D&D 5E Anyone played to 20th level and kept going?

[DaveDash]

I'm currently playing an 18th level fighter/paladin in a converted Age of Worms campaign. Maybe it's just because the DM's been converting stuff over from 3.5, but for the last few levels, the game's felt a bit too easy. We can deal a lot of damage and take a lot of damage, and we can do things that bypass a lot of stuff that would've been challenging a few levels earlier.

I agree that solo monsters are too easily dispatched. The last big solo boss fight we had was with this monstrously huge carrion crawler. The DM had given it legendary and lair actions, but those hardly slowed us down. We dispatched that thing with ease. I want to say that giving it minions would've helped, but it would've depended on the kind of minions.

An earlier fight we had consisted of a horde of undead creatures trying to scale a slope while some monstrous skeletal dragon thingy loomed over them. My paladin used plant growth to slow the horde's advance and the druid shapechanged into a gold dragon and that was that. We picked off the horde easily from a safe distance, while the druid dragon dealt with the skeleton thing.

I'm glad to hear that other DMs are still able to challenge their high level PCs, though. It's possible my DM just hasn't figured out how to do it properly yet.

It's a hell of a lot of work converting stuff at high level. I've spent 8 months converting 41 pages of NPCs and creatures from City of the Spider Queen - usually spending a few hours a week. But the results have been satisfactory.

Your DM may be just reskin things which IMO will result in a subpar challenge.

Also 3rd edition stuff generally seems to have lesser numbers of creatures, and sometimes assumes an encounter that is 1-2 levels higher is a 'tough fight'.
A solo creature in 5e needs to be at least Level + 5 generally to be a deadly encounter, and lots of encounters with only a couple of creatures will be too easy for a high level 5e group.

What I do is look at the module and go "Ok, it wants a EL18 encounter". I'll then keep the spirit of the encounter intact, but I'll make creatures that will equal a "Hard" encounter for a level 18 group (I do "hard" because of the magic items my group has). If it's obviously meant to be a rough fight, I'll make it deadly.

If it's a powerful NPC I will usually give them a couple of low CR minions (usually CR5 for this level). 3e assumes casters and such are running around with a huge number of buffs on, instead 5e you need minions instead of buffs.

At your level your average encounter against a solo should have 300+ hit points and a decent AC, along with the ability to do about 120 damage per round. Does it feel like that?

 

[pukunui]

At your level your average encounter against a solo should have 300+ hit points and a decent AC, along with the ability to do about 120 damage per round. Does it feel like that?

No, not really. I'm not sure how much damage that carrion crawler thing was capable of doing. It hardly hit us at all.

My PC is one tough mutha. She's got AC 24, around 150 hp (including 23 temp hp from her Inspiring Leader feat), 20 Dex and 20 Cha, and a vorpal moondblade. The druid also likes to cast foresight on her to improve her chances of cutting something's head off (so for 8 hours a day, she has advantage on all her attacks and enemies have disadvantage on their attacks against her). Plus she's got her immunity to fear, her +5 to all saves, and her resistance to spell damage on top of all that.

We're currently in a giant city that's being attacked by chromatic dragons. Two of us managed to beat off an adult green dragon with little trouble, and when we went up against the fire giant leader and his aide, the druid cast reverse gravity on them. The aide went flying 100 ft up into the air, while the leader grabbed onto something and is now hanging upside down.

It's starting to feel like epic-level 4e, where we could consistently stunlock big monsters and whittle them down to 0 hp without any real danger.

 

[DaveDash]

No, not really. I'm not sure how much damage that carrion crawler thing was capable of doing. It hardly hit us at all.

My PC is one tough mutha. She's got AC 24, around 150 hp (including 23 temp hp from her Inspiring Leader feat), and a vorpal moondblade.

We're currently in a giant city that's being attacked by chromatic dragons. Two of us managed to beat off an adult green dragon with little trouble, and when we went up against the fire giant leader and his aide, the druid cast reverse gravity on them. The aide went flying 100 ft up into the air, while the leader grabbed onto something and is now hanging upside down.

It's starting to feel like epic-level 4e, where we could consistently stunlock big monsters and whittle them down to 0 hp without any real danger.

Yeah Adult Green Dragons aren't going to scare 18th level party members. Your DM should be using at least Ancient Green Dragons - and spell caster ones with dispel magic, shield, counter-spell, misty step, and haste (and potentially True Sight and Freedom of Movement if they have the slots - just to be safe).

I have a Paladin, Abjurer Wizard, Lore Bard, and Light Cleric in my high level group.
They tear through stuff out of the monsters manual (recently killed a Balor without too much issue), but I almost killed one of them with a handful of ghasts and a couple of CR10 demonic ghouls (created using DMG rules) thrown in the mix. The ghouls could effectively use that potent constitution disease from the Contagion spell on hit (save means you're safe for 24 hours).
After the fight the comment was "I wish we knew those ghouls were going to be so tough!". That'll teach them for metagaming.

EDIT:
5e high level combats as you know run reasonably fast, so your DM can use more creatures in combat without fear (unlike a 3e high level fight).

I have a CR18 Half Fiend/Half Fire Giant "boss" as well, but he also has a Half-Fiend CR10 War Elephant, a couple of normal Fire Giants (CR9), and about half a dozen Ogres (CR2) as his body guard. My group wisely decided to parley with him instead of attack him.

Your DM could have given that Fire Giant BBEG half a dozen minions and the fight would have been very different, even if they're lowish CR ones. Ogres for example still have a truck ton of HP to burn through and enough of them will hurt high level characters.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] I haven't gotten anywhere close to 20th level, but after one look at the Epic Boons in the DMG which DaveDash mentioned, those look like a great way to tide players over for a while in a 20th+ game.

 

[Staccat0]

Barb/rogue uncanny dodge sounds ridiculous. Since the Uncanny Dodge mechanic works differently than barbarian rage, they stack. That is just nasty. And Evasion with Rage too. Evasion works different than Damage Resistance. So you have a tank that takes a 1/4 damage once a round from an attack and 1/3 damage from dex-save damage if he misses his save. That is insane. Were you able to bring that character down?

Bards do look awesome. I've never been able to get into the whole sing-songy thing. It is so hard for me to imagine some guy singing or orating on the battlefield. I keep trying to come up with a bard concept I like, but it always looks a little goofy in my mind's eye. I can see the power of the bard. I was thinking of a valor bard archer that used animate objects to animate some of his arrows when he ended up in melee combat. I thought that would look pretty cool.

I have always liked the idea of a Half-Orc or Dwarven Bard who plays a war drum

 

[Celtavian]

I have always liked the idea of a Half-Orc or Dwarven Bard who plays a war drum

I was thinking of a small belt or shoulder slung war drum. That might look cool.

 

[Luz]

We played to 16th level.

1. Solo monsters didn't hold up too well. A party focus firing a solo creature made fights fairly trivial.

Most solo monsters have a tough time at high level in any edition. I recently came across The Angry GM's advice for 5e boss fights, so I gave it a try for my 9th level group and it works very well. I recommend giving it a try:

http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/

To summarize, it combines two or more monsters into one creature - complete with separate initiatives, hp and attacks. It's like fighting more than one creature, but it's still one creature. Anyway, it's worth checking out.

 

[Prism]

We are playing currently at 20th level plus 3 boons per character to kind of represent 23rd. We probably do more role playing than combat. The exploration pillar is mostly dealt with via the rogue and his high ranking skills or by the wizard with spells like teleport and gate.

Combats still seem challenging but there are only three characters so that probably makes a difference. Its a mix of MM creatures and DM created/modified monsters

We fought Bel which was difficult. Pit fiend with above average hit points, vorpal weapon, and legendary actions. Probably about CR 22. Had some horned devils with him that couldn't be ignored

Last game the party was nearly taken out in 1 round by a demi-lich. Only a save re-roll against the howl avoided a TPK. One character had to get the rest out of the room quickly to enable us to recover the situation. The rogue failed 3 death saves before we could heal him so two of us eventually had to fight it which was a pretty close call in the end. It takes half damage from weapons and is hard to touch with spells.

The rewards are good to though. We recovered some nether scrolls from our fight with the demi-lich and got the gratitude of Zariel for defeating Bel. Not much need for standard treasure at these levels

 

[DaveDash]

I was thinking of a small belt or shoulder slung war drum. That might look cool.

This reminds me of a MMO called Vanguard. It wad meant to be a successor to Everquest, pretty easy to die in it.

Anyway they had a Bard class, and he could equip a little drum like this. He'd take it out and start drumming away and everyone got 300% movement speed and group invisibility. Problem was you couldn't see each other, so it was quite easy to run out of the radius and be left behind in some incredibly dangerous area.
Hilarity ensued.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I've found using legendary creatures extra actions - an action in between each PC turn - makes them very fearsome indeed. We only have 3 PCs in the party though so that probably helps.