D&D 5E Challenging High-Level 5e Characters

[LordEntrails]

I found the hardest thing to meet in OP's criteria were running challenging high level encounters that didn't take two or three hours to run.
Any tips there?

Sure. Thanks for asking nicely

2-3 hour combat doesn't have to be bad. Not if it is interesting, dynamic and meaningful. I tend to think more along the lines of how to keep high level combat from being a slog or boring (i.e. just an exchange of resources). So here are my techniques for doing that.

As I said above, simplify NPC stat blocks. Having an NPC with 40 options is not time friendly. You are not going to use them. Get rid of them.

Know your creatures and plans. i.e. BBEG is going to do X if there are 3 or more targets in AoE. They will do Y if they are based. They will do Z when bloodied. Else they will do ...

Limit the number of NPCs. I don't mean this in terms of using more waves. Waves are tricky. They can be good and bad. But rather than 1 BBEG and a bunch of minions, use one BBEG (or a pair) and a set of supporting NPCs. Minions can be put in swarms if needed, or other minion rules can be used too (not going further down that road, whole another topic). But, if you have 4-6 key NPCs that you've chosen or made them strong enough, that can challenge any party.

Don't just do big bags of hit points. This is incredibly boring. imo, "Resist: all" is better than HPx2! but still uninteresting. One or two heal/regen traits are more interesting, and might even be interruptible (i.e. enabling player agency).

Train players to roll attack and damage at the same time. Train them to be ready to go on their turn (such as a house rule that if; when it is your turn you immediately declare your action and roll, you get a +1 to attacks/saves/checks).

Trust your players. To add the right modifiers. Missing a +2 or even a +5 or doing an extra sneak attack or anything else once in a while is not going to impact the enjoyment at the table unless you let it. To get their own movement right, who cares if they move 5ft too far? To track their own resources. Take what they say and run with it. Just like you expect them to take what you say and go with it. If you are not at a tab le with people you trust, and you are not all there to make a fun time for all, then running high level combats is not your problem.

Use digital tools.
"Garsh darnit! We're here to play D&D the way I did in 1978 and I don't want people playing on their phones or laptops, blah blah blah". Go ahead, be stubborn and shoot yourself in your own foot. But don't complain that your combats take too long. I'll just say it's your own fault. Because it is a choice you make and that makes it your fault. You can still have a car that you have to crank to start it, has no heat or air conditioning and you chose to drive it to work everyday. But I'm still going to say its your own fault.

• Ignore & recreate the encounter building guidelines
• Ignore & recreate monster statblocks
• Ignore & rebuild movement rules to account for a plethora of hazards traps & strongholds, hopefully just not ones that cause combat to drag on for hours
• Waves of monsters, just hopefully they manage to be challenging without dragging combat out for hours,
• Mix up the goals of the monsters you created to replace. Of course those monsters need to be quite a bit more beefy in order to survive long enough or hit hard enough for goals other than fight to the death to happen & hopefully it can be done wiythout taking hours or shifting the solution about challenging combat to something that is not combat.
• Interrupt the rests players try to take. The question was about "challenging combat encounters for high level characters that don't take two to three hours to run" and this particular perpetual motion machine goes nowhere but "ok now that we finished that interruption, lets take a rest... as we will if interrupted a second third or ourtysecond time "

The third of these doesn't even sound like it's about combat & the second one might as well admit that everything suggested should be ignored because the GM will need to redo everything from square one again based on PC builds.

You really don't seem to be trying to actually engage in useful discussion. Show me I'm wrong and I will engage.

I've read wildly different things regarding folks' experience of time spent in combat on these forums- but you've never had a level 15+ combat that took 2+ hours in 5e?

Sure I have. I've had them take longer than 2 hours and be a bore, and be a great time that I wish could have gone on for 10 hours. Time is a poor metric for measuring fun. You are going to be playing for # hours, if all that time is fun and everyone is feeling like their characters are meaningful and growing, who cares if you accomplish 1 encounter or 5?

 

[Distracted DM]

Sure. Thanks for asking nicely

2-3 hour combat doesn't have to be bad. Not if it is interesting, dynamic and meaningful. I tend to think more along the lines of how to keep high level combat from being a slog or boring (i.e. just an exchange of resources). So here are my techniques for doing that.

As I said above, simplify NPC stat blocks. Having an NPC with 40 options is not time friendly. You are not going to use them. Get rid of them.

Know your creatures and plans. i.e. BBEG is going to do X if there are 3 or more targets in AoE. They will do Y if they are based. They will do Z when bloodied. Else they will do ...

Limit the number of NPCs. I don't mean this in terms of using more waves. Waves are tricky. They can be good and bad. But rather than 1 BBEG and a bunch of minions, use one BBEG (or a pair) and a set of supporting NPCs. Minions can be put in swarms if needed, or other minion rules can be used too (not going further down that road, whole another topic). But, if you have 4-6 key NPCs that you've chosen or made them strong enough, that can challenge any party.

Don't just do big bags of hit points. This is incredibly boring. imo, "Resist: all" is better than HPx2! but still uninteresting. One or two heal/regen traits are more interesting, and might even be interruptible (i.e. enabling player agency).

Train players to roll attack and damage at the same time. Train them to be ready to go on their turn (such as a house rule that if; when it is your turn you immediately declare your action and roll, you get a +1 to attacks/saves/checks).

Trust your players. To add the right modifiers. Missing a +2 or even a +5 or doing an extra sneak attack or anything else once in a while is not going to impact the enjoyment at the table unless you let it. To get their own movement right, who cares if they move 5ft too far? To track their own resources. Take what they say and run with it. Just like you expect them to take what you say and go with it. If you are not at a tab le with people you trust, and you are not all there to make a fun time for all, then running high level combats is not your problem.

Use digital tools.
"Garsh darnit! We're here to play D&D the way I did in 1978 and I don't want people playing on their phones or laptops, blah blah blah". Go ahead, be stubborn and shoot yourself in your own foot. But don't complain that your combats take too long. I'll just say it's your own fault. Because it is a choice you make and that makes it your fault. You can still have a car that you have to crank to start it, has no heat or air conditioning and you chose to drive it to work everyday. But I'm still going to say its your own fault.



You really don't seem to be trying to actually engage in useful discussion. Show me I'm wrong and I will engage.

Sure I have. I've had them take longer than 2 hours and be a bore, and be a great time that I wish could have gone on for 10 hours. Time is a poor metric for measuring fun. You are going to be playing for # hours, if all that time is fun and everyone is feeling like their characters are meaningful and growing, who cares if you accomplish 1 encounter or 5?

There are some good tips in here, thank you for sharing

 

[LordEntrails]

I do appreciate your replies- I hope my incredulity doesn't come across as rude. I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing!
Can you give an example of an encounter that you've run in the past that really challenged a level 15+ party? Monsters, basic party makeup, basic environ etc.

Sure. Party at level 20 they were;
Firblog Ranger 20, Deep Gnome Rogue 20, Half-elf Sorcerer 20, Half-elf fighter 8 / wiz 12, mountain dwarf cleric 20, Drow bard 19/warlock 1

One undead boat fight (modified Dread Knight Dreadnaught from Beyond Icespire trilogy). Boat could submerge at will. Total XP of 29,150. I would guess they were around level 15 at this time. NPCs:
1 bonework amalgram CR 6
1 bonework skeleton CR 4
1 Emberlost (Dread Knight) CR 19
1 minotaur skeleton CR 2
3 skeletons CR 1/4
1 Skeleton Champion CR 5
2 skeleton knights CR 2
1 turtle skeleton CR 2

Finale was a fight against Ebondeath. A mythic level CR 30 folks on ENWorld helped me develop. ED was supported by multiple plague wyverns (CR7), Harpies (CR 1), Harpy Witch (CR5), and a CR0 hazard I called a Putrid Undead Spirit which poisoned those who entered or started w/in 5 ft and it had a 1d6+7 attack. i.e. just minor terrain hazard.

Another tier 4 challenge happened in Iniarv's tower, taking on the lich himself. Encounter included elevations, strong points and line of sight. 139,800 XP
Iniarv (lich) CR 22
6 boneclaws CR 12
Death knight CR 17
12 Ghasts CR 2
Pit Fiend CR 20

 

[Oofta]

I do appreciate your replies- I hope my incredulity doesn't come across as rude. I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing!
Can you give an example of an encounter that you've run in the past that really challenged a level 15+ party? Monsters, basic party makeup, basic environ etc.

One example for my level 20 group was a warforged collosus and a retriever.

The big fight after a few encounters without a long rest was against the black knight, Korvar. I used a level 20 would be a warforged lord of blades that I upgraded to level 20 as the big bad, there were also some legendary and lair actions, he had cast expeditious retreat and freedom of movement on himself before combat. I just added the faithful hound to his list so that I wouldn't forget him. Since it was a 6 person party he had 5 legendary actions. He had 3 stone guardians with him and an archmage. I changed the spell list for the archmage, made him an evoker and before combat he cast foresight on the BBEG. The mage also had contingency to trigger greater invisibility when combat starts (so no action was needed), and revised the spell list. I also had his special guard, 3 CR 12ish monsters based on champions.

Basically the big bad flew around (movement speed 80 because of the expeditious retreat) hacking into people, I think he probably fired off destructive wave a couple of times. The stone guardians were more or less fodder to split up attacks, the mage was just annoying. I had everyone's AC and saves written down (with a note if they had options like shield) so I could just roll dice and tell them what happened. I also tell people what DC they're targeting for spell saves and write down enemy AC after a round or so, it saves time.

Anyway, like I said this fight might have taken close to two hours, but honestly I didn't time it so I can't guarantee.

Spoiler: Custom monsters

 

[ECMO3]

As happens in my campaigns, the characters in my 12th level Empire of the Ghouls campaign have hit the point where they're able to mitigate a lot of the threat of big battles.

With ten years of D&D 5e behind us – what are your best approaches for keeping up challenging combat encounters for high level characters that don't take two to three hours to run?

What are your favorite tricks that keep the threat high but don't take agency away from the characters or the choices the players made in building them?

Spells. They almost always work for this.

PCs are capped at level 20 and generally top out at a 20 casting stat, enemy spellcasters don't have such limits and you can easily drive DC well over 20 on a save or suck. I am playing level 20 in a campaign right now and one enemy was pitching a DC25 save at the party in the session last night.

Monks and Paladins are the only classes that can routinely pass saves at high level. A Paladin can help others in the party too, but only if the party clumps up and then they are vulnerable to AOEs.

Another thing that will debilitate a high-level party fast is a campaign that forces exhaustion and for the kind of things characters are doing at this level, that is not difficult from a story perspective.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I found the hardest thing to meet in OP's criteria were running challenging high level encounters that didn't take two or three hours to run.
Any tips there?

The first thing, IMO, is to figure out where your bottleneck is. Are the players deliberating a long time on their turns? Is the DM spending a long time considering their tactics on the monsters' turns? Once you know what the table is spending lots of time on, you can takes steps to address it.

I'm not sure if it helps with speed of play, but I use an alternating initiative system. Player > monster > player > monster. I think it helps keep the players more attentive, which probably helps with speed.

What does save time pre-combat is that I have the players give me a default initiative order. They roll initiative and I roll for the monsters and whoever has the highest roll, their side acts first. Saves me so much time over trying to arrange individual initiatives.

I don't usually have combats run over 2 hours, even at high levels. Oftentimes, significantly less.

The last session I ran, the big combat went around 60-90 minutes. There was also another, easier, combat that was under an hour.

IIRC, the party was 16th level. Moon Druid, Soulknife Rogue, Aberrant Mind Sorlock, Fey Ranger, Battle fist Artificer, as well as 4 NPCs who are mostly a bit weaker than the party - 2 fighters, a stone giant (reskinned), and an adult red dragon.

The big fight involved a Kingfissure Worm (Flee Mortals) and 3 Purple Worms. It was supposed to begin inside a combination darkness/anti-magic field, but thanks to good scouting by the party it took place on the outer edge of the field instead. Several characters (including the dragon) were swallowed early in the fight. The players found it to be a challenging fight.

I did end the fight a little early. The last worm was at 60 HP, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and they had no reason they wouldn't be able to take a long rest, so I called it. I doubt that would have added more than a few minutes to the fight though, at most.

I also ran high level games for a much smaller party, and I found that to be faster than the big party I'm running for now.

 

[Quickleaf]

I found the hardest thing to meet in OP's criteria were running challenging high level encounters that didn't take two or three hours to run.
Any tips there?

I haven’t GMed 5e past 13th level, so take my observation with a grain of salt. While I think there are techniques to mitigate the game taking longer at higher level… Ultimately I think it’s a case of the limitations/issues of the rules structures in place since 1st level (eg initiative & action economy) becoming exacerbated by feature bloat at higher levels. I think it’s ultimately the system we’re wrestling with. What seem like forgivable / work-around-able design choices at low level become glaringly more difficult to address at high level. Once I realized that, that’s when I started questioning those underlying rules premises - which is great for house rules or a home game, but not productive to conversations when we’re discussing RAW.

 

[Distracted DM]

I haven’t GMed 5e past 13th level, so take my observation with a grain of salt. While I think there are techniques to mitigate the game taking longer at higher level… Ultimately I think it’s a case of the limitations/issues of the rules structures in place since 1st level (eg initiative & action economy) becoming exacerbated by feature bloat at higher levels. I think it’s ultimately the system we’re wrestling with. What seem like forgivable / work-around-able design choices at low level become glaringly more difficult to address at high level. Once I realized that, that’s when I started questioning those underlying rules premises - which is great for house rules or a home game, but not productive to conversations when we’re discussing RAW.

Very much so yes, which is why I'm trying to figure out when some folk say they have challenging high level combats that never go past an hour or two... I don't know what I'm doing wrong

I've run several 5e campaigns from tier1 to tier4, and challenging high level characters usually means a long, complex encounter and yes, there's a lot of deliberating because of all the stuff they can do at higher levels.

 

[Quickleaf]

Very much so yes, which is why I'm trying to figure out when some folk say they have challenging high level combats that never go past an hour or two... I don't know what I'm doing wrong

I've run several 5e campaigns from tier1 to tier4, and challenging high level characters usually means a long, complex encounter and yes, there's a lot of deliberating because of all the stuff they can do at higher levels.

Yeah, speaking for myself I found the usual platitudes online re. How to speed up combat - “roll attack and damage at same time”, “make sure players know their stuff”, “timer on player turns” - really didn’t move the dial much. They just made the game less fun for very little payoff.

Instead I watched and took notes of my own game and noticed there were several choke points where time was sinking:
1. Players deciding what to do
2. Setting up map+minis and initiative order (as well as managing initiative order)
3. Reactions, esp. opportunity attacks & clarification about who already reacted and slightly delayed “oh I meant to use X reaction.”

My answers were not specific to high level, but I was thinking about early interventions that (I think) will have a trickle effect onto higher level play:
1. Give players a one minute football huddle to get their plan/approach set (after initiative established)
2. Minimally use gridded combat & use clustered initiative (allow players with no monsters in between to go in any order/mix up turns) & sometimes don’t use initiative at all -ie don’t treat all combats as worthy of same magnifiying lens
3. Limit opp attacks to fighter, barbarian, PCs taking feat, soldier type monsters & tentacle monsters & legendary monsters

 

[Fanaelialae]

Very much so yes, which is why I'm trying to figure out when some folk say they have challenging high level combats that never go past an hour or two... I don't know what I'm doing wrong

I've run several 5e campaigns from tier1 to tier4, and challenging high level characters usually means a long, complex encounter and yes, there's a lot of deliberating because of all the stuff they can do at higher levels.

If they're spending a lot of time deliberating, then that's at least one of your bottlenecks. Either reduce the time they deliberate, or accept that your combats will run long.

A simple, straight-forward approach would be to simply talk to your players. Something like, "Hey guys, the combats are running a little long for my taste. Do you think we cut down on the strategizing a bit?"