Mathias Pitheld's page

I'm currently running a campaign with APL around 18.5. On the GM side of things I offer the following:

1. If you're running spellcasters don't bother choosing all their spells, they'll probably only get a few rounds to cast anyway. In addition, pre-calculate their Spell Penetration, Concentration and base spell DC (I usually note this as DC=#+spell lv).

2. If you're running physical combatants with feats pre-calculate their attack bonuses factoring in Power Attack, Vital Strike, Deadly Aim, etc. and any combination of the above so you can quickly choose on the fly.

3. Note how many hit dice a creature has. I use custom stat blocks I designed with Excel and make sure to include this number. At high levels many things are HD dependent and knowing immediately how effective a spell, such as Dictum is can speed things up greatly.

4. Have a general idea of what high level spells can do. Wish and Miracle especially. Once players have access to them they will immediately search for ways to utilize them.

5. Figure out exactly how willing you and your party are to let PCs and enemies fall to save or die effects like Destruction or massive damage. As a corollary, decide how willing you are to fudge dice rolls to prevent a party member or NPC being obliterated or Soul Bound.

6. Know what resources are available in your campaign. At high levels PCs are able to buy or locate nearly anything. How much diamond dust is around (for Wish and True Res), where can they forge, buy or sell +9 weapons, who can tell them the deepest secrets of the world (assuming they don't have a high level bard)? Even just a few vague ideas can give you and your party a framework for what is possible.

7. Finally - try to be at least one or preferably two sessions ahead of your party in preparation. A clever high level party can blow through a huge amount of content quickly and leave you scrambling.

Well...that's all I've got. Hope it was helpful.

Good luck.

This one requires a good deal of DM fiat and screwing with the mechanics but it was too good to pass up.

At one point in my latest campaign the party ends up playing a game (basically wizard's chess with them as pieces) against the Big Bad's animated board. They lose but, to see what would happen, rewind the game a couple moves. In this scenario they win.

At this point one of the players starts arguing that under quantum mechanics both outcomes happened in alternate universes and with a plane shift and natural 20 on his Knowledge Planes check manages to transfer his character from the universe where they won to the universe where they lost. This is so incredible the two immediately high five.

In return I point out that clearly one of them must be made of antimatter so when they touch they cancel each other out and take the universe with them.

That in turn is countered by the request for a will save to withstand the end of all things, channel that force to his design and create the universe anew in his image. Sure, why not. Of course, natural 20 passes the save (Whose DC I had ad hocced to be unpassable) and the character becomes overgod of his own reality thankfully separate from the one I was running.

The up shot of this for the party is that, though the character has been erased from their reality and now has never even been (which was strange for his brother), the only remaining reality is the one in which they won the challenge. So they take their victory and move on with the campaign.

Is what happened technically possible under the rules? Heck no.

Was it far too awesome not to happen? Heck yes.