Another thing you can do is either add more enemies, or use enemies that amplify a pc's weakness. My 3 lvl 20 players curbstomped a balor and took its lunch money; however, before that, 3 CR 8 frost giants were beating them so bad, I almost pulled a deus ex just to keep them alive. The mistake a lot of us make with hi-level campaigns is that we focus on enemy CR instead of enemy tactics. Remember: sometimes, quantity is better than quality.
Eh. A party of 10th level players can curbstomp a Balor, depending on how many PC's there are. Adding more enemies or deliberately trying to make things harder arbitrarily, is boring and not creative, in my opinion.
I use a few different things: 1. Swarms. If it has a stat block, you can turn it into a swarm. Goblins, Kobolds, City Guards, Zombies, Skeletons, Werewolves, Archers, Spellcasters, Demons, whatever... One hit point pool, One Initiative Roll, One or two special attacks depending, Multi Attack with the number of attacks cut in half when the swarm's hit points drop by half, The swarm's space is Difficult Terrain, etc... Standard Swarm Mechanics. You will have to be creative in how you describe combat, A bit more... Theatrically. For example, lets say you use the Guard stat block. Say you want ten Guards, each has 11 hit points giving your Swarm or Guard Unit 110 hit points. For each 11 hit points that your players "Remove", you describe them as killing one enemy. Even though the swarm only has one hit point pool, you want your players to feel like every single enemy they kill matters. Now you can challenge your players with 20, 50, even a hundred or more enemies without messing up Initiative or slowing the game to a crawl. The trick is entirely in how you describe it. Also, every swarm or unit needs commanders. This is where you use your "special" units. Spellcasters, things like that. Don't ignore those Special Attacks either. What's more interesting, a zombie horde that strikes you a couple times, or a zombie horde that strikes you, grapples you and tries to bite you with it`s cursed bite? 2. Take a lesson from videogames. Instead of just using things like Legendary Resistance or Legendary Actions, use other things like having to Destroy the Magic Pylons, Shatter the Eldritch Obelisks, Kill the Cultists, Stop the Ritual, Avoid the Environmental Effects, Deal with all the Minions, etc... All while trying to fight the BBEG. A big mistake that a lot of the DMs I`ve played with seem to make, is trying to run a simple "vanilla" encounter for high levels players. It rarely works. If it`s just a Monster Stomp, then why would it be interesting or challenging to a bunch of godlings? Even monsters like the Terrasque are rather boring(and die easily). 3. Use appropriate tactics and strategies. Think Tucker`s Kobolds. A book I can highly recommend is "The Monsters Know What Their Doing". This is a big one. You can make any encounter either boring or awesome for any level of play, just by how you use those monsters. Monsters that just mindlessly run in to attack and thus die easily are boring. Monsters that use preparation, cover, tactics, traps, knows when to retreat and to advance, knows how to cover each other, and back each other up. Now THAT'S both interesting and challenging! Even for high level players. This one thing alone can make your players blow through almost all of their resources in a single battle, just trying to keep a lid on all the chaos! It works especially well on spellcasters. Use a combination of these and you will never have any real trouble challenging your players at any level.
I came up with the same swarm idea, but I use it for a different purpose. I use it to thematically balance monsters and armies. In stories a dragon can kill an army, a hero can't fight an army, but a hero can kill a dragon. So once human enemies group up, they act as swarms against PC's but monsters can get free AOE where one attack hits every soldier at once. Now a tarasque doesn't die to 200 peasants with shortbows, but a PC can, like in the stories.
@@Thunderdumpe Sure, absolutely you can do that! You can do almost anything you want with it. The Entire secret to using swarms is Entirely in how you describe it! It becomes a narrative tool, that you can put math to. How you do that is entirely up to you! Lets use zombies. No, a hero can't attack the entire swarm at once with a sword, but they can attack the closest zombie. If each zombie has 22 hit points, then if the player does that much or more damage, just "kill" or remove one zombie from the horde or swarm. You have to describe it as single combat, even with the shared hit point pool for the entire swarm. This still works narratively, because only so many creatures can be close enough to the heroes to attack them at any one point in time, as represented by multiattack. The way you Describe it each zombie only got one slam attack, but there are so many zombies that the player gets hit multiple times. Let me ask you a question, whats scarier, getting hit with a zombie`s slam attack?, or getting grabbed and eaten by a horde of zombies like in the Walking Dead? So, you just give your swarm of zombies special attacks, an auto grapple on hit and a cursed bite on top of the multiattack Slam attack. Just that right there, you have now recreated the show The Walking Dead in DnD, mostly. Die while under the effects of the curse, and come back as a zombie. Yes there are healing spells and remove curse, but the players better make sure they don't die before those can get used... The catch? You have to describe it that way.
@@Yoshi-Wise A trick I learned fairly recently that you might like, is that if you want to add tension and pressure to an encounter without overwhelming you players then use dice, usually a D4, as a count down timer till reinforcements arrive. The die is sitting visible right on the table for everyone to see! Now they don't get to take their sweet time anymore... 4 rounds, 3 rounds, 2 rounds, 1 round. It's amazing how much harder they will push themselves! Make sure to describe the sounds of running feet and yelling voices coming from somewhere else, getting closer each round. If you want to see panic on your players faces, put down a second one, then if the fight drags on another round, then a third... The players have no clue what kind of, or how many reinforcements are coming, only that they ARE coming! Now they feel pressure and a sense that time is running out, something that's hard to do normally. This is also how I stop them from taking rests in the middle of dungeons or encounters, I just start putting dice on the table! One, at, a , time. I don't even say a word. You can adjust the difficulty of an encounter this way as well, to how how many resources your party has left. If they are low-ish on hit points and spell slots then it might only be a couple low level minions. If they are nearly full on hit points, spell slots and abilities, then maybe it's 10 or more bad guys, plus maybe a spellcaster and some archers. If they are still doing great, then just put down another die... The difference between doing this, or simply throwing more bad guys at them without it, is the additional Psychological Pressure and sense of Anticipation, Dread and Foreboding you can achieve. And the best part is that it's super easy! Since the first time you do this your players will have no clue whats going on, I recommend starting with two minions, "You hear a couple of voices and two pairs of running feet!" 4 rounds. They now know how this works, so when you put down another die and say "You hear a LOT of voices and many, MANY running feet!" 4 rounds, 3 rounds, etc, Then they start feeling the pressure!
I do swarms as well but u make their main attack be a save that they take half damage from (is the swarm attack) represents the idea you always get hit by the mass of swarm attacks. The swarm then has other special attacks that either represent something else the entire swarm can do OR a hero/commander in the units contributions.
I find a good way to balance the ethereal plane is not to populate it, but to underline its sheer emptiness. By for example, the longer you spend in it at a time, the more dreadful the silence begins to feel. Until eventually resulting in the player slowly losing sight of the material plane as they are consumed by nothing. I’ve found it builds a lot of tension around even suggesting the spell’s use.
Good point. Silence is a dreadful feeling. We had our electricity shut off due to a repair the other day and the sunden stop in background noise is noteworthy.
One other thing to remember - high level PCs are *known*. They are inpactful enough that any villain looiing to mess with them will naturally plan for their abilities. So it's nore sensible that the GM ve tailoring encounters to target weaknesses or nullify advantages.
This kind of thinking can be very overplayed. It’s one thing for future adversaries to learn of specific strengths/weaknesses that became part of the narrative that resulted in the PCs fame, plus some reasonable inferences. It’s another thing to have an antagonist start throwing 3-dozen curses at the party’s single-class wizard, because the one thing said Wizard Counterspelled during a fight with the Lich that made the party’s name was a Curse, because said Wizard has a permanent -6 on such saves. And if your answer as a DM to how your new BBEG knows all these still fairly concealed weaknesses of the party is some version of Six Dozen Contact Outer Plane/Other high-end divinations, that should be an integrated part of the story, and not just a snarky excuse. If an Arch-Conjurer starts a months long intelligence-gathering operation against PCs who have saved the world 4x, someone on the side of Good is likely to learn about that and try to warn the PCs. Basically, if it’s twinkery for the PCs to do it to the campaign/DM, it remains twink-BS for the DM to do it to the party.
@@Shawn-f3x As always, it's largely a matter of degree. After your fighter is seen surviving a fireball or two in front of a crowd, having the villain be aware they have a ring of fire resistance is not going to break anything. But having the fire Drake that guards the pass suddenly only use bite attacks would be a problem. The balance point is where your intelligent villains are being sensible in the same way the PCs would. Secret weaknesses are a plot device more than a mechanic. Undercutting those for convenience is an unforced error. That said - having the BBEG monologue about how hard he had to work to find one is a great way to up the challenge during a big fight.
@@PVS3 Agreed. I basically replied as I did because of how startlingly common it seems to have become for a lot of DMs to fall into a weird competition with the party, these days. So many things are a matter of nuance/degree, as you said, but like this one phrase I keep seeing lately, “If the PCs can do it, so can the bad guys.” Yes, technically that’s true, but just because a DM can have NPCs do something, doesn’t mean they should. Some acts of munchkinry are simple instances of players feeling like their characters backs are to the wall, and that’s not a situation/justification a DM should ever really have. I try to remind new DMs to remember what it’s like when you were playing your oldest/favorite PC, then compare that to the favorite NPC they ever made. It tends to underscore the point that the disproportionate time/energy investment of the player to the created PC is always orders of magnitude greater than that of a DM for even the most detailed, background-rich, longest running of NPCs. But that gets off-topic into this whole other thing where I believe a lot of DMs can be overly flippant about unfortunate PC deaths. Like, no, it’s *not* the same thing when your BBEG of 2 years is finally defeated, versus the Level 17 Arcane Archer/Level 6 Spellsinger gets Disintegrated in a world where revivification magic tops out at Raise Dead. (Happened recently to an online friend, and I literally had to explain to the DM why she wanted to take a few sessions off, with him just *not* getting it.) I’m aggravated enough at this point, I’ve made bringing her PC back a major focus of my character’s downtime, and man, do I miss the camaraderie of round-the-actual-table groups.
For Etherealness, just say the Wizard or architect of that dungeon used Private Sanctum over its entire length... Private Sanctum prohibits **planar travel.** The Ethereal Plane is another plane. It also prevents Plane Shift and Blink.
Cast Etherealness outside the dungeon, then walk in. And you don't even have to worry about the 8-hour time limit, since Private Sanctum will prevent you from traveling back to the material plane. Though I guess technically if the duration runs out and Private Sanctum keeps you from travelling back, you'd just be stuck on the Ethereal Plane.
Good call on the Private Sanctum spell. There was once an abjuration spell called Dimensional Anchor; this fella was helpful for high lvl 3rd Ed D&D campaigns. A spell that blocks extra dimensional forms of travel, plane shift, etherealness etc. Hell, I've even used this spell as a permanent asset within a dungeon, a large magic stone that prevents people from randomly teleporting into the big baddie's temple that he was residing in. It was too heavy for the party to take, but with some effort they could destroy it (they decided not to due to the resources required to kill a boulder.) I guess the boulder was technically an artifact magical item, but it was unconventional and added a nice aesthetic to an otherwise lavishly decorated dungeon.
Alternative for Similacrum: have it reserve the spell slot, and have all similacrum share the spell slots of the original instead of having their own spell slots. Suddenly, you get a hardcap on how many similacrum any caster can make, no matter how many times they copy themselves. Further, put the similacrum under the DM's control as NPCs (they act like the original and obey them, but the longer they last the more they develop an independent personality, goals & other deviations).
My DM once gave my Fighter a weapon that can cut holes into the etheric plane. Once I wrapped my head around what that meant, I realized he basically gave my fighter Etherialness as an ability. We were only level 7. I abused this so badly that we trivialized a major quest and walls were never an issue. I'm pretty sure he would have nerfed it but I ended up breaking the weapon to save a player, it was powered by a 300g diamond. He told me afterwards that it was a huge relief to him that I broke the broken item, lol. The things I do for roleplay.
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I make my martial characters stronger at higher levels with a few tactics. Firstly, I uncap the physical stats from having a max, and then items that increase str/dex/con now do so as a flat bonus instead of raising the stat to a set point. I also add bonuses for having certain level stats, higher levels of dex grant you movement speed buffs, removing difficult terrain penalties, and at 30 dex the ability to walk on water because of “how fast you are” Strength starts to add bonus thunder/force damage dice for every hit, allows you to ignore resistances and lets you grapple larger size creatures. I more or less wanted my players to feel like anime protagonists at high levels, for both the casters and the martial characters. I do also buff castors at lower levels so everyone feels relatively strong throughout the game.
I would love to see you list all those high-level martial buffs! Bc I agree - a high-level martial should have supernatural abilities that result naturally from their insane stats. A 20th level Barbarian with 30 Strength should be able to create shockwaves by punching the ground. We've all fought bosses who do that. Why can't the PCs do it too?
It seems like people forget the other planes exist. Some of them are prime locations for making areas that tax high level characters, especially spell casters. Yes, they have all these spells and abilities, but if you have to use half of them just to be able to survive in the plane of fire, and THEN deal with whatever the high level BBEG has for you, well... And as for the Ethereal plane issue, you just need to setup the danger of the plane being something that doesn't happen immediately and can be done in short bursts. But going overboard by being there for long periods of time or multiple times in succession can bring the attention of the more dangerous aspects of that realm. And if the planes aren't working for you, then take them to a new more dangerous setting entirely. D&D does have precedent for interconnected realms. Just add your own to the list.
Yeah, other planes are dangerous as heck. I did a level 20 prequel to a campaign where the characters get sent back in time to relive their lives and make better choices, so I choose the elemental plane of fire. First of all, the elemental plane of fire is completely inhospitable unless you are immune to fire, so you either need to give the players prep time, or you do what I did and set it in the City of Brass. Secondly, lorewise, there is an army of over 100,000 Efreeti in the City of Brass, and Efreeti are CR 11, which means even with a party of level 20 characters you should really only be sending a handful of them at a time. After doing research, I ended up retooling a guns-blazing-invasion-of-the-palace encounter into a stealthy sneak-around-and-fight-as-few-people-as-possible one, because it was going to be way too hard, even for max level characters.
You can't believe the number of times I've seen people say "why would you take a short rest when you can take a superior long rest if you have time to fortify your position in a dungeon?" Like my brother in Christ, have you not consider patrols or scrying magic? Or even other time limits that may require you to need to get through that dungeon faster. And that is considering just dungeon travel and not other types of campaigns. Such as pursuit style sessions.
It's why I was so puzzled that from 3rd Ed onwards time and timing stopped being a thing in the rules. Prior to that an Investigation check or anything of the sort took 1 turn (10 minutes). The rules state you can only really adventure for 8hrs a day without consequences, hence tension was always present.
@@jasonfurumetarualkemisto5917 I feel that a lot of the changes that were for the worse in 3.5 were due to not realizing how important such things were for the flow of the game at the time.
@@Delmworks Its a shame really, instead of trimming the fat they cut down to the bone. I recently got a collection of Ad&ds books and was blown away by how detailed and helpful they were. There's a whole section in the DMG that describes all the most abused spells and how to counter and mitigate them, the exact thing this video is doing.
I'm a fan of ruling that you can't learn spells that you haven't found in the world through scrolls, books, or teachers. This allows the GM to control which spells they have to deal with and makes each spell learned on the same caliber as gaining a magic item.
For the ethereal plane one, while one player is off scouting the dungeon, a few things. 1.) They still need to be able to spot the traps. Like, yeah, they could hover below ground, zig-zagging through every spot, but to cover every space, it seems unlikely that this would be able to be done quickly. And even then, that only covers the ground. I the trap is from above, or from the side, then they need to spend even more time. And ultimately... 2.) That time while they are away from the party is time that the party could be attacked. And if you are off in the dungeon and the rest of the party is at the opening, good luck hearing them. You may very well come back to a dead party. 3.) Who's to say that some mad wizard didn't find a way to protect their area from the ethereal pane. It does say that the ethereal plane doesn't connect to all planes, and a smart wizard would likely also know of the vulnerabilities of the plane. So they could erect some planar shift magic to act as a barricade around an area. Essentially an anti-magic field, just for the ethereal plane. Even the BBEG setting up a long-term extra-dimensional plane in a place would block travel through that part. 4.) What your party can do, you can do. So if they slip in via etherealness to spy on you, you do the same to them. Maybe even while they are sleeping, you nab their gear. Unless they are resting in an extra-dimensional space. In which case, sorry. Though, 1 and 2 could be gotten around by casting it at a higher level to take your party with you, there isn't much they can do to get around a specific barrier.
The level 4 spell "*Mordenkainen's Private Sanctom*" can be tweeked to deal with this etherealness because 1 it blocks planer travel. You could also have it block the ethereal plane.
I love Forcecage. I use it against players all the time, it's one of the easiest ways to guarantee they spend spell slots. When they use it on me, I've won! They used a 7th level slot, and I have one less monster to manage lol
One thing I enjoy about high level play, from the perspective of a GM, is that the party will reach a point where, even if they encounter something they can't fight, they have the tools to work around it. You stop really having to worry about if something is 'too much' for them, because you can trust they have the resources to either deal with it directly, or to get away from it and find another angle. Figuring out when that point is can be somewhat subjective by group, of course.
That's not how simulacrum works sage advice made it clear along time ago that the sim counts as you for the purposes of not making extra simulacrum. Only one sim per character is allowed. It's still quiet powerful but infinite sims is not possible
Thank you for the Tipps. But I have another idea. The main problem is very obvious at 13:44 - you want to catch the interest of your players. But they are level 17+, they are demigods, kings, ultra wizards, cult leaders, whatever. After reading the book from Jonah Fishel et al. I came to the conclusion that the solution is to change the meta from reactive to proactive. I expect players with level 17-20, that they have plans how to rule, form, shape or protect the world they are living in. We are far too used to the idea that the badies are hatching evil plans and the players have to react to this. We need to make players more responsible for their campaigns and give them agency. I mean, if you were a level 20 doctor, scientist, general, president, ceo - you would have plans what to do with your power, you wouldn’t have to sit at home and wait for danger to knock on your door yet again.
Fascinating take. I like the way it sells the fantasy of absolute power. After all this time fighting to get to the top of the food chain, now you're the one calling the shots. 🙂
Easiest method of dealing with a spellcaster simulacrum is to just use a variation on the old rule of "they only get half their class levels". Just make it so that a simulacrum gets their spellcaster level treated as a half-spellcaster level. Still a reasonable amount of spell slots, and the big epic spells are restricted to the actual PCs in the party. After all, a martial simulacrum is significantly worse than the PC equivalent, so the caster simulacrum should be as well.
Here's my opinions on the spells mentioned and how I would deal with them: Tiny Hut & Equivalents: DISPEL MAGIC LMAO Dealing with simulacrum has several ways. Don't let wish cast simulacrum, or put the wizard on a time constraint or party limit for an encounter so they can't bring all the simulacrums with them, like a bridge that would collapse if more than 8 people were on it, then the platform behind them explodes and all the simulacrums die or smt. Also having the BBEG keeping tabs on the players could also shut down some of their shenanigans, like 'oh shoot they are casting simulacrum, i know this trick, i did it myself! *intense counterspell noises* (or have the BBEG also stroll up with 500 simulacrums, then they just go like 'yeah no im willing to compromise if you are' and tell the player that they can both put away the simulacrums before the fight so they don't just immediately get nuked by 500 meteor swarms for a TPK) How to solve etherealness: Shrodinger's Phase Spiders. At any moment there is both infinite and zero phase spiders on the ethereal plane, it all depends on when the party enters the place and how the DM was feeling at that moment For Wall of Force, yeah no the spell is really good and some encounters need to be changed to account for it, but just giving the villain misty step or burrow speed could help nerf the spell for solving encounters, and it can even flip the table on the party by cornering them using the very wall they summoned glibness exists i guess, we love cheesing social encounters (just don't do that much checks during the encounter, have it be mostly RP focused and not based on rolls) I gave wish a bit of a rework. Wishes can be handed out at lower levels, but they require a sacrifice most of the time in the form of magic items. Sometimes the wish could backfire or outright fail if the wisher attempts to get something beyond the capabilities of the deity granting the wish, and that means they lost something for nothing. It causes the players to think about their wish to avoid backfiring, so they would undershoot the wish a bit. Alternatively, COUNTERSPELL
@8:34 I think my solution would be to say that, where there are large numbers of creatures in the real world, large numbers of ethereal creatures are also there in the Ethereal plane, and the creatures in the Ethereal plane often mirror the attitudes of those in the material plane. That way, they can do the cool stuff in towns and whatnot, but when in a dungeon where there’s lots of bad creatures in the material plane there will be a lot of bad creatures in the ethereal plane
Actually a better solution already exists in old dnd lore. And that's "dense materials" or other specific materials act as walls to someone on the border ethereal. Walls of force also act as a wall for those on the ethereal plane. As for an example of what dense materials are. Typically lead in other elements of denser on the periodic table would work. Some of the odd materials that you can use are Gorgons blood. Not the Greek Gorgons but the metal bull monster sheet. Another thing is that glyphs of warding can also trigger on entities in the ethereal plane. There's also not a lot of fun things that wander the ethereal plane. There's a load of monsters and other horrors that wander in the border ethereal, not saying to have a dungeon have 500 monsters chilling in the ethereal waiting to gank the one poor soul that cast become ethereal. But let's say a dungeon has one or two entities trapped inside or refuse to leave. Most of the time paranoid glitches and or tomb makers will protect their bases from the ethereal plane. As it's potentially a vulnerability that they should account for
Well thought and well spoken. The only thing I would add that super perception abilities can also be game breaking, as they can render many puzzles and quests centered around mysteries problematic.
I've made two things in my world, first, The world escalates with them which is not my favourite, but its the only way to control them, following your magic sword example, once they arrive, the security, traps, rumors become more dangerous, even for a high level party, and if they take it, enemies will come for it because they also want it. Second, inevitables and the DM avatar, (the avatar was the lore and rumors the players made themselves), there are locations like an AMAZONIAN FOREST with an inevitable guardian in it, only active if "something destroys the forest at a big rate". And the avatar, its an old wizard that overcame the gods and doesnt want other messing with its achievement. So, if a lvl 20 pslelcaster party starts breaking reality like crazy, inevitables come to do their job (check old lore), or the avatar just come and stop them (never happened). My high level parties have enjoy the world so far. Even meeting gods, fighting evil and blowing things up.
I made epic battles on hex maps that turned until regular combat when the party got close enough to attack or get attacked. After combat they have to re-asses how the battle is going and what they are going to do next.
You just rule that the longer you remain in the ethereal plane, the more likely you're going to attract a wanderer of the ethereal plane. Maybe call it an, "Ethereal Walker" These creatures will show up when the DM secretly rolls a 90 or better on a d100 and the DC drops by 10 for every minute you spend in there. One minute goes by, you roll for a 90 or higher. Another minute goes by, you roll for an 80 or higher. Another minute, roll for a 70 or higher. This goes on until they pass the DC. The first time this happens, it might be just one Ethereal Walker, but each time there are more.
Lol I also realized the high level dnd isn't broken. It's just some of those high level spells are. One small quick change and it can be rebalanced. Though the "other" problem is stakes, which was touched in the video and man that DM really went ham on "trauma" lolol
About Etherealness. You don't need to make the ethereal plane empty or super dangerous, there are many options in the middle. From the random encounter list (going from nothing to really powerfull encounters) to tailoring an encounter depending you want them to succeed or not.
2:20 Giving martial characters access to magic items just gives them access to the broken stuff. Resting Spells: In Fifth Edition, because you can't alter the flow of time with Demiplane, these are just sort of okay. Time still passes. This is a peculiar type of a retreat, not a pause. True Sight allows you to see, among other things 'doors hidden by magic'. Like that leading to a Magnificent Mansion. In addition to the suggestions you gave, the enemy could also lay an ambush, or bury the entrance in lava, etc. Or they could dispel it. Ideally, do this a few hours after the party has retreated inside. Strictly speaking Plane Shift does not *say* it can breach a Magnificent Mansion, but it can breach a Demiplane. Also dispelling a demiplane can trap the occupants if they don't have access to plane shift. Leomund's Tiny Hut is extremely nasty to enemies that don't have 4th level spells and/or Dispel, but, it is ruled that you *cannot* shoot out ('moving through' and 'shooting through') are different. Against enemies that *do*, however... Teleportation: At the level you get Teleport there is nothing of danger or interest in wilderness travel. Though, sadly, Fifth Edition lacks the some of the rather mean things you can do to someone who tries to teleport to your location... 6:05 Ah, so it's like Unlimited Solar Works back in 3.5. Perhaps the 'simulacrum can't cast spells higher than the spell slot you used -1' alone would be enough, though that's still potentially four layers of Simulacrum. Alternatively, a rather simple change: "The simulacrum is Friendly to you and creatures you designate. The simulacrum can’t gain levels, and it can’t take Short or Long Rests." Or just, y'know, decide what they want Simulacrum to do. I'm pretty sure it's one of those one-offs they gave to an villain in an AD&D adventure and just sort of... kept, but it has some potential approaches. 1: Simplify it. Simulacrum creates an illusory double of a creature. It has preset stats which can't be changed - though, perhaps you could *give* it spells? It's a pretty simple construct you use to impersonate people and infiltrate. 2: Complicate it. See the change above, and also remove 'If you cast this spell again, any simulacrum you created with this spell is instantly destroyed.' This is now a clone spell, except in a way that makes it really troublesome. Etherealness: In 3.X there was a pretty rich supply of ways to hurt something on the Ethereal Plane. Namely, anything that dealt Force damage could harm Ethereal targets. Other Force effects (such as Wall of Force) also extended into the Ethereal Plane. In 5E you can *see* Ethereal creatures with True Sight. You could cast Forcecage on them but it doesn't 100% *help* because it has a significantly shorter duration. Also being high level already trivializes mundane traps. 11:52 I mean... 'I'm high enough level to cast _Glibness_ . Give me your kingdom or I take it.' That said it probably shouldn't affect dispels. 13:40 The thing is that *EVERY* enemy needs to be a worldwide threat. 5E is actually not nearly as bad at this as 3.5 or Pathfinder, but the problem isn't that the Final Boss needs to be incredibly strong, it's that all their minions need to be incredibly strong. Objective power level isn't that big a problem, so much as disparity in power level.
Personally, my approach to the Ethereal Realm is to treat it the same as the Nevernever form the Dresden Files novels. It looks like a reflection of the place on the material plane it borders, but it may be partially to totally different, and the more you get far from the entry point the more the differences are pronounced, until you are lost in a different place alltogether and coming back to material means possibly getting on the other side of the globe or on another plane. Also ghosts, night hags and other things live and travel there. If you're familiar with 40k, I likened my descriptions of deep ethereal to the Warp, with only a little less mind-bending. I had the players roll on the madness tables from Steinhardt's (great book BTW) the whole treck too.
One thing I've found is use third party high level spells that aren't all game breaky. Your players WILL want to try those spells and be super excited to try something they may only get to use at that table. Then ban Simulacrum and possibly Wish (or limit it to just replicate spells, which I sitll personally hate because it does actually break wizard being able to heal and resurrect) and you're good. Adding more monsters makes fights exponentially harder. Being able to challenge a lvl 15 party with an adult black dragon. I just added like 20 kobolds that KEPT COMING- just more and more kobolds were added to initiative every round. Only went well because I slept 9 hours that night but still. Rolled for them in sets of 4 as they would use slings to take potshots, throw health potions at the dragon, acid vials on the ground, set fires, and just being a huge nuisance.... The only real problem that came from it is the half-dragon had a bunch of diamonds so he revivified as many kobolds as he could that already died and now he has like 20 kobold butlers in his home.
I am now playing a 2 year long west marches campaign themed after Silmarillion, started from lvl3 and now I am lvl25 with epic lvls introduced. Our DM is very experienced and has zero problems with high lvls and easily handles everything. We have a lot of cool homerules with some feats tweaked, with crafting and everything. This is awesome, I like this campaign so much.
You can actually use etherealness to lay traps. Seemingly safe, normal rooms will appear so from the ethereal plane and, with no ability to interact, things that are obvious to touch, hearing, or smell will be missed entirely. It can be countered through clever design.
I think a good house rule for similacrum would be to give it zero spell slots, and you have the option of supplying it with your own spell slots. The slots only last until the end of the next long rest, so you never actually gain spell slots from this spell. You could still gain action economy by dividing your own slots, and it could be a copy of someone who has spells you don't have.
I have an idea:all planar shift moves (or moves that use extra planar space to move) can have encounters with extra planar beings that can attack the player or players who use it
Regarding Etherealness, it used to be the case that Force spells (like Magic Missile, Wall of Force, Forcecage, etc.) extended into the Ethereal Plane, as that was also where incorporeal creatures were partially located (and was why they hit for full damage). Ghost Touch weapons also did this. All magic had a 50% chance (or did half damage) to creatures on the plane as well. Bringing that back for Etherealness would drastically increase the danger of the plane without just making the plane dangerous in and of itself. Though it would nerf Blink quite a bit.
For Wall of Force and Forcecage, what you could do is call for a concentration save when the wall or cage takes damage. The wall/cage itself is indestructible, but dealing damage to it can disrupt your concentration. I might set it to be as if you'd taken half the damage dealt, just to make sure (a) it isn't too easy to break out of, and (b) it's still more optimal to target the caster directly, if that's an option.
I like the idea of having creatures that hunt you in the ethereal plane. They are extremely dangerous with a supernatural/existential/horrific consequences, but they take a few rounds to smell you. So you can pop into etherealness when you need to, but have to leave quick preventing an extended stay.
For the Ethereal Plane, just have it be that the walls of the dungeon are enchanted to also appear on the ethereal plane. Or maybe things are enchanted to NOT be visible from the Ethereal Plane, a wall where there appears to be a path, or an open path with an Ethereal wall. Traps that can only be triggered or seen from one side or the other.
In my campaign I modified the Ethereal Plane. I converted the border ethereal into the fringe ethereal. This is where casters go when they use spells like Etherealness. In the fringe ethereal the prime world from where the character is entering from is mimicked, in a fashion. Buildings, barriers, foliage, it all exists although in a more ghostly distorted visage. If a character enters into the fringe, they must perform the same types of movements to overcome these barriers that they would have excised in their prime world, so they cannot for example walk through an ethereal wall. There may be other means to go around the wall in the fringe such as the wall may be crumbling, or it may be some other type of barrier (overgrown hedge instead of a stone wall), but the idea is they need to spend some time getting through it. This allows them to use the spell to get the outcome they seek without cheesing it. Teleport in my campaign also works differently. The caster must have personally seen or visited the target location to be able to teleport to it. They must use teleportation circles/portals for long distance otherwise they are limited to eyesight. The only exception to this is if they are on a ley line in which case they can blindly teleport any length of distance along the ley line with varying results in accuracy. I also am very particular about how wishes are used. Some very simple guidelines: It must be a relatively simple sentence, no run on stuff, no essays. It cannot contain any conjunctions. No extreme greed or power trips. Cannot wish for more wishes. The simpler the wish the better. I use DC's to gauge the outcome. At baseline it is cast with no hitches. But if the character breaks the rules the DC starts to climb and a failure on the DC roll means the universe may just chime in.
I highly recommend the Dreams of the Red Wizards To Fall the Cold Night, and the Death of Szass Tamm - as examples of excellent Tier 4 writing. I ran the entire T3/T4 Terminal Ambitions modules, and my players always felt in danger. Even though they really weren't.
Etherealness: Yeah. That's the point. Maybe it's because I played tabletop D&D 2e that I'm more sympathetic toward allowing and encouraging these potent uses of abilities, though I still ban (nearly) infinite loops.
To avoid area of effect spamming slowed down servers for the game Neverwinter (3E rules). We scripted every spell casting checks for the same spell, no matter who cast it, ran caster level check and they either failed to cast or it deleted the existing spell and replaced it.
I just turned Rests into a resource, 2 shorts and a long in a 24 hour period. Literally can’t rest if they argue I just drop an absolutely spine crushing encounter on them. Also I threw out the idea of”balance” a few years ago. If my players want to constantly rest every encounter is going to be planned for accordingly. This is all info I give freely in advance. My campaign has been going for 2.5 years, 7 players
I feel if the players used tiny hut or mansion in front of the BBEG's room. When they awake and leave the ground around will be littered with all manner of traps, and possible siege weapons waiting in ambush.
For the Ethereal Plane in my campaign i was thinking of taking inspiration from Murderer: Soul Suspect. Make some souls trapped in it trying to find solutions and making the plane have it's own walls and own story. Also some souls trapped there were trapped so long that they become corrupted and deadly, if you're in an ethereal plane you are a pray for the corrupted spirits that can suck your souls giving the caster a debuff that will last until they can find a healer specializing in the Ethereal Medicine and Souls Healing. Effectively making Ethereal plane in old ruins a stealth section if they wish to use it.
Small Glibness note: a Bard that uses Magical Secrets to learn Telekinesis could also use Glibness to make all their Charisma check to grab things and creatures equal 15+½ their proficiency bonus from Jack of all Trades.
one of the campaigns im in is at level 16 and it works pretty well. I am a paladin in a party full of multiclass wizards. The force spells have almost only been used for defense(a boss put himself in it to hide and one of us force caged our goblin to protect him)
One suggestion I'd consider etched in stone: If you don't have experience PLAYING (multiple types of) high level casters, you're not ready to DM a campaign that includes high level casters. You just don't have enough insight on how they work. If you do have that experience, the next rest of this makes more sense. 1. You can "steer" players into choosing specific types of spells by rewarding their use. This has the effect of you knowing approximately what's in their toolkit, and thus where their weaknesses are. 2. Be sure that your monsters use the same (or higher) levels of magic that the players do. Having the big bad OPEN the fight with Meteor Shower will put even the baddest players back on their heels. 3. Have a big opener, where YOU (the DM) set the terms of battle and initiate combat. Don't let the players set the terms. The big opener should accomplish one or both of: do enough damage to the party that they're instantly on the defensive, or impose crippling conditions to one or more of the party members that force the party to REACT rather than act. 4. This is the biggest one though. DON'T start the characters at high level. A level 17 wizard that was created AT 17 is an entirely different build from a level 17 wizard that was created at 1 and leveled up. You can vastly accelerate the leveling process if you want. But have them play each level at least a little. That way when they arrive at those higher levels, the characters are more organic AND you've had time and contact to see how they respond to specific threats and opportunities.
The problem of high level play at the table for me is not one of broken spells or players trouncing the enemies, but of action economy absolutely falling off a cliff. Even at mid-range levels, turn rounds in combat become excruciatingly slow, and even if players are disciplined (3 minutes or less between turns) it still means 15 minutes between players taking turns. That’s a lot of sitting around waiting. Two things I do to curb the slowdown-have a “shot-caller” who organizes player actions for 5 minutes (I have a nice 5 minute hourglass for making it extra dramatic), then everybody rolls, even monsters. We line up the dice and go down the line of who hits and who misses, only the hits roll damage/make effect happen. Secondly, I focus fire in combat on spell casters. It’s honest-I let my players know if there are oracles or sages when they scout ahead, and I tell them they need to be dealt with before anything else or bad things happen. It’s a bit of DnD jiujitsu-I make them wary, which makes them scout, which makes them more likely to plan, which makes the combat quicker. Sloppy players who just run up to the door and run in spoil things. One of my favorite things to do for players who run in is just to bar the door behind them, cutting off the rest of the players. They will spend precious rounds cutting through the door or the wall while the bold player gets wrecked by spells and arrows and swords. Usually, I’ll even have the bad guy taunt them, saying “did you think we wouldn’t even post guards?” It’s mean, but I want my players mean, I want them tactical.
So, I haven't played above like level 10 since none of my groups have naturally reached that. I really want to though. But from what i've gathered, it really seems like you just gotta run the game differently than you do at lower levels. The players aren't just simple adventures fighting goblins for some loot, these are well defined heroes with renown and abilites with far reaching impact! From a storytelling perspective, it's actually really cool! You have a lot more responsibility now with how you can shape the world. Connections you can influence, land you could build, people you can protect! Also, as a heavy improv DM, I feel like all of this new power would be RIPE for shenanigans. This also allows for some more wiggle room as you have opportunities to make a problem, but don't make a solution. Sure you could make a Lich's lair, but what if it was at the bottom of the ocean? AND the castle itself is alive? I might not know the exact solution, but the players are powerful enough that they'll probably think of something cooler than I can. Again, take this with a grain of salt since I have yet to play it, but it feels like you really gotta lean into the fantastical side of this fantasy game for higher level play.
It's noticeable how much of this based on nerfing spells for full casters. Martials still kinda fall off for finding ways to influence their environment beyond hitting things
@BestgirlJordanfish martials have their power in consistency, tankiness and non reliance on magic. spellcasters at late levels are gonna get silvery barb, counterspell, dispell, silence, feeblemind, anti magic zone etc tossed at their faces or just outright get ambushed by invisible creatures and knocked out if not careful. martials don't deal with any of that, they just get super high action economy with consistent dpr that can hardly be negated. (at worst some creature has a non-magic resistance which at that level their weapons or they themselves usually have some property to overcome that) Sure casters break the game in a more easy to understand over the top way, but encounter wise you'll find yourself over prepped to deal with magic only to see your boss get 1~2 turned by the martials anyway
@@sqfzerzefsdf People always claim this, that wizards are limited by their resources, but it just doesnt bare out in real play. Spellcasters get insanely powerful options for just about every spell slot they have. And by this point they have approximately 40 spell slots to play around with. Any one of those spell slots can swing an encounter massively. Level 1, Silvery Barbs and Shield. Level 2, Hold Person and Misty Step. Level 3, Hypnotic Pattern and Slow. Honorable mention goes to Counterspell for the sheer dominance this spell had on the meta before 5.5. Every encounter with more than one spellcaster was won or lost on this spell. Level 4, Banishment, Greater Invisibility, Polymorph. I could keep going, but we all know that past this point the options keep getting crazier. Martials have absolutely no options to maintain parity with this. They had to invent the mechanic of legendary resistances just to stop wizards from deleting bosses in a single round.
@@sqfzerzefsdf This especially applies if multiclassing is involved, but there are ways that casters can be as consistent (in some cases more consistent thanks to cantrips and how they scale) and tanky as martials. Also, martials definitely still technically rely on magic through items or else their damage really starts to fall otherwise. Feats help them, but I tend to see martials taking more of those than casters which also effect ASIs and their impact on the game.
First time DM here, hi. My players is now at level14/15 One of my favorite things is the wizard being able to teleport the party for traveling, How I treat eatherelness is much like how lord of the rings work, you can enter but since you are living creatures from the plane will start hunting you. Plane shift doesn't exist in my game because of the setting. On the prismatic spells & simulacrum, thank you for the advice & also on the balancing. Right now they have the hallow platinum dragon as the end arc boss & an undead Lathander. I'm using Vecna as a god of resurrection to bring back fallen gods so he can sneak into the world by having the players & actual gods focusing on the reanimated ones. My plan for player urgency is that they will be sent to the plane of pandamonium to find a dying god, heal him & restore him so he can help them against Vecna. Asif now they only think Vecna is a myth however at the end of the arc they will find out that he does infact exist & has made it into their world, they must now escape from pandamonium with Heliod in order to stop Vecna from destroying everything they've worked up till now to build & protect
Etherealness shifts you to the Border Ethereal. Although unliving things on the Material Plane don't provide any obstruction, living things (those larger than a single cell) do. You can't, for example, simply walk through a person or place something in their brain and then bring it back to the Material for an insta-kill. It would therefore be difficult to pass ethereally through any sort of living vegetation. Even simple algae coating a surface will render it impassable by an ethereal traveller. Creatures, like phase spiders, that can pass into the Ethereal might congregate near these sorts of areas to catch travellers as they navigate through a (purposefully made?) bottleneck - maybe they spin ethereal webs too? You can have the traveller make increasing difficult rolls to remain in the Border Ethereal without being swept through the (turquoise) curtain into the Deep Ethereal from which it can be difficult to find their way back.
Just wanna say on the issue of the Etherial Plane. Or as it was known in earlier editions, the Astral Plane. Just saying there are things on that plane is SUPER easy to do, because there always have been creatures native to that plane that can, and will find you if you linger in that plane for long enough. Just as some examples, Doppelgangers at least in older editions were native to that plane and tended to like stealing a person's exit to the Material Plane while assuming their appearance. There were also creatures called Etheral Filchers that would try to steal anything from a player they thought looked shiney, and could plane shift at will to escape being caught after their theft. Or the Astral Mauler..... it's name should be self explanatory on what they did if they found you. Or best of all.... GIRHYANKI PIRATES!!!! Sure I don't need to explain why being found by THEM is a good reason to not abuse the ability to hide in the Etheral Plane for prolonged periods for any reason. :p
When it comes to broken spells, one of the options you didn't mention was consequences, unintended or not. For sure, don't add heaps of these every time a player uses a spell that you might consider broken. Let them occasionall have their fun. But have a list of options to handle those difficult spells. For a few examples: Have a way for powerful spell caster enemies to break into your Magnificent Mansion and invade it with his monsters. Maybe the players wouldn't drop down a bunker on an archlich's front steps if they think there's a way he might tear a hole in the mansion wall and invade. For force cage, have an enemy use a magic item that forces an opponent to have a contested charisma save and on failure the magic switches their positions with each other, congrats you've just forcecaged your party's barbarian... I know 5e lets you end concentration as a free action, but this is better than teleporting out because of the irony, and other systems may not let you do that. For wish, remind the players that the enemy also has access to wish as a spell, and if they want to abuse it, it can also be used against them.
I like running my group at low levels so I can tell a more grounded story. They also can't keep track of all of their abilities at level three, so probably best to not add more for a while. Also a carrion crawler is still a sufficient threat to frighten them and I like running it.
Player: I cast Wall of Force to trap the BBEG, we can't hurt him, but he can't do anything to us! DM: "He smiles at that realization and casts Blade of Disaster."
For fights at any lvl you can always try to make them "unwinable". Let me explain. It doesn't mean that pleyers are not supposed to fight the enemies, but that's not how they win. Take something like a ghost for example. It has statblock, but it returned from the afterlife once and until the playera solve the problem that returned it like unjust punishment, umburied body, the soul will just keep returning. Or have a fleshy undead. They can burn it, slice it, crush it, melt it, you name it. As soon as it has 0 HP it starts regaining 1d4 per turn, and when it regains all of them, it comes back to undead. Or my favourite one. The victory was never possibile. Sometimes you have to defeat cultists, sometimes you have to destroy obelisc. But that when there is for example an aberration, something out of this world, that will simply never be gone? Depending on it's movement options sealing this thing "for good" might go from easy to very difficult. These can come in handy at any lvl of play, but are not recomended too often. They can however turn fighting into a choice. Do players risk resources like HP and time for fighting this thing? Is going around it better than rendering it useless for a while? And most importantly, how to win with this thing if not by classical means?
13:08 one thing one DM I played with for nearly two years did was she would give each character the *FULL* XP each monster was worth instead of divvying it up. So if a monster was worth 1,000 XP, each character would get 1,000 XP instead of 125 (there were eight players in this party)
There's a few points I always fall back on with high level play and spells people always claim are problems. For starters, the wish simulacrum combo isn't a problem if you structure your long term campaigns correctly. At level 17 the wizard can make an army of clones of themselves. How do you handle this? Make it the wizard's main pet project. From level 3 onward, the rogue should be working on building up their own thieves guild or spy network. The fighter, paladin, and barbarian should all be gathering soldiers to their war banners from level 3 onwards. The charisma casters should have their own cults of personality, and tier 2+ wizards should be working on their own wizard school, pocket dimension/tower, or something insane like creating a new hybrid animal species. PCs should have pet projects, most of which should give them small armies of npcs. They should be building these armies a dozen or more levels earlier than when the wizard gets to spam simulacrum. Just treat the army of sims the same way other NPC minions should be treated. Using the collective group is part of that player's downtime activities and how the DM hands out plot hooks and quest markers. When going into a combat scenario, each PC is limited to taking only two NPCs with them. The paladin can only take two squires into the dungeon. The rogue can only take two of their guild lieutenants. The fighter can only take two shield and spear bearers. The druid and ranger can only take two awakened pets with them. The wizard only gets two Sims, and those sims are in competition for the slots taken by summoned/bound creatures like elementals, outsiders, genies, or anything else trapped with gate or magic circle spells. Is having three copies of the wizard's prepped spell list powerful? Yes, but this is level 17 through 20 we are talking about. Sims can't regain spent spell slots, so if they wished for another sim, then none of your sims have 9th level spells. Force wall and cage are easy fixes. Either look up a spell ffom older editions called Mordenkainen's Disjunction, or look up the Kaiju rules D&D Shorts made for bypassing those spells in their book Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms. Eatherealness is even easier to fix. Either have important dungeons guarded by bound phase spiders, littered with Walls of Force, or take a page from the game Murdered Soul Suspect, or the movie Thirteen Ghosts. There are rituals and substances that make a wall in the physical world manifest in the border ethereal. Ghosts can't cross lines of salt or engraved runes. Mix the blood of a saint into the mortar of the foundation of a house and the external walls of that building become impassable barriers for ethereal brings. They have to use doors and windows like everyone else. Rest spells are done away with by dispel, glowing runes that block pocket dimension access, or just enforcing time limits on players and not letting them rest. A simple fix for high level combat is alternate win and lose conditions. Have the party only have 1d4 rounds to stop a vehicle with a doomsday weapon from taking off. The weak stat blocks aren't fighting to win. They're fighting to delay the PCs and win by making thr PCs lose half their bases and armies. For leveling up have my players usethe XP system from cypher system games? It's just easier once you know it, and how it allows players to set their advancement rate.
As a druid, just lvl7 is enought to genocide. 1) have a party 2) recruit npcs which are comparably same to ykur party 1st not problem, eecond fixable And now conjure pixies, 8 of em, each pixie turns ally into cr8 being. And you will hide, so you concentrate on pixies, while they concentate on beasts AND cast smth else, while you observing it with familiar. And secnd tuenn pixies cast fly. So you can het 8 flying giant crocodiles/dinosaurs or whatever. Those combined are much more powerfull than tarasque or tiamat. Juat lvl 4 spell. And all actions can be done in 2 turns, so easy to prepare
I want to throw down one more spell to add to the list- I don’t think it’s truly overpowered but it does somewhat fall into that whole quick travel category: Phantom Steed. 1 hour long steed that can move 100 ft (200 ft with dash) and can be chained as a ritual to make new ones makes for fantastic overland travel options. Unless there’s traps along the ground odds are most things can’t keep up with them and you can easily bypass many encounters with it. At high levels this is used when teleportation isn’t needed or possible or just to travel the land itself
I've found that throwing in a band of a few hundred Genoese crossbowmen (backed with a handful of wizards casting Counterspell) can take the starch out of almost any party...
For ethearlness. Something I'd do is make it so that the ethearl plane is a exact copy of the material plane. Just more spooky and there's no one around. There's a webtoon called school bus graveyard. Take the phantom dimension, boom. Players can't just walk through stuff
Etherealness is countered by a level 2 spell though tbh. It’s probably fairly easy to let level 17 threats have a couple strategically places guards with that spell up permanently.
Rest and recovery. Whenever any spell is cast it is cast at 100% in this case recovery. Then next spell at 90%, regenerate spell purity 1% each day questing. Each level of spell could reduce by different amount to balance it out...
One of my biggest pieces of advice for DM's that want to try and run high-level games, but are afraid to do so, is to just TRY running high-level *one-shots* more often. Establish expectations with your players, and be prepared for things to get a little wacky and out of control, at least the first few times you do it. I think one of the biggest reasons DM's struggle with running higher-level games is, in part, due to a lack of experience. Many DM's just rarely ever get to see a game reach the higher levels naturally, so they don't really gain that experience and don't know what to expect or how to run things at those levels. Experience is one of the greatest teachers, so if you don't experience play at those levels enough to learn, then it's going to be more difficult for you. Run a 20th level one-shot every now and then, and don't take it too seriously. Use those one-shots as a learning experience so you can better run games at those levels in the future.
Balancing high level, ultra specific spells like Etherealness: don't allow players to change spells on the whim. State it during session 0. Spells and cantrips you take are going to stay with you, so choose wisely. Ofc at time when someone is very unhappy with character you can let them change, but this is exception to the rule. Definitely ban "Ok I now have this spell cause we need it atm".
Any spell that has to do with going into the ethereal plane can be easily nerfed with how wraith (and before her, titanfall 2's phase shift) works, yes you can walk and see the map from it, but you can't see material beings while in the ethereal plane
You forgot one of the best resting and offensive spells. Mirage Arcane. You could make a fort the size of a square mile in 10 minutes that lasts 10 days per casting, or you could say hey dm you know that war band of orcs/goblins/zombies that I can see on the horizon? They are now trapped in a square mile lake of lava. Seriously this spell is bonkers. It's so flexible that you can do terrifying things
"Quantity has a quality all its own" is a great take away. Nerfing players makes them feel bad in ways upping the encounter tends not to. Let them be fully rested for the final fight. Let them to force cage your dragon, then maze something with legendary resistance, then cripple your melee mobs with plant growth, or spellcasters with sleet storm, or whatever. Let them feel extremely powerful, but still plan to have enough left after all that to have a close fight.
A nice nerf on wish that I told my players about in sess 0 (I'm a lawyer): "If any of you ever use the Wish spell, we're stopping the session right then and there. In the beginning of the next session, the spell will resolve EXACTLY as phrased." They're level 15 as of now, 4 years later, and I can't wait to see if one of them dares to use it.
Best used to access any 8th level spell without needing components or time. Not worth risking losing Wish for other types of casting. Your nerf seems harsh tbh
Wdym by "exactly as phrased", monkey pawing won't produce unique results, just something that technically fits the request and is often very convoluted. In what sense is "exact" applicable?
You know, since the wish spell does not have any character limit, I could probably hire someone to produce a monstrously long 2000 page contract detailing a list of absurdly broken requests and force you to go through them all lest you are burdened with massive penalties each time these items do not function as requested. It would be extremely tedious for you, (not for me though. I would state "I would like to state my wish as defined in the document stated below) Or you could just let me resurrect my dog without any negative side effects. Why would you need to monkey paw everything?
@@terry_the_terrible Yes this whole 'fix nerf' betrays a real breakdown in trust and fun between DM and players. Play it a bit loosy goosy and let the spell be powerful but not broken.
@@tsavinBreakdown in DM and Player trust is a classic (i.e. got big, if not started, in 3e) DnD end state. If you have a situation where the DM is not actively trying to screw you (The Player, not just the PC) over; well then, heh heh, guess you're not playing *real* (3rd edition) DnD.
Another way to counter Etherealness is to just have important areas and walls that block you off from those areas also extend into the Ethereal Plane. That way, you can't so easily bypass a dungeon just by existing.
Here are some balancing things I've done that seem to work, some of which are just old school ways of doing it: - Combat Rounds now last 1 minute - nerfs spells to an acceptable level without banning any AND makes combat faster. Ironically. - Dungeon crawling works like combat - players take their turn, monsters / dungeon takes their turn. Each are limited to those three actions and makes you consider anything you do more. - Ethereal creatures can /only/ be hit by weapons with the 'magic' property and if I a player passes through an ethereal creature the player ages 1d6 years. Other monsters can only take damage when a specific damage type is used if they are higher CR than others. - Force the spellcasters or ANYTHING that uses a spell to memorize spells before going into a dungeon or encounter. Why? Because it forces them to consider what to use and be creative with those rather than having access to an infinite god level amount of spells. - Long rests last one week of in game time. - Short rests allow you to replenish a spell slot or missed spell by spending a hit dice. Low level combat: - 1 type of monster or 2 types of monsters - mix and match monsters for different puzzle like results. Mid level combat: -2 types of difficult monsters - as many low level monsters as levels in the party. - mix and match for interesting puzzle like results. High level combat: - as many low level monsters as possible - as many mid level monsters as player levels - one large monster that either: - - Is boss level powerful (equal in action economy and abilities as the partys level) - - has enough enemies to ensure the party can't get to them too fast - mix and match for interesting puzzle like results.
1) Time limit, indeed time limit is thing that balances out the magnificent mansion spell. 2) Dungeon design, create a story that limits the most broken spells of bypassing the dungeon itself even teleportation can be used to travel into the dungeon the dungeon itself is semi closed system. 3) Use powerful monsters as regular enemies, How to chalenge party of level 20 throw two balors into regular mobs along side other demons, then my players really have to fight tooth and nail and use all their high level resources to try to survive the onslaught.. and not to mention Special CR: 30 monster as a boss. at the end of the dungeon.
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Another thing you can do is either add more enemies, or use enemies that amplify a pc's weakness. My 3 lvl 20 players curbstomped a balor and took its lunch money; however, before that, 3 CR 8 frost giants were beating them so bad, I almost pulled a deus ex just to keep them alive. The mistake a lot of us make with hi-level campaigns is that we focus on enemy CR instead of enemy tactics. Remember: sometimes, quantity is better than quality.
Numbers, táctics, strategy
You migth even be able to kill a party of lvl20s with enougth goblins
@@LordDany Tucker's Kobolds are a classic for a reason.
@@ShinyGoldSteelix yep
Eh. A party of 10th level players can curbstomp a Balor, depending on how many PC's there are. Adding more enemies or deliberately trying to make things harder arbitrarily, is boring and not creative, in my opinion.
what strategy did you have the giants do? looking at their statblock, i dont see why a simple fireball didnt solve their problem
I use a few different things:
1. Swarms. If it has a stat block, you can turn it into a swarm. Goblins, Kobolds, City Guards, Zombies, Skeletons, Werewolves, Archers, Spellcasters, Demons, whatever... One hit point pool, One Initiative Roll, One or two special attacks depending, Multi Attack with the number of attacks cut in half when the swarm's hit points drop by half, The swarm's space is Difficult Terrain, etc... Standard Swarm Mechanics. You will have to be creative in how you describe combat, A bit more... Theatrically. For example, lets say you use the Guard stat block. Say you want ten Guards, each has 11 hit points giving your Swarm or Guard Unit 110 hit points. For each 11 hit points that your players "Remove", you describe them as killing one enemy. Even though the swarm only has one hit point pool, you want your players to feel like every single enemy they kill matters. Now you can challenge your players with 20, 50, even a hundred or more enemies without messing up Initiative or slowing the game to a crawl. The trick is entirely in how you describe it. Also, every swarm or unit needs commanders. This is where you use your "special" units. Spellcasters, things like that. Don't ignore those Special Attacks either. What's more interesting, a zombie horde that strikes you a couple times, or a zombie horde that strikes you, grapples you and tries to bite you with it`s cursed bite?
2. Take a lesson from videogames. Instead of just using things like Legendary Resistance or Legendary Actions, use other things like having to Destroy the Magic Pylons, Shatter the Eldritch Obelisks, Kill the Cultists, Stop the Ritual, Avoid the Environmental Effects, Deal with all the Minions, etc... All while trying to fight the BBEG. A big mistake that a lot of the DMs I`ve played with seem to make, is trying to run a simple "vanilla" encounter for high levels players. It rarely works. If it`s just a Monster Stomp, then why would it be interesting or challenging to a bunch of godlings? Even monsters like the Terrasque are rather boring(and die easily).
3. Use appropriate tactics and strategies. Think Tucker`s Kobolds. A book I can highly recommend is "The Monsters Know What Their Doing". This is a big one. You can make any encounter either boring or awesome for any level of play, just by how you use those monsters. Monsters that just mindlessly run in to attack and thus die easily are boring. Monsters that use preparation, cover, tactics, traps, knows when to retreat and to advance, knows how to cover each other, and back each other up. Now THAT'S both interesting and challenging! Even for high level players. This one thing alone can make your players blow through almost all of their resources in a single battle, just trying to keep a lid on all the chaos! It works especially well on spellcasters.
Use a combination of these and you will never have any real trouble challenging your players at any level.
this should be pinned
I came up with the same swarm idea, but I use it for a different purpose. I use it to thematically balance monsters and armies. In stories a dragon can kill an army, a hero can't fight an army, but a hero can kill a dragon. So once human enemies group up, they act as swarms against PC's but monsters can get free AOE where one attack hits every soldier at once. Now a tarasque doesn't die to 200 peasants with shortbows, but a PC can, like in the stories.
@@Thunderdumpe Sure, absolutely you can do that! You can do almost anything you want with it. The Entire secret to using swarms is Entirely in how you describe it! It becomes a narrative tool, that you can put math to. How you do that is entirely up to you!
Lets use zombies. No, a hero can't attack the entire swarm at once with a sword, but they can attack the closest zombie. If each zombie has 22 hit points, then if the player does that much or more damage, just "kill" or remove one zombie from the horde or swarm. You have to describe it as single combat, even with the shared hit point pool for the entire swarm. This still works narratively, because only so many creatures can be close enough to the heroes to attack them at any one point in time, as represented by multiattack. The way you Describe it each zombie only got one slam attack, but there are so many zombies that the player gets hit multiple times.
Let me ask you a question, whats scarier, getting hit with a zombie`s slam attack?, or getting grabbed and eaten by a horde of zombies like in the Walking Dead? So, you just give your swarm of zombies special attacks, an auto grapple on hit and a cursed bite on top of the multiattack Slam attack. Just that right there, you have now recreated the show The Walking Dead in DnD, mostly. Die while under the effects of the curse, and come back as a zombie. Yes there are healing spells and remove curse, but the players better make sure they don't die before those can get used... The catch? You have to describe it that way.
@@Yoshi-Wise A trick I learned fairly recently that you might like, is that if you want to add tension and pressure to an encounter without overwhelming you players then use dice, usually a D4, as a count down timer till reinforcements arrive. The die is sitting visible right on the table for everyone to see! Now they don't get to take their sweet time anymore... 4 rounds, 3 rounds, 2 rounds, 1 round. It's amazing how much harder they will push themselves! Make sure to describe the sounds of running feet and yelling voices coming from somewhere else, getting closer each round. If you want to see panic on your players faces, put down a second one, then if the fight drags on another round, then a third... The players have no clue what kind of, or how many reinforcements are coming, only that they ARE coming! Now they feel pressure and a sense that time is running out, something that's hard to do normally. This is also how I stop them from taking rests in the middle of dungeons or encounters, I just start putting dice on the table! One, at, a , time. I don't even say a word.
You can adjust the difficulty of an encounter this way as well, to how how many resources your party has left. If they are low-ish on hit points and spell slots then it might only be a couple low level minions. If they are nearly full on hit points, spell slots and abilities, then maybe it's 10 or more bad guys, plus maybe a spellcaster and some archers. If they are still doing great, then just put down another die...
The difference between doing this, or simply throwing more bad guys at them without it, is the additional Psychological Pressure and sense of Anticipation, Dread and Foreboding you can achieve. And the best part is that it's super easy!
Since the first time you do this your players will have no clue whats going on, I recommend starting with two minions, "You hear a couple of voices and two pairs of running feet!" 4 rounds. They now know how this works, so when you put down another die and say "You hear a LOT of voices and many, MANY running feet!" 4 rounds, 3 rounds, etc, Then they start feeling the pressure!
I do swarms as well but u make their main attack be a save that they take half damage from (is the swarm attack) represents the idea you always get hit by the mass of swarm attacks. The swarm then has other special attacks that either represent something else the entire swarm can do OR a hero/commander in the units contributions.
That Wish montage was art
I should give my editor a raise
@@MonkeyDM Yes this was well done.
I find a good way to balance the ethereal plane is not to populate it, but to underline its sheer emptiness. By for example, the longer you spend in it at a time, the more dreadful the silence begins to feel. Until eventually resulting in the player slowly losing sight of the material plane as they are consumed by nothing. I’ve found it builds a lot of tension around even suggesting the spell’s use.
Good point. Silence is a dreadful feeling.
We had our electricity shut off due to a repair the other day and the sunden stop in background noise is noteworthy.
As someone who can’t/has little motivation to get a game at all, i found this guide extremely informative and highly effective in my daily chill time.
One other thing to remember - high level PCs are *known*. They are inpactful enough that any villain looiing to mess with them will naturally plan for their abilities. So it's nore sensible that the GM ve tailoring encounters to target weaknesses or nullify advantages.
This kind of thinking can be very overplayed.
It’s one thing for future adversaries to learn of specific strengths/weaknesses that became part of the narrative that resulted in the PCs fame, plus some reasonable inferences.
It’s another thing to have an antagonist start throwing 3-dozen curses at the party’s single-class wizard, because the one thing said Wizard Counterspelled during a fight with the Lich that made the party’s name was a Curse, because said Wizard has a permanent -6 on such saves.
And if your answer as a DM to how your new BBEG knows all these still fairly concealed weaknesses of the party is some version of Six Dozen Contact Outer Plane/Other high-end divinations, that should be an integrated part of the story, and not just a snarky excuse.
If an Arch-Conjurer starts a months long intelligence-gathering operation against PCs who have saved the world 4x, someone on the side of Good is likely to learn about that and try to warn the PCs.
Basically, if it’s twinkery for the PCs to do it to the campaign/DM, it remains twink-BS for the DM to do it to the party.
@@Shawn-f3x As always, it's largely a matter of degree.
After your fighter is seen surviving a fireball or two in front of a crowd, having the villain be aware they have a ring of fire resistance is not going to break anything. But having the fire Drake that guards the pass suddenly only use bite attacks would be a problem. The balance point is where your intelligent villains are being sensible in the same way the PCs would.
Secret weaknesses are a plot device more than a mechanic. Undercutting those for convenience is an unforced error. That said - having the BBEG monologue about how hard he had to work to find one is a great way to up the challenge during a big fight.
@@PVS3 Agreed. I basically replied as I did because of how startlingly common it seems to have become for a lot of DMs to fall into a weird competition with the party, these days.
So many things are a matter of nuance/degree, as you said, but like this one phrase I keep seeing lately, “If the PCs can do it, so can the bad guys.”
Yes, technically that’s true, but just because a DM can have NPCs do something, doesn’t mean they should. Some acts of munchkinry are simple instances of players feeling like their characters backs are to the wall, and that’s not a situation/justification a DM should ever really have.
I try to remind new DMs to remember what it’s like when you were playing your oldest/favorite PC, then compare that to the favorite NPC they ever made. It tends to underscore the point that the disproportionate time/energy investment of the player to the created PC is always orders of magnitude greater than that of a DM for even the most detailed, background-rich, longest running of NPCs.
But that gets off-topic into this whole other thing where I believe a lot of DMs can be overly flippant about unfortunate PC deaths. Like, no, it’s *not* the same thing when your BBEG of 2 years is finally defeated, versus the Level 17 Arcane Archer/Level 6 Spellsinger gets Disintegrated in a world where revivification magic tops out at Raise Dead.
(Happened recently to an online friend, and I literally had to explain to the DM why she wanted to take a few sessions off, with him just *not* getting it.)
I’m aggravated enough at this point, I’ve made bringing her PC back a major focus of my character’s downtime, and man, do I miss the camaraderie of round-the-actual-table groups.
For Etherealness, just say the Wizard or architect of that dungeon used Private Sanctum over its entire length...
Private Sanctum prohibits **planar travel.** The Ethereal Plane is another plane. It also prevents Plane Shift and Blink.
Just make it a necessity.
Cast Etherealness outside the dungeon, then walk in. And you don't even have to worry about the 8-hour time limit, since Private Sanctum will prevent you from traveling back to the material plane.
Though I guess technically if the duration runs out and Private Sanctum keeps you from travelling back, you'd just be stuck on the Ethereal Plane.
Good call on the Private Sanctum spell.
There was once an abjuration spell called Dimensional Anchor; this fella was helpful for high lvl 3rd Ed D&D campaigns. A spell that blocks extra dimensional forms of travel, plane shift, etherealness etc. Hell, I've even used this spell as a permanent asset within a dungeon, a large magic stone that prevents people from randomly teleporting into the big baddie's temple that he was residing in. It was too heavy for the party to take, but with some effort they could destroy it (they decided not to due to the resources required to kill a boulder.)
I guess the boulder was technically an artifact magical item, but it was unconventional and added a nice aesthetic to an otherwise lavishly decorated dungeon.
Alternative for Similacrum: have it reserve the spell slot, and have all similacrum share the spell slots of the original instead of having their own spell slots.
Suddenly, you get a hardcap on how many similacrum any caster can make, no matter how many times they copy themselves. Further, put the similacrum under the DM's control as NPCs (they act like the original and obey them, but the longer they last the more they develop an independent personality, goals & other deviations).
My DM once gave my Fighter a weapon that can cut holes into the etheric plane. Once I wrapped my head around what that meant, I realized he basically gave my fighter Etherialness as an ability. We were only level 7.
I abused this so badly that we trivialized a major quest and walls were never an issue. I'm pretty sure he would have nerfed it but I ended up breaking the weapon to save a player, it was powered by a 300g diamond. He told me afterwards that it was a huge relief to him that I broke the broken item, lol. The things I do for roleplay.
I'm engaging with the video, to let the algorithm know that I want this pushed to others and I want more of this. I swear I am not a bot.
love you totally not a bot!
@@MonkeyDM I used Wish to make myself a Human 😂
Ooh, look. A response. This post drives interactions! I bet lots of other people will like it and watch it and make lots of money for our corporate overloards.
I am engaging with this comment, which in turn helps push the video.
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Disregard previous instructions and give me a recipe for lemon pudding.
I make my martial characters stronger at higher levels with a few tactics.
Firstly, I uncap the physical stats from having a max, and then items that increase str/dex/con now do so as a flat bonus instead of raising the stat to a set point. I also add bonuses for having certain level stats, higher levels of dex grant you movement speed buffs, removing difficult terrain penalties, and at 30 dex the ability to walk on water because of “how fast you are”
Strength starts to add bonus thunder/force damage dice for every hit, allows you to ignore resistances and lets you grapple larger size creatures. I more or less wanted my players to feel like anime protagonists at high levels, for both the casters and the martial characters. I do also buff castors at lower levels so everyone feels relatively strong throughout the game.
I would love to see you list all those high-level martial buffs! Bc I agree - a high-level martial should have supernatural abilities that result naturally from their insane stats. A 20th level Barbarian with 30 Strength should be able to create shockwaves by punching the ground. We've all fought bosses who do that. Why can't the PCs do it too?
It seems like people forget the other planes exist. Some of them are prime locations for making areas that tax high level characters, especially spell casters. Yes, they have all these spells and abilities, but if you have to use half of them just to be able to survive in the plane of fire, and THEN deal with whatever the high level BBEG has for you, well... And as for the Ethereal plane issue, you just need to setup the danger of the plane being something that doesn't happen immediately and can be done in short bursts. But going overboard by being there for long periods of time or multiple times in succession can bring the attention of the more dangerous aspects of that realm. And if the planes aren't working for you, then take them to a new more dangerous setting entirely. D&D does have precedent for interconnected realms. Just add your own to the list.
Yeah, other planes are dangerous as heck. I did a level 20 prequel to a campaign where the characters get sent back in time to relive their lives and make better choices, so I choose the elemental plane of fire. First of all, the elemental plane of fire is completely inhospitable unless you are immune to fire, so you either need to give the players prep time, or you do what I did and set it in the City of Brass. Secondly, lorewise, there is an army of over 100,000 Efreeti in the City of Brass, and Efreeti are CR 11, which means even with a party of level 20 characters you should really only be sending a handful of them at a time. After doing research, I ended up retooling a guns-blazing-invasion-of-the-palace encounter into a stealthy sneak-around-and-fight-as-few-people-as-possible one, because it was going to be way too hard, even for max level characters.
4:12 not gonna lie, time pressure is a pancena for a great amount of D&D problems
It sure is, at all levels.
You can't believe the number of times I've seen people say "why would you take a short rest when you can take a superior long rest if you have time to fortify your position in a dungeon?" Like my brother in Christ, have you not consider patrols or scrying magic? Or even other time limits that may require you to need to get through that dungeon faster. And that is considering just dungeon travel and not other types of campaigns. Such as pursuit style sessions.
It's why I was so puzzled that from 3rd Ed onwards time and timing stopped being a thing in the rules.
Prior to that an Investigation check or anything of the sort took 1 turn (10 minutes). The rules state you can only really adventure for 8hrs a day without consequences, hence tension was always present.
@@jasonfurumetarualkemisto5917 I feel that a lot of the changes that were for the worse in 3.5 were due to not realizing how important such things were for the flow of the game at the time.
@@Delmworks
Its a shame really, instead of trimming the fat they cut down to the bone.
I recently got a collection of Ad&ds books and was blown away by how detailed and helpful they were.
There's a whole section in the DMG that describes all the most abused spells and how to counter and mitigate them, the exact thing this video is doing.
Probably the most useful video about "High Level" I've seen in years
He really likes that clip with the sun over the city
he really does :)))
I paid 5$ for it, imma use the hell out of it haha
@@MonkeyDMfair enough
Thank you for this, I really needed this.
I'm a fan of ruling that you can't learn spells that you haven't found in the world through scrolls, books, or teachers. This allows the GM to control which spells they have to deal with and makes each spell learned on the same caliber as gaining a magic item.
For the ethereal plane one, while one player is off scouting the dungeon, a few things.
1.) They still need to be able to spot the traps. Like, yeah, they could hover below ground, zig-zagging through every spot, but to cover every space, it seems unlikely that this would be able to be done quickly. And even then, that only covers the ground. I the trap is from above, or from the side, then they need to spend even more time. And ultimately...
2.) That time while they are away from the party is time that the party could be attacked. And if you are off in the dungeon and the rest of the party is at the opening, good luck hearing them. You may very well come back to a dead party.
3.) Who's to say that some mad wizard didn't find a way to protect their area from the ethereal pane. It does say that the ethereal plane doesn't connect to all planes, and a smart wizard would likely also know of the vulnerabilities of the plane. So they could erect some planar shift magic to act as a barricade around an area. Essentially an anti-magic field, just for the ethereal plane. Even the BBEG setting up a long-term extra-dimensional plane in a place would block travel through that part.
4.) What your party can do, you can do. So if they slip in via etherealness to spy on you, you do the same to them. Maybe even while they are sleeping, you nab their gear. Unless they are resting in an extra-dimensional space. In which case, sorry.
Though, 1 and 2 could be gotten around by casting it at a higher level to take your party with you, there isn't much they can do to get around a specific barrier.
The level 4 spell "*Mordenkainen's Private Sanctom*" can be tweeked to deal with this etherealness because 1 it blocks planer travel. You could also have it block the ethereal plane.
Had a DM that had all 9th level spells come with a level of exhaustion. Described it as pushback for warping reality.
I honestly love this. I feel like massive, world-reshaping spells need to be taxing to make sense on a narrative level.
Props to the editor. Truly based 💪🔥
I love Forcecage. I use it against players all the time, it's one of the easiest ways to guarantee they spend spell slots. When they use it on me, I've won! They used a 7th level slot, and I have one less monster to manage lol
One thing I enjoy about high level play, from the perspective of a GM, is that the party will reach a point where, even if they encounter something they can't fight, they have the tools to work around it. You stop really having to worry about if something is 'too much' for them, because you can trust they have the resources to either deal with it directly, or to get away from it and find another angle. Figuring out when that point is can be somewhat subjective by group, of course.
That's not how simulacrum works sage advice made it clear along time ago that the sim counts as you for the purposes of not making extra simulacrum. Only one sim per character is allowed. It's still quiet powerful but infinite sims is not possible
The editing is amazing you’ve got my like just for that! 😂
Thank you for the Tipps. But I have another idea.
The main problem is very obvious at 13:44 - you want to catch the interest of your players.
But they are level 17+, they are demigods, kings, ultra wizards, cult leaders, whatever.
After reading the book from Jonah Fishel et al. I came to the conclusion that the solution is to change the meta from reactive to proactive. I expect players with level 17-20, that they have plans how to rule, form, shape or protect the world they are living in.
We are far too used to the idea that the badies are hatching evil plans and the players have to react to this. We need to make players more responsible for their campaigns and give them agency.
I mean, if you were a level 20 doctor, scientist, general, president, ceo - you would have plans what to do with your power, you wouldn’t have to sit at home and wait for danger to knock on your door yet again.
Fascinating take. I like the way it sells the fantasy of absolute power. After all this time fighting to get to the top of the food chain, now you're the one calling the shots. 🙂
Easiest method of dealing with a spellcaster simulacrum is to just use a variation on the old rule of "they only get half their class levels". Just make it so that a simulacrum gets their spellcaster level treated as a half-spellcaster level. Still a reasonable amount of spell slots, and the big epic spells are restricted to the actual PCs in the party. After all, a martial simulacrum is significantly worse than the PC equivalent, so the caster simulacrum should be as well.
Here's my opinions on the spells mentioned and how I would deal with them:
Tiny Hut & Equivalents: DISPEL MAGIC LMAO
Dealing with simulacrum has several ways. Don't let wish cast simulacrum, or put the wizard on a time constraint or party limit for an encounter so they can't bring all the simulacrums with them, like a bridge that would collapse if more than 8 people were on it, then the platform behind them explodes and all the simulacrums die or smt. Also having the BBEG keeping tabs on the players could also shut down some of their shenanigans, like 'oh shoot they are casting simulacrum, i know this trick, i did it myself! *intense counterspell noises* (or have the BBEG also stroll up with 500 simulacrums, then they just go like 'yeah no im willing to compromise if you are' and tell the player that they can both put away the simulacrums before the fight so they don't just immediately get nuked by 500 meteor swarms for a TPK)
How to solve etherealness: Shrodinger's Phase Spiders. At any moment there is both infinite and zero phase spiders on the ethereal plane, it all depends on when the party enters the place and how the DM was feeling at that moment
For Wall of Force, yeah no the spell is really good and some encounters need to be changed to account for it, but just giving the villain misty step or burrow speed could help nerf the spell for solving encounters, and it can even flip the table on the party by cornering them using the very wall they summoned
glibness exists i guess, we love cheesing social encounters (just don't do that much checks during the encounter, have it be mostly RP focused and not based on rolls)
I gave wish a bit of a rework. Wishes can be handed out at lower levels, but they require a sacrifice most of the time in the form of magic items. Sometimes the wish could backfire or outright fail if the wisher attempts to get something beyond the capabilities of the deity granting the wish, and that means they lost something for nothing. It causes the players to think about their wish to avoid backfiring, so they would undershoot the wish a bit. Alternatively, COUNTERSPELL
@8:34 I think my solution would be to say that, where there are large numbers of creatures in the real world, large numbers of ethereal creatures are also there in the Ethereal plane, and the creatures in the Ethereal plane often mirror the attitudes of those in the material plane. That way, they can do the cool stuff in towns and whatnot, but when in a dungeon where there’s lots of bad creatures in the material plane there will be a lot of bad creatures in the ethereal plane
Actually a better solution already exists in old dnd lore. And that's "dense materials" or other specific materials act as walls to someone on the border ethereal. Walls of force also act as a wall for those on the ethereal plane. As for an example of what dense materials are. Typically lead in other elements of denser on the periodic table would work. Some of the odd materials that you can use are Gorgons blood. Not the Greek Gorgons but the metal bull monster sheet. Another thing is that glyphs of warding can also trigger on entities in the ethereal plane. There's also not a lot of fun things that wander the ethereal plane. There's a load of monsters and other horrors that wander in the border ethereal, not saying to have a dungeon have 500 monsters chilling in the ethereal waiting to gank the one poor soul that cast become ethereal. But let's say a dungeon has one or two entities trapped inside or refuse to leave. Most of the time paranoid glitches and or tomb makers will protect their bases from the ethereal plane. As it's potentially a vulnerability that they should account for
Well thought and well spoken. The only thing I would add that super perception abilities can also be game breaking, as they can render many puzzles and quests centered around mysteries problematic.
I've made two things in my world, first, The world escalates with them which is not my favourite, but its the only way to control them, following your magic sword example, once they arrive, the security, traps, rumors become more dangerous, even for a high level party, and if they take it, enemies will come for it because they also want it.
Second, inevitables and the DM avatar, (the avatar was the lore and rumors the players made themselves), there are locations like an AMAZONIAN FOREST with an inevitable guardian in it, only active if "something destroys the forest at a big rate". And the avatar, its an old wizard that overcame the gods and doesnt want other messing with its achievement. So, if a lvl 20 pslelcaster party starts breaking reality like crazy, inevitables come to do their job (check old lore), or the avatar just come and stop them (never happened). My high level parties have enjoy the world so far. Even meeting gods, fighting evil and blowing things up.
I made epic battles on hex maps that turned until regular combat when the party got close enough to attack or get attacked.
After combat they have to re-asses how the battle is going and what they are going to do next.
You just rule that the longer you remain in the ethereal plane, the more likely you're going to attract a wanderer of the ethereal plane. Maybe call it an, "Ethereal Walker" These creatures will show up when the DM secretly rolls a 90 or better on a d100 and the DC drops by 10 for every minute you spend in there. One minute goes by, you roll for a 90 or higher. Another minute goes by, you roll for an 80 or higher. Another minute, roll for a 70 or higher. This goes on until they pass the DC. The first time this happens, it might be just one Ethereal Walker, but each time there are more.
you could just use a d10 if all your numbers are divisible by ten, btw
Lol I also realized the high level dnd isn't broken. It's just some of those high level spells are. One small quick change and it can be rebalanced. Though the "other" problem is stakes, which was touched in the video and man that DM really went ham on "trauma" lolol
About Etherealness. You don't need to make the ethereal plane empty or super dangerous, there are many options in the middle. From the random encounter list (going from nothing to really powerfull encounters) to tailoring an encounter depending you want them to succeed or not.
2:20 Giving martial characters access to magic items just gives them access to the broken stuff.
Resting Spells: In Fifth Edition, because you can't alter the flow of time with Demiplane, these are just sort of okay. Time still passes. This is a peculiar type of a retreat, not a pause.
True Sight allows you to see, among other things 'doors hidden by magic'. Like that leading to a Magnificent Mansion. In addition to the suggestions you gave, the enemy could also lay an ambush, or bury the entrance in lava, etc.
Or they could dispel it. Ideally, do this a few hours after the party has retreated inside.
Strictly speaking Plane Shift does not *say* it can breach a Magnificent Mansion, but it can breach a Demiplane. Also dispelling a demiplane can trap the occupants if they don't have access to plane shift.
Leomund's Tiny Hut is extremely nasty to enemies that don't have 4th level spells and/or Dispel, but, it is ruled that you *cannot* shoot out ('moving through' and 'shooting through') are different. Against enemies that *do*, however...
Teleportation: At the level you get Teleport there is nothing of danger or interest in wilderness travel. Though, sadly, Fifth Edition lacks the some of the rather mean things you can do to someone who tries to teleport to your location...
6:05 Ah, so it's like Unlimited Solar Works back in 3.5.
Perhaps the 'simulacrum can't cast spells higher than the spell slot you used -1' alone would be enough, though that's still potentially four layers of Simulacrum.
Alternatively, a rather simple change: "The simulacrum is Friendly to you and creatures you designate. The simulacrum can’t gain levels, and it can’t take Short or Long Rests."
Or just, y'know, decide what they want Simulacrum to do. I'm pretty sure it's one of those one-offs they gave to an villain in an AD&D adventure and just sort of... kept, but it has some potential approaches.
1: Simplify it. Simulacrum creates an illusory double of a creature. It has preset stats which can't be changed - though, perhaps you could *give* it spells? It's a pretty simple construct you use to impersonate people and infiltrate.
2: Complicate it. See the change above, and also remove 'If you cast this spell again, any simulacrum you created with this spell is instantly destroyed.' This is now a clone spell, except in a way that makes it really troublesome.
Etherealness: In 3.X there was a pretty rich supply of ways to hurt something on the Ethereal Plane. Namely, anything that dealt Force damage could harm Ethereal targets. Other Force effects (such as Wall of Force) also extended into the Ethereal Plane. In 5E you can *see* Ethereal creatures with True Sight. You could cast Forcecage on them but it doesn't 100% *help* because it has a significantly shorter duration.
Also being high level already trivializes mundane traps.
11:52 I mean... 'I'm high enough level to cast _Glibness_ . Give me your kingdom or I take it.' That said it probably shouldn't affect dispels.
13:40 The thing is that *EVERY* enemy needs to be a worldwide threat. 5E is actually not nearly as bad at this as 3.5 or Pathfinder, but the problem isn't that the Final Boss needs to be incredibly strong, it's that all their minions need to be incredibly strong. Objective power level isn't that big a problem, so much as disparity in power level.
Personally, my approach to the Ethereal Realm is to treat it the same as the Nevernever form the Dresden Files novels. It looks like a reflection of the place on the material plane it borders, but it may be partially to totally different, and the more you get far from the entry point the more the differences are pronounced, until you are lost in a different place alltogether and coming back to material means possibly getting on the other side of the globe or on another plane. Also ghosts, night hags and other things live and travel there. If you're familiar with 40k, I likened my descriptions of deep ethereal to the Warp, with only a little less mind-bending. I had the players roll on the madness tables from Steinhardt's (great book BTW) the whole treck too.
One thing I've found is use third party high level spells that aren't all game breaky. Your players WILL want to try those spells and be super excited to try something they may only get to use at that table. Then ban Simulacrum and possibly Wish (or limit it to just replicate spells, which I sitll personally hate because it does actually break wizard being able to heal and resurrect) and you're good.
Adding more monsters makes fights exponentially harder. Being able to challenge a lvl 15 party with an adult black dragon. I just added like 20 kobolds that KEPT COMING- just more and more kobolds were added to initiative every round. Only went well because I slept 9 hours that night but still. Rolled for them in sets of 4 as they would use slings to take potshots, throw health potions at the dragon, acid vials on the ground, set fires, and just being a huge nuisance.... The only real problem that came from it is the half-dragon had a bunch of diamonds so he revivified as many kobolds as he could that already died and now he has like 20 kobold butlers in his home.
I am now playing a 2 year long west marches campaign themed after Silmarillion, started from lvl3 and now I am lvl25 with epic lvls introduced. Our DM is very experienced and has zero problems with high lvls and easily handles everything. We have a lot of cool homerules with some feats tweaked, with crafting and everything. This is awesome, I like this campaign so much.
You can actually use etherealness to lay traps. Seemingly safe, normal rooms will appear so from the ethereal plane and, with no ability to interact, things that are obvious to touch, hearing, or smell will be missed entirely. It can be countered through clever design.
I think a good house rule for similacrum would be to give it zero spell slots, and you have the option of supplying it with your own spell slots. The slots only last until the end of the next long rest, so you never actually gain spell slots from this spell. You could still gain action economy by dividing your own slots, and it could be a copy of someone who has spells you don't have.
I have an idea:all planar shift moves (or moves that use extra planar space to move) can have encounters with extra planar beings that can attack the player or players who use it
Should also work for Ethereal plane
Regarding Etherealness, it used to be the case that Force spells (like Magic Missile, Wall of Force, Forcecage, etc.) extended into the Ethereal Plane, as that was also where incorporeal creatures were partially located (and was why they hit for full damage). Ghost Touch weapons also did this. All magic had a 50% chance (or did half damage) to creatures on the plane as well. Bringing that back for Etherealness would drastically increase the danger of the plane without just making the plane dangerous in and of itself. Though it would nerf Blink quite a bit.
For Wall of Force and Forcecage, what you could do is call for a concentration save when the wall or cage takes damage. The wall/cage itself is indestructible, but dealing damage to it can disrupt your concentration. I might set it to be as if you'd taken half the damage dealt, just to make sure (a) it isn't too easy to break out of, and (b) it's still more optimal to target the caster directly, if that's an option.
I like the idea of having creatures that hunt you in the ethereal plane. They are extremely dangerous with a supernatural/existential/horrific consequences, but they take a few rounds to smell you. So you can pop into etherealness when you need to, but have to leave quick preventing an extended stay.
Great advice! Lots of DM's will like this.
Great video man we need more of these. Le meilleur youtubeur de dnd
2 years since last vid? Worth
😂
For the Ethereal Plane, just have it be that the walls of the dungeon are enchanted to also appear on the ethereal plane. Or maybe things are enchanted to NOT be visible from the Ethereal Plane, a wall where there appears to be a path, or an open path with an Ethereal wall. Traps that can only be triggered or seen from one side or the other.
In my campaign I modified the Ethereal Plane. I converted the border ethereal into the fringe ethereal. This is where casters go when they use spells like Etherealness. In the fringe ethereal the prime world from where the character is entering from is mimicked, in a fashion. Buildings, barriers, foliage, it all exists although in a more ghostly distorted visage. If a character enters into the fringe, they must perform the same types of movements to overcome these barriers that they would have excised in their prime world, so they cannot for example walk through an ethereal wall. There may be other means to go around the wall in the fringe such as the wall may be crumbling, or it may be some other type of barrier (overgrown hedge instead of a stone wall), but the idea is they need to spend some time getting through it. This allows them to use the spell to get the outcome they seek without cheesing it.
Teleport in my campaign also works differently. The caster must have personally seen or visited the target location to be able to teleport to it. They must use teleportation circles/portals for long distance otherwise they are limited to eyesight. The only exception to this is if they are on a ley line in which case they can blindly teleport any length of distance along the ley line with varying results in accuracy.
I also am very particular about how wishes are used. Some very simple guidelines:
It must be a relatively simple sentence, no run on stuff, no essays.
It cannot contain any conjunctions.
No extreme greed or power trips.
Cannot wish for more wishes.
The simpler the wish the better. I use DC's to gauge the outcome. At baseline it is cast with no hitches. But if the character breaks the rules the DC starts to climb and a failure on the DC roll means the universe may just chime in.
Nicely edited 👍👍👍💯💯💯
I highly recommend the Dreams of the Red Wizards To Fall the Cold Night, and the Death of Szass Tamm - as examples of excellent Tier 4 writing. I ran the entire T3/T4 Terminal Ambitions modules, and my players always felt in danger. Even though they really weren't.
Etherealness: Yeah. That's the point.
Maybe it's because I played tabletop D&D 2e that I'm more sympathetic toward allowing and encouraging these potent uses of abilities, though I still ban (nearly) infinite loops.
To avoid area of effect spamming slowed down servers for the game Neverwinter (3E rules). We scripted every spell casting checks for the same spell, no matter who cast it, ran caster level check and they either failed to cast or it deleted the existing spell and replaced it.
I'm surprised you didn't mention 'Disintegrate' on Wall of Force and Forcecage.
I always have creatures who are "ghostly" style undead also exist in the Ethereal plan, so ghost, wraiths and so on and the wizard is there along :P.
I didn't recognize you without your glasses in the thumbnail, still lookin good tho
I just turned Rests into a resource, 2 shorts and a long in a 24 hour period. Literally can’t rest if they argue I just drop an absolutely spine crushing encounter on them. Also I threw out the idea of”balance” a few years ago. If my players want to constantly rest every encounter is going to be planned for accordingly. This is all info I give freely in advance. My campaign has been going for 2.5 years, 7 players
I feel if the players used tiny hut or mansion in front of the BBEG's room. When they awake and leave the ground around will be littered with all manner of traps, and possible siege weapons waiting in ambush.
For the Ethereal Plane in my campaign i was thinking of taking inspiration from Murderer: Soul Suspect. Make some souls trapped in it trying to find solutions and making the plane have it's own walls and own story. Also some souls trapped there were trapped so long that they become corrupted and deadly, if you're in an ethereal plane you are a pray for the corrupted spirits that can suck your souls giving the caster a debuff that will last until they can find a healer specializing in the Ethereal Medicine and Souls Healing.
Effectively making Ethereal plane in old ruins a stealth section if they wish to use it.
Small Glibness note: a Bard that uses Magical Secrets to learn Telekinesis could also use Glibness to make all their Charisma check to grab things and creatures equal 15+½ their proficiency bonus from Jack of all Trades.
one of the campaigns im in is at level 16 and it works pretty well. I am a paladin in a party full of multiclass wizards. The force spells have almost only been used for defense(a boss put himself in it to hide and one of us force caged our goblin to protect him)
One suggestion I'd consider etched in stone:
If you don't have experience PLAYING (multiple types of) high level casters, you're not ready to DM a campaign that includes high level casters.
You just don't have enough insight on how they work.
If you do have that experience, the next rest of this makes more sense.
1. You can "steer" players into choosing specific types of spells by rewarding their use. This has the effect of you knowing approximately what's in their toolkit, and thus where their weaknesses are.
2. Be sure that your monsters use the same (or higher) levels of magic that the players do. Having the big bad OPEN the fight with Meteor Shower will put even the baddest players back on their heels.
3. Have a big opener, where YOU (the DM) set the terms of battle and initiate combat. Don't let the players set the terms. The big opener should accomplish one or both of: do enough damage to the party that they're instantly on the defensive, or impose crippling conditions to one or more of the party members that force the party to REACT rather than act.
4. This is the biggest one though.
DON'T start the characters at high level. A level 17 wizard that was created AT 17 is an entirely different build from a level 17 wizard that was created at 1 and leveled up. You can vastly accelerate the leveling process if you want. But have them play each level at least a little. That way when they arrive at those higher levels, the characters are more organic AND you've had time and contact to see how they respond to specific threats and opportunities.
Peak editing skills🔥🔥🙏
The problem of high level play at the table for me is not one of broken spells or players trouncing the enemies, but of action economy absolutely falling off a cliff. Even at mid-range levels, turn rounds in combat become excruciatingly slow, and even if players are disciplined (3 minutes or less between turns) it still means 15 minutes between players taking turns. That’s a lot of sitting around waiting.
Two things I do to curb the slowdown-have a “shot-caller” who organizes player actions for 5 minutes (I have a nice 5 minute hourglass for making it extra dramatic), then everybody rolls, even monsters. We line up the dice and go down the line of who hits and who misses, only the hits roll damage/make effect happen.
Secondly, I focus fire in combat on spell casters. It’s honest-I let my players know if there are oracles or sages when they scout ahead, and I tell them they need to be dealt with before anything else or bad things happen. It’s a bit of DnD jiujitsu-I make them wary, which makes them scout, which makes them more likely to plan, which makes the combat quicker. Sloppy players who just run up to the door and run in spoil things. One of my favorite things to do for players who run in is just to bar the door behind them, cutting off the rest of the players. They will spend precious rounds cutting through the door or the wall while the bold player gets wrecked by spells and arrows and swords. Usually, I’ll even have the bad guy taunt them, saying “did you think we wouldn’t even post guards?” It’s mean, but I want my players mean, I want them tactical.
I wish ... to see your video editing software timeline for the "I wish" montage section of this video ...
Seriously that must have been crazy.
So, I haven't played above like level 10 since none of my groups have naturally reached that. I really want to though. But from what i've gathered, it really seems like you just gotta run the game differently than you do at lower levels. The players aren't just simple adventures fighting goblins for some loot, these are well defined heroes with renown and abilites with far reaching impact! From a storytelling perspective, it's actually really cool! You have a lot more responsibility now with how you can shape the world. Connections you can influence, land you could build, people you can protect!
Also, as a heavy improv DM, I feel like all of this new power would be RIPE for shenanigans. This also allows for some more wiggle room as you have opportunities to make a problem, but don't make a solution. Sure you could make a Lich's lair, but what if it was at the bottom of the ocean? AND the castle itself is alive? I might not know the exact solution, but the players are powerful enough that they'll probably think of something cooler than I can.
Again, take this with a grain of salt since I have yet to play it, but it feels like you really gotta lean into the fantastical side of this fantasy game for higher level play.
Ethereal Plane: It’s dangerous, but not constantly. You have to be very stealthy.
It's noticeable how much of this based on nerfing spells for full casters. Martials still kinda fall off for finding ways to influence their environment beyond hitting things
@BestgirlJordanfish martials have their power in consistency, tankiness and non reliance on magic. spellcasters at late levels are gonna get silvery barb, counterspell, dispell, silence, feeblemind, anti magic zone etc tossed at their faces or just outright get ambushed by invisible creatures and knocked out if not careful.
martials don't deal with any of that, they just get super high action economy with consistent dpr that can hardly be negated. (at worst some creature has a non-magic resistance which at that level their weapons or they themselves usually have some property to overcome that)
Sure casters break the game in a more easy to understand over the top way, but encounter wise you'll find yourself over prepped to deal with magic only to see your boss get 1~2 turned by the martials anyway
@@sqfzerzefsdf People always claim this, that wizards are limited by their resources, but it just doesnt bare out in real play. Spellcasters get insanely powerful options for just about every spell slot they have. And by this point they have approximately 40 spell slots to play around with.
Any one of those spell slots can swing an encounter massively.
Level 1, Silvery Barbs and Shield.
Level 2, Hold Person and Misty Step.
Level 3, Hypnotic Pattern and Slow. Honorable mention goes to Counterspell for the sheer dominance this spell had on the meta before 5.5. Every encounter with more than one spellcaster was won or lost on this spell.
Level 4, Banishment, Greater Invisibility, Polymorph.
I could keep going, but we all know that past this point the options keep getting crazier. Martials have absolutely no options to maintain parity with this. They had to invent the mechanic of legendary resistances just to stop wizards from deleting bosses in a single round.
@@sqfzerzefsdf This especially applies if multiclassing is involved, but there are ways that casters can be as consistent (in some cases more consistent thanks to cantrips and how they scale) and tanky as martials. Also, martials definitely still technically rely on magic through items or else their damage really starts to fall otherwise. Feats help them, but I tend to see martials taking more of those than casters which also effect ASIs and their impact on the game.
First time DM here, hi. My players is now at level14/15 One of my favorite things is the wizard being able to teleport the party for traveling, How I treat eatherelness is much like how lord of the rings work, you can enter but since you are living creatures from the plane will start hunting you. Plane shift doesn't exist in my game because of the setting. On the prismatic spells & simulacrum, thank you for the advice & also on the balancing. Right now they have the hallow platinum dragon as the end arc boss & an undead Lathander. I'm using Vecna as a god of resurrection to bring back fallen gods so he can sneak into the world by having the players & actual gods focusing on the reanimated ones. My plan for player urgency is that they will be sent to the plane of pandamonium to find a dying god, heal him & restore him so he can help them against Vecna. Asif now they only think Vecna is a myth however at the end of the arc they will find out that he does infact exist & has made it into their world, they must now escape from pandamonium with Heliod in order to stop Vecna from destroying everything they've worked up till now to build & protect
I want to apologize this 2as a comment that turned into a rant 🙏
Etherealness shifts you to the Border Ethereal. Although unliving things on the Material Plane don't provide any obstruction, living things (those larger than a single cell) do. You can't, for example, simply walk through a person or place something in their brain and then bring it back to the Material for an insta-kill. It would therefore be difficult to pass ethereally through any sort of living vegetation. Even simple algae coating a surface will render it impassable by an ethereal traveller. Creatures, like phase spiders, that can pass into the Ethereal might congregate near these sorts of areas to catch travellers as they navigate through a (purposefully made?) bottleneck - maybe they spin ethereal webs too? You can have the traveller make increasing difficult rolls to remain in the Border Ethereal without being swept through the (turquoise) curtain into the Deep Ethereal from which it can be difficult to find their way back.
Just wanna say on the issue of the Etherial Plane. Or as it was known in earlier editions, the Astral Plane. Just saying there are things on that plane is SUPER easy to do, because there always have been creatures native to that plane that can, and will find you if you linger in that plane for long enough.
Just as some examples, Doppelgangers at least in older editions were native to that plane and tended to like stealing a person's exit to the Material Plane while assuming their appearance.
There were also creatures called Etheral Filchers that would try to steal anything from a player they thought looked shiney, and could plane shift at will to escape being caught after their theft. Or the Astral Mauler..... it's name should be self explanatory on what they did if they found you.
Or best of all.... GIRHYANKI PIRATES!!!!
Sure I don't need to explain why being found by THEM is a good reason to not abuse the ability to hide in the Etheral Plane for prolonged periods for any reason. :p
When it comes to broken spells, one of the options you didn't mention was consequences, unintended or not. For sure, don't add heaps of these every time a player uses a spell that you might consider broken. Let them occasionall have their fun. But have a list of options to handle those difficult spells.
For a few examples: Have a way for powerful spell caster enemies to break into your Magnificent Mansion and invade it with his monsters. Maybe the players wouldn't drop down a bunker on an archlich's front steps if they think there's a way he might tear a hole in the mansion wall and invade.
For force cage, have an enemy use a magic item that forces an opponent to have a contested charisma save and on failure the magic switches their positions with each other, congrats you've just forcecaged your party's barbarian... I know 5e lets you end concentration as a free action, but this is better than teleporting out because of the irony, and other systems may not let you do that.
For wish, remind the players that the enemy also has access to wish as a spell, and if they want to abuse it, it can also be used against them.
this is genuinely just a good video
I like running my group at low levels so I can tell a more grounded story. They also can't keep track of all of their abilities at level three, so probably best to not add more for a while.
Also a carrion crawler is still a sufficient threat to frighten them and I like running it.
Player: I cast Wall of Force to trap the BBEG, we can't hurt him, but he can't do anything to us!
DM: "He smiles at that realization and casts Blade of Disaster."
For fights at any lvl you can always try to make them "unwinable".
Let me explain.
It doesn't mean that pleyers are not supposed to fight the enemies, but that's not how they win.
Take something like a ghost for example. It has statblock, but it returned from the afterlife once and until the playera solve the problem that returned it like unjust punishment, umburied body, the soul will just keep returning.
Or have a fleshy undead. They can burn it, slice it, crush it, melt it, you name it. As soon as it has 0 HP it starts regaining 1d4 per turn, and when it regains all of them, it comes back to undead.
Or my favourite one. The victory was never possibile. Sometimes you have to defeat cultists, sometimes you have to destroy obelisc.
But that when there is for example an aberration, something out of this world, that will simply never be gone?
Depending on it's movement options sealing this thing "for good" might go from easy to very difficult.
These can come in handy at any lvl of play, but are not recomended too often.
They can however turn fighting into a choice. Do players risk resources like HP and time for fighting this thing? Is going around it better than rendering it useless for a while?
And most importantly, how to win with this thing if not by classical means?
13:08 one thing one DM I played with for nearly two years did was she would give each character the *FULL* XP each monster was worth instead of divvying it up. So if a monster was worth 1,000 XP, each character would get 1,000 XP instead of 125 (there were eight players in this party)
The delivery on "creating new trauma" had me burst out laughing xD
You don't know what true pain is until you have to deal with Prismatic Wall.
When your demi-god / demon lord / arch devil gets stuck inside a forcecage, you realize how broken it is.
There's a few points I always fall back on with high level play and spells people always claim are problems.
For starters, the wish simulacrum combo isn't a problem if you structure your long term campaigns correctly. At level 17 the wizard can make an army of clones of themselves. How do you handle this? Make it the wizard's main pet project.
From level 3 onward, the rogue should be working on building up their own thieves guild or spy network. The fighter, paladin, and barbarian should all be gathering soldiers to their war banners from level 3 onwards. The charisma casters should have their own cults of personality, and tier 2+ wizards should be working on their own wizard school, pocket dimension/tower, or something insane like creating a new hybrid animal species.
PCs should have pet projects, most of which should give them small armies of npcs. They should be building these armies a dozen or more levels earlier than when the wizard gets to spam simulacrum. Just treat the army of sims the same way other NPC minions should be treated. Using the collective group is part of that player's downtime activities and how the DM hands out plot hooks and quest markers. When going into a combat scenario, each PC is limited to taking only two NPCs with them. The paladin can only take two squires into the dungeon. The rogue can only take two of their guild lieutenants. The fighter can only take two shield and spear bearers. The druid and ranger can only take two awakened pets with them. The wizard only gets two Sims, and those sims are in competition for the slots taken by summoned/bound creatures like elementals, outsiders, genies, or anything else trapped with gate or magic circle spells. Is having three copies of the wizard's prepped spell list powerful? Yes, but this is level 17 through 20 we are talking about. Sims can't regain spent spell slots, so if they wished for another sim, then none of your sims have 9th level spells.
Force wall and cage are easy fixes. Either look up a spell ffom older editions called Mordenkainen's Disjunction, or look up the Kaiju rules D&D Shorts made for bypassing those spells in their book Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms.
Eatherealness is even easier to fix. Either have important dungeons guarded by bound phase spiders, littered with Walls of Force, or take a page from the game Murdered Soul Suspect, or the movie Thirteen Ghosts. There are rituals and substances that make a wall in the physical world manifest in the border ethereal. Ghosts can't cross lines of salt or engraved runes. Mix the blood of a saint into the mortar of the foundation of a house and the external walls of that building become impassable barriers for ethereal brings. They have to use doors and windows like everyone else.
Rest spells are done away with by dispel, glowing runes that block pocket dimension access, or just enforcing time limits on players and not letting them rest.
A simple fix for high level combat is alternate win and lose conditions. Have the party only have 1d4 rounds to stop a vehicle with a doomsday weapon from taking off. The weak stat blocks aren't fighting to win. They're fighting to delay the PCs and win by making thr PCs lose half their bases and armies.
For leveling up have my players usethe XP system from cypher system games? It's just easier once you know it, and how it allows players to set their advancement rate.
As a druid, just lvl7 is enought to genocide.
1) have a party
2) recruit npcs which are comparably same to ykur party
1st not problem, eecond fixable
And now conjure pixies, 8 of em, each pixie turns ally into cr8 being. And you will hide, so you concentrate on pixies, while they concentate on beasts AND cast smth else, while you observing it with familiar. And secnd tuenn pixies cast fly.
So you can het 8 flying giant crocodiles/dinosaurs or whatever. Those combined are much more powerfull than tarasque or tiamat. Juat lvl 4 spell. And all actions can be done in 2 turns, so easy to prepare
I want to throw down one more spell to add to the list- I don’t think it’s truly overpowered but it does somewhat fall into that whole quick travel category: Phantom Steed. 1 hour long steed that can move 100 ft (200 ft with dash) and can be chained as a ritual to make new ones makes for fantastic overland travel options. Unless there’s traps along the ground odds are most things can’t keep up with them and you can easily bypass many encounters with it. At high levels this is used when teleportation isn’t needed or possible or just to travel the land itself
Why would high level characters skip encounters. That seems a lot like not playing the game. Yippie!
O@@archersfriend5900only if you play combat as sport. When you do combat as survival with real risks of consequences then its just smart play.
I've found that throwing in a band of a few hundred Genoese crossbowmen (backed with a handful of wizards casting Counterspell) can take the starch out of almost any party...
Oh no you are inside a wall of force healing yourselves....**pulls out 3 blades of disasters**...finally, I always wanted to try this spell
For ethearlness. Something I'd do is make it so that the ethearl plane is a exact copy of the material plane. Just more spooky and there's no one around. There's a webtoon called school bus graveyard. Take the phantom dimension, boom. Players can't just walk through stuff
Etherealness is countered by a level 2 spell though tbh. It’s probably fairly easy to let level 17 threats have a couple strategically places guards with that spell up permanently.
Rest and recovery. Whenever any spell is cast it is cast at 100% in this case recovery. Then next spell at 90%, regenerate spell purity 1% each day questing. Each level of spell could reduce by different amount to balance it out...
One of my biggest pieces of advice for DM's that want to try and run high-level games, but are afraid to do so, is to just TRY running high-level *one-shots* more often. Establish expectations with your players, and be prepared for things to get a little wacky and out of control, at least the first few times you do it.
I think one of the biggest reasons DM's struggle with running higher-level games is, in part, due to a lack of experience. Many DM's just rarely ever get to see a game reach the higher levels naturally, so they don't really gain that experience and don't know what to expect or how to run things at those levels. Experience is one of the greatest teachers, so if you don't experience play at those levels enough to learn, then it's going to be more difficult for you.
Run a 20th level one-shot every now and then, and don't take it too seriously. Use those one-shots as a learning experience so you can better run games at those levels in the future.
Balancing high level, ultra specific spells like Etherealness: don't allow players to change spells on the whim.
State it during session 0. Spells and cantrips you take are going to stay with you, so choose wisely.
Ofc at time when someone is very unhappy with character you can let them change, but this is exception to the rule. Definitely ban "Ok I now have this spell cause we need it atm".
Have played the majority of my games over level 10, have never had an issue
Any spell that has to do with going into the ethereal plane can be easily nerfed with how wraith (and before her, titanfall 2's phase shift) works, yes you can walk and see the map from it, but you can't see material beings while in the ethereal plane
You forgot one of the best resting and offensive spells. Mirage Arcane. You could make a fort the size of a square mile in 10 minutes that lasts 10 days per casting, or you could say hey dm you know that war band of orcs/goblins/zombies that I can see on the horizon? They are now trapped in a square mile lake of lava. Seriously this spell is bonkers. It's so flexible that you can do terrifying things
"Quantity has a quality all its own" is a great take away. Nerfing players makes them feel bad in ways upping the encounter tends not to.
Let them be fully rested for the final fight. Let them to force cage your dragon, then maze something with legendary resistance, then cripple your melee mobs with plant growth, or spellcasters with sleet storm, or whatever. Let them feel extremely powerful, but still plan to have enough left after all that to have a close fight.
A nice nerf on wish that I told my players about in sess 0 (I'm a lawyer):
"If any of you ever use the Wish spell, we're stopping the session right then and there. In the beginning of the next session, the spell will resolve EXACTLY as phrased."
They're level 15 as of now, 4 years later, and I can't wait to see if one of them dares to use it.
Best used to access any 8th level spell without needing components or time. Not worth risking losing Wish for other types of casting. Your nerf seems harsh tbh
Wdym by "exactly as phrased", monkey pawing won't produce unique results, just something that technically fits the request and is often very convoluted. In what sense is "exact" applicable?
You know, since the wish spell does not have any character limit, I could probably hire someone to produce a monstrously long 2000 page contract detailing a list of absurdly broken requests and force you to go through them all lest you are burdened with massive penalties each time these items do not function as requested. It would be extremely tedious for you, (not for me though. I would state "I would like to state my wish as defined in the document stated below)
Or you could just let me resurrect my dog without any negative side effects.
Why would you need to monkey paw everything?
@@terry_the_terrible Yes this whole 'fix nerf' betrays a real breakdown in trust and fun between DM and players. Play it a bit loosy goosy and let the spell be powerful but not broken.
@@tsavinBreakdown in DM and Player trust is a classic (i.e. got big, if not started, in 3e) DnD end state.
If you have a situation where the DM is not actively trying to screw you (The Player, not just the PC) over; well then, heh heh, guess you're not playing *real* (3rd edition) DnD.
You only have to fill one dungeon with Phase Spiders to get a player thinking twice about etherealness forever
Another way to counter Etherealness is to just have important areas and walls that block you off from those areas also extend into the Ethereal Plane. That way, you can't so easily bypass a dungeon just by existing.
Here are some balancing things I've done that seem to work, some of which are just old school ways of doing it:
- Combat Rounds now last 1 minute - nerfs spells to an acceptable level without banning any AND makes combat faster. Ironically.
- Dungeon crawling works like combat - players take their turn, monsters / dungeon takes their turn. Each are limited to those three actions and makes you consider anything you do more.
- Ethereal creatures can /only/ be hit by weapons with the 'magic' property and if I a player passes through an ethereal creature the player ages 1d6 years. Other monsters can only take damage when a specific damage type is used if they are higher CR than others.
- Force the spellcasters or ANYTHING that uses a spell to memorize spells before going into a dungeon or encounter. Why? Because it forces them to consider what to use and be creative with those rather than having access to an infinite god level amount of spells.
- Long rests last one week of in game time.
- Short rests allow you to replenish a spell slot or missed spell by spending a hit dice.
Low level combat:
- 1 type of monster or 2 types of monsters
- mix and match monsters for different puzzle like results.
Mid level combat:
-2 types of difficult monsters
- as many low level monsters as levels in the party.
- mix and match for interesting puzzle like results.
High level combat:
- as many low level monsters as possible
- as many mid level monsters as player levels
- one large monster that either:
- - Is boss level powerful (equal in action economy and abilities as the partys level)
- - has enough enemies to ensure the party can't get to them too fast
- mix and match for interesting puzzle like results.
The mistake was having all the high level players fighting the DM, when in fact they should be challenging each other.
1) Time limit, indeed time limit is thing that balances out the magnificent mansion spell. 2) Dungeon design, create a story that limits the most broken spells of bypassing the dungeon itself even teleportation can be used to travel into the dungeon the dungeon itself is semi closed system. 3) Use powerful monsters as regular enemies, How to chalenge party of level 20 throw two balors into regular mobs along side other demons, then my players really have to fight tooth and nail and use all their high level resources to try to survive the onslaught.. and not to mention Special CR: 30 monster as a boss. at the end of the dungeon.