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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 9049942" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I totally want the players to have fun and win, because if they aren't having fun I won't be either. It does go the other way though, and my multiverse is like my own PC with an identity, consistency, etc that needs to be respected for me to have fun (so that the players can have it in this reciprocal thing).I don't like to do arbitrary things to create challenge at high level. I want things to make sense in the setting. A world isn't suddenly going to be facing multiple epic threats just because the PCs can handle them now. Neither will I artificially alter stat blocks. In this context I mean I might give a monster levels, or special abilities that have an in-world explanation, but I won't just change the math in their statblock to increase the challenge (unless it's a permanent well considered change, rather than a party customization, but YMMV).For me, while you can have an occasional Material Plane epic combat, mostly, you want to shift to the Planes.The example I always use of a completely non-contrived challenge that can be as hard as you want and still perfectly fit the setting is an army of fiends. Because of the Blood War there are lots of those. Use one. The party has to fight an army of fiends. Of course, they might be able to find ways to achieve their objective without doing that, which is totally cool. Just make some (obvious to the players) benefit of fighting the army rather than overcoming the obstacle another way. Like some really nice loot the top commanders are wielding. If the players choose not to take the bait, I'm going to assume that they aren't interested in that sort of awesome fun challenge, and they are wrong, but what ya gonna do, lol. Let them decide.You can decide how big of a force they have to deal with, but the important thing is to look up the lore and do it justice. You can find material in 5e and your previous edition of choice telling you how these armies should be composed.CR 7 fiends as shock troops? Well that's supposed to be the first line charging in, so if you have an small force of 500, that's going to be dozens of those bad boys.CR 11 fiends described as aerial artillery? You'll need several. CR 10 lesser commanders? One per every 20 troops at least. Etc. Your milling masses of lemures or manes, even if you count them in the numbers, shouldn't be more than half the troops. And don't count them when you are planning. They are just bubble wrap for rounds a PC has nothing better to do, or obstacles for a PC who lost his flight capabilities for that round, or doesn't want to fight a dozen CR 8-13 flying creatures on his way to his next major objective.Really dig into that lore and make sure you have various levels of commanders. Your Pit Fiend or Balor may be top dog, but his bodyguards are no slouch and he has the whole descending hierarchy of his class of fiend below him filling those ranks as different kinds of troops and commanders.If you just pick  a half dozen types of friends, you aren't doing justice to what is supposed to be going on in the lore, and you are making it easier on your PCs because they will have a smaller list of special abilities and defenses to deal with. Don't do that! Make them face all of that stuff at once.And remember that fiends also hire (or otherwise acquire) humanoids and other monsters as extra soldiers. Your basic canon fodder will just take the place of manes and lemures, but this is a good way to add some higher level NPC statblocks to add in casters or other threats you think might be missing in the army itself. Just make sure it makes sense why they are there, and realized that those high level NPCs will use their capabilities to flee to save their lives, since they don't just respawn on their home plane of they get put in the dead book.And what's so great is how scalable it is. Sure, you probably aren't going to do this more than two or three times, but you should do it more than once so you can change the size of the force, the type of of fiends, and the objectives.Don't just send them to assassinate Demogorgon (especially with the pathetic official stats) and have them go through a couple preliminary fights then face him and a couple CR 15 lieutenants. That isn't how it should go down. Until they are hip deep in fiendish ichor they have not faced a real force of fiends.</blockquote>

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