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Cogidubnus
2010-11-12, 01:20 PM
Can I get some advice on building challenging encounters for a party of level 30 upwards PCs (possibly gestalt, too). Obviously these guys are going to be packing some serious firepower, so I'd like some help. Specific examples would be great, but so would general tips for building/improving monsters.

Agrippa
2010-11-12, 01:31 PM
Darkseid and Asmodeus have joined forces to conqure and enslave the multiverse. What are you guys going to do about it?

Cogidubnus
2010-11-12, 01:33 PM
Darkseid and Asmodeus have joined forces to conqure and enslave the multiverse. What are you guys going to do about it?

I have a setting. I need actual encounter building advice.

And it's...kinda like that. Think Asmodeus' fall.

Agrippa
2010-11-12, 01:36 PM
I have a setting. I need actual encounter building advice.

And it's...kinda like that. Think Asmodeus' fall.

It was just a thought exercise. I didn't mean that you should do exactly as I suggested. Just take the same basic idea, two cosmic tyrants planning to conqure the multiverse together, and adapt it to your setting. As for encounter building advice how about fiendish anaxims (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm#anaxim) forged in the bowels of the Nine Hells. The PCs could fight those guys. Take one or two and give it a few handlers.

Cogidubnus
2010-11-12, 01:37 PM
It was just a thought exercise. I didn't mean that you should do exactly as I suggested. Just take the same basic idea, two cosmic tyrants planning to conqure the multiverse together, and adpt it to your setting.

Ok. But still, it doesn't give me help building individual encounters.

Agrippa
2010-11-12, 01:45 PM
Ok. But still, it doesn't give me help building individual encounters.

I added a little more to the post if you'd like to know.

blackjack217
2010-11-12, 01:47 PM
Dicefreaks stated out a lot of epic devils in their guide to hell now to find a link.
found it! http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8

Urpriest
2010-11-12, 01:58 PM
How high Tier are things going to be? If you're going to have a pile of Tier 1s, some thoughts:

Celerity is annoying. I'd recommend coming up with rules for whether you can respond to a Celerity with another Celerity.

High level enemies should often have Spell Stowaway: Time Stop. It really does help things stay reasonable.

SurlySeraph
2010-11-12, 02:18 PM
It's hard to speak in much detail without knowing more about the party makeup, but you can assume that most members of the party will have a trick that allows them to instantly kill anything that doesn't have a specific way of defending against it. Quickened True Strike + a heavily metamagicked Enervation can instantly kill any living creature without Death Ward; many charge builds can do tens of thousands of damage to anything that doesn't have Ironguard or a similar way of ignoring melee attacks. You want to try to make sure that no one instantly ends any encounter, without making their abilities worthless.

This is hard for two reasons. First, the numbers get high enough (and there's enough room for variation in them depending on level of optimization) that it's hard to keep monsters' abilities in a range where every party member can affect them, but they won't instantly die to any particular trick. Second, at this level most effective defenses against a trick will make that trick completely worthless rather than having some chance of success and some chance of failure. Persistent Ironguard makes the caster immune to attacks with melee weapons, unless one of the meleers has a weapon made of Deep Crystal, Ironwood, or another material that he's fairly unlikely to want for his primary melee weapon. Death Ward blocks Enervation entirely, no questions asked. Magic immunity or extremely high spell resistance can shut down a lot of things that casters do, though of course there are other things they can do.

Another problem is that things that are legitimately dangerous to epic-level characters also tend to be no fun to deal with. Casting Disjunction on the party will certainly weaken them a lot, but rolling saves for every item is a huge pain and if you do disable a fair number of the awesome hyper-expensive items the players so lovingly picked out, they will be extremely annoyed. A Shape of Fire's Blazefire ability is quite dangerous to melee types - not because of the damage it does, because it'll permanently lower their HP and thus make them weaker in every subsequent fight. An Iron Colossus can be dealt with easily by shooting it over and over with arrows that do over 20 damage (unless you have a way to make a +6 weapon retain its enhancement in an antimagic field or use a spamabble ability like Shards of Granite that ignores DR, you can't overcome its DR), but that's boring. In a straightforward fight the casters will probably have few options but to Gate creatures in to bash on it; and few 30th-level characters can reliably hit AC 60 in an antimagic field, so melee against it isn't much fun.

One thing I'd recommend would be to include multiple creatures in most encounters. It might not have as much of an epic feel as the party against a single giant monster, and the bookkeeping can be hellish. But it makes it a lot less likely that someone will instantly destroy the encounter without anyone else contributing. It also means that you can tailor particular creatures to particular party members, making sure each is fighting something challenging but surmountable for them. Otherwise you could put the party up against an Iron Colossus that only the main melee fighter can hit and no one else can do anything to, a [anything not immune to death effects] that a Factotum 11/ Wizard 19 can repeatedly cast a save-or-die against until it rolls a 1 in his first round while everyone else twiddles their thumbs, or something else that negates a lot of the party.

Alternately, you can just throw whatever looks interesting at the party (as long as they have a way to escape) and just assume they'll find a way to beat it - or escape, prepare a way to beat it, and come back. They're 30th-level gestalt characters, they'll probably have some way to beat anything that isn't immune to everything.

Finally, you might want to give everything lots of extra HP and a way to come back after seeming to be killed (such as high regeneration, an ability to cast illusions, or a contingent healing or resurrection spell). That way, it's much harder for encounters to just instantly end to a lucky hit.

Honestly, the system is so wonky at epic levels that running everything on DM fiat is probably the best approach. My suggestions above boil down to "Make it easy to say the encounter isn't really over when a player does something that would instantly defeat the encounter."