D&D 5E (2014) Looking for Campaigns for 14+ level PCs

[OB1]

Dungeon of the Mad Mage contains adventures for levels up to 20. I borrowed a couple of those and converted the fluff to fit into my campaign pretty easily. Which to Jer's point right above, took place almost exclusively in the Outer Planes once the party hit Tier IV.

But ultimately, high level play in D&D requires a big commitment from the DM to make it fun. At Tier IV, the specific makeup of the party has a huge effect on what challenges them. What would be trivial to one 18th level party might be an impossible challenge for another, which is what makes creating published adventures at higher levels so tricky to produce.

What I can say, is that if you can make that commitment, it will be worth it, both for you and the players.

 

[Reynard]

14th level characters are basically the Avengers. Unless you have a threat like Ultron or Thanos it's not worth them getting out of bed. And Ultron and Thanos do not hang around on street corners mugging little old ladies.

No you don't. You need challenges that demand high powered PCs but you dont need villains that want to take over the world.

An ancient gold dragon is nearing the end of it's long life and wishes to distribute its hoard to other good dragons. It chooses the PCs to not only act as envoys for it but protect the treasure parcels in transit from evil dragons.

A wizard accidentally plane shifted an entire city to Somewhere Else and could really use the PCs' help getting it back, please and thank you.

Epic Level adventurers from different Prime worlds come and off the PCs a place in their Multiversal League if Justice, since they are the big damn heroes of their world. Of course, they are small fries on the big stage and will have to prove themselves.

For their efforts in defeating the Big Bads that got them to 13th level, the PCs are rewarded with a frontier to tame. They are more powerful than anything in the region, but can they carve civilization out of the wilds?

 

[robus]

What I can say, is that if you can make that commitment, it will be worth it, both for you and the players.

Precisely. My players are currently at level 19 and still having fun. Is it hard to make their PCs suffer? Sure. But it’s still easy to make them (as players) curious and still easy to make them laugh at the absurdity of some situations.

And that’s really all it needs. Are you all still having fun?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In addition I quite liked running "5 Coins for a Kingdom" back in the day. Also "Where Chaos Reigns".

So I disagree with Paul Farquhar in one respect. Your 14th level players don't need to be the Avengers, they can be the bridge crew of the Enterprise instead. Planar adventures for high level characters are where it's at IMO - get them away from the game world and off on a journey of exploration in the Outer Planes and you'll find that there are tons of places you can steal at least adventure ideas from, if not whole adventures.

The thing is, the bridge crew of the Enterprise do not wander the universe at random doing sidequests. They have a five year mission. They have a ship and redshirts to manage. The game at high level has a whole different format: rather than being a sandbox it is mission and management based. The best way to continue to challenge a high level party is to give them problems which can't be solved with force, such as treaty negotiations. Now some players might like that sort of thing, but it's a very different to the low level game.

 

[S'mon]

D&D simply doesn't work well at that level, especially when it comes to sidequests. Anything powerful enough to challenge a 14th level party is far to powerful to be relegated to a mere sidequest. You need a string of world/universe/multiverse threatening archvillains.

That matches my experience of 3e/PF, but not 5e. I challenged a 10th-14th level 5e party last session with 12 CR 3 plant/zombie thingies in a dungeon cellar. A few demons or devils can easily provide a challenge. Bounded Accuracy means that a few (eg) Nalfeshnee can easily challenge high level PCs without being a world-ending threat.

 

[S'mon]

14th level characters are basically the Avengers. Unless you have a threat like Ultron or Thanos it's not worth them getting out of bed. And Ultron and Thanos do not hang around on street corners mugging little old ladies.

IME 20th level PCs with Epic Boons do kinda play like The Avengers. Not at 14th though, at least not the groups I've seen.

What I've been doing with my high level 5e group is running Paizo AP adventures converted from Pathfinder. We recently played Shattered Star #5 and are currently on #6, these have been working very well. The threats tend to be grand but regional - "Save Magnimar" not "Save Golarion".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That matches my experience of 3e/PF, but not 5e. I challenged a 10th-14th level 5e party last session with 12 CR 3 plant/zombie thingies in a dungeon cellar. A few demons or devils can easily provide a challenge. Bounded Accuracy means that a few (eg) Nalfeshnee can easily challenge high level PCs without being a world-ending threat.

The problem isn't finding monsters tough enough to be a challenge. The problem is monsters that tough usually have agendas of their own, they don't hang around in the wilderness stealing the odd cow.

 

[amethal]

The problem isn't finding monsters tough enough to be a challenge. The problem is monsters that tough usually have agendas of their own, they don't hang around in the wilderness stealing the odd cow.

I thought one of the advantages of the bounded accuracy approach was that you could use (say) 12 CR 3 monsters to challenge a high level party. A band of CR 3 monsters doesn't need a world-shaking agenda (although they will presumably be doing more than stealing cows).

I've no idea if it works in practice, since I don't play 5e, but it seems to work for S'mon.

 

[Morrus]

Eeek. I initially read that as "14+ PCs!"

 

[S'mon]

The problem isn't finding monsters tough enough to be a challenge. The problem is monsters that tough usually have agendas of their own, they don't hang around in the wilderness stealing the odd cow.

No, they hang around in evil dungeons, evil wizard towers & such.