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

[Reynard]

Wizard: OK, Everyone, pre buff. (A few rounds later) I wish the skull of the cult leader of Nox-Ra from level 17 of the Hellstair to be teleported to the table in this room.

(Inexperienced DM thinking at a million miles an hour for a reason why this wont work)

Wizard: Payment please.

Simple fetch quests are not going to work, unless you've done your homework (and have experience) on high level PC abilities.

It was just an example of why a high level party might go into a dungeon. If you could just wish the thing out the guy offering you the money would have hired someone to do it, obviously.

 

[Maxperson]

Who built Abarim's Tower?
Abarim the Archmage.

The fey who he entered into a bargain with. Peasants he conscripted.

What's not in the MM or DMG? Abarim's Dampening Zone spell, Jerkucles' ability to punch through anything, the Nightpope's Total Sensory Deprivation Aura, or Zuzuran's Groundhog

Make it up. As the DM I make up all kinds of neat things for the game. Why do you need an official source for those things?

 

[Reynard]

A dungeon is (in reality) just a railroaded (or semi railroaded) series of adventures limited by the walls of the dungeon. At low level, walls are enough to keep the train on the rails. From mid-level onwards, they cease to be, because PCs have abilities that bypass them.

At higher levels, you need to think beyond walls being the rails. Give the PCs the illusion of freedom of choice, but the walls are actually still there, they just dont see them anymore.

It is an adventuring environment, not an adventure. If you run a railroad adventure, it doesn't matter if it is in a dungeon or on a githyanki pirate ship.

 

[Minigiant]

I really have not idea what your talking about. I don't need any of those to make 20th level dungeon. I have my own NPCs and monsters to make dungeons, traps, etc.

The Nightpope's Sensory Deprivation Aura forces a Constitution saving through to not lose your senses of balance, hearing, smell, sight, space, taste, time, and touch. Success means you only lose one of your choice. Being the aura from the outside via divination or memory adds the sense of self to the mix.

Travelling into the Cathedral of Midnight involves preparing yourself and your party to deal with their ability to interact and understand the world being stripped away one by one and using your features and items to mitigate the loss. You still have your power but the dungeon challenges that power.

 

[Stalker0]

Here's an example of my 20th level adventure I ran at the end of a particularly campaign. In that campaign, we did "snapshots" I ran adventurers for the party at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels, so while it was a campaign it was designed as a series of 3ish adventures at a given level, and then with a large jump in levels and time.

The final mission: Kill Asmodeus. The entire campaign had been centered around this, and the party had ultimately done the following in previous adventurers. Note I didn't have official stats for Asmodeus at the time, so I just went nuts with him.

• Work with a cabal of genies to block Asmodeus' wishing power for a short period of time.
• Made a deal with a host of angels. The angels could not enter Asmodeus' lair due to his insane angelic wards, but they could fight the hoards of devils outside, giving the party time to work.
• Work with the avatar of destiny so that Asmodeus would be "greatly weakened" (aka beatable) on a specific day and time, and would be killable by a mcguffin.
• Setup a teleport blocker around the lair to ensure Asmodeus couldn't just plane shift or teleport out. It also blocked things like passdoor.

So as the party ported into the front of his lair, they had a teleport block preventing them from moving throughout the lair, and had a roughly 1 hour time limit to work. This focused the adventure and gave it limited scope (while teleport blocking is not often a good idea all the time, in this case it was baked into the previous work the party had done, and preventing the devils from using it against them either, so it was fair play all around).

A general summary on the encounters:

1) A room of fire proof devils with lava constantly filling the room.
2) An adamantine golem in anti-magic field with a hoard of devils (the golem is technically invulnerable in the AM field).
3) An underground cavern with a large body of water, that actually turned out to be a colossal water elemental. Within the water was 50 shadows.
4) 50 "custom monsters" that all can use magic missile at will. (so ~525 points of unstoppable force damage every round).
5) An arena with hordes of traps and monsters.
6) A character possessesing the class features of a 20th level fighter/barbarian/and paladin (one of my PCs from another game supped up for the challenge).
7) One final hoard of devils.
8) Asmodeus himself.

The 6 20th level characters beat all of it without losing a person. Asmodeus was killed in two rounds. Ultimately though the party was very happy, they saw how dangerous Asmodeus was (so they knew if they didn't rocket tag him they would get toasted), and they had to get pretty creative with ways to get through all the encounters. But honestly for this adventure I literally just threw the kitchen sink at them, not having a clue how they were going to survive it. But....they did anyway.

 

[LordEntrails]

All these examples of using wish to turn high level adventures into non-challenges are inane.

First, wish is a campaign limited spell. Characters can NOT cast this once per day every day for the rest of their lives. Their are real costs to casting this spell, including the losing the ability to ever cast it again. If the party wants to use such a powerful resource for a 100k gp, I'm all for it. Because next time they won't have that ability anymore (or a dozen other reasons).

Second, if the players don't want to have fun, why are you playing?

 

[dave2008]

The Nightpope's Sensory Deprivation Aura forces a Constitution saving through to not lose your senses of balance, hearing, smell, sight, space, taste, time, and touch. Success means you only lose one of your choice. Being the aura from the outside via divination or memory adds the sense of self to the mix.

Travelling into the Cathedral of Midnight involves preparing yourself and your party to deal with their ability to interact and understand the world being stripped away one by one and using your features and items to mitigate the loss. You still have your power but the dungeon challenges that power.

OK, but I don't need that in the DMG to:

1. Create similar effects myself
2. Challenge 20th level PCs in a dungeon.

You have not explained why that is needed, nor why we need levels 21-30 to use the things you say are needed!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Hahahaha. The end result is always the same. The players are challenged, but ultimately successful in defeating the bad guys.

And of course, you're doing more work. Your players have more abilities, and the numbers being tossed around are higher. A goblins stat block is a little different to that of a Spellcasting Ancient Dragon.

If you dont want to do the work, dont DM high level parties.

And you don't think "way more work and BS for the same payoff" is part of the problem with writing high level general audience adventures and high level D&D in general?

 

[Minigiant]

OK, but I don't need that in the DMG to:

1. Create similar effects myself
2. Challenge 20th level PCs in a dungeon.

You have not explained why that is needed, nor why we need levels 21-30 to use the things you say are needed!

That's my point.

It's not in the book. That's why you can't run 5e Tier 4 dungeon adventures in 5e by the book.

The stuff you need isn't in the books.

You have to make up more than half of it wholesale as homebrew. Stuff that is often too powerful to be allowed for level 1-20 player characters to have access to.

 

[Flamestrike]

And you don't think "way more work and BS for the same payoff" is part of the problem with writing high level general audience adventures and high level D&D in general?

It's not the same pay-off. It's a better pay off.

Not many DMs can run high level adventures well. Being able to do so is much more rewarding than running a low level 'lets go kill some kobolds' adventure, which nearly anyone can do.