D&D 5E (2014) How do you keep your players going from "goblins to gods" in your games?

[Sunseeker]

Sounds like you've got a great group for a campaign-less world with lots of dungeon-crawly tombs and stuff.

I personally don't have a problem with going from kobolds to gods. It's just a matter of pacing the game properly.

 

[MechaPilot]

You could let traps and hazards do the heavy lifting, and then let the lower and mid CR creatures try to clean up what's left of the PCs.

You could also give class levels (say, rogue or fighter levels) to the low and mid CR creatures to make up for the difference in power.

 

[Rhenny]

I think there are a few things you can try.

1) Let the lower level PCs interact with monsters/npcs that they have no chance of defeating so that they see more than just the grunts. (Have the real baddie stick around for a few rounds, then leave while the group fights the minions)

2) Design encounters where the PCs don't necessarily have to kill the bad guys. Sneak in...steal...help a prisoner escape...find a magical item/portal and activate it just in the nick of time...do 50% damage and have the bad guy flee (this lets you use higher CR for lower and mid level pcs), have the bad guy offer the PCs a deal.

3) Use the environment to make life more difficult for the PCs especially at higher level. If they have to endure rock slides, geysers, gas clouds, extreme temperatures, traps that have been set by others, etc...then the monsters/npcs they fight may not have to be as high a level to still present a challenge. Grab individual PCs and put them into environments they are not comfortable in...like grappling and dragging them into water, grappling and flying up into the air with one to take them to a nest or to drop them from a higher altitude, make them fight the baddies in a poison gas cloud (I love when Liches do that), use magic wall spells to divide and conquer, etc. Some of these tactics may not kill PCs, but they will force them to use resources and get them feeling uncomfortable. Again, you don't need god like monsters to do some of that stuff even to higher level PCs.

By and large, as the game plays into the higher levels, often the stakes move away from the PCs themselves and become more about how they can save destruction to towns, cities and loved ones they care about. Sometimes they can save the world, and they don't necessarily have to fight gods to do it. Personally, I find it really hard to make this shift so most of my campaigns end before they PCs get to level 16.

Hope this helps.

 

[Draegn]

Opponents can do anything that the players can.

Each character has a nemesis.

 

[Li Shenron]

Breaking down your requirements....

Example: My players get tired of the same old starting out at 1st level and killing things like kobolds and goblins and then as they gain levels the encounters have to become bigger and badder.

Start at a higher level.

I suggest trying 3rd (so everybody has a subclass) or 4th (so everybody has a feat if they want). Go straight with bigger and more interesting monsters. You can of course start even higher. See my last note however, and remember that unfortunately the 5e monster manual is heavily focused on low-level creatures, so as you go higher in level you'll have to either modify/create/boost monsters or have bigger monsters parties.

They like to dungeon crawl and explore without making a massive impact on the world as a whole.

Dungeon crawls work at every level. Just scale the encounters and challenges appropriately. Occasionally (but not all the time) put magical effects in the dungeon that foil or disrupt certain important types of spells effect such as teleportation, levitation, invisibility etc, if they become standard tactics.

They have no interest in fighting gods and primordials, they just want to continue fighting normal creatures with maybe the highest being "a" dragon.

Well I never had my PCs fight gods even at the highest level... There is no limit to the CR/level of a monster, so you can just keep going with "normal creatures" as long as you find or create stronger ones.

You also don't have to keep levelling up the PC at the official rate. The important thing is having fun, and if your players have fun at level 12th, you don't ever have to go beyond level 12th! If you are afraid that completely stopping experience will disappoint or unmotivate them, instead of stopping just slow it down. Try change the level advancement from linear (X levels every Y sessions) to slower and slower (always more sessions needed for the next level compared to the previous).

Last note: remember that you can always separate the narrative from the mechanic, so keep an eye on how the game works at higher levels. Some gaming groups don't play well at high level where each PC has a lot of stuff on their character sheet. You can keep the level down, and at the same time boost the narrative to make it feel like there is still a progression of power.

 

[S'mon]

You can certainly run 5e at level 20 without gods & primordials. If you use more of a 3e/4e type power curve for NPCs there's no reason you can't have many CR 20+ mortal NPC foes, for instance. You can make CR 21+ dragons relatively common, as ancient dragons were in 1e. Have lots of high level NPCs and monsters, including advanced versions of weaker ones. Basically what 4e does. Run 20th level 5e like it was 20th level 4e (ie high Paragon, no 21-30 Epic Tier). Keep threats on a mortal scale.

 

[S'mon]

That's something I've been thinking about, a *lot*. To avoid this, my campaigns usually end at level 11, and at that level it's already hard to challenge players with low level creatures to be honest. But now my players also want to keep playing their characters, even though they don't like how the game feels at higher levels... So I needed to find a solution !

Things I will do :

_Use Point-buy instead of rolling
_Limit proficiency bonus to +4 : to prevent Expertise from becoming a problem
_Use fixed Hit Points or PC stop gaining Hit Points at level 5 or 6 : HP inflation makes the game a grind
_Remove 9th level spells (but not spellslots) and tweak some others : gives plenty of room for progression but removes the most annoying spells from the game
_Remove the -5/+10 part of feats
_Limit numerical bonuses for magic items to +1 and make these items very rare
_Limit very heavy armor : for me a player shouldn't be able to wear a full plate 24 hours a day.

I think that should be enough to keep things on an earthly level.

It's a bit like playing E-6 but your Offensive "CR" keeps increasing after level 6, although your Defensive "CR" stays the same.

My PCs are level 11-13 now and I've not seen any problem. But it is a lowish magic
campaign and magic item bonuses are low, mostly +1 stuff with a single +2 sword.
Keeping AC-boosting items to +1 bonus I think is quite important for Bounded Accuracy to keep lower level monsters threatening. I find I can still use anything from CR 1/2 to CR 18+ and it
works fine; the PCs were talking about going up against the local CR 24+ Empyrean
(a son of Ares-Bane) though and that might not go so well (unless they can beat his AC 27 with a Contagion spell...)

Two sessions ago, for closing the Black Sun Gate (a 20-session quest) the elves gave the PCs out a bunch of protective items (+1 shield, +1 mithril full plate, +1 mithril chain shirt that counts as light armour - so equivalent to +2 studded) - before that they only had magic weapons and a ring of
protection. ACs are currently:

Hakeem, Barb-13: AC 20 (DEX 14 CON 20 +1 shield)
Rey, Rogue-11: AC 20 (DEX 20 ring of protection +1 mithril chain shirt)
Thuruar, Cleric-12: AC 21 (+1 mithril full plate, shield)

Plus two occasional/new PCs (Giff Champion Fighter 11, Dragonborn Barbarian 11) have no magic protection and have AC 18 & 19.

I think if you have teen-level PCs with ACs in the mid 20s there will definitely be issues, but keep it around 20 or so and the game seems to run fine.

 

[delericho]

Cap the level range, probably to level 10.

5e is deliberately designed with the level range broken down into tiers, with PCs getting a big boost in power at levels 5, 11, and 17. As they advance to the next tier, they are supposed to face a whole new tier of opponents also, and so the progression from "goblins" at level 1 to "gods" at level 20 is pretty much hard-coded into the game. If you want to cap it at "dragons" instead of "gods", cap at 16th level; if you want "giants" instead of "dragons", go for level 10.

 

[Saeviomagy]

12,700xp (a 'deadly' 20th level encounter) contains 254 goblins. Against ACs beyond 24, those goblins deal ~114 damage per round. Below 24, their damage will ramp up. I daresay you can spread them out enough that the PCs can't kill them all too quickly.

In short, you can still fight goblins at 20th level, you just fight more.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

Just set the party on fire and blindfold them. Then have them fight more goblins.

Remember, you're going to need specialist blindfolding and setting on fire goblins to deal with the Wizard spells 'remove blindfold' and 'stop being on fire' in order to whittle down the party's resources.