As the title says... how do I make day to day adventuring a challenge or risk for high level PCs.
I have a table of 4 level 15 PCs and nothing I throw at them makes a dent until we reach big battles like a liche and some minions, or an ancient dragon of some sort with lair activities. But until that point, they just smash through everything. Combat takes ages and there's no real threat of death. So, yeah. How do you make the days of random encounters challenging.
Do you just suddenly have goblins with +8 to hit, 3D6 damage and 50HP each? Cause that seems a bit naff to me.
PCs of level 15 or higher can generally travel anywhere in the fantasy world with little difficulty and little danger. It is best to just skip the details of the journey, unless you want to narrate what they are seeing whilst travelling.
Certainly it isn't worth actually running a combat against a group of anything less than CR 20+
The better question is where are they travelling to that they might worry about getting attacked?
But doesn't that mean you just end up with high level fight after high level fight? If they're walking through a forest, there's still a chance that a bunch of bandits might be unlucky enough to try to ambush them. Or some wild animals or something. They don't know you're a lvl 15 Warlock.
But doesn't that mean you just end up with high level fight after high level fight? If they're walking through a forest, there's still a chance that a bunch of bandits might be unlucky enough to try to ambush them. Or some wild animals or something. They don't know you're a lvl 15 Warlock.
Yes, but what is more important, verisimilitude or enjoyable storytelling? With how effortlessly high-level PCs would wipe the floor with most random encounter monsters, you can just as easily narrate it as "On the journey to the temple, you are attacked by a group of bandits who don't recognize you. They're no match for you, and the rest of your trek through the forest is peaceful." Unless you want to give them a chance to feel powerful as they destroy some mooks, there's little point in throwing low-level random encounters at them. It'll just slow down the game.
PCs in tier 3 and 4 are walking demigods. A demigod isn't going to break a sweat over an owlbear, and the world as a whole gets a lot less scary when you have magic, money, and power that can literally reshape reality. So if you're looking for more opportunities to threaten the party, you're going to have to jump the shark more and be more choosy with the ways you challenge them. There's a reason most high-level campaigns end with the PCs fighting and replacing literal gods. That's kind of the only weight class left that can really give them a workout.
So, as noted, high level campaigns require something far more involved than “day to day”.
and even that requires something far more involved and less reliant on the overwhelming power of high level players.
by 13th level, you have to do the more involved plots, the whole overcoming twisted machinations and dealing with the horrors of the past stuff.
this is when they should be facing the toughest monsters — beholders, dragons, extra dimensional witches looking for more material to write about, planar beings who have the same level of power.
Adventures need to scale up with them.
so: local village or town troubles for 1 to 4, city and region troubles for 5 to 8, kingdom or large region stuff for 9 to 12, multi-kingdom large scale problems that are long term schemes of gods and the smartest, most cunning monsters at 13 to 16. And at 17 and above, they have to face world level events that are the literal things that legends and myths are made of.
if they were tackling dragons at 5th level, then the dragons are underpowered or underplayed. A dragon should be able to wipe a party of 10th levels out in under five minutes.
It means that the stats blocks become the places you start an adventure from, because things like beholders don’t just float around a dungeon waiting for fools. They plan, they scheme, they are genuine villains. Rakshasas, the kinds of people who would bring forth a sword wraith commander and his Regiment, skull lords….
Strahd should be scaled for 13 to 16, really, but no one would play it then.
high level characters require high level stakes, high complexity puzzles and challenges, and ultimately will rely less on combat and brute force day to day because the stuff they should deal with isn’t going to include those except at certain times. They are facing supervillains, who will have hirelings and thugs. They have to deal with mafia bosses and whatever the equivalent of a corporate overlord for your setting is.
in short, the higher your level, the less you will use the big, flashy, showy stuff and the more you will use the sneaky, tactical, odd stuff. The game shifts from bashing to braining — if you want to go a full 20 levels.
which is not to say those big huge battles aren’t there, just that now they have to be earned.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I have a table of 4 level 15 PCs and nothing I throw at them makes a dent until we reach big battles like a liche and some minions, or an ancient dragon of some sort with lair activities. But until that point, they just smash through everything. Combat takes ages and there's no real threat of death. So, yeah. How do you make the days of random encounters challenging.
Any encounters that will make a dent are going to be big nasty fights that will take some time to work through, though you can speed up encounters by using monsters that have high first turn damage and low hit points.
But doesn't that mean you just end up with high level fight after high level fight? If they're walking through a forest, there's still a chance that a bunch of bandits might be unlucky enough to try to ambush them. Or some wild animals or something. They don't know you're a lvl 15 Warlock.
Well, by the time you're 15th level people have probably heard of you so they might know, but if some unwise bandits ambush a 15th level party, I'll just tell the PCs "on your way through the forest, you encounter some local bandits, who you defeat without incident" and not bother to play out the combat, grant experience, or anything.
To give a bit more context, stakes are now high. They're trying to stop an imprisoned God from breaking his shackles and entering the Mortal Plane and generally making it a bad place.
The big fights are fine. I have no problem with that. It's the getting places and having a sense of adventure while getting there. They're in a race against the Gods High Priest to get keys from one of the PC's brothers who are strewn across the world. Is the answer really just "You travel for 2 weeks until you reach your brother. X happens along the way, which you overcome without too much of a problem." and then pick it up from there?
To give a bit more context, stakes are now high. They're trying to stop an imprisoned God from breaking his shackles and entering the Mortal Plane and generally making it a bad place.
The big fights are fine. I have no problem with that. It's the getting places and having a sense of adventure while getting there. They're in a race against the Gods High Priest to get keys from one of the PC's brothers who are strewn across the world. Is the answer really just "You travel for 2 weeks until you reach your brother. X happens along the way, which you overcome without too much of a problem." and then pick it up from there?
Depends on whether their enemies try to interfere, either directly (assassins) or indirectly (causing disasters, waking up forgotten elder horrors, etc). High level PCs are unlikely to run into random significant challenges, but enemy action is certainly possible.
You can also have them travel to places where random encounters could be significant, for example another of the keys is located in one of the lower planes.
To give a bit more context, stakes are now high. They're trying to stop an imprisoned God from breaking his shackles and entering the Mortal Plane and generally making it a bad place.
The big fights are fine. I have no problem with that. It's the getting places and having a sense of adventure while getting there. They're in a race against the Gods High Priest to get keys from one of the PC's brothers who are strewn across the world. Is the answer really just "You travel for 2 weeks until you reach your brother. X happens along the way, which you overcome without too much of a problem." and then pick it up from there?
Depends on whether their enemies try to interfere, either directly (assassins) or indirectly (causing disasters, waking up forgotten elder horrors, etc). High level PCs are unlikely to run into random significant challenges, but enemy action is certainly possible.
Well the challenge may not be the fight, but the time the fight takes up. And sure, wiping out a party of low-level bandits may only take a few minutes, but what if the bandits made off with their horses? Does the priest of the imprisoned God know about the party's efforts to stop him? Said priest could be throwing assassins at them, deranged cultists, anything to slow them down.
To give a bit more context, stakes are now high. They're trying to stop an imprisoned God from breaking his shackles and entering the Mortal Plane and generally making it a bad place.
The big fights are fine. I have no problem with that. It's the getting places and having a sense of adventure while getting there. They're in a race against the Gods High Priest to get keys from one of the PC's brothers who are strewn across the world. Is the answer really just "You travel for 2 weeks until you reach your brother. X happens along the way, which you overcome without too much of a problem." and then pick it up from there?
So, I had a party that was in the same Tier, decided to accept a little Teleport spell. Got unlucky with their dice rolls and wound up 56 miles out in the ocean, in a direction that they didn't know, with no prior knowledge of the area. The challenge in this scenario didn't come from combat, it came from them being on a timeclock. They were needing to cover 800 miles in less than 3 days, and are now floating in the ocean with no boat 56 miles out from land, no ability to breathe water or fly. They could try to swim it, but that would have taken a day longer than they had, and the party wouldn't have a way to take a long rest without something to keep them buoyant.
TL;DR: Combat isn't the only challenge in the game. The environment is much less forgiving than a bandit. A ticking clock doesn't care what level the party is, when time runs out, that's it.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Are the other faction aware of the PCs? Can they send a competent group of assassins to attack them when they are camping overnight? (Give PCs a chance to spot that they are being followed.)
So a quick and easy way comes from of all places the Essentials Kit. I recently had to run the Dragon of Icespire Peak and Gnomengarde has an area effect where any spell slot used results in a Wild Magic effect.
I actually have an entire island where any spell or magic effect used on the island results in a wild magic effect too. It entirely rewrote how my players chose to explore and fight. Things like Legendary, Lair, and Area affects are a great tool for a DM to change up the way players have to encounter the obstacles that you throw in their way. The effects of an area don't have to be too harsh either. I had a table with effects like a bird appearing and pooing on a PC. Or their skin turning bright hot pink. Or their armour, clothes and items teleporting fifteen feet away. I did throw in some harsher ones, like a random polymorph and a fiend appearing whose CR is equal to the PCs levels.
For my money, although combat is fun it's the stuff that isn't combat which frequently offers the real challenges.
Another example is the party notice in some ruins off in the distance, that there is an old ruin from which chanting is coming. At this ruin there is a ceremony going on...a fiend lord is taking a child as a way of fulfilling a bargin with a local village. The Party receive an offer if they attempt to intervene, an item required to fulfil a quest for the child's freedom. Boom, all of a sudden it's more difficult to complete their quest. If the party try to kill the fiend the fiend simply teleports away due to an inherent ability rather than spellcasting (to prevent Counterspell).
Likewise I recently threw a crooked/rigged circus/carnival at players. It wasn't so much about any inherent ability being used, but instead was a side distraction. Something interesting to do in the background. It immediately meant that their combat abilities were less utilised and is more about challenging their other skills.
Being brutal, one of the problems of popular TV at the moment is the entire season arc. Every genre show at the moment is based around a big season arc rather than challenge or monster of the week. And I feel like that's being reflected in our own abilities to tell our stories. When we're surrounded by nothing but media which is the arc it's more difficult to think in terms of the episodic format. So, I'd emphasise going to TV series from years ago that is monster or challenge of the week format. Buffy was the pinnacle of this to my mind, though a product of it's time (90's & 00's). For a similar and more modern way of telling such stories check out the early episodes of Oxventure (a D&D actual play), it is to my mind one of the most entertaining shows out there. It also really feels more like the experience of sitting round the D&D table than any other D&D play I've watched.
What I guess I'm saying is to try and think less in terms of the BBEG. It's a common trap to have an end goal for our players, but sometimes it can be counter productive and counter-creative.
The making the encounters is fairly easy (high level mages with lots of backup do wonders). However coming up with a storyline as to why these are random encounters is the hard part.
If you are just looking for filler to take up time, then create enemies/organizations that have the ability to send parties that will be hard encounters.
They're in a race against the Gods High Priest to get keys from one of the PC's brothers who are strewn across the world. Is the answer really just "You travel for 2 weeks until you reach your brother. X happens along the way, which you overcome without too much of a problem." and then pick it up from there?
I agree with Kaavel. Fights are not the answer here. You'll need to get creative.
If this is an awakening god situation, what if there are environmental effects that delay the party? What if the baddies are scrying on the party and doing everything in their power to slow or confuse them? What if the party encounters a strange mist that wipes their memories for a short period of time if they fail a save? What if the baddies enchanted some villagers to attack the party - the solution isn't combat, it's figuring out how to make the peaceful villagers stop going berserk. Think like the villains and put unusual challenges in the party's path that flesh out your narrative or add color to it. Heck, maybe the party stumbles upon a forest of living memories or awakened trees. Nothing bad needs to happen, but it can just be cool or creepy and flavorful. Use your setting as if it were an NPC and see what happens.
High level encounters along the way generally, in my experience, come from one of two places. In the first case the the players must travel to some largely inaccessible place where everything is just that much stronger. It might be easy getting to the island of lost souls but once you're there every encounter is significant. In the second case the big bad is sending high level hit squads and summons to harass the PCs and generally complicate travel. This often involves a lot of ambushes and combat\trap combos as the enemies are actively preparing the terrain. It can also involve a fair amount of intrigue.
When you hit 15th level you're not going to be doing a lot of day to day adventuring. Or rather their day to day adventuring is not the same as that experienced by the bunch of blokes in a knackered old wagon that they were 14 levels ago. By 15th level if you want to go somewhere you're teleporting/plane shifting to near wherever you go so make sure the timescale of the adventure reflects that. And remember the opposition will have the same magnitude of resources. When they teleport where they're going they could easily find a well tooled up band of counter adventurers already there and dug in for an ambush or fight. And the opposition is not going to piss about - they (probably) haven't got to a comparable level as the adventurers by being a bunch of idiots, they'll know their capabilities and probably have a good insight into the adventurers as well.
So there's not going to be a bunch of 87 bandits lurking by the road, but there might be an ancient red dragon swooping in, flaming them then getting the hell out of dodge until a recharge occurs. Whenever they cast a spell an opposition mage casts counterspell at level 3 just to disrupt what the adventurers are up to. Likewise the opposition have only one job (stop the adventurers DEAD) so they won't keep any resources in reserve, they'll hit them with whatever they've got as soon as they can. When the Adventurers try and travel to a public teleportation circle they find someone's chucked a glyph of warding on it.
So change up your conception of day to day and throw everything at them - including a heavy porcelain kitchen sink covered in Explosive Runs :-)
I'd say: don't bog them down in low CR encounters. Have them happen, fine, great, but they're a forgone conclusion. At that level the impact of the encounter is how the party deals with the perpetrators. Massacre? Eventually rumours will build. Mercy? Maybe the perpetrators reform, maybe they don't. Is the party to thank for Frank the Benevolent, who they spared only for him to find a kind God? Are they to blame for Kevin the Callous, who roasted and ate seven babies after sacking the village of Greendale?
Random encounters simply aren’t worth the time unless they could present a challenge.
But most tables are set for 5 to 12, lol.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
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As the title says... how do I make day to day adventuring a challenge or risk for high level PCs.
I have a table of 4 level 15 PCs and nothing I throw at them makes a dent until we reach big battles like a liche and some minions, or an ancient dragon of some sort with lair activities. But until that point, they just smash through everything. Combat takes ages and there's no real threat of death. So, yeah. How do you make the days of random encounters challenging.
Do you just suddenly have goblins with +8 to hit, 3D6 damage and 50HP each? Cause that seems a bit naff to me.
PCs of level 15 or higher can generally travel anywhere in the fantasy world with little difficulty and little danger. It is best to just skip the details of the journey, unless you want to narrate what they are seeing whilst travelling.
Certainly it isn't worth actually running a combat against a group of anything less than CR 20+
The better question is where are they travelling to that they might worry about getting attacked?
But doesn't that mean you just end up with high level fight after high level fight? If they're walking through a forest, there's still a chance that a bunch of bandits might be unlucky enough to try to ambush them. Or some wild animals or something. They don't know you're a lvl 15 Warlock.
Yes, but what is more important, verisimilitude or enjoyable storytelling? With how effortlessly high-level PCs would wipe the floor with most random encounter monsters, you can just as easily narrate it as "On the journey to the temple, you are attacked by a group of bandits who don't recognize you. They're no match for you, and the rest of your trek through the forest is peaceful." Unless you want to give them a chance to feel powerful as they destroy some mooks, there's little point in throwing low-level random encounters at them. It'll just slow down the game.
PCs in tier 3 and 4 are walking demigods. A demigod isn't going to break a sweat over an owlbear, and the world as a whole gets a lot less scary when you have magic, money, and power that can literally reshape reality. So if you're looking for more opportunities to threaten the party, you're going to have to jump the shark more and be more choosy with the ways you challenge them. There's a reason most high-level campaigns end with the PCs fighting and replacing literal gods. That's kind of the only weight class left that can really give them a workout.
So, as noted, high level campaigns require something far more involved than “day to day”.
and even that requires something far more involved and less reliant on the overwhelming power of high level players.
by 13th level, you have to do the more involved plots, the whole overcoming twisted machinations and dealing with the horrors of the past stuff.
this is when they should be facing the toughest monsters — beholders, dragons, extra dimensional witches looking for more material to write about, planar beings who have the same level of power.
Adventures need to scale up with them.
so: local village or town troubles for 1 to 4, city and region troubles for 5 to 8, kingdom or large region stuff for 9 to 12, multi-kingdom large scale problems that are long term schemes of gods and the smartest, most cunning monsters at 13 to 16. And at 17 and above, they have to face world level events that are the literal things that legends and myths are made of.
if they were tackling dragons at 5th level, then the dragons are underpowered or underplayed. A dragon should be able to wipe a party of 10th levels out in under five minutes.
It means that the stats blocks become the places you start an adventure from, because things like beholders don’t just float around a dungeon waiting for fools. They plan, they scheme, they are genuine villains. Rakshasas, the kinds of people who would bring forth a sword wraith commander and his Regiment, skull lords….
Strahd should be scaled for 13 to 16, really, but no one would play it then.
high level characters require high level stakes, high complexity puzzles and challenges, and ultimately will rely less on combat and brute force day to day because the stuff they should deal with isn’t going to include those except at certain times. They are facing supervillains, who will have hirelings and thugs. They have to deal with mafia bosses and whatever the equivalent of a corporate overlord for your setting is.
in short, the higher your level, the less you will use the big, flashy, showy stuff and the more you will use the sneaky, tactical, odd stuff. The game shifts from bashing to braining — if you want to go a full 20 levels.
which is not to say those big huge battles aren’t there, just that now they have to be earned.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
It's level 15, why would day to day adventuring be a challenge?
Any encounters that will make a dent are going to be big nasty fights that will take some time to work through, though you can speed up encounters by using monsters that have high first turn damage and low hit points.
Well, by the time you're 15th level people have probably heard of you so they might know, but if some unwise bandits ambush a 15th level party, I'll just tell the PCs "on your way through the forest, you encounter some local bandits, who you defeat without incident" and not bother to play out the combat, grant experience, or anything.
To give a bit more context, stakes are now high. They're trying to stop an imprisoned God from breaking his shackles and entering the Mortal Plane and generally making it a bad place.
The big fights are fine. I have no problem with that. It's the getting places and having a sense of adventure while getting there. They're in a race against the Gods High Priest to get keys from one of the PC's brothers who are strewn across the world. Is the answer really just "You travel for 2 weeks until you reach your brother. X happens along the way, which you overcome without too much of a problem." and then pick it up from there?
Depends on whether their enemies try to interfere, either directly (assassins) or indirectly (causing disasters, waking up forgotten elder horrors, etc). High level PCs are unlikely to run into random significant challenges, but enemy action is certainly possible.
You can also have them travel to places where random encounters could be significant, for example another of the keys is located in one of the lower planes.
Well the challenge may not be the fight, but the time the fight takes up. And sure, wiping out a party of low-level bandits may only take a few minutes, but what if the bandits made off with their horses? Does the priest of the imprisoned God know about the party's efforts to stop him? Said priest could be throwing assassins at them, deranged cultists, anything to slow them down.
So, I had a party that was in the same Tier, decided to accept a little Teleport spell. Got unlucky with their dice rolls and wound up 56 miles out in the ocean, in a direction that they didn't know, with no prior knowledge of the area. The challenge in this scenario didn't come from combat, it came from them being on a timeclock. They were needing to cover 800 miles in less than 3 days, and are now floating in the ocean with no boat 56 miles out from land, no ability to breathe water or fly. They could try to swim it, but that would have taken a day longer than they had, and the party wouldn't have a way to take a long rest without something to keep them buoyant.
TL;DR: Combat isn't the only challenge in the game. The environment is much less forgiving than a bandit. A ticking clock doesn't care what level the party is, when time runs out, that's it.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Are the other faction aware of the PCs? Can they send a competent group of assassins to attack them when they are camping overnight? (Give PCs a chance to spot that they are being followed.)
So a quick and easy way comes from of all places the Essentials Kit. I recently had to run the Dragon of Icespire Peak and Gnomengarde has an area effect where any spell slot used results in a Wild Magic effect.
I actually have an entire island where any spell or magic effect used on the island results in a wild magic effect too. It entirely rewrote how my players chose to explore and fight. Things like Legendary, Lair, and Area affects are a great tool for a DM to change up the way players have to encounter the obstacles that you throw in their way. The effects of an area don't have to be too harsh either. I had a table with effects like a bird appearing and pooing on a PC. Or their skin turning bright hot pink. Or their armour, clothes and items teleporting fifteen feet away. I did throw in some harsher ones, like a random polymorph and a fiend appearing whose CR is equal to the PCs levels.
For my money, although combat is fun it's the stuff that isn't combat which frequently offers the real challenges.
Another example is the party notice in some ruins off in the distance, that there is an old ruin from which chanting is coming. At this ruin there is a ceremony going on...a fiend lord is taking a child as a way of fulfilling a bargin with a local village. The Party receive an offer if they attempt to intervene, an item required to fulfil a quest for the child's freedom. Boom, all of a sudden it's more difficult to complete their quest. If the party try to kill the fiend the fiend simply teleports away due to an inherent ability rather than spellcasting (to prevent Counterspell).
Likewise I recently threw a crooked/rigged circus/carnival at players. It wasn't so much about any inherent ability being used, but instead was a side distraction. Something interesting to do in the background. It immediately meant that their combat abilities were less utilised and is more about challenging their other skills.
Being brutal, one of the problems of popular TV at the moment is the entire season arc. Every genre show at the moment is based around a big season arc rather than challenge or monster of the week. And I feel like that's being reflected in our own abilities to tell our stories. When we're surrounded by nothing but media which is the arc it's more difficult to think in terms of the episodic format. So, I'd emphasise going to TV series from years ago that is monster or challenge of the week format. Buffy was the pinnacle of this to my mind, though a product of it's time (90's & 00's). For a similar and more modern way of telling such stories check out the early episodes of Oxventure (a D&D actual play), it is to my mind one of the most entertaining shows out there. It also really feels more like the experience of sitting round the D&D table than any other D&D play I've watched.
What I guess I'm saying is to try and think less in terms of the BBEG. It's a common trap to have an end goal for our players, but sometimes it can be counter productive and counter-creative.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Several great suggestions already.
The making the encounters is fairly easy (high level mages with lots of backup do wonders). However coming up with a storyline as to why these are random encounters is the hard part.
If you are just looking for filler to take up time, then create enemies/organizations that have the ability to send parties that will be hard encounters.
I agree with Kaavel. Fights are not the answer here. You'll need to get creative.
If this is an awakening god situation, what if there are environmental effects that delay the party? What if the baddies are scrying on the party and doing everything in their power to slow or confuse them? What if the party encounters a strange mist that wipes their memories for a short period of time if they fail a save? What if the baddies enchanted some villagers to attack the party - the solution isn't combat, it's figuring out how to make the peaceful villagers stop going berserk. Think like the villains and put unusual challenges in the party's path that flesh out your narrative or add color to it. Heck, maybe the party stumbles upon a forest of living memories or awakened trees. Nothing bad needs to happen, but it can just be cool or creepy and flavorful. Use your setting as if it were an NPC and see what happens.
Thanks everyone for their suggestions. They're definitely getting my thinking moving along.
High level encounters along the way generally, in my experience, come from one of two places. In the first case the the players must travel to some largely inaccessible place where everything is just that much stronger. It might be easy getting to the island of lost souls but once you're there every encounter is significant. In the second case the big bad is sending high level hit squads and summons to harass the PCs and generally complicate travel. This often involves a lot of ambushes and combat\trap combos as the enemies are actively preparing the terrain. It can also involve a fair amount of intrigue.
When you hit 15th level you're not going to be doing a lot of day to day adventuring. Or rather their day to day adventuring is not the same as that experienced by the bunch of blokes in a knackered old wagon that they were 14 levels ago. By 15th level if you want to go somewhere you're teleporting/plane shifting to near wherever you go so make sure the timescale of the adventure reflects that. And remember the opposition will have the same magnitude of resources. When they teleport where they're going they could easily find a well tooled up band of counter adventurers already there and dug in for an ambush or fight. And the opposition is not going to piss about - they (probably) haven't got to a comparable level as the adventurers by being a bunch of idiots, they'll know their capabilities and probably have a good insight into the adventurers as well.
So there's not going to be a bunch of 87 bandits lurking by the road, but there might be an ancient red dragon swooping in, flaming them then getting the hell out of dodge until a recharge occurs. Whenever they cast a spell an opposition mage casts counterspell at level 3 just to disrupt what the adventurers are up to. Likewise the opposition have only one job (stop the adventurers DEAD) so they won't keep any resources in reserve, they'll hit them with whatever they've got as soon as they can. When the Adventurers try and travel to a public teleportation circle they find someone's chucked a glyph of warding on it.
So change up your conception of day to day and throw everything at them - including a heavy porcelain kitchen sink covered in Explosive Runs :-)
I'd say: don't bog them down in low CR encounters. Have them happen, fine, great, but they're a forgone conclusion. At that level the impact of the encounter is how the party deals with the perpetrators. Massacre? Eventually rumours will build. Mercy? Maybe the perpetrators reform, maybe they don't. Is the party to thank for Frank the Benevolent, who they spared only for him to find a kind God? Are they to blame for Kevin the Callous, who roasted and ate seven babies after sacking the village of Greendale?
Random encounters simply aren’t worth the time unless they could present a challenge.
But most tables are set for 5 to 12, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds