Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Scenario 1: Atropus, The World Born Dead finally comes to Toril and it's up to the level 20 heroes to defeat the Elder Evil before it destroys all life on Toril.
Scenario 2: Death Heart, the city ruled by undead comes out of the Negative Energy Plane to wreak havoc and it's up to the party of seasoned adventurers to fight off the invasion.
The ending of a campaign should feel like something that organically grew out of the campaign itself. A capstone of all the effort that it took to go there. Thus, if you are already in a campaign, the right answer is the one that feels organic for what you have already done thus far. If you are not, then the right answer is whichever you would prefer building and running an entire campaign around.
Those are not things we can decide - if you are in the former situation, we do not have enough information; if you are in the latter then we cannot tell you what you would find more fun to build your campaign around.
That said, functionally these are nearly exactly the same - both are large threats that spawn lots of undead with their arrival. Mechanically you’ll have lots of undead followed by a boss dominating your capstone sessions. So, really comes down to a vibe check between these two options of what you want to do.
I realize we don’t have much context here, but those both sound like they’re kind of dropped in out of nowhere. Is this for an ongoing campaign or are you in the planning stages?
As caerwyn said, if it’s ongoing, then I’d say use whichever one makes sense considering what been happening in the world.
If you’re in the planning stages, I’d say you’re looking much, much too far ahead. Most campaigns either peter out well before 20, or the characters are able to reach a natural, satisfying conclusion well before 20. I know lots of people have the 1-20 idea in their head, but in practice, it very rarely works. If nothing else, it usually takes too long, irl, to get to 20.
I’d suggest something much more vague, the cultists are summoning the horrors of whichever sort. Then when things are wrapping up, you find an appropriate enemy for the ending.
Have you been building toward either of those things throughout the campaign? Do your players know those names and what those threats represent? Without knowing what your campaign has been about so far it's hard to say which of those two options would be the more fitting option for a big climactic event or if either is even appropriate at all. Say hypothetically your players have spent the past 19 levels dealing with fae nonsense and the feywild; having an undead elder god drop out of the sky or a city of undead phase into reality would feel like a pretty big non sequitur.
Well, it's the planning phase I guess I had this idea for a really long campaign involving multiple adventure books.
I personally would probably use both as alternative "bad" endings.
"You're not chaotic evil! You're just chaotic SHIT!"
Yeah, we all have those ideas. And if you can pull it off, that's fantastic, and great for you and your players.
But I'd suggest against starting with the 1-20 idea. I guess with milestone leveling, you can better set the pace of when the characters do what. But even then, they will often surprise you. Could be they figure out the problem 5 levels earlier than you expect and just beeline for the BBEG. It would be really unsatisfying to then find ways to insert more side quests and slow them down so they hit the level you expected them to be when the hit the end. Or, conversely, they might take on more than you expect, and you end up over-leveling them. It's better to plan out an idea of what the BBEG is going to do if the PCs don't get involved. Then they start doing their thing, and you just kind of see how things shake out. Most often, the story ends up being told quicker than 20 levels.
There's also some of the more practical concerns. High level characters (late T3 and certainly T4) are notoriously hard to challenge, and, really, you can only throw tiamat at them so many times. In a weird way, they can get boring. And then there's the irl stuff. People move or their job changes and they need to drop out of the campaign. You can usually recruit others, but that gets to become a real hassle. And, even with consistent players, there's a steady stream of new subclasses (and within a few months, a whole new class) coming out. And I'm not even including 3rd party stuff if you use that. Players often burn out on their characters and want to try some of the new shiny stuff. I personally find about 2 years of actual, real-life calendar time to be about the max before people start itching to wrap things up so they can try a new character, give or take (YMMV). And it's really hard to fit 1-20 in that space, even if you're playing 1/week with no interruptions.
That's a really long way to say, I'd suggest you don't plan out a level 20 encounter, maybe think in terms of a rough idea for a final boss battle, and then, whenever it arrives, that's when you find a level appropriate set of enemies to populate it. And keep in mind that you may even have a better idea between the beginning and the end. Don't be afraid to change your plan.
Well, I was thinking of doing a campaign something like this:
Assuming you play weekly that’s a decade or two’s worth of campaign there considering many of those are intended to be months or years worth of campaign by themselves, to mention nothing of the fact the levelling is going to be all over the place. Do you really think you can keep a party together that long?
48 pre-written modules? First of all, there's a lot of level overlap in them, so you'll either have to ignore level-ups, re-balance existing encounters to take into account higher levels, or other homebrew. I'm currently in a campaign which attempted to weld together some modules of the same level. Some homebrew was attempted, and then quietly discarded as flaws in the concept appeared.
Also, good luck finding players who won't have schedule conflicts and have to drop out. I suggest going a campaign at a time, preparing for the next as each nears its end. Feel free to use the same PC's or allow players to change things up and try out new PC's as they wish. Don't try and shoehorn 48 modules into one campaign. These 48 modules were not designed to work together in a continuous manner, the balance will be all out of whack because of that, and your players will get restless well before finishing them.
I was thinking that maybe Tomb of Annihilation could have Kongamato, Mbielu Dinosaurs, Spinosauruses and J'ba Fofi (from Tome of Beasts 1) added to the jungle encounters while Princes of the Apocalypse could have Elemental Evil Giants and Elemental Hulks (from Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants) added to make it more difficult I could also adapt the Avatars of Elemental Evil to 5e. Maybe I could also add Abishai and adapt Dragonspawn of Tiamat to 5e for the Tyranny of Dragons campaigns. I could probably add some other things to the other modules I just have to think a bit.
Oh boy. That is a lot. I respect the ambition, but I think your eyes are bigger than your stomach. As CunningSmile noted, that list would take about ten or twenty years to play through. And that's assuming the group keeps a regular play schedule and doesn't fall apart because people move, get married, have kids, change jobs, get divorced, etc. Thematically it's all over the place. If you're building toward the big bad at the end being either an undead elder god or a multidimensional city of undeath, then maybe whittle that list down and pick a throughline that puts together a few undead related stories.
I just like a campaign to have varying themes which I feel would make it fun. Maybe there could also be some Cthulhu Mythos or a meta-crossover with planet earth?
Honestly, getting through one full campaign is a feat in itself. I would eat my DM bald cap if you can run three full modules with a single table of players. Manage down those expectations or you will end up hating the game.
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I think you should start and run your campaign and see where it goes. Deciding what the lvl 20 finale will look like before the campaign starts is somewhat work for nothing. Meaning the party is not nearly there yet. They have a lot of things to do and during that period things may change and your ending that you posted might not feeling right.
Thankfully, you have a lot of time to figure out how to make it great!
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Getting through one module can be a challenge. Playing though multiple modules is not really a feasible option for most gaming groups, especially the idea of playing multiple modules with the same characters- as other posters have said they're either going to end up massively over-leveled or level up progression is going to be ground to such a halt that players will get frustrated and leave the game.
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