High level campaign help...

[crater]

How do you generally design higher level adventures to provide interesting challenges?

The party in my campaign is around 12th level, which is uncharted territory for us in 3.5 (or 3.0 for that matter). The DM is expressing concern with how he's going to run adventures for a party that has access to game-changing magic such as Scry, Teleport, etherealness and Kiss of the Vampire (from Magic of Faerun, which as far as I can tell seems a bit good for a 5th level spell).

What do other DMs do when a party scrys on enemies, then teleports in, pre-buffed with higher level spells? Is every significant villain in a campaign of this level protected with anti-scying magic in lead-lined towers? Is the Ethereal plane always full of ghosts and wandering ethereal monsters to stop characters going wherever they like while observing everything that goes on in the material plane? And on the flip side, should a high level party expect to have enemies teleporting in on them every day?

Some help would be appreciated!

 

[MerakSpielman]

Standard reply: Read Piratecat's story hour. 17th+ level PCs fighting for their lives with a great plot and wonderful characterization (and great prose). It's easy to spot - it's the one with three freakin' billion views.

Other than that, just some general advice. Make plots that are so convoluted that Scry, Teleport without error, hell even Wish are required to get anywhere. Don't dread your PCs using their abilities - count on it.

 

[EricNoah]

I'm no expert on the design side, but I'm playing a 19th level character right now. Our DM creates the adventures specifically with the idea that we can't even get underway or get near our goals without access to the spells you mention. His NPC spellcasters use devious tactics, too -- scrying and teleporting among them, plus lots of symbols of death/hopelessness/etc., and even a simple minor globe of invulnerability stymies us from time to time, plus we've been facing a lot of undead and constructs which are immune or less affected by a lot of the standard spells one might pick. It's amazing how even a low-level spell like darkness can be a real hindrance when we're not prepared for it.

 

[RangerWickett]

A good villain might be smart enough to not get on your radar. He'll have his minions do stuff, and he'll protect himself with Mindblank, or at least Nondetection. That's not a very unreasonable protection. But you'll likely hear about the villainous goings-ons of his henchmen, and when you scry and teleport in to wax them, the villain will learn about it, and respond in kind, eventually.

But that's not fun.

What's fun is to get the characters involved in intrigue, or in dangers that have to be thwarted a piece at a time. Not all villains are going to have lead-lined towers (or, in my campaign, opalite inquisitor masks that negate teleportation and screw with divination), but most of the high-level ones will. I mean, it's not exactly a cop-out to have these superb defenses. If you're going to be evil, and you have money to hire minions, you might as well invest in some anti-'Scry & Fry' magic.

Let the PCs use their abilities. That is key. But you don't have to let them use their abilities to kill everything. Some foes are smarter or better defended than others. Let them Scry & Fry the underlings, discover clues, and rush to stop an evil plot going on elsewhere in the world while they try to figure out where the main villain is. The villain is, of course, handily hidden in the depths of a dreamscape created by all the latent psionic energy of the sleeping people in huge metropolis. He's somewhat vulnerable during the day, but when enough people are sleeping, he can hop from dream to dream.

I noticed something in my last campaign. For the first few sessions, teleport didn't work. It gave the party time to get to know the world and be used to its cities, peoples, and so on. Then, after about three months, the party figured out how to get teleportation working again, and at that point, all hell broke loose. It took three months of game time to go from 5th to 9th level. The next week, once everyone realized teleportation was working, saw the party negotiating with three world leaders across the continent, then finding a secretive hidden artifact that let them teleport an army onto a giant airship of doom, and then they had to teleport elsewhere to stop another villainous plot.

Basically, what happened was that, all of a sudden, the world leaders got access to intercontinental ballistic missiles, and they decided to take out old foes. So in about a week, the world was torn to pieces.

The party gained four levels in that week.

 

[Piratecat]

Story hours are a great source for high-lvl campaign hints, but there are lots of other ones besides my own that provide good advice. See (contact)'s for politics and butt-kicking dungeon fun, for instance, and Sepulchrave's for a more epic feel.

My best advice is: unless you have a really good reason, DON'T work to nullify those new powers. Instead, create adventures where you need to use the high-lvl abilities.

Such as:

- a villain whose lair is only accessable through the ethereal plane

- a villain who desperately seeks a Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum spell because his enemies always teleport in. Until then, he invites them to sit down for tea -- or he has his XPH psion redirect their teleports.

- no clues to a villain's plot other than what a divination can provide.

You get the idea. It's a different frame of mind, but I find it quite fun.

 

[Felikeries]

majorly terrible 'monster,beast' foes are encountered at
a substantial flow,or bewildering focus within the campaign
that shows what a level adjusted series they are bound to
encounter may truelly mean,as well as met through the
idiom for 'tastefull' high level 'work' by curbing iether no
intellect from non 'sentient' species or returning that low
intelligence though with the flavour of intense magic,fighting,
or combat tricks from this form of enounter

'delusions' that a low level cantrip or some similar effect of arcana
has no effect should fall to a DM act of trickery wether by by
demi-god mishumoured cruelty,or arch mage item empowerment, or
simply a Celestial or Saintly apropriation for that which is taken to be
much less than that for which it shall excellenciate

 

[Ravilah]

At higher levels, the ability to travel to any plane or unearth almost any mystery merely increases the size of the playing field. I loved having my players use commune and divination spells to garner scraps of info about vague prophecies, and then have to figure out how to survive on the elemental plane of water or how to get out of the Bastion of Last Hope. More than once, my players used divination to scout out a particular foe, but I still had a nasty surprise waiting for them when they got there. In one of my favorite DM moments, my players had spent the better part of the evening preparing for the white dragon they knew was within the heart of an ice island (floating in the water plane), only to find a RED dragon burst from the floor, with fireballs blasting everywhere. The trick? It was a white dragon, but it was glammered like a red, and had a necklace of fireballs. It took them a while to figure it out, and they wasted a lot of rounds thinking that their scorching ray spells were useless. (I almost got them to flee in terror and give up on the attack altogether. Darn that wizard with the high spot check!).

 

[ForceUser]

What P-Kat said. Don't try to stymie a high-level group's powers, just roll with it and create scenarios wherein they need those powers to accomplish their high-level goals. It's a lot of fun. The "kick-in-the-door" style of play is no longer a viable option for players, and they end up needing to engage their brains quite a bit more as they plan strategies & counter-strategies & contingiencies. On the flip side, a high-level group planning an assault on a high-level enemy sounds a bit like a board meeting as they discuss pros, cons & options. It can take hours to plan such an action. But when it comes together it is usually worth it to see how the myriad of powers & abilities clash & interplay.

 

[crater]

Well thanks for the high-level turnout guys!

or he has his XPH psion redirect their teleports.

XPH... where can I find that?

Scry & Fry

So now I know the technical term!

 

[resistor]

Well thanks for the high-level turnout guys!




XPH... where can I find that?




So now I know the technical term!

XPH is the Expanded Psionics Handbook. ie. the 3.5 version.