As a long-time dungeon master, I’ve had the pleasure of taking multiple campaigns all the way up to level 20 and when your party surpasses that level 15 benchmark, combat becomes an entirely different beast. Here are a few strategies to keep your high-level game running smoothly:
- Make combat deadly and meaningful: Combat takes a lot longer at higher levels and it becomes extremely inefficient to run fluff encounters that don’t truly impact the story or the characters. In any combat scenario where it is almost impossible for the adversaries to come out victorious, consider changing the encounter into a brief collaborative roleplay exercise where the party can describe how they quickly overcome the enemy.
- Don’t exceed the number of party members with enemies: It’s better to have a few very strong enemies, because at this level, the party will simply wipe the floor with the weaker ones. If a particular encounter calls for more enemies, considering making the weaker ones “Minion” style enemies that only have 1hp.
- Tell Your players when their turn is coming: Since combat takes much longer at high levels, this will give your players more opportunities to zone out of the session at hand when it isn’t their turn. Reminding them when their turn is near will pull them back into the game and give them some time to prepare what they will do.
- The DM’s ARK: Managing multiple creatures in high level encounters can be a daunting task, even more so if the creatures can cast magic. Rather than flipping through your sourcebooks to find a ruling or spell distinction, simply ask the ARK’s Scribe Bot to find it for you!
Using these strategies in my D&D campaigns has helped me a ton. Hopefully they’ll help you too! Happy gaming!
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