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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 6153178" data-attributes="member: 78958">What you're describing is in fact a general problem with high-level play. So many creatures have extremely powerful alpha strikes, and of course PCs do, too, that the game is fittingly described as "rocket tag" at that point.Some would argue that a level 17 party entering a graveyard and not taking precautions against death effects are begging to get killed. Others would argue that level 17 characters have no business NOT checking out everything with divination magic first, before going there in person. Heck, a Detect Evil or Detect Undead would probably have warned them enough that there is a more powerful foe than just Ghouls hanging out here. Finally, a DC 26 Fort save is something that level 17 characters are expected to pass on a regular basis, so if any effect with that save DC is giving the party a hard time, it might be said that they're much in need of stepping up their game.On the other hand, your game seems a little more carefree, or at least not that into optimization and all the metagame stuff, to me. The PC builds you mentioned seem downright silly from an optimization standpoint (while probably making a lot of good sense where the characters are concerned). Therefore, playing high-level D&D as rocket tag seems to be right off the table. Sure, some rocket tag is built into the system, and you just ran into an excellent example of that.However, it doesn't have to be that way. If the players rarely encounter potentially campaign-ending abilities in the surprise round, and if they don't use alpha strike techniques (like celerity/arcane-fusion novas, scry-and-die, white raven tactics spam etc.) themselves, a Banshee turning up out of nowhere and wailing them to death might come as a surprise, and a bad and unfun one at that. So think about the style of your game, and what's usual and what isn't, just like other posters have already stated.Finally, some metagame/DMing concerns: a Banshee is such a powerful monster, and such an iconically deadly foe, that some rumors would have cropped up in the region. Its dwelling place ought to be something quite out of the ordinary. You said that the area looked unusually blighted, but adventurers encounter that every day. Have you made sure to bring across how powerfully unholy the place was? Maybe you gave the players lots of clues; maybe you didn't. Maybe they just decided to ignore good advice. But I think opening up with Ghouls, at least, was the wrong step, and ultimately contributed to your players' relative carelessness. Ghouls just make it look like this was ye olde undead-filled graveyard, nothing to worry about at their level. And straight after a bunch of CR 1 monsters, a CR 17 opponent gets a surprise round on the PCs - that kind of "pacing" can result in really nasty backlash.</blockquote>

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