dave2008
Legend
Unfortunately, Tiamat is only CR 30.
D&D 5E Epic Level Adventures/Mini Campaigns?
Bacon Bits
Hero
I wouldn't go to 4e. 4e's idea of epic level is "identical level 5, but add 10 to all the DCs and make the NPCs spikier." 4e characters don't really get epic level powers. They just get bigger numbers. The whole idea was to take the sweet spot of levels 3-9 and smear that power level across levels 1 to 30.
I was actually going to play scales of war as my current campaign but my PCs voted for an oriental adventure campaign instead. So I ended up converting a bunch of scales of war to 5e but its unfinished - including an epic level Tiamat + exarchs.
Road tested her as part of a dream sequence in my previous campaign and she demolished my 6 person level 18 party. Having said that, the PCs said that if they had known they were going to fight Tiamat and therefore had been prepared - which they would have in a normal "PC vs Tiamat" campaign - (and level 20) they felt they could take her.
Road tested her as part of a dream sequence in my previous campaign and she demolished my 6 person level 18 party. Having said that, the PCs said that if they had known they were going to fight Tiamat and therefore had been prepared - which they would have in a normal "PC vs Tiamat" campaign - (and level 20) they felt they could take her.
I can actually compensate for that in conversion. What I like about 4e is that they had pretty interesting combats and monsters had interesting powers. Whenever I have converted them to 5e they have worked well.
Bacon Bits
Hero
I agree that the adventures are, by and large, fairly well designed. However, I would never qualify those adventures as "epic level" category. Based on what we played, they were just regular adventures with regular monsters dressed up in bigger pants. The PCs didn't have to do anything to win other than go room to room and have a series of 2-4 skirmish combat encounters every day until they got high enough level to challenge the final boss monster. That's not an epic level adventure to me. That's an adventure at levels higher than 20.
Prism
Explorer
We play an epic level campaign a couple of times a year which is a continuation of one we played in multiple older editions. The characters are around level 23 in terms of epic boons. It works well when the adventures are custom built for the characters, based on their own desires and plots as pre written plots can feel a bit generic. The characters are all following their own paths but come together sometimes to help each other. We have run adventures dealing with stories involving one character becoming a duke of hell, another trying to stop (or help) the release of Tharizdun, freeing a god from imprisonment and madness.
At this level you don't really have to help the characters get anywhere as they can do it themselves. You don't need to give them much guidance at all. If you design a series of set encounters expect them to completely ignore them and go to the end, call in favours, summon major entities to help etc. Got to be as fluid as possible for this level as play. I don't believe pre written adventures work too well except as a loose framework.
At this level you don't really have to help the characters get anywhere as they can do it themselves. You don't need to give them much guidance at all. If you design a series of set encounters expect them to completely ignore them and go to the end, call in favours, summon major entities to help etc. Got to be as fluid as possible for this level as play. I don't believe pre written adventures work too well except as a loose framework.
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