Epic Campaign encounter ideas

[croaker]

Hi everyone me and my group have been playing the mystical game of d&d for couple years now and they have voiced a request to play epic campaign and being the DM for half the games we played i decided to take on the mantle once more

we are going to be playing 3.5

now onto the good part the first at least one fourth of the campaign is going to be in the Underdark and i was wondering if some of you would kindly help me out with some interesting encounters

to give you some more info about party
1 is lvl 20 dread necromancer so he is lich with limited spell choice

1 is a wizard ur-priest mystic theurge so he can cast both arcane 9th level spells and cleric 9th level spells lvl 20 total

1 is either being a dragon shaman (black) or some combination of fighter with bladesage lvl 20 total

our last one is going to be ranger or another fighter mixed with tome of battle class lvl 20 total

so now that you know the characters was hoping you could make a interesting fight or puzzle or such

thanks in advance

[Kol Korran]

a bit more information might be useful:
what is the campaign about? who are the antagonists? what are the goals of the party?

i'm the last person to give you advice on such high level games, but the above questions are kind of true for any campaign i think.

[Balor01]

I suggest a flying swarm, small enough that it is immune to weapons and has an (Ex) field that acts like disjunction. (Say CL 50) It has some funny move speed (perfect fly 1000 feet) and some decent (Ex) detection abilities. Something via trueseeing/blindsight, etc.

On top of it all: disintegration, to deal with those pesky force spells.

So now you have here a creature that is immune to weapon/force dmg (cannot be killed by say, a mountain falling on it for 24.000 hp dmg), is untouchable by spells (permanent disjunction pwns them all), untouchable by chaingating solars - they just disappear at the edge of disjunction field.

To top it off, give this swarm an ability to track any creature (some epic-penetrates mindblank scrying) and an ability to teleport itself even into Forbiddance-infested plane.

If you want to be real nasty, raise that Distraction DC to, say 220.

[DoctorGlock]

Epic encounters should really downplay combat, especially since epic combat is ridiculously long and arduous (between action abuse and counters and contingencies I've seen single rounds last an hour). One combat/session or every two sessions maximum. There is some severe power discrepancy in the party. Your wizard can do everything, the necromancer can do a fair amount, the ranger, unless he is a sword of the arcane order wildshape mystic ranger with ACF chaining is going to be hurting. The dragon shaman even more.

Do you have a plot? What does the encounter lend to the story? How does it advance the game? This is epic, does the encounter provoke awe or wonder, does it stir the imagination? Big stats do not do that, and the poster above me talking about a ball of flying DM fiat will just tick your players off.

Tips: Make it weird, out of the normal, make them ask why or how
Go for scale, it should be vast, huge, bordering the impossible
Subvert expectations

Epic is hard to plan and we need a clear idea of what you want before we can help.

Edit: I'll throw out an encounter I was brewing for my game. An entity that does not exist in the normal sense is more difficult to kill than the flying fiat, and if they find a way, far more rewarding, so without further ado, "it that walks behind the shadows" (i need a better name)
ITWBTS exists in the details. Whenever a pattern catches the eye or you see a shape in the clouds, there is ITWBS. Anywhere there are details, it manifests. The weave of the mages robe, the pits on the metal of the fighter's sword, the lumps in a bowl of potatoes. But it is not the random details or the interpretation thereof. ITWBTS is melevolent and intelligent. When you see the shape of teeth bared in the details, it is coming, you look again, the image gone, searching and you see it again... but now it is closer. It has your scent and it is coming for you... you run, throwing down whatever so saw it in, fleeing far... you stop to rest by a stream... and in the pattern of the rocks you see it, even closer, malice in its eyes...

Finding a way to escape this thing is probably alot more fun and requires more creative solutions than "drop the sun on it"

[croaker]

alright thanks for advice

but yes this campaign is going to start in month or two and im basing it around something i found in mm5 i believe i saw the mindflayers of thoon and the idea just seemed great so the main antagonist shall be a sect of mindflayers called the "plains walkers" that while out searching for knowledge found thoon, but i want them to be a mystery till the right moment

so its starts as rumors of unusual activity in northern continent and a couple raids of drow elves coming from said underdark then when they go and investigate they find that the drow elves arent raiding and are being pushed out by the tide of underdark creatures lucky enough to not be killed or controlled by said "planes walkers" and they get this info through either scrying or
such they have plenty of ways to go about this then they go into underdark to discover whats going down like any curious adventurer and i have mapped out first couple small encounters that are either solved with a fireball or roleplaying just to progress story and i was going to do a couple puzzles made to stop the less experienced parties from getting father into mind flayers domain.

i have the first couple encounters drawn out of normal mindflayers that are holed up in abandoned drow compound and a cult of drow goblin kobold and some hook horrors being controlled by thoon

right now im wondering on how to introduce the "plains walkers" and how i could make it a challenge without leaving it all to the spell casters

also ive been looking for a way to kill a god since i want the climax of this campaign to be you stopping the alien god thoon from tearing into this plane of existence so far answers were
1 make characters gods
2 make it so the enemy isnt a god(item, kill all followers)
3 get another god that is stronger to beat the life out of said god

im personally leaning towards number 2 making them search for parts of epic creatures, artifacts and such that when combined can morally wound a god

and if i missed anything just say it

ps

i dont really like stealing names from other things so could anyone think of better name for the "planes walkers"

p.ps

and by encounter i dont mean fighting it could be hey i found a hermit or a cool maze that leads to awesome treasure

[Kol Korran]

i'm really no expert on such high level games, but lets see...

such they have plenty of ways to go about this then they go into underdark to discover whats going down like any curious adventurer and i have mapped out first couple small encounters that are either solved with a fireball or roleplaying just to progress story and i was going to do a couple puzzles made to stop the less experienced parties from getting father into mind flayers domain.
level 20 characters have so many powerful spells and resources at their disposal they will probably find out what's happening with their spells alone, and get into the center of things with their spells (greater teleportation for once) or really really close.

true, i have no idea what these "mind flayers of Thoon" are capable of, but just "walking to the place" is no longer what i'd expect of such high level characters to do. also... encounters that can be solved by a few blasty spells are a waste of people's time (unless their purpose are either humor or "look how awesome the PCs are!")


i have the first couple encounters drawn out of normal mindflayers that are holed up in abandoned drow compound and a cult of drow goblin kobold and some hook horrors being controlled by thoon
a mind flayer is CR 8, 16 mindflayers are CR 16, the party won't even scratch their heads (CR 20 is supposed to be easy). you need stronger flayers, some major mooks (which the PCs will still wipe the floor with), some serious caster level for the flayers, or some "special effects" given to the m by Thoon.

a worthy encounter might be some aberrations from Lords of madness, especially the Elder Brain (CR 25) that can be a boos monster for this part.


also ive been looking for a way to kill a god since i want the climax of this campaign to be you stopping the alien god thoon from tearing into this plane of existence so far answers were
1 make characters gods
2 make it so the enemy isnt a god(item, kill all followers)
3 get another god that is stronger to beat the life out of said god

im personally leaning towards number 2 making them search for parts of epic creatures, artifacts and such that when combined can morally wound a god
1- it's a cool idea, but will probably need a campaign in itself.
2- the McGuffin solution... it's a possibility, but at these levels you need to think of a reason why the PCs can do it, and not any of he other gods or entities.

also, as DoctorGlock have mentioned- these kind of games need something a bit more complex, more awe inspiring, more "metaphor as reality" kid of ideas other than "assemble item X from ingredients Z, Y and M" Epic adventures should feel different in essence than lower level adventures. they are not the same adventures with tougher monsters.

3- it's very very anticlimactic.

and if i missed anything just say it


ps

i dont really like stealing names from other things so could anyone think of better name for the "planes walkers"
"the reveal"? "the lost mystery"? "those who walk?"

[croaker]

well im going for a hint of .... realism dont think this is the right word for this but anyhow i dont want them to be thinking that now that they are level 20 that all of the world bursts with things of epical proportions so im building it up.
i was thinking that mabey within a certain distance from the Thoon
followers congregate cant be teleported in and out of except by those with certain items. to prevent the whole scrying thing or clerical version of the spell i would assume that most of the important info would be safegaurded by spells of equal or higher level and im not worried about them teleporting around in the underdark since in my campaign the only people with accurate descriptions of areas or maps reliable enough are
1 the drow- who im just going to take a guess that they are going to probably not get on friendly terms with

2 mindflayers thoon and non-thoon- they are going to be main enemy

as for the surviving group im going with the theme that the survivors were not the run of the mill mindflayers but the elite and they're bodyguards im planning on making the Thoon mindflayers really focused on being clerics and wizards.

ive also made a sample survivor grunt CR14 lvl 5 occult slayers with some ithilid savant and i would probably make the boss of these elite guard with max lvl of ithilid savant with a ultharid from lords of madness as their leader with levels of sorc or wizard (leaning toward wizard since stonger bonus to int than cha)


but yeah the first 2-3 sessions are for roleplaying purposes then when they get enough info from scouting around the underdark i took another look and im probably not going to use the base creatures i will use templates and levels so should escalate in challange.

so yeah they cant just teleport around without knowing an area and cant scry say "some room farther underground" but if they know how to play dnd at all they should be able to attain maps or descriptions from scry so it will all work out well.

but thanks for poking holes in my plans makes the campaign better :smallsmile:
so how would you go about the whole getting item able to at least stop a god if not kill them?

and yeah "those who walk the planes" has a nice ring

[croaker]

Sorry for those who have to read this i just read through my post above, and noticed its grammar was horrible and thought i had to seriously apologize. (and prove to myself i could write proper sentence structure if i wanted to.) so yeah thank you and please continue to help my little campaign work out the kinks.