How to get to 50th level?

[d4]

Kill a few titans, that will get you up to 50th level.

Titans are only CR 21, last time i checked the Monster Manual.

 

[Sarellion]

Titans are only CR 21, last time i checked the Monster Manual.

He meant the Scarred Lands Titans who are the progenitors of the gods.

 

[Zappo]

Well, to find out how high you can go, we just need to know the CR of the most powerful thing in the multiverse (probably a god) and then use the XP tables to see when they're too high to gain any XP from eliminating it

...so what is the highest CR creature and/or god out there?

Can't do it. The most stupid and weak of the kobolds could have any CR up to infinite, just by having enough character levels. And he can get those levels, because you can gain experience even by defeating stuff below your CR...

So here's how you get to level 50: get as high level as you can without driving high-CR opponents to extinction. Then train low-CR creatures by getting them to defeat their peers, until their CR is high enough that you gain experience from defeating them. Then defeat them. Repeat. It's not a fast method, though. Eventually, you'll have to train creatures to get their CR high enough to give experience to the creatures you're training for yourself to defeat... it's the kind of nefarious scheme some immortal fiend could devise to gain power.

Hey, I just realized that this explains perfectly the reason for which villains always leave young heroes alive, instead of killing them while they're still weak! They hope to let their CR go up!

 

[Lu Wei Fong]

With practice and training your characters could get up to any level they wanted. Adventuring and fingthing monsters is only one way to advance, it just happens to be A: The quickest and B: The foundation of the game. If a wizard studies spells long and hard enough, they will achieve higher levels of arcane power, even if they haven't gone out of their tower for 10 years. If a monk does nothing but train and spar all day every day in their monastary, they will get more powerful. It's simply slower.
Ultimately, the reason few PCs or NPCs achieve such epic levels is because they don't live long enough, not because there's a limit to their potential power.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

...
So here's how you get to level 50: get as high level as you can without driving high-CR opponents to extinction. Then train low-CR creatures by getting them to defeat their peers, until their CR is high enough that you gain experience from defeating them. Then defeat them. Repeat. ...

NOW I understand the Oathbound setting! The "Feathered Foul" are really just farming experience points! Thanks Zappo!

 

[kamosa]

One word

Insta-Kobold-o-matic.

 

[Wombat]

Personally, I start losing interest in the game much above 15th level, so this question is not aimed at me

 

[Jolly Giant]

I DM a campaign that's now around level 30 (started at level 10 4 years ago; we wanted a change from low-level play and to see what the game was like at higher levels.), and both my players and I are enjoying the campaign more for each level.

So far I've had no problems coming up with plots and challenges; quite the reverse: I find that the more powerful the NPCs are; the more resources they have, the more complicated plots I can devise for them.

As it has already been said repeatedly, one secret to challenging your PCs is to know the rules for monster advancement; HD, templates, class levels... I never use stuff straight out of a book at this level. Another important thing is to know what your monsters and NPCs are capable of, so stat them out fully! At this level they have a lot of special attacks, special qualities, spells etc., and the DM needs to take full advantage of these to make encounters interesting and challenging.

Admittedly it's an awful lot of work for me, but that's largely to do with my style of DMing. I like to have at least half a dozen loose threads and plot-hooks dangling in front of the PCs and then let them choose which hook to bite (I hate railroading! ). This means that for any given session I have NPCs, monsters, strategies and locations for roughly six sessions ready! It's ok, what I don't get to use one session, I usually get to use later on. Thankfully, I have a job with a lot of down time, so I can bring my books and notepaper with me!

 

[pogre]

I'm really enjoying reading about some of the epic campaigns out there. I would assume level 50 characters would be caught in cosmic struggles.

I have only played/ran one high level campaign and the game is definitely different. Our game only reached 24th level IIRC. The prep time for the adventures was a bit daunting, but still it was a good time. I look forward to doing it again, but I understand why some folks prefer to play at under 10th level.

 

[the Jester]

My game (started at 1st) is at epic levels now, with the highest level pc being 24th (I believe). We're still having a blast, but I've never run a game like this before and it's truly out of hand. They just won the game. They beat my ultra-mean conversion of Return to the Tomb of Horrors and destroyed their ultra-bad ass arch-nemesis in the same session.

To answer the original question- when would the pcs run out of challenges?- I guess they could go after the biggest god in the planes (have indeed considered this as a campaign finale), then go after whatever sort of overgods there might be in the background, and- I suppose, hypothetically, possibly- even try to defeat Tharizdun itself. I'd peg Tharizdun's CR at around 1000. But I don't think there's much of anything else up there past CR 200 in my game... well, who knows, the megasharks that devour whole islands...

{Please understand that I'm considering the gods and so on as fair play with quantifiable CRs for purposes of this question, but that I don't think that's actually the case.)