Epic Level Adventures

the Jester

Legend
Sooo... once the pcs are powerful enough to take on demon princes and arch-devils, what's next?

When the group has overrun the Tomb of Horrors, what's the next adventure?

When they're they highest-level people on their planet, who do they challenge next?
 

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I've come up with the same problem, myself. Really, adventures work best at these levels if you can tailor them to the group and campaign world, but that doesn't stop me from wishing there were published epic adventures out there...
 

I personally look to the campaign world's possible future and work with that.

If you have epic level characters and nothing to challenge them, start with something simple. Wars.

An Epic hero can become a legend from there. And if retirement is the next step, it's a name that will ring down the campaign world's history.

OR one step up. There is a thread about sigil under seige because of the devil and demons working together. I've started something like that in my campaign world and it's partly because it is necessary for my group to get higher in leve and this one incident can be suuuuuch a great motivator.

IN my game, someone is going to end up having a choice to remain mortal or immortal. :) I'm leaving it at that.
 

Well, I'm planning on some political and personal entanglements. . . and I'm sending them off to the outer planes for a jaunt, if they want to go. But I have a series of adventures in mind that are somewhat level-independent, and those might be great fun.

I think it's important to supply some grounding as soon as my group gets back from their current dungeon crawl. A fun place to stay, good friends, comfort - something to remind them why they face all the horror.
 

Outer planar ideas work very well, especially if the DM does not knee-cap himself by limiting the outer planes to the Great Wheel or whatever other set-up that treats the planes simply as "other places to go."

If the group's cleric is 32nd level in a world where the PCs are the highest level people around, think of some funky implications that can cause. Suddenly (relatively speaking) that character's deity has a degree if influence over the world that none of the other gods have. Will that bring the god's plane "closer" to the game's world...or will it attract a backlash from the other gods' followers who demand a balance or are threatened by that god?

What about the 28th level Sorcerer whose distant ancestors demand for him to join them in [wherever they now reside] and become the champion for their causes and ideals in an abstract and wholly immortal war over ideas and the future of something-or-other?

Don't forget about fighters, either. The ultimate warriors and masters of various fighting arts just might begin to "attract" beasts of legend in order to maintain the fact that they are still the "ultimate" beasts of the ancient world. It sounds like a cheesey B-movie, but it could be given a serious light if you tie in the character's past and have related monsters of legend or whatever attempting to avenge the past.

I could go on. Essentially, in my opinion, once characters reach epic levels, the old school dungeon crawls or magic item quests become even more tedious and boring than ever. Basically, combat in epic levels is even shorter than ever. So many insta-kill possibilities exist that, in my opinion, combat works more as a deterrent to playing stupid than as a centerpiece for action.
 

In my high-level campaign, the PCs have decided to build a perfectly safe world. That means getting rid of any potential threat, eliminating dictators, major monsters, terrorists, basically, deciding who gets to live and who gets to die in this new world order.

That's the challenge: how do you save the world if the world doesn't want to be saved? And who died and put you in charge anyway?
 

I just finished a long solo campaign that went from level 13 to level 57. Let's see...

Until level 20, the campaign stayed within my homebrew campaign world. After that, the PC was introduced to Union. Once there, there was a merchant that had a problem with some epic critters (Invisible Stalkers with the Paragon template) in his house. The PC went there and cleared it, but also met some epic minotaurs that were burglarizing the house.

After that, the PC got hired by the Planar Cartography Society, as a search and rescue agent. His first mission was to go to an alternate material plane to rescue some surveyors that were out of touch. Long story short, he went and got them back (it lasted 3 game sessions and included different sites on that alternate material plane, but that's the gist of it).

After that, a fire elemental entity was causing some problems on the plane of fire. The Sultan of the City of Brass called on an old debt from the Planar Cartography Society to deal with it, which in turn asked the PC to take care of it.

Then the PC was invited to an elegant party in Union, where he met a noble epic dude flanked by two minotaurs. The same type of minotaurs that he previously met (plot expands). They got into a duel of snide comments, and that was that (for now).

Then the PC was called upon by a rogue that picked the enmity with an evil entity card in a Deck of Many Things, to deal with said entity in the Abyss. He went, killed it, came back, claimed reward.

Meanwhile, the PC's NPC sister is attacked in my homebrew. He goes there, kills 200 gargoyles, and finds her in a deep coma. It so happens that a very rare ingredient in some remote plane is necessary to save her (Wish and such just won't do it).

He goes, fights many critters, finds the ingredient, and comes back to save her. He eventually finds out that it's the epic noble dude from the party that ordered this attack.

He goes to the dude's material plane. Finds him, lots of battles in the dude's city and fortress, and finally slays him. I'm thinking about having someone true resurrect him later, but we never got to that.

Then, some aasimar of an elven deity requests his help into retreiving the deity's most important cleric (a 73rd level elf). The cleric has turned to evil against her will, and is under the control of a vassal of Grumsh, a chromatic dragon of great power, served by 43rd level fighter orcs.

He goes in the undergound place where it lives ( a huge cave complex with lakes and forests, and 2 dungeons), and wins the day.

Finally, I had some evil Advanced Elder Titan (CR 60) bluffing the over-gods into granting him godhood. He successfully prevented the four elemental planes from feeding all the Material Planes, and slowly but surely all creation is disappearing. The PC's deity appears (he's level 50 at that point), and asks the PC to go to deal with that (deities cannot access the place where the Titan is, only mortals).

And that was the final adventure of that epic campaign. He decided to retire with his love interest, becoming the ruler of the city where the campaign started.


HTH
 
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When I plan a long term campaign and its underlying plot, at least with my current one, I fully expect for them to jump past level 21. I don't much care for the implications that 'epic' carries with it oftentimes, but it works I guess.

Especially based upon the planes, there's always someone out there more powerful than you. It's infinite and there's always something for you to be involved in. Not everything can be solved by force of arms or caster level. Some things require long term planning, balancing of various resources and negotiations with everyone involved. Things don't get uncomplicated or easier just because you can cast level 9 or higher spells at ease. Frankly it can be more dangerous for you that way since you'll have a greater visibility and powerful persons aren't quite as likely to ignore you.

Heck, there's always the route of being a proxy, or eventually gaining some level of divinity yourselves. However I don't care to run a game beyond the level of proxies, so divinity is more a conclusion to a character than the start of something else. Just my personal preference there.
 

Trainz said:
I just finished a long solo campaign that went from level 13 to level 57. Let's see...

{snip }

He decided to retire with his love interest, becoming the ruler of the city where the campaign started.
HTH

That is some cool stuff - and he got the happy ending too!
 

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