D&D 5E Running D&D 5e for Levels 10+

[robus]

Is your group more than 4 players? Do they use standard ability score generation? Do they use feats? Do they have magic items? Are they experienced players? Do their character builds work well together? Do they have more than 1 long rest per 6-8 encounters?

Any combination of the above is going to affect what you need to throw at PCs to challenge them. Unlike a computer game, the developers don't have control over your group or your effectiveness as a DM at implementing smart tactics for the monsters.

This thread has devolved ... do you have any suggestions about how to scale up encounters to get to the difficulty level you seek? I gave a page or so of suggestions several pages back, is there anything other than adding HP to make encounters tougher?

I’m not sure what you’re wanting from me? As I said my monsters don’t have trouble hitting the characters, it’s just that they get taken out too fast for the combat to be meaningful. in my experience the main issue has been longevity. Perhaps if my monsters lived long enough I’d have insight into other improvements...

And I’m not sure why you think my comment is off topic? My players are at level 14 and this is the difficulty I’ve found challenging them and Hussar’s suggestion sounds like a good approach.

You could just ignore my comment if you feel it’s unhelpful of course.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not really. Numerically speaking, most 7th level parties are probably pretty close. This edition isn't terribly susceptible to optimization, at least compared to either of the two preceding editions. The book tells you how you should assign your stats, and even if you just follow that advice, you're going to be pretty solid.

Stat designation is the least of what I’m talking about, although it does matter. What about feats? Multiclassing? Number of party members? Were the PCs created in isolation or collaboratively?

If such uniformity as you suggest existed, then why do we have such varying examples of party strength in play?

Numbers have meaning within the system. The point of a system is in how the mechanics reflect the reality of the setting. That's what the game is, which distinguishes it from other games on the market.

A roc has Strength 28, and that's supposed to let it pick up an elephants. The Tarrasque has Strength 30, and it's depicted as knocking down buildings. If I need a monster to have Strength 50 in order to challenge the party, then that means it should be able to juggle mountains, or else I'm not playing in this system anymore. As the DM, I don't want to put the party up against a mountain-juggling cosmic monstrosity as anything other than the grand finale of the campaign. That is the issue, is that the mechanics required to challenge a basic high-level party would not be sustainable within the setting.

Numbers have what meaning we give them in the system. Your descriptions of Strength scores are totally arbitrary. I mean, a score of 50 is nearly twoce that of 28, and yet I think a mountain weighs far more than about 2 elephants.

And again, you’re relying totally on Ability Scores. But you’re not limited to Ability Scores when you want to adjust a monster. You can assign any kind of bonus you like. Look at the Brute ability of the Bugbear. It drastically increases the creature’s damage output without altering its Strength score.

But rather than get tied up in all this back and forth...how do you handle the game above level 10? Do you not run games at that level? Do you make adjustments to enemies? Or throw tons of creatures at the PCs?

How do you deal with the abilities that high level PCs possess?

 

[Hussar]

It's not about apologizing for the designers. But, it is about recognizing the source of the issue and dealing with it as needed.

1. The Monster Manual DOES NOT PRESUME feats. Feats are optional. The Basic Rules do not include feats, for example, so, any group using the Basic Rules who tried to use a "Turned up to 11" monster manual would have many issues.

2. EVERY solution proposed gets immediately ignored and I have no idea why. Your PC's are dealing X damage per round? Ok, fine. Design for your party. You want a strong fight, then you need about 4x HP for the encounter. Monster damage doesn't seem to be the issue, simply monster longevity during the fight. So, fix the HP and you're gold. But apparently, this is a completely unrealistic, or unwanted, bit of advice that cannot possibly work.

3. NOT EVERY GROUP is having this issue. And that's getting ignored. I'm not saying that your group isn't having the problem. I'm sure that it is. [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] would not be banging this drum pretty much weekly (if not daily) for three years if it wasn't a problem in his game. But, again, we're back to point 2. Every solution is ignored and the ONLY solution is for the designers to "fix" the game, even though a fix for his group would make the game completely unusable for me.

4. Power creep is a real problem here. If we go the route of redesigning the game, presumably players will simply find new ways to up their DPR and render the new set of challenges too easy. So, we up the monsters again. Onwards and upwards. We saw this in every single edition so far. I'd much prefer to fix this issue at someone's specific table rather than force the problem on everyone.

So, my basic question still remains. What would you like to see as a fix to this problem? Upping monsters and/or reducing PC DPR? Doing that would require a complete rewrite of the Monster Manual and PHB. You're essentially asking for D&D 5.5 Ed. No thanks. I'd much rather that you fix your own problems rather than force me to keep up with the splat churn just to keep "current" for the expected challenge level. I'm going to be 100% selfish here.

I AM NOT HAVING YOUR PROBLEM. Please, do not try to force your solution on my table. Not when fixing your problems is so ludicrously simple.

 

[Eric V]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], if it was published as a separate module, there would be no solution forced on your table, right?

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], if it was published as a separate module, there would be no solution forced on your table, right?

Fair enough. But, then people would bitch about every subsequent supplement that didn't take that into account. Would the next Volo's guide follow the module or the baseline? And what would you actually expect to see in this module that isn't being presented right here? How about new character options? Baseline or the new module? You are adding a level of complexity to the game that would have to be accounted for in every product going forward. Modules would need to be published twice, once for you and once for me.

Or do you really think the kvetching would stop if a simple Unearthed Arcana article detailing "turn it to 11" was published and then never referenced by any other product?

 

[Hussar]

Off the top of my head, solutions to running D&D at "turned to 11":

1. Max monster HP.

2. Adjust monster HP to reflect party DPS.

3. Tap in 3 levels of Bear Totem Barbarian to any solo monster. ((Thus increasing it's HP, effectively doubling its HP as well (except to psychic damage) and granting attack, skill and damage bonuses))

4. Actually follow the 6-8 encounter/day guidelines.

5. Remove the +5/-10 feats.

6. Design encounters so that they do not directly challenge PC strengths or, if you want to directly challenge PC strengths, accept that these encounters will be far easier than expected.

7. Use terrain and scenario design features to challenge PC's. Lighting, unstable footing, choke points, whatever.

8. Add in character levels to any monster to greatly increase monster options. Imagine a demon with a few levels of warlock, being able to see clearly in 120 feet of darkness, and using spells like Hunger of Hadar.

There. Surely any or all of those options, which took me all of 5 minutes to come up with, would solve 99% of your problems. The only issue now is YOU (not you [MENTION=6779717]Eric V[/MENTION], but the general you) have to do the work. Easy peasy.

 

[Oofta]

I’m not sure what you’re wanting from me? As I said my monsters don’t have trouble hitting the characters, it’s just that they get taken out too fast for the combat to be meaningful. in my experience the main issue has been longevity. Perhaps if my monsters lived long enough I’d have insight into other improvements...

And I’m not sure why you think my comment is off topic? My players are at level 14 and this is the difficulty I’ve found challenging them and Hussar’s suggestion sounds like a good approach.

You could just ignore my comment if you feel it’s unhelpful of course.

Sorry if I misunderstood, or if my response didn't convey tone correctly.

Increasing HP is one simple and easy way of increasing threat level of a monster.

 

[Hussar]

Just as a thought. Give a Frost giant 4 levels of Bear Totem Barbarian and the Tough feat. That gives him a base of 208 HP, effectively doubled to 416 HP, and, heck, make him a Frenzy Barbarian for a 3rd attack on the second round onward. Becomes about a CR 10 creature (or thereabouts). Would take about 10 seconds to stat that up.

Do we really need to rewrite the books for this?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Stat designation is the least of what I’m talking about, although it does matter. What about feats? Multiclassing? Number of party members? Were the PCs created in isolation or collaboratively?

If such uniformity as you suggest existed, then why do we have such varying examples of party strength in play?

I don't know that we do. I haven't heard many examples where the dragon swoops down to claw at the party, and the PCs all die because it's just stronger than they are. Most of the anecdotal evidence in this thread is consistent with PCs being uniformly very powerful, and high-level monsters being uniformly chumps.

But rather than get tied up in all this back and forth...how do you handle the game above level 10? Do you not run games at that level? Do you make adjustments to enemies? Or throw tons of creatures at the PCs?

How do you deal with the abilities that high level PCs possess?

Large groups of enemies still pose a challenge, as do multiple encounters in a day. The traditional dungeon format can be useful for forcing linearity, so that the party has to deal with several challenges in a row, although that can also feel contrived if everything magically resets when they leave to rest. In my case, the party had made a powerful enemy by that point, so they felt obligated to complete each dungeon quickly before anyone could notice and escape to tell the boss.

Also, Empyreans. At one point, I needed stats for the kind of super-powered war golem that a nigh-omnipotent evil wizard would create, and I settled on the Empyrean as the closest thing in the book. One Empyrean makes for an easy fight, and two Empyreans make for a hard fight. Neither of those will challenge a party, on their own, but they can count as one of the six fights in a day. You could probably also use adult dragons for your standard mooks, depending on what makes sense for the world and what's going on.

And in the rare case where I needed a solo monster to challenge the entire party, I resorted to the kind of powerful cosmic beings that I mentioned. In the first case, that was the Archmage/Lich/AncientBlackDragon/DoubleKraken. In the second case, it was a miles-wide dragon of pure energy with thousands of hit points and a breath weapon that could vaporize cities. It's not something you could really pull off in a setting that you planned to use again, but for a one-time event, it provided a definitive conclusion.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know that we do. I haven't heard many examples where the dragon swoops down to claw at the party, and the PCs all die because it's just stronger than they are. Most of the anecdotal evidence in this thread is consistent with PCs being uniformly very powerful, and high-level monsters being uniformly chumps.

Okay, fair enough. The examples in this thread have mostly been like that. I’d argue that they’re pretty vague, so it’s hard to know if things could have went differently, and also that it’s mostly a few people citing the weakness of monsters over and over.

I suppose I was thinking back to other threads about this topic, and remembering many anecdotes on the other side. And my own...I have no problem challenging my group of level 15 to 16 PCs. The characters are effective, the players are experienced, and they function really well as a team. The players are all friends who’ve been playing together for a minimum of 20 years.

I think one good encounter I can thibk of took place in the Astral Plane, on the hisk of the dead god Aoskar. The party faced a group of githyanki and their red dragon. I used the base githyanki entry in the MM as the grunts, and bolstered them with a few elite githyanki with fighter levels, a couple of clerics, and a githyanki version of the archmage. Since they were on their home turf, they all had strong positions, including elevation and cover. I played them as an effective group that acted with caution and tact. The dragon was just the icing on the cake. All I did to him was max out his HP.

So I added some class levels to some villains, used terrain and cover to increase challenge, maxed out the dragon’s HP, and didn’t play the villains as though they were just waiting to be killed by the PCs. The githyanki archers readied actions. Their caster used counterspell to foil PC spells. The dragon didn’t sit on its perch taking shot after shot from the Ranger and lamenting its inability to go toe to toe with the party.

Yes, the PCs won. But it was not an easy battle by any means. And although I did adjust some of the bad guys, none of what I did was so drastic as to require a new rule book. I used my own judgment and what the game has already provided.

I could share more anecdotes allng those lines if it would help the conversation to provide examples.

Large groups of enemies still pose a challenge, as do multiple encounters in a day. The traditional dungeon format can be useful for forcing linearity, so that the party has to deal with several challenges in a row, although that can also feel contrived if everything magically resets when they leave to rest. In my case, the party had made a powerful enemy by that point, so they felt obligated to complete each dungeon quickly before anyone could notice and escape to tell the boss.

Also, Empyreans. At one point, I needed stats for the kind of super-powered war golem that a nigh-omnipotent evil wizard would create, and I settled on the Empyrean as the closest thing in the book. One Empyrean makes for an easy fight, and two Empyreans make for a hard fight. Neither of those will challenge a party, on their own, but they can count as one of the six fights in a day. You could probably also use adult dragons for your standard mooks, depending on what makes sense for the world and what's going on.

And in the rare case where I needed a solo monster to challenge the entire party, I resorted to the kind of powerful cosmic beings that I mentioned. In the first case, that was the Archmage/Lich/AncientBlackDragon/DoubleKraken. In the second case, it was a miles-wide dragon of pure energy with thousands of hit points and a breath weapon that could vaporize cities. It's not something you could really pull off in a setting that you planned to use again, but for a one-time event, it provided a definitive conclusion.

Okay. I’ve come up with pretty powerful unique beings for my party to face. Nothing along the lines of what you’re describing, but I homebrewed Duke Amon. Nothjng wrong with that kind of thing. I still had him bolstered by several other creatures, though.

It sounds to me like you are very hesitant to deviate from the established math and the monster entries as they exist, is that right?