At later levels (the first one being specifically at level 9, the second at level 12) two of the main big story encounters, both of which are literal gods. The whole late-game and foreshadowed early game plot revolves around the power hungry Fairy King trying to cause the other planes to fall into chaos, and then take each over one by one, so they completely succumb to the chaos of the fey realm.
The first encounter is the PCs going to the celestial realm (because of a magic outage for clerics and certain warlocks), to find and hopefully prevent a war brewing between gods (that is one of the fairy kings plans to instigate tension, so he can swoop in and take over), and I want the characters to aim towards a more diplomatic approach, but knowing my friends/players, they may opt towards a more hostile option.
For the second encounter, it’s essentially the final boss fight of the campaign (BBEG if you will) against the fairy king, trying to dethrone him and hopefully put a less greedy ruler of the fey realm in power. I want the fight to have waves, sort of like a video game, of typical feywild encounters.
Any advice on balancing both? Both fights don’t come for a while, but I still want to alter stats for certain things that already exist on a sort of godly level, or take stats of actual gods, so I can design the fight perfectly. It’s meant for a fighter, rogue, and warlock (fiend patron for the warlock, unknown subclasses for the fighter and rogue).
Edit: The party is not only going to be the warlock fighter and rogue, because I am giving them a cleric npc and possibly other characters for assistance in both situations.
How exactly do players win against things that powerful? That's my question. They are doomed to lose, even at the highest levels. You need a very specific plan to deal with things that go wrong. They are going to fight a god, and if they can't win, that's frustrating. Give them a way to exploit a weakness in the Fairy King. Something capable of killing the Fairy King. Then when the Fairy King escapes, you run them though the boss fight and kill the Fairy King. I would suggest Cold Iron weapons that make the characters immune to all the Fairy King's powers, go right through all his defenses, and do extra damage to all his servants. The adventure is in getting them made, using something like meteoric iron, something rare indeed, like Mithral or Adamantium.
Oh. As for stats on a god? Tiamat is easy to find stats for. Have a look. That's the kind of thing you are talking about sending up against level 12 players.
I notice; No healer. They will have to have at least one, and more would be better.
How exactly do players win against things that powerful? That's my question. They are doomed to lose, even at the highest levels. You need a very specific plan to deal with things that go wrong. They are going to fight a god,and if they can't win, that's frustrating. Give them a way to exploit a weakness in the Fairy King. Something capable of killing the Fairy King. Then when the Fairy escapes, you run them though the boss fight and kill the Fairy King. I would suggest Cold Iron weapons that make the characters immune to all the Fairy King's powers, go right through all his defenses, and do extra damage to all his servants. The adventure is in getting them make, using something like meteoric iron, something rare indeed, like Mithral or Adamantium.
I notice; No healer. They will have to have at least one, and more would be better.
Great idea! Fighting what is literally a god is very hard, but thank you for the advice! Also, I forgot to mention, I’m giving them at least one assistant npc (a cleric, and possible other characters just in case), so that they don’t lack a healer.
Give the antagonists story-driven weaknesses. For example, a fey creature might be weak to cold iron, or have to make saves against being charmed by creatures that use its full name. Then give those things narrative impact. The party has to travel to a different realm to get cold iron weapons because you simply can't get that stuff in the feywild, obviously. Also consider that a godlike creature is often empowered by the amount of belief in it. Maybe the party runs a smear campaign that causes the king's followers to believe in him less, weakening him a great deal.
A great example of how to fight a god comes right out of Critical Role, actually. Spoiler for the end of CR Season 1 below:
To successfully weaken Vecna in order to fight him, the party had to go on quests to obtain Divine Trammels from some gods. They had to complete quests for these gods or otherwise prove themselves worthy in order to get that bead of power that then had to be successfully crafted into a trammel, complete with checks. Then, in the fight, they had to spear Vecna with these trammels, which greatly weakened him to the point that they could then seal him. They couldn't outright kill a god, but they sealed him through a ritual (which itself had to be found in a special book that required a quest to find, and only certain characters could even use it).
From what I understand you're thinking about trying to plan encounters at level 9 and level 12 when your players aren't even level 3.
Unless you're just blasting them through the levels with extremely generous milestones, if you play on a fortnightly basis, running 5 hour sessions, your players might hit level 8 after about a year of gameplay. I'm basing this on my own campaigns, which are about 50-50 roleplay/combat. There is absolutely no way that you can, or should, begin to guess what level they'll be reaching that point in the game, and trying to plan for it now is essentially just a fun exercise for you.
From what I understand you're thinking about trying to plan encounters at level 9 and level 12 when your players aren't even level 3.
Unless you're just blasting them through the levels with extremely generous milestones, if you play on a fortnightly basis, running 5 hour sessions, your players might hit level 8 after about a year of gameplay. I'm basing this on my own campaigns, which are about 50-50 roleplay/combat. There is absolutely no way that you can, or should, begin to guess what level they'll be reaching that point in the game, and trying to plan for it now is essentially just a fun exercise for you.
Thanks for the advice! I wasn’t sure if I should have been planning so early, but that’s good to know for the future. (also, the campaign is leveling up the characters through story milestones).
One way to deal with an enemy that is way beyond their level is to create alternate win conditions. So maybe they don't need to kill the enemy, but need to, say, complete some ritual using some magic items and a magical location to bind / banish / imprison him. The fight will be to battle your way to the location, taking down minions along the way, while the BBEG tries to thwart you. Then you need to survive for some number of rounds while you complete the ritual.
Of course, high level BBEGs will be good at thwarting, too. They might have attacks that can one-shot the players. Maybe if you give the players advance in-game knowledge of his capabilities, they can prepare defenses. Maybe you can provide in-game magic items that specifically protect against his deadlier attacks. For example when my players were going up against a red dragon that was a little too strong for their level, I provided them a limited supply of Potions of Resistance (Fire).
From what I understand you're thinking about trying to plan encounters at level 9 and level 12 when your players aren't even level 3.
Unless you're just blasting them through the levels with extremely generous milestones, if you play on a fortnightly basis, running 5 hour sessions, your players might hit level 8 after about a year of gameplay. I'm basing this on my own campaigns, which are about 50-50 roleplay/combat. There is absolutely no way that you can, or should, begin to guess what level they'll be reaching that point in the game, and trying to plan for it now is essentially just a fun exercise for you.
Thanks for the advice! I wasn’t sure if I should have been planning so early, but that’s good to know for the future. (also, the campaign is leveling up the characters through story milestones).
To build on what Sanvael said, I think it's fine to have a concept for who the BBEG is and what their plans are. Just don't lock down too many details yet in terms of power level, weaknesses etc. -- you want to leave room for the campaign to add some pieces to the puzzle over the coming months. Maybe your party really takes to a throwaway NPC and you decide to give them a much bigger role, and can work them and their story into the final quest. Maybe some tactic the party comes up with in battle inspires a cool homebrew magic item that will give them a different way to tackle the BBEG. That sort of thing.
Letting the story grow organically and having the party's actions at lower levels inform future developments, rather than deciding right out of the gate how things Should Happen, will make for a much better payoff.
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
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At later levels (the first one being specifically at level 9, the second at level 12) two of the main big story encounters, both of which are literal gods. The whole late-game and foreshadowed early game plot revolves around the power hungry Fairy King trying to cause the other planes to fall into chaos, and then take each over one by one, so they completely succumb to the chaos of the fey realm.
The first encounter is the PCs going to the celestial realm (because of a magic outage for clerics and certain warlocks), to find and hopefully prevent a war brewing between gods (that is one of the fairy kings plans to instigate tension, so he can swoop in and take over), and I want the characters to aim towards a more diplomatic approach, but knowing my friends/players, they may opt towards a more hostile option.
For the second encounter, it’s essentially the final boss fight of the campaign (BBEG if you will) against the fairy king, trying to dethrone him and hopefully put a less greedy ruler of the fey realm in power. I want the fight to have waves, sort of like a video game, of typical feywild encounters.
Any advice on balancing both? Both fights don’t come for a while, but I still want to alter stats for certain things that already exist on a sort of godly level, or take stats of actual gods, so I can design the fight perfectly. It’s meant for a fighter, rogue, and warlock (fiend patron for the warlock, unknown subclasses for the fighter and rogue).
Edit: The party is not only going to be the warlock fighter and rogue, because I am giving them a cleric npc and possibly other characters for assistance in both situations.
How exactly do players win against things that powerful? That's my question. They are doomed to lose, even at the highest levels. You need a very specific plan to deal with things that go wrong. They are going to fight a god, and if they can't win, that's frustrating. Give them a way to exploit a weakness in the Fairy King. Something capable of killing the Fairy King. Then when the Fairy King escapes, you run them though the boss fight and kill the Fairy King. I would suggest Cold Iron weapons that make the characters immune to all the Fairy King's powers, go right through all his defenses, and do extra damage to all his servants. The adventure is in getting them made, using something like meteoric iron, something rare indeed, like Mithral or Adamantium.
Oh. As for stats on a god? Tiamat is easy to find stats for. Have a look. That's the kind of thing you are talking about sending up against level 12 players.
I notice; No healer. They will have to have at least one, and more would be better.
<Insert clever signature here>
Great idea! Fighting what is literally a god is very hard, but thank you for the advice! Also, I forgot to mention, I’m giving them at least one assistant npc (a cleric, and possible other characters just in case), so that they don’t lack a healer.
Give the antagonists story-driven weaknesses. For example, a fey creature might be weak to cold iron, or have to make saves against being charmed by creatures that use its full name. Then give those things narrative impact. The party has to travel to a different realm to get cold iron weapons because you simply can't get that stuff in the feywild, obviously. Also consider that a godlike creature is often empowered by the amount of belief in it. Maybe the party runs a smear campaign that causes the king's followers to believe in him less, weakening him a great deal.
A great example of how to fight a god comes right out of Critical Role, actually. Spoiler for the end of CR Season 1 below:
To successfully weaken Vecna in order to fight him, the party had to go on quests to obtain Divine Trammels from some gods. They had to complete quests for these gods or otherwise prove themselves worthy in order to get that bead of power that then had to be successfully crafted into a trammel, complete with checks. Then, in the fight, they had to spear Vecna with these trammels, which greatly weakened him to the point that they could then seal him. They couldn't outright kill a god, but they sealed him through a ritual (which itself had to be found in a special book that required a quest to find, and only certain characters could even use it).
So consider taking some ideas from that.
From what I understand you're thinking about trying to plan encounters at level 9 and level 12 when your players aren't even level 3.
Unless you're just blasting them through the levels with extremely generous milestones, if you play on a fortnightly basis, running 5 hour sessions, your players might hit level 8 after about a year of gameplay. I'm basing this on my own campaigns, which are about 50-50 roleplay/combat. There is absolutely no way that you can, or should, begin to guess what level they'll be reaching that point in the game, and trying to plan for it now is essentially just a fun exercise for you.
Thanks for the advice! I wasn’t sure if I should have been planning so early, but that’s good to know for the future. (also, the campaign is leveling up the characters through story milestones).
One way to deal with an enemy that is way beyond their level is to create alternate win conditions. So maybe they don't need to kill the enemy, but need to, say, complete some ritual using some magic items and a magical location to bind / banish / imprison him. The fight will be to battle your way to the location, taking down minions along the way, while the BBEG tries to thwart you. Then you need to survive for some number of rounds while you complete the ritual.
Of course, high level BBEGs will be good at thwarting, too. They might have attacks that can one-shot the players. Maybe if you give the players advance in-game knowledge of his capabilities, they can prepare defenses. Maybe you can provide in-game magic items that specifically protect against his deadlier attacks. For example when my players were going up against a red dragon that was a little too strong for their level, I provided them a limited supply of Potions of Resistance (Fire).
To build on what Sanvael said, I think it's fine to have a concept for who the BBEG is and what their plans are. Just don't lock down too many details yet in terms of power level, weaknesses etc. -- you want to leave room for the campaign to add some pieces to the puzzle over the coming months. Maybe your party really takes to a throwaway NPC and you decide to give them a much bigger role, and can work them and their story into the final quest. Maybe some tactic the party comes up with in battle inspires a cool homebrew magic item that will give them a different way to tackle the BBEG. That sort of thing.
Letting the story grow organically and having the party's actions at lower levels inform future developments, rather than deciding right out of the gate how things Should Happen, will make for a much better payoff.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)