10 Tips for Running High-Level D&D Campaigns

1. The Stakes Must Be High

If in the high levels your players are still fighting lowly kobolds, goblins, orcs, and similar insects, something might be wrong. By tier 3 and 4 of game play, characters should be confronting issues that are kingdom ending and even world ending in scope – and problems of that natures usually involve epic bad guys, too. But not only that, failure should have horrific consequences. Even if the party doesn’t die – because killing high-level characters is almost impossible – they should still be able to fail their missions. Death shouldn’t be the only failure state.

And if they do fail, it should be horrific. The entire city of Waterdeep wiped out. The sun bloated out forever and denizens of the underdark – including the evil drow – surging forth to conquer the surface. You know, bad stuff. Furthermore, if high-level characters ignore plot hooks, and screw around in town, the same horrible things happen! Oh, you didn’t want to help with that mind flayer invasion? Well, there were no other crazy powerful adventures who could do it, so now the entire Sword Coast has been turned into thralls of the mind flayers. Good job. And sometimes failure might mean BEATING the big bad, but destroying half the continent in the process. Sometimes even “victory” can have terrible consequences.

Also, you want your players to feel threatened and menaced. The issues they’re dealing with and the creatures they’re fighting should leave them doubting if they’ll succeed or not. There should be a bit of healthy fear in their hearts.

2. Don’t Neglect the Three Pillars

Social interactions should still be a strong focus of the game. It may be tempting now that the PCs have all these strong combat abilities and spells to move toward a combat-heavy game, but be careful with this. First, combat at high levels tends to take MUCH longer than at low levels, and players still like interacting with NPCs and each other. The game shouldn’t turn into a dungeon crawl that minimizes social interactions UNLESS that what all the players really want. (And they probably don’t.) Give them cool people to interact with though! And perhaps NPCs that are also high-level. They should be rubbing elbows with archmages and kings and silver dragons in the high levels. And these social interactions should be IMPACTFUL to the direction of the game and have real meaning – or just be a chance for the players to bullcrap a little and relax in between tense combats.

Of course, other groups drift the other way and have almost no combat at the higher levels. Wait, what, why? Did you players suddenly decide they don’t like combat? Did they decide that now that they have all these COOL ABILITIES AND SPELLS that they don’t really want to use them? Some people be like: but Luke, the characters are so powerful at high levels that no one in the game world wants to oppose them or challenge them. That’s horse crap. Go flip through the monster manual again. Or Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. OR even better, the Tome of Beasts 1 and 2. You’ll definitely find some high-power bad guys in there for them to fight. Other people be like: well they use their abilities and spells, but we resolve it all narratively without rolling dice. Okay, sure, there is a time and place for that, but unless you have a very special group, I’m willing to bet that at least some of your players still LOVE tactical combat and WANT you to whip out that grid and the minis so they can use their cool stuff in a battle or two.

And EXPLORATION should now involve the party finding fantastical elements as they travel the world or explore the latest dungeon. A tower that disappears every morning and reappears somewhere else in the world. A glowing goblin that can tell you your future for the next five minutes if you feed it a gem worth 5000 gold pieces. Stuff like that.

3. Adjust the Game for the Characters

At high levels you MUST be aware of the PCs’ abilities and spells and adjust your campaign accordingly SO THAT they might be challenged on their adventures. This is NOT you negating their cool powers; this is you making sure they aren’t bored out of their minds as they steamroll one meaningless encounter after another. I once had a paladin that gave a +5 to saving throws to everyone in 30 feet – so that’s the entire party. Once it became clear that no one could ever fail a saving throw ever again, certain things got a little bump so the game could be challenging again. And I just know I’ll get angry comments about this. And some of those angry comments will be along the lines of “But Luke, there are so many OTHER things you can do to make things challenging.” And you’re right, there are, and I do those things, too. However, at high levels, a game master ALSO needs to adjust the mechanics of the game, too, based on the PCs’ power.

Part of adjusting the game also means using more deadly encounters than you did at lower levels. By the time you reach level 15 for sure, you can almost throw out the CR system entirely. I’ve had high-level parties ABSOLUTLEY DESTORY encounters that were FIVE TIMES the “deadly” threshold according to the challenge rating calculations. And – AND – if your party has a cleric, especially a life cleric, -- LOL – they can handle even more nasty stuff. Get ready to throw the entire Monster Manual at them!

My main strategy for adjusting the game for my players involves observing how adventures and encounters go, and then adjusting future ones as needed.

4. Remember, the Bad Guys are High-Level, Too

CR 20 bad guys such as demons and devils and arch-fey have been around the block a few times. Sometimes they’ve existed for centuries. Thus, they KNOW what high-level characters can do – they know the powers, abilities, and spells they have at their disposal – And they anticipate their use. So high-level bad guys prepare their strongholds to protect against scrying and teleportation. They have countermeasures in place for the Forbiddence spell. They have their own wizards and sorcerers who make ample use of counterspell and dispel magic. They have their own clerics and paladins who can heal and bring both them and their minions back to life. Bottom line: if high-level PCs can do it, the bad guys can do it, too.

5. Build Your Bosses like Bosses

If you roll up with a pathetic pansy of a boss – even if the stat block says CR 24 – you’ll find out really fast with a high-level party of characters. If you don’t know how to run the boss optimally, you’ll find out fast. If you didn’t read the stat block carefully beforehand and are trying to wing it, combat will bog down, and your boss will likely fall flat on its face. Not only should minions be terrifying at high levels, but bosses should be BOSSES. Make sure they have legendary resistances, lair actions, legendary actions, and minions to help them in the final fight. Give them magic items. Give them immunity to GAME OVER conditions like stun and paralysis. Don’t skimp here. Be terrifying. Be devious. Be a dungeon master!

6. High-Level Adventurers Have a Reputation that Precedes Them

By the time your players’ characters reach higher levels, they’ll have been doing LOTS of things in the game world. Overcoming enemies, righting wrongs all across the kingdom, impressing various rulers, mingling with nobles at galas and festivals – and their reputation and tales of their mighty deeds will spread across the local area and even across the game world. They are mighty heroes; most people will have heard of them and their exploits. And that INCLUDES bad guys!

So, your bad guys will have heard about the heroes, and they’ll know what some of their abilities are! Which means, if your bad guys aren’t complete IDIOTS they’ll begin preparing to do battle with the heroes, because they’re a good chance they’ll come poking their noses where they don’t belong. Does the wizard love fireball? Animate objects? Firestorm? The bad guys will stock up on potions of fire resistance and dispel magic scrolls. Does the paladin/sorcerer were heavy armor, use the shield spell, and have a cloak of displacement? Cool. Bad guys will use area of effect spells on him, grapple him, push him down deep holes prepared just for him – or just mostly ignore him (since they can’t hit him anyway) and focus fire on other characters. Furthermore, villains might take the initiative and send hit squads after the characters BEFORE they can start meddling with their business.

7. Low-level Mooks Are Still Good

So we’re talking about making the game more challenging, adjusting for character powers, and making nightmarish bosses – but low-level, trivial mooks that the party will steamroll and mop up without batting an eye ARE STILL GOOD TO HAVE. This does two things: first, it reinforces verisimilitude. Just as your players ran into high-level creatures from time to time when they were low level, they also run into low-level creatures when they are high level.

Second, it makes your players feel powerful and awesome when they lay into an entire tribe of goblins and with ease send them fleeing to the far corners of the underdark. This is good; your players have earned the right to feel this way. For encounters like this, where victory is a forgone conclusion, I suggest running them narratively without even rolling dice. Simply have your players describe what their characters are doing and narrate the results.

8. Political Connections Should Become a Thing

Even if you’re not running a political campaign, the heroes will have interacted with lots of different factions and likely nobles and government officials – or at least HELPED resolve problems that affect them – so there will be groups that hold them in high regard, pay them respect, and possibly owe them favors. On the other side of the coin, there will be EVIL factions the heroes have slighted and who will be looking for revenge. So even if you don’t make politics a big part of your game, consider touching on them at least a little bit. Doing so will help your players feel awesome and truly heroic.

9. Give Bad Guys Cool Bases

At low level, it’s fine for your bandits to have their hideout in some rickety buildings in the forest. However, at high levels, your bandits should be githyanki raiders who have their base on the Astral Plane inside the corpse of a floating titan. Think fantastical and cool. Your bad guys are super powerful creatures at high levels. They have access to things low-level bad guys don’t; so, go hog wild and make things super cool. What would you rather do as a level-17 character: clear out yet another set of tunnels in the sewers, or delve into the intestines and internal organs of a long-dead deity?

10. Know Your Players

Some players are not cut out for high-level games. Are they going to try to wish away the boss of every dungeon? Are they going to use rule lawyering and loop holes to have 5 t-rexes every encounter? Or figure out a way to have 100 zombie summons every day? Or use Forbiddence to clean out every level of the dungeon? Now, maybe games like that are fun for you, I don’t know. But they wouldn’t be fun for me, and they wouldn’t be fun for players who actually want to play the game instead of theorizing ways to BREAK the game. So, if your players aren’t mature enough to realize that some uses of their powers actually make the game less fun for others at the table, and cannot responsibly restrain themselves, it might be time to roll up level one characters again.

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