How to Run D&D at High Levels: Adjusting Story & Power

Why do so many D&D groups seem to lose steam in the higher levels? Is running Dungeons & Dragons at high level difficult? Is playing D&D at the higher levels not fun? Or is running a satisfying game of D&D at high levels just a different beast than lower levels? In this video, I discuss how to run D&D at high level, specifically explaining how to adjust both the story and power for high-level Dungeons & Dragons.

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#dnd #dungeonsanddragons

[Raynor]

Now here is a topic that needs more exploring among the d&d content creation community.

[pedrofdez-ordonez]

“The goal is to roleplay good villains, not perfect and all powerful villains”

Strahd would like to have a word

[dondumitru]

As a DM, use the "fog of war" and adjust dynamically. In a battle, never have a single big monster. Rather, first have smaller monsters. As the players defeat the smaller monsters, more waves of smaller monsters can appear - hold them back behind the fog of war, so the players don't know they are there. In fact, they are in a quantum state - they are both there and not there at the same time, and YOU decide if / when / how many to bring into battle as you dynamically assess how the party is doing.

As the players are fighting the big-bad, do the same thing: Reinforcements arrive during the battle, the timing and count of which is determined dynamically by you.

Be careful once you actually place monsters on the board: Once players see a monster, the monster should be played appropriately, don't break the immersion.

Don't plan battles as something determined statically ahead of time. Always have someplace that more opponents can come from, so the players can be surprised. Your dungeons should have multiple paths, so opponents can plausibly circle back around behind the players and setup ambushes. The room where the big-bad is should always have more rooms beyond it where reinforcements could be camping. Dungeons should have multiple entrances, some of which could be discovered by players ahead of time, but others which are probably so well hidden that they can only be discovered from inside the dungeon - that gives you more options for how opponents move around.

I personally do redesign portions of dungeons from week to week, in the areas where players haven't explored yet. One week the players messed up and let the kobolds (hah!) know where they were and then the players camped in the dungeon. The kobolds proceeded to sneak around during the night and to collapse the entrances to the dungeon to trap the players, and during the week-to-week period I redesigned the dungeon they hadn't explored yet to give them a way to get out even after the collapse.

[OC]

Shadversity: Yes, but what about Dragons?

DMLair: Yes, but what about Kobolds?

[Lcirex]

Oh no! Gary is being held hostage! Time for a vid on how to run a rogueless hiest/jailbreak scenario.

[joem]

Tucker's Kobolds were normal Kobolds, and that made them all the worse

[alchemicalvapour]

i'd hate to be the hero who has to fight that one villain who memorized the entire evil overlord list.

[TinyGobos]

I'm so early traps are not even prepared yet

[jackbellinger]

Gary the Intern was the rogue the WHOLE I would have NEVER seen that coming (as I say in my usual sarcastic tone)

[linusd]

One thing I'd like to add is that it can be really fun for players to occasionally have a super easy encounter at high levels. Let them feel epic as they just slaughter hordes of zombies.

On the story progression, my players are level 16. They have gathered armies from different nations and are about to attack a vampire lord's castle. It should be fun.

[joem]

One funny thing about Tucker's Kobolds was that it was an example in Dragon Magazine on how to make the most of your monsters especially for high level characters

[theolddm]

Mini rant in the middle of the video! Love it. When you started talking about the parent-child analogy, I had a mental picture of goblin minions yelling 'Stranger Danger" when the PCs try persuade them to get to the BBEG. All great points!!

[Kalishta]

Just the video I needed, since my party is lvl 13 and it's getting kinda hard to make something challenging nowadays, wish wotc could give dms some love lol

[Xelemich]

"the wizard scout the dungeon with arcane eye"
Here Iam, my group in Rise of Tiamat had a warlock with an Imp who can turn invisible...
they scout the entire dungeon and figure out the best route to reach the destination...

[haveswordwilltravel]

What a great video! I have been a DM for 40 years and I get so much good advice here.

I would like to add to these tips with the following:

The best way to gauge what will challenge your high level Player Characters is time and experience with those characters. By playing with them from level one to the higher oevels you see first hand what tricks, tactics and mannerisms they develope and you can tailor your game accordingly. This also includes character personalities. As you learn learn thier goals, hopes and dreams you can find rewards to tempt them with, as well as what tactics to use against them.

[TalonSilvercloud]

Level 10, my party set off to fight Warmatron Torhild atop a spiral city built into a volcano. This adventure kicked off some BIG character arcs for the entire party.
Level 12, they went to Nifelheim to stop Fimbulvuntr. They fought Baba Yaga. On a rotating horizontal section of her spire. In the worst blizzard ever seen. Wind effects and slippery terrain and rotating tower threatening to send them falling to their doom. Super duper cold from the storm overpowering even Endure Elements. Baba flinging hexes and ice spells, slowing and debuffing them into last week. It was a slog to even make it to her, much less fight her.
Level 14, they ventured into the deserts to the lost city of Amenti, to fight an undead god from a previous pantheon. And his Titan.
Level 15, they fought Loki in the Planar Vaults below Angorok in Svartleheim. A bunch of the aforementioned character arcs managed to wrap up around here, while a few new arcs got started. Given the amount of collateral damage that was expected, the players did their best to minimize losses, and had to stick around for the funerals to see the results first hand.
Level 16, they are currently in the forests of Alfheim, in a race against time to seek a major artifact that will greatly alter the course of a war before their enemies find it.

In the future? It all gets bigger and better.

I find in high level campaigns, you really need to have big setpiece encounters ready to go to keep them challenged. Your biggest tool to encounter design is the players character sheets themselves.
I keep a cheatsheet of major stats from the PC's. I average the AC, Hit, Saves, effect DC's, etc. In a given encounter, I want the less powerful enemies to successfully hit that average 50%, and dangerous enemies to hit 75% or better. I apply the same math from the PC's perspective. To balance the damage out, average out the HP of the PC's. I aim for no enemy average damage attack to kill any player with that HP average in 4 or 5 hits or less. IE-If the player average is 50 HP, average damage should be around 10-12.
This gives a lot of wiggle room for when enemies inflict a critical hit.
Bosses and big dangerous things, I aim for a kill in 3 average damage hits VS average HP. Bosses and dangerous things can have attacks that break that formula as well, like powerful spells. Dangerous attackers who can kill quickly, there is usually a mitigating factor that players can take advantage of, like range or cover or disarming their powerful weapon or interrupting spell casting/concentration or counterspelling.
For the number of attackers, I total up the players HP, and I compare the number of average damage attacks it would take to kill the entire party's HP. For weak enemies I use that number, if there is a boss or dangerous enemy present I reduce it by 20-50%. If a boss is potent enough that they could conceivably drop 1 or more players per round, they usually fight solo.

I don't care if PC's can one-shot something if it's not a boss encounter. If it is a boss encounter, I mitigate high player damage output with battlefield control, some weak enemies, high damage output that makes them slow down to heal, supporters (people to heal the boss or mitigate damage for the boss in some way) or combo breaker type effects.

A good villain bends the rules, occasionally breaks them, and sometimes makes rules of their own.

But, all of this comes with a big old heaping spoon of salt. I'm running Pathfinder, not DnD 5E. My group likes to min/max characters and build for combat, my group likes tough tanky characters and glass cannon mega damage characters, with maybe 1 or 2 encounters per day before they just set up camp for the day. It's all about the sweet spot for your party.

[xanrethan]

I started preparing to write a comment. Then you mentioned a middle ground as ideal to the crafting of encounters. You win this one, sir.

[erikkennedy]

27 seconds in, I’m already thinking “Kobolds? You’re so screwed.” Anyone remember Dragon Mountain?

[MonkeyJedi]

Regarding high-level CR, I recall a quote about the T-34 and Sherman tanks in World War 2: "Quantity has a quality of its own". So you could throw kobolds at your level 12 party, but you would throw a LOT more kobolds than when they were level 2. And give them terrain and/or preparation advantages

[gooddaytoyousir]

A great way to use low level mobs in high level play is have a powerful creature sending dozens and dozens of kobolds/goblins etc at the party full well knowing they are going to be slaughtered. It can act as a moral element to combat because the mobs are more afraid of the high level monster than the party. It also has the effect of keeping party members distracted for a round while your more powerful monsters get into position.