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

[dave2008]

They don't. And this is because the designers of 5e mostly played or pushed unoptimized stereotypical D&D when they designed the game.

And that works for some. I know I can take down my current group with the MM monsters, other groups - not so much.

 

[dave2008]

Hey @Minigiant : does my Godzilla qualify as threat to a group of 20th level PCs? It is been a while since I checked, but I am pretty good at following the DMG guidelines (stretched a bit here for sure, with one caveat). Also, the multiple uses of the mythic trait is bit beyond RAW.

 

[Minigiant]

I get your point, but I personally don't want my dragons relying on spells to challenge PCs. IMO, they should have scary offense and hardy defense. Not every tier 4-5 threat needs to be a riddle.

My personally preference is the 4e route: every color dragon is the epitome of a monster role within that tier.

The White Dragons are the Ultimate Brutes. They master "Dum Dum" tactics and just claw and bite you to death.
The Black Dragons are the Ultimate Lurkers. They attack from cover and darkness. Shoulda have Sneak Attack.
The Green Dragons are the Ultimate Controllers. Say it with me. Save or Suck.
The Blue Dragons are the Ultimate Artillery. Snipe Kite Snipe Kite Land
The Red Dragons are the Ultimate Soldiers. They can claw you to death or burn you from afar. No escape

And it is up to the PCs to deal with a monster fully geared to one tactic that has countermeasure to counters.

 

[dave2008]

My personally preference is the 4e route: every color dragon is the epitome of a monster role within that tier.

The White Dragons are the Ultimate Brutes. They master "Dum Dum" tactics and just claw and bite you to death.
The Black Dragons are the Ultimate Lurkers. They attack from cover and darkness. Shoulda have Sneak Attack.
The Green Dragons are the Ultimate Controllers. Say it with me. Save or Suck.
The Blue Dragons are the Ultimate Artillery. Snipe Kite Snipe Kite Land
The Red Dragons are the Ultimate Soldiers. They can claw you to death or burn you from afar. No escape

And it is up to the PCs to deal with a monster fully geared to one tactic that has countermeasure to counters.

I do like that concept, but...

Of course dragons in 4e were also notoriously chumps to deal with as well. Many of the same problems 5e dragons have. Just like with 5e, I spent a lot of time redesigning 4e dragons. The 4e MM didn't have the countermeasures you've been asking for either. The did get better in the Vault - but they still had issues.

I really hope they take a good hard look a dragon design in the '24 monster manual. However, MotM does not inspire confidence (nor did Fizban's).

 

[Minigiant]

I do like that concept, but...

Of course dragons in 4e were also notoriously chumps to deal with as well. Many of the same problems 5e dragons have. Just like with 5e, I spent a lot of time redesigning 4e dragons. The 4e MM didn't have the countermeasures you've been asking for either. The did get better in the Vault - but they still had issues.

I really hope they take a good hard look a dragon design in the '24 monster manual. However, MotM does not inspire confidence (nor did Fizban's).

4e's problem was mostly math. They kinda figured it out eventually but it was years later. If 4e had the websites and tools 5e had, the problems mostly go away.

4e was a different monster altogether though. It's high levels wasn't difficult or a change of style. It was a slog if you didn't use the adjusted math. 4e prevented the difficulty and style issues by locking most of the crazy effects into rituals and making them treasure so ht the base game loop never changes.

You had to:

1. Do the adventure for the ritual
2. Do the adventure for the money for the ritual
3. Do the busted ritual
4. Now you broke
5. Do the dungeon you did step 1-4 to get to

 

[Quickleaf]

It seems to be an accepted fact that creating pre-designed adventures for high (15+) level characters is difficult.

I would like to accept that argument but with the caveats that a) "difficult" does not mean "impossible" and b) that difficulty is a technical problem that can be solved and is not a systemic problem.

As such I would like to discuss in a serious way what those technical challenges are and how they can be addressed. What I don't want to do is argue about whether the basic premise is true. Nor do I want to discuss the issues of "fluff" around high level adventures -- that is we won't be talking about whether the 18th level characters would be better off doing something else that adventuring.

Remember, the primary goals are to identify problems and discuss potential solutions.

The first thing to came to my mind is a problem that is true for all published adventures but definitely exacerbated at high levels: the designer does not know the composition of the party.

I'm not very well versed in high level adventures, so I've mostly been reading responses from others who have more experience. The highest I've GMed is up to 13th level, and played in a few 17th level one-shots.

The one thing I was starting to notice around 10th level is the abundance of spell slots getting so high that it was challenging to get players to ever feel the "crunch" of running low on spell slots except in very specifically manipulated circumstances. One approach I started playing with was including narrative moments to expend spell slots for a cool effect. For example, reassembling a bridge by expending a 3rd level spell slot, charging up an underwater-pressure-mitigating crystal with escalating spell slots, or activating a wind funnel transporting the PCs from one mountain to the other side of a valley with a total of 2 spell slots per PC transported.

I'm not 100% married to that as an ideal solution (e.g. I think it might further exacerbate certain martial/spellcaster divides), but in some situations I think it can be a fun addition that serves to reduce spell slot resources but feels more like a "value added" rather than something punitive.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Are you really saying a game of D&D must only be in a dungeon with a dragon?

No. But it's a good example of the sort of simple narrative structure my players enjoy. They aren't into politics, world building (which would require taking the game far more seriously than they want to), or freeform play. If you don't drop a signpost "this way to the adventure" in front of them they are locked in decision paralysis.

So what they want from a high level adventure is the same as a low level adventure, but with bigger monsters.

 

[M_Natas]

It seems to be an accepted fact that creating pre-designed adventures for high (15+) level characters is difficult.

I would like to accept that argument but with the caveats that a) "difficult" does not mean "impossible" and b) that difficulty is a technical problem that can be solved and is not a systemic problem.

As such I would like to discuss in a serious way what those technical challenges are and how they can be addressed. What I don't want to do is argue about whether the basic premise is true. Nor do I want to discuss the issues of "fluff" around high level adventures -- that is we won't be talking about whether the 18th level characters would be better off doing something else that adventuring.

Remember, the primary goals are to identify problems and discuss potential solutions.

The first thing to came to my mind is a problem that is true for all published adventures but definitely exacerbated at high levels: the designer does not know the composition of the party.

One solution is to plan the campaign out from level 1/3 up to 20. The last campaign I DMed was built that way. It started at low levels with low-level adventures. Rescue the village from the werewolf. Kill some Zombies. Explore that ruin etc. pp.
While doing so they get involved in the world and exposed to the backstory and the main conflict of the world (this continent was separated from the forgotten realms to quarantine it because of a Lovecraftian entity that was trapped thousand years ago, after it tries to open a hole in reality to let other Lovecraftian things in).
So the stakes kept escalating. From Werewolf threatening a village to an evil IT-like entity killing all the magical children in a city to reassembling the splitted soul of a god to fighting a Kraken that tries to invade a city, getting sparks of divinity and the option to become gods themselves up to find out that the dragon god who you thought was on your side is actually in league with the Lovecraftian monster he is supposed to guard and he is grooming you to become the sacrifice needed to free the monster and open the portal so that the Lovecraftian monsters can colonise this world and reshape it to their liking until they have completely drained it of all life and energy and continuing to the next world.

To create high-level adventures that make sense, you need a world and story that supports that. So from the early levels on you need to build in the 20th Level BBEGs and you need to build in reasons, why they not have taken over the world yet, but become increasingly more dangerous over time.

Like the main trope of high fantasy: the dark Lord who is trapped/lost his power and is bidding his time to get free/get the power back.

But for that all to work, you need the players to want to play safe-the-world campaigns. They need to get invested in the world to play for 20 levels.
And they also need to be okay with not having a choice (because if they don't engage with that adventure, the world will end).

 

[dave2008]

4e's problem was mostly math. They kinda figured it out eventually but it was years later. If 4e had the websites and tools 5e had, the problems mostly go away.

Not really the math, as that barely changed for solo monsters (or at least what I call "the math"). The issue with 4e solos where, IMO:

1. Action economy: Initially solos only got one turn (+ reactions), Later they added "instinctive actions" which add one off turn action. This helped, but 5e Legendary Actions are generally an improvement on this idea.
2. Stunlock/Focus fire: 4e solos had no good way to remove conditions and could easily be shut down so that they did nothing. Again "instinctive actions" helped as you could remove a condition(s) instead of taking the extra action, but that takes you back to #1. Legendary Resistance in 5e was designed to combat this and works better in one sense, but is perhaps to severe in another. I think a better option would be to spend a Legendary Action to remove a condition (like instinctive actions). This is how "Elite Recovery" works in LevelUp.
3. To many hit points: They never really solved this one. The tweaked them a bit, but solos always had a mountain of hit points. 5e eliminated this issue (though maybe to far, but with Mythic monsters they have corrected it wonderfully). Lots of hit points isn't necessarily a problem, except...
4. To little threat: 4e solos did way to little damage, particularly at high level, and where not a threat to harm the party. Thus, battles quickly became a forgone conclusion and then a slog. Later designs improved the situation some, but never came close to solving it. Even at the end, 4e solos did way to little damage. Blog 42 had a great rundown on this issues and I pretty much adopted their revised damage charts. 5e may have improved this issue a little, but definitely has not solved it in official monster design. I can, however, use the DMG guidelines to mostly solve this issue.

 

[dave2008]

I'm not very well versed in high level adventures, so I've mostly been reading responses from others who have more experience. The highest I've GMed is up to 13th level, and played in a few 17th level one-shots.

The one thing I was starting to notice around 10th level is the abundance of spell slots getting so high that it was challenging to get players to ever feel the "crunch" of running low on spell slots except in very specifically manipulated circumstances. One approach I started playing with was including narrative moments to expend spell slots for a cool effect. For example, reassembling a bridge by expending a 3rd level spell slot, charging up an underwater-pressure-mitigating crystal with escalating spell slots, or activating a wind funnel transporting the PCs from one mountain to the other side of a valley with a total of 2 spell slots per PC transported.

I'm not 100% married to that as an ideal solution (e.g. I think it might further exacerbate certain martial/spellcaster divides), but in some situations I think it can be a fun addition that serves to reduce spell slot resources but feels more like a "value added" rather than something punitive.

I do something similar and allow my Wizard to do creative magical things will magic / spell slots (and usually an arcana check) rather than just casts spells. I haven't built them into my adventures so much, but allow it as method for the wizard to freeform his magic somewhat. I like the idea of being more intentional about it. I will give that a try.

This is also similar to what @FrozenNorth was saying. You don't avoid / negate the ability to use teleport, you plan for it and that is one more spell slot taken from the wizard.