What is the mid-late game about?

[Cranefist]

So, I started playing with a group that started me at level 11. I just hit level 12.

Incredibly, we just wacked a CR 16 or 17 vampire. Maybe higher. The DB had 9th level spells and 500+ HP. There were 6 of us banging on him. As a ranger I have an extra +4 and was buffed maybe 5 times before the fight, so I was hitting him on a 3. I hit for around 225 damage over two rounds.

That wasn't too surprising to me. When we decided to go after the guy, I was hitting rolls of 40+ on my tracking and perception rolls to hunt his minions down.

We are actually playing soft ball at this point. I'm pretty sure that the casters with all their speak with dead and find the path and shadow walk and divination and so on and on could have bypassed most of what I was doing, but they let Van Helsing do his thing for story sake. Nice of them.

I have no idea what the GM could have done differently. The vampire's layer was hidden with a dimensional gateway, with a passage so tight you had to have gaseous form or something to fit and a shadow doorway hidden in the pitch black of empty umbra. He had 9th level spell traps and god awful shadow minions, vampires, and other crazy s&~#.

It was borderline incoherent. I only could accept it thematically because of my familiarity with the game, but it didn't look much like any kind of traditional story.

And we are still leveling up. One of the wizards is about to hit 14th. His summoning of Devas and casting limited wishes is already crazy.

I'm running a game right not I'd like to keep leveling up. They will be fine soon but I could see this group going all the way up.

What do you do past a certain point? What can it even be about?

[ub3r_n3rd]

The higher the levels the higher the stakes to me. Whenever I run games that are mid level or higher it's about the class of enemies they are facing down. The story expands outside little border skirmishes to world changing events and events that span the planes and other planets.

There are plenty of monsters, creatures, and BBEG out there that prior to the PC's hitting a certain level of power thought of them as small fries and didn't even show up on their radars. Now when the PC's are running around they are making waves, they have reputations as heroes (or villains) and the bigger guys take notice.

It's all about using your imagination and thinking about the bigger picture to me. I love running the higher level stuff and even run campaigns or one-shots that start out with higher level characters who are uber epic point buys and gestalts, just to give a different feel and flavor.