Speaking of High Power / High Level...

[hong]

Umm, can you say huge understatement? That's a big "that's about it".

Finding something suitable is pretty much the only thing it's about, at all levels even. It just gets increasingly difficult at the higher levels given the mass amount of variables and options.

... I seem to recall saying something like "find a better DM". That still stands.

Your DM may be good according to the metrics of NPC characterisation, building a believable world, playing by the rules, not favouring any one player, etc. That doesn't mean he or she is going to be good when it comes to figuring out how to handle high levels.

Back to the original topic. In the latest session of my (now 15th level) campaign, the group went into a dungeon where they met a bunch of vampires. Now these are my custom "vampires" based on the shadow fiend from the FF, as opposed to the vanilla undead thingies from the MM, but that doesn't really matter. The players plowed through them with no real problems. One sunbeam took out 4 of them, and they beat up on the rest.

Do I consider this a problem? Not really.

1) In the end, it's all about resources consumed, and hit points are only one type of resource. To do that fight, the cleric used her only sunbeam spell, and they used up various other limited-use abilities as well, eg Divine Might. They met more vamps (and their necromancer leader) later, and no sunbeam this time made it rather more difficult.

2) A fight that's too easy is not really a problem, as long as it drains some of the party's resources. You can always throw more fights at them later on. And really, there's nothing wrong with letting the party kick ass once in a while, which leads to...

3) At high levels, not every fight has to be a challenge. There are basically two types of combat encounters when you're high level: those meant to be tough, and those meant to showcase your prowess. These vampires were the same as those that gave them a hard time at 12th level, and the fact that defeated them easily just showed how far they'd come since then.

In the wuxia movie Hero (released just a coupla months ago), there is a scene where two uber-powered swordspersons plow through 3,000 of the king's palace guards on their way to confront him. The point of this scene is not to demonstrate the risk that the swordspersons took in attacking the palace: as far as can be seen, they had no problems at all dealing with the guards. The point is to demonstrate that their abilities and skills are of a completely different order of magnitude to ordinary people.

The same thing can be seen in a less over-the-top fashion in some of the fights in the LotR movies, eg when Aragorn takes on a mob of orcs single-handed in FotR. Ditto a lot of fights involving stormtroopers/federation bots in the Star Wars movies. Ditto the bit in Conan the Barbarian, where Conan and his buddies chop up the snake worshippers in Thulsa Doom's temple.

The same sort of principle applies when it comes to high-level gaming. You need to highlight the contrast between low and high levels at least occasionally, or there really isn't much point to gaining levels. It just becomes a treadmill.

I've run encounters pitting the PCs against large numbers of orcs, assassins, and other low-HD mooks -- 25, 50, up to 100 depending on what level they were at the time. They generally plowed through them like a hot knife through butter, which is pretty much what I'd expected. The real challenges tend to be in the fights with small numbers of enemies.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Granted, it does take a good DM to design a challenging encounter for high level play, but one dice roll can still mean the difference between and easy fight and an insta-kill. Sleep at 1st level? Greater Command at higher levels.

Greater command made its first appearance IMC last week and boy, did it change the encounter. I had a rather harsh encounter with a trio of elemental tempests planned but the GC sent two of them scurrying away. The remaining one was a bit of a challenge (more than expected, really) but it let them perfect their technique before the other two tried to ambush the party at a distance when the GC wore off. The pair of tempests fell quicker than the first one did!

 

[ruleslawyer]

... I seem to recall saying something like "find a better DM". That still stands.

Your DM may be good according to the metrics of NPC characterisation, building a believable world, playing by the rules, not favouring any one player, etc. That doesn't mean he or she is going to be good when it comes to figuring out how to handle high levels.

This, unfortunately, is very true. I needed a lot of practice to get good at handling high-level play as a DM, and to this day, I run pretty much every major encounter (EL = EPL or higher) faced by my (21st-level) PCs as a demo beforehand just to make sure that I didn't overlook something that might kill them too quickly.

2) A fight that's too easy is not really a problem, as long as it drains some of the party's resources. You can always throw more fights at them later on. And really, there's nothing wrong with letting the party kick ass once in a while, which leads to...

3) At high levels, not every fight has to be a challenge. There are basically two types of combat encounters when you're high level: those meant to be tough, and those meant to showcase your prowess. These vampires were the same as those that gave them a hard time at 12th level, and the fact that defeated them easily just showed how far they'd come since then.

An excellent summation of the so-called walkover "problem." However, the other end of the encounter spectrum is equally important, IMHO: Namely, those encounters that at high levels have the potential to quickly decimate the party via save-or-dies, ridiculous amounts of damage per round, and similar common aspects of high-level play. To the end of keeping these sorts of things in check, I tend to believe in implementing a hero or fate point system by the time these effects are commonly in play, so that a single unlucky roll doesn't spell character death.

That said, combat tactics at high levels tend to get very scary, and you have to be prepared for this style of play. My favorite parallel for high- and epic-level D&D play is the superhero style of The Authority or more recent JLA comics. Very rarely does combat involve attrition, prolonged clashes, or chases. Instead, it becomes much more sudden and hit-and-run oriented; the use of teleportation and divination effects becomes ubiquitous; and the winner is almost invariably the one who releases the most devastating smackdown in Round 1, period. That means that you need to focus on a few things:

a) Stealth. This is a big one. IMX, the best way of actually lasting through a high-level encounter without dying or inflicting absolutely colossal amounts of damage in the first 1-2 rounds is to stay out of sight. Stealth is infinitely more useful than protection at these levels.

b) Escape routes. A huge number of your foes at this level will be able to teleport or otherwise use supernatural escape methods; you should be prepared to do so as well! A dimension door or other spell or item is a must at higher levels.

c) Blanket protections. As hong's example notes, a key assumption of encounter design at higher levels is that you'll be able to simply ignore a good number of your opponents' offensive abilities. It takes surprisingly little to ward against some otherwise devastating effects; make sure that you're loaded up on magic circle against evil, death ward, and eventually mind blank, and you'll be able to walk through encounters that otherwise pose a substantial challenge.

d) Look for better ways to hurt than just dealing out damage. In general, the ability to incapacitate, insta-kill, or otherwise cripple your opponents is the critical determinant in high-level encounters; straight hp damage often is not worth it, since many high-level monsters have more hit points for their CR than you want to wade through. Wall spells (to keep monsters out of combat entirely), save-or-dies, and even grappling can be better ways to handle encounters than straight-up hack-and-slash. Skill use also can be remarkably powerful at these levels; once your Diplomacy skill gets up there (and it can get into the 40s by 11th+ level), talking can be as good a way to resolve dangerous encounters as fighting.

e) "Suggested encounters per day" is for chumps. At these levels, you should be able to use your superior movement and other abilities to rest practically between every major encounter. Most DMs will try to stop you from doing this, but that just means that you should try to rest and recuperate at every turn. If you prove better at this than your DM is at stopping you, you can begin practically every combat with a full complement of spells and limited-use abilities, which can turn encounters from insta-kills to smoother sailing.

Finally, keep in mind that the easier availability of true res and similar effects at high level means that the designers understand that there are a goodly number of "insta-kill" encounters at this level. If your DM tries to put limits on the use of these abilities, it's worth informing him that he should consider adding a fate point or other system as compensation, since PCs will die at these levels.

 

[irdeggman]

The most challenging aspect of high level games is the almost infinite set of possibilities. That is to say it is extremely difficult for a DM to plan an encounter for what the PCs might do when they have so many more options as they get higher levels. Spells for instance is the most problematic. An encounter might be relatively easy if the PCs have the right spell prepared or down right impossible.

After gaming with the same group for an extended period of time though a savvy DM will likely pick up on the patterns the players use. Some spellcasters will use certain spells in preference over others or in certain order. The warrior types will have a standard grouping or attack formation - first off ranged then mounted then wade on in or something similar.

The way to make the encounter challenging and more fun for the players is to force them to start to think outside of the box of what they normally do. Ensure that sufficient time is given to the players to come up with a different plan than normal, etc.

 

[MerakSpielman]

There's one very simple way to handle it - put the burden on the players. You can take the kid gloves off, and just run a world the way you would expect it to happen. For example, if the plot involves beholders, instead of making a few encounters with beholders designed to appropriately challange the PCs, make an entire beholder city just like you'd imagine beholders would really make it. It's up to the PCs to find a way to get in and do their job without getting toasted by 3000 beholders.

 

[RuminDange]

No problems with high level play at all IMX. I’ve been running the same campaign since before 3.0E came out. We upgraded to 3.0E and incorporated house rules to fix problem areas or to keep the favor and continued onward.
The biggest problem I have is over-challenging the players with simple stuff.
Most of my players have characters ranging from 35th to near 40th level now, but it is the simple stuff that really can drive them nuts or beat them because of over-confidence or lack of thinking about their actions or plans.
I've had a 34th Ftr/Sorc/Bladesinger nearly beaten to his last hit point by 4 trolls with 4 class levels each (barb, cleric, Rgr and Sor) before another character came in to help him. All due to lack of thinking on his part, and he forgot trolls have reach and he didn’t move too well in deep snow.

The problem of insta-kill or easy encounter applies to all levels of play. The problem most see is the DM's tend to get bored or lazy in making encounters at later levels. And I can be one of them at times due to lack of time. Don’t always have the time to create 2-3 major NPCs/Monsters and stuff when working 40 hours, Master’s degree classes and certification courses are chewing up most of my week.
It takes a lot longer to create, equip and prepare 30-40th level NPCs (like 2 days sometimes) that it just makes you wonder if it is worth it and then one mistake (just like at 1st level) can end in a TPK or a BBEG going down with little to no effort.

Players also effect how the play is at all levels. Like I said lack of thinking or just getting bored or lazy, lack of rules knowledge or forgetting things that have been done before tend to make players make mistakes and end the same way. And this happens at all levels. Had a Ranger in a lower level game I am running on the side while we take a break from the main timeline nearly get killed by some ghouls and a vampire spawn under control of BBEG, because he went off into the forest to do the 24 hour ritual to companion his riding dog, and they still didn’t know anything about the woods and had already been given information that something had happened to a nearby kobold tribe that was very mysterious, that they had not checked out. The party had to break off of their plans to rescue him the next day when he didn’t come back. They tracked the attackers back to the lair and rescued him just in time before he became dinner to the BBEG. Guess what he tried again?

RD