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

[dave2008]

Which is akin to 'an anti-magic field suddenly pops up'.

No, you misunderstood what I wrote and/or made a wrong assumption.

A good DM would have anticipated the use of Wish in such a way,

I did, that is why I responded they way I did. You won't believe what is going to happen next!

Im almost of the view you need to run a game to 20th, and watch as your players ruin your encounters to get a handle on how high level play handles, in order to become a good DM of high level PCs.

I've run three adventures at 20th. TPKs the first two, they finally got the hang of high level by the 3rd time. When we do these one-shot high level adventures I go all out. They were slayed by Demogorgon* in one and Tiamat* in another. They defeated Vecna* in the third.

*Custom version, not the official versions.

 

[Reynard]

I did, that is why I responded they way I did. You won't believe what is going to happen next!

Level 20 Wizards hate this simple trick!

 

[dave2008]

The point is the Necessary amount of MadeupJunk vs Published stuff leans heavily to the former at high levels.

Obviously, there is only one "official" lvl 20 adventure after all. However, the books give me everything I need to make a 20th level adventure (except good advice).

However, like I said, even with all of the stuff officially provided for lower levels, I make it al myself anyway - so no real change. Making stuff is at least 50% of the fun for me.

 

[dave2008]

So @Minigiant, how in your theoretical 5e that goes to lvl 30, do I challenge level 30 PCs when there is no level 31-40 content?

 

[OB1]

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.

This is the true joy of DMing Tier IV. You don't have to worry about killing the party being the fail state for the adventure anymore and can focus on preventing them from reaching their objective and what new adventure that leads to.

 

[LordEntrails]

Im almost of the view you need to run a game to 20th, and watch as your players ruin your encounters to get a handle on how high level play handles, in order to become a good DM of high level PCs.

I won't say almost... g
It's incredible hard to run a tier 4 adventure if you've never run a Teir 3 adventure before. It's hard to do, but certainly the best way to learn to run Tier 4 is to run a campaign from Tier 1 to tier 4 with the same players. But, most groups don't last that long.

 

[Minigiant]

So @Minigiant, how in your theoretical 5e that goes to lvl 30, do I challenge level 30 PCs when there is no level 31-40 content?

You don't have to.

PC advancement caps at level 20.

 

[dave2008]

You don't have to.

PC advancement caps at level 20.

OK, it seems like you have no real argument. I will stop wasting my time.

 

[Minigiant]

OK, it seems like you have no real argument. I will stop wasting my time.

I stated the solution long ago in the topic.

In a dungeon, you challenge the PCs with things that strain or restrict their resource and management of them.

The 5e Mage challenges a Tier 2 party with Tier 3 features.
The 5e Archmage challenges a Tier 3 party with Tier 4 features
The nonexistant Double Archmage challenges a Tier 4 party with Tier 5 features
The nonexistant Avatar of Mage challenges a Tier 5 party with Tier 6 features

 

[dave2008]

I stated the solution long ago in the topic.

In a dungeon, you challenge the PCs with things that strain or restrict their resource and management of them.

Or as others have said, embrace them. Always restricting or straining the PCs is not necessarily good/fun design either.

Also, it is not like I need tier 5 (which does exist in 5e) to challenge tier 4 adventurers. I find that assumption flawed.