Good adventures for players level 12+

[Grunker]

Hi everyone, new dude here. I would like suggestions for the next adventure I'm going to run with my current group. Starting levels for characters can be anywhere from 12-16, but preferably not lower or higher than that. We are playing 3.5.

I'd much prefer long adventures/megaadventures that span at least a few levels. The more opportunity for roleplaying the better.

Thanks in advance :)

[Seatbelt]

Look in the Elder Evils handbook. I loves me some Elder Evils for high level play.

[Emperor Tippy]

How much combat do you want? What is the party make up? How experienced are the players? How optimized are the characters? What kind of setting?

Killing a rogue Ice Assassin Wizard 20 could easily be an entire campaign.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Hi everyone, new dude here. I would like suggestions for the next adventure I'm going to run with my current group. Starting levels for characters can be anywhere from 12-16, but preferably not lower or higher than that.

I'd much prefer long adventures/megaadventures that span at least a few levels. The more opportunity for roleplaying the better.

Thanks in advance :)

I created an adventure module for a 13th-level party (Temple of the Beholder) that represented both my relative newness as a DM and my complete and total sadism. It combined a switch puzzle with eight puzzling dungeons, each themed around a specific school, with varying degrees of challenges. The ninth door led to a beholder who was jealously guarding a fake treasure trove. The real boss was the 15th-level Wizard/Incantatrix who crafted the temple with his own spells, who was prolonging his own life with Persisted Stone Body. The Wizard (who was also permanently Enlarged) was standing directly atop the actual treasure, which was a collection of precious gems and items that he had collected over his adventuring years.

I'm working on revising it for an E6 game (and so as to make it not homicidal, because the thing was seriously evil), but if you'd like, I can post the gist of it for you.

[Fyermind]

By level 12 feel like characters are basically gods. They can do just about everything they put their minds to and nothing is too challenging if they can take their time about dealing with it.

So
Never
Give
Them
Time

Early levels basically demand a lot of downtime to recover during an adventure because spells run out and the little puny level 1 wizard can only shoot crossbow bolts. Aww isn't he cute? By level 12 healing to full health should take less than an hour and deplete none of the parties resources in any serious manner.

Now the game needs to be fast paced. A TV show titled 24 took a whole season to go through a single day of action. Your spellcasters will kill you if you try this on them, but go for something where time is against the players in a serious way.

Build-up out of the way here is my adventure premise:
Diseases spread very quickly once they reach a critical mass. Lycanthropy is a disease in the worst sense. It doesn't kill off it's victims, but it corrupts their way of life (changing alignment), and for three days a month turns them into terrible beasts. If lycanthropy of a serious and evil type broke out in a city that would be the end of all good in the city. What if it started from the very people supposed to protect the city?

The style of lycanthropy I chose? I started with a giant crocodile and applied the dungeonbred template (dungeonscape) to make it large then since there is now WotC dire croc, I went ahead and applied the horrid template (Ebberon campaign setting). Now it can be used for lycanthropy on medium creatures. A basic human commoner afflicted with this version of lycanthropy is roughly a CR 5.

This means that simply killing off the afflicted will be no problem, unless they have special skills themselves. The PCs are not the first heros to try to stop this. The metropolis' elite guards (reasonably well built melee soldiers seven levels below the PCs or so) thought they had wiped out a nest, but many of them were bit. Now not only are the elite guards inflicted, they have spread it to many of the other guards as well.

The Sewer workers guild, like the guards, are a large portion afflicted were crocs by now but unlike the guard they are used to criminal enterprise and acting beneath the law so become were crocs has only made them better at what they have always done: kept the sewers functioning, but gross and dangerous enough to keep their guild in business while running the best smuggling and assassination business in town.

A powerful druid (natural were croc) several levels above the PCs set the whole thing in motion and has been orchestrating it's progression behind the scenes.

It is now a week before the full moon and the players do something to stress out a guard. He flips out and turns into a croc and goes on a rampage. No big deal the players are way stronger than he is... as the shouts ring out, the call is made for more guards...

The bosses will be the Druid (obviously), the druid's bruiser, a very tough barbarian, the head of the elite guard, and the head of the sewer worker's guild (swordsage near the PCs level), one of the first to be afflicted he knows the underground very well and has a lot of experience dealing with monsters that live in the sewers and try to make their homes there.

Other interesting encounters will include the ramifications of the wholesale slaughter of the cities law enforcement, the (innocent) higher ups who don't believe the PCs (consider making shifted were crocs unshift when they die) and criminals who decide now is a great time to take advantage of the lapse in enforcement.

If you use this (in whole or in part) I'd love to hear how it turns out. I might use a dumbed down version (level 6 or 8) for a campaign I'm thinking of running soon.

[Grunker]

@Fyermind: I've been gamemastering for roughly 15 years, so I'm pretty well-versed in running just about any campaign for any level. The pre-written stuff is new, though (only been using them for the last two years), which is why I'm looking for pre-written adventures, not just campaign ideas. My campaign is set up already, with plenty of context and intrigue to go around :)


How much combat do you want?

It doesn't matter too much - I can cut encounters if there are too many or add some if there are too few. What's most important is the quality of the adventure.


What is the party make up?

Complicated. Short story? Archivist front-line fighter, breath weapon user, good-aligned spy/assassin, Mulhorandi holy warrior, Mulhorandi curator-type cleric, and a paladin of Helm.


How experienced are the players?

Except for one they've played tabletop for more than 8 years, and most have played D&D for just as long.


How optimized are the characters?

Extremely without being plain broken, but this is no issue. I can tweak encounters.


What kind of setting?

Again, the setting of the adventure doesn't matter too much - the quality is more important. We're playing in FR anno 1372DR in Mulhorand. So far we've played The Banewarrens and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits within this setting.


Killing a rogue Ice Assassin Wizard 20 could easily be an entire campaign.

Indeed. But so far they've taken their characters from level 6 to level 10-12 in a mix of roleplaying depth in a campaign/intrigue created by me and pre-written adventures. This has created a good gameflow of personal experiences created by me without being too taxing on my free time because of the pre-written stuff :)

So we're back at: A quality adventure is what I need, starting level 12-16. If I would add anything to that it would that it's probably easiest for me if it's written for six or more characters.

[Malachei]

There's a few Pathfinder modules you might want to take a look at, particularly The Witchwar Legacy (level 17). Of course, Dungeon had high-level modules, as well. I don't know of a campaign (i.e. series) that starts this level.

City of the Spider Queen is 10-18, so it might work, but your players may find it too much of the same if you're coming from the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits.