Level 20 one-shot battle? [Combat As Sport, theorycrafting, challenge]

[MaxWilson]

I'm a fan of challenge, and it's no secret that combat tends to be the most exciting aspect of 5E's design, or that level 20 characters are very powerful.

Let's say I'm planning on running a one-shot with a big climactic battle that the players will have to work hard to win--if they just do the straightforward thing and attack monsters until they're dead, they should have no better than a 40% chance of victory. Do you regard the following opposition as potentially beatable while still being challenging? I.e. would you be eager, as a player, to give this scenario a go?

Terrain/Environment: midnight on the shore of a spooky island. A dark ritual is in progress. The beach is about 200 yards x 50 yards, consisting of about 60% difficult terrain by area (sand, water) plus scattered trees (10% total cover by area). Beyond that is dense forest and mountain in one direction, and impassable waters filled with hungry krakens and dragon turtles in the other. Although there is starlight, it counts as darkness, and there is no dim or bright light except what the PCs bring with them. The wind is too strong for flying.

Monsters are initially scattered over the whole beach in a basically random fashion, doing ritual stuff.

PCs begin play on whichever edge of the beach they choose, and may remain initially undetected for as long as their Stealth rolls permit or until they initiate combat.

Opposition:

1 Star Spawn Seer, 1 Star Spawn Larva Mage, 3 Star Spawn Hulks, 6 Star Spawn Manglers, 30 Star Spawn Grues, 3 Annis Hags (will remain within 30' of each other to maintain coven spellcasting), 1 Beholder, 1 Adult Red Dragon (non-spellcasting, no flying), 1 Death Knight, 2 Glabrezus, 1 Lich (beach counts as its lair)

Objectives: kill all of the bad guys before they complete their ritual. At the end of one hour, the DM rolls a d8, and if the number rolled corresponds to a monster (below) that is still alive, there is a great catastrophe and everything you know and love will turn to ash and horror.

1. Star Spawn Seer
2. Star Spawn Larva Mage
3. Adult Red Dragon
4. Beholder
5. Death Knight
6. Annis Hag (any)
7. Glabrezu (any)
8. Lich

On paper this is a 13x Deadly encounter (654,800 XP out of 50,000 XP Deadly threshold, and actually 4x the whole 160,000 XP adventuring day in fact) but the fact that the monsters are initially scattered gives the players a chance to seize the initiative and should make it easier.

Rules:

Assume that all monsters are in play simultaneously, even if they have not yet entered the PCs' field of vision. Assume that monsters communicate with each other and are therefore all generally aware of the PCs' presence once the PCs leave hiding.

Assume that the PCs have not been required to spend any significant resources since their last long rest. (If there were problems getting to the island, they were overcome using low-level spell slots and other resources that aren't worth discussing here.)

Assume that the PCs' method of transport only permits 4 PCs to arrive, no Planar Bound demons or elementals or anything like that, not even with Gate. (It's too easy otherwise.)

[Damon_Tor]

What do they players have in terms of resources?

How much time to they have to prepare before the ritual begins and the battle must be joined?

In other words, how many Glyphs of Warding can the Wizard fit into his Demiplane?

[MaxWilson]

What do they players have in terms of resources?

How much time to they have to prepare before the ritual begins and the battle must be joined?

In other words, how many Glyphs of Warding can the Wizard fit into his Demiplane?

Since this is a Combat As Sport exercise, assume zero. The wizard will be unable to access his Demiplane until the ritual is over***, just as he will be unable to Gate in reinforcements.

*** If you need a justification, I'll say, Planar travel has a high probability of destabilizing the ritual, automatically causing the catastrophe you are trying to prevent.

Edit: in terms of magic items and gold, let's say... the PCs get two randomly-generated CR 17+ hoards from the DMG, and in addition to the magic items, they can spend the gold from the hoard on whatever mundane equipment they need to including poisons and spell components. All of that counts as stuff they've accumulated over the course of their adventures and stored in their Batcave for just such an occasion as this.

[noob]

Since this is a Combat As Sport exercise, assume zero. The wizard will be unable to access his Demiplane until the ritual is over***, just as he will be unable to Gate in reinforcements.

*** If you need a justification, I'll say, Planar travel has a high probability of destabilizing the ritual, automatically causing the catastrophe you are trying to prevent.

Edit: in terms of magic items and gold, let's say... the PCs get two randomly-generated CR 17+ hoards from the DMG, and in addition to the magic items, they can spend the gold from the hoard on whatever mundane equipment they need to including poisons and spell components. All of that counts as stuff they've accumulated over the course of their adventures and stored in their Batcave for just such an occasion as this.

So why do none of the monsters immediately planar travel and get their wanted catastrophe?
Also is recruiting an army(with the gold) allowed?(like recruiting 50 knights or 400 bowmen)

[MaxWilson]

So why do none of the monsters immediately planar travel and get their wanted catastrophe?

Because the catastrophe isn't their goal--it's just a side effect of their goal. Think Dresden Files/Darkhallow here. Cowl wants godlike power; Harry wants to prevent Cowl from killing thousands of people gaining godlike power. If thousands of people die but so do Cowl and Harry, that's a lose/lose outcome.

And yes, the "spooky island" in the scenario is in fact Demonreach, or a 5E equivalent.

Also is recruiting an army(with the gold) allowed?(like recruiting 50 knights or 400 bowmen)

Per the OP, Assume that the PCs' method of transport only permits 4 PCs to arrive, no Planar Bound demons or elementals or anything like that, not even with Gate. (It's too easy otherwise.)

So you can have an army back home, for roleplaying reasons, but you can't bring them into play. Otherwise it's too easy. (And that is as true at level 1 as level 20. Once you start bringing armies into play, there's no real need for PCs unless the bad guys have armies too, and then it's a wargame.)

[Rukelnikov]

Of course the chance to make it out of this scenario depends highly on the party in question, however, the most likely scenario is that after any enemy is engaged, they will aggro every enemy on the island, however since not all of them will be together at the moment combat starts, many will have to spend their first and maybe second round getting close enough to fight, and thus the alpha strike will be key, if they manage to take out about half of the enemies with it I think they got pretty solid chances of winning

Given the dimensions of the island, Meteor Swarm has a good chance of hitting almost every enemy, and will likely wipe the trash leaving something like:

1 Star Spawn Seer (wounded)
1 Star Spawn Larva Mage (wounded)
3 Star Spawn Hulks (near death)
1 Beholder (wounded)
1 Adult Red Dragon (very lightly wounded)
1 Death Knight (lightly wounded)
2 Glabrezus (wounded)
1 Lich (wounded)

Against this lineup, I think it will be a gruesome battle, and decided mainly by the order of initiative and the order of enemies the players choose to focus.

Without a potent initial wipe like this they will likely be zerged

[MaxWilson]

Of course the chance to make it out of this scenario depends highly on the party in question, however, the most likely scenario is that after any enemy is engaged, they will aggro every enemy on the island, however since not all of them will be together at the moment combat starts, many will have to spend their first and maybe second round getting close enough to fight

Possibly even more. In the most extreme potential case, if the beholder starts at the opposite end of the beach (200 yards away), it would take the beholder 12 rounds (72 seconds) to engage. (120' range + 40' movement per round = 12 rounds of Dashing required.) That's ignoring any time required to navigate around total cover obstacles, but trees might not be a problem for a hovering beholder. (I'll say that the beholder can withstand the high winds to circumvent the ban on flying, because otherwise it would be stuck in place and no fun at all.)

and thus the alpha strike will be key, if they manage to take out about half of the enemies with it I think they got pretty solid chances of winning

Given the dimensions of the island, Meteor Swarm has a good chance of hitting almost every enemy, and will likely wipe the trash leaving something like:

1 Star Spawn Seer (wounded)
1 Star Spawn Larva Mage (wounded)
3 Star Spawn Hulks (near death)
1 Beholder (wounded)
1 Adult Red Dragon (very lightly wounded)
1 Death Knight (lightly wounded)
2 Glabrezus (wounded)
1 Lich (wounded)

Against this lineup, I think it will be a gruesome battle, and decided mainly by the order of initiative and the order of enemies the players choose to focus.

Without a potent initial wipe like this they will likely be zerged

The big question of course is "how do you locate all of the monsters beforehand, given the darkness?" But I think this is solvable via divinations like Arcane Eye + familiars, maybe with Prodigy: Perception and Skulker for good measure.

I suppose a party of 4 Fighter 2/Evoker 18 might have a very easy time with this fight once they locate all the monsters. Each one does Action Surge: Meteor Swarm + Overchanneled Fireball/Cone of Cold.

I think even a less gimicky, more "realistic" party could totally win this battle, if the players are skilled. I for one would have fun playing out this scenario. You could put a few minor encounters before it, ~2x Deadly or so, but the real fun would come at the 13x Deadly climax.

P.S. obviously the easiest way to win this is via chain Wishing for Simulacra. I tend to overlook that exploit because my house rules prevent it from working (Simulacra are not full-powered copies). For purposes of this thread please just consider Simulacrum to create a copy with only 50% of the original's class levels.

[willdaBEAST]

I’ve never ran a lvl 20 encounter, but just played a session at lvl 16 as a fighter/champion.

I was dominated before I could act and spent the entire combat trying to reach a caster ally and then downing him in a single turn. It was a bit frustrating to be honest. I had plenty of save attempts and used indomitable twice, but could not beat the spell DC of a lich.

What I would recommend is tailoring the combat to the composition of the party, give each class a role or chance to shine. My character was a pole arm master, sentinel and that never came into play, I had absolutely no affect on controlling the battlefield.

More and more I’m thinking that the combat mechanics of 5e shine in essentially phases. Create a moment for blast casters to wipe out a wave of weak enemies, give the stronger fighter a monster to go toe to toe with, have undead for the paladin to smite, etc. Anything save or suck is fine temporarily, but if it locks a player out of the encounter, it’s a problem.

[MaxWilson]

What I would recommend is tailoring the combat to the composition of the party, give each class a role or chance to shine. My character was a pole arm master, sentinel and that never came into play, I had absolutely no affect on controlling the battlefield.

My intention in this case is the opposite: make up a bunch of tough scenarios, and let the players tailor their characters to the world. Especially if it's a CRPG, an app on your phone to play when you're bored, there's not much cost if it turns out that your character isn't panning out--you just start a new campaign with different characters.

More and more I’m thinking that the combat mechanics of 5e shine in essentially phases. Create a moment for blast casters to wipe out a wave of weak enemies, give the stronger fighter a monster to go toe to toe with, have undead for the paladin to smite, etc. Anything save or suck is fine temporarily, but if it locks a player out of the encounter, it’s a problem.

I agree that having a wide variety of stuff to do is good. In the scenario in the OP, it looks like the monsters are maybe too vulnerable to alpha strikes, despite having sneaky things like Star Spawn Manglers present in total darkness. The scenario would probably be improved by (1) not giving players the chance to start hidden, just have combat start as soon as they arrive (and make up a suitable justification, like maybe they all arrived in a bolt of lightning), (2) placing enemies more deliberately instead of randomly, and maybe swapping some of them out for monsters with better ranged attacks, (3) finding ways to give more of the monsters total cover initially, e.g. involving Earth Elementals/Dao/Purple Worms.

Alternately, spread the combats out over the space of 8 hours instead of 1 hour, and scatter the monsters over an area about 3 miles across instead of 200 yards x 50 yards.

[th3g0dc0mp13x]

I would play the heck out of this. My main caveat is I really hope the DM would tell me in advance that there was no rests and it's a lot of high power combatants.

Given only that minimal information, My ideal party would probably be a Battle-master Archer, Illusion Wizard (My character), Ancients Paladin, Shepard Druid.

Also I love this idea I may make a one shot myself. For more of an adventuring day thing though I'd have 4 battles and give them a mcguffin that allows 2 short rests.

4 battles. 3 reminiscent of the boats in cold days and 1 at the top of the hill.

Spoiler: He who walks behind

Show

Nightwalker
3 shadow horror's
20 Shadows

Spoiler: He who walks before

Show

Star Spawn Larva Mage
2 SS Hulks
10 SS Grue
2 SS Manglers

Stuff like that.

[Mortis_Elrod]

So to answer the question. Yes. This looks really interesting and i would totally attempt it.

I don't have alot of experience with higher level play in 5e though so the amount of time needed to build a cohesive dream team to do this would be a game in of itself.

[Corran]

The scenario would probably be improved by (1) not giving players the chance to start hidden, just have combat start as soon as they arrive (and make up a suitable justification, like maybe they all arrived in a bolt of lightning)

Oh, this is cruel. Give the players a cool description of how they arrive and in exchange take away the chance to spring a surprise (maybe it's for the best though, as with these enemies, surprise is a double edged knife).

As a one shot, yeah, I don't see why I wouldn't give it a try (and another, and another, and another.... till there are not enough people willing to have their characters' butts kicked. Or till I won it.). As part of an ongoing campaign, half this force would have me running the other way. I think I understand now why you like using xp as a plot tool (there is probably a better way to put it).

Question. Are the krakens/dragon turtles in league with the enemy force on the island, or are they neutral (the description hungry makes me think they are neutral)? If neutral, there is always the idea to try involve them in the fight, hopefully in a way that it will inconvenience the enemy more than us. The latter is not difficult to accomplish, though the difficult part is finding a way to bring them into the fight. I checked tsunami and unfortunately it wont work, because it can only move huge or smaller enemies (also, there are some issues regarding positioning when casting, but this is moot as it wont work anyway), and I don't think using enlarge/reduce will be of much use either. Perhaps the best way is to try and use the water filled with krakens/dragon turtles terrain as an abstractly danger zone and try to force enough enemies inside it for the krakens to take care of. I think repelling blast (and teleports for positioning ourselves) is the best way to achieve that, as it bypasses saves and opposed checks (telekinesis as a back up maybe, as it can play well with quickening repelling blasts). Synchronization would be key as well, so the more characters we have with repelling blast (action surge/ quickened spell) the better this plan will work (clockwork initiative would tremendously help us here). Though the trouble now lies with luring the enemies (creating cover and spamming ranged attacks from behind it seems an easy enough way of accomplishing that). Even if the enemies were unable to see through our tactics before we put them to use, will they even bother chasing us close to the shore, or would they just be happy to guard the ritual site until the ritual is completed? A middle solution seems like the most realistic to me, something like the higher in the hierarchy monsters sending the other half to chase us while the ones left behind defend the site from other potential threats. But perhaps it's best to give a few details about how the monsters will act in a scenario where the players would try to lure them away from where they are standing? Because if we have to win the fight in X rounds, then there are a lot of strategies that are thrown out of the window. If this was a video game, how smart is the AI aggro thingy? Of course, all of this is a waste if the krakens/dragon turtles are in league with the monsters on the island. So... are they? *asks and crosses fingers

[MaxWilson]

I would play the heck out of this. My main caveat is I really hope the DM would tell me in advance that there was no rests and it's a lot of high power combatants.

Yep. Would you be more interested in the original one-big-long-fight scenario, or the variant where the ritual is taking place over 8 hours instead of 1, with monsters at the five points of a pentagram 3 miles in diameter? There would be more monsters, but fewer synergies between monsters, and you'd have a chance to rest and pre-cast spells before each encounter.

Given only that minimal information, My ideal party would probably be a Battle-master Archer, Illusion Wizard (My character), Ancients Paladin, Shepard Druid.

Also I love this idea I may make a one shot myself. For more of an adventuring day thing though I'd have 4 battles and give them a mcguffin that allows 2 short rests.

Also a good idea. I've given out magic tapestries before that let you get an hour-long rest in an extra-dimensional space, in only a few seconds to an outside observer.

4 battles. 3 reminiscent of the boats in cold days and 1 at the top of the hill.

Spoiler: He who walks behind

Show

Nightwalker
3 shadow horror's
20 Shadows

Spoiler: He who walks before

Show

Star Spawn Larva Mage
2 SS Hulks
10 SS Grue
2 SS Manglers

Stuff like that.

That sounds fun. I'd play that.

What are Shadow Horrors?

Also, how would you prevent Harry from nuking all three boats with Meteor Swarm at the same time? What would you do to make this something other than one big fight? Make it three nested dimensional portals instead of three boats?

=============================================

*snip* As part of an ongoing campaign, half this force would have me running the other way. I think I understand now why you like using xp as a plot tool (there is probably a better way to put it).

I see it as the DM's job to set up the scenario in such a way that the players have an excuse to override their PCs' natural survival instincts and fight anyway. :)

And yes, handing out 160,000ish XP the minute they arrive in a bolt of lightning should set the mood nicely. :) Though it wouldn't be strictly necessary, because in this case I'm envisioning that the players already know all the information from this thread.

BTW, part of my motivation here is to get DMs thinking in level 20 terms, realizing the scope of what a level 20 fight would look like so they can plan campaigns from the get-go to have interesting level 20 action instead of petering out before they even get there. If you're psychologically prepared to throw around things like a crashed beholder tyrant ship with ten surviving beholders (led by a Hive Mother) and their homegrown army of 80 Blue Slaads and 800 hobgoblin archers, your campaigns don't have to end at level 14! In fact, lower-level characters who use Combat As War tactics to defeat level 20 threats will very rapidly advance to level 20 where they have a fighting chance even in a "fair fight." :)

Question. Are the krakens/dragon turtles in league with the enemy force on the island, or are they neutral (the description hungry makes me think they are neutral)?

Neutral and omni-cidal.

If neutral, there is always the idea to try involve them in the fight, hopefully in a way that it will inconvenience the enemy more than us. The latter is not difficult to accomplish, though the difficult part is finding a way to bring them into the fight.

This is Combat As War thinking, and I love it, but the Combat As Sport intent here is to just provide a bounded but flavorful space for the battle to take place in. You're not necessarily capable of pinpointing any particular krakens or dragon turtles in the water, from where you stand on the shore--you just know that if you go in the water, the DM has license to say, "A massive form shifts on the seafloor and you realize that a angry kraken has now also entered the fight," as much as he wants.

Perhaps the best way is to try and use the water filled with krakens/dragon turtles terrain as an abstractly danger zone and try to force enough enemies inside it for the krakens to take care of.

It's safe to assume that the enemies aren't going to go in the water either. The intent is for you to be able to treat the battlespace as 200 yards x 50 yards, because Combat As Sport. :) We'll draw the 600 x 150 battlegrid and hopefully not have to draw any extensions to it after that unless the PCs flee into the forest or something.

I think repelling blast (and teleports for positioning ourselves) is the best way to achieve that, as it bypasses saves and opposed checks (telekinesis as a back up maybe, as it can play well with quickening repelling blasts).

That's fair game, but (1) might not be the most efficient use of your turns, and (2) if an angry kraken is activated, you won't have any guarantees as to what it does besides attacking whatever woke it up. This is a legal play but risky, and as DM I would encourage you to just pretend the water is a hard boundary because I make absolutely no guarantees to you about what happens if something does go in the water. If you Eldritch Blast a Grue into the water and I roll dice and suddenly three krakens suddenly start hurling lightning bolts at everything within 120' of the water, you've been warned.

Synchronization would be key as well, so the more characters we have with repelling blast (action surge/ quickened spell) the better this plan will work (clockwork initiative would tremendously help us here).

Is "clockwork initiative" another name for vanilla 5E initiative, or something different?

Though the trouble now lies with luring the enemies (creating cover and spamming ranged attacks from behind it seems an easy enough way of accomplishing that). Even if the enemies were unable to see through our tactics before we put them to use, will they even bother chasing us close to the shore, or would they just be happy to guard the ritual site until the ritual is completed?

Assume that their goal is to achieve godlike power, not to kill you. To the extent that you're not interfering with their plans, they are happy to take precautions (e.g. rearranging their forces) and then ignore you.

A middle solution seems like the most realistic to me, something like the higher in the hierarchy monsters sending the other half to chase us while the ones left behind defend the site from other potential threats.

They're not stupid, they won't willingly let themselves be defeated in detail. If you give them time to get organized and they have reason to launch an attack, it's going to be an all-out assault.

Just for fun and flavor, I'm going to say the lich here is in tactical command. She's roughly 300,000 years old and her name is Sethra Lavode.

Spoiler: Obligatory Brustian footnote

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Yes, yes, I know the real Sethra is a vampire, not a lich, and arguably not evil. Just roll with it, okay?

But perhaps it's best to give a few details about how the monsters will act in a scenario where the players would try to lure them away from where they are standing? Because if we have to win the fight in X rounds, then there are a lot of strategies that are thrown out of the window. If this was a video game, how smart is the AI aggro thingy? Of course, all of this is a waste if the krakens/dragon turtles are in league with the monsters on the island. So... are they? *asks and crosses fingers

X = 600 rounds, so you have some time to play with.

Because there's an intelligent commander, Sethra, even dumb monsters like the Grues can be expected to act at least somewhat intelligently, at least in the larger details that you can imagine Sethra shouting as commands. Beyond that I make no guarantees about how smart the AI is except that it isn't smarter than I am. :-P It could potentially be a lot dumber but you won't know until you enter play. (I'm a fan of adaptive AI a la Peter Spronk's work and ideally I'd like it to dynamically adjust its intelligence based on the player--at the higher levels, Grues might attempt a Goblin Conga Line to make more melee attacks, but for most players they would just move into melee as soon as they could and make attacks until they die, jabbering foul madness the whole time.)

[Corran]

I see it as the DM's job to set up the scenario in such a way that the players have an excuse to override their PCs' natural survival instincts and fight anyway. :)

And yes, handing out 160,000ish XP the minute they arrive in a bolt of lightning should set the mood nicely. :) Though it wouldn't be strictly necessary, because in this case I'm envisioning that the players already know all the information from this thread.

BTW, part of my motivation here is to get DMs thinking in level 20 terms, realizing the scope of what a level 20 fight would look like so they can plan campaigns from the get-go to have interesting level 20 action instead of petering out before they even get there. If you're psychologically prepared to throw around things like a crashed beholder tyrant ship with ten surviving beholders (led by a Hive Mother) and their homegrown army of 80 Blue Slaads and 800 hobgoblin archers, your campaigns don't have to end at level 14! In fact, lower-level characters who use Combat As War tactics to defeat level 20 threats will very rapidly advance to level 20 where they have a fighting chance even in a "fair fight." :)

Gotcha.
In the interest of more general discussion...

Spoiler: off topic

Show

I would discourage any DM from planning the final sessions in that detail ahead of time, because I would then worry if the DM either rushes the campaign or abandones it because the players are taking long to get there. So I'd prefer to look at it as an argument aiming at convincing DM's to not be afraid to start a game at the higher levels.

This is Combat As War thinking, and I love it, but the Combat As Sport intent here is to just provide a bounded but flavorful space for the battle to take place in. You're not necessarily capable of pinpointing any particular krakens or dragon turtles in the water, from where you stand on the shore--you just know that if you go in the water, the DM has license to say, "A massive form shifts on the seafloor and you realize that a angry kraken has now also entered the fight," as much as he wants.



It's safe to assume that the enemies aren't going to go in the water either. The intent is for you to be able to treat the battlespace as 200 yards x 50 yards, because Combat As Sport. :) We'll draw the 600 x 150 battlegrid and hopefully not have to draw any extensions to it after that unless the PCs flee into the forest or something.

Ok. The distinction was not that clear to me, but now I get it. The characters' abilities must be the factor contributing the most to their plan.

Is "clockwork initiative" another name for vanilla 5E initiative, or something different?

I don't know if it's a used term (probably not), but the idea is that all monsters use the same initiative. In which case it wont make as much difference in what turn the players will act, so usually what ends up happening is starting the combat with the pc or monster that rolled the highest and the go clockwise (so you don't have to spend time looking at the initiative list). Don't love it, but it can speed things up if you don't want to bother with these stuff.

My thoughts behind this was that pc's will get more chances to pull off combos (as enemies will be 'frozen' -if you exlude reactions- during their off-turn), but the same certainly holds true for the monsters. Usually this isn't a big deal, because pc's have a lot more synergies between them than the monsters have, though against such a force I wouldn't bet on it.

They're not stupid, they won't willingly let themselves be defeated in detail. If you give them time to get organized and they have reason to launch an attack, it's going to be an all-out assault.

Yeah, after reading it a second time, I realized this was more wishful thinking than the realistic thing to expect.

Just for fun and flavor, I'm going to say the lich here is in tactical command. She's roughly 300,000 years old and her name is Sethra Lavode.
...

Dressing it up with fluff makes it more interesting to think about, that's for sure.

-------------------------------------------

Are these kind of fights even winnable (played as CoS)? I mean, sure, chain simulacra and perhaps a handful of other tricks (I remember one, and I am pretty sure it was you who had said it in another thread, though correct me if I remember wrong; one caster casts shapechange -dragon- on himself and a second caster casts invulnerability on him) can probably win you any fight, but a few I-win buttons aside, can four 20-level pc's actually win that scenario?
Edit: Just asking for a gut reply.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that this is (or should be) the kind of playtesting that rpg game systems go through. Give several people an impossible to win scenario and see if any of such group figured out a way to win it. Then go and make the necessary changes to the features that were the culprits of the victory.

[Rukelnikov]

Possibly even more. In the most extreme potential case, if the beholder starts at the opposite end of the beach (200 yards away), it would take the beholder 12 rounds (72 seconds) to engage. (120' range + 40' movement per round = 12 rounds of Dashing required.) That's ignoring any time required to navigate around total cover obstacles, but trees might not be a problem for a hovering beholder. (I'll say that the beholder can withstand the high winds to circumvent the ban on flying, because otherwise it would be stuck in place and no fun at all.)

Dang, the measures were in yards, I thought they were feet.You're right some of them can take more than a couple of turns getting there.

The big question of course is "how do you locate all of the monsters beforehand, given the darkness?" But I think this is solvable via divinations like Arcane Eye + familiars, maybe with Prodigy: Perception and Skulker for good measure.

Yeah, I thought it was a smaller island (ft instead of yards), and MS could just nuke almost the entire surface of it. They'd have to resort to magic or scouting, both could be dangerous in this scenario.

I suppose a party of 4 Fighter 2/Evoker 18 might have a very easy time with this fight once they locate all the monsters. Each one does Action Surge: Meteor Swarm + Overchanneled Fireball/Cone of Cold.

Yeah, I was assuming the party would only have one Wizard, what you described has a very good chance of killing everything in the first round.

I think even a less gimicky, more "realistic" party could totally win this battle, if the players are skilled. I for one would have fun playing out this scenario. You could put a few minor encounters before it, ~2x Deadly or so, but the real fun would come at the 13x Deadly climax.

Sure, consider that, given the island is not as small as I thought and, as you mentioned, some of the enemies may reach the fight like 4 rounds in, it will be something like a gauntlet, and they can choose which wave to start with.

My point is, those previous encounters may not be necessary (and the time they take, may be necessary for the final fight, which looks to be a very long one), since with the "enemy waves" feel they fight has, it'll already start as only a Deadly x2 or so (whichever the players choose to), and then scale every round. It'll be a cool fight.

P.S. obviously the easiest way to win this is via chain Wishing for Simulacra. I tend to overlook that exploit because my house rules prevent it from working (Simulacra are not full-powered copies). For purposes of this thread please just consider Simulacrum to create a copy with only 50% of the original's class levels.

I tend to ignore it too cause no one in my group would attempt it, its clear that cannot fly.

[MaxWilson]

Gotcha.
In the interest of more general discussion...

Spoiler: off topic

Show

I would discourage any DM from planning the final sessions in that detail ahead of time, because I would then worry if the DM either rushes the campaign or abandones it because the players are taking long to get there. So I'd prefer to look at it as an argument aiming at convincing DM's to not be afraid to start a game at the higher levels.

Spoiler: Off topic, campaign construction

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Oh, I agree that the DM shouldn't plan final sessions at the start of the campaign. But if you design a world like this, and you're psychologically comfortable with what level 20 challenges are like, you can be offering level 20ish fights all along if you want to, at least in certain areas of the sandbox; or you can start a normal campaign and then at some point have some kind of catastrophe or singularity or Riftwar or something which transforms the world and makes stuff like this start happening a lot.

Spoiler: Anecdote

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One of the very first big fights of my very first 5E campaign was a level 20 fight for 3rd level PCs. It was about a dozen umber hulks and a handful of neogis including a 7th level neogi wizard. Because the PCs knew in advance that this neogi ship was going to show up (to pick up the hatchlings it had left a month before, after killing all of the villagers except one that it overlooked), and because they recruited help (30 guards that they were able to borrow from the king), and prepared the ground, and set traps and stuff, and caught the neogis in a dispersed formation... because of all that, plus some luck with the dice, they survived and earned enough XP to go up several levels, although I ruled that it would take several game sessions for them to "process" all of their XP, at the rate of one additional level per session. They also won themselves a spelljamming Hammership which they proceeded to ignore until later on the campaign when they finally realized what it was and how to work it. That experience and some subsequent ones taught me that the game is actually a lot of fun when you challenge the PCs with high-difficulty, high-impact adventure.

For example, if I wanted to run a level 20-oriented campaign today, I'd start the PCs out in the land of the Twelve Cities, full of musty dungeons and thousand-year-old crypts, and then I'd... start wiping out the cities with disasters one by one. The PCs can engage in regular dungeon spelunking for treasure and XP, but that's just a training ground, because somebody is going to need to deal with whatever disaster is about to turn the Eleven Cities into the Nine Cities, e.g. "it turns out that the Mind Flayers have actually been in control of the city government of Oona, through hundreds of strategically-placed Intellect Devourer meat puppets, for the last hundred years, and now their plan has moved to the next phase of 'collecting extra brains and other supplies before launching the Utterdark', and they've set their sights on Ronstadt". Out of mercy I'll assure the players in advance that I have only a fixed schedule of disasters in motion, and if they manage to stop enough of them, their legend will live forever as the heroes who saved the Seven Cities! Or not. :)

I don't know if it's a used term (probably not), but the idea is that all monsters use the same initiative.

I see. No, clockwork initiative isn't in use in this scenario. You can have regular 5E initiative or concurrent initiative (each round, everybody declares then everybody acts, rolling initiative when necessary to figure out who goes first), but even regular initiative is fairly predictable, and I like chaos. :)

If all of the PCs Delay in concurrent initiative, then it will seem like clockwork initiative, but there's a cost: all of the monsters will get to move first every round while you Delay. (Also, there's a risk that some of the monsters might Delay initially too, especially smart ones like the lich, and if that happens then they still have the option of declaring real actions at the same time as you do.)

In which case it wont make as much difference in what turn the players will act, so usually what ends up happening is starting the combat with the pc or monster that rolled the highest and the go clockwise (so you don't have to spend time looking at the initiative list). Don't love it, but it can speed things up if you don't want to bother with these stuff.

My thoughts behind this was that pc's will get more chances to pull off combos (as enemies will be 'frozen' -if you exlude reactions- during their off-turn), but the same certainly holds true for the monsters. Usually this isn't a big deal, because pc's have a lot more synergies between them than the monsters have, though against such a force I wouldn't bet on it.

I agree that combos are fun, and enabling them (at a cost) is one of the things I love about concurrent initiative.

Are these kind of fights even winnable (played as CoS)? I mean, sure, chain simulacra and perhaps a handful of other tricks (I remember one, and I am pretty sure it was you who had said it in another thread, though correct me if I remember wrong; one caster casts shapechange -dragon- on himself and a second caster casts invulnerability on him) can probably win you any fight, but a few I-win buttons aside, can four 20-level pc's actually win that scenario?
Edit: Just asking for a gut reply.

Spoiler: Off topic, Invulnerability trick

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Note: Invulnerability is self-only, so you'd want to do it the other way around. Invulnerability on self, other caster casts True Polymorph on invulnerable guy to turn him into a Shadow Dragon or something, and then Rope Trick or Dimension Door or something to get himself to safety. (Rope Trick would destabilize the ritual in this scenario though.)

Also, in this scenario, the lich or the Glabrezus might just Dispel Magic to kill your combo.

Yes, it's winnable. In fact discussion on this thread has shown me that the original scenario is actually pretty trivial for e.g. 4x Fighter 2/Evoker 18, even without Simulacrum. You've got 560 HP worth of Meteor Swarm to play with, plus another 288 HP of Maximized Fireball, and Meteor Swam has enough AoE that it can hit about 25% of the beach at any one time--and you can save it, too, until the monsters start clumping up to attack you. You'll still wind up fighting a few creatures like the Red Dragon and the Death Knight, but Meteor Swarms excel at clearing out anything that isn't itself CR 15ish+.

I sketched out a number of other, more balanced parties that I think would win too. A Mobile Moon Druid in Earth Elemental form doing hit-and-run Contagion from below the surface of the sand while a couple dozen of his conjured wolves/elks/whatnot screen the PCs from harm, a Warlock casting Armor of Agathys V and creating an Abominable Yeti out of a tree and then checking Fireball/Command V/Agonizing Repelling Eldritch Spear of Lethargy, a Divine Sorlock using Holy Aura and Wish (Symbol of Insanity), etc., etc.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that this is (or should be) the kind of playtesting that rpg game systems go through. Give several people an impossible to win scenario and see if any of such group figured out a way to win it. Then go and make the necessary changes to the features that were the culprits of the victory.

I agree.

Note that you don't necessarily playtest in order to change rules for PCs--you might be playtesting the monsters instead. E.g. if Grues and Manglers were twice as fast (60' and 80' move respectively) and the Beholder had 800' darkvision and 1200' range on its eye-beams, and was able to use them even on targets it cannot see due to heavy obscurement (at advantage on their saving throws), the scenario gets harder. If Magic Resistance and Legendary Resistance let monsters ignore spells outright instead of just affecting saves, the scenario gets harder still. Eventually you get it to a nice point where the scenario is hard, but winnable, but where simple tactics like Meteor Swarm x4 are no longer the best or funnest way to win.

P.S. It's incredibly dumb that 5E makes ranged combat so strong and then also makes so many monsters so slow. Melee would have a much better niche in the game if monsters that can run quite fast were common (~30 mph = ~speed 130'), and melee specialists were needed to deal with those once they close. Melee guys still wouldn't be good at catching up to fleeing monsters, but as long as you just make those monsters suicidally aggressive, at least melee will have a niche.

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Dang, the measures were in yards, I thought they were feet.You're right some of them can take more than a couple of turns getting there.

Yeah, I thought it was a smaller island (ft instead of yards), and MS could just nuke almost the entire surface of it. They'd have to resort to magic or scouting, both could be dangerous in this scenario.

Yeah, I was assuming the party would only have one Wizard, what you described has a very good chance of killing everything in the first round.

Maybe the beach should be made wider, 200 yards x 200 yards? Or maybe the "bolt of lightning, you're suddenly here and all the monsters know it" plus the darkness and total cover will be enough to prevent Meteor Swarm from trivializing everything. PCs would still Meteor Swarm freely and often whenever they see clumps of enemies, but at least there'd be a chance that Manglers are sneaking up on them every round, so they have a reason to stay interested even when there's only a couple of monsters visible.

Sure, consider that, given the island is not as small as I thought and, as you mentioned, some of the enemies may reach the fight like 4 rounds in, it will be something like a gauntlet, and they can choose which wave to start with.

Yep, this is what I would hope for.

My point is, those previous encounters may not be necessary (and the time they take, may be necessary for the final fight, which looks to be a very long one), since with the "enemy waves" feel they fight has, it'll already start as only a Deadly x2 or so (whichever the players choose to), and then scale every round. It'll be a cool fight.

This is a terrific point. Table time matters a lot. Assuming that for some reason Meteor Swarm carpet bombing doesn't work, the fight seems likely to be one of those that feels like forty-five minutes but then you look at the clock and it's been five hours.

[th3g0dc0mp13x]

Yep. Would you be more interested in the original one-big-long-fight scenario, or the variant where the ritual is taking place over 8 hours instead of 1, with monsters at the five points of a pentagram 3 miles in diameter? There would be more monsters, but fewer synergies between monsters, and you'd have a chance to rest and pre-cast spells before each encounter.
Also a good idea. I've given out magic tapestries before that let you get an hour-long rest in an extra-dimensional space, in only a few seconds to an outside observer.

I would actually love it as the 1 hour version but with a short rest mcguffin of some kind.

That sounds fun. I'd play that.
What are Shadow Horrors?

Shadow horrors are from Guildmaster's guide to Ravnica, they're a CR9 super sneaky thing that has a 60' radius aoe attack.

Also, how would you prevent Harry from nuking all three boats with Meteor Swarm at the same time? What would you do to make this something other than one big fight? Make it three nested dimensional portals instead of three boats?

two options,
A. Make the battlefield bigger, Each "boat" is a mile and a half from the next, if they want to split their surprise advantage then they can hit two with one swarm but not three.
B. Hardened positions, have the ritual spaces be protected in obsidian bunkers, The casters don't die but their protection vanishes, thus still giving a benefit as trying to fight against ranged attackers that have 3/4 cover or total cover is a pain in the butt.

Edit: third option, Fog of War is a real thing especially on a lake at night the farthest your darkvision gets is like 150', If you can't see it you can't hit it.

[Mongobear]

I'M just Zerg it with OP melee builds, since flying is banned.

4x Paladins rushing the Undead and Smiting them into Oblivion, then teaming up in pairs to handle the rest.

4x GWM Bear Totem barbarians, with Resilient(Wisdom), and maybe a lucky ring/armor for psychic resistance. Infinite Rages, crazy Str/Con, etc.

Heck, 2 Paladins and 2 Barbarians, split into a 1:1 duo and just Zerg the island from each side, not much worry with saves In the Paladin auras, and they can heal the barbarian if his HP ever does dip low.

[Dualswinger]

Precisely one of your monsters are immune to fire. So a level 17 illusionist wizard can wipe out the entire island population in under a minute save for the dragon with mirage arcane.

Taking on an adult red shouldn’t be too much problem on his own, especially if it can’t fly.

[Mongobear]

Just realized I did a so ght necro on this thread, my apologies.

Thats what i get for not checking the dates after using Search function.

[Rukelnikov]

Just realized I did a so ght necro on this thread, my apologies.

Thats what i get for not checking the dates after using Search function.

Its been 45 days so its acceptable (IIRC 45 days is the limit)

@MaxWilson: How did the encounter go??

[Mongobear]

Its been 45 days so its acceptable (IIRC 45 days is the limit)

@MaxWilson: How did the encounter go??

Lol, it was close, just wanted to be sure.

[darknite]

Looks do-able to me for a full party of 20th level PCs. Actually I'd buff monster HP and put some NPC-favorable environmental effects in place, too.