Level 20 party, what now?


Advice

Liberty's Edge

The party on my Campaign has just stopped a Star-Spawn of Cthulhu with relative ease and hit level 20. I had told them this was pretty much THE final fight but they simply want to keep going. This is the first time I have had a group this powerful and I'd would love to know if anyone has suggestions on where I could lead them now.

Current situation:
*There's going to be some nuclear-winteresque climate after the Star Spawn arrived in a meteorite. WINTER IS COMING! xD
*There's some "toxic waste" that spilled into the sea from killing other aberrations that came with the Star Spawn. Mutations to be expected?
*The party had interest on claiming a small area devastated by a tsumani for their own. The previous owners were cultists of the Star Spawn so they believe no one else will stop them.
*Also, we have introduced Interplanetary Teleport into the story so I guess I could take this off world or perhaps to other planes.

Party members:

*Half-elf Sorcerer (Preferred combos: Fireball/Disintegrate+Anything that gives negative levels)
*Half-elf Ranger/shadowdancer (Two-Weapon Fighting with very average mundane stats... in fact she has been quite lucky on not getting killed so far)
*Elf Barbarian (Axe weilding with insane STR - Optimized for max DPS)
*Human Fighter (Two-handed weapon - also optimized for DPS)
*Half-Orc Cleric (Buffer and Divine Striker)
*Tiefling Fighter12/Rogue8 (A "Vigilante" with a Cohort. Focuses on stealth and ranged attacks with a rifle)

Suggestions on published adventures or modules??


Get them to play their descendants or something.

Otherwise, start tagging them with things with Mythic levels or Advanced templates or interesting social situations.


The Epic Level Handbook (3.0) has settings and monsters for 20+ level.
Check out Planescape stuff.
Dungeon magazine has some high level stuff also.

In general, you are in home brew territory as characters that powerful are too unpredictable.

Oh yeah... the gods have noticed you. Ascending [mythic?] could be an option.

/cevah

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

E20?


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Soulnova wrote:
*The party had interest on claiming a small area devastated by a tsumani for their own. The previous owners were cultists of the Star Spawn so they believe no one else will stop them.

Ha! Give them a session or two with minimal challenges. Armies of puny sahuagins reluctant to give up their new turf, or of forces both good and evil seeking to secure these powerful heroes' allegiances. Let them feel like big damn heroes for a while before you start hammering them again.

Potential threats:
- A local aboleth lord (or demigod, or lich, or fiend, or neothelid sorcerer, or mage cabal/hag coven) seeking to enslave the PCs for their own nefarious ends. The means of enslavement might vary from mind control to threats against loved ones to "deals with the devil" with unpleasant side effects.

- The PCs attentions wind up divided by multiple threats against areas they care about (a nation declares war on the nation containing a hometown, for instance). Even with teleportation, they can't tackle all of them at once. Splitting them up, however, makes them vulnerable.

- Something involving the Starstone—it's been stolen, it's being corrupted, the heroes need to take the Test, the heroes need to recover it from a city claimed by the winter and the undead/fey. This has the handy side effect of pushing them towards the best means of "retirement" available, godhood!


It also would have been good if you asked about this a couple of levels ago.

So, maybe now they have to kill Cthulhu in his lair before he comes to Golarion?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Think in terms of a concluding story arc. Your goals should be to give each character a moment to truly shine, and think of an end game goal that will give them satisfaction whether in victory or defeat. It should be a victory so glorious that legends will shine down, or so final a defeat that it will take another generation of heroes to redeem.


it is a very simple task....

AWAKEN THE TARASK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Have a Tarask attack the area the decided to sleep at so when they all wake up they see the area is on fire and the Tarask attacking whatever moves.

Scarab Sages

TheWhiteWingFamily wrote:

it is a very simple task....

AWAKEN THE TARASK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No no no... we can do better than that.

Start small, though - give the players a few sessions to play with their capstone powers and feel like young gods before you turn up the heat. Just a few scattered hints that trouble's coming. Then:

1) Hurtle an asteroid at their world. Threaten imminent world destruction. Then, whatever huge plan they concoct to save the day (expending resources in the process) inadvertently wakes the Tarrasque!

2) Threaten multiple apocalypses at once: asteroid PLUS zombie plague, imminent planetary explosion PLUS alien invasion, crumbling of local spacetime PLUS re-awakening of a mad god, etc. Bonus points for stacking up three Apocalypse-level events simultaneously.

3) The End Times. This universe is packing up, shutting down, and generally coming to the end of its life. Stars going out, planets cracking up, gods dying, the dead rising from the grave, etc. There seems to be no stopping it by any power. Kobyashi Maru.

Then see how they handle it. Do they retreat to their own demiplane with a handful of followers? Do they go down fighting even though they know it's the end? Or do they sacrifice themselves to buy the universe some time for a new generation of heroes to arise?


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Time to go mythic.

Liberty's Edge

I thought about starting with new characters, but the thing is they had already "retired"... this is a second wind. We started the campaign 10 years ago (3.5) and it lasted two years. They hit lvl 16 and faced a Balor. This year, I had asked them if they wanted to dust their characters and use them again and they all jumped at the opportunity. They already shone and were regarded as heroes even before the Star-Spawn came, which is the reason they were asked to deal with it in the first place.

@Kobold Cleaver - I try not to separate them because then everything drags out and they don't have much patience in that regard. BUT... most of them live in the same place... the "Elven Empire", it was just a regular kingdom but now, thanks to them, it has flourished. I guess the other Kingdoms might start to take issue on them.

The Tiefling got Leadership during their downtime and has a network of vigilantes keeping the capital with low crime. He also got maried to an Aasimar Paladin and had a little girl. During this story arc he also adopted a small alien child they found on another planet when they looked for info about the Star-Spawn. (It was a quick trip).

The Elf Barbarian is actually a Barbarian King, the only one who is not living with the rest on the "Elven Empire". Some say he has proven himself and is favored by Kord. He already has 6 kids, one of them seems to have a knack for magic so he's being raised at the Arcane Academy because the clan is not so easy on NEEEEEERDS.

The Sorcerer made an Arcane Academy just to spite his Wizard rival and run him out of business. Because the Tsunami was coming he used 3 wishes to make it a floating castle. As it was no small feat, there were secondary effects and now he's bonded to the building. If something happens to it, the damage will also affect him. From now on they will have to fix everything with mending. His mother is also taking care of two drow girls they stole from a matron. That was fun. So YEAH, they have plenty of kids around that could grow to be the next generation... if the need arises, but right now the players are very happy with how things are going.

The mythic stuff is the equivalent of "Epic"? I haven't checked that out yet.

@LazarX - Yeah, this time around our new cleric really took the spotlight. The Barbarian and him follow Kord...

I'm starting to feel I will definitely look at the Mythic info and Planescape. I really don't want to go after the Tarrasque...


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber

It really depends upon your players.

Do they want to keep doing more of the same?

Dungeoncrawls and BBEG trouncing on a bigger and bigger scale?

Do they want Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Pathfinder-style with the Mythic/Epic/Planescape material?

Do they want to do world/kingdom building?

There's lots of DM tricks you can pull, but a little direction helps.

Ask them to tell you five things about characters in post-Starspawn world, at least two must be about their own character, the other 3 can be about other PCs or NPCs, the things they say need not be entirely true, or only be true...from a certain point of view.

Liberty's Edge

the Lorax wrote:


Ask them to tell you five things about characters in post-Starspawn world, at least two must be about their own character, the other 3 can be about other PCs or NPCs, the things they say need not be entirely true, or only be true...from a certain point of view.

I like the sound of that. I'll do it. I'll let you guys know as soon as I'm able.

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