Advice on running high level adventures

[Erywin]

Shil, the idea of 'virtual' magic items is great, I was wondering if it was an 'ok' think to do as a DM, going to give it a try over the next few session. Generally if I want to challenge my PCs without giving them more loot I send stripped down barbarians or sorcerers after them Well last time it was a group of soulknife assassins that had used up all their psionic tattoos as buffs

Cheers,
E

 

[shilsen]

Shil, the idea of 'virtual' magic items is great

Thanks. The longer I DM the more I get comfortable with doing things outside the box, and this is something which has worked well for me. Nowadays, I often tend to focus more on the effect I want to achieve (in this case, NPCs who are as competent as they should be under the DMG wealth system) and then just put together the method that suits me best rather than automatically going for the given method (i.e. bonuses actually coming from equipment).

I was wondering if it was an 'ok' think to do as a DM, going to give it a try over the next few session. Generally if I want to challenge my PCs without giving them more loot I send stripped down barbarians or sorcerers after them Well last time it was a group of soulknife assassins that had used up all their psionic tattoos as buffs

As long as it makes the game work better for you and your players, I think anything is acceptable for the DM to do. In this case, I can think of a few ways to make it more palatable (beside doing it secretly and not telling players) for your players.

One is to keep the PCs fairly well-equipped and wealthy. If they are, then the players are less likely to complain that you're not following the dotted lines and giving them the treasure they "deserve." And another is to provide similar virtual magic items for the PCs. In my game, due to various in-game events, the PCs have ended up with the following permanent bonuses: enhancement bonuses to all stats (+4), resistance bonus (+4) to all saves, natural armor bonus to AC (+4), deflection bonus (+3) to AC, plus a couple of other things. With them benefiting thus much from me messing with the standard rules, there's a lot less basis for them to complain when me messing with the standard rules impacts them negatively too.

 

[TheYeti1775]

1) Lets your players mow through things with their excellent tactics... but just once or twice. After that, your BBEG needs to adapt to PC tactics. Eventually area villains know what the local heroes can do, and plan for it. Its more fun for the PCs (at least it is for me) if every session is a little different as well. e.g. A Summoned Earth elemental can just walk through a castle, so your defensive strategies need to change if the BBEG knows the PCs like to summon them.

This bit a DM's butt one time.
My mage Magnus was always throwing fire spells left and right. Especially Fireball, when he made scrolls he was making Fireball scrolls. Well the DM prepared an ambush for us in the capital city, our enemies knew me as a fire mage. They were not prepped for me to not use fire spells in the old city (mostly wood buildings) instead I had marked my group control spells. Stuff like Rainbow Pattern and Evard's, needless to say all the ambushers were only buffed with fire resistance.

 

[Eldragon]

Personally, I really don't like "Virtual Magic Items". I make an exception for boosts to BaB and Saves. Those are just number boosters (EDWD Syndrome confers wonderful bonuses). I'm talking about items that confer specific effects.

As a player, I get really frustrated when some enemy NPC gets to have a nice permanent magical effect, but when killed, not a single magic item confers that effect. Instead I do things slightly differently: Magic Items with Class/Alignment restrictions. A Helmet of True Seeing, only useable by chaotic Evil creatures is useless to an all good party, Paladins/Clerics usually want to see such items destroyed, and high power magic items are impossible to sell for a lot of gold because merchants just don't have the cash on hand. Such items usually Radiate "Evil" and have some other nasty side effect too, like "must be fed the blood of the innocents 1 year"

This bit a DM's butt one time....

IMHO, I think thats exactly how it is supposed to happen. The PCs switched tactics, throwing the enemy NPCs for a loop because they expected the PCs to behave in a certain way.

I have had players get irritated with me because I had the NPCs ready for them. "How could the Lord of Darkness possibly know we were going to teleport right to his lair? It worked on all his underlings!" Good to see you were able to turn the tables before the inevitable TPK occurs because some PCs refuse to adapt.

 

[Numion]

Also, when you get the hang of laying smackdown on high level PCs, don't forget to have them from time to time encounter low powered monsters, for two reasons:

verisimilitude: the roaming bands of kobolds they fought at level 1 haven't disappeared.

sense of achievement: if your opposition constantly upgrades to match the PCs a la Diablo, it might make gaining levels seem pointless. Once in a while trumping 1st monsters with a flick of the wrist reminds players how far the PCs have come.

 

[Quartz]

2) When the PCs make a plan that an NPC hasn't thought of yet, let them trounce on people for a while.

Equally, when the NPC should have thought of it, change her plan / spells memorised etc on the fly. But let the players know that you'll be doing this beforehand.

 

[paradox42]

Also, when you get the hang of laying smackdown on high level PCs, don't forget to have them from time to time encounter low powered monsters, for two reasons:

verisimilitude: the roaming bands of kobolds they fought at level 1 haven't disappeared.

sense of achievement: if your opposition constantly upgrades to match the PCs a la Diablo, it might make gaining levels seem pointless. Once in a while trumping 1st monsters with a flick of the wrist reminds players how far the PCs have come.

What's even more fun is that, if you don't end up doing this very often because the PCs almost never actually travel somewhere (for instance), when they finally do- and you hit them with a random encounter- they'll likely treat it very, very cautiously since they're expecting you to throw appropriately-CR'ed monsters at them.

Case in point: the PCs in my original Epic game are traveling through the Negative Energy Plane ATM, for personal reasons, and on the way to their hoped-for destination (the former domain of a now-dead Overgod) they met a creature. Well, I as the DM knew that this poor little sacrificial lamb was only CR 10 vs. the group of 32nd-level PCs, but they didn't! The party members who went first in initiative order actually waited until the first spellcaster went who then Greater Teleported the party 50 miles forward and thus out of combat.

I was chuckling up a storm, believe me. And since we ended the session on another random encounter (I didn't want to start a combat and not finish it at the very end), I may get 'em again this weekend.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

Personally I use SRD and cut and paste to create my own encounter references otherwise I end up with 4 books open in front of me as i check magic items vs spell vs monsters....

Oh, yes, the SRD is a lifesaver for me. Even when I was running Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde (the lower levels of this campaign), I prepared spell cards for all NPCs. I hate stopping the flow of the game to look things up. I also make spell and ability cards for my players--a bit tough on the cleric (wow, does that stack ever get large!) but very useful. I can see it will be even more useful at higher levels.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

The higher level the game gets, the more the dm is reacting to the pcs rather than the other way around. They really start to dictate what happens in the campaign once they can pretty much go anywhere via teleport. Keep in mind that they can abandon an adventure that they don't like, usually with ease, once they have this kind of ability.

Yeah, I've already learned that can be a problem. I had devised an encounter early on that bridged two parts of Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde in which I'd cleverly separated the BBEG from where the PCs would enter by a chasm. Of course, I forgot one of the PCs had learned fly.

And more recently, my lovely Abyss-corrupted drow BBEG was soundly trounced with no damage whatsoever to the PCs because one of them was able to summon a hound archon, who quickly dispatched him. (Less said about that whole encounter, the better. I do have my pride.)

THIS is why I need advice on higher level DMing.

 

[Nifft]

Lots of great advice here.

One thing I can say, now that my group is 16th level: Don't bother knowing all the solutions. Don't bother leaving three sets of obvious clues. Don't bother dropping a map with a route to the hidden temple. Don't bother putting a lever which reverses the death-trap.

The PCs will get out of terrible situations on their own. As others have said, don't take away their cool powers, require their cool powers. Why has no-one ever found the secret thingy? Maybe no-one else ever cast divination to find out what beats its guardian. Maybe none of the earlier groups could teleport. Maybe... I dunno.

The big point is: you need to feel comfortable throwing stuff at them with no planned solution, and then being cool with them solving it anyway.

Cheers, -- N