D&D 5E (2024) Let's Write A High Level Adventure

[Tonguez]

What about a Planar post office?

The PCs are called to deliver a letter to the Queen of Air and Darkness or maybe a recipient in Hell?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What are you talking about bro. I'm literally in a level 18 Wrath of the Righteous game with Mythic tiers and we still have brushes with death on the semi-regular. It's not impossible to challenge high level parties.

What ruleset are you using? The CRPG? Not 5e out the box if you have Mythic tiers in any case.

“Use different rules” is certainly a solution, but outside the parameters of the exercise.

 

[Tonguez]

A possible adventure topic.

[File the serial numbers off, obviously...]
How would Keep on the Borderlands be written/revised if it was intended for:

• A party of four PC's of 16th level:
  
  [*]The party may have retainers or an entourage​
  [*]The party may have a base of operations​
• Opponents that are:
  
  [*]Opponents that are organized​
  [*]Opponents that may be aware of the PC's plans in advance​
  [*]Opponents that may be capable of stiking the PC's base of operations​
• Additional Challenges:
  
  [*]A party of 16th level characters have more resources with which to handle morally grey topics. How will they handle the moral problems the original module creates​

Or rebuild any early "problematic" adventure, as proof of concept.

Keep on the Border Ethereal?
A cold mist coils across the road as you ascend toward the high battlements of the Keep. Shadows stretch forward, reaching for you, as the sun dips behind the twisted outlines of mountains and ancient trees. But this is not the Keep you expected. Its walls shimmer, translucent and wavering, as though it exists in two planes at once. Guards stand at attention, yet you catch glimpses of other figures, half-seen, almost shadows, fading the instant you look directly at them.

Then, as if a breath has passed through the stones, the Keep looms solid grey once more. A chill crawls down your spine. Something is reaching out, pulling the Keep and its surroundings into the Deep Ethereal.

Shadows gather on the ramparts, and darker things now stalk the forest. The Cult of the Caves has completed their dark ritual, whatever lurks there now is far more terrible than what they were before.

=> PCs find themselves on a Border Ethereal, with the Keep flickering in and out and the Caves transformed into portals to the Deep Ethereal and its many unnatural creatures and phenomena.

PCs need to negotiate both sides of the veil as they seek to discover what or who is reaching out of the Deep Ethereal. Can they stabilize the Keep, save its denizens, end the Cult and close the portals that have been opened?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Too good, that's the issue. Combat is basically an "I win" button for the PCs. So you need to challenge them with problems that cannot be solved with violence.

Or monsters they cannot simply 'win' against.

I'm building a "Godsrealm Generator" as part of my God Rules: Player's Guide. This includes the terrain of the Realm itself and also the central Lair (Tomb, Castle, Mansion, Dungeon, Tomb - you choose from several simple layout styles). Originally this was for the PCs to build their own Realm/Fortress, but now that I have built it, I see its more of a Quick Adventure Generator for exploring an Immortal's Realm or Fortress.

I'm still tweaking the details but I am convinced its robust enough to challenge high level characters. Plus the Lair section can easily be adapted for creating Adventures of any level. If I get the time and space in the book I might write up a brief sample Adventure.

 

[dave2008]

What about a Planar post office?

The PCs are called to deliver a letter to the Queen of Air and Darkness or maybe a recipient in Hell?

I love this idea!

 

[dave2008]

@Reynard, have you looked at Chains of Asmodeus? Is is "semi-official," created as a possible follow up to Descent in Avernus and is levels 11-20. Also, it is not "save the world" adventure, but save the soul or your friends / loved ones. It is a loner adventure so it doesn't meet all your constraints, but you could just start at the latter half of the adventure and jump in at level 16-20.

 

[dave2008]

As I said, minions are pointless. Multiple bosses, the players will just split up and take them out one at a time. The only way those PCs aren’t going to win is if the opponents can take out the entire party in the first round of combat.

And that doesn’t make for a good encounter either.

In Chains of Avernus the PCs (levels 11-20) are pursued by a pair of Devil brothers that are both CR 21 and you must kill both in the same round to finish them off. It can be a very dangerous conflict that could occur at any point in the adventure.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The players must travel to the Feywild to find a magical, roaming hut inhabited by the orc god Gruumsh, whom they must convince to part with his ambrosia pie.

If a longer campaign is needed, the adventurers must cross the multiverse to locate the ingredients of said pie for Gruumsh to bake for them.

 

[dave2008]

What ruleset are you using? The CRPG? Not 5e out the box if you have Mythic tiers in any case.

“Use different rules” is certainly a solution, but outside the parameters of the exercise.

Wrath of the Righteous is a Pathfinder game so mythic tiers are RAW. Though as this is a 5e thread it is outside the parameters of this exercise as you suggest.

 

[Reynard]

Honestly I like the idea of a heist scenario.

Perhaps the target is a very secure vault, in a dangerous plane of existence like Carceri or Hell. The target, whatever it is, is in a place that only a team of level 16+ PCs have any hope of getting into. The players will need to both gather information and do research, solve puzzles and problems, and possibly fight off the guards of the vault.

My favorite kind of heist is the reverse heist. I ran Shadowdark game where the PCs had to recover powerful artifact crowns from the (now retired) adventurers that had robbed them from their tombs and break back in and give them back before the unquiet dead queens within punished the whole city. It was fun. Something like that could be reworked to higher level.