D&D 5E The challenges of high level adventure design.

[Reynard]

This is a thread about designing challenges for high level parties.

My comment of ''15th level parties should be dealing with existential threats to the entire realm. These are people that can go toe to toe with primal Demon Lords and expect to win. Think planar travel, artifacts and similar things being features, with the fate of the world in the PCs hands.'' is entirely on point with that topic, and clearly within the scope of that topic.

When designing high level adventures, that's your starting point for where to begin. Think big.

That then lets you use antagonists, who are no fools, have dealt with high level PCs before, know all the tricks and abilities that high level PCs use, know effective counters, and know how to exploit the weakness of PCs. It lets you use alien or unusual environments, that force the PCs to think outside the box.

If your groups mission is 'Travel to the 88th layer of the Abyss, and slay Demogorgon (who is well versed in the abilities of high-level adventurers, with millennia of experience) before he destroys the Macguffin of Doom during the imminent Astral convergence and merges the Prime material with the Abyss' your party is not just plane shifting next to him, and nova striking him like a chump.

And I'm saying that high level adventures do not need to have world shaking stakes. There are plenty of other stories you can tell with demigods. Greek myths and comic books should get you started on possibilities.

More importantly, this thread is specifically about finding design solutions to design problems. It is not about soft topics. Those might be interesting to discuss but I am trying to solve the technical issues with high level adventures, or at least determine definitively that they exist.

 

[LordEntrails]

Making a high level adventure for D&D 5e that is suitable for publishing...
To me the biggest challenges are:

• potential diversity of the party (class, features, optimization, magic, etc)
• diversity of the player's problem solving skills and tactical competence
• DM expectations and abilities

So how do/would I approach these?

• Understanding that the adventure is going to need a section to educate the DM on expectations and how to run the adventure.
• Flexibility in challenges

The first is fairly easy, about all you can do is write a few well written paragraphs on explaining how flexibility is important, that the solutions (even those presented in the adventure) are only examples and guidelines. That the DM may be able to run the adventure as written, BUT that the players may well go in directions not foreseen and therefore adaptability is important.

Now, how do you write an adventure that is flexible? Factions that have motivations is the first step.

This can be several competing factions that the party has to overcome (i.e. Dragon Heist Remix) or a single BBEG that has various resources that they can draw upon as needed. And then the DM needs to adjust what the NPCs do based upon what the players do. (The players scry the location of the BBEG and skip everything? Well it was a well-prepared trap, or...). But, don't punish players for creative solutions and only give the illusion of player agency.

Encounters are often planned with pools of re-usable resources (NPCs) to call upon. i..e pre-create ~10 different groups of (re-usable) adversaries (a set of guards, of scouts, of shock troops, of casters, of...) and then mix and match and pull them into encounters either alone or to supplement the major opponent of some obstacle. This makes the design easy, and flexible, while maintaining a "theme" (i.e. all 10 groups are creature types related to the adventure, cult, BBEG.) Another key feature of this approach is that each encounter can vary in difficulty by letting the DM call in waves; i.e. the location has a set of guards, but they call for help and are soon joined by a party of caster and/or shock troops. Whatever the DM needs to do to provide the appropriate challenge for that encounter.

Which means you have to indicate how challenging each encounter should be in your design and how to adjust it. (i.e. this encounter should be a significant challenge for the party, try to insure they use half of their daily resources here.) You can still do 6-8 encounters/day if that makes sense. Or go with daily nova fights. It all depends on your adventure type and style.

And then remember that a high-level adventure probably should not be about defeating a dracolich in combat. Or just about the combat. But perhaps there are political, social, or strategic objectives that have to be solved before you can actually kill the dracolich. (i.e. maybe the dracolich has a phylactery, and not only do you have to find it, and steal it out from the vaults of the High Captain of Luskan. But then you have to make your way to a source of primordial fire to destroy it. Then you have to pin down the dracolich so it actually stands and fights. Then you get to kill it in combat, all before it raises an army of undead to swarm your beloved city.

Now you have a high level adventure that is flexible. Flexible because the party can solve each step in numerous ways. Flexible because combats can be adjusted based upon the abilities of the players and characters. And it has the content and outline that makes it publishable.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes I know. But you don't need level 30 stuff to make level 20 adventures exciting IMO.

And 5e does have level 30 stuff too (just not from WotC).

I never said that.

I said you need level 30 equivalent stuff to run level 20 dungeons adventures.

Without it, you can only run level 20 non-dunguen adventures.

 

[Flamestrike]

As a participant, I really liked @Flamestrike 's high level PbP adventure. It seemed all involved were experienced gamers and we were definitely sufficiently challenged (too bad it was left unfinished by real world events!)

In fact, I liked it enough that I shamelessly copied it and have run it 3 times since then (once online and twice in person). All 3 groups LOVED the experience. Though I will say (echoing a prior comment) 2 of the groups were simply not prepared for high level play and I had to adjust things as a result.

Thanks mate!

Was meaning to ask you how that went. I did end up giving you the notes for the unfinished bit right?

 

[Flamestrike]

High level characters aren't necessarily super hard to make adventures for, a party of Champion Fighter, Berserker Barbarian, Assassin Rogue and Open Hand Monk could probably go on a low level adventure and have things be fine as long as you buff the enemy numbers accordingly (you might need some insane numbers, to be fair, those guys can melt a boss pretty well).

Now, if you balance the adventure for Wizards/Druids/Clerics/etc, then that party above probably can't do anything. That's one of the big issues, there's a huge gap in versatility and power between classes, and the wild stuff you'll need to handle the spellcasters can make more mundane means obsolete (if you're not just throwing anti-magic everywhere).

Yet in the high-level adventure I ran for you (featuring a Sorcerer with a Staff of Power, a Bard and a Cleric/ Paladin), your Fighter was the leading damage dealer by far, and very clearly contributed to the adventure.

 

[Reynard]

Encounters are often planned with pools of re-usable resources (NPCs) to call upon. i..e pre-create ~10 different groups of (re-usable) adversaries (a set of guards, of scouts, of shock troops, of casters, of...) and then mix and match and pull them into encounters either alone or to supplement the major opponent of some obstacle. This makes the design easy, and flexible, while maintaining a "theme" (i.e. all 10 groups are creature types related to the adventure, cult, BBEG.) Another key feature of this approach is that each encounter can vary in difficulty by letting the DM call in waves; i.e. the location has a set of guards, but they call for help and are soon joined by a party of caster and/or shock troops. Whatever the DM needs to do to provide the appropriate challenge for that encounter.

While I think having "quantum encounters" in a regular game is generally a good idea, I am not sure it is a good solution for a published adventure. It feels like it would take up too much space/word count in the adventure. But that is jus a kneejerk guess based on the idea. I would have to see it to know for sure.

I wonder if a tool you could use would be to emphasize to the GM that this adventure has to be read thoroughly, prepped for and customized. I know that might seem counter to the value of a pre-written adventure, but multiple people have identified the peculiarities of any particular group of high level PCs as a design challenge. Is tell the GM explicitly to customize the adventure for their characters a good solution? And if so, what does your baseline design look like -- assumes the cleric, wizard, rogue, warrior standard mix?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Make non-casters have narrative control at least in the same ballpark zip code continent and you can start to design high level adventures that work. Right now you have the game disingenuously presenting Paul Blart with slightly bigger numbers and Doctor Strange as being peers, when that is simply not the case. It makes designing a published adventure more difficult when all one guy has it the ability to hit stuff, and the other can rewrite reality 20+ times a day. Casters are automatically given more spotlight because they change the world in a way that martial characters cannot. Even the playing field and you can get a baseline for what a party can do.

 

[Reynard]

I never said that.

I said you need level 30 equivalent stuff to run level 20 dungeons adventures.

Without it, you can only run level 20 non-dunguen adventures.

I'm still not clear on why you think tis is true. 5E "dungeon" content is not based on levels anyway -- it is CRs and whatever handwavium they use in their designs. Could you explain your position here in a little more detail, please?

 

[Flamestrike]

More importantly, this thread is specifically about finding design solutions to design problems. It is not about soft topics.

Firstly, I put to you those two things are linked. Those 'soft topics' as you call them, directly influence mechanical choices you make in your encounter and adventure design, and adversary and environment choices.

Secondly, your 'design problems' runs into the issue that many (most) DMs lack experience in running high level parties (like most players will tell you, their games often peter out by mid-single digit levels, usually 5-7).

Most DMs are well versed with Spells of levels 1-3 and class features found at levels 1-7, and running monsters of CR's up to 10. They're also well versed with 'here is the dungeon, go there, explore it, and get loot' type of adventure design.

When you get into the mid teens levels and higher, few DMs have the experience to deal with high level PC shenanigans (they simply rage quit, usually after a bunch of anti-magic fields start popping up everywhere) AND the adventures are still following similar narratives as they were at low levels (which also feeds into the same problem).

 

[Reynard]

Make non-casters have narrative control at least in the same ballpark zip code continent and you can start to design high level adventures that work. Right now you have the game disingenuously presenting Paul Blart with slightly bigger numbers and Doctor Strange as being peers, when that is simply not the case. It makes designing a published adventure more difficult when all one guy has it the ability to hit stuff, and the other can rewrite reality 20+ times a day. Casters are automatically given more spotlight because they change the world in a way that martial characters cannot. Even the playing field and you can get a baseline for what a party can do.

How would you do that in an adventure? What sorts of design tools would you use to achieve that goal?