Challenging High-Level Parties

[Fax Celestis]

How do you challenge a high-level party without making every battle against another legendary monster? It quickly starts becoming a pretty hefty stretch.

[TomTheRat]

Conflict that cannot be resolved by killing. Politics, politics, politics.

[Fax Celestis]

There's still only so many kingdoms that can be overthrown with a political coup.

[Mike_Lemmer]

Nonstop battles against hordes of moderate monsters? Give them an Astral Fortress on crack to break into?

[Anxe]

You don't need to challenge them, you need to entertain them. But that doesn't answer your question. Hydras are a good idea as well as normal monsters like Orc with class levels. If you don't want to just start ripping new monsters out of the books than you need to use class levels. It involves mroe prep time to design them, but if you want to go ahead.

[lord_khaine]

i would recomend sending bigger groups of weaker monsters against them, potentialy with a few class levels if the lv difference is to big to allow them to damage the players normaly.

of course, it does get harder to manage when you suddenly have 6 creatures with various abilities running around trying to keep your players, but it does make for entertaining encounters.

[TwentiesFTW]

I have the exact same problem! I'm currently running an epic-level game (gods forgive me) and its proving to be an interesting effort. I feel qualified as a DM, having roughly 6 or 7 years of experience with the game in its varying incarnations, but its definitely a challenge for me to challenge my PCs, and it only gets harder as levels go up.

The biggest problem I think, is that they have soo much gold, and soo many Hit Points, and everything else, really. The only way to stop them is to build something that will definitely stop them. I've found the best way to keep the monotony out is to mix the RP and combat up, so even though there is a lot of powerful monsters, its not yet another mighty dragon, because there's a reason.

A few things I've found/think I will find helpful are:

-Putting them places where certain types of abilities or schools of magic don't function (without warning)
-Putting them places where magic items/certain types of magical items don't function.
-Sending along crucial NPCs who aren't high-level at all, or otherwise flimsy. Such as a 20th lvl expert with a Con penalty that they absolutely require for this Knowledge here, or that Decipher Script there, or this Forgery, or even who knows the way to a hidden place that is magically barred against divination.
-Complimentary monsters that make fights both interesting, but also harder.
-Delicate Environments: A room made out of paper or rope (no fireballs), a battle on a boat, where the challenge is not killing the Sea Monster, but doing so before he sinks their vessel, and so on.

Like it says in the epic book, I guess, don't pull your punches. By higher levels, you can expect the PCs to have several Disintegrates handy at a full day's rest. No reason you can't slow 'em down by throwing in Walls of Force. Sometimes as a DM its a war of attrition. You wear them down with small inconveniences and challenges and then throw in something that can now prove difficult. Similarly, traped rooms with mechanics that reinforce the monsters work well. My favorite has to be a room full of Iron Golems (as many and as advanced as you need for your PCs) in which a maximed delayed blast fireball is consistently going off. My epic PCs almost all have evation (acursed Boots of Swiftness!) but the fire damage still rebuffs the golems.

I hope any of my suggestions have helped. I really think the biggest part is to keep an honest mix of RP based challenges and combat challenges. And not be afraid every once in a while to stack it up so high that they need to retreat and return fully buffed and ready to rock. I know my epic PCs haven't figured that out yet (they built them at 30th lvl), but they will. They keep thinking Epic=Godmode. lol. The Paragon Very Old Green Dragon and the Paragon War Troll they just met are going to prove them a different opinion entirely.

Hope I helped, this is my first post on the forums on a whole, and I know I rambled a bit.

[Golthur]

In "old school", I've had decent success with the old stronghold standby. That is, the PCs are now the owners of a big patch of land, a town, a stronghold, what have you.

Big, threatening monsters start becoming few and far between, to be replaced with a million logistical concerns. Still, my players found it entertaining. Even more so when there was the "rival stronghold" who had everything so much better than the PCs - better land, sitting on a gold mine, more in favour with the king, etc., etc.

It's also a nigh-infinite gold sink

[deadseashoals]

You could always take them to other planes where they're not the biggest fish.

[puppyavenger]

You could always take them to other planes where they're not the biggest fish.

Like say ... FR

[Thinker]

Get them involved in the blood war or have them fight on the side of celestials or fiends for a while...as champions of gods or something. Casters are always another good option.

[Dairun Cates]

I prefer the "So weird and unique that they never see it coming" school of thought. Throw something at them that they've never seen before. Something that is probably created by you and not in the books. Hell, throw a horde of Rust Monsters at them that have mutated and eat magic instead of metal. Give them teleporting goblinoids. Give them an owlbear that's more owl than bear. Clearly by the time they've seen epic level they've almost seen the end of the world at least once. There's nothing that should theorhetically phase them at this point. Try to do it anyway.

[nerulean]

Let's be honest: when you're talking about combat, you have a choice between monsters, NPCs with matching class levels, and a combination of the two, so the things that've got to be mixed up are the circumstances of each combat. TwentiesFTW had some great ideas. Force them into situations where just killing everything with their immense firepower isn't an option, so they've got to think about tactics. Render them helpless occasionally and force them to use their own ingenuity to get out of problems that they can't just blast or smash their way through.

[Alleine]

Throw them into a situation where "Kill it with fire!" won't work, such as stopping a black hole.

[TheThan]

Invading hoard of super advanced Aliens, with laser guns, jet packs… the works. Make a single guy a huge threat to the party, resistance to everything and nearly impossible to hurt. Then make sure EVERY piece of technology is destroyed when one of them falls. Thusly preventing the PCs from getting their hands on high tech weaponry.

[Ivius]

With high level parties, don't DM hard, DM smart. Put them in an unfamiliar situation. As an example, I'm DMing a PbP Tomb of Horrors game... but upside down. Don't do "Smash the monster", but "Figure out how to get to the monster, then figure out how to smash it".

[Neon Knight]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Tucker's Kobolds.

[Zeful]

One that was thrown around the wizards boards a while back was "you wake up a level 1."

[Curmudgeon]

Make them worry as much (or more) about defense than offense. Having an important, weak NPC added to their party is good. But having a lot of weak NPCs to protect is better. There could be some stealthy slavers who are making off with local children, and planting evidence that the party is responsible. Then they've got to clear their names, prevent any more children from being abducted, and find and stop the slavers -- all the while being hunted by the mercenaries the king has called in to "handle" the high-level party.

Infrastructure defense is good, too. Thus it doesn't matter if the party survives with all their HP intact if they fail to save the Bridge of Peace -- the structure that physically and symbolically connects two kingdoms. Bridges have really sucky AC.

[cupkeyk]

Challenging situations and monsters combined.

A room with reloading spike traps and monsters that know how to bypass them will force the rogue to exit combat to disarm them while the tanks work to both fight the monsters and defend the defenseless rogue.

Flood traps with a giant crab. Poor rogue probably has no ranks in swim.

Combo monsters too, like illithids and golems, medusae and grimlocks.

Situations that force thinking instaed of bashing.

[brant167]

The majority of the games I run make it to the mid twenties. The hardest thing as said before about dm'ing higher level is the equipment. They can easily afford or create things like the ring of 9 lives. So, in order to really slow then down make sure they don't get their hands on starting wealth. 1/4th starting wealth is a good place to start. It allows them to get some cool items but nothing uber. A few rules I run with is that fortification armor does not exist as it does in the book it gives the person a + to their ac against confirming critical hits.
So a +1 fortification would give a +2 AC bonus against critical hits and sneak attacks a plus 2 fortification would give a +4 AC bonus against critical hits ect...
Another rule is to make sure the players do not pick up any items that give them mind blank or true seeing. These two spells in a item are way to powerful. My suggestion is to have these spells cost 250xp to cast.
An other suggestion would be to use various monsters but upgrade their hit dice. Here is a program that does it for you. http://www.nzcomputers.net/heroforge/
There is also some easy character creation stuff on that page as well. You can make a 21st level NPC in no time.
But all in all use things that make make the characters think. The players will be able to out do you in combat the majority of the time. Just make sure your main NPC's are at least 7 levels about the players and you should be fine.

[Indon]

I'm a fan of introducing military matters into things, myself, as a variant on politics.

[NullAshton]

My old DM kept challenging us by having us constantly fight high level villians. They would constantly send demons to fight us at night, with occasional random demon challenges because the ones we try to kill keep getting away... it's a reasonable system to keep your players filled with combat fun.

There's also unique encounters. For example, defeat an encounter before they escape can be fairly challenging. Several lower level mooks combined with an average CR guy can also be fun, as the high CR person can buff up the lower CR people. The low CR people can all die, while the more challenging henchmen is powerful enough to get away when most of his mooks die.

[Proven_Paradox]

As a couple of other people have suggested, I like to increase the threat of my encounters by coupling them with resetting traps. For example, the battle takes place in a room with a magically charged sigil on the floor, and every time the PCs step over a line on the sigil, they take Xd6 fire damage, no save. For extra fun, have the monster(s) they're fighting be healed by fire damage. Suddenly the PCs are taking more damage AND the monster(s) is(are) lasting longer.

For really high levels, just remind your PCs that anything available to them is available to foes. Then make characters with similar gear and similar levels. Have some sort of contingent teleportation effect on them so that they and their gear teleports away when they die. Even more fun if you intend for them to be recurring foes. More to manage, perhaps, but that's what comes with high levels.

[Bagera]

Immerse them in culture, have interesting events, such as a murder mystery, or figuring out how a horse race was rigged. As many have said give challenges that can't be solved only by force of arms.

[NullAshton]

As a couple of other people have suggested, I like to increase the threat of my encounters by coupling them with resetting traps. For example, the battle takes place in a room with a magically charged sigil on the floor, and every time the PCs step over a line on the sigil, they take Xd6 fire damage, no save. For extra fun, have the monster(s) they're fighting be healed by fire damage. Suddenly the PCs are taking more damage AND the monster(s) is(are) lasting longer.

For really high levels, just remind your PCs that anything available to them is available to foes. Then make characters with similar gear and similar levels. Have some sort of contingent teleportation effect on them so that they and their gear teleports away when they die. Even more fun if you intend for them to be recurring foes. More to manage, perhaps, but that's what comes with high levels.

Beware, the contingent teleportation thing may result in bodily injury to the DM. Most people would NOT LIKE IT if that kept happening.

[Ivius]

Beware, the contingent teleportation thing may result in bodily injury to the DM. Most people would NOT LIKE IT if that kept happening.

But once or twice, a teleport contingent on "I cast Gaseous Form" can make an escape look like a climactic death.

[bosssmiley]

I'll echo the earlier "It's all about the politics" posters. Drag them (kicking and screaming if need be) into the wider political ramifications of their actions and even of their presence in the world. Use affiliations (from PHB2 and FR IIRC). Allow the characters to *initiate* plots.

Simon Phipp has a couple of good articles on this often overlooked (in D&D3rd Ed) aspect of being a power in the realm/world/plane. He's talking Glorantha in his articles, but the principles underlying his examples are easily 'ported over.

[Superglucose]

Do NOT have more than say, three balors in a room at the same time. While it wasn't a particuarly difficult encounter, we only had characters left because my paladin's gold dragon mount had fire immunity... and was able to negotiate true ressurections for us all.

Something about taking nine hundred damage before reflex saves.

Though it WAS funny to set off a chain reaction of Balors...