Mid-Levels and higher-can you still challenge players?

[Thealtruistorc]

This stems back to an argument I was having with one of my players about an adventure I was creating, which was intended for characters of 12th level. He got rather annoyed with me and said that it would be a waste of time, because he believes you can't challenge players after 8th level because of all the options they have available to them. I countered with the idea that DMs are also allowed a bunch of creative tricks at higher levels and so can meet the players' expectations, but he seems convinced that the only games in which a party can face genuine difficulty stop at 7th level.

What do you guys think? Is it possible for a high-level adventure to remain challenging and interesting throughout? What are some tools that you guys use to make powerful characters think on their feet and still struggle for their successes? I personally think that DMs have enough resources to keep the game interesting until at least 17th level, and that more powerful characters and opponents open up more opportunities than they shut down.

[Malroth]

Definately possible but you need some good system mastery, very little in the default monster manual is put together well enough to be a credible threat to a moderately optimized lv 12 group but with a light dabbling in non-ascociated class levels (hint nothing has druid wizard or psion as an ascociated class) and a template or 2 and suddenly you're threatening a kill on every encounter which is fine, At that level Death is a minor status effect feel free to drop one or 2 characters per battle sometimes in ways that can't be fixed with raise dead.

[Cosi]

I recommend reading Challenging D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder Parties in Practice (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=8940.0). If you have time, books like The Chronicles of Amber (really, almost anything by Zelazny - I like Lord of Light), the Wheel of Time, Malazan, or the Dresden Files have high level characters who face real and legitimate challenges. Also, those are legitimately good books.

But yes, the player in question is totally wrong. Nothing you get at 9th level makes it "impossible to challenge players". teleport and plane shift are powerful tools that allow the players to influence the story very directly, but they don't prevent you from telling stories (consider The Chronicles of Amber for an example of adventures in a world where all the PCs have plane shift).

Now, there are a couple of things that do change at that point.

Most obviously and most importantly you can't just recycle low level adventures and challenge players. Lord of the Rings is a multi-session epic campaign for 3rd level PCs, but it's a three action excursion for 9th level PCs (teleport to Mordor, drop ring in volcano, teleport home). But there are also stories you can tell at that level that you can't tell at lower levels. For example, actual planar exploration.

The other problem is that 9th is in the range where mundane characters start to really fall behind. Fighters don't get enough to compete at high levels, and 9th is where it starts to show. The party swordsman needs an upgrade of some kind, be it an overhaul as a Gish or an artifact sword. But the Wizard or Rogue or Druid or whatever is still fully able to compete.

[Grod_The_Giant]

There's certainly a point somewhere around there where MUNDANE challenges no longer apply. For any action, there's a spell that makes it simple.

But all that means is that the challenges have to get magic. You have to get weird and obscure, and you have to be better at optimizing than your players. But for every spell, there's also a counterspell.

[John Longarrow]

This is the point where putting time limits on the characters starts becoming important. 1st level party trying to get to the Sheriffs tower to let him know about the bandits doesn't have a tight schedule. Identifying, locating, and stopping the Vampire lord who's trying to open a portal to the Abyss tomorrow night does.

Likewise your encounters should be using both magic and mundane means to shut down some of the more obnoxious spells. Painting walls/ceiling/floor/doors with lead and covering them with stucco/wood has an immediate impact on a fair number of spells. Same with using magical traps (or normal traps in conjunction with guardians familiar with them).

Your encounters become multi-layered. If you have a quartet of sixth level gnoll rangers (favored enemy PC) raining arrows on the party, make sure you've got something that will close with them also. Toss in a summoned creature round 2, next to the party caster. Let the gnolls fall back to a prepared ambush for when the party follows. Get creative, have fun!

[nedz]

Yes, though how you do it depends upon the party.

If the party is of wildly differing tiers then it can be hard to challenge the casters without making the mundanes spectators or, inversely, challenge the mundanes without the casters trivialising the situation: party imbalance becomes much more noticeable at this stage.

Also, throwing a T1 caster at a mundane party isn't going to end well for the party - assuming the caster is not played as dumb.

As to your player's comments — well you'll just have to prove him wrong. :smallsmile:

[martixy]

And by system mastery, what is meant is: know how all the elements interact.

The rules minutia is just the ephemera, the ability to take the game from moment to moment.

The mastery comes from understanding the interaction of all of that.
One of, if not the most important aspect is managing the action economy.
You see, at those levels, single monsters are simply NOT a threat to the party, unless they're too overpowered, in which case it simply drops PCs like flies.
There is a certain critical point in the game(right around the point your friend was arguing) where the action-to-power output of PCs simply becomes too much. So take away the action advantage from PCs, equalize the playing field, force them to choose and strategize effectively.

Here's a little less obvious example: Pre-combat buffing. If they do it before combat, this is actions that they won't have to undertake while in combat. This is an action advantage.
Counters include surprising your PCs, and dispelling. Now I know many people dislike Mordenkainen's Disjunction and think of it as very broken, but on high levels it is an excellent opener for combat.

Another thing is that as PCs gain levels, their options increase.
So at the lower levels it might be easy to follow the letter of the books and end up with a decent encounter, because there is simply less variables that could influence the balance, less for the designers to account for. This is not true at higher levels. You have to get creative.

Be aware of what capabilities your players possess. D&D is designed in such a way, that characters do not only gain bonuses in numbers, but their abilities change qualitatively during the course of leveling. Things like the ability to repair ability drain, teleport, resurrection, plane shift, wish, etc. fundamentally change the flow of the game. You just have to adapt to that.

High level play is also more volatile and strategic.
As Sun Tzu said: Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

The latter might fly at low levels, but in high ones, if you go in winging it at high levels, you're likely to get obliterated. This goes for both sides - either as the DM your encounter gets obliterated, or the PCs get wiped cuz they charged forth mindlessly.

Here's an example from the PCs side: Think about fighting a balor. Which, in the current "metagame" as it were, is a good challenge for 14-15 level party with a couple of T1s. First of all, you'll need to know that Invisibility is simply not a valid approach against that creature.
After that you'll need a few things to stand a hair's chance of succeeding. The most essential - freedom of movement, because blasphemy. BFC will help immensely. Protection from Evil protects against domination.

As a DM test your PCs, you might find that they forgot to bring with them this one protection that allows you to completely turn the battle and send them running.
In one of my campaigns my group had one of those uh... silly moments. It was long ago, but I remember it cuz of a very funny thing that happened. The relevant actors are our scout and warlock. So... we either forgot the Protection or the Scout moved out of the range of a Circle spell. Either way... the Balor/Pit Fiend we were fighting immediately seized the chance and dominated him. Remember that these are beasts with 24-26 Int/Wis, so they're far from stupid. The amusing part is when our Scout then turns and rolls 3 nat20s, insta-gibbing our Warlock. It was both amusing and a holy sh^t, WTF moment.

You see, part of what constitutes the CR of these monsters is the assumption that they are played correctly and to their full potential.

[Beheld]

This stems back to an argument I was having with one of my players about an adventure I was creating, which was intended for characters of 12th level. He got rather annoyed with me and said that it would be a waste of time, because he believes you can't challenge players after 8th level because of all the options they have available to them. I countered with the idea that DMs are also allowed a bunch of creative tricks at higher levels and so can meet the players' expectations, but he seems convinced that the only games in which a party can face genuine difficulty stop at 7th level.

What do you guys think? Is it possible for a high-level adventure to remain challenging and interesting throughout? What are some tools that you guys use to make powerful characters think on their feet and still struggle for their successes? I personally think that DMs have enough resources to keep the game interesting until at least 17th level, and that more powerful characters and opponents open up more opportunities than they shut down.

Your player is completely wrong. Now first off, let me be clear, this absolutely nothing within the encounter guidelines that can challenge a Wizard who uses Planar Binding. But that's because Planar Binding breaks the guidelines itself. "Really, a level 11 Wizard and 49 Glabrezu's managed to beat a Glabrezu? You don't say!"

But skipping past super megabroken calling magic, or anything else that breaks the encounter guidelines by turning your alleged party level 13 party into an EL 300 encounter (Dread Warriors, Dominate Person, ect) you can easily challenge optimized parties. You need:

1) High level adventures. If the adventure can be solved by Contact Other Plane and Teleport with no risk or effort, that's not really a high level adventure, Indiana Jones goes to the temple and gets the idol and leaves, level 9+ Wizards tell their apprentices to do that while they do real things.

2) For combat, optimization makes more of a difference as CR/level increases. So while a highly optimized first level party can easily be challenged by low EL encounters straight from the book, a higher level party might need more. Take a Ice Devil. Honestly, it can be a huge hassle and challenge to lots of parties on all on it's own. But if your party is super optimized, maybe they can beat it. One the other hand, it has alertness, weapon focus, and cleave as feats. And your PCs probably have flaws and the most optimized feats they can find across 40 splats. If that Ice devil has his feats picked better, and he switches some skill points to UMD to use the otherwise worthless scrolls he is likely to roll in a treasure parcel (or even better, if you design custom treasures, a thing that doesn't even increase EL) then you can get a lot farther. Especially if he intelligently scouts the party when they first arrive and makes clever use of his illusions and infinite range see in darkness to distract and harass the party.

And this is all one level 13 creature fighting 4 level 13 creatures. If he ends up using up a lot of their resources and wasting time and spells, and then they decide to rest, well then the BBEG skates of to another location and Binds a new Ice Devil, because he's not an idiot.

[AlanBruce]

Be aware that just because the PCs are powerful and smart- particularly smart- that doesn't mean the players are.

I ran a dungeon crawl awhile back for 6 PCs. General builds as follows:

ECL 14 archer cleric

ECL 14 dervish

ECL 14 bard

ECL 14 dragon shaman

ECL 13 beguiler

ECL 13 duskblade


The party's wizard was currently retraining to go MotAO and Archmage, so he was not joining them in this crawl, but the party gathered the necessary intel to determine the following:

This dungeon was filled with constructs, long since thought destroyed. They knew that the dungeon in question was an old factory and that someone had reactivated it, awakening the many machines that could, if unchecked, wreak havoc in the city where they currently resided.

With that in mind, the party did the appropriate shopping: adamantine arrows for the cleric, greater demolition crystals for the dervish and a blink ring for the duskblade.

These PCs had been in play for a long time. Some of them, like the cleric and shaman, for years IRL, so I asked, as I always do, if they knew how their class features worked, since it is their responsibility to keep track of that, something they assured me was the case. That they were ready.

The party already had a bunch of scrolls and wands and wondrous items, so they were well equipped to handle the situation. A healthy combination of divine, arcane and melee. There ought to be no casualties whatsoever...

Or so I thought.

The first two encounters go splendidly- the dervish does her Dance early on, but cuts the constructs down effortlessly. The beguiler uses BFC on some robots to hamper their speed while the cleric shoots arrows on those not caught in the Solid Fog like a mad man.

The dragon shaman freezes any stragglers and keeps her dual auras up, for good measure.

The bard uses Words of Creation to boost their damage output, although it wasn't needed- the duskblade and dervish littered the hallway with metal limbs in 2 rounds. Maybe 3.

A little exploring later, they find themselves in a long hallway, twenty feet wide and twenty feet tall. the hallway stretched 100ft. towards the next door, but the room was not empty.

Ten pixie sized machines flew twenty feet above them. Five were almost above them, while the other five were at the end of the hallway by the door they needed to go, which was blocked by an ogre sized tank construct, complete with shoulder cannons and big scary fists.

Arcana checks are rolled by the players and the party learns that the small guys flying above like to focus fire on single targets, using an ability similar to the Legion devil from FC 2, so the more there are in the room and if they are able to shoot, the better their chances are to possibly drop a PC. Additionally, they learn that these guys can inflict precision damage based on their Dexterity modifier with each successful hit.

The big tank guy on the ground with them, given the description most likely has a trample attack and it probably can use ranged fire given its cannons- they didn't roll that well on that guy.

Initiative is rolled and the beguiler and dervish go first. The dervish runs all the way down the hall and does her Dance again, managing to cut the tank, but not drop it.

Beguiler's turn comes up and i'm thinking "ok, the dervish has FoM courtesy of the beguiler, maybe an invisible solid fog on her area and that should halt the five fliers and the big guy and..."

I use my UMD to cast magic missile on the one flier over here!

Everybody agrees that "it's the best possible decision", as the flier is hit, but for pitiful damage.

The flier's turn comes in and, predictably, they focus fire on the Dervish, dropping her.

The cleric rushes in and casts Heal on her because "the shaman's aura should give her DR."

I show them the players the map and then proceed to show them the shaman's aura range- 30ft.- which was not enough to cover the Dervish. This resulted in a wasted Heal and a 12 round battle as the tank boss proceeded to trample the party 3 times.

I believe the duskblade mentioned by round 9: "I have a blink ring!", when he was at 10hp.

End result: The party took them all down. No BFCs were cast. Tremendous expenditure of resources and the Dervish PC coming back reincarnated as an elf.

This was, according to the calculator, an EL 10 encounter.

Moral of the story: PCs with a big pile of spells and high level tricks mean nothing when those playing them do not know how to use them.

[daemonvatis]

I find a lot of parties struggle with incorporeal monsters. Sure mages can still hit them, but an incorporeal creature with SR is a real challenge. Use them just enough to convince your fighter-type that he needs to spend a lot of gold on a ghost touch weapon. But also send in golems (high DR and flat-out immune to magic), which the fighter's new weapon doesn't have any advantage against. Then some fiends (BoVD is a good place to look) with SR and DR10/good. Then some upgraded trolls.

Your fighter can't afford a +1 adamatine flaming holy ghost touch greatsword with an aura of good at 9th level.

Just send varied monsters

[AlanBruce]

I find a lot of parties struggle with incorporeal monsters. Sure mages can still hit them, but an incorporeal creature with SR is a real challenge. Use them just enough to convince your fighter-type that he needs to spend a lot of gold on a ghost touch weapon.

By mid to high levels, dealing with incorporeal creatures should not be an issue. If the resident party cleric isn't turning them, several in the party besides the appointed sorcerer or wizard should be using [Force] spells on them.

No Force spells? No problem! The Transdimensional Spell feat can take care of incorporeal and ethereal creatures as well.

And if you really want these things to literally wink out, Extraordinary Spell Aim AMF will make sure you aren't bothered by them. Widen it for good measure.


But also send in golems (high DR and flat-out immune to magic), which the fighter's new weapon doesn't have any advantage against.


A common misconception about golems is this entry, however...


Spell Immunity (Ex)
A creature with spell immunity avoids the effects of spells and spell-like abilities that directly affect it. This works exactly like spell resistance, except that it cannot be overcome. Sometimes spell immunity is conditional or applies to only spells of a certain kind or level. Spells that do not allow spell resistance are not affected by spell immunity.


So cast Fly and Orb away!

[ace rooster]

I would say that it depends on the players and the DM. If the DM is not as good (or prepared/able to put as much work in) as the players at the system then things can fail miserably. Sometimes they won't, and the players may have great fun running amok. The reason I as a player might object to high level play is beause of 'that guy'. The guy who spent three days on his character and has an item list four sheets long from forty books. At low levels a thrown together character with basic kit can keep up ok, but once you get to mid levels it is hard to even be a sideshow. The DM has to throw challenges that simple characters simply cannot deal with.

The higher level you get the more your power level is dependent on how much time you spend alone in your bedroom. I (and I think many others) play to get drunk, have fun, and socialise. I have better things to do alone in my bedroom* than participate in an arms race, so at high levels I will fall behind someone who puts more time in. It is easy to misplace the blame on the DM for not producing challenges for the whole party, but often the issue is a mismatch in terms of time available. Often this is on the DMs part, because a build that takes three days to build takes much longer to build a challenge for. The DM has to spend far longer designing every encounter, and often they are over quicker anyway. Those creative tricks are not free.

As always, play the game how you want. If the DM and the players are up for the time commitment, there is nothing 'wrong' with spending huge amounts of time on builds. It can rapidly become a problem if anyone cannot though, and this is worse at high levels.

* mostly programming. :smalltongue: