How to play HIGH LEVEL D&D without the game falling apart. D&D 5e
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:09 Avoiding high level play
5:35 High level play wrecked my campaign
7:50 5th edition is better at high levels
8:40 Warnings about high level
10:41 Breaking your toys
14:50 9 things you can do
15:20 The social contract
15:40 Manage the rules
16:44 Manage magic items
19:57 Watch what the characters do
20:42 Create interesting environments
21:32 Create unique challenges
22:28 Use interesting monsters
23:45 Give everyone a chance to shine
24:52 Make reasonable rulings
27:03 Wrap up
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If you would like to check out the 20th level one shot: ruclips.net/video/rFA-kSl-1gA/видео.html
The important thing to remember about high level play is that a single adventure for a high level party is basically a campaign unto-itself for a low level party. You gotta have the fodder, the mooks, the random encounters, the hooks, the hints, the leads, and the investigation. The only difference is the party moves through the checkpoints faster and the BBEG just happens to exist in a competitive weight class.
It's also good to remember what the party's capabilities are, and to not be shy about deploying simple counters, such as ranged weapons, ambushes, defensive tactics, and not sticking important things at the top of towers where flying/teleporting/scrying is possible. Don't be afraid to mix in low level casters with counterspell/dispel if your spellcasters start getting cheeky, and enforce reasonable turn times (eg, the 60 second rule) to keep things quick. Going high level doesn't mean having to go big. It means not really worrying about whether they'll live or not (newsflash: they probably will)
@@zourin8804 I'd like to roll in a point here, drawing from another system called Godbound. In Godbound, you play literal demigods, with sufficient divine power that, depending on your abilities you could kill all ordinary humans within eyesight just by deciding to. Does this mean Godbound games never include large groups of ordinary humans, knowing that they'll never threaten a combat-oriented Godbound? No, you put them there *specifically* because they'll never threaten a combat-oriented Godbound, and nothing makes a player realise just how powerful they actually are than killing a thousand people without even rolling a dice.
One thing left unmentioned is that you don’t need to fully play out every encounter. Tons of hit points means it takes a lot of time to whittle health down. Once it’s clear that the PCs are going to win, end the encounter. My cutoff tends to be: the end of a monster’s turn where the PCs should be able to drop all monsters by those monsters’ next turns without expending significant resources. Once the outcome is determined, rolling more dice loses its excitement. Chris did this a couple times in the level 20 game if I remember right.
This is a great tip.
Often the answer here is to just not have monsters fight to the death. When they get low on hit points they should run, or if that's not an option, surrender. This doesn't have to happen every fight, but against any reasonably intelligent foe, if you can see that the fight is won, and the PCs can see it, the monsters can see it too, and sitting there while the PCs clean them up doesn't make much sense.
Unless your party are murder hobos. Then you kill their joy.
I did something similar in some low level games, the party was tracking groups of gnolls, the gnoll packs were all technically hard/very hard encounters, but when the gnolls took about 50% casualties, they'd flee. That basically led to both sides attempting ambushes on each other. Which of course led to trying to ambush the ambushers.
@Cian Wade this is a great idea
I'm currently in a campaign where all the character are level 25. The players got to pick an epic boon for each level above 20, or multiclass to get levels in other classes. I'm not entirely sure how our DM manages to keep up entertained and challenged, but the social contract is the biggest factor. We all want to keep playing, so none of us try to break the game, even though any one of us could.
For the point about magic items:
I recently finished a Dimension 20 series and in it, the DM homebrewed magic items that were themed around the characters they were given to. One character, was a knight and protector for the royal family, so his magic item was a shield that allowed him to basically teleport to a target that got hit by an attack and then take all of the damage for them, as a reaction. Oddly enough, that feature was what prevented the character from drowning in the ocean (they fell in and had heavy armor) because a party member took a hit while he could still see them, so he used his reaction to zoop back onto the ship, take the damage, and not drown to death. I thought that was a really cool and creative way of using it.
I feel like DMs can have a lot of fun with this and can even collaborate with the players on some ideas.
DM & player cooperative item making is one of the cooler things about higher levels and even lower ones if there's a gap in what the pre-printed items do.
in a current campaign we've come across tons of cursed items but the DM makes sure that none of them are debilitating and act more as balancing tools or can be diminished by a certain character's features or traits.
I am impressed about how that high-level one-shot has had more ongoing impact than one would typically expect from a one-shot. Colby devoted a video to his build for that episode. A recent debate between the Dungeon Dudes centered on their experience in the one-shot. And now, of course, there is this video.
Which video was this? Are you talking about the paladin discussion?
I cant find the DD debate, can you help me with that?
Presumably he means the recent bladesinger video.
We just recently finished a lv 1-20 campaign. Highly recommend having other things going on in the combat. The bad guy is unlocking a gate so you can't let them get to all the locks while fighting them. Two bad guys behind a barrier chanting while you are fighting the main bad. They could be doing nothing or they could make the equivalent of a force cage appear if they are able to finish the ritual. Etc.
I love high level play as DM.
I use only one rule for "balance" = THERE WILL BE NO BALANCE.
You can do whatever broken stuff you desire, but keep in mind that I as a DM will always have access to more broken stuff than players.
Challenge me, but keep in mind I can challenge you more.
And things just work themselves out naturally. We all have fun and reality sometimes breaks apart... but that is a sacrifice that I am more than willing to take.
I call the Simulacrum exploit "the Amoeba Wizard." I swear, it'll catch on sooner or later. But, I do have a solution for it that doesn't require any re-writing of the rules. The spell, as written, ends with "If you cast this spell again, any duplicate you created with this spell is instantly destroyed." The duplicate you created is a near-exact copy of a creature that just cast Simulacrum, therefore if IT casts the spell it will destroy itself in the process.
something that may add to the convo:
per DMG, Gargantuan controls a space of 20 by 20 ft. or *larger*. So I do believe that its not a DM's ruling, but actual rules from the book that a tarrasque can be bigger than 4by4 square.
CMIIW.
a friend of mine who is a fellow DM once told me "Gargantuan is not a size, it's an achievement" and that stayed with me
It's why you can Enlarge a Gargantuan creature, but what happens is kind of up to the DM. From Large to Huge isn't a 100% increase like the spell states, so it could just be one more row and column, or a DM might say that past Gargantuan you do literally double it's dimensions.
@@wverms My own personal headcanon and one shared by a few other DMs I play with, is that they've included, specifically for epic level play, 2 size categories above Gargantuan (one of which use to exist back in 3.5e era IIRC). That is Colossal and Titanic. So large is 2 by 2, huge is 3 by 3, Gargantuan is 4 by 4, Colossal is 5 by 5 and Titanic is 6 by 6. Any bigger than that and you're looking at less a direct fight with the creature and more the adventurerer's playing 'Shadow of colossus D&D edition'.
Puzzles can be great at lower levels, but I think they're a must at higher levels. I'm using puzzles loosely here, but Chris had a few different puzzles in his one-shot. Straight combat becomes just too time-consuming to threaten characters with one battle after the other. You've got to throw stuff at the players that make them really think. Recently I placed my characters into an Agatha Christie mystery. Considering there are wikipedia pages with plots and characters for tons of mystery books, it's not really all that time-consuming either. There was a battle at the end, so it wasn't without combat, but the characters were forced to use all sorts of skill checks they'd never had to use before along the way. And some of the skills they were just terrible at, which made it fun. Dump stats start meaning something when a character is forced to use them through a variety of interesting puzzles. Players start rethinking the wisdom of their 15-15-15-8-8-8 point-buy characters.
I agree completely. I believe that every combat is a puzzle in its own right. The level of the players just dictates the complexity of that puzzle.
Silvery barbs is amazing but I think it should’ve been a level 2 spell like the other new spells that came out with Strixhaven. When I read the spell it seems like the spell would be amazing for bards especially the eloquence bard.
"It was the first time we had ever played D&D where we couldn't complete a single combat in a session."
[4th edition joke here]
I think 5e is VERY easy to do lategame in comparison to previous editions for many reasons. The primary one, which is more focused on 3.x/pf, is that the gap between an optimized character and an unoptimized one is ridiculously large in comparison to 5e.
I feel like a social contract pretty much 100% eliminates the problem of 3.5/PF over-optimization.
I do appreciate the mention of the social contract. It really does help shut down any of the theory crafting whiteboard drawings that while fun, you shouldn't have to ban because everyone should understand why it is bad.
I'm always really impressed at how your advice, be it for builds or rules adjudication, always highlights the overall group enjoyment of the game. Watching out for players outshining each other and avoiding exploits that make things less fun for someone, making sure things are interesting as opposed to just powerful, those are all fundamental for the health of the game. Thanks for always bringing this up in your analyses.
Great advice... for level 1 and 20 alike!
Yep. All these should be considered at every level :)
One of the biggest problems with high-level adventuring is making encounters feel challenging without too much risk of a TPK. I have found is that it is easier to do this when the opponents rely less on being ever-larger bags of hit points, and more on significant battlefield control capabilities. The players may have world-changing abilities, but if they have trouble bringing those abilities to bear, they are forced to struggle. The result for me has been a number of encounters in which the characters' HP never dropped significantly, but they felt as if they had been put through the ringer.
I'm only starting to play at levels ~10, but I'm finding the "different environments" to be my preferred way to challenge the party. Sure 70% of the monsters mainly do a couple different types of attacks, but that feels totally different if they are fighting on a beach and the enemies are on top of fortifications shooting down at the party, or if they are in narrow underwater tunnels, or in a forest with tons of natural cover.
Thanks for this video. I think that your 1 shot was very instructive as to the game not being broken at level 20. If anything I thought that Monty's wizard looked weak compared to the other characters and that there wasn't a lot for them to do at times. So it really showed how the wizard isn't always the ultimate at the 20th level. In fact, in the one-shot it looked more like the Paladin was one that had all the power. Thanks so much for these videos. Just found your channel and I am really enjoying it.
Ya he really casted wall of force 🥱, and shapechange. But just spammed SILVERY BARBS before a roll was even made.
Good tactics that he nor anyone could 😡
- cast a summon spell to give the monk all the “ally dmg multiplayer”
- literally any buff spell like haste
@@dominicl5862 Part of it is the same problem wizards always face. You memorize a core number of spells that are always useful Wall of Force, Silvery Barbs, etc and then you have a variety of situational spells. If you didn't pick the right situational spells you look useless. If you did pick the right situational spells you look like a future seeing god with all the answers.
@@bahhumbug2072 Heres the thing with playing full casters, you realize every single spell is "situational" even the staples. Think about fireball, its a legendary spell, but if you have it prepped, and never face a large group, its not gonna be good. So what do you do to round it out, take a spell that is good against one creature. Even if your list of spells is a bunch of bangers, if you dont know which spell to use at the right time, you're gonna fail and be useless. It takes practice playing a full caster.
Basically you start designing your prep list for every "situation" that could come up.
Like monty had NO spell that was good in a situation where:
a: theres only one creature,
b: that creature has high saves
c: that creature has high hp
In that situation you'd want a spell like: Summon greater demon, haste, greater invisibility, bigbys hand, etc.
With your spells, if you want to be effective in combat you have to be ready for these situations:
1: A single BOSS enemy
2: A Hoard of enemies (6+)
3: A few stronge enemies (2-5)
Once you have those bases covered, you go for more utility, or get more precise with coverage like:
1: Spells that are good in a hallway (Lightning bolt)
2: Spells that are effective in a chaotic melee (Slow)
3: Spells against enemies far away etc. etc.
Its the difference between playing a cleric that casts Spirit Guardians every time initiative is rolled vs one who thinks about and realizes that a second level bless is gonna do more damage (fighting a single creature for example)
@@dominicl5862 he used wall of force to keep them close and stayed away to avoid loosing concentration he couldnt buff or summon also he had a familiar owl he only used for scouting so i imagine they had some rules about that or he just completely forgot it existed 😂 also the other peeps werent really able to use concentration because they got bitchslapped every end turn and none of them had amazing con saves other than colby but he had to attack since he was the only one doing actual dmg
Besides that monty did amazing at supporting the party if you forget about that ray of frost
"I can just add it in." 100% this. The best moment for me as a DM was when I realized I could just add a feature to a monster to make it challenge the party. DM's, change anything you want! It's your game and if the players complain "that monster can't do that!" Tell them they are a metagaming twit and you can do whatever you want!
I played a Sorcerer that had Silvery Barbs and every time I cast it as a reaction it failed to mitigate at all. I eventually stopped using it and just went back to Shield as my go-to. I could hand out advantage afterward sure but, I mean. If I just wanted to do that I could have taken the Help action. I genuinely think the Silvery Barbs controversy is overblown and a case of whiteroomers assuming rerolling is more effective than it is.
People forget random doesn't quit being random.
@@RisinTyson People forget most DMs roll behind a screen. But I agree on a Sorcerer or Wizard Silvery Barbs is fine, it is Fey Touched that makes it bonkers b/c suddenly it isn't one reroll it's 3. But even then, up to level 8 I think Silvery Barbs is still mostly fine. It's when you get to levels 8+ and your party can afford to use Banishment or Hypnotic Pattern every combat with multiple SBs castings to make sure they stick that it becomes an issue. But again it largely comes down to the social contract, if the players know what each other finds fun and respect that it's totally fine! But if you have the "I'm going to be the god-wizard and be the best at everything and just shut down all the combats" type player then Silvery Barbs makes it extremely easy for them to do so.
@@agilemind6241 the strongest user of save spells is the eloquence bard. Also hypnotic pattern is a charm effect I've already ran out of use for. Prebuilt campaign age of worms undead trait. Wait how does fey touch make SB better?
One of my players in a recent campaign had taken silvery barbs, and only used it when I got natural 20's. It hurt, but at least I don't have a Grave cleric! DMs wanna roll beeg dice too :'(
@@BlueFoxXT basically the power of silvery barbs right there. Well that and forcing legendary resistances
I think the lack of high level play being supported by WOTC is more a problem than the high levels themselves.
Not being exposed to these lvls in a thought out product makes people feel a bit uneasy about trying. So less people do so, leads to pure whiteboard about high lvl play.
I do wish there were more official high level adventures.
@@TreantmonksTemple I wish there were _any_ .
@@cp1cupcake Just play Dungeon of the Mad Mage! What do you mean you don't want a mindless dungeon crawl with nothing interesting about it?
@@cp1cupcake Adventurer's league modules are the closest thing. you could take a look.
@@Apfeljunge666 and honestly there aren't that many. And honestly the quality is all over the place. I have played t3 and t4 adventures that didn't account for things like invisibility and flight
3e was a bit of a bookkeeping chore when you got high levels, 5 attacks, each with a different bonus to hit, 3 types of AC (Regular, Natural, Flat-footed) and soooo many options from splat books that yeah, it just kinda got old. I think 5e does mitigate that somewhat
High level D&D is a lot of fun when it’s done correctly.
I've been having some serious DM burnout as I'm currently running 2 high level campaigns that are just boring to me. some of these changes may help me.
Thanks for the content, man.
I know you feel responsible for giving your players the campaign they want, but if you feel burned out and tired then I ask what's the point? You're the one putting the most effort in making your games a reality. It's ok to ask your players to try a new campaign that will get you excited again and that is also easier to manage.
5e puts the entire burden on DMs to restrict and micro-manage the parameters of the game in such a way that was not taught or demanded at lower levels.
Here’s a suggestion: play a game system that properly supports high level play instead, one that designed for and playtested high level play. Play a game system where you can follow it’s encounter building guidelines, without any tweaking and without any additional work, and will produce a fun combat encounter at any levels 1-20 even if the terrain is a big empty room.
Try Pathfinder 2. You are making your life way easier.
One thing that I leard way back in the 3.5/PF days was that at a certain point you can't be cheking traps with 10-foot pole anymore. Embrace the power scale! Your exemple of the Elderbrain dragon is spot on. At this point creatures should be weirder and more umpredictable. Bringback templates, check out Advanced Bestiary (for both D&D and PF). This is for combat specificly, while on the lore side play up the enviromental/planet/plane side effects of the conflict. I understand that army battles are a niche within a niche, and not everyone likes to amass an army or deal with sub rules, etc. But perhaps that's how a combatant can contribute at higher levels, at least that's what the did in older editions.
Great Video,
Cheers!
If they lean harder into templates, what I would appreciate is a tool that allows you to click and drag templates onto a creature stat block and have it immediately applied.
It sucks that the loop exists, and it kinda tarnished Simulacrum’s rep; HOWEVER, I love simulacrum just used naturally. If you’re a 13th lvl wizard, and you have a shadow clone that has MOST of your broken spells and slots. It’s still gonna be dummy strong. And it takes resources so its not necessarily free. Plus it’ll have like 50hp 😂😂
i've been watching your vids for about 2 years now (same time i DM weekly and we even finished a level 3-16 campaign). i learn a lot from you and generally really like your "mentality" and thoughts behind the game. thank you very much for sharing, you are an inspiration! ♡
Thanks so much!
Thank you so much for this video, advice for keeping high level dnd fresh and fun is something I’ve found sorely lacking from wotc
I feel that patching the spells to explicitly prohibit the castings of Simulacrum and Wish for either would be fine.
My rule is that magical creations can’t duplicate the spells that created them. So no simulacrum for a simulacrum, no find familiar for a familiar.
@@Adurnis Much more elegant. Going to use this one in my games.
@@Adurnis that’s a good ruling. I also like saying that Simulacrums and similar creatures can’t cast the highest level of magic of the being that created them.
I played 2 mid/high level campaigns, and I had 2 options as a main fight.
The first time I put a medium/low main enemy, a caster, and then put a bunch of medium health enemies which functioned as "body guards", and I practically opted like this, when they die, he is as much as dead.
The second time I put a high health monster (not to the level of the Tarrasque) with maybe 4/5 monsters to keep the PCs "entertained", like I put a barlgura with 5 Grey slaads as subordinates, and in this combat when I saw that the slaads died and the barlgura couldn't practically scratch the Barbarian while being targeted by everything I decided to give the killing blow to the one keeping him at bay.
Excellent video. Really resonated with the fundamental point of 'just be a good friend' when playing.
Excellent video! I think your 9 rules for high level play work great for any tier, really. Love that you include points like "give everyone a chance to shine." Optimizing the stats and the fun, as always. :)
Can you make a video on all the ways to break the game? (Coffeelock, wish simulacrum, …)
Obviously I don’t ever want to use one of these, but I think the fiendish RAW rules lawyering to find exploits really fun
I too would like to see this. It just goes to show that the designers really need to consider some tweaks for 5.5
@@DeadpoolAli Yeah, very exited for that. Though I don’t like the recent direction of the game (lineages instead of races and many many broken subclasses outclassing the rest)
@@aldoushuxley5953 I’m not too familiar with lineages, I thought it was just a pseudo race like custom lineage? But I really fallen in love with some of the new subclasses in the game and think old ones should get a serious touch up. Ie: all sorcerers should have a spells known list like the clockwork and abhorrent mind subclasses.
I would be too long for a single video.
@@DeadpoolAli Yeah, I really, really love Clockwork too. But that’s what I mean, now whenever I play shadow or divine soul (the strongest before) I feel like I am crippled and not at full power if you understand what I mean.
The differences between the best and the ok is just too much imo (all should be like clockwork, not the other way though)
Drafting up my first high end campaign/world. Bringing them into a homebrew world between time and space, so funky things can happen narratively (meeting, unknown to them, alternate versions of themselves from the "future"). with time not being so linear and passing at different rates within that world. what looks like a normal path might take months to march down only for it to take a day to get back. deadly time anomalys, magic storms that can do anything from polymorphing everything within it to opening portals that flood the area with creatures from other planes (plenty more storms on the table), Gravity wells, a plethora of living gods, fractal rooms of "infinite" outcomes (think trying to make your way through a hypercube), creatures dedicated to feeding upon those from faerun (Fae Chuggers). Some fun ideas for bosses and bbeg, not doing damage but aging them more and more the longer they're in combat (% based would be fair for more short lived races). Some of those living gods are in fact themselves that they must slay just to replace them and be challenged by another group of themselves. no idea if this is gonna run well but i'm having a lot of fun putting it together.
This is a wonderful video! In my experience, players that don’t abide by the social contract tend to break the game or leave the game well before level 20! A key part of this is that at a certain point YOU don’t want to DM for them anymore! Clone and simulacrum isn’t the problem, as the DM, I could do that to the players as a good 16th level encounter…. But if I don’t dial it back to a problem the players can actually solve and have fun solving…. It would just break the contract of everyone having fun! I see even experienced DMs do things where the players can only choose between crappy options, and there are punishments for whatever they do…. THAT IS NOT FUN! Experienced players also realize that through action or inaction they can make things UNFUN for others around the table, and THEY DON’T DO THAT! It’s not that hard people! The best house rule I ever came up with is that I can roll back the clock at any time that a player does something UNFUN, undo it, and run play forward from there. If players continue every session, they are asked to leave.
Simulacrum should probably be a 9th level spell to begin with.
Really should!
You didn't mention it I think, but ending fights when they would just go on, with the PC's slowly defeating each enemy, was something I found a really good idea in your one-shot. Definitely soemthing to keep in mind that you can just do that as a DM.
I'll be honest, I did the simulacrum loop but that was because I made the discovery as a player in the game without hearing about it online. Though I also spoke with the DM when I figured out I could do it and asked them if it was alright before I even did it. And I never used it to break everything, just so my Necromancer Wizard had a few failsafes in case he died to continue his goals and protect those he cared about.
Also if you REALLY wanna make the Simulacrum loop stronger (albiet more dangerous for you) you can always cast True Polymorph on your Simulacrum to turn them into a perfect copy of yourself so they can regain spell slots each day. But be warned they won't be under your control anymore so make sure you wouldn't screw yourself over if you found out you were just a copy of an original 'you'.
As a DM, I enjoy higher level play a lot. It's a lot of fun to give the players challenges that should be beyond their level only to see them overcome the odds. I find I ignore CR more and more as I get higher up though, and just go with theming and adjustments to stat blocks as well as multiple things going on in the fight besides "Hit the thing until it's no longer moving."
10:50 Sixty5 hits the nail on the head, more than system flaws and busted abilities, breaching the social contract is what really will wreck games, cuz you can always talk to your players and say "hey Mike, that spell is insane and I don't really know how to deal with it, we need to change something about it." And if they're a reasonable human being a compromise can be reached.
I think the social contract is one of the supreme rules that needs to be acknowledged for any level of play, for example personally I want to simulacrum chain in a planned 20th level campaign but my goal with it isn't to overthrow the multiverse or something I just want to build a cool wizard lair where my wizards clone is kept. It never occurred to me to use magic missiles with the 18th level feature to destroy the world because my goal is to play the game. Weather you like the numbers game or creating a narrative (personally I'm the latter) it circumvents the desired outcome regardless. The game is a collaborative effort almost first and foremost if you make an effort towards that with communication then you can make even actively adversarial gameplay be fun and enjoyable so long as people communicate and agree.
Just completed running a Pathfinder game that ran for 5 years and ended in a glorious final battle with 6 level 20 characters.
The Simulacrum loop sounds like a great way to give an end game enemy to players. Catch a wizard after he finds the loop and has been at and created a handful or more of them.
Actually........ great fix for the new Vecna stat block. 🤣
That's really helpful for everyone who wants to run high level encounters. Not even level 20, from 13 or so onwards, play can become kinda stale.
And as the resident party pooper I'd like to add that this is so much additional work for the DM. 5e really left the DM's hanging when it comes to high level content. All of your 9 steps are super helpful and even necessary to run a good game in general, even though there's next to no help coming from the books.
Something I do to reduce the martial/caster disparity is allow all classes to use scrolls and wands. It just requires proficiency in the associated skill: arcana, nature, or religion.
This was something all classes could do in earlier editions.
Some personal comments (from a few T4 oneshots and now 2nd long term campaign starting to hit T4, tho first one only ended in 5e with some next content and as such both have a lot of 3e stuff ported over):
1) Silvery Barbs really is just the finale of the triangle tie with shield and absorb elements of staples that show marial reaction options for tactical responses/executions of the group goals beyond AoO would be nice (be it via tome of battle style all martials getting superiority dice, but D4s without feats and subclasses or through a standard by subclass level specific option like retal for zerker).
2) Might be due to types of players that ran em (scry and die, aoe nuker, debuffer and now last but not least a ally buff/protection/tactics control focused abjurer) or due to emphasis on potions, scrolls and services (especially mounts, companions and hirelings) being things that can be used but "wizards"/full casters in general didnt seem to be as much of a problem in terms of table dynamics and game itself (ignoring 1-3 days wasted on maps that end up scrapped/unused/reworked for something because earthquake/apocalypse from the sky/zombie dragon swarm floods).
2.5) Simulacrum loop technically breaks when going hard RAW (sim copies all statistics, a creature having a simulacrum is technically a magical effect active on the creature due to the "if you cast this spell again" aspect, which in turn by RAW should be copied as its part of the creatures statistics, same way a possession ability of a monster does/any specific rather than generic statblock acquisition does with all effects on the creature its trying to take over), which is the best kind of RAW to apply.
3) On the list, returning challenges that were hard or seemed impossible in early levels is something else to add. It doesnt have to be cool or super unique, but just a case of a stone door a level 3 fighter and barbarian together couldnt push thus required a journey to get a magic key now being kicked open as a action to the point that it slides off whatever the stone slab door was attached to and pancakes 90-100 hp worth of goblins (since relatively decent build with tier appropriate items should on average deal around 3+5.5~6*level worth of sustainable dpr during recommended daily xp of encounters) without even needing a check by said fighter that now has a 31 passive athletics give. Since the gobs give no xp either way it doesnt cut into the balance while still being extremely satisfying.
4) Seriously why spell storing ring? Why lock one of the "5e fucked non-casters Use Magic Item" fix item when equalizing power curves (specifically, the one that martial players want to use far more often than the few staves and wands that dont have caster pre-req)? That feels like its only going to encourage the already heavy "my capstone is shit, ill get 1 level of cleric or 2 of warlock or artificer" multiclassing.
5) BIG YES on the attunement, but also on the idea of item slots thats only slightly touched up on and where the item is stored by the player (and if its even possible). The difference between a interaction to get a item and having to use a action to just bring it out can easily make a "op for even taking attunement" seeming item at high power levels brought back down to balance (or in blackrazors case, his demand to a daily soul meal).
6) Page 81 objectives also make for good mini-factors for spice. Otherwise worthless imps can cast a fireball that has a 1 round delay or quasits that explode in demon ichor at their initiative next round after death (aka prevent ritual/take out specific target), enemy has a belt filled with portions and wands that are loosely hanging/easily attacked (and/or stolen with a contested SoH check; aka retrieve/deliver item), some enemies aren't intelligent thus only react when hit/when they detect you even if others are in combat (aka multi stage+sneak in objective) or are boosted by something like a large hallow+aura of protection effect thus when alerted can be navigated out to a spot where they are dispatched as easily as typical instead of a slow slog, etc etc.
7) Gargantuan monsters actually dont take up 4x4. They take up a MINIMUM of 4x4 (same way how in terms of height, a small creature is 1x1x1, but a medium is 1x1x2, if height comes up due to objects, wall spells, mold earth cover, etc) - stated so on pages 248-251 of the DMG, so it really isn't even a ruling, just the base rules as written that Everybody walk the lion-turtle-dinosaur cant be yoinked by forcecage.
The deal with the simulacrum loop is, thats the kind of stuff where Gods intervene, a bunch of Marut shift in and murder you for violating the laws of the planes and protect the balance.
You have to know what you can get away with, and at some point players get so powerful, that they have to interact with entities that can kick their butts no matter how powerful they think they are.
Its interesting, the rules for keeping a high level game engaging and under control are really the same for every level if you think about. I've found that the work required by the DM to create a healthy game is a matter of the DMs attitude and effort level, and less on the power scaling. Its comparable to differences between a basic arithmetic teacher for 5 year olds and a university calculus professor - the experience for the students can be equally great or awful depending on the attitude of the teacher to create value for the students, and neither class should be dismissed as unimportant as compared to the other, simply because of level of complexity. Everyone I've heard say "high level DND is ridiculous" or "I don't like running level 17+ games" is basically saying, "I'm unprepared, uncreative, and I don't trust my players because we don't have a healthy social contract in place. I would prefer that the small numbers inherent in low level keep my players in line and my workload low, because being your DM is a generally a pain, and I'm trying to keep my pain to a minimum." I do what I can to not communicate this to my players. I want them to know that I value being their DM, regardless of circumstances of the session. I look forward to high level play, because I look forward to engaging in my hobby.
As someone who's run a bunch of high level 1-shots, I totally agree on interesting enemies and environments, and keeping default sourcebooks limited (anything else requires approval).
Other techniques I have used -
Really large battlegrounds (800ft on a side).
Interesting restrictions (e.g. no muticlassing or feats but you can bring an artifact).
A clause saying that if you want run Illusions or Multiple Summons, let's have a chat beforehand to figure out how to make it work for both of us.
one of the most usefull things any DM could ever do is read the morale rules from 2nd edition. Most enemies should not fight until the bitter end and those rules allow the DM to adjust difficulty on the fly as well as providing an out to combats that are staling out. When then enemy rolls a morale checks is DMs descretion and thats the main strenght. Is the fight going bad for the players but they managed to kill a few opponents. Roll morale on an enemy backliner if they get out of dodge. Fight is stalling out? Roll morale and if it fails have to enemy potencially starting to negotiate some kind of mutual withdrawl. Or maybe offer a bribe? Half of an Goblin army gets killed in a cone of cold? Have them break and flee instantly, so the fight doesnt go to cleanup and you as a DM extracted some resources. Great tool for all systems and editions that results in interesting outcomes. And a defeated enemy is always more interesting then a dead one.
Thanks for the wisdom :). Good stuff
Currently running and writing a level 20 campaign where the party were hired to enter the 9 hells to collect the blood of Levistus. I'm using a lot of rules from the Decent into Avernus module and homebrew from 3.5 I converted to 5e. So far the game hasn't been broken but they did avoid 4 hours of exhaustion saves and acrobatic and athletic checks to scale a mountain of obsidian by the paladin using his flying mount to one by one fly the party down the mountain. Saved them a half hour of game time but protected them from. The exhaustion effects of hell. I rolled random encounters for them every hour taking a bit from 3.5 that for every hour of travel their is a 15% chance of an encounter happening. And the paladin used banishment on the 3.5 converted bluespawn godslayer zombie hellwasp hive (converted stats for the godslayer that I gave a hellwasp breath attack that did some damage and spawned hellwasp swarms) 2 hours of prep taken out in a single spell. 😂😢
I'm having a blast regardless and I plan on bringing back the idea of the hellwasp hive by using the body of a beholder this time. Even if it gets banished in all having a good time homebrewing monsters from my favorite edition, 3.5
Great Post - thank you.
Thanks for this
Something I want to try at some point is changing damage resistance so that magic items don't override special materials. For example, if something has damage resistance to all weapons except silver or magic weapons, they have resistance to all weapons except silver weapons. It prevents players from simply using their artifact level weapon for everything and it might take a few rounds before they figure out what type of weapon is going to work on a particular creature.
Yeah, I can definitely see how high-level stuff /requires/ the social contract of keeping the game fun. I think it's fair to give the guideline of 'no infinite combos/loops, and your action/BA on your turn should take less than a minute to complete once you've decided what you're doing.
PS, I would LOVE to get a copy of the planning docs you had for your 1-shot. My group's been wanting to play one, but it's a ton of work to build one from scratch. I'd definitely be willing to become a patron for even just scans that I could collate into a doc.
A few times when a player suddenly were unable to join a planned session, I've instead run some arena fights.
All the players have already made a lvl 20 character with a selection of magic items, these characters gets dropped into a huge arena and given a minute to cast buffs and other effects on themselves, and some epic monsters gets summoned in for them to fight.
As a DM and some players that have all played a couple years but far from the lifelong DnDers we often hear about, taking on a fresh lvl 20 character (or one or several high CR monsters) didn't cause any major problems. Sure, that one guy who picked artificer and the other who made a psionic based on old UA had to check up a few things every now and then and maybe not every combat decision was optimal, but the fights themselves rarely took much more than an hour and we all had good fun.
Really good talk about playing high level... in general! I'm not playing 5e but SW5e (Star Wars version...you should do a review!) and high level play has been an issue for me
Thanks for the video.
I think at level 20 even a wizard going a little nuts, so long as things are done within the intent of the rules and not using TRDSIC that's clearly unintended, things are fine.
I even include things you've said are really bad, before! With a caveat. Example: planar binding a small army at level 17+ is FUN. But you have to sort of... make sure you don't overshadow the rest of the party, and you have to play nice with the DM. So if you bind an army, you can give each party member a pet, for example.
If you do this, and that's how you want to play, you might also want to be nice to the DM and actually indulge in the fantasy a bit... and that means letting the planar minions actually soak hits by foregoing the usual "God wizard" style of shutting encounters down with control spells. A fight is a lot more epic with your party and a bunch of minions crashing into a swarm of enemies. The oomph of that effect is lost if you give in to temptation and start flinging out walls and forcecages to totally trivialize the fight. Indulging in high end power is, in part, about regulating yourself.
Thanks Chris.
I loved how you managed the one-shot ❤️
Honestly, at high level my personal experience is that casters go from all mighty DMG dealers to be more battlefield control and buffs mainly because enemies can start being straight up immune to spells of X level or lower as well as having legendary resistance. Which means any spell that uses a saving throw is probably not gonna be useful and many spells won't do anything when it comes to DMG due to various immunities.
My rule of thumb, not just for high-level combat, but low-level too is to have an event, goal or purpose to the encounter.
Sure, you can fly up and spend 1million turns shooting the tarrasque with a bow, but it's gonna lay waste to the city in 10 turns.
Sure, you can kill the 20 skeletons, but they're gonna rise up again in 1d4 turns unless you kill the cultist performing the ritual.
Interactive objects, no blank rooms. Chandeliers suspended by pulleys; strictly for lowering slowly for ease of cleaning, of course.
I want to state that I am comparatively a newbie, only having played with one group in one campaign, albeit up to 8th level over the course of a year or so. As my son came to an age where I thought he'd enjoy the game, and because we were all on covid lock down, I also started GMing a single-player game for him (wow, that's pretty tough!) but it really only confirmed what I felt before. To me, the STORY in D&D is a collaboration between the player and the DM and that's beautiful and creative, but the WORLD, how it works or doesn't, what's in it or not in it etc. is entirely up to the DM, and every player shouldn't just 'respect' that, but actively welcome it - demand it even - because without it, there is no longer a game. It's similar to how an artist is bounded by the canvas - creativity happens within boundaries, not with no rules, no limitations, no consistency.
So if I want to try something I think would be cool but the DM says it won't work as I imagine, then I immediately accept that this is just how the world works, just as if I tried something outlandish in the real world, discovered it doesn't work, then I wouldn't sit there complaining at nature and physical reality that I just spent all this time preparing for this stupid action so it should work as I want - I just start thinking of what else I could possibly do.
But also as a (very inexperienced GM), if a player wants to try a stupid thing, then I am *more than happy* to let them try, and the DC is really just about how badly the result of their failure is. A natural 20 means they get away with it unharmed, not that they somehow succeed in subverting reality.
So my automatic instinct following your thought experiment about wishing simulacrum is... go ahead... and now I'll have a really good think about what happens to someone in my world when they wish a simulacrum, and that would generate a story with a threat in it that would, depending on how well they dealt with it, mean that they could escape the repercussions of their actions, but if they did badly, well, the wizard might find himself magically silenced until he goes to find a cure, or if they do startlingly badly, perhaps the wizard is capture by intergalactic beings that get randy when this kind of power is used. Whatever the outcome, and however the players approach it - I imagine the wizard's not going to want to go through that experience again. I want the world to make it inconvenient or outright stupid for them to use an exploit - I don't want to stop their creativity, just to have repercussions for people powerplaying.
People keep forgetting about the inevitables, monsters hardbaked into the Lore to prevent this exact kind of shitting around by PCs.
Primus is the god of order in DnD, also known as the god of we don't do that here. The moment shenanigans occur it gets his attention.
So sure Awesome McWizard can summon infinite simulacrums. But if after his 5th day doing this he instantly gets jumped by 50 Maruts, teleported to sigil and forced to pay a hefty fine to some archangel in court they aren't going to do it again.
Best part is, it's all Lore friendly.
>for high lvl game we need to agree to not break the game
So its not that dm bans Simulacrum - its that the players do. Wow, what a twist. Amazing. Rly circumvented the endless leak problem by pushing it off onto some1 else - the party, in this case.
Heres 1 thing i can agree on: im gonna make simulacrums. Plenty of them. But ill keep almost all of them at bay. If i feel like im losing, ill summon more. A lot more. I might not be a threat at a given point in time, but i will be a looming menace non-stop.
One thing I like to do in regards to point 7 is to look at 4e powers. These make really interesting features for monsters :)
One thing Mark Sherlock Hulmes did in high rollers to challenge 5 level 17’s in an encounter vs an archfey (non combat) was to have a new mechanic where the archfey could set up any 3 realities in the tower, such as “nobody can move” or “spells can’t be cast” now clearly that’s ripe for abuse in the wrong hands but he made it so it that the characters still had a chance to influence her and it was really interesting
Man this mans voice is just great to listen to
On the topic of "Creating interesting encounters", I am currently running the dungeon of the mad mage and there is a floor (14 I do believe) called the Arcturiadoom, where there is a forge room. The furnaces in them are linked to the Elemental Plane of Fire, I had one of the fire giants grapple the parties fighter and hold him in there, luckily for the players the wizard and his firing squad of skeletons took out the giant so he could save the fighter before he Perma died (it was close though).
I agree mostly, nothing really uniquely hard about dming high levels rather it just magnifies problems you would have at lower levels and that you really have to work harder to make interesting encounters.
One thing I'm struggling with as a player in tier 3 about to go into tier 4 is everything has legendary resistance and such.
Had 2 rounds of combat that went for 4 hours last night. Was wayyy too long
low level save or suck spells from a couple of casters eat through them fast. That or focus on boosting your party or direct damage for that one combat. and not everything should have legendary resistances, your dm probably has just had too many wizards blow everything out of the water.
@@rianfelis3156 this is a great point. Tasha's Hideous Laughter is a 1st level spell but what BBEG wants to succumb to those effects? This is only one example to your point. There are many.
High level game play utilizes the paramount rule of "fun" and the Gygax rule(the books are guidelines not set in stone)
Yeah. Trying to patch everything with tons of house rules turns into "There's a hole in bucket, dear Liza."
Aside from that. I pretty much approach my tables the same way.
If you want a working high level D&D system.
It's called pathfinder 2nd edition.
High level subclass analysis please!
Yes you are right, with a sensible social contract managing the rules and magic items, you can play at high level. But that is the point. The game should be pitched in a better place so that there is a whole lot less item and rules management to do. D&D is owned by a big company with lotes of resources. They can write sensible rules that scale well. Its not that hard. Sure there will always be a few exceptions that need to be managed by the GM. But the base game should be better.
When you mentioned Blackrazor I winced. I still regret in my D&D inexperience having my players go into that damn dungeon and getting that, Wave and Whelm. I made the assumption that the dungeon level was appropriate for the character levels.... and they decided to keep them rather than hand in for the reward. Luckily the player with Blackrazor had their character embrace the more negative aspects and the social contract is tight enough with them that they willingly retired the character to maintain some balance (with a possible recurring comrade-turned villain as a plot hook). For the player with Wave though, their dice rolling and optomancing level means that item is a crutch they really don't want to let go of. Combine that with a fairly large group of good players able to think outside the box who have gone through some published dungeons that have been rather liberal with magic items and I'm pitting lvl 7 characters against lvl10-11+ stuff
I really wish I'd run the campaign Lazy DM style from the start rather than linking published adventures together and trusting the challenge rating system was fair and accurate. The players seem to enjoy it much better now it's more off the cuff. Only bad point is they're jonesing to level up to 8th, and I've only just got the balance right for them. The thought of 20th level makes me feel a bit sick and break out in cold sweats. :D
One thing I don't see mentioned is what players can do to help high-level play. Your talk on social contract is an obvious exception. But players can also decide when to use spells ahead of time. E.G. Casting AOE's when a certain number of creatures are in range.
To everyone who thinks things fall apart at level 20, I love high level play. We reached level 20 and had a blast the entire time. I do think that players that can’t manage their time well in initiative needs to be asked to leave well before you get to level 20. I completely agree with Treantmonk, you need to keep the social contact intact and revisit every month or so. This video is so spot on and well done!
I think the game tends to break less in B/X and advanced to some degree because the styles of play were more explicitly expected to change (from dungeon crawl, to hexcrawl, to domain level play). But a lot of people just kept the long adventure campaign anyway. Your video is useful in all editions
The problem I see with 3-4T in D&D is that you, as a DM, need to watch a video with 9 bullets point and 27min of explanation just to begin developing something close to good or challenging.
But, I really didn't get the differences from 3rd to 5th edition. I DM'ed high level (13lv) 3rd edition adventures to a few players but they were very bad optmized, so that was not hard to me to do
Meanwhile the only game I've been in where Simulacrum was used, it was so that a player could justify continuing adventuring while leaving the copy behind to run a new brewery/tavern business.
This is great info for DM's. The only thing is that most DM's know what the problem is, like some DM's I heard about can barley figure out how to deal with fly PC's. Other have a hard time telling interesting stories to integrate players actions. As a martial main, I have had many experiences where I felt more like Sakura in the Shinobi war then a main character after Lvl 15. Good video though
I could've sworn that the DM having the final say on all rules was in the RAW ;)
I’ve always thought that the wish simulacrum thing is actually better as an enemy plot line, like some evil wizard who did this to control whatever plane they’re on. It becomes this whack a mole of where is the original caster haha
Yes Multiclassing is not that good on 20th level but is still very powerful on most campaigns where you don't even reach max level and so don't have worry about the losing capstone
In general I think D&D needs to work on its build integration and diversity. I feel they pruned way too much for 5e. Then again, this is an issue that exists in most other RPGs, even in video games - ie you have some of the best goodies at max level, but usually have very little time to spend at max level, I think game devs (whether campaign DMs, or Board Game devs, or video game devs) should think about this consciously to give players some breathing room at max level
The main thing that I think is silly is when people talk about how easily high level parties melt through enemies.
You’re the DM. You can make stronger enemies. Hell even adding hit points to a standard enemy is fine as long as it’s not ridiculously lopsided. As long as the creature has interesting things it can do it’s super easy to prevent boring encounters.
The simulacrum loop is how you get a shrike
Treatmonk, you should stream a level 20 campaign!
Currently running a high lvl 3.5 campaign, crazy stuff. But super fun and incredibly epic.
As you say, that social contract and communication part is key.
One more consideration on the topic of breaking things - consider what such loopholes do in your world. I.e. take the player actions seriously and remember your world is a real place.
Would the gods not have an eye on powerful wizards and be alarmed when they detect multiple castings of Simulacrum? Sounds like ringing on the divine doorbell to me...
Indeed, with the realism of your world considered in this way, the players may begin such a move specifically to gain an audience with a god... what a risk though!
The problem with high level, which I am running right now, is most of my players don't study their characters, so they constantly miss remember things they can do. With a bunch of abilities it just takes a bit longer. High level play is amazing fun, it's just a bit more to deal with for everyone. I feel bad for tables that never get to play with high level toys. As dedicated wizard player, don't be a jerk to your dm. Have fun, use spells, don't break everything just cause you can.
Re: Simulacrum loop, first off what a concept for a BBEG eh?
I guess it's a personal take/houserule on spell slots and casting, but I don't think a spell cast a certain level should let you get more spells at a higher level than the original casting. There are no other spells that do this (afaik - Planar Ally maybe but it's pretty explicit the ally remains fully under DM control and probably won't give you all its magic for free). This would mean the 7th level simulacrum not only lacks the 7th level slot used to cast it but can't ever have 8th or 9th level slots (no Wish). An 8th or 9th level casting of Simulacrum (or when you're level 20 and have two 7th level slots) would still allow it to cast its own simulacrum but it would always have the price tag and never get the free wish loop for infinite simulacra.
why is your Tarrasque so tiny? Raw it can be 4x4 square or LARGER.
Edit: the way I determine the controlled area of a garganutan creature in 5e, if there are any measurements given, to look at those and substract the reach, if that makes sense.
so a Tarrasque is 70 feet long and has a tail with 20 feet reach. that means It reasonably controls a space of 50 by 50 feet imo (10 by 10 squares)
Played a monk in t4. Kensei. One level dip into knowledge domain cleric, debated two into rogue. But it wasn't bad. Play smart, you'll keep up. Not on AOE, but in necessary things.
I've got a level 19 fighter right now. Admittedly he is pretty tough likely compared to most similar characters. I completely outshine the two casters in the party.
I was looking at the stats for the Tarrasque yesterday. I think I could take him. Solo.
Pathfinder i had the pleasure of playing a campaign from 1 to 20 was a pure power fantasy once we had some agency due to leveling and magic items and then we started challenging our dm (Way of the Wicked 3rd party campaign) free for all each of us could get a template if we could explain how we got it and its fits the setting. i played an evil Paladin who became an undead (charisma became an OP-stat) and at lvl 12 he had to give the minions adittional 5lvl in fighter to become a challenge and i read the books afterwards and the vanilla enemies would have been too weak but the party was awesome and we had fun was difficult to start the next campaign at lvl 1
Additionally to these static methods as a dm you could also dynamically intervene, by, let's say having a god show up ans check on all that powerful magic being cast at once.
the simulacrum loop is the reason I ban wish as a player spell. If players want a wish as part of the story, I might give it to them. It is a horrible standard option for high-tier play because it wholly disrupts the game
Yeah wish is honestly silly.
I really dislike it too
I hate that Wish is just a player spell. It destroys the whole fantasy of going on a quest to meet a higher being and begging for a favour or seeking out the one item in the whole world that can grant wishes.... etc...