Zardnaar
Legend
So my campaign is wrapping up this Sunday. It took over a year to get to level 13 and the campaign was built off the foundations of Dragon of Stormwrack Isle.
A problem of a year long game is player retention. Finding players is easy I can run 2-3 games if I want to. Getting the right players for that amount of time is rough. I live in a student city so October rolls around exams kick in and then home for summer. Post grad students are often looking at leaving once they get a job offer. Level 20 would take 2 years theoretically unless I speed up leveling to around a level every two sessions.
A couple of my players have DM'd games up to level 10-14. They either want to give up or do a couple of encounters level up until hey give up. I got to play as a player in Curse of Strahd and volunteered to nerf my character to help the DM out.
So I "rushed" my last two sessions over 3 sit downs. Took around 4 hours to write stuff up. By rushed I used the RAW encounter guidelines in 5.5 DMG and filled them up with thematically suitable candidates.
Xp Budgets 5 13th Level Characters
High 27k
Medium 21k
Low 15k
And I'e memorized the xp amounts for various CRs. CR1 200xp, CR2 450, CR5 1800, CR16 15k. CR 9 or 10 was 5900 iirc.
Basically stress testing the new rules. 10 CR5s is 18000xp I have 3k left over for a medium encounter. 10 CR 5s is over 1000 hp to chew through (varies by monster). I can probably squeeze in a CR6-8. I can also use 4 CR 10s or so or 3+ fodder. Fodders essentially CR 1-3. Low numbers of opponents spells like command and Chromatic Orb and twinned hold monsters matter more. Quicker combat though. See previous comments about fireball, Chromatic Orb and control spells.
Demons are invading Baldurs Gate. I'm using lots of demons and cultists. Demons are fairly typical higher level monsters imho to use.
I prepped 10 encounters. The PCs are not supposed to grind through them. They did that at level 12 with 9 encounters in a single long rest. 3 low/medium/high encounters and final one is deadly X2. I'm not to worried about a TPK potential final battle as 5E is easy mode (5.0 they defeated X5 deadly).
4/10 of those encounters were fixed locations. The other 6 were DM specials. I wanted to add some allies and tie it all togather with previous adventures. 4 groups of NPCs from previous adventures turned up to aid them. One group of allies made the ultimate sacrifice. Determined at random. The allies.
Runara from DoSI. Bronze dragon. With Gith Knight previously encountered.
Blepp DoSI. Leading the Kamikaze Kobold Brigades. Knights of Bahumat riding half silver dragon war dogs (dont ask).
Ravens Crew (BG gang)
Selune's Faith.
Runara the dragon was the ultimate sacrifice. The PCs encountered the demons responsible and fought around her corpse on the streets of Baldurs Gate. Those 6 non fixed encounters I prepared? I randomly chose one responsible. Once that combat resolved the allies arrived. The Selunites were capable of resurrection and raised Runara.
That first combat though it was the largest encounter i prepared. It was a medium one with a nalfeshnee, 6 cultists spellcasters and CR 1-3 fodder. Fairly spread out as well. PCs ate 3 level 6 fireballs and it took a while to chew through the encounter. Theres a reason the 5.5 DMG recommends no more than X2 numbers vs the PCs. You can go over that but consequences.
The idea of the allies was to add an extra element and the PCs got to assign them jobs around the city. Selunes faithful could resurrect or do another job but not both. They could also chose a boon from one of the allies for later. 3 allies they eliminate 3 encounters from my pool of 5 remaining floating encounters. The Selunites were also put in for resurrection purposes. I dont really want anyone to miss out IRL in terms of sitting at the table with nothing to do.
So final encounters were the 3 fixed ones, 2 floating and final boss. One PC at ramdom gained a boon. They chose Runara's and gained her breath weapon once. Also tied it back to level 1-3 nice.
Next up they defeated one of the fixed encounters. 2 left, 2 floating plus boss fight. The idea is to eliminate the 3 anchor points and one of the last floating encounters is used before boss fight. An exploding abyssal meteor (meteor swarm spell) will be used to "summon" one of the last encounters. Basic idea is tension building.
Level 13 characters. They're very tanky. Some of them have toughness feat. Since level 11 they've been using heroes feast. Celestial Warlock has been using aid. Which stacks with heroes feast. Plus temporary hit points. Buckets of HP. With fire resistance, evasion and those buckets of hp 3 level 6 fireballs don't matter to much. Clerics can divine intervention a prayer of healing in combat. And theres a warlock in the party lol. Each PC has 13 HD to use to regain HP.
Conjure Celestial. 4d12 hp of healing per round. 10' radius. Duration 100 rounds. And 7d12 radiant danage in combat iirc.Theres basically nothing I can do RAW to stop that outside of heavy metagaming with energy drain and chill touch effects. 4E introduced this way lower tgan lvl 13 so dont @me about that edition being better. Its a modern D&D issue not 5E issue. Say 3E onwards.
A CR 16 marilith rolling well can shave off around 50% hp in one round. My one rolled poorly. And it flunked a save vs lvl 1 twinned command with +8 on the save with advantage.
For those of you wanting high level stuff its hard to run. And a grind. I have better things to do its not that much fun. Opportunity cost as well. Why play level 13 vs restarting at 1 or 3? You want to play higher levels feel free to DM it.
Remaing high encounters are a balor plus friends and an archmage plus cultists plus demonic friends. Tough cultists are the hierophant, fiendish and refluffed elemental ones. CR 8-10. Those things hit like a truck plus spells.
Its not spellcasters are broken either. They cant really seal the deal efficiently. Outside of narrow builds their damage sucks. Their best option is buff/support and disable let the martials deal with it. Teamwork yay I suppose.
A problem of a year long game is player retention. Finding players is easy I can run 2-3 games if I want to. Getting the right players for that amount of time is rough. I live in a student city so October rolls around exams kick in and then home for summer. Post grad students are often looking at leaving once they get a job offer. Level 20 would take 2 years theoretically unless I speed up leveling to around a level every two sessions.
A couple of my players have DM'd games up to level 10-14. They either want to give up or do a couple of encounters level up until hey give up. I got to play as a player in Curse of Strahd and volunteered to nerf my character to help the DM out.
So I "rushed" my last two sessions over 3 sit downs. Took around 4 hours to write stuff up. By rushed I used the RAW encounter guidelines in 5.5 DMG and filled them up with thematically suitable candidates.
Xp Budgets 5 13th Level Characters
High 27k
Medium 21k
Low 15k
And I'e memorized the xp amounts for various CRs. CR1 200xp, CR2 450, CR5 1800, CR16 15k. CR 9 or 10 was 5900 iirc.
Basically stress testing the new rules. 10 CR5s is 18000xp I have 3k left over for a medium encounter. 10 CR 5s is over 1000 hp to chew through (varies by monster). I can probably squeeze in a CR6-8. I can also use 4 CR 10s or so or 3+ fodder. Fodders essentially CR 1-3. Low numbers of opponents spells like command and Chromatic Orb and twinned hold monsters matter more. Quicker combat though. See previous comments about fireball, Chromatic Orb and control spells.
Demons are invading Baldurs Gate. I'm using lots of demons and cultists. Demons are fairly typical higher level monsters imho to use.
I prepped 10 encounters. The PCs are not supposed to grind through them. They did that at level 12 with 9 encounters in a single long rest. 3 low/medium/high encounters and final one is deadly X2. I'm not to worried about a TPK potential final battle as 5E is easy mode (5.0 they defeated X5 deadly).
4/10 of those encounters were fixed locations. The other 6 were DM specials. I wanted to add some allies and tie it all togather with previous adventures. 4 groups of NPCs from previous adventures turned up to aid them. One group of allies made the ultimate sacrifice. Determined at random. The allies.
Runara from DoSI. Bronze dragon. With Gith Knight previously encountered.
Blepp DoSI. Leading the Kamikaze Kobold Brigades. Knights of Bahumat riding half silver dragon war dogs (dont ask).
Ravens Crew (BG gang)
Selune's Faith.
Runara the dragon was the ultimate sacrifice. The PCs encountered the demons responsible and fought around her corpse on the streets of Baldurs Gate. Those 6 non fixed encounters I prepared? I randomly chose one responsible. Once that combat resolved the allies arrived. The Selunites were capable of resurrection and raised Runara.
That first combat though it was the largest encounter i prepared. It was a medium one with a nalfeshnee, 6 cultists spellcasters and CR 1-3 fodder. Fairly spread out as well. PCs ate 3 level 6 fireballs and it took a while to chew through the encounter. Theres a reason the 5.5 DMG recommends no more than X2 numbers vs the PCs. You can go over that but consequences.
The idea of the allies was to add an extra element and the PCs got to assign them jobs around the city. Selunes faithful could resurrect or do another job but not both. They could also chose a boon from one of the allies for later. 3 allies they eliminate 3 encounters from my pool of 5 remaining floating encounters. The Selunites were also put in for resurrection purposes. I dont really want anyone to miss out IRL in terms of sitting at the table with nothing to do.
So final encounters were the 3 fixed ones, 2 floating and final boss. One PC at ramdom gained a boon. They chose Runara's and gained her breath weapon once. Also tied it back to level 1-3 nice.
Next up they defeated one of the fixed encounters. 2 left, 2 floating plus boss fight. The idea is to eliminate the 3 anchor points and one of the last floating encounters is used before boss fight. An exploding abyssal meteor (meteor swarm spell) will be used to "summon" one of the last encounters. Basic idea is tension building.
Level 13 characters. They're very tanky. Some of them have toughness feat. Since level 11 they've been using heroes feast. Celestial Warlock has been using aid. Which stacks with heroes feast. Plus temporary hit points. Buckets of HP. With fire resistance, evasion and those buckets of hp 3 level 6 fireballs don't matter to much. Clerics can divine intervention a prayer of healing in combat. And theres a warlock in the party lol. Each PC has 13 HD to use to regain HP.
Conjure Celestial. 4d12 hp of healing per round. 10' radius. Duration 100 rounds. And 7d12 radiant danage in combat iirc.Theres basically nothing I can do RAW to stop that outside of heavy metagaming with energy drain and chill touch effects. 4E introduced this way lower tgan lvl 13 so dont @me about that edition being better. Its a modern D&D issue not 5E issue. Say 3E onwards.
A CR 16 marilith rolling well can shave off around 50% hp in one round. My one rolled poorly. And it flunked a save vs lvl 1 twinned command with +8 on the save with advantage.
For those of you wanting high level stuff its hard to run. And a grind. I have better things to do its not that much fun. Opportunity cost as well. Why play level 13 vs restarting at 1 or 3? You want to play higher levels feel free to DM it.
Remaing high encounters are a balor plus friends and an archmage plus cultists plus demonic friends. Tough cultists are the hierophant, fiendish and refluffed elemental ones. CR 8-10. Those things hit like a truck plus spells.
Its not spellcasters are broken either. They cant really seal the deal efficiently. Outside of narrow builds their damage sucks. Their best option is buff/support and disable let the martials deal with it. Teamwork yay I suppose.
