Challenging OP Epic Level Characters? (My players - keep out!)

[LemonSkye]

Before I begin, I just want to state that I'm well aware the problem is completely my fault--I was way, way too lenient with my players for far too long. I let a lot of stuff slide that I shouldn't have, but the important thing is, I've learned from my mistakes, and am more than ready to try and get my game back on track.

Unfortunately, I don't really know where to start. :smalleek:

I'm running an Epic campaign (the players are 22nd level right now, game started at 15th and was always intended to go Epic) for a party of 4: a Human Wizard/Sandshaper/War Weaver; an Elan Psion/Metamind/Archpsion; A Tibbit (catwere) Rogue/Void Incarnate, and a Vril/Half-Minotaur/Half-Ogre Barbarian/Warhulk/Hulking Hurler (that last one should give you an idea of the kind of shenanigans I'm dealing with here).

On top of all this, the party has an entourage of cohorts, dragons, and a number of former enemies that were captured and, through use of magic and psionics, essentially brainwashed into working for the party. This number increases with just about every single combat, because my players appear to be under the assumption that we're playing Pokemon or something. :smallannoyed:

The end result is that I'm having an increasingly difficult time giving them an appropriate challenge. They either kill whatever I throw at them in 2 hits, capture and brainwash for later use, or flee the scene if they can't do either of the above. I've already had a talk with the group about the ever-expanding entourage, and they've agreed to essentially leave the sidekicks behind from here on out, which solves the problem of sheer numbers. We've also been operating on a "you level when I say you level" system for a while, until I can get the power creep under control.

I'm at wits' end for what else to do to save this game, however. They're starting to get into the meat of the plot, so I'd rather not have them start over from scratch at a lower level. I'm basically looking for general ideas on course correction, and tips from DMs with experience running these kinds of high-powered campaigns. (BTW, this is all running up to a war with the gods--and believe me, they have taken notice of the characters :smallamused:).

Also, what in-game justifications can I use to stop the party from just capturing and brainwashing every enemy they come across?

[W3bDragon]

I'm sure there are others more experienced in epic games than I that can comment on how best to handle an OP group of epic level characters. That said, I know what I would do if I was in your shoes...

I know you said you didn't want to start over from scratch, but, truly, that is the only real fix. Anything else you do will continue to be an arms race, and an epic level arms race usually means that either they stomp all over your baddies, or your baddies destroy them in 2 rounds. Rocket tag and all.

As such, I would recommend that you park their characters and play new ones, planning to go back to the old ones at the campaign climax. A few options are:

* Having a greater deity, whose plans are being threatened by the PCs, trap them in a demi plane prison made specifically for them. They get stuck there (by the power of plot if need be) and they need to be released before time runs out on their quest. They manage to reach out with magic or psionics and send a blind message across the planes. "Free Us! We're You're Only Hope!" A group of low level characters receive this message and decide to act on it.

* Have them ascend to demi-god status, which grants them even more power, but binds them by the rule of the gods. As such, they can no longer interfere directly in the affairs of the prime material (or whatever). As such, they each choose a successor to continue their quest based on who would be the most faithful and steadfast. (This happens to be a bunch of low level characters.)


That way, you don't have to stop your storyline. The plot continues. Their epic characters remain an integral part of the story and eventually they can play them again once the campaign has reached its epic war of the gods ending. Until then, they play a group of low level (think 1st-3rd) agents of their old characters who try to further their goals or attempt a plane spanning quest to free them from their prison.

Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck!

[Arcanist]

In my experience, when DM'ing for an Epic game you're not supposed to target the PCs because the PCs are too powerful to actually be targeted. Instead, target the entire world. Throw Gods, Demon Lords, Demiliches, Armies of Tarrasque, a Legion of Invulnerable Soldiers lead by a Cabal of Epic Mindflayers...

When in Epic, I cannot stress this enough if you as the DM are not playing smart with your encounters or attackers you are only hurting yourself since the PCs will either:

1) Kill it and Animate it as a super zombie
2) Brainwash it into being their slave
3) Planeshift it into the Positive Energy Planes with a contingent Dimensional Anchor casted on them to prevent them from leaving.
4) Anything else I'm not listing because... Casters.

Feel free to kill a PC, these guys have Wish, Miracle, True Resurrection and all that good stuff. Hell, if one PC has Epic Spellcasting that is a good enough excuse to go all out.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

When facing Epic characters, you need sufficiently epic creatures to challenge them and ALL the shenanigans they've pulled off, not just their standard LA.

A demon lord or evil demigod or abomination should do as a challenge. Specifically;


Lady Vorpal . CR 39ish (optimized)
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb320/prodigyduck/Marilith.jpg

CE Large outsider (chaotic, demon, evil, atrocity), Fighter 18, Antipaladin 2
Init +10; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, true seeing; Perception +68
Aura insanity (100 ft, will DC 48), unholy aura
DEFENSE
AC 66, touch 34, flat-footed 56 (+13 deflection, +10 Dex, +32 natural, –1 size, +2 profane)
hp 1426 (46d10+966)
Fort +64, Ref +46, Will +55
DR 50/-; Fast Healing 30, Regeneration 10/epic+holy+axiomatic OR good/law spells, Immune electricity/fire/poison/acid/cold/ability damage/ability drain/energy drain/stunning/mind affecting; SR 70
OFFENSE
Speed 40 ft
Melee Six Tongues of Torment, each at +81/+81/+76/+71/+66 touch, 2d8+39 slashing + 1 constitution damage +1 spell resistance damage +Insanity DC 55 +Vorpal (17-20, 3x)
Lady Vorpal will almost always Power Attack, reducing attack by 11 and increasing damage by 22.
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 41st)
Constant—true seeing, unholy aura
At will—dominate monster, greater dispel magic, greater teleport (self plus 50 lbs. of objects only), power word stun, telekinesis, blasphemy, fire storm, implosion, summon (level 9, any 1 CR 19 or lower demon 100%)
At will—via Ravage—align weapon, thanatopic enervation, greater heroism, divine favor, fly
6/day—via Ravage—Wish, Miracle
At will—via Domain— Break, Scorching Ray, Fireball, Wall of Fire, Summon Monster V (evil only), Summon Monster VI (evil only), Finger of Death, Fire Storm, Gate (evil only)
STATISTICS
Str 50, Dex 30, Con 50, Int 27, Wis 29, Cha 36
BAB +46; CMB +66 (+80 grab); CMD 101
Feats Iron Will, Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, Toughness, Deflect Arrows, Improved Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Mobility, Combat Reflexes, Improved Grab, Improved Sunder
Fighter Feats Exotic Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Specialization, Power Attack, Multiweapon Fighting, Improved Multiweapon Fighting, Greater Multiweapon Fighting, Off-hand Slash, Improved Critical
Epic Feats Damage Reduction 10x, Legendary Wrestler, Autoquicken SLA (greater teleport)
Fighter Epic Feats Epic Weapon Focus, Epic Weapon Specialization, Perfect Multiweapon Fighting, Exceptional Deflection, Infinite Deflection, Armed Deflection, Epic Prowess 2x
Skills lots :smalltongue:
Languages all; telepathy 100 ft.
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Racial: Vorpal Strike (all slashing weapons/attacks)
Class: Aura of Evil, Armor Training +8, Weapon Training +8, Bravery +12, Armor Mastery, Weapon Mastery, Unholy Grace +13, Smite Good 1/day
Warps: Lose wings/feet/entangle/flaming body/whip mastery/death throes, gain marilith extra hands and tail.
Ravages: Virtual Class (cosmic, fighter 18), Regeneration (cosmic, 10/epic+holy+axiomatic OR good/law spells), Improved Damage Reduction (cosmic, +20), Fast Healing (cosmic, 30), Spell-Like Abilities (cosmic), Immunities (vile: ability/energy drain and mind-affecting, abhorrent: ability damage/polymorph/petrification, common: stunning)
SDAs: Cosmic Spell Resistance, Invulnerable*, Chaos Blows*
The Power Cosmic: Rank 2. Use all senses up to 2 miles away. Use sight/hearing with -1 perception per 2 miles. Remote Sense 1 location, Awareness of the Name, Awareness of Domain, Divine Immunity (ability damage/ability drain/energy drain/mind affecting overcome with rank check), Armageddon Domain.

Invulnerable [Cs] As per Divine Dodge except that Lady Vorpal has 52% chance to be outright invulnerable to each attack and effect rather that blinking out of reality to dodge them.

Chaos Blows [Cs] As per Irresistible Blows, Lady Vorpal's melee attacks are touch attacks. Instead of nauseating enemies, they inflict an equal duration Insanity, though enemies such affected never attack Lady Vorpal. The DC is still 10 + 1/2 HD + CON modifier + Rank (fort DC 55)

The Angel's Lament [Artifact] This plate armor emits a soft, sickly yellow light and is translucent. Fitting like a second skin, it was crafted personally by Lady Vorpal from the skin and bone of slain angels. It mechanically functions as an adamantine +10, ghost ward, heavy fortification celestial full plate with the great reflection ability. Additionally, it protects the wearer as if by both versions of Fire Shield at once (CL 41). If the attacker is Lawful or Good, the protections deal Anarchic or Unholy damage respectively rather than their normal types.
When Lady Vorpal wears this armor, her AC increases by 19 (to 85) and her DR increases by 8 (to 58/-) due both to the armor itself and her mastery of armored combat.

The Six Tongues of Torment [Artifact] Each one of these six large silver bastard swords functions as a +1 wounding negating sword of speed. In addition, a wielder may command each sword to change in one of the following ways as a free action:
Warp Form: the sword changes to a material of the wielder's choice.
Warp Essence: the sword strikes as a weapon of a specific non-neutral alignment (i.e. chaotic evil, lawful evil, chaotic good or lawful good)
Warped Grief: the sword becomes a sword of grief, delivering 2d4 negative levels per hit.
Each sword may only be changed in one of the above ways, though different swords can be changed in different ways. Changes remain until the wielder picks a new warp, sheathes or stops wielding the weapon.


What we have here is a Demon Lady of demigoddess status; 46 HD/levels plus 2 Divine Ranks. She is built as an extremely tough, extremely dangerous Epic melee creature to actually challenge a 39th level party.

Tactics:

She can see further than any PC (cosmic awareness) and thus can attack first.
She starts annihilating the PCs' minions while ignoring their attacks to make a point.
Being a deity, she can prevent Gates from being opened automatically and is not subject to dispels and antimagic.
She uses her Insanity aura offensively by moving around and turning the PCs' minions (or the PCs themselves) insane.
Due to her feats, she can bat arrows, rays, orbs, boulders, thrown weapons, siege weapons, meteor swarms and any other ranged or ranged touch attacks out of the sky, forcing PCs to engage her in melee and preventing Arcane/Divine Reach shenanigans.
She has sufficient Spell Resistance to annoy even epic mages.
If she is losing, she can fire off a Wish or Miracle to fully heal up to 12 times a day.
If she is losing, she can teleport away and come back; the PCs can't dimensionally anchor her because she can bat dimensional anchors aside (they're rays).
She has 30 attacks per round that will hit. Each of them is Vorpal.
She can employ Gate to open it in the PCs' vicinity. Being unique creatures, the PCs aren't forced to come through and serve... but she can thus pinpoint their location and move there herself.

[jokeaccount]

The problem with PCs that optimized is that even lady Vorpal might not survive the hulking hurler's 1500 dpr. As W3bdragon pointed out it will become a stupid game of who plays first. If the party rolls good initiative or succeed in divination then they will roflstomp the encounter no matter what (too much burst damage). Of the enemy plays first the party will get stomped. The problem with that is inflation of optimized characters (they achieve 5000 damage but still have only 250 hp themselves -_-). You could possible throw at them stupid custom encounters with enemies that have 50000 health but for some random reason only deal 50 dpr.

Solutions for tagging out those characters have been given. If you are impartial to keep going with them then since you're at epic levels you could just customize your way through with your own epic enemies:

UberHandOfGod:
-Combination of classes that give Divine Grace 2-3 times. (Add feats that allow charisma to replace the other save modifiers) -> 50 on all saves
-Divine granted ability for 90% damage reduction (instead of flat amount).
-Has divine template that grants him hand picked SLAs that challenge your party with divine powered DCs.
-Obviously has some custom artifact weapon (that the PCs won't get even if they win)
-Even his mount is a custom pegasus with his own SLAs and shizzle
-His goal is to show them who's boss here.


The fact is, when you tread into epic levels everyone has potential for everything and you can't just stay undercover for long. If you start gaining power people will notice. You don't need to reach level 40 for them to try and oppose you. Preemption is best and the gods will try to stop them now that they're "neophytes"

[Belial_the_Leveler]

The Hulking Hurler can't do any damage at all due to the infinite exceptional armed deflection feats; Lady Vorpal can deflect anything he throws at her with a reflex save she can't fail. :smallamused:
In Epic, it is possible to defend against the Rocket Tag usual at lower levels. The deflection feat chain takes care of thrown/falling damage and metamagicked orb/ray shenanigans. Immunities can be found via spells, items or, in this example case, racial and template abilities. Spell Resistance and Armor can be increased sufficiently -via feats, items or templates- to make it again hard to hurt enemies.


Specifically, Lady Vorpal has been built to endure at least 5 rounds of her own attacks without healing, up to 48 rounds of her own attacks with healing, and to negate any and all shenanigans short of infinite loops.
This is pretty much a textbook example of a credible epic threat; her abilities negate the shenanigans slowly accumulating at higher levels so that the PCs have to rely on normal attacks combined with good tactics and enough resource-spending to get an attrition victory if they can.


This doesn't mean there isn't a cheesy tactic or two that could still work - I may not have thought of everything - but against your typical "overpowered" PCs that rely on said shenanigans, she should level the playing field (by leveling them).

[Mishkov]

The war hulk should be easy to deal with if you limit the amount of stuff he can throw. Sure, he can chuck a thousand ton boulder at someone's head but he has to find that mountain first. (Also it's mundane...)

That being said, anything the players introduce into the campaign is completely legitimate for you to throw back at them. Have them be ambushed by a couple of hurlers and wizards who dominate a party member (and thus all the cohorts).

As for the cohorts, that's something I'd start to houserule the number that can follow around (or area damage) because the bookkeeping gets out of hand.

Also at this level, especially with the gods involved, there should be a lot of planar travel. Different planes have different rules on a lot mechanics that can throw them for a loop or change the mechanics for homebrewed planes of existence.

I also second the opinion that if PC death isn't happening on a somewhat regular basis, you need to take the training wheels off. Dungeons and ambushes should be designed to kill them. NPCs and definitely gods should know their weaknesses and target it.

[AmberVael]

Epic games, and high power games in general, require a somewhat different mechanical approach than your standard game. For one, it must be understood that there is extreme potential for divergence in power and capability- one epic level party may be little different from their non-epic counterparts, while another may have progressed to such a state that numerical scores are ceasing to have any value or relevance whatsoever.

It is more important than ever, then, to fully grasp what the players are capable of, what their weaknesses and strengths are- both in terms of the characters they play and what the players themselves are willing to do with those mechanics they have. You can't trust level and CR to do the job of making adequate challenges for you- challenges must be tailored specifically to the group.


They either kill whatever I throw at them in 2 hits, capture and brainwash for later use, or flee the scene if they can't do either of the above.
This is something common I see at these levels. By the time you've hit epic, Save or Die effects, massive damage capabilities, and similar things have all become common. It is exceptionally easy for combat to become a game of rocket tag, and thus to end quickly and violently.

Worse still is that most of the methods used to prevent such things are hard counters and immunities that don't make things harder so much as just winnow down methods of attack. At worst, these things make an enemy nearly unassailable rather than difficult to defeat- yet they still may have openings that allow them to be taken down in a single hit.

In order for enemies to remain competitive, a DM needs to give them ways to counter and block powerful assaults in general rather than passively negate specific attacks. Yet, there still needs to be a way to reliably defeat the character in the end.

First, my advice is to aim for ablative defenses. Don't give something immunity- give it an ability that can block something, but that will eventually run out. Stuff like temporary hit points, items with limited charges that can provide immunities or status removal (third eye of clarity, for example), certain spells (wings of cover), and so on. Don't give an enemy a way to protect themselves forever, but do give them a way to protect themselves for a time. What is more, you really need to communicate to the players that the enemy is being worn down, in order to convey a sense of progress.
This isn't to say you should never have immunities (sometimes you do need to use them, as well), it's just that something should always have reasonably wide openings in their defenses to allow for a number of ways to fight against them.

Second, at this level enemies generally need reactive capabilities. It's way easier to deal with all of the absurd things an epic party can throw at you when you have access to things such as celerity, synchronicity, anticipatory strike, counter maneuvers, immediate action spells/powers, etc. By making defense something that can be controlled rather than something passive, an enemy has a great many more options, and thus has an easier time surviving. If done well, this also makes combat a lot more interesting and dynamic. Such things can escalate quickly though, so I'd use them with care.

Third, I strongly recommend an enemy that either has action shenanigans (that is, is capable of taking notably more than the one standard action, one move action turn), or multiple enemies. Single enemies have a way of getting trounced swiftly in any game, let alone high power ones, due to their severe action disadvantage. Multiple enemies also makes it harder to win in one go, since there is more than one target to focus on. One lucky hit won't end a fight against more than one enemy.


As a side note, I would strongly discourage use of monsters like the previously posted 'Lady Vorpal.' That's pretty much the antithesis of what you should be using: Immunities to everything, pointlessly absurd numbers, massive rocket tag powers... don't do stuff like that. It makes for a very frustrating and irritating type of combat... while the monster still lacks a way to truly be a challenge to an optimized and clever party.

[Emperor Tippy]

First, remember the fun that is non-associated class levels.
Second, how are you handling epic spell casting.
Third, play smart.

A personal favorite of mine is to take a Shadesteel Golem with Rudimentary Intelligence created by a CL 40 or so wizard. Follow that up with +5 tomes for all six stats. Now give it 19 Factotum levels and a level of Mindbender. It has 18 HD and a CR of 11. Those 19 Factotum levels bring it's CR to 21 and the level of Mind Bender brings it to 21.5. Round it off with a level of Swordsage.

Now it's 39 HD means that it qualifies for epic feats. If it takes Improved Spell Capacity three times then it get's to use 9th level spells multiple times per day.

You also want to grab Exceptional and Infinite Deflection to render you immune to virtually all ranged attacks. Then you want to grab Permanent Emanation: Widened Suppressing Field (Complete Mage) for each school of magic, including Universal (you do want to shut down Wish). You also want to grab Permanent Emanation: Temporal Repair to shut down Celerity, Time Stop, and other time manipulation shenanigans.

Now you want a Weirdstone to shut down teleportation in a six mile radius.

Now you get your 39 Craft Contingent Spells. Be sure to include a Craft Contingent Wish to remove the golem from the battlefield in the event that he should loose.

CR 23 is perfectly reasonable, even if the enemy is immune to virtually everything but short range melee attacks (and with magic items and feats you can make those pretty worthless as well), can selectively shut down magic in the area, shuts down all means of escape, shuts down Celerity, shuts down Time Stop, and can kill it's enemies in one hit.

[Krobar]

I have always found, both as a player and a DM, the most challenging encounters / battles tend to be with another adventuring party of similar level and skill. This holds true from level 1 through level 100 or higher. They know all the tricks, have all the buffs and immunities, all the skills, everything.

My players fear other adventurers more than they fear Orcus himself.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

That would depend on the Orcus. For example;
http://horrorsoftheabyss.wikidot.com/orcus-demon-prince-of-the-undead


Kudos to Dicefreaks for building a planar lord that makes sense - ruling a practically infinite plane of chaotic evil soul-eating monstrosities probably requires being able to beat up such monstrosities. (which most Orcus iterations elsewhere simply can't do)

[Sylthia]

For one, you could DM fiat the epic level characters away from their numerous cohorts and mind-slaves. I'm not sure how slow combat runs for you, but from my experience in similar situations, it takes forever.

Since they are epic, you could say the gods have taken an interest in their activity and they are whisked away to another plane.

[ikosaeder]

Throw some challenges, they do not expect and they are not prepared for.
1.) Something underwater is nice. They cannot provide each and every follower with means to dive for a prolonged period of time. So they have to leave some/most of them behind. Combat under water is different. Hurling large objects will not help.
Magic, Sight everything is more complicated than on solid land.
Your party cannot (easily) capture water creatures to enlarge their army. And a specialized water creature will have certain advantages against land creatures.
2.) A fight between two former enemies. They might be loyal to the party but my have old things the want to settle. To dragons fighting will lead to a lot of collateral damage on the lower level cohorts.

2 would have most affect while players are occupied with 1 ;-)

3.) Plane shifts should be quite common for epic characters. Some planes have different physics, e.g. lesser gravity or total darkness or extrem temperatures. Each of them would be quite easy for the characters to deal with but not for all their minions.

4.) Make an adventure or part of it, totally without combat. This is challenging for the Dm as well, but this will give the players a totally new perspective.

[charcoalninja]

A big thing I want to mention from my experience in epic is that a HUGE part of the fun for the PCs in such a game is that their characters ARE crazy powerful. They should feel like unstoppable world stomping asskickers because that's exactly what they are. So in my opinion, I wouldn't worry too much about the combative challenges being traditionally challenging because at epic nothing is. In 3.5 epic combat is very binary and as you're seeing, enemies seldom survive longer that 2-3 rounds before they're mindwiped into butlers.

So don't keep making crazy strong ubermobs for them to smash their heads against.

As epic characters they should be working to undermine people who are just as capable as them. As has been suggested, attack not them, but what is important to them. There should be plots that threaten to disrupt the world, that are multifacetted. That last point I can't stress enough.

Rather than having one big bad like lady vorpal (who seems to have arbitrary boosts and DR for no reason other than to try and make her matter) you have armies of millions attacking a wide variety of targets and the players have to try to contain the threat, locate the generals, actually GET to them to stop them, and find a way to permanently kill them.

Strange settings and planes of existence where things don't always work well, or the way they're supposed to can also bring some interesting challenges their way.

So my recomendation is to really build up a large sweeping threat that will cause a lot of change in the world, without focusing exclusively on if the PCs are physically threatened by the army/enemy. Because seriously lets say you make some big bad that TPKs them, or kills what, half of them. So what? they're back in a standard action from wish, or they reform in their clones or they were astrally projecting the whole time, the Psion's army of 6 mind seeded twins show up and nuke the problem, etc.

threat of life and limb isn't the big deal it used to be. Story fallout is what the characters stand to lose. Failure in epic isn't death like it is in heroic, failure in epic is the creation of suckworld.

EDIT: oh also, to embrace the minion thing, if they have some favourites that tthey send out to help solve problems you could always run adventures for a brief time where the players are playing the minions. Sort of a change of pace to mix it up, and to give them more of a sense of how crazy their real characters are and how big everything is.

[Bonzai]

I had the same exact problem the first time I DM'ed an Epic game. They started at lvl 1, and at the end were lvl 22. Usually our campaigns tend to burn out by 15th level, but in this case everyone was having fun, so we just kept on going. In the end, I ran out of story and the campaign ended organically. I tried to challenge my players through the whole campaign. Make them sweat a little every night, without directly meta gaming or directly gunning for the players. I think I did a fair job of this, as there were only 3 player deaths the entire campaign, and one of those was entirely preventable. However, as the game progressed, the sweet spot between being really tough and a potential total party wipe got smaller and smaller. By the time they hit epic, it felt like the only way to prevent the party from steam rolling an encounter, would be to throw something at them that could kill a few of them out right. That was a line I refused to cross as a DM, and I don't believe in being adversarial with the players. My job is to present a good story, and provide the players a forum to play in. Still, I felt like I was failing as a DM, by not providing a strong enough challenge. Long story short, the campaign finally came to an end, and after it was over I voiced my concerns to my players.

My players gave me some great advice, and that was to not worry about it. They were having FUN, which was more important than being challenged every night. Their characters were powerful, but they earned that power level by level. By not being adversarial, I was allowing their characters to do what they were designed to, and they were enjoying it. So here is my advice for you. If you can't make the combats tough, then at least make them interesting. Mix things up and add different elements to them. In the end, as long as the players are having fun, it doesn't matter.

Lol, but to show you what I was dealing with, here was my players party;

Elf Beguiler/Guild Mage/sandshaper/ Fate Spinner: She had all the rogue stuff handled. She also had very nice battle field control options. She could also out right dominate a threat, which she didn't do often, but when she did it could be devastating. So after a white Slaadi got dominated I had to be real careful what I threw at them, as it would only add to their power. However, her most problematic ability came from Fate Spinner. She was able to take luck out of the equation. If a party member failed a save, they got to re-roll. If an NPC made a save, they had to re-roll it. This provided a nice safety net for the party.

Human Psion/Wizard/Theurge: This player was the dedicated problem solver. Whatever the situation, he had an app for that. Between Psychic reformation and the amulet that lets you swap out spells, he had an insane selection of spells at his finger tips. He focused on countering situations that arose. Dampen power, defensive teleports, etc.. His worst ability though was the power that let him interrupt my turn as an immediate action. This power saved the party's collective bacon many times.

Elven Ranger/OoTBI/?: Can't remember his exact build, but he was an optimized archer who could also lower SR with successful hits with his bow. He wasn't to bad on his own, but he was buffed to insane levels by another player, with his arrows doing major fire damage, half being irresistible. He averaged over 300 damage a round, before crits. Not as impressive as your warhulk, but he could knock down most individual targets in a round or two or clear a board of lesser targets.

Spell Scale Warmage/Wild Mage/?: He was the other half of the Ranger combo. He wasn't too intimidating on his own, but the buffs he supplied the Archer made up for it. Other than that, he was a typical warmage, with half his fire damage being irresistible.

Unseelie Fey Dread Necromancer: My players pulled a fast one on me here. They asked me if Dragon Magazine material was allowed, and I responded with "No, but only because I don't have the material myself to review". So I was gifted a nice shiny new Dragon Compendium, and the character was introduced before I had time to digest what Unseelie Fey actually did. But I can't complain, I got a new book out of it, and the character wasn't out of line when held up against some of the other's in the party. This character had some very mean minions. She was also built as a pseudo tank, as she had a bunch of DR and great healing/regen ability. But her bread and butter combo was getting in some ones face, where unseelie fey would then drop their saves to abysmal levels, and then cast implode on them. She also had a contingency up to implode the first thing that struck her. She would save or die most things, and if they passed their save the beguiler could make them re-roll it. She also took care of any undead that the party might encounter.


And that was the party. It was a really tough nut to crack, as they had so many over lapping synergies and defenses. Offensively they were also tough, as they had many different sources of damage and ways to remove threats. So yeah, I know exactly where you are coming from.

[Vaz]

I've never understood Hulking Hurlers "throwing the earth at someone". They'd just end up doing a Handstand and throwing themselves backwards at a million miles an hour.

[Bonzai]

I've never understood Hulking Hurlers "throwing the earth at someone". They'd just end up doing a Handstand and throwing themselves backwards at a million miles an hour.

There are some monsters that can catch projectiles and throw them back at the thrower. Like a Rage Walker (MM3)for example. Just saying.... :smallamused:

As for the dominated cohorts. What happens if they enter an anti-magic zone, or some chain dispels target them? I imagine that they probably wouldn't be to happy with the party. Might even help whomever they are fighting against out of principle.

Normally I wouldn't suggest hard counters against players, but since you asked...

I did use these tricks on my players. Fortunately the Archer was able to survive a single shot thrown back at him (barely), and declined to fire any more that combat. The party took care of it, and that was that. I didn't try anything like that again, as it would have been deliberately trying to shut down a player. It made sense for the Rage Walker to be there, and the it was level appropriate so I went with it. As for the dominated minions, they were mostly fine with them getting killed off. Except for the White Slaadi, which they went out of their way to keep as he was valuable (they actually tracked him down on his home plane and re-dominated him, lol). And I was fine with that, as it added an extra challenge to the combat.

So an advanced Rage Walker with some epic living spell minions (including an epic dispel or two) could be an interesting encounter. :smallbiggrin:

[Belial_the_Leveler]

This is a campaign where the PCs face gods and abominations - that's why I posted the above demigoddess/abomination.



Generally speaking a god or abomination is immune to mind-affecting, energy drain, ability damage/drain, death effects, form-altering attacks, and if at least lesser gods, imprisonment and banishment. They might also have a given number of Domains and they can use the spells of their domains at will.
That's in addition to 40+ racial HD and/or class levels.
Finally, each god has cosmic awareness and the greater gods can even be aware of events weeks before they happen, plus a number of Divine Powers equivalent to epic spells which they can use multiple times a day (often at will).


When Chauntea makes a mile-high mountain appear around you and bury you or a mile-deep chasm appear under your feet or when she can cause an 18-mile-wide earthquake that lasts 18 hours as a standard action with Divine Earth Mastery, you'd better not annoy the lady.

When Nerull can look at you across the planes from where he sits on his throne of skulls, rips out your soul and eats it because he felt like it or when he immediately ressurrects the enemy you just killed with his Hand of Life and Death ability, there's an even better reason not to annoy him.

When Azuth knows each and every spell or magic ability you will cast in a fight 17 weeks before that fight even happens, and he knows all spells ever and can invent new spells of his liking as a free action, you can bet there are a bazillion ways things aren't going to go well for you.

[LemonSkye]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone! You've all given me quite a few good ideas. I'll try and detail each of my responses:

A couple of you have mentioned leaving the cohorts and such behind. This has already been discussed with my players, as mentioned in my original post, and they've agreed to it...mainly because combat was taking 4+ hours per round and everyone thought that it was getting ridiculous.

A lot of you are focusing on my Hulking Hurler/Warhulk as being the real thorn in my side. He's not. While he's certainly capable of dealing out tons and tons of damage, the person who's playing him isn't familiar enough with D&D to be able to really exploit the build (he also didn't build it himself; the players for the Wizard and the Psion made it for him). My biggest problem is the Wizard, who does have Epic Spellcasting, but so far has only used it to create a very weak version of Polymorph (due to that whole family of spells flat not existing in my game, mostly for story purposes). He's generally the one behind the "capture and brainwash" scheme (the Psion would rather just disintegrate everyone and be done with it), which is his answer to most any combat. The Rogue, for similar reasons as the Warhulk (and also because she tends to spend her time coming up with things like an Armored Warchicken Mount with a bunch of necklaces of fireballs), is almost completely a nonissue. In most of the combats, she ends up knocked out or in hiding--not to stab anyone, but just to get out of the combat. :smallannoyed:

General notes on how I've been handling combat so far: I learned very early on that single monsters/enemies just flat weren't going to cut it. What I've been doing for the last few combats has been sending waves after waves of enemies at them, without giving the spellcaster and the Psion a chance to recover fully. Since they're not gaining XP right now ("you level when I say you level"), the party isn't gaining levels upon levels for each wave, allowing me to kind of grind them down. They actually ended up running from the last major combat, mainly because I put the fear of god into the Wizard. Vecna, specifically.

The city that the wizard owns (don't ask), as well as most of the continent that it's on, was laid siege to by a vast army of undead and abominations while the party was held up elsewhere. By the time they returned, the city had completely fallen, and they fought to free it. The last wave of enemies that the party stuck around for was a clutch of 10 Infernals, which have the ability to become completely immune to a spell once it's been cast on them. The Rogue went and hid in the building below (all this was taking place on a rooftop), and came face-to-face with a one-eyed lich. The Wizard's player has a sort of reverence/total fear of Vecna, immediately took it to be the lich-god without any investigation whatsoever, and used his War Weaver abilities to teleport everyone as far away as he possibly could. One of Vecna's many secrets is actually a linchpin for the plot, but instead of investigating his background, the Psion and the Wizard have it in their heads that the most important thing right now is going to get the Sword of Kas (which gives absolutely no real benefit to fighting Vecna), despite my trying to steer them back on course. *headdesk*

There's a slightly more detailed account of what's been happening on the game's Obsidian Portal page (http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/crystalline-dreams/adventure-log) (blog format, so they're in reverse chronological order; and yes, those dates are accurate--my group rotates games, and people were burnt out on fantasy games for a while). Also, names/character builds: Khalaan/Wizard, Balthezar/Psion, Lunara/Rogue, Garah/Warhulk. There's also a little bit more information on the world itself, which leads me to my next point...

Important note on how the gods are being handled in this game:

Standard Greyhawk pantheon, but with a twist: those deities are not the first gods the world has had, and due to how they attained their power, as soon as the party defeats them (or enough of their agents), they begin to lose their divinity. The draconic gods are important exceptions to this rule, and the place that the party's in now is loaded with very powerful agents of Tiamat (though the party has yet to figure this out). The "old gods" (the pantheon I created for this game) aren't yet at full strength, and probably won't be for a while in-game.


I think that's everything I wanted to cover at the moment. Please keep your suggestions coming! :smallsmile:

[ikosaeder]

One of Vecna's many secrets is actually a linchpin for the plot, but instead of investigating his background, the Psion and the Wizard have it in their heads that the most important thing right now is going to get the Sword of Kas (which gives absolutely no real benefit to fighting Vecna), despite my trying to steer them back on course. *headdesk*

Well, let them have the sword together with some new strands of clues.

About the wizards city: It is normal for players to obtain property. Especially when the start having cohorts or followers. Typically around level 10 my players have a house in a city they frequently visit. With their increasing reputation they will also obtain aristocratical or clerical titles and politics and diplomacy get more important than combat.

[Skysaber]

Get an imp to flash the party with a Mirror of Opposition, then teleport with it away.

Say the imp is the familiar to a very powerful enemy wizard, so it has every excuse to be buffed to the nines, pop in, flash, and pop out before they have any chance to react.

The party then faces themselves in combat. Pull out all of the stops.

Of course they'll try to shut down the imp the second and all subsequent times. But an epic enemy wizard sending his familiar into danger isn't going to pull any stops on getting it out again, either.

"Ok, it appears and you pop Celerity. In response to that, it pops Celerity, and teleports out. Flashing you with the mirror was a free action. You follow? Ok, you land on a zero-magic plane" - the imp gets retrieved by its master via Gate, which is one of the very few ways to leave such a plane. But the gate appears at the bottom of a 50ft well that is only large enough to pass the imp.

Let them do that once or twice before you have the imp use a spyglass on the mirror to flash the party from a great distance. So the reflections are aware of the party before the party is, and can buff and get a surprise round.

Don't be afraid to kill players, or even TPK if they are not cautious. They have plenty of minions who can bring them back. Death at this level is an inconvenience, since they can return from it without penalty it's no more serious or long term than a Sleep spell is to first level guys.

And if they have an enemy, that enemy would be insane not to use some form of Divination to observe the party's every fight. So he'd have every rational excuse to prepare counters for their most often used abilities on the minions he sends forward.

Epic fights always go to the one who thinks furthest ahead.

[Krobar]

Get an imp to flash the party with a Mirror of Opposition, then teleport with it away.

Say the imp is the familiar to a very powerful enemy wizard, so it has every excuse to be buffed to the nines, pop in, flash, and pop out before they have any chance to react.

The party then faces themselves in combat. Pull out all of the stops.

Of course they'll try to shut down the imp the second and all subsequent times. But an epic enemy wizard sending his familiar into danger isn't going to pull any stops on getting it out again, either.

"Ok, it appears and you pop Celerity. In response to that, it pops Celerity, and teleports out. Flashing you with the mirror was a free action. You follow? Ok, you land on a zero-magic plane" - the imp gets retrieved by its master via Gate, which is one of the very few ways to leave such a plane. But the gate appears at the bottom of a 50ft well that is only large enough to pass the imp.

Let them do that once or twice before you have the imp use a spyglass on the mirror to flash the party from a great distance. So the reflections are aware of the party before the party is, and can buff and get a surprise round.

Don't be afraid to kill players, or even TPK if they are not cautious. They have plenty of minions who can bring them back. Death at this level is an inconvenience, since they can return from it without penalty it's no more serious or long term than a Sleep spell is to first level guys.

And if they have an enemy, that enemy would be insane not to use some form of Divination to observe the party's every fight. So he'd have every rational excuse to prepare counters for their most often used abilities on the minions he sends forward.

Epic fights always go to the one who thinks furthest ahead.

If they're epic someone will surely have Greater Anticipate Teleportation cast daily. Not to mention wishes for when they get REALLY ticked off at whoever SENT the imp. Not saying it won't work, but epic level adventurers will usually be able to deal with that type of shenanigan fairly easily.

[Skysaber]

If they're epic someone will surely have Greater Anticipate Teleportation cast daily. Not to mention wishes for when they get REALLY ticked off at whoever SENT the imp. Not saying it won't work, but epic level adventurers will usually be able to deal with that type of shenanigan fairly easily.

Greater Anticipate Teleport has a range. Mirrors do not. All it requires is line of sight and you've got a reflection.

Also Spellblade, for a measly +6,000gp on an item carried by the imp, takes any Wishes targeted on him and converts them over to his own use. Do the same for Miracle, then the lesser versions.

Throw on an Amulet of Second Chances. Imp pops in, they do something you did not expect that trumps him, amulet causes that round to restart over again, and he chooses not to pop in.

At least, not until his master has worked out a counter to the party's latest tactic.

And while we're on the subject, make your mirror with the restriction that it can only be used by imps. Or throw on two or three more such restrictions so it can only be used by imps who are familiars and serve whoever their enemy is, then give it straps on the back so he can use it as a shield.

An intelligent shield who insists that it only serves owners who are naked except for it (and maybe one or two items of jewelry, like that Amulet of Second Chances), hates the party, and has an Ego score of a bazillion and a half.

[Beldar]

I've done a number of very high-level campaigns & am currently running one now.
I enjoy them because:
A) the players get to try out many things they've only dreamed of trying (high level spells, items like Staff of the Magi etc).
2) you, as the DM, get to try out even more things you've only dreamed of, in the form of your monsters and badguys. It's fun to design an "overpowered" guy & then actually get to use him in combat against the players.

The only real drawback is that it takes a lot more work to DM a high-powered campaign.

The key is this: There is no such thing as "overpowered" in an absolute sense - all power is relative. A Tiger tank is overpowered relative to a Sherman tank, an even match for a Pershing tank & nothing more than a target for an Abrams tank. It's all relative.

So what you've described is your players stomping all over your badguys. That means your badguys aren't strong enough.
There are many ways to make them stronger (very many within the rules & far more when you remember that as DM, you can give yourself exceptions to the rules as needed).

One that I've been consistently surprised by is as basic as it gets - straight out of monster manual 1 (Chapter 4, beginning on page 290). Each monster has listed a range of HD that it can be "advanced" to. Chapter 4 tells you how. The real zinger here is on the last page of that chapter, where it says how many hit dice the monster gets for each extra CR (usually 3 or 4 hd per CR).

So, take for example the humble Assassin Vine: normally a CR3 at 4hd, its advancement says it can go all the way up to arbitrary sizes (33+) That's unusual - to have it uncapped, so lets pretend that it stops at 32 HD - the top end of a Gargantuan Assassin vine.
Chapter 4 says that Plants get 4HD per extra CR. So going to 32 HD gives us 28 more HD than before, which means 7 CR more than before.
We now have a CR10 assassin vine. Hes gone up 2 size categories, so he gets +16 str (and more, like a bunch of con & natural armor & loses some dex) to a str of 36. His base attack is as a cleric's, so 3/4 of his hd or 24.
He also gets 7 ability score increases (1 per 4 hd). If we put them all on str, his str is now 43.
His attack is now +38 to hit (16+24-2 for more size) and +24 to damage (+16 str *1.5 since it considers it a 2-handed attack).
That's pretty good for a CR10 :)

And for monsters generally, I use a "survival of the fittest" rule when I'm dm'ing. By that I mean the weakest monsters tend to die off faster, so the ones left for you to meet are the stronger ones. That means two things (the way I do it): They have 2/3 to 3/4 of max HP instead of 1/2, and I round up all odd ability stats. Do that or not as you please.

Also, I haven't found it specified either way, but I usually give monsters an attack progression. Meaning that even though he had only one attack at 4hd, when his attack bonus got to +6 I gave him a second strike at -5 from his base, Then again when he gets to +11 base attack & so on.

He would get Feats too, if he had an intelligence score (which can be done with Awaken Plant). Very interesting things can be done by spending the monsters feats wisely (and given that, as DM, you can allow yourself any feats from any books, some of which are fairly potent - Try Karmic Strike on some Monsters & see how that works :).

But wait, there's more.
He has an ability that requires a save. This is pure gold, since the save DC is calculated as: 10+ability bonus + HALF HD!!
Half his HD was paltry before, but now it is significant. His save-or-be-entangled is now DC27. Even epic level characters can fail that level of save more or less regularly. Now, while Entanglement is not a big deal, think of this same principle applied to a monster that has a real threat (like save or be turned to stone).

And, as a CR10, you can have several of these face the party. The equation the DMG gives is for every doubling of monsters, increase the CR by 2. So to face a level 20 party, you can have 32 CR10's, per the rules (obviously that is "overpowered" so you'd want to tone it down a bit - the point is a vast amount of power is allowable here by the strict rules in the basic Monster Manual).

Now, these are limited in their flexibility - they are good at hand-to-hand & have excellent reach (which increased as they went up in size, though I haven't found an official reference for how much, so I use a seat-of-the-pants doubling reach for every size category increase), but given these are hidden well so the party stumbles into them, you can have a great fight for the party. Especially since these are good at grappling and casters have real trouble casting while grappled.

This is just one example. It takes a while the first couple times, but after you get used to the monster advancement system, it takes maybe 10 minutes to advance a monster.
And given you are allowing the players all kinds of leeway, give yourself some too and feel free to advance monsters above the top HD caps the MM assigns. Doing that makes for some fun encounters, like the 26 HD cockatrice that recently came within an inch of Total Party Kill on my party of 20'th level characters. The cockatrice had some "chaff" mixed in to give it more time to work, but that turn-to-stone peck was almost irresistable.
By "Chaff" I mean throw in a couple normal monsters so the party has trouble guessing which is the augmented monster. If they can't guess which is the real threat, there is more time for that threat to work in. In this case, there was a Dire Boar & a Dire Bull (I just used stats for an elephant, since I couldn't find a Dire Bull), plus half a dozen Azers. All but the cockatrice were "stock" & the party wasted some really high-level spellpower blasting CR2 azers out of existence. :)

But that (monster advancement) is just one avenue for continuing the challenge.
Adding templates is another.
For example, you mentioned that the party is using the Mindrape spell to take over and control monsters & that that's a problem.
Mindrape allows SR and a will save & is fixable by Break Enchantment (in some cases), and doesn't work against mindless things (like constructs, undead and our assassin vine above). Any of those can be used to reduce its effect (send mindless things, or things with high saves or SR, etc).
So one option is to give your monsters the Spellwarped template. It gives the monsters SR of 11+HD. With a little advancement like above, you can easily obtain an SR the players can't beat. Though I don't advise that. I try to aim for the range where they will have a chance to succeed (generally between 50% and 25% for the players to beat the SR, which may seem like a lot of SR, until you remember that not all your monsters will have it, so on the ones that do, it should be significant).

Another way to challenge the players, and my favorite, is to have a Nemesis: some high-powered caster or equivalent, who builds up an organization & regularly spies on the party & sends augmented minions out to fight them.
Minion augmentation takes many forms. It can be potions, spells that buff them just before they teleport in (cast directly or via Wondrous Architecture or Magic Traps), or a few key monsters with character class levels seeded in among them. This post is already really long & evil overlord organizations with minion augmentation will easily take as much text again as all the above, so I will try to write & post that within a day or so.
The keys here are:
1) The nemesis does his best not to risk his precious self versus the party - he operates thru disposable minions which are easily replaced. That does not mean he can't be found nor faced, but make it as hard as you can & give him Contingent spells and such things so he can get away again if found & defeated. He is the major opponent - they must really work to defeat him (should take constant attempts across several levels or so).
2) The minions need to be augmented by things that the party can't just capture to make them stronger. That is, don't give them all Magic Swords, since when the party kills them, they will capture these. Instead, give them all levels of Kensai - which lets them treat a weapon as magic (significantly magic).
I don't mean "given them no treasure" - just stick with the usual amounts (and have them use it against the party too, before the party defeats them and captures it).

For example, my current Nemesis is The Great Mugwump - an abusively-optimized goblin Psion that uses Mind Seed to make tons of copies of himself via other goblins (then called Lesser Mugwumps). Each copy is a psion, though a weaker one. But have you seen what 2 dozen psions can do with massed Crystal Shard attacks, for example? It will shred most things.
And as Psions, they have great flexibility - they can charm monsters to send out against the party, they can summon things (see what 2 dozen Ice Mephits can do with Magic Missile - a nice softening-up bombardment from a disposable summon), they can help train up other goblins as whatever class levels seem usable etc. Lately they've been gate-ing in demons to send against the party (You can get more flexibility by allowing them to invent new Powers by the same rules that players use).

And the Lesser Mugwumps can be variable, since each can Use Psychic Reformation to change out his Powers, feats etc. If, for example, they take a number of Abyssal Heritor feats, they can be as strong as the original Mugwump (One Abyssal Heritor feat lets you ignore negative levels, which they get via the Mind Seed).
Then remember that since Lesser Mugwumps are expendable, they are therefore something the Great Mugwump can experiment on. Make some be Vampires, or Lycanthropes, or Spellwarped etc. A Were-tiger Psion who spends his Power points to buff up before the fight is a nasty foe. Try some templates from Savage Species (like Multiheaded with the Multi-voiced feat, so he can cast multiple spells per round) for extra amusement.

But even when you just send in some charmed monsters, the challenge is more than it appears, since they can be buffed via psionic powers & have some psionic fire-support. For example, if some Lesser Mugwumps are hiding nearby invisibly (or ethereally and with Trans-Dimensional Spell MM feat - or infinite variations, you get the idea) and have Readied Actions to blast the Party caster when he attempts to cast, the fight can be suddenly much harder for the party, since most of the casters spells fizzle. Or if they Counterspell. Or if they similarly target party weaknesses (for example, charming the Hulking Hurler to attack party members).

Imagine a few Lesser Mugwumps sneaking in to where the party keep their Mindraped former-foes, using Break Enchantment to free them of that & organizing them to ambush the party :)

Another great Nemesis concept if a Necromancer - there are so many types of undead he can make, augment, & send against the party.

Anyway, more later if I can.

But in short, while it takes work, it can be amazingly fun to come up with new challenges for a high-level party. You basically get to build all the brokenest character concepts you want & use them (always carefully moderated to be a challenge rather than an automatic stomp in either direction).
All the ridiculous things, like a character with a 100+ AC, or immunity to all spells, or an action sequence that lets him dim-door in, attack & dim-door out before the characters can respond, or an awesome ranged attack from 10 miles out that makes them save-or-die at every hit (and take lots of damage either way), you can build & try on the party to see how they respond. It challenges their resourcefulness & that can be a nice part of the game.

[Fouredged Sword]

The concern of fearing killing characters should be set aside at this point in play. Yes, death becomes a very real reality in all combat that threatens them, but at the same time, death becomes a simple annoyance.

Realize that restoring life to characters is a matter of a spell slot. Death is BFC at this level. The BBEG dies, yes, but he has a minion with a scroll of true resurrection waiting with a contingent dancing lights spell to go off when he dies.

Kill party members. Kill them mercilessly. If the party wipes, they find themselves in Bator (an old demonic foe got their claws into their souls), and get to fight their way out, or they find themselves in the outlands and can pop back in time for tea.

Death is not a problem. The challenge should always be that death is a roadblock that slows the party down. That is the best you can hope for really.

[Icewraith]

Use the swarm template as a guideline for handling massive groups of weak creatures.

The epic destroy seed will demolish abjurations and antimagic fields, and gets a caster level check to take out epic magic effects that would otherwise block it.

I had a super powerful draco-demilich breed up a subrace of blue dragons with six humanoid arms and the aforementioned destroy seed as a breath weapon, a good chunk of dragon hit dice, and gestalted with fighter. They tended to be armed with two spiked chains, an intelligent shield packing several dispels and a readied action to counterspell, the mage slayer line, trip/lockdown feats, teleport as a spell-like ability, mind blank, and were continuously cloned and rented out as mercenaries to other epic-level spellcasters in exchange for powerful magic, favors, spellcasting services etc.

Major opponents generally had two or three of these guys hanging around as minions, groups of lesser opponents using a modified swarm template, and one or two spellcasters. Can the PCs hire some of these themselves? Maybe, but they have to figure out what the backstory is and then find something valuable enough that the DDL is willing to consider a deal. As a LE undead Blue Dragon, the DDL is very unlikely to go back on a contract since his reputation has garnered him entire worlds and captive gods to render down into component parts in the course of his magical research, with relatively little effort on his part once he got the operation going.

At epic, once everyone has enough defenses to not get one-shot, line of effect becomes very important for things like adjucating counterspells.

You have to force your players into expending resources just to lock down all the bad guy's options before even thinking about engaging him, in the meantime the boss has a few rounds to pull off whatever shenanigans you want him to. Have active contingencies for what happens if key opponents are dominated etc, figure out how to handle teleportation and gating if necessary. Also remember Dimensional Anchor's big brother, Dimensional Lock.

Also there's the Rod of "Save my Butt" which when activated fires off a prismatic shell, a whole string of dispels and anti-anti teleport effects in the area of the shell, and then a number of teleport effects. Pricey but worth it for the epic evildoer who wants to make a daring escape. Also consider immediate-action epic magic and artifacts for escape purposes.

Basically you need a source of powerful disposable minions and you need to always vastly outnumber the PCs.

Edit: A BBEG who is truly out to screw the PCs in an epic game will attempt to disintegrate the remains of any dead PC, wrecking the majority of the PCs magic items and significantly handicapping the party even if the manages to raise the PC.

[illyrus]

Going to give a base idea, this exact plan may not work but hopefully it will give way to one that would.

An NPC with a mundane disguise finds/creates a bunch of protection from x items that can be turned on for a long time with a command word. Basically an item that will suppress domination and other mind control without geting rid of it. He sneaks the items on to all the dominated bad guys and waits for the PCs to be away from home.

He then activates the command word that will suppress the dominate effect. He uses his massive diplomacy to convince all the temporarily freed baddies to join with him in defeating the PCs (though really this shouldn't be a hard thing to convince them of). The liberator NPC might throw on a bunch of buffs to all the "freed" cohorts and then probably leaves. The "freed" cohorts quickly subdue/dominate/kill any naturally allied cohorts and await for the PCs to arrive home where they spring a massive ambush.

Oh and the disguise, it makes him look like someone he wants the PCs to go kill for him. While there are plenty of ways around it the party may go with the obvious one and believe what any cohorts they subdue and re-dominate tell them.

[Shining Wrath]

Start here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282178) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280524).

Ability-score draining creatures are also your friend. Especially if you can make them fast or invisible.

[Icewraith]

If you've made it to epic, you can deal with ability drain. Usually you're flat out immune.

[Beldar]

If they've made it to epic, they could *potentially* deal with anything.

But potential is not always actualized.
That's because they still have limited resources - only so much time, money, spells per day & so on.
That includes only so much xp to spend casting wish.
Note that very high limits are still limits.

The DMG says each level-appropriate encounter should get them to spend about 1/4 of the day's resources. Ergo - making the party spend resources is itself challenging to them, since they only have so many & must decide where to spend them - what the best uses are.

And as noted game designer Sid Meier said - "a game is a series of interesting decisions".

So, to challenge them and keep them challenged you must send things that they are not perfectly defended against. There will be some. They can't be strong everywhere (or at least, not so strong that you can't be stronger: weakness is relative too).

Though I have to remind myself from time to time not to make things too challenging for the party too consistently. They should get chances to shine - to be dramatically successful at what they do.
As a small for-instance, the paladin in my party bought 3/day Contingent Energy Resistance for his armor (He wanted it to work more often but 3/day was all he could afford). Anyway, in the fight last week, that purchase saved his life twice. That kind of success is necessary. I've seen DM's never send a certain kind of threat again after a party becomes resistant to that. That's a mistake. You, as DM, can afford to throw in the occasional challenge the party will totally stomp - it costs you nothing & makes them feel good.

Though it sounds like your campaign includes plenty of opportunities for the players to shine. Too many, or you wouldn't asked for help in challenging them.

So, a few more random thoughts on how to challenge them.

One is to look on character optimization boards, find some nasty builds & bring them in (wholesale or modified as needed) as minions of the party's Great Nemesis.
Basically this is Darth Maul (as he played out in the movie - spare me the debates of what he should have been, since that's another topic & I largely agree already) - he was the minion of the party's main Nemesis (Darth Sidious) who built him up as a disposable (though potent) tool and used him as such, by sending him to go stomp the party (or try to).

So, for example, you could get an Uber-charger or two & have them fight the party (with some suitable support along - like some chaff to receive extra hits & some casters to counterspell).
There are many variations here.
And you can even get wacky with it - allowing things into the builds from rare & obscure books, or even having the bad guys invent them. This can lead to some very interesting builds.
For instance, use the Encyclopedia Arcane Crossbreeding rules to take strengths from 2 or more monsters and combine them. The Encyclopedia makes this hard to do, but you as DM can give the bad guys enough resources etc to succeed.
One such fun combination is a Will-o-wisp and anything with a good ranged attack (pixie, basilisk, beholder).
Take from the wisp the fly speed, natural invisibility, and immunity to all but a 2 spells (use the 3rd edition version, not the 3.5 edition - as DM that's your choice. But the 3.5 version allows them to be hurt by anything that doesn't allow spell resistance, which is way too big a list & leaves the immunity more or less meaningless. Side note - I usually play "3.x" which means when 3.0 and 3.5 differ on something, use whichever version you prefer. It works when I'm a player & when I'm DM. But as DM you have the option to allow that for yourself but not for the party, if you don't want to go whole-hog).
Then you augment it with a couple dozen more HD & now you have a ranged attacker that can stay at range, not be hurt by spells & what it throws at you (whether pixie arrows, basilisk gaze or beholder eye-rays) have save DC's high enough (via the added HD, half of which gets added to the save DC) to be a threat.

Then with any such thing, you generally want about 1.5 to 2 times as many of them as you have party members. That makes the action economy go in their favor (ie they get more actions than the pc's), and makes it no big deal when one or two of them get one-shotted by luck, a clever play or whatever. It doesn't matter if the Hulking Hurler does 5000 damage per hit, or 50,000 - either way he only kills one per shot (and that's if he can get close enough to do so - he has very limited range), and you have a few to spare.
If you give them enough HD, then they have enough HD to resist area effect spells. That is, if they have 2-300 hp each, then it will take several 10d6 fireballs (or 15d6 spells etc) before they even start to care (I'm speaking of monsters in general here - these wisps are immune to fireball etc).

But the key to challenging your party is to know your party - know their strengths and weaknesses.
This can help you defend against their strengths & attack their weaknesses.
For example, as already mentioned:
The Wizard can blast multiple targets, but his damage is capped, so enough HP on the targets to resist a few rounds of it is enough to make it an interesting fight.
And the Hulking hurler can do fantastic amounts of damage, but only at short range & only to targets he can find (as well as only as many times as he can attack - partly dependent on number of attacks & partly on how much ammo he has).
The Wizard and Psion have a harder time building up their save DC's than you have building up save bonuses. Use that, so that monsters save at least 50% of the time.
The Wizard and the Psion can be counterspelled, especially if you make a few guys good at it with the rights feats.
For example: This combo of feats is nasty:
- Opportunity Counterspell (page 21 Ultimate Feats) - you are always treated as if you have a readied action to counterspell & do so as a free action (all this just once/round).
- Counterspell Riposte (p14 ultimate feats) - on a successful counterspell, you can instantly & as a free action cast another spell in response.
- Superior Counterspelling (Page 33 encyclopedia Arcane Abjuration) - when you use Dispel Magic to counterspell, you automatically succeed at the attempt, but still roll. If that roll would have succeeded by 10 or more, then the Dispel 'used' is not used up, but still available for further use.
Possibly including:
Spell Hawk (+4 spellcraft to identify spell & +2 to counterspell), plus
Spell Stealer (if you successfully counterspell, then the spell still happens but YOU choose the target. requires Spell Hawk). Both in Ult Feats

After the first time the Wizard's uber-optimized save-or-die gets redirected via Spell Stealer towards a party member, you will probably see them act a bit more cautiously in general. :)

One last thought for now. The military has the concept of "combined arms". In short, this means that while different types of military units (ie infantry, armored vehicles, helicopters, artillery) can be effective all on their own, they are far more effective (more than the sum of the parts) when cooperating together.

So, the crossbred Wisps mentioned above are nice. But if you combine them with something of a different type (say, something that can stand in hand-to-hand combat with the party and be a credible threat for a few rounds), they are far more effective. The party has to decide (an interesting decision, as mentioned above, is a good thing) whether to ignore one threat (the hand to hand guys, or the wisps) & try to take out the other, or to try to manage both at the same time.
Either approach has costs (provoking attacks of opportunity for example).

For example, my party recently faced some Beholders supported by Behirs. Either one by itself wouldn't be much of a challenge. But together, they were potent. The Beholders keep everything in Antimagic while the Behirs attack hand to hand & keep the party away from the Beholders. It worked pretty well.

You can also sometimes get the party to react instead of acting - that is, instead of taking out enemies, they spend their time trying to undo things the enemies have done (turn someone back to flesh from stone, for example). If you get enough of that, it can result in a condition that used to be known as "thrashing" in the computer world (where the hard disk drive has several read/write requests on different parts of the disk, and tries to multi-task them, spending some time on one & then some time on another, but resulting in it spending almost all of its time changing between jobs - seeking back & forth on the disk & getting almost no reading/writing done). That "thrashing" situation is almost always perceived as an epic fight by the party, since they are doing their best as fast as they can but making little progress - just treading water.
I've had thrashing conditions result from doing lots of damage (party members rush around with healing spells and potions - spending all their time on that & so doing no damage back to the enemy) or from circumstances (they rush to free the drowning princess npc while a caster keeps undoing their actions and archers whittle away at their hp), or from reversible conditions like flesh-to-stone that the party rushes around to reverse (while entangled and otherwise opposed).
You don't want every fight to be a "thrashing", but the occasional one definitely contributes to the feeling that they are being challenged.

In general, at this level, you need at least 1 spellcaster supporting any group that should be a serious threat to the party. This support could be in the form of buffing spells (during combat, or from safety before combat), or active counterspelling, or dispelling things the party have done (least effective is to have the casters blast the party for damage, but throw in some of that for variety).
Magic is powerful & is best countered by other magic.

Though a nice side-effect of augmenting monsters (as per chapter 4 of the Monster Manual) is they get lots of new skills for you to choose. I had some Arrow Demons last night acting as their own magic support via a few carefully chosen scrolls and a high Use Magic Device score.

[cerin616]

Jesus, with that level of shenanigans, no one is on their team. Brainwashing and mind wipeing people to enslave them is highly evil, and most cohorts will abandon a follower that behaves as such out of disgust, or terror. Unless the cohorts are also mind slaves. In which case, have some high level casters start dispelling mind effects and release everything.

Anti magic zones should do a solid job of messing with the casters, especially if they are cast at god levels. Deflect anything is an easy to get epic feat. Hulking Hurler? no big deal, just deflect the mountains back at him.

And When in serious doubt, make **** up. you are the dm, and you have that power. It straight up says in most of the books "These enemies are all guide lines and only you as the dungeon master knows the strength of your party and can create an effective challenge." And besides, you have gods out there with powers like "warp reality" get imaginative.