D&D 5E Level-agnostic adventures

[merwins]

I'm not excluding OSR adventures.
I don't mean simple narratives where I have to fill in level appropriate challenges.
I don't mean stat-free.
I don't mean scalable adventures.
I don't mean progression based adventure collections (campaigns).

If you know of any adventures that can be played through, with stats as published, by groups of any (or nearly any) level, please post links here.

 

[the Jester]

I don't have links or know if you can find them, but back in the day- mostly during the 2e era, I believe- Dungeon Magazine published a number of "Contest of Champion" adventures that were level-agnostic and almost totally depended on player skill, rather than stats. The two that I read were really good, but I've never played them or run them.

 

[NotAYakk]

I don't know of any. But the problem is interesting...

You'd sort of have to have a range of possible outcomes, as the capabilities of a wish swinging mage and one who can create a magical lightbulb are a bit far apart.

Here is a stab at a plot. Vecna is going to kill Ioun. Or kills Ioun.

At low levels, it is an adventure about survival. Saving a small band of people against a disaster; in this case, the back blast of ioun dying and vecna taking her place.

Next tier, it is an attempt to save the archive, a copy of iouns knowledge, and share it with the world. Knowledge wants to be free.

The next step, you try to protect her reincarnation, so she can be reborn, against agents of vecna.

Above that, you can intercept the murder plot, and turn the tables on the god lich of secrets. Or self incarnate as ioun yourselves.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think there is anything like a level agnostic adventure, since D&D magic generally offers solutions to problems not available at lower levels regardless of what the problem is.

It is possible to design adventures that a party of any level can succeed at. To do it, you need to either have purely passive problems that only react to things a player does, so that you have a pure test of player skill, or you have to have challenges which purely test things that most players don't invest chargen resources so that higher level characters are only marginally better at solving the problem than lower level characters.

Tomb of Horrors is actually fairly close to being a challenge that a party of 1st level characters could complete, but which would seriously challenge a party of 10th level characters. However, the odds of completion (without spoilers) are still much better for a party of 10th level characters than they are for lower level characters.

 

[merwins]

Thanks for the clues. Found this link.

How to Create Level-Independent Challenges (a la Challenge of Champions) | DMDave Workshop

BroadSword Magazine #1 is officially on the way, the entire run of the magazine has secured over $40,000 on Kickstarter. One of the adventures in the first issue involves an old-school, level-indep…

dmdave.com

Not sure this is the direction I want to pursue.
While I have gone this route before (player puzzles instead of character puzzles), I think i want to try something different.

I've noticed that often times, players (and therefore their characters) default to learned habits. Those learned habits change over time, and with good roleplayers, may be dependent on character personality as well.

Should be able to design encounter paths such that encounter resolution is based on character personality and actions rather than player capability.

Things like Wish would pose the greatest problem, but that spell is not naturally available in my game.

 

[S'mon]

Social challenges and some mysteries that can't be solved by dice rolling may offer the most level-agnostic opportunities. An adventure based around intrigue in a royal court, for instance, may offer threats and opportunities independent of a PC's personal power. Even a character who can auto a 30 on Persuasion* in 5e may do badly if they make the wrong choices - qv A Game of Thrones.

*Epic Rogue 20 with Reliable Talent, Persuasion Expertise (+12), and CHA 26+ (+8).

 

[Lanefan]

I'd probably go with some sort of mystery, particularly if you can find a way to nerf divination magic so they have to figure it out the hard way.

 

[aco175]

I don't have links or know if you can find them, but back in the day- mostly during the 2e era, I believe- Dungeon Magazine published a number of "Contest of Champion" adventures that were level-agnostic and almost totally depended on player skill, rather than stats. The two that I read were really good, but I've never played them or run them.

Loved these modules. They are a lot of player logic over character skill.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

You can probably find some Planescape adventures like this. Try "Tales From the Infinite Staircase", it's a compendium of several related adventures. Of course, they are strongly setting-specific so I don't know if that will work.

 

[Quartz]

If you know of any adventures that can be played through, with stats as published, by groups of any (or nearly any) level, please post links here.

Look up the 'Challenge of Champions' adventures in Dungeon magazine.