I'm a fairly new DM and am currently running my second campaign. My plan is to have my party end the campaign at level 20. I was looking for a homebrew boss and the best one I could find was a CR 30. Will that be too hard for four players at level 20? If so, what is a fairer but still challenging CR?
Well, I avoid CR 30 for a reason. Once you get there, everything else pales in comparison. And since you say you're a new DM, I'm going to give you some more advice: you're not going to get to level 20. If you do, it will take years, and most campaigns fade out before then. This is a simple fact. Once your players break level 15, balancing encounters becomes practically impossible. Instead of aiming for 20, I'd instead go for somewhere in the 13-16 range. This will still allow you to have a respectable CR 19-23 foe (the range of most Demon Lords and Archdevils).
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I appreciate your response. That takes a lot of pressure off of me.
No problem! Good luck, and I hope you and your party have fun!
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Great! Well the only official ones are Tiamat and Tarrasque, so I would browse the homebrew section for more ideas. Practice with the monster before your players fight it, because CR 30s have a gigantic stat block and it will take a bit to get use to what it can do and how you should use it, on a strategic level. Lots of moving parts ya know.
But yea that is the climax of most good homebrew campaigns, battling the CR 30. My players might fight Glasya. Level them up every 2-3 sessions and stay on track for it.
Great! Well the only official ones are Tiamat and Tarrasque, so I would browse the homebrew section for more ideas. Practice with the monster before your players fight it, because CR 30s have a gigantic stat block and it will take a bit to get use to what it can do and how you should use it, on a strategic level. Lots of moving parts ya know.
But yea that is the climax of most good homebrew campaigns, battling the CR 30. My players might fight Glasya. Level them up every 2-3 sessions and stay on track for it.
If you're going for CR30 (which seems like that's not necessarily your goal now that you're getting more advice), I'd say a 4-person party is going to really struggle against a foe that powerful, even at level 20. If you still want to go that way, I'd say try and have a powerful NPC assisting.
That said... it also depends on your players. I've played with people before who are so focused on min-maxing that the only way to challenge them is to throw wildly overpowered enemies at them and hope for the best.
If you're going for CR30 (which seems like that's not necessarily your goal now that you're getting more advice), I'd say a 4-person party is going to really struggle against a foe that powerful, even at level 20. If you still want to go that way, I'd say try and have a powerful NPC assisting.
Level 20 party vs Tarrasque: wizard casts Fly with a 6th level spell slot. Party bombards Tarrasque into submission while taking no damage.
If you're going for CR30 (which seems like that's not necessarily your goal now that you're getting more advice), I'd say a 4-person party is going to really struggle against a foe that powerful, even at level 20. If you still want to go that way, I'd say try and have a powerful NPC assisting.
That said... it also depends on your players. I've played with people before who are so focused on min-maxing that the only way to challenge them is to throw wildly overpowered enemies at them and hope for the best.
Yeah my party is also new to the game so they aren't really min/maxed.
Great! Well the only official ones are Tiamat and Tarrasque, so I would browse the homebrew section for more ideas. Practice with the monster before your players fight it, because CR 30s have a gigantic stat block and it will take a bit to get use to what it can do and how you should use it, on a strategic level. Lots of moving parts ya know.
But yea that is the climax of most good homebrew campaigns, battling the CR 30. My players might fight Glasya. Level them up every 2-3 sessions and stay on track for it.
There is also The Aspect of Tiamat and Aspect of Bahamut.
I think that if you have incredibly powerful characters, then you should start sending packs of about level 5 monsters and slowly increase from there. It makes the game a lot more fun and at level 20, your characters have a lot more weapons that do instant kills and if you have a lot of creatures, it gets harder to kill them instantly, so it is a lot more fun!
Let's take this into consideration compared to villains not from dnd, but from other peices of fiction. Let's take Bill cipher for example. They couldn't fight him outright, so they tricked him. When the party can't outright face something so overwhelmingly powerful, they must find other ways to best their foe.
Let's consider that the original post was from three years ago and the campaign is most likely over by now. Also, enemies that have to be defeated using trickery or the like tend to be poor choices for D&D, in large part because it generally means that the "face" character with the highest charisma in the party does the heavy lifting while the rest of the party mostly watches, whereas in combat most every character is able to contribute something unless the player has more or less deliberately nerfed themselves.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Hi all,
I'm a fairly new DM and am currently running my second campaign. My plan is to have my party end the campaign at level 20. I was looking for a homebrew boss and the best one I could find was a CR 30. Will that be too hard for four players at level 20? If so, what is a fairer but still challenging CR?
Well, I avoid CR 30 for a reason. Once you get there, everything else pales in comparison. And since you say you're a new DM, I'm going to give you some more advice: you're not going to get to level 20. If you do, it will take years, and most campaigns fade out before then. This is a simple fact. Once your players break level 15, balancing encounters becomes practically impossible. Instead of aiming for 20, I'd instead go for somewhere in the 13-16 range. This will still allow you to have a respectable CR 19-23 foe (the range of most Demon Lords and Archdevils).
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I appreciate your response. That takes a lot of pressure off of me.
No problem! Good luck, and I hope you and your party have fun!
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Great! Well the only official ones are Tiamat and Tarrasque, so I would browse the homebrew section for more ideas. Practice with the monster before your players fight it, because CR 30s have a gigantic stat block and it will take a bit to get use to what it can do and how you should use it, on a strategic level. Lots of moving parts ya know.
But yea that is the climax of most good homebrew campaigns, battling the CR 30. My players might fight Glasya. Level them up every 2-3 sessions and stay on track for it.
Thanks! This is really good advice guys
If you're going for CR30 (which seems like that's not necessarily your goal now that you're getting more advice), I'd say a 4-person party is going to really struggle against a foe that powerful, even at level 20. If you still want to go that way, I'd say try and have a powerful NPC assisting.
That said... it also depends on your players. I've played with people before who are so focused on min-maxing that the only way to challenge them is to throw wildly overpowered enemies at them and hope for the best.
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Level 20 party vs Tarrasque: wizard casts Fly with a 6th level spell slot. Party bombards Tarrasque into submission while taking no damage.
Yeah my party is also new to the game so they aren't really min/maxed.
There is also The Aspect of Tiamat and Aspect of Bahamut.
I think that if you have incredibly powerful characters, then you should start sending packs of about level 5 monsters and slowly increase from there. It makes the game a lot more fun and at level 20, your characters have a lot more weapons that do instant kills and if you have a lot of creatures, it gets harder to kill them instantly, so it is a lot more fun!
Let's take this into consideration compared to villains not from dnd, but from other peices of fiction. Let's take Bill cipher for example. They couldn't fight him outright, so they tricked him. When the party can't outright face something so overwhelmingly powerful, they must find other ways to best their foe.
Let's consider that the original post was from three years ago and the campaign is most likely over by now. Also, enemies that have to be defeated using trickery or the like tend to be poor choices for D&D, in large part because it generally means that the "face" character with the highest charisma in the party does the heavy lifting while the rest of the party mostly watches, whereas in combat most every character is able to contribute something unless the player has more or less deliberately nerfed themselves.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Good point