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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jimmytheccomic" data-source="post: 7341861" data-attributes="member: 6875326">I'm running for a level 18 party now- I'd read a lot about how they're difficult to challenge once they hit high levels, so I was expecting some huge power spike, but honestly it's not THAT much different than the lower levels. Here's a few things I've been doing that keep the game rough for them:1.) Completely ignore the difficulty charts given in the book. They are super useful for the first five levels, and good as a rough guideline for levels 6-10, but once they hit around 11 or 12 the difficulty suggested by the book is completely irrelevant, just feel out your players and put in what would be challenging.For instance, my most recent game had two encounters. In the first encounter, the party fought two Goristros (CR 17), backed up by three "Bulezau", fairly standard CR 13 creatures that I made. In the second encounter, the party fought a mind flayer lich (CR 22), backed up by four mind flayers (CR 7). Now, if we go by the book, these encounters should have killed them several times over. That's absolutely not happening. But, they were certainly challenging encounters, and the party still has a bit to go before they're able to long rest- the players are totally nervous about running out of juice before they hit the finish line.In my experience, if you're comfortable completely ignoring the XP charts of the book, and you're making them have several encounters between long rests, you can absolutely put the pressure on them.2. Another nice DM trick that I've noticed is, as the PCs get higher level their ability scores don't really increase by a ton. So, if you switch out damage dealers for "Fail this save and take damage" or "Fail this save and some horrific status effect happens", combat stays tricky for them. 3. Build your own monsters. Monster creation is a whole different thread, but you do want to get comfortable making your own creatures for the higher level game. Specifically, I've found bringing back in stat/ability score damage really hammers them. They've got a lot of resources to deal with HP loss, but once you start hitting their stats they just have less juice to deal with the consequences. Combine this fact with ability scores remaining a challenge anyway, and they can have a pretty tough adventuring day.</blockquote>

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