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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 1425588" data-attributes="member: 2">I really disagree with mmadsen. While I had some magical countermeasures in place during this last adventure in order to foster a sense of isolation, it's the first time I've ever done that, and I've never needed it before. My general rule of thumb when dealing with high level adventurers is to take the players' assumptions and then twist them. An example that came up recently: the group was planning to storm a hidden underground temple-laboratory dedicated to the God of Abominations. I had planned it with a whole slew of melded-animal and melded-monster abominations, a handful of "scientists" (mostly clerics and wizards) doing the experimenting, and a vampiric dracolich being falsely worshipped as a deific avatar by everyone in the temple.I had a wonderful entrance for the dracolich. Throughout the temple were mounted dragon skulls on walls; each of these breathed out clouds of mist. In some cases, the mist was magical and transported anyone in it into the next room. My plan was for the group to come into yet another room with a dragon skull on the wall. The difference was that this time, the skull belonged to the dracolich as she observed comings and goings with her head stuck through a wall. I figured that the players would relax into a pattern by the time they got there, so it would be a tremendous surprise when she tumbled down the wall and attacked.Of course, my players somewhat outsmarted me. They used commune with nature to figure out which parts of the underground temple had the greatest concentrations of evil. Then they used an earthquake to collapse as much of the complex as possible, and used digging spells to tunnel straight down to the nasty parts. It was beautiful tactics.In return, the dracolich heard them coming and got into position. They angled so as to emerge into her anteroom, and so she gave them a moment or two of false security before she set off the trap that I had previously planned. It was a glorious battle. Tactically, the earthquake meant that certain reinforcements couldn't reach the dracolich in time, and that was a reward for the group's clever thinking. There was still plenty of suspense and drama, though, no question about it.My point is really that since high lvl characters have a lot of resources at their disposal, you have to challenge the players to think and outsmart you. Do that by guessing how they'd most easily solve a problem, and make a solution a possible problem in itself. Someone here recently mentioned tracking a really evil bad guy to his home town, only to learn that he was a most beloved mayor; that's a great example of requiring your players to then take a different and more creative tack to finding a solution.I have several ongoing plots that might never be solved if the group doesn't use divination spells to get a glimpse into what is going on. These are fun adventures, but they'd be much tougher to do if the group wasn't high level.</blockquote>

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