is slower than hell anyway. At high levels, the entire session would be spent on a 10 round combat.
I've heard folks complain about statting out NPCs in a high level game. That sure is a pain when done via paper and pencil.
When I ran a high level game (7 players, 16th-19th level), I created several template NPCs and different classes and levels and a few iconic high level monsters in PCGen and just edited them to individualize them when needed.
The problems in my game were:
1) The power level reached insane heights. (flying everywhere, teleport, plane shift, instakill spells, insane magic items)
2) It no longer resembled any of the sword and sorcery and fantasy fiction that I was brought up on even remotely. It was like medieval Super Heroes.
3) Class power imbalance: The spellcasters and their ilk took over the game, leaving other PCs feeling frustrated.
4)Designing Encounters: As every encounter had to be scaled to fit the most powerful characters, others less powerful characters were killed routinely. If it was scaled to fit the less powerful classes, it was over in 2 rounds
5)3x combat is slower than hell anyway. At high levels, the entire session would be spent on a 10 round combat.
kigmatzomat
Hero
Tclynch said:
Sorry, I've already got 8 players.
Kae'Yoss
First Post
Remathilis said:
Drow stop being a threat? You know, in one of the novels it is said that they regularly conjure up powerful fiends to negotiate with - and unlike other mortals, aren't treated as tools by the fiends. Those demons know that they're equal partners with the drow - at best.
Orcs I can see not being a high level threat (Because the main purpose of an orc is to die, giving XP to low-level characters
), but drow can easily be a threat on all levels.He had to plan it? Prepare?
If you think that way: Why didn't the CR 6 critter jump on you before you turned level 6? Why wasn't it the very first encounter you had? Because its CR is too high? That argument can't be brought against high-level play alone. In fact, If you care about these things, you better stop playing D&D right now.
Umbran said:
No, but they weren't complaining that it takes too long to reach high level, either. Someone else was, and for him (or her) I gave this advice.
Jefe Bergenstein
Legend
jasin said:
You CAN do this. Our last Al-Quadim game, which went from 1-21 dealt specifically with this sort of change. The PC's who started out as scam artists playing coffe houses for coppers became national heroes and their band world famous (someone likened the game to the Beatles fight Godzilla and save the world). At one point the group was accosted by fans who wanted to be conned. A yearning to retrun to simpler roots played out as a motif throughout the campaign.
What you cant do is have a static concept. While its not the penultimate storytelling, Luke Skywalker went from loser to leader over the course of a few movies. Plan for this sort of thing to happen if your campaign is going to stretch into the teens.
I personally dont have that big a deal with high level NPC design. Really only the top 3 levels of spells make a big difference, so pick those and use any minor ones on the fly. The advice on the big 6 for magic items is pretty spot on, so equip your NPC's thusly. Skills are pretty unimportant, but if it comes up, treat them as having class level +3 + stat in whatever is relevant. Its a bit more complicated than a 3rd level mook, but (for me at least) not the hours some people are claiming.
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