Do you Enjoy running high level games?

[twofalls]

Have you seen the "Alert System" from Fiery Dragon? It might work well to give you a simple yet effective way to monitor the level of response the PCs are provoking. If they don't watch it they will eventually be bringing that platoon of hill giants and assembled magical support down on their heads. I would guess that Darkhold would have magical alarms making the use of Passwall etc the equivalent of loud flashy spells from the point of view of raising the alert factor.

No, I haven't actually. I think what I'm going to do is to take my post about the infiltration of Darkhold and start a new thread on it to try to drag in the Forgotten Realms enthusiats on the boards. I'm really needing ideas on this because right now I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with it all.

 

[Thanee]

Not having experienced high level play myself, this is what I hear a lot. If you compare this to the amount of prep time going into NPC or monster creation, it seems like a waste of time to me.

That is pretty much the case for equally powerful high level parties.

It's more fun to make it some kind of high level "cat and mouse" game to get the jump on the other side.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ibram]

as a general rule Im not a big fan of higher levels, at least from the DM side.

Firstly NPC creation become much more difficult as you go higher and higher in level. As someone who avoids the "monster of the week" approach I usualy use LA +0 creatures with class levels (instead of bigger and bigger monsters).

Secondly as the power level of the PCs goes it it gets more and more out of synch with my campaign world (where mortals are still mortal and even the most experienced swordsman will lose against a large number of opponents). Magic users are even worse, as I prefer low key magic over the big stuff.

I usualy let my campaings end at around 12th level

 

[GlassJaw]

I not really opposed to high-level games but I really don't like "standard" D&D at high-levels. There's just too much accounting, especially with all the spells flying around.

Now before someone says I don't know the rules that well or I haven't played at the high levels enbough, let me just say that I have. I can recite most of the spells in the PHB by heart and calculate modifiers on the fly. I just don't like it.

A high-level game in a low-magic setting is a completely different animal.

 

[Aethelstan]

I find them to be fun. They are easy to preapre for and the players like all the options they have for their characters.

Easy to prepare for!? Stating out a bunch of high level NPCs (particularly spellcasters) is far more tedious and time-consuming that for low level. Time I could be using to develop background material or plot threads gets eaten up making long lists of spells and magic items and generating stat "bricks." With a job and family, I'd much rather spend my limited time running a good 5th level game than get bogged down in all the sprawling stats and bookkeeping of high level play. Also, I've found that unless your group's players are hardcore, they just can't or won't keep track of all the spells, abilities and modifiers in play during high level combat. Even with good players, combat rounds get slower and slower as levels increase.
When a game hits double digit levels, I find that a law of diminishing returns sets in. It takes more and more time and effort for DMs to create fun, challenging games.

 

[DaveMage]

Easy to prepare for!? Stating out a bunch of high level NPCs (particularly spellcasters) is far more tedious and time-consuming that for low level.

A while back (like a couple of years ago) Henry posted some guidelines for quick NPCs. Henry, if you happen to spot this thread, would you re-post those?

 

[dungeon blaster]

Honestly, some people here might have a better time playing C&C, or something other than D&D. I prefer lower powered campaigns to suit my homebrew world, but it is very difficult to do with 3ed rules.

 

[pogre]

It is more prep time, but I have come to enjoy high level adventuring. The main attraction for me is how involved the PCs have become in the campaign world. It's neat to see them mulling over political considerations as they ponder their next adventuring opportunity.

For this campaign I completely abandoned my old grim and gritty style, but do limit folks mostly to the core rules. From the very beginning I visualized the PCs as fated - people who are fated by the cosmos for something greater than the average denizen of the world. In a sense they are pseudo-medieval superheroes, but it seems to work for us.

My next campaign may return to my grim and gritty roots, but it will be a different rules systems - probably good ole' WFRP.

 

[Crothian]

This is the antithesis of my experiences Crothian. How exactly do you make the high level games easy to prepare for? I find that the various NPC generators out there work fine for low to mid level games, however for upper level games they are inadequate because in order to create a challenging environment (and one that makes consistent sense) you need to tailor the NPC's heavily.

It is a combination of desisiveness, memorization and cheating that makes it easy. Take a 20th level fighter, I know without the books how many HPs, BAB, saves, skill points and number of feats he is going to have. I can pick out most of the magical items from memory and rarely have to go to the books unless I'm looking for something rare or if I don't know what to give him. Even the caster classes are easy to do, most of the common spells are common becasue they are used the most and I know them and their levels without need of a book. Attributes I justy write down what I feel he should have. The chating aspect is when I don't define a character fully. I don't need to spend all the skill mpoints of a 210th level character for instance if his job is to die at the hands of the PCs. So, I give him skills that matter but don't worry about the extra stuff that does not. If the charater lives and becomes important I can flesh him out later. I live by my sig and have no qualms with making things up, even high level characters at the time I introduce them tom the party. NPC stats are rarely so important they need to be done fully and completely right anyway. I take shortcuts to ensure a fun game is had by all and to hell with the rules and inconviences that get in the way.

 

[Silverleaf]

I have seven PC's between 11th and 13th level (avg party level is 12). I have fighters who are averaging 60 pts of damage per round (with spellcasters pumps), and a mage who is probably the most clever role player I've ever played with in using his spells. If I were running a group with the standard book concept of four PCs I think this wouldn't be so difficult, but with seven the formulas in the books for calculating CR's breaks down completely and even with all my gaming experience I'm not used to running games with this type of a power curve.

Heh, average damage for a Basic D&D 12th level fighter is like anywhere from 1/5th to 1/6th of that... Needless to say, there's a heck of a lot less "buffing" going on. And the numbers are easier to manage. Also, no criticals (which don't fit in well with the abstract combat anyway), creature hit points are much lower (heck /everything/ is proportionately lower), and there's generally less number crunching to do.
That said, I'm not much into super-high-level play. I'm very happy with the way the game was originally designed: you get more powerful quickly at the beginning, but then it starts to level off big time around 9th level as the XP chart gets much harder to climb (1,050,000 XPs to be 14th-level magic-user... ) Also, after 9th level, no more rolling for hit points. You get an extra 1 or 2 hp/level and that's it. You do get to build a castle/tower/hideout and attract followers though. My preferred edition (1981 Basic/Expert) tops off at level 14 anyway, and nobody has ever gone past that in all the years I've played. Anywhere between 9th and 14th level is a good place to retire the character AFAIC, and due to the logarithmic nature of the XP charts, that level range is enough to handle many years of play (without ever-constantly increasing power levels).
If you really wanted to play super-high-level campaigns and keep it simple though, there's always the Rules Cyclopedia. It goes up to level 36, and after that you can even get the Immortals rules... Not really my cup of tea though.