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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shardstone" data-source="post: 9346071" data-attributes="member: 6807784">ONe of my favorite games was an 8-shot that was 17th to 20th level, with multiple sessions at 20th.On the player end, I allowed, at the time, all official WotC content. Had 4 players. Setting was Crifoth -- a blasted wasteland haunted by demons and affliction. Players went around killing Archfiends, one of them became an Archfiend, and in the end they succeeded in bringing humanity back to the wasteland to fix the world.I prepared my monsters to have teleportation for spells like force cage. MOst combats were against solos or duos, since we focused on the archfiends. I ran very high damage, several turns-per-round for my solos. Combats were consistently close; at this level, most combats were also fresh because they have so many resources they they can almost always be something close to fresh, and you can't really attrition them the traditional way. Despite that, I found that running for 20th level characters as if they'll always be fresh (even if they aren't in reality) was instrumental in creating a challenging atmosphere.I didn't concern myself at all with what my players might be capable of, and instead welcomed them to surprise me with their characters. In order to start at a higher level, you have to be willing to improvise and build on the wild spells casters can drop. If you can do so well, it'll create a very strong sense of dynamic play; something is always happening, there is always spectacle, and because the players themselves are normal humans, there's a surprising amount of grounded reactions too. The players were very much thespians (though two were optimizers) and so I found that the dramas that exist at low level still existed at high level.First session was essentially a test run. I wanted my players to exercise and play with their toys freely to see what would happen. From there, they pretty much got the hang of piloting their high level heroes and it was smooth sailing.I did allow them plenty of magic items. One of each tier, or several rare/uncommon and one very rare or legendary.</blockquote>

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