I actually ran a level 60 campaing. The whole adventure was about fighting rogue demi-gods. The first battle was 6 krakens, they beat the hell out of them then lost to the bbeg and had to teleport out. Some of the bosses had upwards of 35,000 hp and dealt about 500/1,000 damage each round. Some of the most fun i ever had
@@TheUglyGoblin it really was. The final boss was just a giant golem made from the moon. It had about 45,000 or 50,000 hp and could shoot lasers in lines that were 100ft wide and 5 mile long. Of course the rouge still took 0 damage🤣. We ended the campaing when they reached level 100
@@TheUglyGoblin I think everyone should play at that level at least once. Here are the rules we used; Extra attack from diffrent classes stacks You gain spell slots sepretly from each class(for example, a wizard 4 artificer 2 will not have 3rd level spells, but 6 1st level spells and 3 second level). Every 20 levels the maximum ability score maximum you have is increased by 5(so at level 40 the maximum is 25. At 60 it is 30 and so on) Your prof bonus goes up by 1 every 8 levels(only apllies after level 20), You gain +1 to your Ac every 10 levels(including levels 10 and 20) Hope you get to try this out. (oh also i started them with 1 legendary item, 1 vary rare and 2 rare items for every 20 levels).
As a player, some higher level oneshots I've been a part of have been a lot of fun! I can only imagine what a long campaign with level 20+ players looks like, but your examples from your game sounded really really amazing O-O Great video too!
Oh my gosh! Thank you so much 😭 Mmmm I love high level one shots, they're a great way to taste that power xD But sometimes I also get overwhelmed by how much I can suddenly do on mh character sheet @_@ But as a DM it's very fun because you can do anything without any repercussions xD
A fun addition to high levels is large scale battles. It does a good job of making PCs simultaneously feel powerful (the barbarian fights a large horde on their own, the wizard summons a meteor storm and destroys a battalion), while also forcing them to see their limits. Maybe they can revive some of their close friends, perhaps even some select few soldiers. But there will still be lose of life. They can’t save everyone. It’s poignant.
Oh yeah! Minions are great for this! I've done this a lot but felt it needed a whole other video. I'll either use "1hp minions" or give them like 20hp or something and any excess damage dealt by players crosses over into the other enemies. Makes a swing of a Barbarian's sword feel great
I ran a few encounters where the threats they faced weren't big but there was a lot of allies who were really struggling and who needed to be saved so AOEs where a dangerous move for areas where both sides where so tightly knotted together
I do something similar, but I use the mass combat rules from that one UA combined with Dinension 20, A Crown of Candy rules from their finale. Your way is better for more manageable encounters
There's two ways to run high level ttrpg games. 1. One shots at the level cap or higher where the party has to fight wave after wave of enemies without being allowed to rest or restore their resources. 2. Nation building long running campaigns. For the first option, my main inspiration is the trailer from the Magic the Gathering card set War of the Spark. The players all make 3 level 20 planeswalker characters. Their first string characters are dropped into the Tenth District of Ravnica as the world is ending, and armies of blue metal coated undead are swarming the streets. Every 10 minutes, the party is attacked by 2d6 death knights, 1d4 liches, and 2d6 zombified full plate wearing versions of random critters from the Planshift Amonkhet pdf. The players have to deal with the undead hoard, Nicol Bolas, the planeswalkers loyal to Nicol Bolas, the 3 to 5 legendary artifacts Bolas is using to invade the plane of Ravnica, and whatever the ten guilds of Ravnica are doing in the background. Plus, if anyone drops to zero hp or goes unconscious, any adjacent undead invader can sacrifice itself to rip out their planeswalker spark and insta kill that PC. The player then pulls up their next character, who is ported into the fight, and things continue. If the players can accomplish a major goal before the session is over or all 3 of their PCs die, they "won" the one shot. As for long form, pick up the Acquisitions Incorporated book, the Ravnica book, maybe the MCDM books Strongholds and Followers or Kingdoms and Warfare, and probably the 3e book Stronghold Builders Guidebook. Use renown and faction rewards to build up the presence the PCs have on the world stage of the setting. Tier 4 play is less about how many fireballs you can throw and more about turning the world map into one big sandbox. People complain about martials not having enough power, but if your players get to tier 3 levels and the fighter isn't a king or at the very least a warlord, then you failed as a DM. Have a nation spring up around the fighter's war banner. Have the rogue and bard establish their own spy networks. Give the barbarian control of a half dozen tribes. Let the druid design their own haunted/enchanted forest. Let the divine casters become pope while the arcane casters build their multidimensional wizard's tower and craft a philosopher's stone. Each class has a unique thematic power structure it can build from simply engaging with the social pillar of the game. Give the players a nation to run with each PC governing a different aspect of the nation, and then throw kingdom ending threats at that nation every 4 or 5 months of game time. "Here's 6 months of downtime to do whatever you want before the next crisis pops up. Tell me what you're doing, and once everyone's plans are in play we'll start the clock, roll initiative, and see if those plans will offset the fact that you'll be dealing with 12 combat encounters, zero rests, and a final boss fight with what might be an actual god."
Damn this is one intense and indepth breakdown! Yeah sure those are defiantely two ways you could run those games for sure! Whatever works best for you and your players. Some solid advice in here! Thank you so much for watching and commenting :D
Commenting at the “getting abstract” tip, I have a boss planned for when my party have to placate the strongest being in the setting by fighting him. The fight will take place “across the universe” where each 5ft square is instead 5 billion light years, planets and galaxies can be used as improvised weapons, and the gods would watch the fight because the Strongest Being forced them down to the planet.
Ive never had this exact experience, but i did dm a game for kids where most of the players were pretty low level, but one player wanted to bring in their much higher level (i believe tenth level) wizard into the game. The other players were okay with it, but my conviate was that everytime the wizard cast a spell, they would turn into a different animal by roll of a d100. This delighted everyone, especially the wizard, as they had to figure out how to cast spells when they were, for example, an ostrich and did not have the dexterity.
The wizard deleting that power source reminds me of a character from my favorite book, The Wandering Inn. He’s long dead, but is so far the most powerful character to have ever existed in the world of the book. He was a mage, and was called The Mage of Magic’s End. Because at the height of his research, he found and reached for the heart of magic. But like a child fumbling for a candle flame, he extinguished it, completely ending magic itself for the next 10,000 years or so I think that level of power is awesome to play with. Thanks for making this video
I swear our party does that for every roll, like harvesting poison, picking locks, and pretty much anything except stealth. Help + guidance is the cheapest “guaranteed* win”
Oh this is so cool! Aw and thank you :3 Funnily enough, this same party accident deleted two schools of magic in the universe xD but have only recently restored them (after like 3 years of our real lives xD )
I ran a 4 year long campaign that went from 1-20. High tier was tough to figure out but once I got it, it was amazing. They were absolutely MONSTERS on the battlefield and had an incredibly close knit family group. I’d love to capture that kind of lightning in a bottle in my upcoming game.
Aw that's amazing! And that's just it! It does take a little time to adjust to those high levels but when you do and let go of the wheel a bit it's so much fun
Its worth noting that there are still plenty of threats for even a level 20 party to face, even in the MM. Its why making sure to design your world to account for high level PCs is important. Make your players shit their pants with a hit squad of 7 Dao (with higher level slaves) when they piss off a higher member of the Earth Genie community. Or perhaps they feel the return of fear when a trio of balor brothers seek out the party as worthy game and slaves. Don't do this all the time, but the point is to prevent the feeling of being untouchable and more a "big fish in a small pond". Really the planes are the perfect place to clarify that view (with all the treasures and larger rewards that come with it). And if the players don't come to the planes, well... the planes will always want to come to them for one reason or another >: ). This is also how you prevent the "why aren't the higher level people we just talked to dealing with this?". There's always another leak that needs duct tape, another cockroach infestation that must be exterminated. No rest for the wicked; you gotta prioritize.
9:54 - I have, in a DM whose games follow a lot of this advice even at lower levels's game, played a shadow monk who semi-regularly got 40+ on stealth rolls. It was a lot of fun.
This video almost made me tear up, it was so heartwarming and inspiring. I am about to run a homebrew high level 30hr weekend one shot as a relatively new dm and I am terrified, but you so perfectly expressed exactly why I’m so excited for this game and why I wanted to create it and run it. Thank you for this, it was both incredibly helpful and the exact encouragement I’ve been needing. I’m also so glad I found your channel, I love your style, one of the best youtube dnd creators I’ve found, instantly subscribed.
Oh my goodness 🥺🥺 thank so much! It makes me beyond happy to know that this video has enouraged someone like that. You're gonna blow it out of the water n_n I hope you have the best time and buckets full of fun :3
My DM made it that we all were cursed to never go betond level 15 bist we dont have a level cap and can multiclass as long as we have a teacher. Most fun we ever had . We stoped at level 60 and we all loved it . Did that for 4 years .
On the power source story, I loved it, the only thing i would have changed is that when the power source reached the void, it would spark an entirely new realm to be born there, this allows you to make a plane of existence which in where all your pcs can live out power growth yet again, facing challanges of an unknown and new universe setting up the possibility of more stories. I did do something thats similar in the way it played out but thats where the similarities end. Cheers
Aw dang! Yeah someone said something similar (but with an eviler twist xD ) But gosh yeah that would be a real cool thing to discover in the followup campaign to this :D
I’ve never run a high level game, but I’ve played in multiple. And I can’t agree more that at the level that players get ridiculous the DM isn’t really in control anymore. Even without going past lvl 20, no boons. I had thousands of health because I wanted to see how far I could push the game. It was amazingly fun to just fiddle as much power as I could out of DnD’s rule set.
I have s o so so SO wanted to play high level stuff. Most of my OCs are also crazy OP so seeing this helps me alot figureo ut what the heck to do to give my OCs challenges.
Great video, my players are only now level 7 - so not quite ready to fight planets, however, this has excited me to run games at higher levels 🎉 sounds like a blast ❤
Aw hell yeh! Yeah things get wild! But there is nothing to stop you having them face off against crazy things even now! DnD shorts actually put up a sample of their Kaiju Battle mechanics for free recently! Very cool stuff there
I believe that a number of these points - especially the first one - do apply equally to low level plays. If you let the players steer the narrative, you'll not only give them much more agency, but you also need to prep far less because it's the player's responsibility to take on challenges they can handle and how to overcome a hurdle too big to surmount by conventional means. Consider this - why do players not need copious amounts of prep time and detailed flowcharts or dialogue trees to play their characters? It's because they have a picture of what their character is like and play them accordingly. Do the same for your NPCs. It's also fine if the party spends the bulk of their time with characters who do not pose a threat to them in combat. That is to be expected if you're one of the most powerful beings in existence. The action shifts from "Can I clear this dungeon?" to "How would clearing the dungeon affect the world?". It's one of the major factors that makes high level play more than just low level play with bigger numbers.
I think a great way to make the party feel more powerful is add destruction to the environment for flavor or to effect the environment. Say the monk hits a solid combo on a monster make the ground crack under them or make the enemy fly through a building
Our high level campaign has multiple magic systems. Any given planet only has access to 2 of them. If you are able to access a given magic system you can combine them into a new, much more powerful system. The compilation of these systems and the crazy behind the scene math our dm does to decide how they work results in the party having to figure out how to use their varied magics to solve whatever impossibly powerful foe we face.
@@TheUglyGoblin well it's not from scratch. It started as being set in Brandon Sanderson's cosmere. As time has gone on we've drifted pretty far from what would be recognizable from the books.
20th level is the pinnacle of what one hopes to achieve. It is the beginning and not the end of who the character becomes. That is why I believe in a continuing story of many campaigns
@TheUglyGoblin people remember it for being weird but not how ludicrously broken the attacks were! Stuff like trapping you in an infinite dimension where all concepts are nonsense, and nonsense equals damage, which means everything is damage. That and, you know.. literally retconning the entire series to make the big bad just not have powers anymore
I feel like there are two ways to take high level play. One, as described here, is hamming it up. Dont try to outmatch or cripple your players and just keep blowing the stakes up. If the world is their playground, let them play in it. If they are godlike, give them godlike problems to solve. The second approach is giving them something they can't solve so easily to make them think. This isn't just a "hit them with a nerf bat" tactic like some more toxic adventure designers may do, but rather its just a problem presented in a way that isn't straightforward to solve. Or maybe it is but the straightforward solution isn't the best one. "I wish the lich to unexist." Will solve the problem, but before committing someone or something reminds you of the cascade effects that wishes may have, either direct consequences unforeseen like armies of undead now have no master to keep them in check, or indirect consequences like "well great now everyones fighting over the land the lich used to control and a world war broke out." Idk, things like that. Just cuz your a demigod doesnt mean that you'll be able to perfectly solve every problem
Yes yeah! Exactly! I think I mentioned that too. Giving them not just logical puzzles to solve but creative ones where they have to really think outside of the box and use their powers and abilities in strange unconventional ways
My first TTRPG was Exalted - there is only high-level play in Exalted (well, high and higher level). The thing most DMs miss about super powerful parties is the challenge of success. The drama isn't in whether or not you can defeat the enemy, but dealing with the consequences of it. Your Litch King, as part of his empire of evil, also operates the supply chain which feeds orphans along the coast of the continent - not by design, but as a consequence of being a large system which people find ways to benefit from. How do you now feed the orphans? The mercenaries you hired see the near divine power you used to sunder a dragon and now start revering you - is this the start of a religion or a nation? What will you do with the leadership that's been thrust upon you. The game becomes less about how hard you punchie, and more about what it means to punchie that hard.
Seen the Avengers? That's how you run high level D&D. The greatest super-heroes versus the greatest super-villains to save the Verse! Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yeah sure! That can definately work up until a point, but I feel like it can become quite "monster of the week"ish and monotonous unfortunately :,3 And also far too combat heavy. But definately fun if it happens once or twice
@@TheUglyGoblin aha! That's why you spin it out over multiple Phases and everybody gets their own solo movies, where half the group still makes cameos. (I do get your point tho, srsly.)
I have a friend who has a good counter to becoming op. we start in a abstract universe full of strong people like worm or RWBY, then give us a power from a different universe. You could end up with light powers or biological control, but here's the kick, in player fighting. If we get bored we can off eachother and we'd be reset or the dm could spawn someone/something we can't deal with (like error404, Scarlet king, or even a character named Scion) and it ends up really fun. We usually gain universal travel as a power before we reach celestial power (we use a weird power system) so basically, we could fight Goku and one of us could betray the others, they get beat down, or they can acquire Goku as a team member. Sorry for length also reply if you'd change something
Been on a high level campaign for 4 years, did the exact same things as you, have my own skill tree that rivals and even surpasses runescape combined with skyrim
Reminds me of the tabletop game godbound where you play as literal gods and the game is more sandboxxy in which the players affect the world and story more than a D&D character.
I'm running a game of 3.5 since 2018 (they started at 4 and now they are ar lv 24) and it's pretty epic but, sometimes, 1 or 2 boss battle resulted tedious for the rulesets of 3.5 (particularly the boss battle against Adam I Blackfyre, a god-emperor gone mad for the influences of a corrupting artifact that lasted 3 days in real life). My players are happy of my campaign but sometimes I'm not of some boss battles I've designed badly. This video will help me a lot, thanks
This repository of links and your video alone is so helpful. I have been building and wanting to run a world where the PC's and a few NPC's are at godlike levels, and how they would interact, so I can absolutely use this for my inspiration and to think about how to tackle these issues. Thank you so much, man, I'm gonna save this and walk forward with a little more to think about so I can make sure that this world, campaign and these experiences are properly seared into their minds.
I am running my first game, that started as level 1, now the party is at level 4, but after watching this video I already can't wait to get past level 20, I got plans for multiverse ending threats already
That is awesome to hear how long your game has been running!! I am doing a long term story focused campaign where leveling isn't the carrot. Been going a year and a half, into session 65 at lv 3 now.
Woah! Session 65! That is seriously impressive! Love that though! I've heard about games too where they make the level cap 6, but I think you can still take feats and continue getting magic items. But you are always going to be squsihy. It's usually used yo add a gritty realism to the game. The players don't level but the threats they face do
My previous campaign ran up to level 28, most of the 3rd Act was spent fighting guys who were pretty much demigods or actual gods with world-shattering capabilities. Twas a great time.
I've personally never run a level 20 game (mostly because my games fizzle out before the players get that high) but the approach I want to take is "Balance over powered with over powered" or as I like to call it, the "Brutal Doom Approach" If the PCs are super powerful, so should the monsters be. Create homebrew monsters that surpasses the likes of Tiamat.
Oh hell yeah! Absolutely! I recommend also not just focusing on raw damage and loads of hp though, give them really strange and scary abilities, like a Shadow or Intellect devourer's ability to permanently reduce a player's stats. Or like I mentioned, Dungeon Dad's Genius Loci has some Very fun things. I hope you get to have some wild high games sometime ;3
@@TheUglyGoblin Yeah definitely. Just buffing HP and damage output is not really fun. Though sometimes you can have abilities that aren't really strange but can still be devastating. Like a mass Hold Person spell that also does psychic damage. Or something one of my DMs did in a Epic Level one-shot where the boss does free damage at the start of every round that increases by an amount every round.
@@Zulk_RS oh very cool! Yes so similar to a Marut! They are scary! Haha mmmm the hold person idea is a questionable one though. I've done things like that before and when the players can't do anything it can make it quite frustrating and not very fun for them unfortunately. Easy to kill them for sure but better used to build tension maybe at the start of a fight, like in a mini puzzle rather than in mid combat :P But yeah it's the simple things that are suuuuper fun usually
@@TheUglyGoblin Hold Person thing was a highly specific example but the point was that sometimes, mechanically simple but "Oh no" type moves the monster can do can still make for a challenging combat to 20th level and beyond players.
As someone getting into later levels in my campaign, the trick I've found is that the bad guys will just not care about the party's power level when they show up. Most will be smart enough to at least know the party is coming, maybe find out what classes they are, dig through their treasure hoard for their most powerful items or even hide them away to spite the party's looting attempts. Recall their armies and minions to Tucker's Kobold Skeletons the first two floors of a fortress, only for the third floor to be several permanent illusions stacked onto each other with traps that lead back into the pain floors. When the party actually find the Lich, he has three Ultroloths and a quartet of Bone Devils with him, because that's the kind of clout that he has; also there's a Symbol on the floor just past the door and he has a scroll of Antimagic Shell to make himself immune to damage for 10 minutes as he pulls a bunch of DEX-for-half levers to bully the party.
I’m currently running a 16th level party. Once they got to Tier 3, I just made them all Barons or lords, gave them their own towns on a colony planet (it’s a spelljammer campaign), and introduced a Cult worshipping an ancient black dragon that had infiltrated their towns. I basically just told them the situation, gave them a downtime session, and asked “what do you do?” It’s great, they all had their own approaches to searching for the cult and securing their towns. The Paladin equipped their guards with magical weapons, secured their loyalty, and built a huge watch tower. The Warlock worked with a shadowy spy organization to get information, essentially created a Suicide squad-style group of convicts that follow his patron, and basically spread his own cult to limit how many members the dragon cult could get. It’s really fun to see how they approach the situation, especially knowing how easily they could simply walk into the dragons lair and just kill him (Between the Gloomstalker/Rogue/Twilight Cleric, the Rune Knight/Astra self monk and the Evocationist wizard with the smoldering tome, they could very easily deal around 300 damage in the first turn.)
I'm currently level 14 in a 2-year-running campaign that "plans" to get to 30, but I'm the kind of player who enjoys balancing stats and am not a full-caster, so I have mixed feelings on what I'll even be able to do to pitch in at those high of levels. 😮💨 I play an Artificer, so maybe I can... make artifacts? 🤷♂
Oooo that's a tricky one. Yeah full casters seriously dominate in later games. But I have had an arteficer in my games and he was pretty powerful. I allowed him to get a passive income. He was able to get a contract with different clients in a very wealthy city, once a week. The would contact his sending stone (sending stones have like a phone number in this world xD ) and give him the details on what they want made. He would then build it and ship it through a wormhole bag. (Kind of like a bag of holding that would connect back to his shop in that town. And they would send him the money back through the other side. It was really fun and allowed him to get creative with his inventions. I would present him with the probablem and he would work out how to feasibly create an invention to fix that problem. We also used "Witch + Craft" as a resource book, which has excellent mechanics for crafting, if ever you are interested. They can be used very well with arteficers to make their inventing process more like a minigame rather than simple rolling once and that's it. Also! Maybe your DM would let you build an iron man suit or something xD there are some really neat "magical" items in the scifi supplement for dnd5e: The Fifth Age. www.enworld.org/threads/fifth-age-a-hard-science-fiction-5e-conversion.459300/ If ever you wanted to try and build some of the things in here! Could be rad! But absolutely I think letting you start basically becoming batman, who has an invention for everything, would be pretty cool xD
@@TheUglyGoblin I LOVE that you work with your player by giving them a problem that can be solved through crafting! The Batman-Meets-Ironman idea is definitely up my alley on what I'd like to do but... ...Our game is a little weird, we had a DM-shift when our primary DM went to University and our game STARTED as an Acquisitions Incorporated game - so taking orders, managing money, running a shop, etc were all things we would basically do on our party's "weekends" while during the week we would raid the dungeon of the mad mage - the new DM, who was a player, isn't as good at supporting that kind of playstyle and is much more chaotic and improv-y when it comes to setup. He and I are both aware of both of our shortcomings, though, so we do try to work on getting things I can feel confident in doing... it just hasn't been super successful due to the general lack of Artificer support in the standard and most expanded 5e rules, let alone for lv20+ I'll DEFINITELY give that link a look! I'm all for adding more detail to my inventions, but I do want to make it as simple as possible due to the current DM's storystyle. It's a tough situation, but hopefully not impossible. Right now he's allowed me to make an army of Roombas to clean the city we sort of are in charge of, I've even basically recreated a fallout-style Protectron. :D
@@OneKnightGaming Aw haha thank you XD mmm that sounds tricky for sure, so yeah maybe the crafting mini game might be too much but maybe just during downtime you could work on the “prototypes” in that fifth age pdf. And maybe your cleaning squad could earn you a passive income to fund your projects XD haha Maybe you could even have lil robots who can source you simple magical items that you could keep in a utility belt (a utility belt with lots of small bags of holding XD ). Fun things like an immovable rod or sovereign glue, that allow you to use your intuition and creativity to get through dungeons and encounters. Perhaps your dm would even allow you to keep a list of items you can just have on hand. Or items you could prepare in the same way a Druid prepares items. I hope all works out to you. I am also currently working on a video where I go into more depth on these High Tier Skill Trees so keep an eye out for that next week ;3 you might be able to use that in your games too! :D
About the "get abstract" bit, I'm planning the final dungeon for our group of soon to be 20th level games, and the BBEG has currently set a device to reset time. The group knows about it and they're racing to stop BBEG. The fun thing is: killing he BBEG isn't going to cut it. Once the device is started, it has no stopping. The only way to disable it going "by the rules" is a wish spell, and I know they'll have only one character to use it, if they manage to kill the BBEG without using their 9th level slot. Apart from that, they will have to be creative about it. I, myself, didn't thing of anything and I'm excited and curious to what might go about!
I’m currently running a game that’s been going for 5 years, they started at level 1 and the plan was to go to level 50, but the bar is even higher now and there’s no sign of stopping. I ran a scientifically modified Tarrasque as a big bad boss, they pulled in every favor they had and all the allies they had made and by the skin of their teeth they were able to beat it before it destroyed their home planet. It was glorious
Actually gives me some nice ideas for my upcoming 3-20 campaign... I was already a little annoyed with not feeling powerful but being told I am........ so this gives me some more spice. Thank you good sir
Hahahaha xD thank you so much for watching! Yeah things get wild in pur games xD or at least I try my best to make sure they do. But honestly I don't actually have yo try hard a lot of the time xD the party create their own obstacles all the time
@TheUglyGoblin my players are winding down a tournament as part of downtime between adventures. Once that's over the city they base in is going to be attacked by a Mummy Lord who has made some alliances with an Alhoon, and his colony of Mind Flayer Wizards also his small fleet of nautaloids which the Mummy Lord has helpfully Mumified to create Crawling Apocalypses that can fly, a brain stealer dragon, as well as a couple dozen boneyards with my own custom made (substantially weaker) version of death knight riders, and for good measure an army of a custom monster I created based on Barrow Wights from Lord of the Rings called Ghouls, which are what happens if you split the difference between a D&D zombie and a vampire spawn. 6 players at level 12, but I think they can take it.
@TheUglyGoblin it occurs to me that they will actually be 13th level at the point they're doing this, but still what's an apocalyptic battle for survival against 3/5 of the surviving major bad guys without a little power creep.
@@TheUglyGoblin update, replacing the brain stealer dragon with a carefully bred and control neothelid, under the idea that the standard one in the MM is a diseased feral version of the creature, and their potential is so much greater when properly cultivated, instead of it having to feast on other tadpoles it has been fed a steady supply of brains and rather than having the mind flayer version of Kuru, it's just as smart as a mind flayer and also has its beastial size and strength
I would suggest using a lingering injury table. If you survived long enough to reach a high level your character is bound to have some scars. It could even make a big bad more threatening because it shows that you aren’t the first adventurers to try and stop them. The last ones failed to finish them off.
Oh I love using these tables. Such a good idea to use them on villains though! Never thought of that. My only issue with so many of them is they can just be cured with 1 point of magical healing. It's a shame haha :P
@@TheUglyGoblin Actually some injuries would require the 7th level spell regenerate. A simple healing spell won’t work. Plus you can treat it as an affliction that gets progressively worse the longer it goes untreated. Wounds can get infected for example especially when necrotic damage is involved. You’d need a potion of cure disease or something. It would be a race against the clock to gather the right ingredients. Adding a sense of urgency. Have them make a con save if they take a long rest or something. If they fail they wake up with a fever as the infection gets worse. If they don’t find a cure soon they might not wake up the next time they try to take a rest. Fun fact restoration spells don’t cure diseases. So infection is a real danger.
Wait yeah. I'm gonna subscribe to this channel. I like your spirit in this video a lot. And I'm gonna be using these principles as my players move past lvl 15.
Cool video, I run alot of High level games, and one tool I use is creating frameworks for adventures, a yes/no scenario of what works in high level play a where and a why. Spelljammer is great for this. the AD&D sorcers have really too much of this but some tings I kept. Such as when the players are in the Astral Sea or the Phlogiston (not in a crystal sphere) Teleportation powers and Extra dimensional spaces dont work, Only Astral Projection does. This forces them to really on their spelljamming vessel and if it gets destroyed well it could be centuries before they reach a crystal sphere without it. (Ie create a situation of cool failure that does not end the game) The PC's current problem is that a GoD of oblivion is plotting the end of everything and the PC's have been foiling his plans for so long he lured them into the astral plane through an astral storm the PC's ship is nearly destroyed several long time crew members that have been around since 5h level have been disintegrated. And now they are face to face with the god of oblivion himself in the Astral Sea in the center of the storm and the god believes he has won. The players ship is too beat up to leave and thwart his plans and so they are stuck there with him to watch the end of all things. What the players do not know is that these gods act on a truce of not getting directly involved and the god of oblivion is pushing the line as he is physically in the PC's presence. So he cannot attack the PC's without drawing the attention of other gods that also would want to directly interfere. So the PC's must decide on how to stop this god as they just hit level 20 and have literally until the end of time to decide how to end a god of oblivion... and after that they have to stop his universe ending monster....
Bloody hell that sounds epic as hell! Love the rational for things here too! Sounds mad! But it's just so cool when things get blown to immense proportions like this! The final outcome reminds me a bit of doctor strange using his ol time loop xD existing with this being of chaos for all eternity. Very cool stuff! Would love to know how it all ends up!
I'm running my game we are level 11 and currently in this arc as I call it The Sunken Tower, the party are fighting their way through a mage tower. This has been a period of the group finally getting to see the scope of the scope of the powers set against them and realizing they have been fighting the minions of an ancient red dragon from the start, getting in his way both directly and indirectly, a big goal of mine is to build the group up so when they return from this adventure they have the power they need to truly turn the tides and drive out the darkness. It's been a lot of fun and as the DM I tend to just lean into the stuff the group dose and it's worked out, let them be the heroes of the story, in one corner you have the party set up to challenge all these powerful foes that intend and cause terrible harm and tragedy to the world around them, the party who through it all have been the underdogs and fighting uphill, but they have not given up and keep pushing. The group has already done plenty of silly and crazy stuff with a party of marital characters and it's been a lot of fun I hope we hit the higher levels of play and if things go well I think we will. I may be misremembering this quote but it sticks with me when I set things up as the DM, "As storytellers we put dragons in children's stories not to be terrifying but because we want to show they can be overcome."
@TheUglyGoblin I like it, the trick is to lean into the fun. My players have had fun and at times run stuff over and others it's nail bitting, none of us me included are certain how things will play out. 😀
actually had something in mind for my players after Level 20. but haven't thought past the basic stuff from level 15 onward I planned on revealing the main villain's true identity around that time and have him be the hardest fight I got for them. but after Level 20, I planned on destroying the Material Plane due to the fight with the BBEG. they have complete free access to all planes and their main goal isn't to just fight the main villian (as I also planned on them getting their shit rocked by him despite them being level 20) and their main goal was to find a way to get stronger past their natural limit. the remnants of the material plane are still there and they can go there and fight the final boss at anytime they wish. however, they can recruit allies from any of the planes, fight monsters that normally would have been impossible for them to find otherwise, certain side quests might occur that they can go on to help discover new forms of power, but when they think their ready, they can tackle the final fight. if your wondering just how hard the fight has to be in order for it to only be possible with a level 20 party? well let me ask you a question, how does being able to steal any spellcasters wish spell for whatever purpose he wants, being able to make someone lose all Sorcery points/Ki/Spell slots/ battle master maneuvers/ Rages/etc. on touch, make all party members get reduced to 1 HP for free, the ability to take 5 actions in a single turn, using 3 out of 12 different spheres (one for each damage type) that each deals about the same as Meteor Swarm and have effects ranging from being hit with nuclear radiation that last for 10d100 turns (for poison) to reducing the number of saving throws they can use for the rest of the fight (for necrotic). as well as a move straight up called Genocide that has a chance to insta-kill them. so yeah, I got a lot planned
I ran multiple campaigns and oneshots at high level. My main story even ended with a lv 20 full campaign where my players handled a "situation" with the general of the gehenna. And we came to the conclusion that... none of us likes the high levels on a mechanical level, except one, the house power player and only because he can use the calculator to read how big are the numbers of his build. Except the power player, none of them has the time to read the manual that much, the game becomes so bloated that they can't even remember everything their character have or can do adding also the fact that we have to take ofter big pauses even months long between sections due to irl schedule. But the worst for them is the length of the turns, since each of them need minimum 15 minutes to decide for their actions, read every option on the sheet. I can ramp up the excitment for the combat with the narration, but if it is followed by another lengthy wait for another player's turn, everyone loses the focus again. I also do not have the time to build monsters for each game, and improvising an high level monster is really hard. I have homebrewed many rules to make the game less complex for them but i find myself unable to adjust the amounts of things of the end game. And as i said, embrace the amount with them actually does damage the game for my players...except the power player. Even on a narration point of view there is contrast in the group but there i've been able to "accomodate" the tastes. Three out of four of my players want a scoundrel hero story of criminals, court schemes, mad wizards and the damsel in distress in the clutch of a dragon or an evil kingdom... the power player wants the manga/anime style gods killing spree. I found a sweet spot for it. I run my story in a really cinematic way, heavily inspired by movies and books where there is the Sauron like demigodly enemy while the majority of the characters are still mere mortals and for the final confrontation i use a narration similar to indiana jones movies, where the otherwordly mess and the BBEG manifest in a flash at the end of the story and the characters have the possibility of dispose of it because they have the right item or knowledge, collected during the campaign. In the narrative everyone is happy, the power player less then the other but... there it's my fault. My main setting, started as a mix of dnd lore and character, after more then 10 years and 4 campaigns has become a stand alone world spanning 3 eras. I don't like the idea of crumbling the world building of this world because only one of the players wants to "face the gods in the godly arena, with no story, no spoken interaction, carve craters in physics of reality with the strength of his blow, r*pe the god of evil with daggers, violate his dead body and reign as the infinite justicar that punish with eternal suffering and eyeballs r*pe all criminals". Yes, that is where the power player goes with his characters when left unchecked or in high level oneshots. I will have none of that.
I feel interpersonal conflicts and conflicts of character that haven't been explored or resolved or even discovered to that point could make polarizing arcs, especially when considering their newfound or established status as basically a demigod. I've never played DND nor do I watch like a lot of DND content, so if anyone wants to tell me what I might be missing there please do. :)
I’m a first timer DM, and frankly I’m going from levels 1-20. The whole full set. Currently the party is at level 9-10, and going through their personal arcs. I’m genuinely terrified for us getting to level 15+. 😂😅 Still wouldn’t change it though and I’m not backing out. My players are so excited to get there and I’m excited to see it.
Aw listen, you'll be just fine ;3 so long as you can keep having fun you're doing it right. Going through their personal arcs is a good sign ;3 I'm sure they are loving that Hats off to you uwu
I used to DM 2E with lots of adventures between 29 and early 30s in the 90s and early 00s. Those were the days. Did some becmi all the way to 36 and could not get into the immortal rules at all. Love the upper levels. Even in 3.X and 5E
If my players yeeted a power source from reality, I would have contemplated letting the power source stumble onto or drag some intelligent creature or society into the void, creating a pocket dimension while warping the power source to make it not locateable. Then, either in this campaign or the next, that dimension becomes connected/involved with the campaign...
I totally understand that way of thinking and this power source has had a looooong histoy with this campaign. And so, eventually you just have to give your players a win and let them destroy it without yet another plot twist or repercussion/gotchya moment :P But a great idea none the less :3
I think that rather than make them indulging into fighting gods (but very good video anyway !), two alternative, more modest and yet sufficient solutions : 1) take hint in Tolkien and other writers, and make them partake into world politics, like, really interesting ones (forming a "White Council" that moves pawns against the Great Evil or wathever ; kingmaking etc.) ; 2) turn them into NPCs for their new low-level characters to meet. Nothing greater than seeing oneself through a flattering mirror.
Im not gonna lie, as someone who optimizes a lot, I don't agree that high level DnD characters are as powerful as you or most believe? They *are* powerful, but demigod? Only if your demigods are relatively low in the totem pole. It's really not hard to shut down high level abilities. Magic resistance, teleportation, high damage, etc. That being said, I do really like this video, it's very fun and I generally agree.
Aw thank you very much 😁 My point was actually that I think they are lacking in power and my suggestion is to Help them feel as powerful as they probably should after everything they have faced :P
It is only a few very specific high level spells that break D&D like Simulacrum and Wish. People have done high level games with full martial/half caster parties and the game is surprisingly balanced. The game is just a little easy. High level PCs can't be challenged even by a Terrask, who simply doesn't do enough damage per turn and is mostly just a big damage sponge.
@TheUglyGoblin Yep, and when doing high level boss fights you need interesting mechanics (thinking in MMO terms). Stuff like adds that buff the boss or unique environmental hazards.
@@TheUglyGoblin 2 Rangers (Gnome Drakewarden / Human Horizon Walker) 1 Monk (Turtle Ascendant Dragon) 1 Fighter (Shifter Rune Knight) 1 Bard/Fighter (Dragonborn College of Eloquence). All very tied to the plot.
@@TheUglyGoblin OMG the monk!!! We invented a new move where he uses his weight + the dragon wings with the Step of the wind to jump very high and fall at the enemies causing tons of damage but he also takes some damage to balance a little bit, it took a month of discussions about the mechanics but worked out very well!
As I watch this, I am about an hour away from running my D&D session, where I expect my party to achieve level 24. By the end of that level (hopefully by the end of the year) they will have defeated Tiamat and saved the world (and ended the campaign).
First you need a high level BBEG, then they need some high level plans and high level mini bosses. I personally just let Tiamat a god that can cast wish like it's their breath weapon and only one goal exists; don't let Tiamat reform.
Let me do some maths natural 20 + 6(proficent)+6(expertise)+10(baridc)+10(arbility score) +3(guidance) = 59 I doubted really hard that something like that was even possible in base 5e, even with the strongest characters around, bounded accuracy and all that, however, its very much possible, even without homebrew
The way I run it is like high/G/master Rank in monster hunter where I make the monsters more powerful and dangerous I also incorporated deviants into the mix as ‘battlesworen’ which was just deviant lore wise like I had a battlesworen Black Dragon which the party had a connection with because they directly caused it to become battlesworen battle
Ooo this sounds pretty neat :P Could also try sending TWO regular black dragons at em >:D you'd be suprised at how tricky it makes it :P Mentioning Monster Hunter actually, there is a pdf somewhere for adding all of those monsters to your game, adding a salvaging mechanics and weapon building. It's honestly so cool
@@TheUglyGoblin I also tried that out in a one shot I ran in the same world and borrowed(did not steal why would you say that) the concept of monsters that pair (think toaster and blue toaster) and my players (like me in the games) disliked fighting two of the same monster they did not even find it hard they nearly one shot one of the dragons and 3 shot the other but it just wasn’t fun so I decided I would only make them fight more then one weak creature so not 2 dragons but like 10 wolves
@@The_pitbull536 that's totally fair! I find it so interesting what some parties struggle with compared to others. And for one party 2 dragons might be impossible but for other's (like yours) it's a walk in the park xD
Wait, what's that at 09:00? Did they make an anime about J. Jonah Jamerson being Tarzan (presumably to get more pictures of Spiderman), and why did I not know of it until now?
Hahahaha oh my god xD I want to frame this comment xD haha it's actually an Amazing anime! Everything by this director is crazy good. This anime movie is called Paprika and the match cuts are just incredible
Talking about high level play, my character Forge, is an abomination multi-class of all classes. It's a solo adventure. My DC's go up to sometimes beyond 50.
@@TheUglyGoblin Forge is currently building a metropolis, called Unity Springs, of all creatures. He farms so hard, the citizens have gained strength and power from eating the food he grows. Where the people have evolved because of it, and he's their patron and he shares his abilities with them. The royal guard are all Greatwyrms, everyone has a Will-o'-the-wisp partner that's capable of telepathy, and he wears monk like royal robes made of spider silk. It's nuts. For a taste of the people who live there: Beholders, Greatwyrms of all colour, oozes, goblins, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Dragonborn, Fiend's, monstrosities, and some Elementals. He's ended an entire civilization because it became a threat, single handedly.
I've been playing 4e, and we're in paragon tier, which is the equivalent of like levels 9-12 or so. There's a lot of utility spells and abilities that break a normal game, but they're not at the combat stage of punching gods yet. How do I make a story work when my guys can long-range teleport so freely?
Oof that is a good question. I have a map of my world at this stage so I know where most things are, and often use Dungeon Alchmist if I need to build maps quickly. But honestly, my best advice would be to make the places you want them to go as enticing as possible so they'll only really teleport there. Still have places of interest far away so they still get to use those teleporting abilities. But try to tie all of the players personal goals to your main plot so they don't feel the need to teleport elsewhere. But they may find the urge to teleport somehwere with shops and things like that. So random tables can help you there xD if there are places that you Don't want them to go though, gorgon blood apparently blocks people from teleporting through it ;3 maybe your villains can fortify their layers with it xD
@@TheUglyGoblin In truth, one of the biggest problems hasn't been getting them to go somewhere but that I can't keep them anywhere. They can always just... leave a situation, and bring a priority target with them. But I think I want to try and do what you mentioned in the video - threatening civilians so they have to stay and fight directly
@@ellentheeducator oh that is an excellent idea! Yes! Having core reasons to stay are great, Esspecially if the reasons come from the players too. Also playing into the "fear of missing out" vibes is fun xD say they escape a fight from a villain, the they never get to find out what information they may have been keeping from them. Or villains that the party runs away from, not only survive but also now know more about the party, their weaknesses and how to best them next time.
I actually ran a level 60 campaing.
The whole adventure was about fighting rogue demi-gods.
The first battle was 6 krakens, they beat the hell out of them then lost to the bbeg and had to teleport out.
Some of the bosses had upwards of 35,000 hp and dealt about 500/1,000 damage each round. Some of the most fun i ever had
LEVEL 60!!!!??!?!? OH MY GOD! This sounds insane xD giving massive Final Fantasy vibes or something xD damn that sounds wicked
@@TheUglyGoblin it really was. The final boss was just a giant golem made from the moon. It had about 45,000 or 50,000 hp and could shoot lasers in lines that were 100ft wide and 5 mile long. Of course the rouge still took 0 damage🤣.
We ended the campaing when they reached level 100
@@adamde-mayo1299 that is insaaaane xD hahaha ohmigod xD I love it so much! Gives me big Gurren Lagann vibes xD so so cool
@@TheUglyGoblin I think everyone should play at that level at least once. Here are the rules we used;
Extra attack from diffrent classes stacks
You gain spell slots sepretly from each class(for example, a wizard 4 artificer 2 will not have 3rd level spells, but 6 1st level spells and 3 second level).
Every 20 levels the maximum ability score maximum you have is increased by 5(so at level 40 the maximum is 25. At 60 it is 30 and so on)
Your prof bonus goes up by 1 every 8 levels(only apllies after level 20),
You gain +1 to your Ac every 10 levels(including levels 10 and 20)
Hope you get to try this out.
(oh also i started them with 1 legendary item, 1 vary rare and 2 rare items for every 20 levels).
@@adamde-mayo1299 aw thank you souch for sharing! These are Great rules 😍 defo using these in the future
As a player, some higher level oneshots I've been a part of have been a lot of fun! I can only imagine what a long campaign with level 20+ players looks like, but your examples from your game sounded really really amazing O-O Great video too!
Oh my gosh! Thank you so much 😭
Mmmm I love high level one shots, they're a great way to taste that power xD
But sometimes I also get overwhelmed by how much I can suddenly do on mh character sheet @_@
But as a DM it's very fun because you can do anything without any repercussions xD
A fun addition to high levels is large scale battles. It does a good job of making PCs simultaneously feel powerful (the barbarian fights a large horde on their own, the wizard summons a meteor storm and destroys a battalion), while also forcing them to see their limits. Maybe they can revive some of their close friends, perhaps even some select few soldiers. But there will still be lose of life. They can’t save everyone. It’s poignant.
Oh yeah! Minions are great for this! I've done this a lot but felt it needed a whole other video. I'll either use "1hp minions" or give them like 20hp or something and any excess damage dealt by players crosses over into the other enemies. Makes a swing of a Barbarian's sword feel great
I ran a few encounters where the threats they faced weren't big but there was a lot of allies who were really struggling and who needed to be saved so AOEs where a dangerous move for areas where both sides where so tightly knotted together
I do something similar, but I use the mass combat rules from that one UA combined with Dinension 20, A Crown of Candy rules from their finale. Your way is better for more manageable encounters
@@bananabanana484 oh! I Need to check those out :O
"I didn't ask how many allies are present, I said I launch meteors on the battlefield"
There's two ways to run high level ttrpg games.
1. One shots at the level cap or higher where the party has to fight wave after wave of enemies without being allowed to rest or restore their resources.
2. Nation building long running campaigns.
For the first option, my main inspiration is the trailer from the Magic the Gathering card set War of the Spark. The players all make 3 level 20 planeswalker characters. Their first string characters are dropped into the Tenth District of Ravnica as the world is ending, and armies of blue metal coated undead are swarming the streets.
Every 10 minutes, the party is attacked by 2d6 death knights, 1d4 liches, and 2d6 zombified full plate wearing versions of random critters from the Planshift Amonkhet pdf.
The players have to deal with the undead hoard, Nicol Bolas, the planeswalkers loyal to Nicol Bolas, the 3 to 5 legendary artifacts Bolas is using to invade the plane of Ravnica, and whatever the ten guilds of Ravnica are doing in the background.
Plus, if anyone drops to zero hp or goes unconscious, any adjacent undead invader can sacrifice itself to rip out their planeswalker spark and insta kill that PC. The player then pulls up their next character, who is ported into the fight, and things continue.
If the players can accomplish a major goal before the session is over or all 3 of their PCs die, they "won" the one shot.
As for long form, pick up the Acquisitions Incorporated book, the Ravnica book, maybe the MCDM books Strongholds and Followers or Kingdoms and Warfare, and probably the 3e book Stronghold Builders Guidebook.
Use renown and faction rewards to build up the presence the PCs have on the world stage of the setting. Tier 4 play is less about how many fireballs you can throw and more about turning the world map into one big sandbox. People complain about martials not having enough power, but if your players get to tier 3 levels and the fighter isn't a king or at the very least a warlord, then you failed as a DM. Have a nation spring up around the fighter's war banner. Have the rogue and bard establish their own spy networks. Give the barbarian control of a half dozen tribes. Let the druid design their own haunted/enchanted forest. Let the divine casters become pope while the arcane casters build their multidimensional wizard's tower and craft a philosopher's stone.
Each class has a unique thematic power structure it can build from simply engaging with the social pillar of the game. Give the players a nation to run with each PC governing a different aspect of the nation, and then throw kingdom ending threats at that nation every 4 or 5 months of game time.
"Here's 6 months of downtime to do whatever you want before the next crisis pops up. Tell me what you're doing, and once everyone's plans are in play we'll start the clock, roll initiative, and see if those plans will offset the fact that you'll be dealing with 12 combat encounters, zero rests, and a final boss fight with what might be an actual god."
Damn this is one intense and indepth breakdown! Yeah sure those are defiantely two ways you could run those games for sure! Whatever works best for you and your players. Some solid advice in here!
Thank you so much for watching and commenting :D
Commenting at the “getting abstract” tip, I have a boss planned for when my party have to placate the strongest being in the setting by fighting him. The fight will take place “across the universe” where each 5ft square is instead 5 billion light years, planets and galaxies can be used as improvised weapons, and the gods would watch the fight because the Strongest Being forced them down to the planet.
Sounds Very Gurren Lagann! I love it xD
Ive never had this exact experience, but i did dm a game for kids where most of the players were pretty low level, but one player wanted to bring in their much higher level (i believe tenth level) wizard into the game. The other players were okay with it, but my conviate was that everytime the wizard cast a spell, they would turn into a different animal by roll of a d100. This delighted everyone, especially the wizard, as they had to figure out how to cast spells when they were, for example, an ostrich and did not have the dexterity.
Aw wow! Hehe xD what a wonderful idea! That is so much fun and so delightful :,) I Love things like this! Amazing
Love i
The wizard deleting that power source reminds me of a character from my favorite book, The Wandering Inn. He’s long dead, but is so far the most powerful character to have ever existed in the world of the book. He was a mage, and was called The Mage of Magic’s End. Because at the height of his research, he found and reached for the heart of magic. But like a child fumbling for a candle flame, he extinguished it, completely ending magic itself for the next 10,000 years or so
I think that level of power is awesome to play with. Thanks for making this video
I swear our party does that for every roll, like harvesting poison, picking locks, and pretty much anything except stealth. Help + guidance is the cheapest “guaranteed* win”
Oh this is so cool! Aw and thank you :3
Funnily enough, this same party accident deleted two schools of magic in the universe xD but have only recently restored them (after like 3 years of our real lives xD )
Very interesting video! I like the more abstract aproach to DMing these kinds of games. Very refreshing!
Oh thank you so much! Yes I figured it could be kind of interesting to go down that route and see what people think! Glad you like it 🥰
I want to see the epic skill tree you created. It sounds amazing and I love high level play.
Oh absolutely! It's right in the description of this video :3 use it however you like :D
I ran a 4 year long campaign that went from 1-20. High tier was tough to figure out but once I got it, it was amazing. They were absolutely MONSTERS on the battlefield and had an incredibly close knit family group. I’d love to capture that kind of lightning in a bottle in my upcoming game.
Aw that's amazing! And that's just it! It does take a little time to adjust to those high levels but when you do and let go of the wheel a bit it's so much fun
Its worth noting that there are still plenty of threats for even a level 20 party to face, even in the MM. Its why making sure to design your world to account for high level PCs is important. Make your players shit their pants with a hit squad of 7 Dao (with higher level slaves) when they piss off a higher member of the Earth Genie community. Or perhaps they feel the return of fear when a trio of balor brothers seek out the party as worthy game and slaves. Don't do this all the time, but the point is to prevent the feeling of being untouchable and more a "big fish in a small pond". Really the planes are the perfect place to clarify that view (with all the treasures and larger rewards that come with it). And if the players don't come to the planes, well... the planes will always want to come to them for one reason or another >: ). This is also how you prevent the "why aren't the higher level people we just talked to dealing with this?". There's always another leak that needs duct tape, another cockroach infestation that must be exterminated. No rest for the wicked; you gotta prioritize.
Love these ideas
9:54 - I have, in a DM whose games follow a lot of this advice even at lower levels's game, played a shadow monk who semi-regularly got 40+ on stealth rolls. It was a lot of fun.
Oh wow xD haha that is incredible xD I mean yeah- you've Gotta reward those kind of rolls!
This video almost made me tear up, it was so heartwarming and inspiring. I am about to run a homebrew high level 30hr weekend one shot as a relatively new dm and I am terrified, but you so perfectly expressed exactly why I’m so excited for this game and why I wanted to create it and run it. Thank you for this, it was both incredibly helpful and the exact encouragement I’ve been needing. I’m also so glad I found your channel, I love your style, one of the best youtube dnd creators I’ve found, instantly subscribed.
Oh my goodness 🥺🥺 thank so much! It makes me beyond happy to know that this video has enouraged someone like that. You're gonna blow it out of the water n_n I hope you have the best time and buckets full of fun :3
This is the first video I've ever seen from your channel. I like it a lot. I'll be back for more
Ohoho! Thank you very much :3 hope I can continue to please
My DM made it that we all were cursed to never go betond level 15 bist we dont have a level cap and can multiclass as long as we have a teacher. Most fun we ever had . We stoped at level 60 and we all loved it . Did that for 4 years .
Oh woah that's deadly! Such a clever way to go about it 😍 that sounds fantastic
I think anybody who's ever run Exalted knows how this feels. And this is generally good advice for Exalted games.
Aw thank you so much 😁
Seeing Simba being yeeted off the cliff, hit me somewhere funny. That unexpectedly had me laughing hard.
Hahaha xD oh my gosh XD this makes me so happy!
On the power source story, I loved it, the only thing i would have changed is that when the power source reached the void, it would spark an entirely new realm to be born there, this allows you to make a plane of existence which in where all your pcs can live out power growth yet again, facing challanges of an unknown and new universe setting up the possibility of more stories. I did do something thats similar in the way it played out but thats where the similarities end. Cheers
Aw dang! Yeah someone said something similar (but with an eviler twist xD )
But gosh yeah that would be a real cool thing to discover in the followup campaign to this :D
I’ve never run a high level game, but I’ve played in multiple. And I can’t agree more that at the level that players get ridiculous the DM isn’t really in control anymore. Even without going past lvl 20, no boons. I had thousands of health because I wanted to see how far I could push the game. It was amazingly fun to just fiddle as much power as I could out of DnD’s rule set.
Yeees!!! Haha and that's just it! Thats That's a fun part about being a player :P getting the DM to get on board with it too is another matter haha xD
I have s o so so SO wanted to play high level stuff. Most of my OCs are also crazy OP so seeing this helps me alot figureo ut what the heck to do to give my OCs challenges.
Oh I am So glad 🥰😁 that's amazing to hear :,3 do let me know how your games go if you get to higher levels :D
Great video, my players are only now level 7 - so not quite ready to fight planets, however, this has excited me to run games at higher levels 🎉 sounds like a blast ❤
Aw hell yeh! Yeah things get wild! But there is nothing to stop you having them face off against crazy things even now! DnD shorts actually put up a sample of their Kaiju Battle mechanics for free recently! Very cool stuff there
Thank you so much for watching ❤️
I believe that a number of these points - especially the first one - do apply equally to low level plays. If you let the players steer the narrative, you'll not only give them much more agency, but you also need to prep far less because it's the player's responsibility to take on challenges they can handle and how to overcome a hurdle too big to surmount by conventional means. Consider this - why do players not need copious amounts of prep time and detailed flowcharts or dialogue trees to play their characters? It's because they have a picture of what their character is like and play them accordingly. Do the same for your NPCs.
It's also fine if the party spends the bulk of their time with characters who do not pose a threat to them in combat. That is to be expected if you're one of the most powerful beings in existence. The action shifts from "Can I clear this dungeon?" to "How would clearing the dungeon affect the world?". It's one of the major factors that makes high level play more than just low level play with bigger numbers.
100% gotta agree with all of that! Perfectly articulated!
I think a great way to make the party feel more powerful is add destruction to the environment for flavor or to effect the environment. Say the monk hits a solid combo on a monster make the ground crack under them or make the enemy fly through a building
Yeeeehs! I do that a lot! It just makes so much sense and the reactions the players have is golden
We just started a level 20 start campaign, I’ll try and remember to update as we play
Oh I'd love to hear about it as you play! Goodluck!
I've never played nor mastered any high level game so... no clue but I trust you and looking for it some day
Aww haha look forward to hearing all about it if ever you get a game! :3
This is exactly what I needed this amazing video!
Aw wow! Haha what a comment :,) thank you so much! So so glad you liked it >:3 hope I can continue to provide :,3
Our high level campaign has multiple magic systems. Any given planet only has access to 2 of them. If you are able to access a given magic system you can combine them into a new, much more powerful system. The compilation of these systems and the crazy behind the scene math our dm does to decide how they work results in the party having to figure out how to use their varied magics to solve whatever impossibly powerful foe we face.
Holy Moly that sounds insane! I don't even know what you have to do to make up swveral new magic systems xD dang that's wicked
@@TheUglyGoblin well it's not from scratch. It started as being set in Brandon Sanderson's cosmere. As time has gone on we've drifted pretty far from what would be recognizable from the books.
@@isaacstandley730 Oh I see :o so cool!
20th level is the pinnacle of what one hopes to achieve. It is the beginning and not the end of who the character becomes. That is why I believe in a continuing story of many campaigns
Mmmm it's so hard hard to end the story xD it's like life really :3
Life begins at level 20 -probably Ronald Reagan
I treat every end game battle like a chapter of Bobobo. Expect things to get absolutely nuts. Hell, the final boss has actual DM powers lol
Oh mah god! I love that xD not enough people know about Bobobo xD
@TheUglyGoblin people remember it for being weird but not how ludicrously broken the attacks were! Stuff like trapping you in an infinite dimension where all concepts are nonsense, and nonsense equals damage, which means everything is damage. That and, you know.. literally retconning the entire series to make the big bad just not have powers anymore
I feel like there are two ways to take high level play. One, as described here, is hamming it up. Dont try to outmatch or cripple your players and just keep blowing the stakes up. If the world is their playground, let them play in it. If they are godlike, give them godlike problems to solve.
The second approach is giving them something they can't solve so easily to make them think. This isn't just a "hit them with a nerf bat" tactic like some more toxic adventure designers may do, but rather its just a problem presented in a way that isn't straightforward to solve. Or maybe it is but the straightforward solution isn't the best one. "I wish the lich to unexist." Will solve the problem, but before committing someone or something reminds you of the cascade effects that wishes may have, either direct consequences unforeseen like armies of undead now have no master to keep them in check, or indirect consequences like "well great now everyones fighting over the land the lich used to control and a world war broke out." Idk, things like that. Just cuz your a demigod doesnt mean that you'll be able to perfectly solve every problem
Yes yeah! Exactly! I think I mentioned that too. Giving them not just logical puzzles to solve but creative ones where they have to really think outside of the box and use their powers and abilities in strange unconventional ways
My first TTRPG was Exalted - there is only high-level play in Exalted (well, high and higher level). The thing most DMs miss about super powerful parties is the challenge of success. The drama isn't in whether or not you can defeat the enemy, but dealing with the consequences of it. Your Litch King, as part of his empire of evil, also operates the supply chain which feeds orphans along the coast of the continent - not by design, but as a consequence of being a large system which people find ways to benefit from. How do you now feed the orphans? The mercenaries you hired see the near divine power you used to sunder a dragon and now start revering you - is this the start of a religion or a nation? What will you do with the leadership that's been thrust upon you. The game becomes less about how hard you punchie, and more about what it means to punchie that hard.
Aw I adore this haha your last line gave me goosebumps xD
Seen the Avengers? That's how you run high level D&D. The greatest super-heroes versus the greatest super-villains to save the Verse! Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yeah sure! That can definately work up until a point, but I feel like it can become quite "monster of the week"ish and monotonous unfortunately :,3
And also far too combat heavy.
But definately fun if it happens once or twice
@@TheUglyGoblin aha! That's why you spin it out over multiple Phases and everybody gets their own solo movies, where half the group still makes cameos. (I do get your point tho, srsly.)
@@MemphiStig hahaha I dig it xD
I have a friend who has a good counter to becoming op. we start in a abstract universe full of strong people like worm or RWBY, then give us a power from a different universe. You could end up with light powers or biological control, but here's the kick, in player fighting. If we get bored we can off eachother and we'd be reset or the dm could spawn someone/something we can't deal with (like error404, Scarlet king, or even a character named Scion) and it ends up really fun. We usually gain universal travel as a power before we reach celestial power (we use a weird power system) so basically, we could fight Goku and one of us could betray the others, they get beat down, or they can acquire Goku as a team member. Sorry for length also reply if you'd change something
This sounds like so much fun xD wooow! I wouldn't change anything if you're having as much fun as you are :3
Been on a high level campaign for 4 years, did the exact same things as you, have my own skill tree that rivals and even surpasses runescape combined with skyrim
No way! Haha we must be friends now uwu
Reminds me of the tabletop game godbound where you play as literal gods and the game is more sandboxxy in which the players affect the world and story more than a D&D character.
Aw that's a deadly comparison :D
I'm running a game of 3.5 since 2018 (they started at 4 and now they are ar lv 24) and it's pretty epic but, sometimes, 1 or 2 boss battle resulted tedious for the rulesets of 3.5 (particularly the boss battle against Adam I Blackfyre, a god-emperor gone mad for the influences of a corrupting artifact that lasted 3 days in real life). My players are happy of my campaign but sometimes I'm not of some boss battles I've designed badly. This video will help me a lot, thanks
Oh gosh this makes me so happy to hear 🥰
This repository of links and your video alone is so helpful. I have been building and wanting to run a world where the PC's and a few NPC's are at godlike levels, and how they would interact, so I can absolutely use this for my inspiration and to think about how to tackle these issues. Thank you so much, man, I'm gonna save this and walk forward with a little more to think about so I can make sure that this world, campaign and these experiences are properly seared into their minds.
Wow! This comment just made my day 😁 so excited for you haha!
I am running my first game, that started as level 1, now the party is at level 4, but after watching this video I already can't wait to get past level 20, I got plans for multiverse ending threats already
Awwww 🥺 I love seeing comments like this :,3 hell yeh! Hehe xD enjoy the journey my friend uwu
That is awesome to hear how long your game has been running!!
I am doing a long term story focused campaign where leveling isn't the carrot. Been going a year and a half, into session 65 at lv 3 now.
Woah! Session 65! That is seriously impressive! Love that though! I've heard about games too where they make the level cap 6, but I think you can still take feats and continue getting magic items. But you are always going to be squsihy. It's usually used yo add a gritty realism to the game. The players don't level but the threats they face do
My previous campaign ran up to level 28, most of the 3rd Act was spent fighting guys who were pretty much demigods or actual gods with world-shattering capabilities.
Twas a great time.
Aw that's fantastic!
Woo Let's go Beta Questers! These references are great! Nice to see the High Tier Boon Table getting some love!
Yes! Haha it's lovely being able to reference our campaigns :,3
Gmbinder has a nice epic level book ranging from level 21 to 25
Oh no way?! :O I gotta check that out
I've personally never run a level 20 game (mostly because my games fizzle out before the players get that high) but the approach I want to take is "Balance over powered with over powered" or as I like to call it, the "Brutal Doom Approach"
If the PCs are super powerful, so should the monsters be. Create homebrew monsters that surpasses the likes of Tiamat.
Oh hell yeah! Absolutely! I recommend also not just focusing on raw damage and loads of hp though, give them really strange and scary abilities, like a Shadow or Intellect devourer's ability to permanently reduce a player's stats. Or like I mentioned, Dungeon Dad's Genius Loci has some Very fun things.
I hope you get to have some wild high games sometime ;3
@@TheUglyGoblin Yeah definitely. Just buffing HP and damage output is not really fun. Though sometimes you can have abilities that aren't really strange but can still be devastating. Like a mass Hold Person spell that also does psychic damage. Or something one of my DMs did in a Epic Level one-shot where the boss does free damage at the start of every round that increases by an amount every round.
@@Zulk_RS oh very cool! Yes so similar to a Marut! They are scary! Haha mmmm the hold person idea is a questionable one though. I've done things like that before and when the players can't do anything it can make it quite frustrating and not very fun for them unfortunately. Easy to kill them for sure but better used to build tension maybe at the start of a fight, like in a mini puzzle rather than in mid combat :P
But yeah it's the simple things that are suuuuper fun usually
@@TheUglyGoblin Hold Person thing was a highly specific example but the point was that sometimes, mechanically simple but "Oh no" type moves the monster can do can still make for a challenging combat to 20th level and beyond players.
@@Zulk_RS I absolutely agree! Very intrigued by the hold person story now haha :P
First video of yours that I've seen. Definitely subscribing, absolutely enthralled by this little goblin avatar of yours.
Aw hell yeah xD haha thank you so much :3 also love the profile pic of yours uwu
This sounds AWESOME
Awhaw xD thank you so much 😁
As someone getting into later levels in my campaign, the trick I've found is that the bad guys will just not care about the party's power level when they show up. Most will be smart enough to at least know the party is coming, maybe find out what classes they are, dig through their treasure hoard for their most powerful items or even hide them away to spite the party's looting attempts. Recall their armies and minions to Tucker's Kobold Skeletons the first two floors of a fortress, only for the third floor to be several permanent illusions stacked onto each other with traps that lead back into the pain floors. When the party actually find the Lich, he has three Ultroloths and a quartet of Bone Devils with him, because that's the kind of clout that he has; also there's a Symbol on the floor just past the door and he has a scroll of Antimagic Shell to make himself immune to damage for 10 minutes as he pulls a bunch of DEX-for-half levers to bully the party.
Oh wow xD sounds hardcore for sure xD
This is a suprisingly original idea. Your breakdown of it was great too. Will look into your content soon!
Aw thank you so much! :,) that means so much :D gosh I am chuffed xD haha thank you so much and thank you for watching 🥰
I’m currently running a 16th level party. Once they got to Tier 3, I just made them all Barons or lords, gave them their own towns on a colony planet (it’s a spelljammer campaign), and introduced a Cult worshipping an ancient black dragon that had infiltrated their towns. I basically just told them the situation, gave them a downtime session, and asked “what do you do?” It’s great, they all had their own approaches to searching for the cult and securing their towns. The Paladin equipped their guards with magical weapons, secured their loyalty, and built a huge watch tower. The Warlock worked with a shadowy spy organization to get information, essentially created a Suicide squad-style group of convicts that follow his patron, and basically spread his own cult to limit how many members the dragon cult could get. It’s really fun to see how they approach the situation, especially knowing how easily they could simply walk into the dragons lair and just kill him (Between the Gloomstalker/Rogue/Twilight Cleric, the Rune Knight/Astra self monk and the Evocationist wizard with the smoldering tome, they could very easily deal around 300 damage in the first turn.)
Woooow 😍 gosh I love all of this! Aw D&D is so much fun xD
What a well made video. Thank you this was fun.
Also you are not a ugly goblin you are adorable.
Aw you are very kind uwu
Hahaha thank you so much for watching 😁
And making me blush u//u
I'm currently level 14 in a 2-year-running campaign that "plans" to get to 30, but I'm the kind of player who enjoys balancing stats and am not a full-caster, so I have mixed feelings on what I'll even be able to do to pitch in at those high of levels. 😮💨 I play an Artificer, so maybe I can... make artifacts? 🤷♂
Oooo that's a tricky one. Yeah full casters seriously dominate in later games.
But I have had an arteficer in my games and he was pretty powerful. I allowed him to get a passive income. He was able to get a contract with different clients in a very wealthy city, once a week. The would contact his sending stone (sending stones have like a phone number in this world xD ) and give him the details on what they want made. He would then build it and ship it through a wormhole bag. (Kind of like a bag of holding that would connect back to his shop in that town. And they would send him the money back through the other side.
It was really fun and allowed him to get creative with his inventions. I would present him with the probablem and he would work out how to feasibly create an invention to fix that problem.
We also used "Witch + Craft" as a resource book, which has excellent mechanics for crafting, if ever you are interested. They can be used very well with arteficers to make their inventing process more like a minigame rather than simple rolling once and that's it.
Also! Maybe your DM would let you build an iron man suit or something xD there are some really neat "magical" items in the scifi supplement for dnd5e: The Fifth Age.
www.enworld.org/threads/fifth-age-a-hard-science-fiction-5e-conversion.459300/
If ever you wanted to try and build some of the things in here! Could be rad!
But absolutely I think letting you start basically becoming batman, who has an invention for everything, would be pretty cool xD
@@TheUglyGoblin I LOVE that you work with your player by giving them a problem that can be solved through crafting! The Batman-Meets-Ironman idea is definitely up my alley on what I'd like to do but...
...Our game is a little weird, we had a DM-shift when our primary DM went to University and our game STARTED as an Acquisitions Incorporated game - so taking orders, managing money, running a shop, etc were all things we would basically do on our party's "weekends" while during the week we would raid the dungeon of the mad mage - the new DM, who was a player, isn't as good at supporting that kind of playstyle and is much more chaotic and improv-y when it comes to setup.
He and I are both aware of both of our shortcomings, though, so we do try to work on getting things I can feel confident in doing... it just hasn't been super successful due to the general lack of Artificer support in the standard and most expanded 5e rules, let alone for lv20+
I'll DEFINITELY give that link a look! I'm all for adding more detail to my inventions, but I do want to make it as simple as possible due to the current DM's storystyle. It's a tough situation, but hopefully not impossible. Right now he's allowed me to make an army of Roombas to clean the city we sort of are in charge of, I've even basically recreated a fallout-style Protectron. :D
@@OneKnightGaming Aw haha thank you XD mmm that sounds tricky for sure, so yeah maybe the crafting mini game might be too much but maybe just during downtime you could work on the “prototypes” in that fifth age pdf.
And maybe your cleaning squad could earn you a passive income to fund your projects XD haha
Maybe you could even have lil robots who can source you simple magical items that you could keep in a utility belt (a utility belt with lots of small bags of holding XD ). Fun things like an immovable rod or sovereign glue, that allow you to use your intuition and creativity to get through dungeons and encounters.
Perhaps your dm would even allow you to keep a list of items you can just have on hand. Or items you could prepare in the same way a Druid prepares items.
I hope all works out to you.
I am also currently working on a video where I go into more depth on these High Tier Skill Trees so keep an eye out for that next week ;3 you might be able to use that in your games too! :D
@@TheUglyGoblin Will do! Adding a mention on any combos of high-tier spells with magic items or highest-half-caster-spells would be EPIC ;)
Great vid. Loved the story time
Aw thank you :D good to know :3 gosh I have a looot of those xD
About the "get abstract" bit, I'm planning the final dungeon for our group of soon to be 20th level games, and the BBEG has currently set a device to reset time. The group knows about it and they're racing to stop BBEG. The fun thing is: killing he BBEG isn't going to cut it. Once the device is started, it has no stopping.
The only way to disable it going "by the rules" is a wish spell, and I know they'll have only one character to use it, if they manage to kill the BBEG without using their 9th level slot. Apart from that, they will have to be creative about it. I, myself, didn't thing of anything and I'm excited and curious to what might go about!
Oh that sounds fantastic!
Yo this was cool as heck!
Aw wow haha thank you so so much :,D ❤️
I’m currently running a game that’s been going for 5 years, they started at level 1 and the plan was to go to level 50, but the bar is even higher now and there’s no sign of stopping. I ran a scientifically modified Tarrasque as a big bad boss, they pulled in every favor they had and all the allies they had made and by the skin of their teeth they were able to beat it before it destroyed their home planet. It was glorious
Aw that sounds JUUUUICY! 😱😍
Actually gives me some nice ideas for my upcoming 3-20 campaign... I was already a little annoyed with not feeling powerful but being told I am........ so this gives me some more spice. Thank you good sir
Oh an absolute pleasure my friend! Have fun >;3
I would absolutely love to join a campaign to get up to lvl 20+ to see what kind of shenanigans could happen. Got a new sub, thanks for the video!!
Aw helll yeh ;3 thank you so much!
Yeah it hits different when your players start at level 0 and make their way to over 20
Seriously great GM content.
Thanks so much for sharing.
Woah! Gosh that is so nice to hear 😁 thank YOU for watching :) and being so kind.
Really good video! Subscribed!!
Aw thank you so much 🥰
Wow, such wild stories in this one 🤯 ridiculous power levels
Hahahaha xD thank you so much for watching! Yeah things get wild in pur games xD or at least I try my best to make sure they do. But honestly I don't actually have yo try hard a lot of the time xD the party create their own obstacles all the time
Very cool video great info
Thank you so so much 🥰 hope I can continue to provie uwu
Nice video, thanks for the tips lil goblin
Haha thank you so much :D My pleasure >:D
I like to give my players things, they can get as powerful as they want, I can always make a more dangerous encounter.
Hell yeah ;3 love those DM fighting words haha
@TheUglyGoblin my players are winding down a tournament as part of downtime between adventures. Once that's over the city they base in is going to be attacked by a Mummy Lord who has made some alliances with an Alhoon, and his colony of Mind Flayer Wizards also his small fleet of nautaloids which the Mummy Lord has helpfully Mumified to create Crawling Apocalypses that can fly, a brain stealer dragon, as well as a couple dozen boneyards with my own custom made (substantially weaker) version of death knight riders, and for good measure an army of a custom monster I created based on Barrow Wights from Lord of the Rings called Ghouls, which are what happens if you split the difference between a D&D zombie and a vampire spawn.
6 players at level 12, but I think they can take it.
@@alexandercross9081 this- is- SO COOL
@TheUglyGoblin it occurs to me that they will actually be 13th level at the point they're doing this, but still what's an apocalyptic battle for survival against 3/5 of the surviving major bad guys without a little power creep.
@@TheUglyGoblin update, replacing the brain stealer dragon with a carefully bred and control neothelid, under the idea that the standard one in the MM is a diseased feral version of the creature, and their potential is so much greater when properly cultivated, instead of it having to feast on other tadpoles it has been fed a steady supply of brains and rather than having the mind flayer version of Kuru, it's just as smart as a mind flayer and also has its beastial size and strength
2:30 you've rediscovered Epic Levels 😝 there was an official 3ed (& 3.5) book about levels 21-30+
Haha I mean I've never played anything from 3e but sure? XD
I would suggest using a lingering injury table. If you survived long enough to reach a high level your character is bound to have some scars.
It could even make a big bad more threatening because it shows that you aren’t the first adventurers to try and stop them. The last ones failed to finish them off.
Oh I love using these tables. Such a good idea to use them on villains though! Never thought of that.
My only issue with so many of them is they can just be cured with 1 point of magical healing. It's a shame haha :P
@@TheUglyGoblin Actually some injuries would require the 7th level spell regenerate. A simple healing spell won’t work.
Plus you can treat it as an affliction that gets progressively worse the longer it goes untreated. Wounds can get infected for example especially when necrotic damage is involved.
You’d need a potion of cure disease or something. It would be a race against the clock to gather the right ingredients. Adding a sense of urgency.
Have them make a con save if they take a long rest or something. If they fail they wake up with a fever as the infection gets worse. If they don’t find a cure soon they might not wake up the next time they try to take a rest. Fun fact restoration spells don’t cure diseases. So infection is a real danger.
@@funnyblog100 that's true :P just the majority don't often last long enough :P but I often homebrew them a lil
Wait yeah. I'm gonna subscribe to this channel. I like your spirit in this video a lot. And I'm gonna be using these principles as my players move past lvl 15.
Aw thank you so much 🥺 aw heck yeah xD I hope it works out >:D
Thank you so much 😁 let me know how it all works out >:3
Cool video, I run alot of High level games, and one tool I use is creating frameworks for adventures, a yes/no scenario of what works in high level play a where and a why. Spelljammer is great for this. the AD&D sorcers have really too much of this but some tings I kept.
Such as when the players are in the Astral Sea or the Phlogiston (not in a crystal sphere) Teleportation powers and Extra dimensional spaces dont work, Only Astral Projection does. This forces them to really on their spelljamming vessel and if it gets destroyed well it could be centuries before they reach a crystal sphere without it. (Ie create a situation of cool failure that does not end the game)
The PC's current problem is that a GoD of oblivion is plotting the end of everything and the PC's have been foiling his plans for so long he lured them into the astral plane through an astral storm the PC's ship is nearly destroyed several long time crew members that have been around since 5h level have been disintegrated. And now they are face to face with the god of oblivion himself in the Astral Sea in the center of the storm and the god believes he has won. The players ship is too beat up to leave and thwart his plans and so they are stuck there with him to watch the end of all things.
What the players do not know is that these gods act on a truce of not getting directly involved and the god of oblivion is pushing the line as he is physically in the PC's presence. So he cannot attack the PC's without drawing the attention of other gods that also would want to directly interfere. So the PC's must decide on how to stop this god as they just hit level 20 and have literally until the end of time to decide how to end a god of oblivion... and after that they have to stop his universe ending monster....
Bloody hell that sounds epic as hell! Love the rational for things here too! Sounds mad! But it's just so cool when things get blown to immense proportions like this! The final outcome reminds me a bit of doctor strange using his ol time loop xD existing with this being of chaos for all eternity. Very cool stuff! Would love to know how it all ends up!
Also thank you so much for watching :3 really appreciate it and this real juicy comment!
I'm running my game we are level 11 and currently in this arc as I call it The Sunken Tower, the party are fighting their way through a mage tower. This has been a period of the group finally getting to see the scope of the scope of the powers set against them and realizing they have been fighting the minions of an ancient red dragon from the start, getting in his way both directly and indirectly, a big goal of mine is to build the group up so when they return from this adventure they have the power they need to truly turn the tides and drive out the darkness. It's been a lot of fun and as the DM I tend to just lean into the stuff the group dose and it's worked out, let them be the heroes of the story, in one corner you have the party set up to challenge all these powerful foes that intend and cause terrible harm and tragedy to the world around them, the party who through it all have been the underdogs and fighting uphill, but they have not given up and keep pushing. The group has already done plenty of silly and crazy stuff with a party of marital characters and it's been a lot of fun I hope we hit the higher levels of play and if things go well I think we will. I may be misremembering this quote but it sticks with me when I set things up as the DM, "As storytellers we put dragons in children's stories not to be terrifying but because we want to show they can be overcome."
Aw what a great quote
@TheUglyGoblin I like it, the trick is to lean into the fun. My players have had fun and at times run stuff over and others it's nail bitting, none of us me included are certain how things will play out. 😀
@@onemisterfranko terrific :3
@TheUglyGoblin thanks, as long as we have fun it's all good.
Underrated channel
Aw gosh thank you so much :,3
Mmmmmm delicious high quality content, yeesss that the good stuff.
Haha this made my morning :3 -sips comment- ah this is the good stuff ❤️
actually had something in mind for my players after Level 20. but haven't thought past the basic stuff from level 15 onward
I planned on revealing the main villain's true identity around that time and have him be the hardest fight I got for them. but after Level 20, I planned on destroying the Material Plane due to the fight with the BBEG. they have complete free access to all planes and their main goal isn't to just fight the main villian (as I also planned on them getting their shit rocked by him despite them being level 20) and their main goal was to find a way to get stronger past their natural limit. the remnants of the material plane are still there and they can go there and fight the final boss at anytime they wish. however, they can recruit allies from any of the planes, fight monsters that normally would have been impossible for them to find otherwise, certain side quests might occur that they can go on to help discover new forms of power, but when they think their ready, they can tackle the final fight.
if your wondering just how hard the fight has to be in order for it to only be possible with a level 20 party? well let me ask you a question, how does being able to steal any spellcasters wish spell for whatever purpose he wants, being able to make someone lose all Sorcery points/Ki/Spell slots/ battle master maneuvers/ Rages/etc. on touch, make all party members get reduced to 1 HP for free, the ability to take 5 actions in a single turn, using 3 out of 12 different spheres (one for each damage type) that each deals about the same as Meteor Swarm and have effects ranging from being hit with nuclear radiation that last for 10d100 turns (for poison) to reducing the number of saving throws they can use for the rest of the fight (for necrotic). as well as a move straight up called Genocide that has a chance to insta-kill them.
so yeah, I got a lot planned
I ran multiple campaigns and oneshots at high level. My main story even ended with a lv 20 full campaign where my players handled a "situation" with the general of the gehenna. And we came to the conclusion that... none of us likes the high levels on a mechanical level, except one, the house power player and only because he can use the calculator to read how big are the numbers of his build. Except the power player, none of them has the time to read the manual that much, the game becomes so bloated that they can't even remember everything their character have or can do adding also the fact that we have to take ofter big pauses even months long between sections due to irl schedule. But the worst for them is the length of the turns, since each of them need minimum 15 minutes to decide for their actions, read every option on the sheet. I can ramp up the excitment for the combat with the narration, but if it is followed by another lengthy wait for another player's turn, everyone loses the focus again. I also do not have the time to build monsters for each game, and improvising an high level monster is really hard. I have homebrewed many rules to make the game less complex for them but i find myself unable to adjust the amounts of things of the end game. And as i said, embrace the amount with them actually does damage the game for my players...except the power player. Even on a narration point of view there is contrast in the group but there i've been able to "accomodate" the tastes. Three out of four of my players want a scoundrel hero story of criminals, court schemes, mad wizards and the damsel in distress in the clutch of a dragon or an evil kingdom... the power player wants the manga/anime style gods killing spree. I found a sweet spot for it. I run my story in a really cinematic way, heavily inspired by movies and books where there is the Sauron like demigodly enemy while the majority of the characters are still mere mortals and for the final confrontation i use a narration similar to indiana jones movies, where the otherwordly mess and the BBEG manifest in a flash at the end of the story and the characters have the possibility of dispose of it because they have the right item or knowledge, collected during the campaign. In the narrative everyone is happy, the power player less then the other but... there it's my fault. My main setting, started as a mix of dnd lore and character, after more then 10 years and 4 campaigns has become a stand alone world spanning 3 eras. I don't like the idea of crumbling the world building of this world because only one of the players wants to "face the gods in the godly arena, with no story, no spoken interaction, carve craters in physics of reality with the strength of his blow, r*pe the god of evil with daggers, violate his dead body and reign as the infinite justicar that punish with eternal suffering and eyeballs r*pe all criminals". Yes, that is where the power player goes with his characters when left unchecked or in high level oneshots. I will have none of that.
Do a video on that boom table bro!
Already have ;D it's my "skill trees" video :3
id probably went with removing level cap
prestige classes stuff
Dayumn. Another great goblin video ❤ i am indeed chaos
Hahaha thank you so so much! Be the chaos! Embrace the chaos
I feel interpersonal conflicts and conflicts of character that haven't been explored or resolved or even discovered to that point could make polarizing arcs, especially when considering their newfound or established status as basically a demigod.
I've never played DND nor do I watch like a lot of DND content, so if anyone wants to tell me what I might be missing there please do. :)
Oh no I think that's all pretty spot on too!
I’m a first timer DM, and frankly I’m going from levels 1-20. The whole full set. Currently the party is at level 9-10, and going through their personal arcs. I’m genuinely terrified for us getting to level 15+. 😂😅 Still wouldn’t change it though and I’m not backing out. My players are so excited to get there and I’m excited to see it.
Aw listen, you'll be just fine ;3 so long as you can keep having fun you're doing it right.
Going through their personal arcs is a good sign ;3 I'm sure they are loving that
Hats off to you uwu
I used to DM 2E with lots of adventures between 29 and early 30s in the 90s and early 00s. Those were the days. Did some becmi all the way to 36 and could not get into the immortal rules at all. Love the upper levels. Even in 3.X and 5E
Aw hell yeah! Sounds hardcore! It is so much fun when you get to those crazy reaches of the cosmos :3 gotta love it.
Thanks for watching by the way ;3
If my players yeeted a power source from reality, I would have contemplated letting the power source stumble onto or drag some intelligent creature or society into the void, creating a pocket dimension while warping the power source to make it not locateable. Then, either in this campaign or the next, that dimension becomes connected/involved with the campaign...
I totally understand that way of thinking and this power source has had a looooong histoy with this campaign. And so, eventually you just have to give your players a win and let them destroy it without yet another plot twist or repercussion/gotchya moment :P
But a great idea none the less :3
@@TheUglyGoblin You are kinder than I am, for sure ;) 😈
@@XainMexi I just know what it's also like to be a player xD and sometimes you just want to have a win
I think that rather than make them indulging into fighting gods (but very good video anyway !), two alternative, more modest and yet sufficient solutions : 1) take hint in Tolkien and other writers, and make them partake into world politics, like, really interesting ones (forming a "White Council" that moves pawns against the Great Evil or wathever ; kingmaking etc.) ; 2) turn them into NPCs for their new low-level characters to meet. Nothing greater than seeing oneself through a flattering mirror.
Oh yeah absolutely!
The frustration of not being able to punch their way through things would also be very funny.
But yeah I really like these ideas
This video wouldn't load for some reason xD but it has now! Love it >:3
Yes a bit odd! Not sure what happened but glad its sorted now!
Your videos are nice.
Thanks :3
Im not gonna lie, as someone who optimizes a lot, I don't agree that high level DnD characters are as powerful as you or most believe?
They *are* powerful, but demigod? Only if your demigods are relatively low in the totem pole. It's really not hard to shut down high level abilities. Magic resistance, teleportation, high damage, etc.
That being said, I do really like this video, it's very fun and I generally agree.
Aw thank you very much 😁
My point was actually that I think they are lacking in power and my suggestion is to Help them feel as powerful as they probably should after everything they have faced :P
@@TheUglyGoblin mm isee
It is only a few very specific high level spells that break D&D like Simulacrum and Wish. People have done high level games with full martial/half caster parties and the game is surprisingly balanced. The game is just a little easy. High level PCs can't be challenged even by a Terrask, who simply doesn't do enough damage per turn and is mostly just a big damage sponge.
Mmmm that's just it! You need to give players more abstract threats rathr than, "here is a big thing to punch"
@TheUglyGoblin Yep, and when doing high level boss fights you need interesting mechanics (thinking in MMO terms). Stuff like adds that buff the boss or unique environmental hazards.
YEAH! ASCEND THE GOD TIERS AND SHATTER THE HEAVENS! ALL THE GODS BE LAID TO WASTE!
WAHAHAHAHA
Currently we are lvl 7 and Im already going crazy!!!
Hahahaha oh yeah xD that'll happen xD it ain't easy being a DM xD what's the party make up? XD
@@TheUglyGoblin 2 Rangers (Gnome Drakewarden / Human Horizon Walker) 1 Monk (Turtle Ascendant Dragon) 1 Fighter (Shifter Rune Knight) 1 Bard/Fighter (Dragonborn College of Eloquence). All very tied to the plot.
@@vinigmoura Aw that sounds like such a fun crew xD the Turtle monk sounds wicked (they all do!)
@@TheUglyGoblin OMG the monk!!! We invented a new move where he uses his weight + the dragon wings with the Step of the wind to jump very high and fall at the enemies causing tons of damage but he also takes some damage to balance a little bit, it took a month of discussions about the mechanics but worked out very well!
@@vinigmoura absolutely incredible! Haha makes so much sense xD I love it
Getting ridiculous in dnd would be fun. Maybe lore inaccurate but fun nonetheless
I mean that's why we play it in the end of the day right ;3 ? For the fun :3
As I watch this, I am about an hour away from running my D&D session, where I expect my party to achieve level 24. By the end of that level (hopefully by the end of the year) they will have defeated Tiamat and saved the world (and ended the campaign).
Aw so so exciting! Have an absolute blast :D hope this video helps you out :3 even a lil
This is more like a post lvl 20 video.
High level is like dragons and demon lords. You described god level and dimensional conflict.
Ooo I like Dungeons and Demon Lords xD
First you need a high level BBEG, then they need some high level plans and high level mini bosses.
I personally just let Tiamat a god that can cast wish like it's their breath weapon and only one goal exists; don't let Tiamat reform.
Interesting
Let me do some maths
natural 20 + 6(proficent)+6(expertise)+10(baridc)+10(arbility score) +3(guidance) = 59
I doubted really hard that something like that was even possible in base 5e, even with the strongest characters around, bounded accuracy and all that, however, its very much possible, even without homebrew
I know right haha I was mind blown xD
The way I run it is like high/G/master Rank in monster hunter where I make the monsters more powerful and dangerous I also incorporated deviants into the mix as ‘battlesworen’ which was just deviant lore wise like I had a battlesworen Black Dragon which the party had a connection with because they directly caused it to become battlesworen battle
Ooo this sounds pretty neat :P
Could also try sending TWO regular black dragons at em >:D you'd be suprised at how tricky it makes it :P
Mentioning Monster Hunter actually, there is a pdf somewhere for adding all of those monsters to your game, adding a salvaging mechanics and weapon building. It's honestly so cool
@@TheUglyGoblin I also tried that out in a one shot I ran in the same world and borrowed(did not steal why would you say that) the concept of monsters that pair (think toaster and blue toaster) and my players (like me in the games) disliked fighting two of the same monster they did not even find it hard they nearly one shot one of the dragons and 3 shot the other but it just wasn’t fun so I decided I would only make them fight more then one weak creature so not 2 dragons but like 10 wolves
@@The_pitbull536 that's totally fair! I find it so interesting what some parties struggle with compared to others. And for one party 2 dragons might be impossible but for other's (like yours) it's a walk in the park xD
My campaign is... from level 1 to level 100...
My god.... I salute you
Show us how you made the high tier boon table 🔫
Hahahaha xD I sorta did in my Skill Tree video :3
Daaaaamn! Over 50k views!! This video blew up BIG TIME
Honestly- insane
Wait, what's that at 09:00? Did they make an anime about J. Jonah Jamerson being Tarzan (presumably to get more pictures of Spiderman), and why did I not know of it until now?
Hahahaha oh my god xD I want to frame this comment xD haha it's actually an Amazing anime! Everything by this director is crazy good. This anime movie is called Paprika and the match cuts are just incredible
Every frame a painting does an Awesome video essay on it
Just build a litch like uoud build a player. Theyll have so much fun
Oh I do that all the time haha
What if you just make them have to deal with all the fans they get
Hahaha I like that approach xD always having to protect the fans that constantly surround them xD
@@TheUglyGoblin mans gonna make the Hollywood celebrity experience in DND
Talking about high level play, my character Forge, is an abomination multi-class of all classes. It's a solo adventure.
My DC's go up to sometimes beyond 50.
That is incredible xD
@@TheUglyGoblin Forge is currently building a metropolis, called Unity Springs, of all creatures. He farms so hard, the citizens have gained strength and power from eating the food he grows. Where the people have evolved because of it, and he's their patron and he shares his abilities with them.
The royal guard are all Greatwyrms, everyone has a Will-o'-the-wisp partner that's capable of telepathy, and he wears monk like royal robes made of spider silk. It's nuts. For a taste of the people who live there: Beholders, Greatwyrms of all colour, oozes, goblins, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Dragonborn, Fiend's, monstrosities, and some Elementals. He's ended an entire civilization because it became a threat, single handedly.
I've been playing 4e, and we're in paragon tier, which is the equivalent of like levels 9-12 or so. There's a lot of utility spells and abilities that break a normal game, but they're not at the combat stage of punching gods yet. How do I make a story work when my guys can long-range teleport so freely?
Oof that is a good question. I have a map of my world at this stage so I know where most things are, and often use Dungeon Alchmist if I need to build maps quickly. But honestly, my best advice would be to make the places you want them to go as enticing as possible so they'll only really teleport there. Still have places of interest far away so they still get to use those teleporting abilities. But try to tie all of the players personal goals to your main plot so they don't feel the need to teleport elsewhere. But they may find the urge to teleport somehwere with shops and things like that. So random tables can help you there xD if there are places that you Don't want them to go though, gorgon blood apparently blocks people from teleporting through it ;3 maybe your villains can fortify their layers with it xD
@@TheUglyGoblin In truth, one of the biggest problems hasn't been getting them to go somewhere but that I can't keep them anywhere. They can always just... leave a situation, and bring a priority target with them. But I think I want to try and do what you mentioned in the video - threatening civilians so they have to stay and fight directly
@@ellentheeducator oh that is an excellent idea! Yes! Having core reasons to stay are great, Esspecially if the reasons come from the players too. Also playing into the "fear of missing out" vibes is fun xD say they escape a fight from a villain, the they never get to find out what information they may have been keeping from them. Or villains that the party runs away from, not only survive but also now know more about the party, their weaknesses and how to best them next time.
Awesome video! Many thanks :). Sub is out!
Wooo! Thank you so much 😁