D&D 5E Scaling Rage of Demons for higher level party

[Simon Mountney]

Hi all, I'm a fairly new DM and working my group quite happily through Princes of the Apocalypse right now and having a lot of fun with it. When it ends though I figured I could easily enough merge the quest ending into the start of Rage of Demons. My question though is how I should go about levelling up the various encounters. PotA will get them all to level 15ish, and RoD is built expecting a group of level 1 PCs. While I will of course offer the players the chance to roll fresh characters I suspect they will all remain invested in the continued adventures of their existing team - assuming they don't get TPKed.

RoD isn't out yet so taking Princes of the Apocalypse as an example, if a group of level 15 players started that campaign what would I need to do to challenge the group fairly? Starting adventures are very simple so that new players can figure things out as they go. This wouldn't be needed in this case.

Help very much appreciated!

 

[S'mon]

In 5e it seems pretty easy to level-up encounters just by increasing the number of monsters? Maybe add a higher-CR leader.

 

[Prism]

It could be quite a challenge if you played the adventure as is, even with scaled encounters I think. Your party will have access to high level magic which could change whole sections of the way the adventure ran. And at these levels I imagine your players will be ready to fight some pretty high level opponents rather than goin back and fighting more low levels ones similar to the stuff they have been doing in Princes of the Apocalypse

If it was me I would write my own mini adventure using some of the encounter areas from the module but my own monsters and story. This could be quite hard to write as a new DM though? This is something like I am going to write for my group. One of our characters has a long time issue with Grazzt and this could be an opportunity to write something into our campaign to deal with that story. Its not often you get to kill a demon prince on the prime material plane on your own terms - a certain character has been waiting a good while for a chance like this.

Or start over with new characters and play as written. Sometimes it can help to have a connection or two between the original characters and the new ones if that works for the group

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Here's an idea: leave the whole adventure intact exactly the way it is, and see how fast your players can curbstomp it, until suddenly they don't and then die to overconfidence. Might be fun, for them and for you.

 

[hawkeyefan]

[MENTION=6705778]Simon Mountney[/MENTION], how far into Princes of the Apocalypse are you? I would say adjust the latter part of that adventure down a bit, which shouldn't be too difficult except for the Elemental Princes themselves. But if you haven't gotten too far into it, maybe adjust it so that it ends at level 10 or 12, maybe. And then Adjust the beginning of Out of the Abyss up a bit until things kind of level off on their own.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6705778]Simon Mountney[/MENTION] Welcome to ENWorld!

From the looks of it, Out of the Abyss will have several demon lords statted in it, definitely Zuggtmoy and Orcus (he's CR 26).

You could simply focus combat on fighting demons and leave the role-playing and exploration stuff mostly unchanged.

In Chris Perkin's interview he mentioned that the intention isn't to have characters in the level 1-15 range facing demon lords. However with your party starting at 15th level, maybe that's part of their end game rather than (or in addition to) organizing an army or banishing the demon lords? Take out Jubilex, Zuggtmoy, Orcus, etc. in epic frickin' battles.

You could even tie the demons to Tharzidun if you wanted better flow from Princes of the Apocalypse. Perhaps Tharzidun is attempting to break free thru the portals opening to the Abyss in the Underdark?

 

[Dkase]

Here's an idea: leave the whole adventure intact exactly the way it is, and see how fast your players can curbstomp it, until suddenly they don't and then die to overconfidence. Might be fun, for them and for you.

I think this would be a pretty fun idea too! Let the PCs revel in what they earned!

 

[S'mon]

Here's an idea: leave the whole adventure intact exactly the way it is, and see how fast your players can curbstomp it, until suddenly they don't and then die to overconfidence. Might be fun, for them and for you.

I agree there's no harm in some kerbstomp battles early on (except in 4e). One thing you can often do to increase threat level is to combine several combat encounters in one, in 5e this swiftly increases the challenge level a *lot*, it also means you play through it quicker which is good as you'll probably want to get to the later stuff fast.

 

[CapnZapp]

NB. Rage of Demons is WotCs name of the overall product line-up, or "storyline", for fall 2015. Rage of Demons includes novels, computer games, miniatures and assorted merchandise.

And, yes, even a pen and paper supplement! *shock* The pen-n-paper campaign book we're discussing here is called Out of the Abyss.

Now that we're on the same page, to offer the contrary opinion:

I recommend you drop the idea to take level 15 characters through a level 1 adventure. It will be much more exciting if each player comes up with a new character, possibly a protege or relative to the old one.

Based on WotC's uneven CR mechanism, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if a gang of well optimized level 15 characters will be able to take down even demon lords, especially if the party is larger than four, the DM has been generous with magical loot and/or the DM plays monsters in "cinematic mode" (that is, make them underestimate the heroes and wade into reckless battle just like stereotypical bad guys in action flicks often do).

Taken together, this will probably mean 90% of the adventure will be wasted. Also think about the previews we've gotten showcasing "whimsical" NPCs - if there's one thing that makes players ignore bothersome or irritating characters, it is when they know they are pushovers and can safely be ignored.

Compare to the gradual build-up where every NPC is a credible threat and therefore needs to be interacted with properly you get when the PCs are fragile low level neophytes.

(Do note: the adventure isn't out yet, so all of this is just guesses)