Design Secrets: High-Level Adventures

While you have to keep many things in mind when dealing with high-level characters and the challenges they should face, I've boiled them down here to three rules to remember when creating adventures for these powerful PCs.

1. Know What They Can Do. If you aren't prepared for what the PCs can do with their skills, spells, feats, and magic items, they are going to throw you for a loop, and quickly. You have to be ready when the spellcaster pulls out the high-level divination spell that "ruins" the adventure, or when the monk just jumps over the 30-foot chasm of fire, or when the cleric brings the murdered king back to life.

In my adventure Demon God's Fane, the scenario begins with a murder mystery. So I thought of all the ways the PCs could use spells to solve it and presented a summary for the DM:

The PCs can call upon a number of divination spells to help them solve the murders. In fact, after only a little investigation, the spells they possess should make short work of the "mystery." That's fine -- do not feel that the players are "cheating" by doing this.

Divination: The question this spell answers must be related to an action or goal, such as, "Will we find the murderer by questioning all the fishermen?" to which the spell would reply (assuming the roll for a correct divination succeeds), "Those who plumb the waters know much, and one has had dark secrets bestowed upon him only recently."

Commune: This is probably most useful of all spells; once the PCs get some suspects, they can simply ask "yes" or "no" questions using this spell and get the answers. Asking if Drabat Finch is the murderer will obviously get a "yes" answer.

Scrying (including clairaudience/clairvoyance or arcane eye): Once some suspects are identified, another quick and simple way to find out more about them is to spy on them magically.

Detect Thoughts: Using this spell is fairly invasive, but it gets the job done. However, the Umbral Taint has placed a conditional spell on Drabat, so if someone attempts to use this spell on him, dire events occur. (See pages 6 and 7.)

Legend Lore: This spell won't help much with solving the murders-the events are too recent and not "legendary." However, once the PCs discover the existence of the Demon God's Fane, they can use this spell to learn the history of this area: Ochremeshk, both demon and god, built a terrible temple here, where blood sacrifices were offered to him night and day. Demons cavorted with mortals, spreading pain and misery throughout the land. Only the might of Gaen's chosen one ended the Fane, sealing it within a golden tomb that glistens today right before your very eyes.

Speak with Dead: If the PCs attempt to question one of the victims with this spell, they discover that not enough of the face and head of the body remains for the corpse to speak. A make whole spell, however, turns this into a quick and easy way to get information. While Ritter was killed quickly from behind (and thus knows nothing), Drabat subdued and tortured other three slowly. They remember it all in horrifying detail, and do not hesitate to name their killer. Hanna even heard Drabat mention something called "the Demon God."

Raise Dead/Resurrection: Too little of any of the victims' remains to use raise dead. Resurrection or true resurrection is needed to bring them back to life. Once so restored, however, they can relate any information mentioned under the description for speak with dead, above.

2. Don't Negate, Embrace. It's a tendency for DMs (and module writers) to do everything mentioned in Step 1 and then systematically eliminate the possibility of the PCs using those abilities. If they have a clever trap in the adventure that requires the characters to be on the ground, they make it impossible to fly. That's lazy design. One needs to realize that once you've reached 10th level, pits aren't meant to be the big challenge that they were at 1st level.

That doesn't mean that anti-magic fields (or whatever) are always bad. Sometimes it's interesting to strip away a character's magical abilities. But only once in a while -- as the exception, not the rule. If the PCs are always having their good abilities taken away from them, they will become frustrated.

Instead of negating character abilities, design your high-level adventures to require those high-level abilities. If the PCs are 13th level, there's nothing wrong with designing a quest that can be completed only by teleporting to a special area unreachable by conventional means. It's in the PCs' power to get there (one way or another).

Again, using Demon God's Fane as an example, at one point in the adventure, the PCs will further the plot with a holy word, dismissal, or banishment spell. Another instance assumes they have the capability to become ethereal. And so on.

Now, these capabilities aren't always necessarily "required" (that punishes people for simply preparing the wrong spell that day), but they make things easier -- so it rewards PCs for using the abilities they struggled for so many levels to obtain. And even requiring such displays of high-level power sometimes is good, too. Maybe the only way to learn the secret the PCs need is if the bard makes a DC 30 bardic knowledge check or the wizard casts legend lore. You get the idea.

3. Let Them Kick Butt (Sometimes). When you play a computer game like Diablo, the program scales the game to increase in difficulty at exactly the same rate as your character increases in level. So, as an example (I didn't actually dig into the game to find the formula), if you have 10 hp at 1st level and inflict 1d6 damage on the monster with 5 hp, at 10th level you have 100 hp and inflict 10d6 damage on the monster with 50 hp. There are lots of interesting distractions, and Diablo can be a fun game, but fights at 10th level end up feeling exactly like fights at 1st level, and you still need to go back to town for healing potions just as often as you did before.

Don't let this happen in your D&D game. High level isn't like low level. At low level, everything is a challenge -- sometimes, a really tough challenge. While you should challenge your players sufficiently, make sure you also occasionally give them opponents they can overcome easily. The whole world doesn't rise in level as the PCs do, so when they have made it to 15th level, they should feel as though they really are superior to some of the foes they must face. If this isn't the case, then why keep trying to gain levels?

The whole point of these suggestions is to avoid punishing characters for being high level. If your players have reached 15th level with their PCs, it is because they played in your game for months and months. That's something you want to reward.