Epic Level Game Ideas

[tstewt1921]

Hey all, me and my group have run several games in the past but haven't gone far past 20, no higher than 22. I've been wanting to come up with a game that would run all the way to the middle 30s if possible. I know the power level would be a bit out there and most monsters would have to be customized which is fine. I'm just having problems coming up with a story other than harrowing hell. Any cool story ideas you could come up with would be amazing!!! I'm open to all stories, if it is something pregen (if there is anything for that high) it would need to be compatible with 3.5.

[Cosi]

Some possible plot hooks:

The Stars are Right: The stars have come into alignment and the wards around the prisons of the great old ones weaken. The players must battle cultists, aberrations, and eventually avatars of the elder gods in hopes of preventing them from escaping their prisons. Eventually, one or more of them does escape, and the players must battle against things that were not meant to be. You can either use Lovecraft's pantheon straight up, or mix your own.

Invasion of the Ethergaunts: The empire of the Ethergaunts has decided to annex the material plane. All their mystic secrets and arcane sciences are deployed in the service of the conquest. The flesh engines pour forth hordes of vermin. The Logic of Thoth tears apart the boundaries between worlds and floods cities with engaged elementals. The self-replicating Silver Legions strip landscapes bare to make more clockwork warriors. The players must defeat all these enemies and more, find a way into the fortress dimensions of the Exarchs of the empire, and devise some way of permanently killing creatures that have been experimenting with magic since before the mortal races tamed fire.

Ascension: The Allfather has died, and the world is in chaos. The sites of power that enabled his rule sit unclaimed, and a thousand fledgling gods strive to claim them. The players are a group of godlings who have decided that banding together gives them the best chance at ultimate power. Shamelessly stolen from the Dominions line of games.

The Sultan of Sultans: Once, the four peoples of the genies were ruled by a single leader. But it has been an age since any could claim to the title. However, the discovery of a ruin in the deep Astral Plane that matches descriptions of the Palace of All Genies may change that. Politics swirl, with each genie ruler simultaneously claiming that the palace's appearance clearly proves they are the rightful heir, and that none may enter, presumably for fear of being found wrong. But the pressure to explore the ruin is mounting. Beyond proof of which claim holds, the palace doubtless contains secrets long lost to the multiverse, and artifacts of staggering power. But to explore it is to risk a multiversal war, and to reveal what you find would all but guarantee it.

Trade War: The players are the founders of a fledgling inter-planar trading company. Their adversaries are, of course, the heads of all the other inter-planar trading companies, many of whom are epic level characters. To succeed they have to balance on the knive's edge -- don't provoke someone you can't handle, but don't allow your business to stagnate.

[zlefin]

well, first question is how varied you want the foes to be; and how much sense you want the plot to make.
Far realms can be a good choice for ultra-high level fights.
not sure there's any suitable modules, most of those are made more for lvl 20, than meant to truly scale into epic. Though you could always adapt some of them by changing the monsters to be 10 CR higher. There's a whole bunch of em related to the elder evils book iirc.

If not hell, why not invade heaven? or take down mechanus? really going after any plane would be fine.

Or just some prime material(s) - note the plural, your group already conquered one prime material plane in its entirety, and is moving on to take more of them, that should attract some high level opposition.

[MoiMagnus]

I've done recently (during the last 4 years) a 30 level campaign in a home-made D&D.
So the progression isn't exactly the same as D&D3.5, but it should be transposable.

In short: High level works pretty well if you start ruling empires, taking care of economics and armies, and only fight "commando attack" against powerful beings.

In long:

Level 1-5: We're recruited to deal with some infernal cults causing trouble in the capital of the kingdom of Altas (human kingdom). We also have some mercenaries missions for a guy named Clausius, we're not sure if he is the head of the local CIA, or the head of the local mafia, or both. We quickly gain some fame and start wtrongly colaborating with the officials against this infernal threat. The army of the hobgoblin autocratic empire are starting to rise, and it is probably part of the plot of the devil-prince Aex, which is trying to destabilise the kingdom of Altas from the inside with those infernal cults.

Conclusion: Dismantelment of the cult.

Level 6-10: By dismanteling the local infernal cult, we gained enough fame to start working directly for Nathanael, king's chancelor (and "true ruler" of the kingdom). The kingdom is preparing to a defensive war against the hobgoblins, and sabotage and raids start to happens. This, plus personnal plot from some players. And plus the Clausius quests. And plus some fishy things about the chancelor, which is starting to become crazy and turn the kingdom into a brutal dictatorship (he is becoming paranoiac).

Conclusion: The chancelor had made a pact with Asmodeos: the soul of every condemned by the justice against the power to fight against the devil-prince Aex. And he ended up corrupted by infernal power (as planed by Asmodeos, of course). We had a big boss fight against him, and killed him.

Level 11-15: The king was "mentally killed" by the chancelor Nathanael. And we just killed the chancelor. At the beginning of a war. Since Clausius was indeed the head of the CIA, he arrange things to make us become "temporary chancelors". And we have a war to win. We have a lot of diplomacy and economics to handle (particularly with the elven kingdom nearby)

Conclusion: We succesfully organised the defense of Altas. And one of us managed to be crowned Queen of Altas (through personnal plot).

Level 16-20: But we've not won the war. And the big bads are preparing a doomsday weapon, so we need to counter-attack, and go commando to kill the big bads (working for Aex) and destroy the weapon. And... we randomly find a prophety about us being the cause of the destruction of the universe. (Prophecy of Shade, the LE god of destruction of the universe). But we don't have the time to care about it too much. And we also find under the kingdom of Altas an underground fortress with so powerful defenses that we don't really want to go inside.

Conclusion (first part): We defeated the big bads, and recruited the LN among them. Aex negociated a "peace" against future help.
Conclusion (second part): The Elven Queen, which also had a pact with Asmodeos (she was working with Nathanael, but, we didn't see that coming), betrayed us and tried to capture the hidden fortress. The final battle inside the fortress to get rid of her unfortunatly damaged the magical defenses (that she was trying to destroy anyway). It is revealed to us that this fortress is in fact a prison for the god-killing entities created during the first war (gods versus primordials). Thoses entities cannot be killed by gods (because that's why they were created), so they were put there hidden, by few gods. And it was succesfully maintained as a secret until now.

Level 21-25: Literally every powerful and egoistic entity of the universe now want to gain the control of the prison, because it would give them huge negotiation power with the gods (or just because they want to create chaos by freeing them). But, that's not the only problem, since the gods themselve are also a problem. A resolution about to be voted by the Celestian Alliance is "Take militaristic control of the material plane to defend the fortress. Death of most mortals will follow, this will only be a problem for few thousand years, they will be able to repopulate the material plan when we would have finished to move the prison elsewhere". We to get with diplomaty and warfare to manage to allow the material plane to continue to exist as it is. We also discover multiple plot of the god Shade for world destruction, succeeding into forcing a direct war between the infernal armies and the material plane.

Conclusion: The Altas Alliance of realms over multiple planes is starting to be fiable enough to convince the gods they don't need to take control of the material plane.

Level 26-30: We have 5 problems
1) Asmodeos, which is trying to take control of the fortress trough its devil-princes, while claiming he has no control on them at the gods' council, even helping them so that whatever happens he will be part of the winners.
2) Shade, trying to destroy the world, and having prophetised said that WE would be the cause of world destruction
3) The Demons, because of course Shade synchronised its plans with the 666th aniversary of the last global invasion of the universe by demons, which mean a worl-threatening invasion of uncountable demons.
4) The god-killing entities, that start poping out of the prison because some ennemy commando sometimes manage to get in and free one of them before we arrive.
5) Not destroying the material planes, nor turning it into a brutal dictatorship, in the process.

Conclusion: We do manage to get the get Asomdeos and Demons to mostly concentrate against each others. We manage to defeat Shade and not fall under its prophecy of world destruction, though it was due to the help of a Far Realm entity: Tzeentch, and the universe is probably gonna pay for it latter, but that's another story. And we got rid of the god-killing entities throught he creation of a new plane created to handle them (my personnal quest): the plane of dreams.

Post Conclusion: In the time of a generation, we rose the technology and magic of the material plane from "medieval fantastic" to a "magical steam punk" level, forged planar alliance, witnessed the rise and fall of some planar factions. This was a time of strong fate. But as fate weaken, knowledge and power fade away, interplanar relationship disappear, and our time became legend. Our achievments regarded an impossible, until the next wave of fate.

Other advices

I advice you to look for full 4e campaigns. You will need some adaptation, but they are divided into 3 tiers of 10 levels which is a good start, and the typical example of ending is "At level 30, you goes back in time to the origin of time, in order to ensure that the world is created as it should, and not pertubated by the big bad. Upon defeating the big bad, you decide to remain the see the creation of the universe, and quickly realise that no gods are present. They were supposed to come into existence few minutes ago, but nothing. Without gods, the universe cannot start. What should you do? You suddently have the realisation: you are the gods."
(I've only looked at two of them. I was not convinced by the execution, but the ideas were interesting)

[Seneschul]

Step 1: Choose your theme. Hell broke loose? Fail teleport dropping the PCs at the center of the plane/universe/etc, far realms?
Step 2: Check how the players feel about said theme
Step 3: Pick at least 10 theme appropriate mook-types(y'know, a couple animals, a couple undead, a couple horrors, etc). Don't buff them out yet - they are only a chassis to bolt combos onto. These will be the 'easy' mooks, the trash in each fight.
Step 4: Pick a few mini-boss types - tend towards stuff that's drop-in-situation capable, that you can bolt on whenever you feel like. Don't get too attached, and be ready to change their combos up a bit.
Step 5: Peruse the forums, listen to your players. What combos are going to be fun? What combos are your players going to use that you need to break?
Step 6:Try to bolt on 1 combo, and 1 partial group-style combo on each of your bad guys.
Step 7: Worried about killing your PCs? Have a few tagalongs and hangers-on - cheap cannon fodder to show-off how serious and deadly encounters are going to be.



Remember, the important thing is for you to have a few templates to bolt on to some chassis so that PCs wrecking your plan don't really wreck your plans.
Out of the fights you have, you'll have a few NPCs escape and "grow" into recurring villians.