D&D 5E What I learned after DMing for 29 levels

[kbrakke]

If you didn't start at level 1 you were never really playing D&D IMHO.

It sure felt like D&D.
I'm actually not a fan of starting at 1 for any group without new players in 5e. When I start a hexcrawling game with this group they will start at level 2. If we do a more plot based adventure style game they would start at 3. At this point I don't get inspired to DM at level 1.

So you just make up the epic levels? If the campaign I'm in at the moment unfolds like I think it might, I'm thinking of extending it into epic levels. Did you ever think about tweaking the epic destinies from 4e?

I did mostly just make up the Epic levels. The main source of inspiration was what the players were doing and what they wanted to do both mechanically and storywise. I did look at Epic destinies as one of many things to draw inspiration from, but because each epic path was only about the characters I didn't want to lock down a specific path for them. It wasn't them persuing a specific epic goal, but rather what they were doing at an epic scale.

Love it, this is awesome stuff! I absolutely agree on the "why not" part. Many of the higher CR monsters in 5e are designed way too conservatively. You just need to look at their laughable lair and legendary actions. This is a legendary action for Jubilex, the Demon Lord of Oozes (supposedly CR23): "Acid Splash. Jubilex casts Acid Splash". Come on, really guys? You couldn't think of a legendary action more inspiring than that for a unique named creature?

Once I threw away the MM the high level threats started to shine. I liked using the MM, Volos and Kobold Press Tome of Beasts for inspiration for abilities, legendary actions and so on. But really just making something that felt dangerous and epic was the main thing. I agree 100% on some legendary actions for monsters being laughably bad. At a minimum, even in my normal games, I let spell casting monsters just cast real spells with legendary actions. And let most things reposition with their legendary action.

Not related to this epic game, but I find applying the warlord legendary action template to any humanoid leader types is an easy way to make a humanoid boss battle. Recently I had a swashbuckler with that template as a pirate captain and it was intense.

 

[schnee]

If you didn't start at level 1 you were never really playing D&D IMHO.

Just to let you know, I was laughing AT this post, not WITH it.