D&D 5E A Glimpse Of High-Level Play

Remathilis said:

This is good.

I've been working on converting the 2e Silver Anniversary version of Ravenloft to 5e*, and right now the target level is 15 (due to Strahd being a CR 15 vampire mage). I've been worried as to how badly a HL game runs, especially one with lots of dungeon exploration like RL.

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If he's CR 15 and he's meant to be the end-game villain, I'd probably start your PCs around 12th or 13th. In my experience, PCs can usually fight up a little bit.

MortalPlague said:

That is a wonderful plot. I might have to steal parts of it for my 11th level game (which is more sandbox-focused). Dealing with feeding the empire could make for an interesting challenge that can't be simply met with sword in hand.

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Thanks, that's really kind. I have a number of complications I haven't mentioned -- spoiler block for my players --

[sblock]
-- the empire is in the middle of civil war, the "empress" has no legal right to the position, the "empress" is evil but is doing what she honestly believes is best for the people, the sand divers can shape change into humans (even though they have no idea how humans should act) and for reasons no one has figured out, all the sand divers look just like the "empress", and things are going to get REALLY nasty as soon as the east realizes that they'll be starving to death this winter --[/sblock]

-- but at its core its an interesting puzzle of "how do we use diplomacy or force to overthrow an unjust leader," along with "how do we make sure people don't starve," when those things are necessarily linked together. Fun! I love high-level games; the stakes can be huge amounts of fun. The other high-lvl game I'm running (also lvl 15) has the PCs as the kids of a merchant who's one of four sides in the civil war to control the empire. The PCs have just accidentally freed a willful God who's meant to be bound to a human emperor, things are going to Hell, but the PCs are working hard to ally with one of their enemies to combine forces against the necromancer archmagi who is also vying for the throne.

Just last game, we remembered this old Yamara comic.

MortalPlague said:

If he's CR 15 and he's meant to be the end-game villain, I'd probably start your PCs around 12th or 13th. In my experience, PCs can usually fight up a little bit.

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Thanks. I wasn't sure how much a PC can "punch up" over their level (since CR is supposed to be a "this high to ride" marker). I was debating making it around 13th level (the updated one is 11th, the original 5th!) but wasn't sure if 13 level PCs vs. a 15th level boss would be TPK or not.

Then again, its Strahd. They kinda deserve to die if they aren't smart.

so is Durable a feat tax ...

ducks

Wrathamon said:

so is Durable a feat tax ...

ducks

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There are unique circumstances which made it so for my game.

Firstly, we're running Rise of Tiamat, the playtest version. There are lots of dragons, and dragons hit pretty hard. My buddy and I decided to divvy up the DM'ing duties; we'd each take a handful of the adventures, and then we'd play when the other was running.

My buddy tends to run things very tactically, and won't soften the blow when things are stacked against the PCs. But at the same time, he's not the greatest at communicating everything that's going on. For instance, he won't always give us a sense of just how deadly an encounter we might be running into is, but he also won't give us enough 'recon' to make an educated decision on the matter.

Long story short, we wound up in a TPK at the end of the second adventure. It wasn't even close. Then I ran the third adventure, and that was fine, and then we hit adventure four and nearly TPK'ed again. We lost one PC, but at one point, every single PC was on the verge of death. We had to eke out a victory.

Following those two significant brushes with death, people began to build PCs for durability.

It's interesting. We don't have those same durability builds, but we're really just starting high-lvl 5e play. I'll keep you updated as to whether they turn out to be necessary.

Question: the Succubi failed to charm anybody? Did they all have good Wis saves? Did they take the Resilient (WISDOM) feat? That's my plan for my 8th level feat coming up just because failing a Wis save seems to be very un-fun most of the time.

The current encounter I have programmed is The Ghost Tower of Inverness, sea of fire and a Fire Giant. The characters are from 7th to 10th level. It plays almost as fast as low-level encounters. 5E is really playable at high level.

A screenshot..
http://kira3696.tripod.com

One of my players wanted to convert and run Tomb of Horrors in 5th edition. So we've been playing that at 15th level. So far it's been great, and a heck of a lot of fun. It seems to run about as fast as our normal lower level game (the characters there have made it to 7th level). I'm very optimistic about high level play in 5th edition from what I've experienced.

epochrpg said:

Question: the Succubi failed to charm anybody? Did they all have good Wis saves? Did they take the Resilient (WISDOM) feat? That's my plan for my 8th level feat coming up just because failing a Wis save seems to be very un-fun most of the time.

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The bard had countercharm to give everyone advantage on their Wisdom saving throw, and there was good dice luck involved. I don't think anyone took that feat, though it seems like a good one to take.