I don't get high-level D&D (merged)
- Thread starter CCamfield
- Start date
WizarDru said:
What problems have you found? The party I DM is currently in mid-level, but as I eye higher levels, I'm paying close attention to what others have to say. I will admit that I am firmly in the camp of those who want to allow players to use their resources to the fullest. Heck, I'll go out of my way to make Knowledge-Architecture a useful skill, if one of the characters has it
.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
For me, it's all about the players and the original scope of the game.
The first part. The players.
If the player's are still using their characters like everday travelling adventurers, then there really is nothing to change. They still seek out new challenges and may be wandering the planes at this point. It's important to note that due to monsters being able to be advanced in so many ways, that you'd still never need anything more than the Monster Manual to effectively challenge them.
If the players are more role playing intensive, things become more interesting because they have a greater scope. But once again, it depends on what they want to do. I once had a player fight 666 demons in order to kill a demon prince. It took all afternoon and I was amazed that critical hits didn't finish the guy, but with Black Razor and it's inanse amount of hit points, he won through. He didn't do this on the prime plane because he wasn't evil. He just wanted a challenge. I've had wizards in campaigns that are the same. They don't go about destroying other wizards, but they seek a challenge. Perhaps seeing who can come up with the best spell, who can unearthed the strongest item, etc...
The second part, is the scope of the original campagin. One thing that Robert Jordan and George Martin did well in their series was start small and move big. Sure, there are some noble characters, but the scale of their personal power isn't huge until latter on. If you can showcase that there are some secrets in the world when the party is young, you can showcase those darker, elder secrets when they get older.
I'm reading Lords of the Night Liches and am already thinking of ways I'm going to add the Void to my campaign. Heck, I've been looking at the Farrealm (mentioned a few WoTC places) and the Old Ones from Call of Cthulhu as well. There are always things to challenge a party on pure level ability.
As far as the scope, no big deal for me. If I populate a place with NPC's and the party doesn't stick around, I can move those that the party didn't meet to the next local. I guess from reading lots of Michael Moorcock when I was younger, planar travel, and even the nature of the multiverse itself, doesn't bother me. Sure, it's fantastic that they can go from Waterdeep to Sembia in a single breath, but it is a fantasy game in the first place. Heck, one of the things I've always tried to recreate is an invasion from another prime material plane as done in Raymond Feist Magician. Good stuff there.
The first part. The players.
If the player's are still using their characters like everday travelling adventurers, then there really is nothing to change. They still seek out new challenges and may be wandering the planes at this point. It's important to note that due to monsters being able to be advanced in so many ways, that you'd still never need anything more than the Monster Manual to effectively challenge them.
If the players are more role playing intensive, things become more interesting because they have a greater scope. But once again, it depends on what they want to do. I once had a player fight 666 demons in order to kill a demon prince. It took all afternoon and I was amazed that critical hits didn't finish the guy, but with Black Razor and it's inanse amount of hit points, he won through. He didn't do this on the prime plane because he wasn't evil. He just wanted a challenge. I've had wizards in campaigns that are the same. They don't go about destroying other wizards, but they seek a challenge. Perhaps seeing who can come up with the best spell, who can unearthed the strongest item, etc...
The second part, is the scope of the original campagin. One thing that Robert Jordan and George Martin did well in their series was start small and move big. Sure, there are some noble characters, but the scale of their personal power isn't huge until latter on. If you can showcase that there are some secrets in the world when the party is young, you can showcase those darker, elder secrets when they get older.
I'm reading Lords of the Night Liches and am already thinking of ways I'm going to add the Void to my campaign. Heck, I've been looking at the Farrealm (mentioned a few WoTC places) and the Old Ones from Call of Cthulhu as well. There are always things to challenge a party on pure level ability.
As far as the scope, no big deal for me. If I populate a place with NPC's and the party doesn't stick around, I can move those that the party didn't meet to the next local. I guess from reading lots of Michael Moorcock when I was younger, planar travel, and even the nature of the multiverse itself, doesn't bother me. Sure, it's fantastic that they can go from Waterdeep to Sembia in a single breath, but it is a fantasy game in the first place. Heck, one of the things I've always tried to recreate is an invasion from another prime material plane as done in Raymond Feist Magician. Good stuff there.
A'koss
Explorer
Style of play...
In the end that's what it boils down to and either you like it or you don't. High Level play in Dungeons & Dragons is very... D&D. It is a style that is unique to itself, it doesn't try to really mirror anything else and is very, very different from low level play. Scry-Buff-Teleport, Improved Invisiblity-Fly-Bombard, Easy Resurrections, Lots of Money, Lots of Magic, Lots of Powerful, Intelligent Monsters and just plain Lots of Power... period.
I'm one of those guys who (at one time) embraced it for all it's worth. One of the key tricks I learned was to create adventures where players are required to use those resources at their disposal rather than just nerfing them at every turn with anti-this and anti-that. It was lots of fun, I even created a setting (Namea) that embraced high magic and who's goal was to be a more believable campaign when you added all the D&Disms to the mix. But then a couple years later it kinda petered out...
We looked at it too long and too closely and the center could no longer hold. High level play became some kind of unrecognizable monster which in no way mirrored what we generally thought Epic Adventuring should be like. Powerful, world renoun characters were a *good thing*, but the D&D style of play became increasingly unidentifyable and unsatisfying. Highly initiative dependent combat, very quick battles, very easy deaths and one hit wonders (Save or Die/Nerfs) didn't help either.
So, like many before us, we opted to go the Low(er) Magic, more Cinematic route... So the question I put to the group was - What do you want it to feel like? And then I set about creating our latest setting.
And I'll tell ya, there is feeling about the table now that I haven't seen since the early Greyhawk days of 1980s.
Cheers!
In the end that's what it boils down to and either you like it or you don't. High Level play in Dungeons & Dragons is very... D&D. It is a style that is unique to itself, it doesn't try to really mirror anything else and is very, very different from low level play. Scry-Buff-Teleport, Improved Invisiblity-Fly-Bombard, Easy Resurrections, Lots of Money, Lots of Magic, Lots of Powerful, Intelligent Monsters and just plain Lots of Power... period.
I'm one of those guys who (at one time) embraced it for all it's worth. One of the key tricks I learned was to create adventures where players are required to use those resources at their disposal rather than just nerfing them at every turn with anti-this and anti-that. It was lots of fun, I even created a setting (Namea) that embraced high magic and who's goal was to be a more believable campaign when you added all the D&Disms to the mix. But then a couple years later it kinda petered out...
We looked at it too long and too closely and the center could no longer hold. High level play became some kind of unrecognizable monster which in no way mirrored what we generally thought Epic Adventuring should be like. Powerful, world renoun characters were a *good thing*, but the D&D style of play became increasingly unidentifyable and unsatisfying. Highly initiative dependent combat, very quick battles, very easy deaths and one hit wonders (Save or Die/Nerfs) didn't help either.
So, like many before us, we opted to go the Low(er) Magic, more Cinematic route... So the question I put to the group was - What do you want it to feel like? And then I set about creating our latest setting.
And I'll tell ya, there is feeling about the table now that I haven't seen since the early Greyhawk days of 1980s.
Cheers!
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Three ways to look and at a high level campaign
1.Scale the world. Its a classic. Maybe you spent most of your life in a small area, valley what ever. Now that you are tougher, you move into the world proper, perhaps bringing the valley with you. When your kingdom is a little small, teleport opens up places you could never travel in time to do anything about. The World itself is yours. And after this the planes, ala.
Planescape. Big fish need a big pond to grow. And honestly that raises the bar on the teleportation (inner planes none functional, outer is screwy, and if the mystery happens to span multiple plans you need at least a Planeshift or portal to get there. I play in a High (almost epic) Planescape game. The Bar for wandering through the planes is damn near infinite, depending on where you are, and if you want teleport-screwing, divination-wigging, and generally rough and tumble place to base a campaign in, you can't beat Sigil for its mysteries.
2.Great power equals Great Responsibility or Great Opporunity.
For those who run good or neutral with good leanings campaigns. Your players now possess incredible abilities, ones that make them head and shoulders above anyone else. What are they doing with them? Who are they helping? If you don't go adventuring that day, your cleric has many healing spells and other such things that are going unused. Is she/he going to let that going to waste or walk to the local village and cure the sick and injured before bed.
For a better example, you spend low to mid level fighting Red Wizards. When you reach high level you start to think, we should do something about Thay.
Evil Kingdoms, Sects, and Cults are what you fight at high levels, especially if you go proactive. Its an interesting twist when they are the invading force, the plotters, or the Inquistion plotting to remove threats that exist rather then the other way around.
For the evil, it is indeed time for you to be proactive as well. Why aren't you ruling this place, this world, everything. Or at least setting it all on fire.
3.You have my full and complete attention. This is most of what most of your enemies are thinking. In fact, many of them are quite possible teaming up to kill you in your sleep. If you have made it to high level, there are people who hate you for it. Perhaps the orcs have declared you an enemy of their race, and any where that keeps you must be burned and sacked. Perhaps those villians whose plots you have foiled start taking their displeasure out on your friends and relatives. Can you protect your family and wander the road looking for bad guys to fight? And for every enemy you had before, their is a new person or groups that only now considers you a threat. You have become that magic "job" to either retire on or set them for life, for every assassin you can think off. These are all things to think about.
Those are the serious thoughts, now for some silliness. Only in a high level game can the monk and samurai turn to the rest of the party and say " You go kill the command staff, we are going to stop the army." Only in a high level game can look a God like he is small and say "Bring it.". And Only in a high level game can you turn a Dark Lord of Lightnin into your own personal bug zapper.
1.Scale the world. Its a classic. Maybe you spent most of your life in a small area, valley what ever. Now that you are tougher, you move into the world proper, perhaps bringing the valley with you. When your kingdom is a little small, teleport opens up places you could never travel in time to do anything about. The World itself is yours. And after this the planes, ala.
Planescape. Big fish need a big pond to grow. And honestly that raises the bar on the teleportation (inner planes none functional, outer is screwy, and if the mystery happens to span multiple plans you need at least a Planeshift or portal to get there. I play in a High (almost epic) Planescape game. The Bar for wandering through the planes is damn near infinite, depending on where you are, and if you want teleport-screwing, divination-wigging, and generally rough and tumble place to base a campaign in, you can't beat Sigil for its mysteries.
2.Great power equals Great Responsibility or Great Opporunity.
For those who run good or neutral with good leanings campaigns. Your players now possess incredible abilities, ones that make them head and shoulders above anyone else. What are they doing with them? Who are they helping? If you don't go adventuring that day, your cleric has many healing spells and other such things that are going unused. Is she/he going to let that going to waste or walk to the local village and cure the sick and injured before bed.
For a better example, you spend low to mid level fighting Red Wizards. When you reach high level you start to think, we should do something about Thay.
Evil Kingdoms, Sects, and Cults are what you fight at high levels, especially if you go proactive. Its an interesting twist when they are the invading force, the plotters, or the Inquistion plotting to remove threats that exist rather then the other way around.
For the evil, it is indeed time for you to be proactive as well. Why aren't you ruling this place, this world, everything. Or at least setting it all on fire.
3.You have my full and complete attention. This is most of what most of your enemies are thinking. In fact, many of them are quite possible teaming up to kill you in your sleep. If you have made it to high level, there are people who hate you for it. Perhaps the orcs have declared you an enemy of their race, and any where that keeps you must be burned and sacked. Perhaps those villians whose plots you have foiled start taking their displeasure out on your friends and relatives. Can you protect your family and wander the road looking for bad guys to fight? And for every enemy you had before, their is a new person or groups that only now considers you a threat. You have become that magic "job" to either retire on or set them for life, for every assassin you can think off. These are all things to think about.
Those are the serious thoughts, now for some silliness. Only in a high level game can the monk and samurai turn to the rest of the party and say " You go kill the command staff, we are going to stop the army." Only in a high level game can look a God like he is small and say "Bring it.". And Only in a high level game can you turn a Dark Lord of Lightnin into your own personal bug zapper.
pogre
Legend
I really enjoy high level D&D, and yet, I agree with many of the complaints others have made about it. The game certainly changes for me when the higher levels (16+) come into play. If I may use other Rpgs as examples:
Levels 1-3 WFRP
Levels 4-7 Runequest
Levels 8-15 D&D
Levels 16+ Exalted
That's the cycle as I see it. I really love levels one through seven. Levels eight through fifteen are usually OK, but for me, less appealing. 8-15 is the least dangerous portion of the game.
Once you hit 16+ it is a game about possibilities and one needs to shed other expectations. Unlike Exalted, however, the game really becomes far more dangerous. Someone made the comment combat and saves tend to be all or nothing - and this is true in my experience too. There is an earth-shaking coolness to how characters can affect the world around them at these levels I really dig.
Still, some game designing professionals I really respect consider the game broken past 13th level - I see their point - it certainly changes.
Levels 1-3 WFRP
Levels 4-7 Runequest
Levels 8-15 D&D
Levels 16+ Exalted
That's the cycle as I see it. I really love levels one through seven. Levels eight through fifteen are usually OK, but for me, less appealing. 8-15 is the least dangerous portion of the game.
Once you hit 16+ it is a game about possibilities and one needs to shed other expectations. Unlike Exalted, however, the game really becomes far more dangerous. Someone made the comment combat and saves tend to be all or nothing - and this is true in my experience too. There is an earth-shaking coolness to how characters can affect the world around them at these levels I really dig.
Still, some game designing professionals I really respect consider the game broken past 13th level - I see their point - it certainly changes.
Jolly Giant
First Post
Once the PCs get into 2-digit levels the game changes A LOT! I for one, think that's just great. 
After numerous TPKs (some due to PC stupidity, others to plain bad luck) both I and the players were getting tired of hunting down goblin cattle rustlers and clearing out kobold lairs, so we decided to start a campaign with level 10 characters.
It was a very welcome change, actually it was like a whole different game. That campaign has been running for 3 years now and the PCs have 22 class levels each. However, I've started a bit of an experiment and up until our last session (two days ago) the players were completely unaware of this...
I'm trying to push the game up yet a powerlevel, see if we can't make yet a new game out of this campaign. I've been a very generous DM for the last couple of levels, letting the PCs get more and more powerful by letting them recieve "rewards" from their deities etc. With all the templates, artifacts etc. they've gained their average ECL was 25-26 rather than 22.
Then, last session, the ultimate power-boost happened: I set them up against (very) minor deity (The Mother of Hags aka The Queen of Curses; one of my own creations) and they managed to kill her! At the moment of her death some of her divine power got transfered to the PCs, making them "hero-deities"/"quasi-deities" (divine rank 0), and their small army of followers all gained a permanent equivalent of "Lesser Aspect of the Deity" spell! (Since it was a permanent effect I made the +4 CHA bonus an inherit bonus rather than an enhancement bonus.)
Now we'll see if we can't get yet a "new" game out of this campaign...
Disclaimer: I am NOT a munckin! (Normally... ) Nor are my players (mostly ). It's just that we've had so many low to mid-level campaigns and want to try something different...
After numerous TPKs (some due to PC stupidity, others to plain bad luck) both I and the players were getting tired of hunting down goblin cattle rustlers and clearing out kobold lairs, so we decided to start a campaign with level 10 characters.
It was a very welcome change, actually it was like a whole different game. That campaign has been running for 3 years now and the PCs have 22 class levels each. However, I've started a bit of an experiment and up until our last session (two days ago) the players were completely unaware of this...
I'm trying to push the game up yet a powerlevel, see if we can't make yet a new game out of this campaign. I've been a very generous DM for the last couple of levels, letting the PCs get more and more powerful by letting them recieve "rewards" from their deities etc. With all the templates, artifacts etc. they've gained their average ECL was 25-26 rather than 22.
Then, last session, the ultimate power-boost happened: I set them up against (very) minor deity (The Mother of Hags aka The Queen of Curses; one of my own creations) and they managed to kill her! At the moment of her death some of her divine power got transfered to the PCs, making them "hero-deities"/"quasi-deities" (divine rank 0), and their small army of followers all gained a permanent equivalent of "Lesser Aspect of the Deity" spell! (Since it was a permanent effect I made the +4 CHA bonus an inherit bonus rather than an enhancement bonus.)
Now we'll see if we can't get yet a "new" game out of this campaign...
Disclaimer: I am NOT a munckin! (Normally...
) Nor are my players (mostly ). It's just that we've had so many low to mid-level campaigns and want to try something different...
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WizarDru
Adventurer
Well, since you asked, I'll give you a few notions, based on experience.Schmoe said:What problems have you found? The party I DM is currently in mid-level, but as I eye higher levels, I'm paying close attention to what others have to say. I will admit that I am firmly in the camp of those who want to allow players to use their resources to the fullest. Heck, I'll go out of my way to make Knowledge-Architecture a useful skill, if one of the characters has it
Understand, for a start, that I enjoy high-level play as much as low-level play. Each has different appeals, and each works differently in both feel and style. However, in practice, they are not as diametrically distant as they might appear at first glance. The players still strive against evil, and they still fight monsters, deal with NPCs in a variety of situations and find themselves in the midst of many different plots and stories. Their place in said stories may have changed, but the stories aren't always that different.
Now, on to some of the potential problems of high-level and Epic play.
- Information Overload: Higher levels mean more. More feats. More classes. More spells. More items. More abilities. More monsters. More more more. That's a lot of information to keep track of. Consider: My group has a party of 6 PCs. There are two familiars, several animal companions, three shadow companions, three paladin mounts, at least three cohorts, and a set of NPCs who show up from time to time (such as good ol' Meepo, Kobold Chief). The effort to maintain all that material can be tedious, if you don't have a system. The DM, by necessity, needs to off-load some of this material and burden onto his players, and needs to rework some of the system. For example: several of my players are now classified as Teams; the shadowdancer and her summoned shadows becomes Team Shadow, the cleric and his paladin cohorts become Team Sun, and the druid and his many summoned creatures/elementals becomes Team Earth. This simplifies the initiative system and battle order a great deal.
- Number Crunching: High-level play requires more back-end work to create appropriate challenges and materials without seeming unbalanced or arbitrary. As the levels go higher, you are forced to either use stock high-level creatures, or spend a good deal of time applying templates, class levels and other techniques to create appropriate and interesting challenges. This can be time consuming. Piratecat uses some excellent techniques to bypass this (such as the ever popular, scratch of the serial numbers and describe it differently method), and my personal favorite technique is to use ENWorld itself as a resource. Folks like Blackdirge are an excellent resource for creating creatures on the fly.
- Unforeseen Interactions and Rules Decisions: Quick: how does spell immunity, a ring of reflection, an anti-magic field and a wall of force interact with a lich and a beholder? At high levels, you have lots of spell effects, items, abilities and powers running simultaneously. Sometimes they interact in bizarre and unanticipated ways. High-level play will often call upon you, as the DM, to make determinations on how to handle such interactions...and often you'll just plain forget that some spells and powers are running. My group has several ways to tell what's active at any given moment (now using spreadsheets and 3x5 cards), I use DM Genie, and we set a '2 minutes and DM rules' rough limit on these issues. Often, I'll ask a player to find me a rules cite in either direction to help with my decision, while I move on to the next player and their action(s). However, given the cornucopia of materials available, some lookup is inevitable on all parts. "Waves of Exhaustion? What's the DC on that? What's your spell resistance? Range? How does that affect Undead? Is that a FORT save? What about people with an Amulet of Health or a Scarab?" And so on.
- Finding the Balance: Combat at high-levels is like, in many ways, lower-level combat, turned up to 11 and then reduced to a fine wine. Many combats are very quick and very final. We call this the 'Everybody rolls a 1, sometimes.' principle. At high-levels, powers fall into the 1 or 20 range. Wherein success is determined by a d20 coming up with one of those numbers. "Can you hit an AC 54? He's got a Fort of +34?" This leads to a lot of difficulties finding the right mix for your group. How to balance lethality against challenge becomes a much more difficult task, especially as CRs become much more subjective at higher levels. A beholder with DC 18 saves against his eye rays is a sad, sorry little creature to an equipped 20th level party. By the same token, many spells just aren't going to succeed against a Winterwight, unless you beat both his SR and saves. In general, that means really good rolls for your players, and really poor rolls for the creature. The ELH has some good suggestions on ways to mitigate this problem, and rules to change once you reach those epic levels...but more work can be done to rectify the problem.
- Verisimilitude: You simply cannot continue the game on the same basis as players become more powerful, and expect verisimilitude to survive. A 20th level fighter can defeat armies. A 20th level cleric is a living agent of a diety's will. A 20th level wizard is a terrifying figure to his enemies...and high level play necessitates enemies and challenges appropriate to these beings. Finding a way to expand the concept of your game is difficult without work, and keeping everythign hanging together can be a chore. However, if you've been doing things right, you've laid the proper foundation which will make this viable...but it's not something that you can do off-the-cuff. Moreover, you have to have players who can remember that just because they are now able to take the king and his whole court behind the woodshed doesn't mean they suddenly consider that an option.
Also, in some ways high-level is liberating to the DM, as well. In many cases, I no longer worry about specific solutions to problems I throw at the players....that's their problem. They have a vast array of talents and powers at their disposal...let them use their brains to work it out. Let them SUPRISE you.
Most of all, learn to be flexible and loose. Some DMs don't like the loss of control at high levels, and that's why they think the game must suffer. It's true, you can no longer force players to enter the dungeon through the front door, navigate the maze and kill the bad guy at the far end (PC's "earthquake" anecdote is particularly appropriate, here). But now, you can change the rules dramatically on them. You can play 'hardball', in a sense, in that the players are playing at the high stakes table, and need to appreciate the fact that you still can't, as Andy Collins put it, "go crank-calling Loki". High-level adventures become collections of nexus points, instead of 10x10 rooms. A player will announce he's going to Acheron, while another pursues an inquiry at the Royal library in the capital. A third heads to Sigil to recruit some mercenaries. When a Balor attacks the castle, they all head there, at the behest of the party cleric, who does a mass sending. Learning to handle the curves the players throw at you is a big part of high-level play. Incorporating their ideas into the story is how it thrives.
In other words, high-level play is worth the effort...even it sometimes seems awfully scary.
ruleslawyer
Registered User
That was one of the great posts, WizarDru. Merci beaucoup.
My simple take on high-level play is this: Forget about high fantasy, and understand that high-level play is essentially a superhero game. The JLA and Authority are great examples of the kinds of obstacles facing writers (DMs) in this kind of environment: Both teams can teleport practically anywhere they like, they have unbelievable information-gathering powers, and they can essentially ignore the will of any individual government. So what can really challenge them? Well, a few things:
1) An unknown foe. As Zad points out, you have to know that you're looking for something in the first place in order to actually find out what it is. High-level opponents have the resources to disguise their identities, create vast misinformation, and cloak themselves from detection. There's absolutely no reason why divinations are going to reveal anything unless and until the PCs can bring their full attention and resources to bear upon something, or someone, that they'd need to know something about in the first place.
2) Things from Beyond. So PCs are too big for their home world; no problem! Extraplanar threats, alien environments, and strange magical effects should become their meat and drink. What with githyanki planecruisers and archdevils and continent-sized water elementals running around, high-level PCs should be mere novices in such environments. They'll need all their powers just to survive on the Negative Energy Plane or the Plane of Fire.
3) Deadly combat. This one can be turned from a curse to a blessing, you know. If PCs know that any given combat against an adversary of commensurate power is an all-or-nothing affair, they're likely to get very combat-shy. Assuming rationality on the part of the PCs' foes, so will they. Interactions thus start leaning heavily toward role-playing and covert machinations rather than open combat, which can lead to a nice self-sustaining RP-oriented campaign. My 21st- to 23rd-level PCs have this sort of thing going on; they play in FR, and have made sworn enemies of the Zhentarim, the Red Wizards, and several other groups, but they don't just go around slaughtering high-level members of those groups, because they know that a single encounter with Manshoon (CR 25) and a couple of beholders could result in the (permanent) deaths of at least one or two of them.
My simple take on high-level play is this: Forget about high fantasy, and understand that high-level play is essentially a superhero game. The JLA and Authority are great examples of the kinds of obstacles facing writers (DMs) in this kind of environment: Both teams can teleport practically anywhere they like, they have unbelievable information-gathering powers, and they can essentially ignore the will of any individual government. So what can really challenge them? Well, a few things:
1) An unknown foe. As Zad points out, you have to know that you're looking for something in the first place in order to actually find out what it is. High-level opponents have the resources to disguise their identities, create vast misinformation, and cloak themselves from detection. There's absolutely no reason why divinations are going to reveal anything unless and until the PCs can bring their full attention and resources to bear upon something, or someone, that they'd need to know something about in the first place.
2) Things from Beyond. So PCs are too big for their home world; no problem! Extraplanar threats, alien environments, and strange magical effects should become their meat and drink. What with githyanki planecruisers and archdevils and continent-sized water elementals running around, high-level PCs should be mere novices in such environments. They'll need all their powers just to survive on the Negative Energy Plane or the Plane of Fire.
3) Deadly combat. This one can be turned from a curse to a blessing, you know. If PCs know that any given combat against an adversary of commensurate power is an all-or-nothing affair, they're likely to get very combat-shy. Assuming rationality on the part of the PCs' foes, so will they. Interactions thus start leaning heavily toward role-playing and covert machinations rather than open combat, which can lead to a nice self-sustaining RP-oriented campaign. My 21st- to 23rd-level PCs have this sort of thing going on; they play in FR, and have made sworn enemies of the Zhentarim, the Red Wizards, and several other groups, but they don't just go around slaughtering high-level members of those groups, because they know that a single encounter with Manshoon (CR 25) and a couple of beholders could result in the (permanent) deaths of at least one or two of them.
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