D&D 5E Advice on dealing with high level characters.

[The Crimson Binome]

Private Sanctum prevents teleportation into or out of an area, and it can be cast in such a way that its effects are permanent. My general assumption for high-end dungeons is that they are entirely covered in this effect, unless there's some point that is specifically designated as the teleportation entrance.

 

[ArtaSoral]

This is all really awesome advice guys thank you so much this is going to really really help.

 

[Krachek]

Hey gents,
So i'm looking for some advice on how to DM for higher level characters. The 5e campaign I've been running for about 2 years now has gotten to level 15 and i'm starting to have alot of trouble dealing with all the powers my PC's are starting to get. Planning encounters that challenge them is pretty difficult, and whats worse is many of their abilities allow them to circumvent any roadblocks. So im looking to see if you guys have any sort of general purpose advice for handling the higher levels.
The immediate issue im dealing with is one of my PC's has the gate spell and the current story arch is calling for them to rescue someone from a dungeon. It seems the gate spell lets him just pull anyone whose name he knows through the portal, aka skip the dungeon. Any advice would be much appreciated .

Assume that they will win every fight or fall back easily.
So don't put challenge in fight.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

One GOOD thing about high-level play as a DM is you really don't need to worry much about pulling your punches. Keep it reasonable but don't worry about the players being able to defeat the obstacles you put in front of them. They have a huge toolbox to work with and will often succeed. But even if they fail, they can usually bounce back and figure out another tack to take.

 

[Nailen]

What about having some magical effect within the dungeon that turns them all into some other race. Depending on how much you want to mess with them, you could turn them into bullywugs, gnomes or something more powerful like orcs, yuan-ti or something else.
Only you know how your players will react to this. Some will hate it, some will relish the challenge...
It's a temporary effect, so you can tell them to stop crying and get on with it!!

 

[Jaelommiss]

The party's wizard gates the prisoner out (let's ignore that a level 15 PC somehow has 9th level spells). This triggers two traps. The first is an alarm that lets everyone in the jail know that teleportation was used and where. The second prevents the PC from closing the gate from this side. The party can either wait out the one minute duration or pass through to the other side and close it from there.

Alternatively, it works. Unfortunately the defenders have their own wizard and gate the prisoner back after a few minutes. Before that, however, they take time to scry the prisoner (they keep blood samples in case of situations like this) to figure out who tried to break their defences.

 

[Wiseblood]

Lets say they gate their guy out. Now make him catatonic. None of their spells end this. Not dead but clearly in some sort of stasis. Divination indicates that the answer is in the dungeon. Now the PCs have a reason to investigate the dungeon.

Bad guys have been alerted to the fact that the prisoner was rescued and make ready for a second incursion. They also can call in their A team to reacquire the prisoner. The A team must be a team, not a solo. With diverse skills that match up pretty well with the PCs. At any level equal powered and equal numbers can be super lethal so be careful.

 

[Cyrinishad]

Lets say they gate their guy out. Now make him catatonic. None of their spells end this. Not dead but clearly in some sort of stasis. Divination indicates that the answer is in the dungeon. Now the PCs have a reason to investigate the dungeon.

Bad guys have been alerted to the fact that the prisoner was rescued and make ready for a second incursion. They also can call in their A team to reacquire the prisoner. The A team must be a team, not a solo. With diverse skills that match up pretty well with the PCs. At any level equal powered and equal numbers can be super lethal so be careful.

This is a really good idea! The guy's soul could be trapped by a Magic Jar type of spell, or his conciousness could be trapped on the Astral Plane... Definitely like the idea of sending a retrieval team to reacquire the prisoner, they could even grab the prisoner after the PCs leave to go back into the dungeon & hide the prisoner at a secondary location if you want to keep them on their toes...

 

[MechaTarrasque]

One thing I try to remember is that when the PC's were low level and didn't have a lot of goodies, they were basically trying to get the goodies from someone else (often at a time very inconvenient for the someone else). Now the PC's are high-level and have a lot of goodies, and the cycle of gaming life says that someone should show up at an inconvenient time and try to steal their goodies.

Also power attracts power, so high-level NPC's might be taking the initiative against high-level PC's, when they wouldn't have bothered with low-level ones.

Combining the two ideas can be a lot of fun, if pseudo PC NPC's steal Maximus Prime, the 15th level PC wizard's special staff, and then die trying to steal something from Bob, the Archpriest of Tiamat, what are the odds that Bob is going to think the Maximus Prime is out to get him?

 

[Oofta]

Lets say they gate their guy out. Now make him catatonic. None of their spells end this. Not dead but clearly in some sort of stasis. Divination indicates that the answer is in the dungeon. Now the PCs have a reason to investigate the dungeon.

Bad guys have been alerted to the fact that the prisoner was rescued and make ready for a second incursion. They also can call in their A team to reacquire the prisoner. The A team must be a team, not a solo. With diverse skills that match up pretty well with the PCs. At any level equal powered and equal numbers can be super lethal so be careful.

I was going to suggest this one or a variation therein myself. The soul is trapped, the guy is poisoned/diseased/cursed and need a special antidote every day or he dies a horrible death.

I also sometimes just play games with magic, spells are not limited to those in the book. So if they go to gate the person out (technically the gate has to be on a different plane of existence) and the prisoner gets gated out but then there's a special contingency and the party gets gated into the prison.

Or just say it doesn't work, there are several spells that stop teleportation.

As far as the general "hard to challenge", you do have to challenge them in different ways but it can still be done. There are other threads about how to build encounters - basically it's just throw more and higher level monsters against them, preferably in waves. Use the CR guidelines as a starting point and adjust as necessary (I simply add a percentage to the target XP budget).

Good luck!