High level party advice and words of wisdom

[Darkwing Duck]

Reading the high level party thread, I decided that there is probably quite a lot of guidance and lessons learned on this messageboard. Collectively, we've got centuries if not millenia of experience.

So, what I'd like this thead to be is a place for people to post their guidance and words of wisdom regarding how to handle the most common (and least common) problems a GM faces when running a high level campaign.

1.) If the destination is somewhere like a cave or forest, it'll be difficult for someone to provide you an adequate description of the place - descriptive enough for teleport, greater to work. In such a place, being off even by a few feet would put you in a cave wall or a tree. That wouldn't kill you with Teleport, Greater, but it would prevent the spell from working. Even the mind of a person who has been there might not help enough unless the person being read has a high Int, studied the area specifically for the sake of teleporting to it, and is being read soon after being there.
Scrying a place to teleport to probably would work, though.

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

Milinnea? How old do you think we are? ;-)

I would say that the caster(s) and the DM need to have a clear understanding A) of how magic works in a particular campaign and B) the caster(s) need to make it a point to let the other players have their moment to shine.

I'm playing a Mystic Theurge in a high level game, incidently the only caster. I consider this character to be a swiss army knife of utility magic. My job as the caster is to facilitate the plot, not to circumvent or trample it. Now I can pull out some Whop-@$$ if I need to, but I prefer to let the more martial characters handle as much as they can (while buffed of course) and otherwise hold my spells in reserve until they're really needed.

[psionichamster]

GMs: Read the spells your players use, and enforce the rules. The simplest change can modify the power level tremendously. This especially applies to spontaneous casters requiring full-round actions to cast Metamagic'd spells (Quicken notwithstanding).

Players: Invest in the world. Your PC can be more than a collection of numbers and calculations, if you spend a LITTLE bit of time and energy. Collect followers (without taking Leadership), construct businesses or guilds, or cultivate a family. All these things will immerse you further in the imaginary world you all share, and assist you GM greatly with adventure ideas and plots.

[Kydeem de'Morcaine]

psionichamster wrote:

... Collect followers (without taking Leadership), construct businesses or guilds, or cultivate a family. All these things will immerse you further in the imaginary world you all share, and assist you GM greatly with adventure ideas and plots.

Check with your GM first. Some of them hate having 'all that crap' added to their neat little plot line. But yes, most of them like it.

[Anonymous Visitor 163 576]

Teleportation (and other forms of instant travel)

This can be completely simple to deal with "I teleport us to the other side of the wall" or "We wind walk to the top of the highest tower we see".

In a way, those uses are just more powerful climb checks. No big deal.

But, travel magic can also be incredibly disruptive to the GM's plans. "We teleport to a different continent. Anything happening there?"

Said another way, it sounds like "You know that adventure you planned? Throw it away and make a good adventure for us on the fly"

So, when these abilities are picked up, it's important to communicate MORE with the GM than in the past. Things like "My character is really interested in the runes on that sword we found, I'm going to investigate that when we have time" or "I study the cave very carefully, it will make a good fall-back position"