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This weekend, I'm going to be participating in my first high-level campaign. Before this, I'd only ever played levels 1-7, but now the GM is DOUBLING that to start us out at level 15, with level 15 starting gold (240000Gp, or the like)And frankly, I'm a little intimidated by the prospect. I'm Playing a two-weapon fighter with 10 levels in fighter and 5 levels in ninja. And with all this power, I'm a little worried about what the GM has cooked up to warrant this. Oh, and from what i can tell, we don't have a healer... Wonderful.
TL;DR:
What to expect from a high-level campaign, and what are some good ways to avoid dying without support.
The main problem with this is not knowing how to best use all of your options, and if the GM has never ran a game at that level he may become overwhelmed by what the party can do.
Using wands, and scrolls will help. Plan for things like removing curses, diseases, energy drain, ability damage, ability drain, restoring other people to life and so on. I highly suggest someone max UMD.
Be tactical also. It helps a lot. :)
Be prepared for encounters to be very swingy. Some will be really easy, others will be really hard.
Expect lots of creatures to be immune or highly resistant to stuff.
A healer will be necessary for status removal. Wands of CLW can deal with between combat healing, but you're going to have to deal with petrification, energy drains, ability drain, ability damage, nauseated, sickened, panicked, insanity.
But really really swingy.
If your party does not have a healer it could be very, very dangerous.
High-level play can be like "rocket tag". Everyone does big damage. Whoever hits first wins.
At this level, healing cannot keep up with the damage numbers being dished out. Even though healing in combat is not very efficient, odds of a TPK skyrocket without a healer. Hopefully your DM will take that into consideration.
At this level of play, the melee characters can usually kill the big bad guys in one round (maybe two). That can go both ways. Your melee character could be dead in two rounds depending on what you're fighting.
Spells like fickle winds can completely shut down an archer build.
Spells like freedom of movement completely eliminate a lot of hazards, spell effects, and monster abilities.
Spells like resist energy can have a big impact on play.
No. 1 challenge for high-level play, if you or the DM is not familiar with all of your PC's (or enemies') abilities, the pace of combat can be very, very slow!
Quicken Spell also increases the action economy of the spellcasters, which effectively doubles their damage per round. Or lead to some really deadly spell combos.
One of the problems I found when playing a high level adventure (level 20!) was that if you're not used to playing at that level you're going to make MANY MISTAKES during character creation.
I think it will only be a major problem if you play a caster, but it's likely to affect any class really.
For example it's very hard to know which spells are actually good to have and not if you haven't seen them in practice. I played a level 19 lich wizard and some of the spells I picked were absolutely abysmal while some were amazing.
In the end I was pulverised by 2 pit fiends, though not before I had banished the third one. We fought a lich wizard who started the battle with time stop and gate.
Other things to note: Get items that can do utility stuff. Something that gives you the ability to fly and to teleport is ideal. Another one of my mistakes was the lack of any ability to fly, aside from a flying carpet.
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Don't spend all your gear on weapons and armour. The fighter class has the bonuses inherantly built in. Usually one holy weapon can cover enough enemies to be worth it. Make your offhand less expensive.
Buy something that allows you to fly if you dont have a caster that can do this for you.
Buy soemthing that allows for miss chance against you if you can afford it (cloak of displacement or some such). These will save your fighters life more than armour at this level.
Be prepared to be blinded/held/cursed etc. Try to get mind prtection from someone as early as possible. Protection from <insert alignment here> shuts down a whole host of powerful mind effecting spells. See if the DM is ok with you getting custom items and build from there.
Take blind fight if you haven't got someone who can make invisible targets visible.
Your group will need a way to lock down teleporting enemies (at will teleports, dimension doors etc are pretty standard at this level unfortunately).
If you believe all the hype on the boards, then kill the enemy casters fast. They can dominate a combat if given three rounds of free reign. (They rarely got that long in any campaign I've run at this level.)
I've DM'd three campaigns so far that went to level 15 - 20, they were intense on both sides of the screen. I can tell you that not having access to in combat healing means someone will drop sooner rather than later. The numbers are just too swingy at that level for a crit not to outright drop or kill someone at some stage. If that happens, the chance of a TPK goes up dramatically I've found. Hopefully your DM understands that and builds encounters appropriately.
I found encounters with more critters but lower level were just as challenging but less likely to wipe someone, than encounters with one or two high level critters. Your mileage may vary.
Cheers
Mindblank was crucial in 3.0. Emphasizing mobility is important. Maximizing action economy is key.