D&D 5E Running High Level 5E is more fun than I thought it would be.

Divine intervention is tricky and only as powerful as the DM decides it is. This is typically just a free spell and the the corresponding saving throw (and resistance) still applies. I'm not familiar with the winter queen though.

Also, reading through your list of monsters I'm not surprised if it was an easy fight. When monster's CR are significantly below the average level of the party they don't count as much as you'd think. That and I never take into account the numbers multiplier, I just add up XP on both sides.

So at best by my calculation guesstimate you may have thrown 2 medium encounters. Given those were the only two fights of they day I'd be surprised if they even broke a sweat.
 

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I've found play in T3 (i.e. 11-16) to work pretty well, and certainly it's a lot of fun. The only major problem I've noted is that 5-8 (or 6-8) encounters/day thing reaaaaaaally seems to apply hardcore here (at lower levels it's less of an issue). If you only throw, say, three encounters a day at them, they have to all be "Deadly" to really make them even sweat, and even then they probably only sweat on the third.

But it runs far better than 3E or, I hate to say it, 4E did at that level. With 4E it was far easier to make the players sweat, and to devise interesting encounters which actually worked out as expected from a DM perspective (this was true in my experience at all levels in 4E, though), but combat bogged down horrifically due to all the counterplay and immediate actions and situational bonuses, which 5E has eliminated via the tight action economy. So combat at L14 isn't all that much slower than L5, say.
 



Oofta said:
A young dragon doesn't have legendary resistance, it would have to be an adult or older. Not sure how they got rid of the queen or what her stats were.
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Ah I missed it was a young dragon. Banishment is trivial if there’s no resistance.
 

Oh by the way. When I ran my campaign after about 12-13 level I just maxed hit points on all the bad guys. The fights were ending way too fast for the players to feel challenged. It is a simple fix for my problem that didn't require me to do much finagling.
 

robus said:
Ah I missed it was a young dragon. Banishment is trivial if there’s no resistance.
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Which can be okay if the party has to worry about managing resources. Even then I probably would have had the queen and her pet dragon banished to a temporary demiplane.

TheDelphian said:
Oh by the way. When I ran my campaign after about 12-13 level I just maxed hit points on all the bad guys. The fights were ending way too fast for the players to feel challenged. It is a simple fix for my problem that didn't require me to do much finagling.
Click to expand...

I find that upping attack bonus by even a couple of points and maxing damage works better for me, it avoids the slog. But there are plenty of ways to adjust challenges without cheating.
 

The Snow Queen did have Legendary Resistance but since it was the Divine Intervention I ruled it would work for at least a few rounds. I just didn't expect them to also banish the dragon and single round the giant.
 



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