Keeping the big boys at bay.

[Minigiant]

Someone is level 1. Someone is level 25. What are your favorite ways you seen or created to keep the level 25 guy from walking into level 1 land that dominating the place?

Everything from "too many enemies to risk leaving home" to "the gods chained me up" to "too busy plottig revenge" to "can't go to Earth without some expensive ritual."

In my homebrew setting, every epic level being is a lazy bum. Angels, devil, demons, they all hate work. They don't want to do anything and hate their power. They give power away so they can sit arounf and do nothing. Taking over kingdoms often uses too much effort that they only do so when they really really have too.

 

[Crothian]

There is no "level one" land. It is a dangerous place for low level characters.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I don't have low-level lands, or high level lands. Everything is mixed together, from high to low. Though generally speaking powerful forces are less individual people more corporations, forces of nature, alien-esque aberration beings, secret socities, etc.

 

[Oni]

Kryptonite and other plot devices.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Why don't fathers play with their toddler's lincoln logs? Because they have their own, more expensive, toys to play with like x-box, high def TVs, etc.

You can just leave it at "these powerful being have concerns which are incomprehensible to mere mortals" and leave well enough alone. You're playing D&D, not writing a fantasy novel. Bad guys don't exist until the PCs interact with them. Likewise with NPCs.

 

[SiderisAnon]

There is also the fact that the actions of a low level character may just be beneath the notice of a high level badguy.

Let's take a kind of fedual example. The baron way out there is having some problems, not a full invasion, just some hitches in his plans. The king doesn't really pay attention to that. Then when the baron is killed and someone is messing with the count's plans, the king starts to take notice, but will probably leave it to the count to deal with. Even if the king gets involved, he's going to send lackeys to deal with the problem first. When the problem finally gets big enough for the king to get involved, the PCs aren't level 1 anymore.

When you apply this to monsters, the reaction gets even slower and looser. First off, you're probably not dealing with a big legitimate organization like a kingdom. Second off, the big bad has limited resources and may not have another servant (like the count) to throw at the party once they take out the baron. Finally, the PCs are generally not messing with the same big bad over and over. Instead, they're taking out low level minions of various powers of various levels, plus some independent operators. Once the PCs start getting noticed by the big bads, it still takes some time before the big bads get involved because it's "not their problem" unless the PCs are heavily focusing on just one big bad's operations.

Human beings are great at ignoring problems that are not right in front of them. Why should big bads of any species be that much different?

 

[Kraydak]

The cynical answer is that they are walking into lvl 1 land and dominating the place. It is just that they are acting as agents provocateurs...

The lvl 25 people want to retire someday, so they need to groom replacements. Their eventual replacements need xp to level up. If the lvl 25 characters just "happens" to lose a tome of demon summoning that becomes the focus of a minor cult which gets wiped out by a lvl 1 party that levels to 2 in the process... mere serendipity.

And if said lvl 1 party, for reasons best left undisclosed, has an atl-atl specialist, well, the lvl 25 character might have one knocking around his back rooms for novelty reasons. If he doesn't, he can get one cheaply!

 

[Storminator]

I played in a level 25 3e game. Most of our time was spent killing generals of the evil army, or hunting demigods, or reclaiming ancestral homelands from the demon invasion, that sort of thing.

There were definitely places where we saw small scale evils. When we smashed the evil army, squads and battalions ran to the hills and set up shop in some tiny little towns. I hope those town had some heroes to send after them because we were plane hopping by then. The next world shattering evil had reared its ugly head and we had to save planets, not small towns.

But every now and again we dropped down. We had a party in a tavern once, with our bard throwing out +40 perform checks, and swordsmanship displays and knife throwing contests... do you know how small a target you hit with a +35? That night became a legend.

So yeah, epic level heroes and villains can go slumming... and it changes the world when they do.

PS

 

[Mistwell]

Sauron doesn't conquer the Shire early on because he has some other higher level locations between his base of operations and the Shire. Nor is it a high priority.

 

[Bumbles]

Someone is level 1. Someone is level 25. What are your favorite ways you seen or created to keep the level 25 guy from walking into level 1 land that dominating the place?

Well, the level 25 guy usually has better things to do, it not being an MMORPG where everybody is not only a jerk, they feel entitled to be one because they paid 15 bucks a month for it.