D&D 5E Have you experienced very high-level (18+) play in 5e? Tell me about it!

[Flamestrike]

That's a common misconception, but 5E wasn't designed to be used without magic items; it was designed to be used regardless of magic items.

Yeah nah.

Maybe in your world +3 weapons and armor and a girdle of Frost giant strength doesnt throw out the maths of bounded accuracy, but hey.

Magic items have a substantial effect on the maths. Calculate the DPR of a 20th level fighter with a +3 greatsword and a Strength of 29 from his belt (compared to a Str 20 fighter with a normal sword) if you dont believe me.

Heck, half the high level critters are resistant to non magic weapons, so dont forget to double their hit points as well.

Magic weapons are not accounted for in the normal CR balancing act. If youre going to include them, you need to take this into account with your encounter design and in other areas.

 

[psychophipps]

I feel it's necessary to point out that most DMs simply fail at being devious enough for the true nastiness of many high-CR opponents to come out.
Take a Balor, for example. It has a genius IQ, the ruthlessness of Stalin, the strength of a dozen men and leads entire demonic legions into battle. The chances of this guy (or lady) waking up one morning and saying to themselves, "Today I'm going to stand in the middle of a room and push myself at a high-level PC party like meat into a sausage maker" is somewhere between slim and nonexistent. You see, this bad boy has everything the DM needs for victory in it's flavor text, i.e. that aforementioned demonic blanking legion.
So now that the PCs are neck deep in minor demons on the ground, have aerial forces swooping in and beating them about the head and shoulders, and endless ranged blasts from various nasties (demons have zero regard for blue-on-blue as long as the Balor's objectives are being met) *then* the General shows up to punk down the 1 or 2 battle-weary survivors for the foot on entrails selfie.
Similarly, you should never see "Just a Death Knight". You should see a ravenous horde of undead of all types, various evil allies, and the Death Knight waving it's sword to give battle orders looking like a total badass on it's Nightmare on the nearest rise.

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[kbrakke]

Back to my original post, the Epic levels I give are of my own creation. They give a unique ability tailored very specifically to each characters story//playstyle. They are pretty fun.

I've actually found avoiding +X weapons is the way to go. Weapons that add an extra one D6 damage (of a specific type), or that have other interesting abilities.

Id also rather be wielding 'Alachiel, Elven Holy great sword' that deals an extra d6 radiant damage, casts protection from evil three times per day, and has the finesse quality.'

It's a trick I've learnt from my own high-level campaigns. Avoid plus X items. It helps ensure bounded accuracy remains relevant even at high levels, plus these kind of items are more interesting than a +2 or three sword.

Completely agree. I have not confirmed, but my experience has given me two rules of thumb for high level play in 5e.
1) Your players can hit 100% of the time and kill on 100% of hits as long as their AC caps out at about 21(Plate Fighter with Shield and Defense style) without any resources spent.
2) If you still want to use the monster manual as is and don't want to spend 4 hours running massive battles you should also keep their accuracy to about +11 without any resources spent. They can still do as much damage as they want.

Basically, if you want run high level 5e, hold your players AC and To-Hit to the basics of the book and you can keep using the Monster Manual without much effort. If you go crazy with magic items (Like me) you will have to make better versions of monsters to keep challenging your players.

I took this lesson in my princes game, where I downgraded anything higher than +1 to a +1 (Except the elemental weapons themselves) and have given them armor and items that give them new options rather than just make them better at their normal job. It has worked wonderfully, in that I have the ability to make them fear if they get too uppity (It goes in waves of thinking they are hot when they take down one prophet to getting spooked when they enter a new area.)

I'm interested in hearing about high level play experiences as I have plenty of high level 3e and pathfinder stuff to run but found that not enjoyable to run at high level.

I'm also interested to hear about what sort of magic items work well to not damage the play experience, or better yet which enhance it.

I'm hearing that +X ac items can have a negative impact and that a way to improve non proficient saves would be helpful. So how about a shield or boots that added to Dex saves, armor that added to con saves etc?

I get that adding to damage for a weapon doesn't unduly effect BA.

Any other things that have become apparent?

As for overall play experience high level has been a rocky ride for me as a DM. As it has gone on I have gotten better at figuring out how hard to make things, but it wasn't always that way. I erred on the side of too easy for a while, but once I realized how rare it was for them to need to spend hit dice I ramped everything up.

My biggest problems were giving out magic items like candy and increasing the attunement limit. I say problem and by that what I really mean is making more work for myself, the players love it, they get to use all their cool items and have super high numbers. For me what that means is I have several players with resistances and immunities.

My high level life lesions:
1) Do not let player AC get too high
2) Avoid immunities from items if you can, resistances are also annoying but not a huge problem.
3) Don't let them increase their accuracy too much, especially not on multiple fronts (+x items, stats over 20)
4) Don't be afraid to try to make things very hard to see what happens, they can almost certainly escape if they need to.
5) Goals other than kill everything make fights dynamic, if the only goal is kill everything it's not going to be too hard for the party to do that.
6) Attrition is still important, though for me personally I shorten the 6-8 to 3-4 and just make things very hard each time, don't be afraid, you probably won't kill them.

You can take Resilient multiple times allowing you to cover all saves.

That is not true. The only feat right now that you can take multiple times is elemental adept. If your dm allows you to take it multiple times then you only have yourself to blame. But unlike previous editions there are not many ways of increasing your Maximum value for saving throws.

 

[OB1]

That is not true. The only feat right now that you can take multiple times is elemental adept. If your dm allows you to take it multiple times then you only have yourself to blame. But unlike previous editions there are not many ways of increasing your Maximum value for saving throws.

Wow, never noticed that before. Now that I know I'll make it an official house rule at my table that you can take Resilient multiple times as long as you are not already proficient in that ability save. Given the opportunity cost of taking Resilient multiple times, I'm very surprised that it isn't already allowed. Can't imagine it is game breaking. Perhaps the designers simply wanted every class to have at least one or two vulnerabilities that they have to play around, even at high levels?

For those without a DM who would allow it, you'll just have to shore up those saves the old fashioned way and bring along a Paladin!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Wow, never noticed that before. Now that I know I'll make it an official house rule at my table that you can take Resilient multiple times as long as you are not already proficient in that ability save. Given the opportunity cost of taking Resilient multiple times, I'm very surprised that it isn't already allowed. Can't imagine it is game breaking. Perhaps the designers simply wanted every class to have at least one or two vulnerabilities that they have to play around, even at high levels?

It's not game-breaking, in the exact same way that a +3 sword isn't game-breaking. The game is designed to tolerate swings of +6 on the d20 roll.

It is, however, vastly better than the alternative. A normal game, without feats, will give you +1 to Charisma saves whenever you decide to shore up your defense against Plane Shift. Compared to that baseline, allowing the Resilient feat is 2-6 times more effective.

 

[waxtransient]

We misread Resilience in my level ~25 game and thought it could be taken more than once. By the time I noticed the error, multiple players had already taken it multiple times (two of my PC's have proficiency in 5/6 saves) so for the remainder of this campaign I'm just house-ruling that they can take it multiple times. It hasn't broken anything, although as I mentioned before, I am using lots of home brew and 3rd party monsters, so DC 25 on saves has become the new norm, and sometimes going even higher.

I'll second some of the things that others have said:
Using strictly monster manual monsters, I feel that generally speaking magic bonuses to AC can be problematic, especially if you are like me and really like the idea of bounded accuracy and lower level monsters being relevant later on in the game. Magic bonuses to AC plus lots of bonuses to relevant saves multiplies this problem.

Also, keep high level clerics in mind. One recent battle was making my party sweat, and looked like it might come down to the wire. The cleric cast Mass Heal and in an instant it went from tense to mopping up mode. This wasn't bad of course, as the cleric did what he was supposed to do and felt awesome for doing it, but it's just a good idea to remember that if you want to create that climactic rumble you should consider the party's hit point pool to be increased by 700 or so.

 

[Quartz]

If you don't assume the +3 weapon (and you shouldn't) AC 25 means only a 35% chance to hit, a 58% chance with advantage and just a 12% chance with disadvantage.

Then just assume Guidance instead. Same difference.

A fighter should be scared of a demon offensive plane shifting them, and should take appropriate counter measures including the possibility of taking the dodge action to keep from getting grappled in the first place.

Just a nitpick but an offensive Plane Shift doesn't require a grapple: it's a melee spell attack (the range being touch).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Magic weapons are not accounted for in the normal CR balancing act. If youre going to include them, you need to take this into account with your encounter design and in other areas.

If you want encounters to be balanced with magic items, to the same degree that they're balanced without magic items, then you need to account for that.

The primary roles of the DM are to play the NPCs, describe what the PCs observe within the world, and adjudicate uncertainty in task resolution. It's not the job of the DM to ensure that encounters are balanced against the party, to any degree, unless you want it to be.

 

[Flamestrike]

If you want encounters to be balanced with magic items, to the same degree that they're balanced without magic items, then you need to account for that.

The primary roles of the DM are to play the NPCs, describe what the PCs observe within the world, and adjudicate uncertainty in task resolution. It's not the job of the DM to ensure that encounters are balanced against the party, to any degree, unless you want it to be.

. This is precisely the DMs job.

Of course you can ignore the rules for encounter building, CRs, rest mechanics and adventuring days if you want, and throw EL 30 combat encounters at your 1st level party for lols if you want but you're playing a very different and likely very short and frustrating game.

We're talking about how the game runs at high level vs level appropriate threats here, not how it runs with a bunch of 20th level PCs taking on a sole Kobold.

 

[CapnZapp]

I feel it's necessary to point out that most DMs simply fail at being devious enough for the true nastiness of many high-CR opponents to come out.
Take a Balor, for example. It has a genius IQ, the ruthlessness of Stalin, the strength of a dozen men and leads entire demonic legions into battle. The chances of this guy (or lady) waking up one morning and saying to themselves, "Today I'm going to stand in the middle of a room and push myself at a high-level PC party like meat into a sausage maker" is somewhere between slim and nonexistent. You see, this bad boy has everything the DM needs for victory in it's flavor text, i.e. that aforementioned demonic blanking legion.
So now that the PCs are neck deep in minor demons on the ground, have aerial forces swooping in and beating them about the head and shoulders, and endless ranged blasts from various nasties (demons have zero regard for blue-on-blue as long as the Balor's objectives are being met) *then* the General shows up to punk down the 1 or 2 battle-weary survivors for the foot on entrails selfie.
Similarly, you should never see "Just a Death Knight". You should see a ravenous horde of undead of all types, various evil allies, and the Death Knight waving it's sword to give battle orders looking like a total badass on it's Nightmare on the nearest rise.

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Is this a defense of WotCs decision to dumb down state blocks, or merely your personal anecdote?

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