D&D 5E Test of High Level 5E: Design 4 or 5 lvl 13 PCs for 6 to 8 encounter adventuring day

Celtavian said:

Twig,

You should take chill touch with the wizard. You want to be able to shut down healing and regeneration while doing damage. No darkvision is going to hurt bad in the encounter Flamestrike made. I'm assuming Keraptis is either a lich or demilich with truesight. He's going to really hurt the characters that lack darkvision.

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Lord Twig said:

I was going to say: "A touch spell? Are you crazy?" Then I looked at the spell... 120' Range! What!?!

Yeah, I'll switch that out.

Darkvision is good, but I refuse to believe that it automatically invalidates any race that doesn't have it. Light spells exist for a reason.

For me part of this is seeing how tough standard encounters can be. The other part is to see if things that are considered bad, or sub-optimal (standard human, beast master ranger, champion fighter, etc) is really that bad. So far I think they are fine, but we will see...

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Celtavian said:

You'll run into problems with the beastmaster when you are fighting creatures that AoE and have resistance to nonmagical attacks. Trying to heal the pet is a bad use of resources and their damage is substantially reduced against creatures with resistance to nonmagical weapons. They become the equivalent of a means to get advantage on one attack for the use of a Bonus Action. It's a bad tradeoff. They definitely have mechanic flaws that did not get thought out well by the design team for higher level play.

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Celtavian said:

No darkvision is rough. light spell is generally inferior to darkvision by quite a margin. Not to mention it interferes with Stealth by acting as a beacon signaling your location for exterior ranged enemies. Imagine how easy the giants would be if it were dark. Be like taking candy from a baby. Now it may be that way for you for a few encounters.

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Radaceus said:

@Flamestrike and @Celtavian, I asked earlier on, what are the maximum number of spells for a wizard for this test? I find it is not realistic to assume a wizard only has the bare minimum allotted from leveling up; That in 13 levels of travels scrolls and what not would have made themselves available to be ascribed, more so as the player earned more income at those higher levels. The example I had mentioned before was an additional Six-1st,Five 2nd, Four 3rd, Three-4th, Two-5th, and One-6th level spells. This would be a Total of Fourteen-1st, Nine-2nd, Eight-3rd, Seven-4th, Six-5th, Five-6th, and Two-7th level spells for a 13th level wizard (assuming the wizard did nto take lower level spells when higher level slots became available)

@Lord Twig

Dont forget you can cast 8 hr buffs, and as a wizard take a short rest and regain the slots. Granted, due to time constraints this should probably be done prior to initial encounter, and as noted in by Flamestrike for encounter I, take a short rest then to change out spells. This would mean roughly 6.5 hrs remaining on the buffs depending upon said encounter and what actions take place afterwards.

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Flamestrike said:

Encounter 3:

Encounter conditions: Same as the rest of the demi-plane.

Encounter environment: The PCs enter a 40'x40' room,with exits to the north, east, west and south. They enter via the southern entrance. The exits to the east and west are twisting corridors that lead to 40'x40' rooms of their own. The northern passage leads further into the dungeon.

Creatures: Patrolling between the three rooms is an Iron Golem, its elemental spirit corrupted by the Elder Elemental Eye after it was sucked into the demiplane from Keraptis lair. Reduce its hit points by 50 (to 160) to acount for damage sustained in the transition to the demi-plane, but due to its rage, the Golem can dash or make an additional slam attack as a bonus action on its turn. Its CR remains unaltered.

As soon as a a PC enters this room, check their passive perception. Those with a passive perception of 15 or higher notices a clanking sound coming from the eastern exit. Give the party 12 seconds to decide upon a course of action, and a further few seconds to narrate it to you before the Golem emerges. Decrease the DC to hear the incoming Golem to 10 the following round, but reduce any time to plan or react to 6 seconds.

The round after, the golem bursts into the room and attacks in a berzerk rage.

It patrols between the three rooms, appearing in this room every minute or so. Once it notices the PC's it attacks as noted above. It cannot be reasoned with, pursues the party throughout the dungeon, and fights to the death.

DMs notes. Its anticipated that most parties will have 1-2 rounds advance warning to either set up an ambush for the Golem or to avoid it entirely (assuming they head down the northern corridor and not the western one in order to avoid the Golem - a party that heads west will instead be cornered in the dead end). A party who obtains surprise on the golem should be able to finish it off inside of a single round or two at worst. This encounter rewards stealthy PCs who focus on scouting and swift planning and decisive action.

If the party take too long deciding how to best deal with the Golem, they face a stand up fight with the creature.

Encounter difficulty: 15,000 XP - 'medium'

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Lord Twig said:

It might take me a little while to get to this encounter, but I believe my party will be able to scout it out, then stealth past it with little expenditure of resources. Which is a good thing since the first encounter took a lot.

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Flamestrike said:

Yeah, Im giving it a day or two before posting the next encounter so peeps can catch up.

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