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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8217563" data-attributes="member: 6801228">So, a few thoughts on my end about things and general and your one-shot in particular. In particular? Zones always sound good, but in personal expeirence I have found players move very little unless they have to move to reach a new threat, or someone is running, so a lot of zones end up unused, or players end up on the edges of them. Additionally, this can be a lot of bookkeeping, especially if you want to make the zones dynamically move. A busy battlefield slows things down. Now, as to things I do for high-level play. Any fight I want to be memorable, I alter the statblocks. I don't even think at low-level play I keep boss monsters 100% RAW. Give them the ability to react to the players. Maybe instead of just using the f5ft line of 12d8 acid, the dragon sees the party has spread out and uses some magic to turn their breath into an acidic fog that does 5d8 damage every round (basing off of cloudkill) or they spray up and cover themselves in Acid, taking on the Black Pudding's rules for melee fighting. Maybe you even fight dirty. The Dragon dives into the acid to avoid being seen, and those acid lakes connect, so it swims up, lunges out of the acid with a bite that grapples, and drags someone into the acid. Even if they have resistance, they will start suffocating, and that gives a new goal in the fight. Not just "beat it til it dies" but "SAVE JIM"Also, as much as it slows things down, I have minions and I have lieutenants. You need a few different things being big threats and able to pull off unique abilities, because the players can shut down a single target. Legendaries help, obviously, but caging it in with a wall of force can still cut off the main threat and let them piecemeal an encounter, so it is generally better for higher level play when they are throwing so many powerful abilities to have multiple viable targets for those abilities. Oh, also, in that line, maximize the Boss's hp. Just do it. A fighter PC and cleric PC can use Holy Weapon+PAM+Action surge+Superiority Dice and dish out 4d10+14d8+1d4+25 damage, which is an average of 112.5 damage, that is one turn that dealt 2/3rds of that dragons health. From a single turn. When you get to high levels PCs can burn down bosses so fast that they either have to be very hard to hit, or very very durable. Otherwise they fold in half the second the party has the time to fight them. In terms of larger adventure structure? Be clever and put them in situations that require the loss of resources or a lot of time. Perhaps you have the door to the inner sanctum heavily warded, and you can either force yourself through and take damage, undo all the magic, or try and go around it by destroying the ruins that could explode and cause damage anyways. The players are levels 12 plus with magic items? They can handle this. Or maybe this place is so acidic and deadly that they take a single point of acid damage every round just for being inside the layer. It isn't a lot, but if they have to navigate the layer on top of fighting the dragon? That is going to add up.</blockquote>

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