Who is interested in playing a 100th level adventure anyway.

[Turhan]

On the surface 100th level seems nearly absurd. I can't imagine such a game. But I think if someone could come up with an interesting idea for the game, figure out what 100th level means, and then explain it to me, I would be willing to try it once.

I generally prefer campaigns of 6th-16th level, however, and the super level games I've been in seemed to degenerate into: "Okay, I just did 300 pts of damage to your 5,000 HP bbeg. Take that." At that point it's ludicrous, imo. But that doesn't mean someone can't make a good high level game.

 

[reveal]

I'll try almost anything once.

I do agree with seeing little point in it on a long-term basis, because I'd need a computer to track the numbers-crunching on a regular basis! Can you imagine just a 100th level cleric?

100d8 + 1000 (30 CON) = 1450 hit points on average!

Epic spells that do hundreds of hit points of damage!

+15 weapons of Disruption that do somewhere like 1d8+3d6+30 damage per hit!


The mind boggles.

We ran three sessions as 26th level characters once, just to try it out. I ended up doing all the math for the DM, and for the other players too, on my laptop. It helped a lot but the battles still took forever. I can see a 100th level game taking 2 or 3 hours minimum per battle, so I think the adventure would have to be either relatively short or not have that much combat involved in it.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

From the poll it looks like a shocking 60% of EN Worlders would like to try this, at least once.

What's so shocking about trying it? One never knows.

 

[reveal]

From the poll it looks like a shocking 60% of EN Worlders would like to try this, at least once.

I'm not shocked. Most people here are pretty open to new things. If it's a one-shot adventure, why the heck not? You can do it just to say you did it, if for no other reason.

 

[Wombat]

Personally, I lose almost all interest in D20 characters around 15th level. Simply trying to keep track of all of the powers, abilities, etc., of a 100th level character would be a nightmare and an exercise in frustration. Beyond that, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what sort of "adventure" would challange such a character in anything even vaguely approaching a semi-realistic world -- perhaps skeet-shooting for gods, but that is about it.

Still, I'd be willing to participate ... once ... with a GM I truly trust ... and only in a joke setting/campaign...

 

[Quickleaf]

I think the main interest of playing such kind of characters, is to play Earth-shaking uber powered heroes who can tackle demon-prince and prevent the galaxy to eventually collapse into a black hole.

This sounds like a superheroes game! In M&M terms it would be PL20 or more. It also is vaguely similar to the "Amber" series with scheming gods working against one another. I kind of see the situation as being similar to the mages in Ars Magica; they are incredibly powerful at higher levels but spend most of their times behind the scenes (in their laboratories) letting their servants do the work. In general, the more powerful one gets, the more they tend to become an absentee landlord.

That said, I will help you hijack your thread.

Is this primarily a comic adventure or a fairy-tale one (as another poster pointed out)?
If comic, is it like Order of the Stick, poking fun at all the D&D tropes?
If it is fairy-tale like, will it be like traditional Frankish/British/Celtic folklore?

Do the players have to make their own characters? If so, what abilities do they have access to? For example, do you use M&M/True20/Blue Rose/Psychic's Handbook type powers? Divine salient abilities? An alternative epic spellcasting system like the Black Company or Ars Magica? Since a 100th level adventure would depend so much upon a character's history and uniqueness, how could you write an adventure if this isn't known?

Or are the characters pre-made? I think this is the saner option. For example, a PC might be The Lady of the Lake, Ares, the Simurgh, Atropos, heck, even Jesus (or Brian!).

What rules do you use? I can't imagine statting up a 100th level character. You get 33 feats from your level alone. You get +20 to your ability scores. You are essentially a living god.

100th Level Plot Idea #1
So you've reached 100th level, have you? That annoying curse of Hectate prevents you from ascending to godhood, not to mention your spouse who'd kill you if you ascended, leaving raising the children to them. Of course, you've known for the last couple years that your enemies children's children have been plotting against you. The fact that the bard cast an epic spell which causes them to be given punning names upon birth didn't smoothe any feathers. Your magic fortress co-exists in seven planes at once, and can disappear in a heartbeat. You have more tentacled horrors magically imprisoned within (er...technically they're in an alternate dimension) than you can remember. Was it Glurfoth or Zilagurt who sucked out your brains, not once but twice? You've settled to watching your children grow. Of course, whenever they want they can take the elf queen's elixir and cease aging, but not before they do their homework.

But life at the top ain't all peaches and cream. You became famous after saving the kingdom, but then it was the country, the world, the universe, and even the gods themselves from Zilagurt...or was it Glurfoth? Everyone cheered and rejoiced, storytellers began posting magical posters of you, kings would sit lower than you (except for that damned gnome who left your party to found Kirpah Nasmong), several national epics were written in your honor, and your party has been immortalized in every way. (If only you could come to a concensus on a party name!) And then everyone and their cousin, and their cousin's foreign horse started asking you for help, and autographs, and miracles. The wizard had to create an entire demi-town of modrons just to process all the requests.

And then the unthinkable happened. You realized you didn't like being famous. You just wanted to settle down on a farm with your family and enjoy a simple life. While bemoaning your fates to a sympathetic arch-fiend at a watering hole at your local planar hub of the multiverse, you had a realization. You could undo your popularity. However, it's going to be tricky to bring down the mountain of legends surrounding you. It'll take a well-orchestrated smear campaign kept secret from the public (the targets being yourselves of course), convincing your family to go along with it, hiring stunt dopplegangers to bungle at any attempted kingdom-saving, and traveling back in time to convince your 1st level selves not to listen to the advice you gave them the last time you time-traveled (you know, the part about sticking to one adventuring profession would be the quickest route to power). It might be dangerous (well, not really, your cloned self can always try again), but it's the best chance you've got at a normal family life.

The Players: Iconic single-class characters. The Bard, The Wizard, The Monk, etc.
The Big Bad Guy: An 100th level commoner of course.

 

[Ozmar]

Campaign/Adventure Idea

I would think that you would want to go truly EPIC with the plot. You've got Faerun's deities statted out, so let's use those as allies and foes. Make the goal something truly amazing, like creating a new plane, altering the structure of the cosmos, taking over Sigil, or designing the next campaign world by overriding the gods and setting your PCs up as the new pantheon.

Even then, I think that sounds like 40 to 50th level characters. But I think it could be fun, if the players are willing to invest enough into the backstory and learn enough about the campaign setting to really understand the implications of all their choices. (What I mean by that: Bane is just another high-level mook if the players don't know anything about his history or mythic status. The players should really be jazzed about the thought of making deals with the elven pantheon to reunite with Lloth against the dwarven and orcish pantheons in a war that they have designed just so they can usurp their collective divine power and establish their own planar realms.)

Oh, and you'd definitely want a relatively easy system for tracking armies, massive organizations of powerful servitors and the various interactions of epic spells, planar attributes and divine powers. Some of that's already out there, but I don't know how well it fits together. In any case, it sounds like a complicated campaign. I'd start with what's available, and that means using the stats for the biggest, baddest deities around.

Oh, and if you really wanna do it right, start the PCs at first level, so by the time they're 30th, they actually know how to play their characters. Of course, that requires long term commitment and molding the campaign over time to support the epic-level setting.

Maybe I'll do that someday... definitely use the Realms. Or maybe Planescape... Hmmm....

Ozmar the Epic DM

[Edit: or go with Quickleaf's idea. I like that, too. ]

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Hm... for trivial encounters, use the Books "Deities and Demigods" and "Faiths and Pantheons"

Don't tell me noone of you is waiting for the random encounter table with the line

"2d6 Helms with 1d4 Tyr officers"


I think I'd try it, just for the heck of it. Deliciously absurd!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Of course, you need to take a two-week vacation to make the character.

 

[Chacal]

I think the main interest of playing such kind of characters, is to play Earth-shaking uber powered heroes who can tackle demon-prince and prevent the galaxy to eventually collapse into a black hole.

I'm quite sure you can play this type of game within the standard 20 levels.
The DM just has to put a limit on the level of NPCs or scale them down in power, but not in apparent and relative power.
In an RPG, statistics are not the primary source of power displays.

Chacal