How does 17-20th level d&d look at your table?

[sorcererlover]

Reading some of the recent threads...

You got people gating in Pyroclastic Dragons with a 42DC save-or-die that pierces all immunites
You got people using Wish to gain access to Epic Items pre-epic
You got people with at-will permanent runes of Time Stop
You got people using Simulacrum and caster level boosters to get possibly epic creatures as slaves pre-epic using Eschew Materials or Miracle to ignore the body part requirement
You got Ice Assassin that's worse than simulacrum
You got Polymorph Any Object creating corpses of Prismatic Great Wyrms for animation into epic Skeletal Dragons. On top of all the other weird stuff Polymorph Any Object enables like impossibly high save DCs, turn entire castles and dungeon into quicksand and kill everyone inside
You got Mindrape letting you instantly learn everything some ancient creature like a million year old something knows.
And then there's Shapechange that gives you access to every single Su ability in the game. And it's persistable.

These aren't weird unforseen uses of the spells either. Everything is used as written in the spell.

To me it feels like the game is unplayable unless you're a spellcaster at 17th level. Like even a 20th level mundane with a million gp worth of magic items is gonna sit on his ass do nothing because the spellcaster will end the encounter either before it begins or on his first round.

So just out of curiosity how does 17th level d&d look at your table? Just so I know what to expect.

[Nifft]

Depends on what your DM allows and what your table seeks out.

Ice Assassin for example was never a problem in my level 17+ games because I didn't introduce it, and nobody asked for it.

You can play high-OP / high-shenanigans games, but they're not the default. They're just the go-to here on the forums because it's easy to google min/max builds and thereby show up other posters.

[sorcererlover]

Depends on what your DM allows and what your table seeks out.

Ice Assassin for example was never a problem in my level 17+ games because I didn't introduce it, and nobody asked for it.

You can play high-OP / high-shenanigans games, but they're not the default. They're just the go-to here on the forums because it's easy to google min/max builds and thereby show up other posters.

Could you describe a typical 17th-20th level encounter and how each party member participated?

[Hiro Quester]

The wizard/sorceror still needs a meat shield to occupy as many as possibly of the large team of bad Guys who are focussed on tearing his head off.

In our group we usually play campaigns into early epic levels. And there is always plenty for mundanes to do (though they do need some awesome equipment).

Anti-magic fields often play a role in equalizing encounters for the party. You need someone who can still go in there and kick butt.

[sorcererlover]

The wizard/sorceror still needs a meat shield to occupy as many as possibly of the large team of bad Guys who are focussed on tearing his head off.

In our group we usually play campaigns into early epic levels. And there is always plenty for mundanes to do (though they do need some awesome equipment).

Anti-magic fields often play a role in equalizing encounters for the party. You need someone who can still go in there and kick butt.

So these spellcasters don't use Gate or Simulacrum for anti-magic fields? What kind of spells do they prepare? Is it just prismatic sphere or similarly BFC support spells?

[Deadline]

These aren't weird unforseen uses of the spells either. Everything is used as written in the spell.

Uh, I think maybe the optimization mindset has blinded you on this. Everything in your list except ... Mindrape and Shapechange are used in weird, unforseen ways. The authors of those spells couldn't possibly have anticipated the edge cases we optimizers like to use to break the game in half. Thinking that sort of thing is intended or the norm at the table would be a mistake.

However, unless you play with the base assumption of "mages are blasters, clerics are healers, rogues are trapspingers, and fighters are the damage dealers", my high level d&d experiences (even relatively lightly optimized) have all devolved into rocket tag. And no, I do not think that's the intended outcome the authors had in mind.

[sorcererlover]

Uh, I think maybe the optimization mindset has blinded you on this. Everything in your list except ... Mindrape and Shapechange are used in weird, unforseen ways. The authors of those spells couldn't possibly have anticipated the edge cases we optimizers like to use to break the game in half. Thinking that sort of thing is intended or the norm at the table would be a mistake.

However, unless you play with the base assumption of "mages are blasters, clerics are healers, rogues are trapspingers, and fighters are the damage dealers", my high level d&d experiences (even relatively lightly optimized) have all devolved into rocket tag. And no, I do not think that's the intended outcome the authors had in mind.

How is gating in a 40 hd creature or creating a simulacrum or ice assassin of a high hd monster or using wish to create magic items not their intended use?

Could you describe one such rocket tag fight?

I never gotten past level 14 before the game ended because of the DM's life issues.

[Quertus]

So just out of curiosity how does 17th level d&d look at your table? Just so I know what to expect.


Could you describe a typical 17th-20th level encounter and how each party member participated?

OK, let's see how many parties I can remember who maybe ran around at roughly that level...

So, let's start with the obvious: Quertus (my signature academia Mage, for whom this account is named), while fully prepared to survive "5D chess", just provides transportation, and his unusual version of Knowledge checks, then mostly sits there with his nose in a book (reading it or writing/drawing in it) while the Fighter beheads everything he can reach, the Sorcerer provides Disintegrate-based fire support, and the Monk solos gods.

The BDH party? Well, the worst initiative in the party was +7, the best was around +18, and everybody dealt tremendous damage. There was almost nothing that ever got to take a turn, and only one thing I can recall that ever got two turns. My AoE SoL caster had just finally reached an 18 in their primary casting stat.

The "all-Rogue" party? Nobody knows - because nobody could see them. No, not even with that. On a good day, people would notice a draft, and suddenly realized that they were naked. On a bad day, they'd have to flail ineffectually at things without vitals, or leave their blood all over the traps some insane ancient civilization left behind.

Black ops? The homebrew psionic archer was rocking house, applying the "dead" condition to almost anything that moves. The Psion was a toolkit, and the Monk... was rather unlucky, as I recall. I think it should have been Archer = Striker, Monk = Tank, Psion = Toolkit, but even the Monk had a hard time making 50 saving throws.

Dragon Hunters? Well, the Archers / Dragon Riders shot things things from my flying fortress. When we had to "beam down" for an away mission, I was worst tank ever (I got Worfed round 1 most every encounter), then the Sorcerer would SoL the encounter, and the Archers and more survivable melee characters would kill what was left. Then I'd get back up, and ask what I missed.

The, um, horse with no name? Well, my character was a pickled Lich who, by virtue of being oh so unnatural himself, had finally stopped running away from anything scary and unnatural - and may no longer have been the party's primary damage dealer. The Warlock had just committed suicide on a Death Giant. The Kobald... Barbarian(?) was off doing his own thing half the time. The Archer was demonstrating the ceiling on archery. The Archivist was rocking the house telling people that they had kidneys or something, while pretending to be something other than a death-worshipping undead monstrosity. The Knight was as close to an indestructible mobile wall as possible. And everyone else seemed to just be coasting in the Archivist's wake (like they would a DFA Bard).

Oh, dear Hextor, the sky eats you!? Well, two TPKs and some miscommunication later, my Cleric was flying around on an Undead dragon, trying to get the party (and what little remained of civilization) in as much trouble as possible. Also, some of the deceased party members had begun to realize that I'd bring them back to life just to torture them further, and wouldn't let me resurrect them anymore. I was (quite intentionally) a glorified box of bandaids, and the primarily Fighter party was "led" by a BFC chain tripper who was more than starting to feel the limits of his potential.

We be monsters? The construct monk would grab pretty much anything, and it would spontaneously die quite mysteriously (to the invisible Rogue). The War Mage would AoE blast things, or let his dragon deal with them. The Fighter would generally act as as fortified wall. And the Cleric with no ranks in Knowledge: Religion? Well, he knew that he liked Fire, so he had allied the party to what was "supposed to be" the BBEG. Which, given that that's pretty much how the party started the game (that is, allying with what the module expected a "human" party to treat as an enemy), I shouldn't have been surprised.

Of the things you mentioned, I think the only tactic you mentioned that was actually used at that level in any of those parties was Simulacrum, and only by me, and only to have things "back at base" (like friendly copies of pretty monsters), not random crazy epic things.

[tiercel]

First off, mostly, it hasn’t. I have been in one campaign that ever got to these levels.

Secondly, there is less pretending that a tabletop game is RAW. Anything that involves, for instance, “...and so technically this means I can just ignore all XP costs” never gets off the ground at tables I’ve been at (much less DMed for).

More generally when a player question like “couldn’t this spell do X?” comes up, where X is potentially problematic, then my DM response to the players as a whole would generally be “do you want X to be how it works?” with the understanding that if it’s X for PCs, then it’s X for everyone

—notably, including any BBEGs, who are generally higher level than PCs and have thus had plenty of time to be doing X, never mind that if X would have fundamentally changed history, then including X will mean history now includes the effects of X.

This is just a D&D version of the Anthropic Principle: if the campaign world exists in a certain way, the rules of that world must be consistent with that world existing in that way. (Corollary: if players want the rules to be different than the world they are in, then the world must actually be consistent with the rules they want.)

Example: if a campaign world hasn’t been completely overrun by Shadows, it means something is keeping Shadowpocalypses (unbounded chain-reaction Shadow spawning from deaths by Shadow) from happening. Either there are powerful actors who simply abnegate the possibility (e.g. the gods have decided to just smite any concentrations of shadows above a certain threshold or anyone who tries to exceed this threshold) or the rules simply do not work that way — which boils down to mostly the same effect (either the rules don’t actually allow X or there is a sufficient/arbitrary amount of power/Plot preventing the rules from ever achieving X in effect).

Which is to say: no campaign (high level or otherwise) I’ve ever been in were set in the Tippyverse, so the rules of the Tippyverse (RAW “technically correct is the best kind of correct”) could not apply in those campaigns.

[unseenmage]

A fun blend of the OP's description and cooperative storytelling.

The GM pulls stuff out of nowhere and we up the ante after making sure the GM understands the Pandora's Box they're opening by backing us into a corner.

Most of the time we all have a blast experimenting with just how dumb OP our characters can get.

Last campaign we played at high levels we traipsed about the galaxy in a refurbished spaceship, slew the demigodly remains of some gods, challenged an interstellar cabal of mutated space dragons and their nigh infinite armies of mutated kaiju babies, established an interstellar trade network, became demigods, established the tech age on our home planet, then reverted it to fantasy medieval standard, created a fleet of better-than-the-starship-Enterprise spaceships, and rode around on Clockwork Spacewhales for fun.

And that was all just the last few sessions.
The campaign ended with our acclaimed ascensions to proper godhood.


Mind that we DO begin our games at between level 1 and level 5, and our table is high op available with relatively low op characters.

So we earn that power after the slog that is low levels and the false starts of less popular abandoned campaigns.

[sorcererlover]

A fun blend of the OP's description and cooperative storytelling.

The GM pulls stuff out of nowhere and we up the ante after making sure the GM understands the Pandora's Box they're opening by backing us into a corner.

Most of the time we all have a blast experimenting with just how dumb OP our characters can get.

Last campaign we played at high levels we traipsed about the galaxy in a refurbished spaceship, slew the demigodly remains of some gods, challenged an interstellar cabal of mutated space dragons and their nigh infinite armies of mutated kaiju babies, established an interstellar trade network, became demigods, established the tech age on our home planet, then reverted it to fantasy medieval standard, created a fleet of better-than-the-starship-Enterprise spaceships, and rode around on Clockwork Spacewhales for fun.

And that was all just the last few sessions.
The campaign ended with our acclaimed ascensions to proper godhood.


Mind that we DO begin our games at between level 1 and level 5, and our table is high op available with relatively low op characters.

So we earn that power after the slog that is low levels and the false starts of less popular abandoned campaigns.

How do your mundanes feel when they don't do anything but sit on their butts inside the spaceship as your spellcasters fly it, fight with it, etc. etc.?

The problem I think I see is that Monsters are stronger than fighters, spellcasters can create an army of monsters, so fighters end up being dead weight and unnecessary.

We all know about quadratic wizards and linear fighters but when this happens in an actual game what happens? Do the fighters leave? Does the DM bring down the banhammer on the spellcaster?

[Darth Ultron]

Well, a lot of the problems you mentioned are easy to fix with some general house rules. Like:

Any magic that summons or creates objects or changes the creatures form have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be summoned/created/changed into. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective). Only some divine magic can ignore this.

And: Anything that comes through the spell Gate is not controlled by the caster

And:Any magic that Changes your body and brain is an inherently risky business. Every round a character spends in a form with a type other than his own, he must make a Will save, Failure means the character becomes the form it has taken in body and mind.

And that is just a sample of house rules that fix many of the problems you mention.

Also, there is the Bigger Fish idea. Sure 17th level is great...but 18th is better, and 19th and to infinity beyond that. And anything the PCs can do, the rest of the multiverse has already done for 20,000 years.

D&D, if you go just ''by the book" does not scale up very well....as they simply don't make much higher level things for the game. But nothing stops a DM from doing so.

But maybe most of all, 17th level D&D is not really ''simple encounters". You don't just fight goblin bandits at 17th level. You are fighting a wyrm dragon and it's minions to save a kingdom.

[unseenmage]

How do your mundanes feel when they don't do anything but sit on their butts inside the spaceship as your spellcasters fly it, fight with it, etc. etc.?

The problem I think I see is that Monsters are stronger than fighters, spellcasters can create an army of monsters, so fighters end up being dead weight and unnecessary.

We all know about quadratic wizards and linear fighters but when this happens in an actual game what happens? Do the fighters leave? Does the DM bring down the banhammer on the spellcaster?

Our fighters ARE monsters. And we were using PF mythic rules so the goblin sharpshooter manning the space lasers was integral in that, via mythic, they could shoot ANYTHING they could see... Made space fights that much easier.

I was playing an alchemist construct master, our optimizer was playing a bard Ghoul with access to 9th lvl spells, and I do not recall the goblin's class as it mattered little once mythic+tech turned them into a laser shots banked off the moon mobile artillery.

The GM made sure everyone still had ways to contribute. The primary casters had a LOT more pressing matters than solving every encounter. Not that we didn't try. There's just only so much that Construct minions without class abilities can do.

That and character matters. Role play. My alchemist was an Android. Not super personable. The bard was a Ghoul. Even less personable. The goblin was our go-to guy for translating spacefaring-spellcaster-ese into primitive alien dinosaur caveman speak.

[Nifft]

Could you describe a typical 17th-20th level encounter and how each party member participated?

I'm not sure I ever had a typical encounter at that level.

Combat ranged from a one-spell kill ("polymorph any object -> potted petunia", goodbye my custom Wendigo Wilder NPC) to long drawn-out running battles with occasional retreat, sometimes a bit too late.


I tried some dumb things (multi-sided battles in which the PCs could have participated -> they ran away after watching me roll NPC attacks against NPCs).

I tried some successful things (NPCs one-shots a PC -> player uses fate token to revive; all players are more careful in future fights).



One high-level party I remember pretty well:

We had one Ranger who had picked campaign-relevant favored enemies (Undead, Evil Outsiders, and ... some other things, I forget): archery based, usually got off a full attack, did the most reliable and most overall HP damage in the group. His holy composite longbow had a name, and it was whispered in fear on two of the lower planes.

We had one Monk / Paladin / custom PrC (to not suck as badly as that seems like it should) who wrestled a flying Vrock out of formation and prevented a Dance of Ruin from going off. Difficult to kill, not the most dangerous but also difficult to ignore.

The two Wizards were occasionally one-spell killers, but mostly they blasted and did sub-par hitpoint damage. BFC and buffing were the exceptions, and when used those did get them out of some trouble, but mostly they did party-wide mobility, utility, and blasting. The players didn't spend enough time in the monster books to break the game with polymorph / shapechange / summoning; they didn't use planar binding for anything except information gathering during downtime, and I think for one construction project.

[SangoProduction]

I played exactly one game at this level range, in about 2 decades of gaming. Well, technically everyone else epic level with spirits of gods, and kitted out in all the legendary equipment, while I played a level 18 half orc wizard (prestige class: Force Missile Mage). And because I didn't care for shopping for magic items, I just took no gear other than the spell book and a loin cloth. Only ever casted variations on Magic Missile. (Mostly metamagic'd)

I eventually retired the character because it was too effective for the table. Being able to kill any other character in a quarter of a spell tends to be a little bit much. I did manage to get metamagics banned from the table though lol.

[Florian]

The "sweet spot" at my tables is around the level 6-8 range of power and options. Playing APs, we do regularly play into the level 17 range, but the whole feeling, tactics and such of the "sweet spot" will still dictate the choices, look & feel and such. It´s basically an evolution from "My Barbarian rages and charges the Goblin with a Greatsword" to "My Barbarian goes into a epic rage and charges (God) with (name of godkiller sword)".

[Couatl]

Actually I had serious issue with high level OP characters the one time I ran past level 16.

One time they pulled off a chained polymorph any object on some stones and created something like 16 frost worms around the bad guys, then blasted there with AoE spells. It came out to be a frost worm bomb with only 2 spells.

The cleric (who was actually an undead dry lich from Sandstorm) was way overpowered because he did the combo with necrotic empowerment and some things from Frostburn I don't actually remember and had immunity to nearly everything, had 7 phylacteries, had twice the hp of an equal level barbarian and I don't remember what more.

The wizard used a spell to create his own demiplane (I believe it was from deities and demigods) and made it an ever expanding realm of air, water and platinum sand and had infinite money.

First I spent hours optimizing my encounters to make them interesting. The I realized it was useless and when there was combat I used to say - "Ok, you kill them, let's proceed". Unfortunately that felt really bad and that made me think that I shouldn't run above level 13 with the same guys again.

[sorcererlover]

Actually I had serious issue with high level OP characters the one time I ran past level 16.

One time they pulled off a chained polymorph any object on some stones and created something like 16 frost worms around the bad guys, then blasted there with AoE spells. It came out to be a frost worm bomb with only 2 spells.

The cleric (who was actually an undead dry lich from Sandstorm) was way overpowered because he did the combo with necrotic empowerment and some things from Frostburn I don't actually remember and had immunity to nearly everything, had 7 phylacteries, had twice the hp of an equal level barbarian and I don't remember what more.

The wizard used a spell to create his own demiplane (I believe it was from deities and demigods) and made it an ever expanding realm of air, water and platinum sand and had infinite money.

First I spent hours optimizing my encounters to make them interesting. The I realized it was useless and when there was combat I used to say - "Ok, you kill them, let's proceed". Unfortunately that felt really bad and that made me think that I shouldn't run above level 13 with the same guys again.

Why didn't you send equally optimized spellcasters to meet them head on? As much infinite wealth the wizard had i'm sure you the DM had more wealth.

So the responses seem to be everyone is so low-op it doesn't feel any different than low levels or it's super high op to the point mundanes aren't your normal mundanes. I guess that makes sense.

[Florian]

@sorcererlover:

It´s not so much "low OP vs. high OP", it´s more about intended tone, mood and look & feel of the actual game play that's the actual point here.

"We play D&D/PF" is pretty much an empty phrase that contain next to no information. You can use the same rules set to play something like Conan or Fafhd and the Grey Mouser from levels 1 to 20, or you can go into Doctor Strange or Inception style games from 1 to 20 (ok, you should avoid using both extremes at the same time. A Wizard going full Inception mode while playing something akin to Swords Against Devilry or a "mundane" Fighter in something like a super hero story? Doesn't work).

Optimization level is always tied to and compared with the actual balance point that comes along with the intended game.

[TheYell]

Combat ranged from a one-spell kill ("polymorph any object -> potted petunia", goodbye my custom Wendigo Wilder NPC


Oh no, not again...

[Crake]

All of my games that have approached those levels have usually tapered off and ended up just being epilogued (that is, we all just sat down and discussed how the game ended, rather than actually playing it out) because the players weren't interested in playing "dungeons and dragons and spreadsheets and splatdiving".

There has been one rather memorable encounter that occured at 17th level, and it involved a megacity being overrun by a horde of "minitarrasques" and dusk giants (the dusk giants had powered up to maximum strength by the time the party got to them, having eaten many people along the way), and it was less a "here's a challenging fight, let's see who wins" and more of a "here's wave after wave of enemies, let's see how long you can survive and how many people you can save".

It involved several buildings being crushed by a goliath psychic warrior using expansion to grow to quite large sizes, as well as a gated solar spamming slaying arrows who also spammed summon monster VII for a while after the fight to summon movanic devas to raise dead as many people nearby as they could.

Generally speaking though, my players don't find tracking a multitude of buffs, and spells prepared from a giant spell book, divining information, performing surgical strikes where possible, and just generally playing a world-spanning game of magical chess, which is basically what high level play involving magic boils down to. You basically start playing civilization in a dnd setting.

Also, regarding using simulacrum and ice assassin without the material components: You can't actually do that. The material component is actually how you determine what the resultant simulacrum/ice assassin is actually going to be. There's 0 other way for the spell to identify what to create. If you don't have it, then then spell doesn't actually make a creature out of anything.

[RoboEmperor]

Also, regarding using simulacrum and ice assassin without the material components: You can't actually do that. The material component is actually how you determine what the resultant simulacrum/ice assassin is actually going to be. There's 0 other way for the spell to identify what to create. If you don't have it, then then spell doesn't actually make a creature out of anything.

That's not true.


Material Component: A gem worth 100 gp—aquamarine for air, tourmaline for earth, garnet for fire, or pearl for water.

According to you someone with the Ignore Material Components epic feat cannot cast this spell because the material component is different for each type of elemental. That's not true. Nowhere does anything anywhere say Ignore Material Components will fail here.

So if a spellcaster can summon the desired Elemental with Ignore Material Components, then spellcasters can create Simulacra of creatures they want without material components.

Don't try to introduce new rules that don't exist. Material Components by RAW are completely annihilated upon casting the spell so it doesn't matter whether a material component existed or not. If it was the focus or the target of the spell it would be a different story but it's not. It's material component that will be completely annihilated.

[Crake]

That's not true.



According to you someone with the Ignore Material Components epic feat cannot cast this spell because the material component is different for each type of elemental. That's not true. Nowhere does anything anywhere say Ignore Material Components will fail here.

So if a spellcaster can summon the desired Elemental with Ignore Material Components, then spellcasters can create Simulacra of creatures they want without material components.

Don't try to introduce new rules that don't exist. Material Components by RAW are completely annihilated upon casting the spell so it doesn't matter whether a material component existed or not. If it was the focus or the target of the spell it would be a different story but it's not. It's material component that will be completely annihilated.

Except Summon Elemental Monolith's material component is determined by the choice made for the spell, rather than the spell's result being determined by the material component chosen. The spell provides the choice, you can summon an elemental monolith, and which one you choose to summon determines what kind of gem you have to use, similar to how summon spells provide you with a set of choices that you may as part of the casting of the spell. On the other hand, simulacrum says you can duplicate a creature, but the spell doesn't know which creature to duplicate. It has no target, it's an effect spell, so the spell has 0 means to determine what creature is being duplicated without the material component. You cast the spell, the spell looks for the part of the creature to know what to duplicate, it finds nothing, and thus can't create anything.

[RoboEmperor]

You cast the spell, the spell looks for the part of the creature to know what to duplicate, it finds nothing, and thus can't create anything.

Where does it say the spell does this? Nowhere does it say it does this.

By your logic if you cast Bull's Strength the spell looks for hairs from a bull but finds nothing and thus can't draw power from it and imbue a creature with +4 str.

No, Eschew Materials lets you get your desired effect without any material component. It either emulates the material component or material components are just magical aids for the spellcaster and a skilled spellcaster can cast spells without magical aids or material components are some other thing. In the end this is all fluff not crunch and has no impact on crunch. Eschew Materials ignores 100% of material components and lets you get the desired effect.

Maybe Eschew Materials lets you magically create a part of the creature for a split second before being annihilated?
Maybe Eschew Materials lets you apply the creature DNA directly with your magical prowess?

Who knows. Point is Eschew Materials will succeed.

Again if you are correct the spell would be target:creature body part. Not Material Component:creature body part.

[Couatl]

Why didn't you send equally optimized spellcasters to meet them head on? As much infinite wealth the wizard had i'm sure you the DM had more wealth.

So the responses seem to be everyone is so low-op it doesn't feel any different than low levels or it's super high op to the point mundanes aren't your normal mundanes. I guess that makes sense.

I did, but as I said 1. it took too long to prepare cause all the Monster Manuals were useless and 2. when the fifth OP wizard and his buddy comes to be an encounter the in-world logic goes to sit and cry in the corner.

[Florian]

Who knows. Point is Eschew Materials will succeed.

Not really.

Specific will always beat general.

It´s actually more or less "open" spells that need a very specific material component for their completion. For example, Plane Shift needs a tuning fork attuned to a certain plane to make that specific plane a target for that spell. Fork (Hell) will beat Fork (Plane Shift). Good luck plane shifting without a fork to designate a plane. Or rather: You can´t actually start casting the spell without having the right components at hand. Substitute bat guano? No problem. Substitute god blood to create an Ice Assassin? Big problem.

[Efrate]

Let's see, our melee type is a pretty stock uber charger with perfect flight and enough movespeed that if he can reach it from at least ten feet away it dies, with up to a 90 degree turn and 20 foot reach. Only like plus 35 to hit at level 15 so high ac can slow him. Thats unbuffed.

Our TWF rogue with even lower op, no craven or assassins stance, but pounce, at level 17 with a full attack with sneak and her initiative will do something similar. But 300 dmg vs. 1300 isn't a noticeable difference mostly. If she gets g. invis with her darkstalker it's almost all the time.

Our Killoren ranger is weaker, only about 90 damage an arrow and 4 arrows a round. without his smite. plus 50 some knowledge checks in his one aspect.

Our archivist just throws a summon nature's ally or monster whatever out and uses dark knowledge and knowledge devotion, handles healing as needed and because he has survived a multitude of otherwise tpks he has stupidly high wbl which he mostly holds onto to lend to others or buy luhix or something similar. When he's not busy with his interplanar brothel. He's also paying for all the teleport without errors and plane shift and such.

Our arcane heirophant throws out some bfc, then buffs his awakened fleshraker and then wild shapes and joins in melee.

Out MoMF is running with a ton of immunities, good fast healing and a bunch of neat niche magic items used in unique ways.

Our casters generally underpreform, but we are a pretty low op table and our full casters have a gentlemans agreement not to just take over everything.

[Quertus]

It´s not so much "low OP vs. high OP", it´s more about intended tone, mood and look & feel of the actual game play that's the actual point here.

"We play D&D/PF" is pretty much an empty phrase that contain next to no information. You can use the same rules set to play something like Conan or Fafhd and the Grey Mouser from levels 1 to 20, or you can go into Doctor Strange or Inception style games from 1 to 20 (ok, you should avoid using both extremes at the same time. A Wizard going full Inception mode while playing something akin to Swords Against Devilry or a "mundane" Fighter in something like a super hero story? Doesn't work).

Optimization level is always tied to and compared with the actual balance point that comes along with the intended game.


our full casters have a gentlemans agreement not to just take over everything.

"D&D 3.5" just tells you the rules set being used (or, at some tables, ignored). Sadly, explaining the tone and "balance range" of the party is better handled with more thorough communication, sample characters, and gentleman's agreements.

[Crake]

Let's see, our melee type is a pretty stock uber charger with perfect flight and enough movespeed that if he can reach it from at least ten feet away it dies, with up to a 90 degree turn and 20 foot reach. Only like plus 35 to hit at level 15 so high ac can slow him. Thats unbuffed.

Minor nitpick: You need to charge at least 10 feet, and your final position must be the closest possible square within which you can attack, so he would have to actually be at least 30 feet away if he's got 20 foot reach.

[Deadline]

How is gating in a 40 hd creature or creating a simulacrum or ice assassin of a high hd monster or using wish to create magic items not their intended use?

Fair point on Gate, didn't have my Draconomicon handy to check the HD limit.

The claim that using caster level boosters and eschew materials to get super power simulacrums is not a weird or unintended use of the spell is faulty. And the Ice Assassin argument usually follows a similar train of thought (assuming optimizer tricks). If you are using Ice Assassin as written and not doing something weird like compelling it to serve as a guardian rather than tracking down its target, then you are similarly using that spell in a weird way.

Using Wish to create epic items is the part I question.


Could you describe one such rocket tag fight?

I'd have to check my DM notes for specific details, but unless something weird happened in the fight, combat was almost always over in one or two rounds. Usually this was due to instant death attacks, or overwhelming damage. And almost always it involved one side being extremely prepared and ambushing the other (scry and die type tactics).

And I can see from your later posts you wanted to know how "mundanes" fared. From my experience, poorly. This included a Paladin being killed by a single full attack from a demon (I think it was an advanced Glabrezu of some sort), and a fighter being killed by a swarm of flying half-fiends (to be fair, they were dealing Vile damage). We had another Paladin who was fairly lackluster in general, but the player didn't seem to mind not being a top damage contributor.

And we had one villain who used Simulacrum to be in many places at once. I can't even remember how many times we killed him, only to have it turn out to be yet another Simulacrum.


I never gotten past level 14 before the game ended because of the DM's life issues.

The number of games I've played to that level are easily less than 10. The game is a very different beast at that level, and not everyone enjoys the types of stories that fit there.

[Telonius]

To me it feels like the game is unplayable unless you're a spellcaster at 17th level. Like even a 20th level mundane with a million gp worth of magic items is gonna sit on his ass do nothing because the spellcaster will end the encounter either before it begins or on his first round.

So just out of curiosity how does 17th level d&d look at your table? Just so I know what to expect.

Slow. Very, very slow. Generally the spellcasters fret about not having the exactly right combo for the encounter, and take their time choosing. Then when the DM asks if the spell offers SR or saves, they have to look it up (since, dear gods, I swear I'm the only one who writes this stuff down ahead of time). The fighter spends a couple of minutes doing algebra to figure out how much his attack bonus and damage bonus turn out to be, then has to start over again since he forgot to add the random bonus from the buff that they forgot was up. The Rogue is generally either running away from the thing that's not going to hit him, or trying to flank the thing that's going to squash him next turn. Everybody's hoping the DM isn't going to have the extradimensional horror try to grapple anyone.

[Hiro Quester]

We have also had some norms that encourage teamwork, and that streamlined play at high levels. WE usually play as a large-ish party (7-8 members). So summoned creatures can slow the game down for everyone.

So we had norms of party members trying very hard to not step on one another's roles, and trying hard to help everyone be able to contribute. E.g. my 21 level druid could have summoned meat shields, but we had a knight who prided himself on being an impenetrable wall, and so I wouldn't summon things that would make him irrelevant (even if I could).

And casters also can focus on buffing the mundanes, rather than solo-ing the encounter. So instead of the cleric gating in a powerful entity to help, he would make the party barbarian into a melee monster by unloading a bunch of buff and protection spells onto him (and enhancing the whole party with protections, mass X spells like Freedom of movement, etc).

Moreover, DMs can encourage casters to make sure everyone is effective, by awarding XP bonuses for teamwork, helping others be better at their roles, etc. The casters investing in empowering mundanes can be very effective, when the party is induced to help one another. My 21 level Bard/SublimeChord PC could do far more well-placed damage to enemies by buffing our fighter, paladin, monk and rogue with a Haste spell and inspire courage, than with a disintegrate spell. And I'd get an XP bonus for teamwork.

And those who can summon, can also choose to voluntarily limit their summoning to deal with some aspect of the Bad Guys' team that operates on the periphery of the action. e.g. the summoned animals, monsters elementals, etc. are used to hold the minor demons at bay so the party members can focus on dealing with the elite crack troops standing in front of the McGuffin.

DM also had ways of limiting spell casters, by artificial urgency: many encounters in a single day, with more anticipated before we get to the McGuffin (which will disappear tonight if we don't get there in time). So casters couldn't blow their whole load of spells in early encounters, but had to save resources for later on. Mundane characters, who are not limited in how many times they can stab, power attack, trip, grapple bad guys, have a lot more to do when casters have to conserve spells for big encounters later on today.

Or the opposite. The day begins with a D-Day style storming the beaches, and many big spells are needed to get us through the masses of enemies standing in our path. So by the time we get through that to the McGuffin-adjacent encounters, the spellcasters are getting a bit lower on resources, and need to be judicious with their use. They need to rely on (and help) mundanes.

[tyckspoon]

Using Wish to create epic items is the part I question.



The 3.5 version of Wish left out any GP limit on items created using it; the cost is meant to be paid in XP instead. If you're hard-casting it and actually paying the XP, that's a pretty significant limit - since you can't spend enough XP to lower your own level there's a fairly natural cap to how powerful an item you can make that way. The silliness happens when that interacts with forms of Wish that don't have to pay XP, such as turning it into a Supernatural ability or having a creature do it as a spell-like ability for you. (XP-free Wishes, in general, don't appear to be something the designers gave any thought to; they result in a number of weird possibilities and are one of the big enablers of Tippyverse style "what does the world look like if you actually apply these rules as written?" scenarios.)

[GreatDane]

So the responses seem to be everyone is so low-op it doesn't feel any different than low levels or it's super high op to the point mundanes aren't your normal mundanes. I guess that makes sense.
This is about the size of it. My groups are aware of the ins and outs of 3.5, and we all agree that "I gate in a solution" is thoroughly unexciting, so we all choose to play "low op."

Mind you, high-level gameplay is different from low-level gameplay! The PCs are much more empowered when it comes to dictating the story, and their power suites make them more akin to superheroes than Tolkieneqsue adventurers. As a nod to the thread title, it looks a lot more like Avengers than Fellowship of the Ring.

[Rhedyn]

DM ran the first printing of the PH for the Shapechange spell where you can turn into double HD per caster level creatures. He also ruled spellcasting to be an extraordinary ability so I would turn a Brass Wyrm for endless free sorcerer spells and I spammed earthquake to destroy AP dungeons without having to fight them.

After we hit level 21, I turned into a monster that could split and made endless copies of myself with unlimited casting and took the multiverse to a post scarcity society.

And I was one of the more underpowered characters in our party. The powerful party member turned into a draco vampire lich with endless HD and BBEG Kyuss gave up and pleaded for mercy rather than fight.

This was our last D&D 3.5 campaign.

[Nifft]

So the responses seem to be everyone is so low-op it doesn't feel any different than low levels or it's super high op to the point mundanes aren't your normal mundanes. I guess that makes sense.

Even in a low-OP group, there is an obvious difference in the size of numbers and the easy application of insta-death effects. Disintegrate is quite an upgrade from scorching ray.

Conversely, insta-death can happen to PCs: a character might have a good chance to make the save vs. a disintegrate ray, but you'd better be sure you're ready for the consequences of that save not being made.

[King of Nowhere]

My group is mid to mid-low op and we are doing fine.

Of course monsters are no longer an issue. I sent them against a tarrasque back when they wwere level 15, and they handled it easily.
No, my campaign has multiple power groups (nations, churches, dragons, other whacky organizations) competing for world domination, and each one of those has its fair share of high level people. SO the pcs are fighting opponents that are just as strong as them, and just as well equipped.

Mundanes handle themselves well. Sure, they need a gazillion magic item (my world is rich, so everyone is above wbl. Once they started looting high level npcs, the pcs became even more so). And sure, they need me to swing my ban hammer at the most powerful combos (my guideline is, if you can't defend against it, then it's too strong). But then, they become VERY difficult to kill. domination? flat out immunity. death effect? fort save pumped to the stratosphere (or flat out immunity). direct damage? saving throw for half damage, elemental resistances, and a ridiculous amount of hit points. no-save ability score damage? Can't defend, so it's banned (or nerfed to give a saving throw). Summoned monsters? they can't even come close to hit the fighter's AC.
casters are very versatile, and they can do a lot of stuff, but in the end they must resort to blasting (works very well against groups, because damage to everyone adds up, but won't kill fast), or spamming save-or-die until someone tanks the saving throw. Fighters have to-hit bonuses high enough that they are guaranteed to deal some damage every round. they don't have the raw power of the casters, but they are difficult to kill and impossible to ignore.
Of course casters can buff mundanes, but both sides have casters, so both sides have the same buffs.

unòlike at other tables, fights tend to be very protracted, due to everyone being so full of protective items/spells as to be almost immortal.


Slow. Very, very slow. Generally the spellcasters fret about not having the exactly right combo for the encounter, and take their time choosing. The fighter spends a couple of minutes doing algebra to figure out how much his attack bonus and damage bonus turn out to be
that too


I did, but as I said 1. it took too long to prepare cause all the Monster Manuals were useless and 2. when the fifth OP wizard and his buddy comes to be an encounter the in-world logic goes to sit and cry in the corner.
I solve this issue with resurrections. Sure, there aren't that many 17th level clerics around, but there are enough to resurrect those who can spare the money, and each power group has access to at least some.
Sure, there are plenty of ways to prevent resurrection, but those are last resort, as the nuclear option. the thing is, high level characters don't fear death. they are either going to go to a paradise-like place, or they'll go to a hell where they will be the biggest, nastiest meanies around, and with the favor of those in charge. Either way, they will do fine. what high level people fear is spending eternity trapped into a gem. So they all made a pact to not use stuff that traps the soul, and should one do it, he would be retaliated in kind, because everyone would become very scared.
This means that I can keep recycling my villains. :smallcool:
Oh, they will have lost their best equipment, looted by the players after the last fight. So the players still feel like they accomplished something in defeating the villain. The villain will be less powerful, so maybe he'll have become thhe henchmen of an even more powerful guy. Or maybe a few former boss villains will gang together.
It also means I don't have to be afraid to kill my players. Even if I accidentally tpk them, well, they will be resurrected by their allies, given second-hand equipment, and they will have to farm equipment again.

In the end, my table is a lot of politiking and strategizing to try and make the enemy faction commit its high level troops under what you think will be favorable conditions. Then there will be an engagement of high level people. A few will die, the losing side will retreat, the winning side will loot the corpses that are left around. Rinse and repeat until one side can't recover their losses anymore.
it's much more engaging than this description make it seem




So the responses seem to be everyone is so low-op it doesn't feel any different than low levels or it's super high op to the point mundanes aren't your normal mundanes. I guess that makes sense.
that sums it up in a nutshell

[weckar]

We mostly end up beating ancient dragons with dex drain. And the world tends to end.

[NecroDancer]

The one party I was apart of that made it to epic levels wasn’t really focused on breaking the game.

Our party’s final battle was against the gods themselves (who were turned into undead by the BBEG and as a result were weakened). We did some pretty ludicrous things like making nigh invincible zombie armies, and creating small moons but we only did all this because the DM gave us the time and resources we needed to do this.

The final battle was a success and we slaughtered the undead gods and then in the epilogue became the new gods of the campaign world.

Honestly none of us wanted to “break” the game with insane combos because it just wasn’t fun or enjoyable. We mainly stuck blasting and sword-swinging in most high level combat. But when the DM specifically told us that we were going to fight gods and had to be creative we did some crazy things.

Honestly breaking the game can be fun if everyone (including the DM) wants to do it. It creates cool scenarios but it should be used sparingly or it loses all sense of enjoyment.

[Deadline]

The 3.5 version of Wish left out any GP limit on items created using it; the cost is meant to be paid in XP instead. If you're hard-casting it and actually paying the XP, that's a pretty significant limit - since you can't spend enough XP to lower your own level there's a fairly natural cap to how powerful an item you can make that way. The silliness happens when that interacts with forms of Wish that don't have to pay XP, such as turning it into a Supernatural ability or having a creature do it as a spell-like ability for you. (XP-free Wishes, in general, don't appear to be something the designers gave any thought to; they result in a number of weird possibilities and are one of the big enablers of Tippyverse style "what does the world look like if you actually apply these rules as written?" scenarios.)

Right, I knew I was forgetting something. :smalltongue:

[RoboEmperor]

The 3.5 version of Wish left out any GP limit on items created using it; the cost is meant to be paid in XP instead. If you're hard-casting it and actually paying the XP, that's a pretty significant limit - since you can't spend enough XP to lower your own level there's a fairly natural cap to how powerful an item you can make that way. The silliness happens when that interacts with forms of Wish that don't have to pay XP, such as turning it into a Supernatural ability or having a creature do it as a spell-like ability for you. (XP-free Wishes, in general, don't appear to be something the designers gave any thought to; they result in a number of weird possibilities and are one of the big enablers of Tippyverse style "what does the world look like if you actually apply these rules as written?" scenarios.)

You can increase the cap by simply obtaining a template with +LA. You can do this with core rules only too.

[JeenLeen]

The one campaign I was in that lasted this long had us all as pretty high-op casters (a Cleric-zilla, Druid-zilla, Wizard-batman/buffer (making the -zillas even more deadly), and a Cleric not-quite-optimized to do healing with 1 level of Rogue for trapfinding).

Battle was routinely
Round 1: Wizard buffs. Zillas auto-kill something with a charge attack. Cleric probably does a Save-or-Die.
Round 2: Wizard save-or-dies. Zillas auto-kill something with a charge attack. Cleric uses Revivify on whoever died from enemy attacks.
And repeat.
Very rocket tag.

One somewhat 'realistic' thing was that, as our PCs were the elite troops against one or two bad forces, we would generally get teleported to a site, do our raid/investigation, then regroup for the next day's assault.

But, also, combat was way too slow.
Although we had written out what our normal buffs were, circumstances change. So figuring out our damage or to-hit modifiers would take literal minutes sometimes. Sure, combat just lasted a few rounds, but it was LONG. Also, there'd be times when it was obvious that the zillas could mop the floor with everything given time, so the others just stayed flying out of range instead of wasting spell slots we'd need for the next fight. (Although we probably had a 1-hour adventuring day, that hour generally did include 3-5 fights so preserving spell slots mattered.)

---

I think play can go better. That game was when our group learned the dangers of overly optimized play. We wound up -- players and DM -- saying we weren't really having fun, so the DM told us the rest of the plot then we started another system.

[Hiro Quester]

A lot of people are talking about the problem of having so many modifiers to calculate at high levels, that it slows down play tremendously.

Our high-level large group all agreed to use The Only Sheet (http://www.theonlysheet.com)as a solution. It is an excel-based character manager used with laptops at the table, that has facilities for automatically calculating modifiers for most aspects of the game.

It comes loaded with all the SRD stuff (there are 3.5, PF, and 5.0 versions), and many users have shared downloadable implementations of spells, races, classes and feats from other books too.

So when the bard starts inspiring courage, you type "Inspire Courage" into the laptop section, type a number into the modifier, and your attack and damage bonuses, changes to will saves etc are all automatically adjusted.

Likewise when the cleric casts mass bull's strength, enlarges you, and you take CON damage and are shaken, and then you start melee flanking from a high ground position.

Since I was playing a self-buffing wildshaping BFC/Melee druid, where practically everything changes when you wildshape (and my Tiger Animal Companion shared spells with me, so his stats also changed often). An automated system like that was a godsend. Especially at 21st level, when I had probably 10-15 buff spells running all the time.

I know some people don't like laptops at the table (distractions). But for our group it seriously simplified the problem of tracking the effects of many many buff spells, equipment bonuses, feats, etc. that affect dice modifiers, and enabled smooth play in a large (8 players) epic-level group.