This is bad, really bad. (Designing CR 80 encounters for a level 80 dwarven fighter)

[atemu1234]

I've inherited a group of PCs from a DM who moved out of state. This group is of the most epic PCs I've ever encountered. We're talking level 80 here. I need to design an epic enough encounter that would span worlds, like an Elder Evil. But much stronger than the typical Elder Evils. All in all, help. Please.

[Effero]

At that level you may as well fight gods or elder wyrm time dragons (CR 99).

[With a box]

Epic wizard who spam chain gate solar?

[atemu1234]

Epic wizard who spam chain gate solar?

With 83 ranks in Spellcraft, he spams an epic mass version of it. He calls it Beware the Heavens.

[Psyren]

There is no point to even rolling dice at that level. Just freeform it, or play cards or flick rubber bands at each other or something. :smalltongue:

[Piell]

Start your own game at a sane level. High level D&D is bad, epic levels are worse. Make your own game good, don't try to Frankenstein together the old game.

[Chaosvii7]

There is no point to even rolling dice at that level. Just freeform it, or play cards or flick rubber bands at each other or something. :smalltongue:

If you're really playing with an ECL 80 party, then this I actually somewhat agree with this.

You'd basically be playing a gussied-up version of Yahtzee at that point; You'd be better off either making a more abstract encounter that doesn't require heavy amounts of rolling but heavy amounts of roleplaying, or making a combat system that could tone everything back down to the point where you do significant damage to each other, but it's not represented by having to roll 80 Character levels' worth of dice over the course of 5-10 minutes.

Or, as was already suggested, find a way to give them all divine ranks and have them roll up new characters in the same campaign setting, except with the addition of a few new gods to the pantheon.

[sakuuya]

Have the 80th-level characters ascend to godhood and talk to the players about how those ascensions affect the world. Then start a sane-level campaign in the setting as altered by the old characters.

EDIT: Sworsaged, dagnabit!

[jjcrpntr]

Have the 80th-level characters ascend to godhood and talk to the players about how those ascensions affect the world. Then start a sane-level campaign in the setting as altered by the old characters.

EDIT: Sworsaged, dagnabit!

That would be interesting. Reroll a cleric that worships the character you just retired

[Spore]

This group is of the most epic PCs I've ever encountered. We're talking level 80 here.

Introduce a 1st level rogue called Boba Fett (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCWOCPxPmus).

[Segev]

The Lady of Pain remains enigmatic and untouchable even at level 80. Because she literally has no stats other than: never leaves Sigil; creates no-resistance Mazes with only one way out; can keep Powers out of Sigil; kills you.

[Bloodgruve]

Allow the group to ascend to over-godhood and commandeer their characters. Have them create lvl1 characters that worship their lvl80 characters.

*Also Swordsaged.. I should read all the posts before posting...

You could have them destroy or trap other gods so they could take their places?

[Cruiser1]

We're talking level 80 here.
Epic levels for mundane characters (like a level 80 straight-classed Fighter) isn't as insane as it is for casters. You could have the level 80 Fighter combat standard epic level monsters like a Hecatoncheires (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm#hecatoncheires) (CR 57), a Devastation Beetle (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/devastationVermin.htm#devastationBeetle) (CR 50), and a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/dragonEpic.htm#prismaticDragon) (CR 66). CR means little at epic levels, but it isn't as worthless when considering mundane combat. Advance monster HD or send several of the above if it's still not challenging enough.

Of course the WBL of a level 80 character is super high. The epic table doesn't extend after level 40, however noticing that levels 33-40 increase WBL by about 112% each, then assuming levels 41-80 increase by no more than 110%, the level 80 WBL is about 600 million gp. That can buy a huge amount of magic items, effectively making any character an epic magic user. A lot depends on the specifics of the epic Fighter and their equipment (and of course the rest of the party) as to what might challenge them.

[XmonkTad]

You could roll up a bunch of regular monsters that took class levels to reach CR80. Or make the lair of the trapmaster and have a bunch of never-miss CR80 traps squish him so you can start over.

[NichG]

At these levels, you need to familiarize yourself with their tricks. Anything made in ignorance of the party's abilities and standard operating procedure will either utterly crush them or will be a triviality. The numbers are meaningless at these levels.

Basically, rather than thinking about it as 'I'm designing CR 80 encounters for a Lv80 party', think of it as 'I am designing encounters for this party'.

Assume (perhaps tell them explicitly) that things which cannot defeat their main tricks will be utterly glossed over and run in free form, since otherwise it'll get very tedious. Then focus on things which aren't completely negated by their win buttons (perhaps they hide the win buttons - e.g. they have something that makes chain-gated-solars a really bad idea until its suppressed, like an aura that automatically takes control of creatures with less than 40HD or something like that).

Also focus on things that individuals generally do poorly, and scenarios that are more 'thinky' than 'bashey'. Epic plotlines for epic characters. For example, there is something causing all manner of planar misalignments or transformations. As an introductory quest, the afterlives have started to mis-sort petitioners, sending good people to the Abyss, evil people to Celestia, etc. When it gets worse, the Plane of Water starts to change its nature, causing water everywhere in the multiverse to begin to transform into blood, or sludge, or whatever - fix it! Then, it seems like the cause of all this is some sort of twisted time-loop involving fate and the impingement of alternate cosmologies through an interface in the plane of mirrors, which also involves deities' divinity being sucked up into their alternate versions and diluted across a hundred realities - go fix it!

[sideswipe]

the gods fear that the party is too strong and send bahamut (buffed by the other gods) after them.
boccob, sice he has knowledge of all spells cast weeks before hand has created counter spells for all the spells cast in the whole combat (including magic items i guess).
if they defeat bahamut then the other gods revive them and send a bigger one. war between the gods and a party they fear.

maybe have a few gods actually side with the party.

say that the outcome of this war will effect the pantheon of gods in your world. and that all campaigns afterwards will use your pantheon of gods. with them potentially as gods that there next players can worship.

but a god war is what is needed.

[Chronos]

Others have already said that you shouldn't even bother trying. I'd like to elaborate on the reasons. Even in normal D&D, power (and thus appropriate selection of enemies) depends on optimization level, but this effect is amplified immensely in epic levels. If an 80th-level fighter is poorly optimized, he can be defeated ten times out of ten by a moderately-optimized wizard of perhaps 10th level. On the other hand, if he's well-optimized, the 80th-level "fighter" (who, despite using that label for himself, probably has most of his levels in other base and prestige classes) can single-handedly take on everything in the core rulebooks at once. And at optimization levels in between, he might be able to take on some extremely powerful things, while still being vulnerable to other extremely weak things.

[Jeff the Green]

Switch to playing Exalted?

[NichG]

the gods fear that the party is too strong and send bahamut (buffed by the other gods) after them.
boccob, sice he has knowledge of all spells cast weeks before hand has created counter spells for all the spells cast in the whole combat (including magic items i guess).
if they defeat bahamut then the other gods revive them and send a bigger one. war between the gods and a party they fear.

maybe have a few gods actually side with the party.

say that the outcome of this war will effect the pantheon of gods in your world. and that all campaigns afterwards will use your pantheon of gods. with them potentially as gods that there next players can worship.

but a god war is what is needed.

I would suggest against doing this. If you don't want to run for these characters, just tell the players OOC rather than creating an in-game plot whose purpose is to get them to stop playing their current characters and start up new ones. The result of something like this is that you end up encouraging the 'everything is walking bags of xp/loot' mentality when gods who were paragons of Good and are extremely wise and intelligent decide to run into the PC meat-grinder because they're jealous of their power.


Others have already said that you shouldn't even bother trying. I'd like to elaborate on the reasons. Even in normal D&D, power (and thus appropriate selection of enemies) depends on optimization level, but this effect is amplified immensely in epic levels. If an 80th-level fighter is poorly optimized, he can be defeated ten times out of ten by a moderately-optimized wizard of perhaps 10th level. On the other hand, if he's well-optimized, the 80th-level "fighter" (who, despite using that label for himself, probably has most of his levels in other base and prestige classes) can single-handedly take on everything in the core rulebooks at once. And at optimization levels in between, he might be able to take on some extremely powerful things, while still being vulnerable to other extremely weak things.

It can be done, but you basically have to learn the abilities of the PCs rather than relying on the system itself to create balanced encounters for you. Every encounter basically should be (has to be) a custom-tuned bit of gameplay that directly addresses what the epic PCs can and cannot do. Things like CR broke down 75 levels ago.

[atemu1234]

Honestly, one of them owns a dwarven city. We agreed that they'd all start new characters, their old ones deciding to just live there for the time being, and that'd be it.