The 14th level PCs have slain their thousands, the 18th level PCs their ten thousands

[shilsen]

It needn't really be formalized, but some sort of discussion where the books gives a couple of level ranges and gives you a general idea what the PCs are like would be nice to have in the DMG (or even the PHB). Preferably referencing mythology and fiction, at least in a general way; for me, many of D&D's quirks are much easier to accept if I can think of it "hey, that's kind of what [character] does in [story..."

Good idea. I've always maintained that characters in D&D who have a few levels are akin to mythic figures (and superheroes) rather than characters from most fantasy literature, and I think having that called out explicitly in the DMG or PHB would be a good idea. I never had problems with the swift increase in PC power levels as they advance, partly due to doing a lot of thinking ahead and number crunching in my head and partly because spending a lot of time on ENWorld makes you well-informed about that whether your own group is in that area or not, but I know many DMs with little experience are surprised at the change in their PCs' capabilities over time.

 

[jasin]

DMs should definitley recognize what kind of power they want their PCs to have and cap the level appropriately (see this article http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html) if at all and either end the game at that level or use something like the 6th level epic rules that were posted a while ago on these boards.

"Analyzing Aragorn" on that webpage was a really excellent article!

And 6th level epic rules sound intriguing... I probably won't use it, but I think I'll need to look it up.

It reminds me of a last game I ran, where the ultimate (non-abstract) evil of the setting were supposed to be a planetar and a marilith. When you think about it in non-D&D terms, that's pretty ing epic. A six-armed 9 ft. tall snake-woman that can just ignore a typical sword blow and can summon whirling rings of blades that could cut through stone or steel, and a 9 ft. tall angel that can kill with a word and cannot be killed without magic, at all. The idea was to present it accordingly in game.

Seemed to be working out well (until I got too busy/burned out to continue, but that's a different story), and ever since, I've been thinking about a game that would accord appropriate respect to high level characters/effect/monsters, and make them appropriately rare: if when you raise dead NPCs don't say "eh... losing a level sure sucks" but "THE DEAD HAS RISEN! A HOLY MAN WALKS AMONG US!", it might of bring a bit of that ever-lamented sense of wonder back to the high levels...

 

[hong]

To a large extent it also depends on what the party makeup is. Right now I'm DMing a 12th level group that consists of a dwarf crusader, a "geomantic channeler" (tweaked dragon shaman), 2 warblades and an archer. No spellcasters at all; no flight, teleport, or any other plot-device powers.

It feels very much like a low-level game, except with bigger numbers. The PCs are more "very very competent" than "mythic". They can scythe their way through mobs of 1HD warriors, but a guy who refuses to talk will still stop them. Why, last session they even had to make Balance checks!

 

[jasin]

To a large extent it also depends on what the party makeup is. Right now I'm DMing a 12th level group that consists of a dwarf crusader, a "geomantic channeler" (tweaked dragon shaman), 2 warblades and an archer. No spellcasters at all; no flight, teleport, or any other plot-device powers.

Interesting. That's the tweaked Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde game? How is such a spellcaster-less party working out in a published adventure?

I guess it helps that SGoS is intended for lower levels, so the plot itself doesn't require plot-device spells...?

BTW, that's a really cool take on the dragon shaman. I'd rather play that than the dragon shaman as written! Any significant mechanical tweaks, or is it just a different look at the same abilities?

 

[hong]

Interesting. That's the tweaked Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde game? How is such a spellcaster-less party working out in a published adventure?

Check your email. I rebooted the game and bumped it up to 12th level.

BTW, that's a really cool take on the dragon shaman. I'd rather play that than the dragon shaman as written! Any significant mechanical tweaks, or is it just a different look at the same abilities?

Didn't you see the rewrite...?


(insert something very much like the druid's intro descriptive text)

remove alignment prereq
class skills: choose one set
spirit aura at 1st level: choose one energy type for resistance, energy shield; you become immune at 9th
spirit adaptation at 3rd, 13th: choose one special ability
breath weapon at 4th level becomes a line of geomantic energy (untyped) cast from your fingertips, like earthbolt spell
remove draconic resolve (but keep natural armour AC bonus)
draconic wings at 19th level becomes one of fly 60' (no wings), burrow 30' or swim 30' speed.

 

[NewJeffCT]

That's true of monsters (and traps, which also have CRs), but the real problem IME is with more general situations, and the mismatch between player/DM expectations and how the game actually plays.

For example, crafting a classic Agatha Christie style murder mystery at 9th-level doesn't work, since all you need to do is commune through the dozen or so suspects to find out who did it.

That's not to say you can't have a murder mystery at 9th, but to be playable, it will have to take this kind of stuff into account. For example, knowing who did it doesn't help, since the murderer's word is better than the PCs' in the community (and the authorities don't have access to commune of their own), so you need to find physical evidence. Or the murderer isn't one of the people gathered in the Accusing Lounge, or he's on the run and the myster is about finding where he is rather than who he is.

Having this sort of thing discussed in the DMG would save grief for many a DM.

Or, the murderer, is in turn murdered by somebody else. The PCs finally track down the killer to some run-down old inn, only to find the suspect freshly murdered in his or her or its room. Any spells to find out who did it, mysteriously, reveal little or nothing. (like, killed in their sleep, or from behind)

Was the murderer murdered to cover up some bigger conspiracy?

Or, you can do a Jack Ruby/Lee Harvey Oswald sort of thing - the PCs find the killer of a prominent noble and bring him in before the magistrate, only to have a loyalist of the noble leap out to kill the killer in a fit of anger. And, questions persist about if the killer the PCs found acted alone, or was part of some grand plot to murder this nobleman?

 

[NewJeffCT]

As an idea, they did do that back when the 2nd edition Options books came out. I think it was called DM's Option: High-level campaigns. From what I can remember (it is at home and I am not) it did a lot of the behind the curtains stuff. It discussed making lowly beasties into fearsome opponents and the issues facing higher level play. The mechanics are not 3rd, but since the book does not concentrate on mechanics it should not be an issue.

Later!

Good idea - I did something like that back in 2E days and scared the you-know-what out of some very powerful PCs that had grown a bit too reliant on their magical items - a beholder used its anti-magic ray in a fairly narrow dungeon corridor to put a halt to the magic of the PCs, and the kobold minions of the beholder started raining arrows down on the PCs from their elevated & protected positions. (roll a d20 40 times and you're bound to hit a few times and its death by pin prick almost) - Finally, one fighter managed to charge the beholder, put down its troll bodyguard and hit the beholder enough where it had to choose between using its anti-magic ray or fighting back to survive. But, those 40 or so kobolds were just standard kobolds and managed to put a scare into the PCs because they were not easily accessible and the PCs were not as magicked-up as normal

 

[paradox42]

This list has some excellent ideas for high-level tactics that your players may use, but the trick is to determine how to build a campaign to challenge them without nerfing them.

I agree that the High Level Campaign guide would be helpful, though I would suggest two smaller PDFs, one for GMs and another for Players.

I am curious how those of you that run high-level games handle some of the power options listed in the thread link above.

The answer to that question sort of depends on what, precisely, you mean by "handle." But IME the main challenge in ultra-high-level games- particularly Epic ones- is acquisition of information, oddly enough.

With the resources PCs have at those levels, preparation is everything, and attention to detail is extremely important (because it's the detail you overlook that invariably kills you- remember the one little spot on the heel of a certain otherwise-invincible Greek hero). Everything at these levels hinges on the old Scry N' Fry tactic (a.k.a Scry-Buff-Teleport), and every entity that survives very long will expect this tactic and plan accordingly. Therefore, such an entity will plan for ways to cancel out scrying (perpetual Mind Blank is an excellent way to start, since it also protects against a lot of attack effects), use Teleport-redirection traps in its lair or just tolerate life in a Dimension Locked zone, etc. This, in turn, means the PCs have to come up with ways to get around these blanket immunities/lair protections/superbuffs. And that means that they need to know which effects the enemy is using.

It's an arms race, in effect, and everybody has access to the "nukes" of D&D- cute spells like Disjunction, Time Stop, and other things DMs who've never run high-level games have nightmares about. But because everybody has them, everybody expects enemies to have them, and plans accordingly- thus restoring a tenuous balance. Like any arms race in the real world, collecting information on your enemy (or even, in some proper Epic plots, on who or what the enemy actually is) is a game everybody plays, because whoever falls behind in that game loses. A Diviner or Seer, at these levels, actually becomes quite possibly the most valuable party member, because without the information the party has virtually no chance of penetrating the enemy's defenses (or finding out who to go after or where to go for that matter).

The key point to all the above? Every single information-gathering spell hinges on you, the DM, telling the party something they (probably) didn't know before. This means that you, the DM, have even more complete control over the plot than you did even at low levels. If the party ignores your adventure hooks, you can draw some enemies out of the woodwork and attack the party with them- the enemies have access to the information spells too, after all, and should be expected to Scry N' Fry the PCs the same way the PCs would do to them. Players who have any interest whatsoever in the game will want to know who hit them and why, if only for revenge. Of course, if the PCs don't ignore your plot hooks, you can just run the adventure as planned. The enemies presumably would hit the PCs as above, but they're just too darned busy dealing with the PCs being inconveniently proactive against them to do anything about it...

When things finally come down to combat, the fight will typically be short (in game terms), and extremely brutal. One-hit kills (or at least one-round kills) will be common, except in the case of the absolute-most-ridiculously-powerful creatures. Because preparation is so important, it will be extremely rare that PCs do not enter a fight fully rested and at full strength- PCs at these levels will take every opportunity they can to recover between fights and maintain peak effectiveness. Naturally, you can have enemies Scry N' Fry them during rest periods if they miss a ward or two, but players who've come up from low levels won't miss such wards often (if at all).

As one final bit of advice concerning high-level and Epic games, I advocate reading the Story Hour forum heavily- and particularly concentrating on those stories that reach these levels. The "Savage Sword of Meepo" group, Piratecat's SH, JollyDoc's adventure paths, and of course Sepulchrave's SH are all excellent examples. Seeing how the PCs in these games handled their high-level plots and opposition will help you better figure out how to run your own.

 

[pemerton]

A Diviner or Seer, at these levels, actually becomes quite possibly the most valuable party member, because without the information the party has virtually no chance of penetrating the enemy's defenses (or finding out who to go after or where to go for that matter).

I'd second all of this post, but the quoted passage reminded me of my groups previous campaign (high-level Rolemaster). The problem with scrying-dependence is that the game can really slow down to the speed of treacle. In our case, the party got so sick of the dependence of everything on scrying that one of the PCs helped bring it about that the Seer PC was sacrificed to a dark god! The player of the Seer then brought in a Warrior-Mage rather than a full spell user, and from then on the party started to rely more on info-feeds from reliable NPCs, spending much less time at the table on scrying.

Our current campaign, also now high level, has much less scrying because we dropped a lot of those options from the rules-set we're using. But everything else mentioned - in particular, attacking at full strength from ambush as the norm - still applies.

 

[Quartz]

"Analyzing Aragorn" on that webpage was a really excellent article!

But the article is fatally flawed. It extends one aspect of D&D - the skill system - to the whole, and that just doesn't work. The combat system and magic system don't scale at the same rates as the skill system. Remember OOTS a few strips back where the commander is telling Haley about the perils of mass combat? That puts Aragorn's combat prowess in a very different light, even more so if you use the Mob template for the goblins.