High-level adventures that aren't planar

[Jerry]

Normally in D&D games, at high levels, the PCs move to alternate dimensions, as it is assumed that the Material Plane will have few to no challenges left for them.

Frank's Wish Economy is that the Wish Economy is the highest in the three tiers, and that it involves stuff like Efreet, Wishes, Fabricate, and what-not. But I don't want to always have the upper ends of the campaign shift to planar adventures; I much prefer the Material Plane.

[virgil]

And...?

[Jerry]

And...?

Actually, nothing much, really. Just a random rant.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Well, if the PCs won't go to the planes, the planes can come to them. You could do something like the JLA's stand against the invasion of an archangel and his choir...

...or demons, I guess.

[Username17]

Plenty of wish-tier opponents live on the prime material. Giants and Dragons are the most obvious of course, but there are also Nightmare Beasts and Undead of all flavors and sizes.

When you're in the level 11+ range you fight seriously big crazy shit. You fight in cloud castles and lava pits against evil wizards and towering colossi. And while these can be in the elemental confluxes or the pits of Hell, they can also just be at the bottom of the sea or the tops of high mountains. The epic landscape of D&D is most standardly in other realms of existence, but parts of it are seriously just in out of the way parts of the otherwise mortal realms.

Remember that any particular D&D campaign is going to have a limited number of quests. Even assuming that you ditch the CR bullshit and go to a more reasonable system like 1-2 levels per quest, let's consider some high level quests:

• The Inverted Tower Rogue illusionist is making trouble. Quest in a surreal tower powered by years of overlapping magical effects. Expect shadow monsters, golems, bound demons, and of course: the original illusionist himself (or is it?). Floating stones, traps beyond measure, and a permanent image on fucking everything.
• The Maw of Darkness A Hullathoin is causing trouble, and hiding in the Banemire. Oh the look of joy on the PC's faces when they realize that Wyverns are a horde monster here and so are hydras. Add a goodly pile of Wisps and genuine undead and the PCs will barely be able to overcome the gathering army of the dead.
• Rise of Ancient Evils The Sunken Temple in the heart of Sahuagin territory is straining against reality, the Great Mother is awakening. The prayers of the Kua-Toa are answered and the depths are filling up with evil the likes of which even the Sahuagin are incapable of imagining. Go to the bottom of the seas and fight epic battles against a backdrop of essentially sunken Atlantis overrun by Lovecraftian horror.
• The Castle in the Sky Real estate above the tallest peaks has never looked so good. The King of the Giants is going crazy and he is banding the tribes together to destroy the worlds of the small folk. That's you, so this is totally bad. The players have to play Against the Giants when Cloud and Storm giants are running around being mook guards.
• The Wicked City Deep in the unerdark there is a city of mindflayers. Or maybe beholders. Aboleth? Something horrible anyway, and for the last thousand years or so it has been just fine down there only occasionally teleporting out to murder people to advance its weird agenda. That ends now, as the plans put in motion before the dwarves finalized their calendar take form. There's a pit full of aberrations and they have had time to prepare. Time and time again.
• The Mountain of Fire The sky turns red as the source of fire itself shudders and rains death upon the fertile valleys. The Great Wyrm is on the move. His minions writhe in fire and lava. Salamanders form the rank and file and beneath the Wyrmbanner march beasts of legend.
• The Soul Gate A great nation has fallen over night as a disastrous cataclysm shatters the capital. Souls of the dead are driven mad with hatred and torment and the Soul Gate compels them back as shadows. The army of spectral forces amasses and seeks to overrun and destroy all life.
• Ambition and Realism A powerful Hobgoblin warlord has raised an army of unimaginable size. Thousands have flocked to his banner and thousands more will continue to do so for it has become clear that those who do not assist him in crushing his foes will doubtless end as the fallen themselves.
• Treasure Hunt An ancient hero took the Justice Blade with him to his grave. A historian has uncovered the location of the ancient battlefield ad now it's a race to an ill-used portion of the Dwarven tunnels. Several groups are searching, and some of them doubtless have nefarious goals.
• Wrath of the Wilds The new Archdruid has made a pact with some powerful fey and has determined that it is time to cull cities and revert most of them to their natural state. Plant monsters come out kaiju style while powerful druidic magics propel armies of predators into crowds of innocent gnomes and kobolds.

There. One quest per level, no plane shifting, 11-20. Take them in any order you wish and modify monster numbers and strengths accordingly.

-Username17

[Jerry]

Hurray for Frank!

[Cynic]

And...?

Actually, nothing much, really. Just a random rant.

I think virgileso's "and...?" was more referencing a point that your posts seem rather incomplete. You can rant and rave but at least complete them. If you want help thinking up new adventures, say you want help thinking up new adventures. If you want something else, specify.

On a slight tangent,this goes back to the other post you made about not liking long posts. Long posts are good from one slightly important perspective. They explain what the poster means and wants.

[Jerry]

They explain what the poster means and wants.

Yes, but some long posts can be summarized/shortened without losing their meaning.

[Talisman]

Frank, I am so totally stealing those adventure ideas.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah honestly I do stuff more like Frank's ideas. I tend to hate planar adventuring because there's really nothing out there that the adventurers actually care about, unless you're just doing a raid on Asmodeus or something.

[Jerry]

Yeah honestly I do stuff more like Frank's ideas. I tend to hate planar adventuring because there's really nothing out there that the adventurers actually care about, unless you're just doing a raid on Asmodeus or something.

Are you kidding me? What about all those mineral deposits in the Plane of Earth? Or how about endless planes full of valuable materials?

[RandomCasualty2]

Are you kidding me? What about all those mineral deposits in the Plane of Earth? Or how about endless planes full of valuable materials?

Well I'm talking plot hooks beyond just a lot of loot.

And really I'd hope that 14th level characters have more to be interested in than harvesting mineral deposits.

[Jerry]

Are you kidding me? What about all those mineral deposits in the Plane of Earth? Or how about endless planes full of valuable materials?

Well I'm talking plot hooks beyond just a lot of loot.

And really I'd hope that 14th level characters have more to be interested in than harvesting mineral deposits.

Money talks. Especially when it involves infinite wealth loops.

[Talisman]

There's lots of planar stuff to do beyond looting. Theres:

~Assassination strikes on important fiends/whatever,
~Information-gathering missions in extremely hostile terrain,
~Rescuing souls that have been wrongly stolen by the demons,
~Negotiating between disparate but not-mortal-enemy groups, such as LG archons and CG eladrin, or NG guardinals and LN modrons,
~Bodyguarding important travelers who need to travel through Limbo for some stupid reason,
~Seeking the McGuffin, which was cast into the depths of Pandemonium 3 1/2 eons ago,
~Tracking down your old nemesis Stabby McBackstab, who has retreated to his Ashen Tower in Hades,
~The demons and the devils have formed a truce. WTF?
~The Spawning Stone has stopped producing slaadi and started producing horrific monstrosities that destroy whole countries. Find out why and stop it.
~Your god says so.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah mostly it's just that PCs as a rule don't tend to care much about the pointless planar wars, because it's all infinity versus infinity, which amounts to "who the hell cares."

It's really a case where if you assassinate anyone but a lord of the nine, nobody is even going to miss him, since there's infinite pit fiends to take his place.

Most of my planar adventures just take place on alternate prime material planes. I guess I just don't find the planes all that interesting in general.

[Talisman]

That's why you make it personal.

Instead of "we need you to kill X demons, so they'll only have [infinity - X]"...

"The demon lord Arglibbib plans to invade the Prime plane, starting with [PCs' home city], on the advice of his mortal counsellor [PCs' old nemesis]. But if you could make it too expensive for him... or make him appear weak in the eyes of the other Abyssal Lords..."

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Yeah mostly it's just that PCs as a rule don't tend to care much about the pointless planar wars, because it's all infinity versus infinity, which amounts to "who the hell cares."

I hate that. You have to make the players and their Pc's care about their efforts, and their efforts need to affect the gameworld. The game system needs to support this, or you do. Otherwise all the possible planar stories go to rot.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah mostly it's just that PCs as a rule don't tend to care much about the pointless planar wars, because it's all infinity versus infinity, which amounts to "who the hell cares."

I hate that. You have to make the players and their Pc's care about their efforts, and their efforts need to affect the gameworld. The game system needs to support this, or you do. Otherwise all the possible planar stories go to rot.

heh, I don't really blame them for not caring. I mean, PCs are going to care most about people they can connect to, and that's the people they know on the prime material plane. And when you fight in something like the blood war, there's really nothing to be gained. You're fighting what is really a pointless battle.

Going to other planes to do quests is like Superman going to Mars and saving the martians... sure, you know Superman does it because he's a hero and all, but there isn't much emotional investment.

[zeruslord]

In Planescape, you generally don't set out to be in the Blood War. You get drafted or you are working in the periphery doing things like keeping it in the lower planes and keeping it from ending in some sort of truce. The players should care because heaven being taken over by Asmodeus and Graz'zt really sucks.

[RandomCasualty2]

In Planescape, you generally don't set out to be in the Blood War. You get drafted or you are working in the periphery doing things like keeping it in the lower planes and keeping it from ending in some sort of truce. The players should care because heaven being taken over by Asmodeus and Graz'zt really sucks.

Well the attitude is that the blood war has been going on for basically eternity, and it will keep going on. People say" Oh the blood war may end iwth a victor" and people just laugh. You can't conquer the nine hells or the Abyss, because they're infinite.

[zeruslord]

There's an infinite army with which to conquer them, and the battlelines have moved back and forth across the three infinite planes in between. The reason that the blood war hasn't ended in some sort of deal (let's all beat up on Elysium) is that an infinite number of Good mortal heroes have intervened to stop the war from ending in a dangerous way, and this week, it's your turn. several of the canonical adventures and some of the planewalker.com 3e material revolve around keeping the blood war going. Actually trying to end the blood war is foolish, but if you don't step up, heaven might be run by pit fiends in a week.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

The reason that the blood war hasn't ended in some sort of deal (let's all beat up on Elysium) is that an infinite number of Good mortal heroes have intervened to stop the war from ending in a dangerous way, and this week, it's your turn.

I think RC's point is that he doesn't understand how Infinity Vs Infinity would be any different from Infinity Vs Infinity+4 Pc's. I don't understand either.

[Username17]

The point of Planescape was that there were infinite forces in eternal conflicts, but that individual critical events shifted the boundaries massively from time to time. Constant fighting and exploring was done by every side in an attempt to find where and when these critical junctures were going to come, and presumably the PCs were going to be at one of them before the end of the campaign.

-Username17

[zeruslord]

I think RC's point is that he doesn't understand how Infinity Vs Infinity would be any different from Infinity Vs Infinity+4 Pc's. I don't understand either.

My point was that Infinity Vs Infinity - 4PCs, who would have been at the right place at the right time and stopped something very crappy from happening, sucks compared to Infinity Vs Infinity. Frank's point stands in general, but I was talking about the particular blood war example. There isn't much the good guys can gain in the blood war, but there is an awful lot they stand to lose.

[Voss]

Yep. And in planescape, belief matters, so you get major shifts if you can just get people to buy into what you're selling. Sometimes this goes badly. Like when the Harmoninium started messing around and lost both a gate town and an entire layer of Arcadia slipped into Mechanus. Oops.