D&D 5E Expanding out of the Abyss to level 20+

[MonsterEnvy]

I might also steal the demogorgon lair action, though it is a very incredibly powerful ability from my quick glance at it

No more Powerful then Fraz'Urbluu blasting the entire party in the lair with a 6d10 psychic damage every other turn, or Orcus' hitting a party member every other turn with power word kill.

 

[kbrakke]

I have a few interesting tidbits about level 20+ play and designing epic monsters. Then a suggestion.

First and foremost, I 100% agree that for small singular fights the encounter guidelines are not even close. Having 6-8 normally budgeted encounters is frankly tedious and uninteresting to run for me. All that for the payoff of the last few being correctly graded. My best solutions have been doing two things
1) Increase the effective character level based on the number of magic items. It's unfortunately not an exact science, but if you look at what a +1 weapon does, it's roughly 4 character levels in offense (enough to hit their next ASI). So I generally give them a +1 for each significant combat altering magic item. Then use that as my new starting budget.
2) Half the number of encounters, but double the difficulty. And I mean flat out, just two encounters put together, multiplier be damned. Also, it's really important to know exactly what your players can do. Did you know that a beholder is almost worthless against a level 22 Monk? (Unless you think that the ki based abilities are magical, which I do not)

I have also found that using the paragon monster system from TheAngryDM is very effective at making difficult "boss" fights. It's a much more fair solo encounter if the enemy just gets to go 2 or 3 times in initiative.

With the above in place I have recently been able to have a very satisfying adventuring day. They were approaching the final fight with an enemy they have had for a long time. It was 4 encounters total. The first two drained some resources but were not threatening, they also served to introduce two new enemies that they would later face, and let them finish off a named enemy that fled from them earlier. They then encountered a paragon monster mini-boss which knocked a few characters out, and then for the final fight they were appropriately drained and it was a nail biter.

As for EHP for the bosses, I actually done a similar thing to Celtavain and made the enemies resistant to normal magical weapons, and sometimes most magical damage. For example I have decided in Eberron that several of the Rakshasas of the Lords of Dust are a step above (Because the normal rakshasa has a non-0 chance of being one rounded by this party). They have resistance to all weapon damage except magical-good-piercing. The Daelkyr similarly have resistance to non-byeshk weapons (And non-force energy damage for reasons). The party has been able to research these weaknesses and develop plans around them. It provides a new challenge that they have to overcome, while still allowing them to take the "hit it a lot" route if they don't try and learn anything.

One other very important thing I find for my boss monsters is that the need a mobility based legendary action. For a boss, being in once place for a round is certain death. It's not easy, but having reasonable cover and obstacles are important for a boss. It lets the bosses live longer and rewards the players for either positioning correctly, or finding a way to remove the cover.

In the context of Out of the Abyss what specifically would I suggest?
I would buff up each demon lord in new ways. There have been good suggestions in this thread already. Then add on to each demon lord (Or just your favorites) a side quest of discovery and/or acquisition. This gives you more xp for each player to get them to the 20+ area, and allows them to learn about these unique strengths to try and form a plan around them.
These could be Shadow of Mordor style where they party has to kidnap and interrogate, a high level demon in the army of the demon lord. It could be more dungeon delvy where they are finding ancient texts that describe the demon lord in their truest form, or unique magical artifacts. It could be political in nature where they actually have to go somewhere on the surface world far away from the Sword Coast and go on a diplomatic mission to get some unique text or artifact from another kingdom. (Negotiating with Szass Tam the lich lord of Thay could be fun for you and disconcerting for the players.)

TL;DR - Make everything much harder when you get to higher levels, the party can handle it.

 

[Eltab]

Not all demon lords are appropriate for this (Jubilex), but Grazzt or Orcus could do this:
Equip him with a Legendary Magic Item. Or an artifact; _Blackrazor_ or a (corrupted) _Moonblade_ come to mind. Or turn _Dragon Slayer_ around and have a _Humanoid Slayer_ weapon.

Many of the demon lords already have weapons, so pick something they can wear. A _"Chameleon Cloak"_ could seriously mess up PCs whose favorite strategy is "artillery duel" (on Fraz-Urblu?). I don't have a DMG with me, so no specific suggestions.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Not all demon lords are appropriate for this (Jubilex), but Grazzt or Orcus could do this:
Equip him with a Legendary Magic Item. Or an artifact; _Blackrazor_ or a (corrupted) _Moonblade_ come to mind. Or turn _Dragon Slayer_ around and have a _Humanoid Slayer_ weapon.

Many of the demon lords already have weapons, so pick something they can wear. A _"Chameleon Cloak"_ could seriously mess up PCs whose favorite strategy is "artillery duel" (on Fraz-Urblu?). I don't have a DMG with me, so no specific suggestions.

Orcus already has a legendary magic item. Anyway the players should not be able to look at the Demon Lords statblock in the first place.

 

[dave2008]

I'm planning on taking the existing material and expanding it to get the party to level 20+. There's so much material in Out of the Abyss it's been easy to increase the challenge and xp of encounters to boost the PC levels. There's so much in Out of the Abyss. I'm planning on making the Demon Lords viable enemies for a group of level 20 characters.

FYI, I have been upgrading and updating epic threats in 5e over that this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468639-5e-EPIC-MONSTER-UPDATES

I have all the demon lords from Out of the Abyss in there.

 

[dave2008]

I was amazed the previous campaign's level 6 party took down a CR 11 Remorhaz without breaking a sweat. It told me the official challenge rating guidelines is worth less than toilet paper.

Unfortunately I don't have my DMG with me at the moment, but I believe that by the encounter building guidelines that a CR 11 creature for a party of 6th lvl PCs should not be to difficult. My DM instinct at least says that would be an easy fight.

 

[dave2008]

I would like to ask more about how you handle this.

I would have thought just adding more hit points would fix this. What do you accomplish by adding resistance against magical weapons, and more importantly, how do you plan for the fighters of your team to overcome this?

(Are you perhaps goind down the 3E route of "resistance against +3 weapons" where a +4 weapon would still work... or what?)

Yep, resistance to plus weapons. I also gave them immunity to low level spells along with magic resistance. So the magic users are just as screwed as the fighters If you want to see more specifics you can check my thread on 5e Epic Monsters: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468639-5e-EPIC-MONSTER-UPDATES

 

[dave2008]

Also two last things I gave them. Baphomet has a breath weapon of Unholy Water that does necrotic damage. As he had that since 1e.

Now why didn't you remind me of that on my Baphomet update? I completely forgot about that - I'll have to add that.

 

[dave2008]

While very true, the problem with this line of reasoning is that it does nothing for all the times when you want the BBEG to be awesome enough to stand against the adventurers' on his own.

The way the game caters to realism in that no creature suddenly sports five actions and five times the hp limits the fantastical scenarios the game can handle. And I guess I'm not used to D&D being too cautious a game to handle the real space-out scenarios...

There is no good solution if you don't accept the 4E notion of "solos" or boss monsters, because by the 5E dogma, you're limited to either bringing in reinforcements or making the monster of such a high CR (like, more than double the APL) that the encounter starts to break in other ways.

(Such as the monster being so much higher CR that its suddenly immune to the attacks of the heroes, just to give one trivial example. Perhaps a more worrying example is that there are no monsters in the CR 40-60 range, which I imagine would be needed to give my players (or Celtavian's) a sporting match at level 20)

The problem isn't that adding backup doesn't work (it does, it's very effective). The problem is that the game provides no good answer for the times when you don't want backup.

The 5e dogma is rulings not rules. The monsters are designed to a particular type of play. If the monsters don't fit your style of play the 5e dogma is to modify them! Make the monsters you want and assign whatever CR you want. Personally I made a new "Stats by CR Table" to help me make monsters as the official guidelines don't mesh with my style of play. The primary thing I did was up the AC and increase damage, didn't change HP much. I've posted the link to it several times in this thread already and I already feel kinda stupid for that.

 

[Celtavian]

Yep, resistance to plus weapons. I also gave them immunity to low level spells along with magic resistance. So the magic users are just as screwed as the fighters If you want to see more specifics you can check my thread on 5e Epic Monsters: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468639-5e-EPIC-MONSTER-UPDATES

Excellent thread. Lots of material to play with.