Tiers of Play in Dungeons & Dragons 5e 

Dungeon Dudes Crafting Custom items ,really crafting things in general as it is really underused and creative I want to play as an eldritch knight and i want to create items to fill any gaps on his abilities. One of the ideas is a gauntlet that allows more cantrips or some spells storing abilities or not even more spells , just more spells learned (im thinking lt having attuned ) Or a enchanted sword mark of their own design that adds different damage types. Really i have too many ideas on how to work around It just seems that lots of people are afraid of tinkering on the game

Dungeon Dudes Also , never forget to once in a while remind them of their power and their feats , make them be revered , make them be feared, have npc who they respect comment on what they are or have done My favorite idea is that when the party goes to a new town, city or plane They meet someone who is full of themselves And they might have the power to prove it , but the party is stronger Have the fighter in a duel with the captain of the guard who once laid the killing blow to an ogre he could be humble or not it is a great encounter to remind them of their power Give the barbarian a bar fight or have them hold part of a collapsed building in order to help someone Or have have the party have a terminator moment where they seem to survive the onlslaughtand deliver it back Give the wizard a chance to use their knowledge to better the place they reside , teach a couple of lessons in the local mage school Druid can instruct how to properly care the land with farmers ,teaching them that somtimes you need to burn the forest so it could blossom to so much more The point is that you need to make them feel like heroes, big , damn HEROS. Moments like that, make the game.

My group seems to always be hell-bent on splitting the party. I'd love a video on dealing with the mechanics of that while still trying to maximize immersion.

I think magic items or xp x milestone would be great issues to talk about, forgive if you already did lol. And great job with this chanel, your videos helped me a lot!

Magic items compared to level of adventurers, how to balance and develop both interesting magical items without breaking the party balance.

That type of campaign setting is call a "Box Set." Reminds me of "Night Below." Or even the "Tome of Horrors" box set. Treat it as a video game that requires no down time for training your characters class skills and abilities.

something like clash of the titans.. the basic rules contains lots of greek mythological monsters.

You start nearly dying to wolves and finish killing Fenrir

@@carso1500 One of my buddies DID die to a wolf in our new campaign at level 1. (Direwolf pup) I mean, I DID land a nat 1 as a Rogue with a shortbow, shooting him in the back of the head and 1 shotting him with a max damage dice (ofc) so the puppies and their mom could just waltz up and start eating... But still the wolves technically did it right?

@@Soriosh if telling you that allows you to sleep at night then alright buddy

This is such a key point! Thank you for making it. This is a great example of how to up the ante with lower-tier monster and make them punch above their weight class. Had Mercer just thrown the beasts and orcs in at Vox Machina without the frame of the hostages and environment, it would not have nearly been as exciting! It just goes to show that with thought and creativity, mundane creatures can still pose a challenge.

I want to suggest that this point, while good in it's own right, is also what they were alluding to in the video. An orc camp throwing themselves at Vox Machina would fail, but an intelligent one with traps and tactics was exciting. It isn't apples to apples with, "Well I'll just have them kill 50 goblins this time". *necroing I know but commenting all the same :D*

blablubb Then he didn’t throw mundane enemies at them, he threw mundane enemies + traps + hostages. Dungeon Dude’s point still stands.

@@edcellwarrior The real point, however, is that you can use mundane opponents in intuitive ways to elicit a good response from players on how exciting it was. The goal is challenging the players and giving them something that takes effort to overcome. Try some trolls out with potions of fire resistance and haste. Things can change quite a bit challenging in those circumstances...

Long ago my players ambushed a small group of orcs. They figured out their mistake when they noticed the uniform equipment and a couple of them had rank insignias. They wound up playing hide and seek with a entire division of orc regular army troops. To their credit they saw the clues and knew 10 orcs, no problem, 10000 orcs, big problem. A sufficient quantity of mundane opponents loses its mundaneness.

Robuster Brown question because I love this: how do you handle the pantheon’s interaction with the new party? Do you control them as the DM?

Floormat1000 yeah, I sat with my players and we talked about how their characters would interact with the world. Nobody played a cleric so the gods didn’t come up too much in that campaign

I'm infatuated with the idea of the highest level magic. True Polymorph is my personal favorite

That is sick

Damn I thought I made a unique character, after reading this... Guess I was wrong

Gandalf was the DM's brother's PC from a previous campaign that gets randomly thrown in when the player is back from college. Also, he's playing the character with a D&D group at college, which is why he suddenly has new equipment.

while free falling

Well... we know that both Gandalf and the Balrog are Maiar and that they fought an epic battle in which they both died. It's just that Illuvatar brought Gandalf back to life and reincarnated him as the White Wizard. If you're confused about the history of the Tolkien universe I suggest reading the Silmarillion. It is a very rewarding (academic) exercise.

Galdolf: "THOUGH SHALL NOT PASS" (casts a fireball) Narartor: later on, Gandolf finds himself surrounded by another horad of monsters. Galdoff: (Fends them off with a short sword!) Audiance: "What? No! Don't do that! Use that spell! Did you seriously forget you had that spell?! Galdoff: "I can't. I'm out of mana!"

Gandalf is a CR10 monster himself ;) (he's a deva)

I also love epic play. You can have great stories at any level range.

Kyle D My first campaign sadly never got to finish, but my party started out in my homebrew setting arriving to a nation’s capital city as escorts for one of the four Council members. While there, they found themselves fighting a troubled man who suddenly went berserk insane and had to kill him. After having a chat with the Captain of the city watch, they learned this wasn’t the first time this happened and ended up investigating and finding out people were being driven insane by a twisted version of the Geas spell that - if they failed to perform their given task - eventually turned them into a monster such as the former elf they encountered and killed in the sewers. At first they thought it might be a warlock or an evil wizard using this to try and take over the country until they infiltrated the manor of one of the nobles they suspected to be in on it and found the lord talking to a suspicious individual in clerical vestments (who promptly teleported out shortly after combat started. In time, they stumbled across the hidden Demi-plane of an ancient gold dragon tired of fighting that now masqueraded as an elf wizard who wanted to be left alone to his research (the demiplane was also being utilized by unscrupulous individuals, the dragon just barely tolerated their presence as long as they didn’t bother him, but he did eventually end up booting them all out). This demiplane had portals leading to different parts of the material realm: one in the capital city of several nations, and other assorted places. They used this to follow a lead they gained to a Roman-esque country overseas and learned there were similar problems going on there as well. Not only were there people being driven insane, what used to be the capital city’s palace (back when it was ruled by a warlord) was full of devils, skeletons, and the people who summoned them. That’s where they found a massive necromantic ritual circle set to suck the life out of everyone for miles and miles around. As bad as that sounds already, it was linked with another circle - one that would use all of those souls to create a portal large and strong enough to enable Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine to bring him and his infernal armies into the material plane (which, due to ancient pacts the gods signed in the aftermath of a huge pre-history disaster, couldn’t simply hop on down to the material plane to stop him if it worked. Not without their own followers doing something similar). They managed to disrupt the ritual and keep this from happening, but one of the PCs died and they learned this was not the only one to worry about. Asmodeus’ followers suspected they were being tracked and had a similar ritual in the works back in the country they’d left behind. So after doing some digging, they learned the ritual this time used a more complicated setup. Four circles like the necromancy one, smaller, but spread out to cover more ground, were placed around the country in ruins beneath four army camps where the country were training their troops in preparation for war (publicly, the Council blamed one of their neighbors for the recent disasters and troubles, and declared war). At least two of the Council were discovered to be in on the whole deal, plus a third they suspected wasn’t entirely willing. The party just barely managed to rush from circle to circle, smashing them up. However, what they didn’t plan on was the different mechanism these circles worked on. They didn’t yank out the life energy all at once, but instead siphoned it slowly away... so by the time they smashed two of them, they had already collected a substantial amount of energy. When that energy went wild, one of them had enough energy to wipe out half of the army camp (and would later, while they were away, lead to a tear forming and opening a portal to the negative energy plane and eventually lead to an undead apocalypse and a necropolis forming in that area). With the ritual there halted, they finally learned where one of the big players was hiding back across the ocean. So after going there, they infiltrated the manor of a suspected blue dragon in disguise. They found their way to his private demiplane where he was holding one of their allies captive and... this is where my campaign stalled out, sadly. Right when they started the boss fight. Scheduling issues, people moving and the works. Had the campaign gone on, they would have faced the jilted, angry mate of a green dragon they slew before, an elf sorceress that had been manipulating things in the starting country, an orc lich who was providing much of the undead they encountered and based in a sub-continent further to the south that was promised a chance to live again (and be immortal), and the cleric who tied them all together acting on behalf of Asmodeus (and who was a mentor for the party’s cleric in the past before he turned evil in despair, promised to get his lost lover back). I had a very loose plan of a final confrontation between these individuals and the party, while the gold dragon (who I planned on being kidnapped and the party having to rescue him) and a hellfire wyrm fought in the background in order to stop the enemy’s final attempt at opening the portal. Despite it dying before it could finish and it being a hot mess as far as my DMing skills, one of the players I still talk to these days still brings it up every now and then. So apparently they enjoyed themselves, even in spite of its ups and downs. But it was an epic, world-spanning campaign that would have taken them to every continent and face off against powerful devils and demons (who may have been inclined to help the party so their rivals couldn’t take over the material plane, but who were also hoping to open a similar portal for themselves and may or may not have tried to hijack it).

........ fuck yea.

Wow, that's some serious high level fantasy. Don't know how you ran it, but I bet everyone had a great time!

Totally stealing this for my campaign. I mean... Not all of it. 95% is fine, though.

The Zekenator he’s a Trickster Domain Cleric. Use thaumaturgy twice in Fellowship alone

That's movie gandalf. Book gandalf especially the white is a 20lvl mage with tons of spellslots

@@georgemas he just doesn't use them to allow everyone else to do what they need to to advance themselves.

Maybe the new party gets some basic magic items from the old party, starting them out ahead of the average 1st level characters

Yep, interleave the tiers. Have the players start new characters while the first set is still alive, then conspire to have the two groups interact. A high level cleric might feel like they've done their piece by founding a religion and a church and performing confirmed miracles, and the player may start to lose interest after achieving a particular level. It's time to introduce The Next Generation. That doesn't mean Jim and Spock and Bones won't still make a cameo from time to time.

What if you had a party that doesn't have any primarys spell casters? No wizards, clerics, sorcerors, or druids? I think it would be a lot less of a headache running tier 4 if you don't have to worry about high level spells. Non spell caster classes still stay mostly straightforward, and sort of linear in their effective power, and they almost never have any game changing abilities, which almost exclusively come from spells.

Back then getting to tenth level took YEARS of regular play and yes at that level you could rule a small country !

Glad you found it helpful! Go out and run an awesome campaign!

Superb tips!

@Naren Gurrier-Jones that just creates bullet sponges; I agree with other commenters, it's better to add another element than to simply ramp up the HP.

He also still has that Hellfire, so maybe Elemental Adapt (Fire) feat.

Fair point. But in Brightburn, “Superman” is the monster, not the hero - which is why it works, because he’s a supernatural being of cosmic power.

Ever since Tucker's Kobolds, low-level monsters with excellent strategy and tactics are a time-honoured tradition for Dungeon Masters who need to humble a group of overconfident player characters. Do you think RU-vid would be interested in us doing a few videos on how to do this?

I'm fairly sure it would! It is an important but poorly covered topic among the roleplay community on RU-vid, and really lacks in-depth attention. One caveat I tend to keep in mind when being creative with low level monsters however is to avoid playing the monsters in a way where they become smarter than what they otherwise should be, as I often see tactical DMs sacrificing the roleplay aspect by making say their ogres or orc barbarians fight like NAVY-Seals tactical masterminds, optimizing each step as if it was chess. I believe roleplay still matters in combat; and so the styles, abilities & tactics should reflect the monsters and their character and story. Hence in my Goblin example although I put the heroes in a terrible position, I still played my goblins as a bunch of whacky oppertunistic ADHD suicidal children who'd flee the moment they became outnumbered even if it meant sacrificing a couple of them to "sub-optimal play" :P Personally I think the video game series such as Vermintide are an excellent source of inspiration if you want to make Goblins or similar weak monsters threatening!

I agree. I think there needs to be a well-developed reason why the creatures are working with high-level tactics. Usually, it means the presence of strong leadership and/or magic. you bring up an excellent point that even the most tactically minded foes might have an illogical compulsion. A group of hobgoblin soldiers might normally be perfect tacticians, but they'll take unwarranted risks if it means slaying an elf. Ogres are typically brutes -- unless they are under the psionic control of a mind flayer. The other component to this is that when foes have well-developed tactics, they often run, call for aid, or surrender before fighting to the death too. Part of the reason why Goblins and Kobolds favour hit and run tactics is that such methods give them plenty of opportunities to escape!

SinerAthin this is a great idea, a way with low level monsters!

I would love a video entirely centered on Tucker's Kobolds, whether it be the actual mechanics of how he used them (there isn't much information about that online) or just taking the basic idea of utilizing low power minions and running with it.

Tier 5 Thanos?

EpicPie9121 tier 4: Goku

Tier 1: Captain America, Black Widow Tier 2: Ironman, Black Panther Tier 3: Vision, Scarlet Witch Tier 4: Stormbreaker Thor

@@blizz3975 i strongly disagree

Tier 1: Black Widow, Punisher, Hawkeye, Captain America Tier 2: Spiderman, Wolverine, Black Panther Tier 3: Ant-Man, Quicksilver, Star-Lord Tier 4: Iron Man, Thor, Hulk Tier 5: Dr. Strange, Scarlett Witch Tier 6: Thanos, Ego

Hope you get to have fun at the high levels, and good luck on your Bard's path to divinity!

We are playing Prince Of The Apocalypse and going to continue on to Out Of The Abyss so I'll get there eventually. Also I know the forgotten realms a lot better than my DM so I'll just use True Polymorph on stuff, cast wish through them and stock up on Tomes and other stuff to the point that I'm practically a demi god...The joke is if we ever run a campaign that is 100 ish years after this one my character would be a viable deity :P True Polymorth is the strongest 9th level spell in my eyes.

Mokona Honestly ,i kinda have to agrre on true polymorf . It basically a spell that gives you free items and c reatures you've seen And with a spell like legend lore findng mythical things it makes it a powerfull combination Plus you could allways just have a small mouse or something and polymorph it in to a terrifying beast pretty much anywhere Now thats a distraction

Telkei Also my character is Half Elf that is discontent with only being a half elf. More over she was trained by a Leshay,an insanely powerful Noble Eladrine race. Race change. Same goes for any other member of the party who character wishes to become something else.

tmage23 yeah like disappearing whenever lol

Sure, if Eru Illuvatar was the DM :)

So cool! I love the idea of D&D continuity existing in multiple realities, and it's the perfect type of adventure for ultra-high level characters!

I DM in my home setting (mainly Multiverse + Spelljammer + loads of homestuff) There are 3 general layers and travel between them is extremely diffcult. Inner layer, Middle layer, Outer layer. Middle layer consist of Material planes, called worlds, which are enclosed in warp-bubbles (it is hard to translate that made-up word). And those bubbles are configurated in a galaxy style fashion, and each of those worlds might be diffirent setting (Faerun, Eberron etc.). It is far easier to travel between worlds than layers, but it is still a challenging job. I've just felt I needed to explain all this. BTW I like your content very much.

dungeons of drakkenheim moment

Thank you! We hope you run a kickass campaign :) As a newer Dungeon Master, what are some of the most important things you've learned so far?

Glad you are enjoying our channel! I think you are right. Likely a few people in the real world could be considered higher "level". What I wanted to emphasize in that point is that there is a tendency to imagine the most badass people and heroes as 20th level characters, usually on the basis that these people are the strongest within their own world or story. Instead, if we look at what they are actually capable of, it helps us see just how amazingly awesome even low level characters can be. You can then use that as a reference point when roleplaying your character and describing their actions. As you say, it's totally realistic to describe your 5th level Monk as someone who could move like a butterfly and sting like a bee!

It truly is the sweet spot, so much so that level progression by CP is deliberately slower in the tier to make it last longer!

I agree 2nd tier is awesome because alot of time, 1st is trying to launch the thing, 3rd is trying to make it hard without killing anybody--2nd is the meat of it

While every tier obviously has its perks, I honestly think Tier 4 is the best when it's actually ran correctly. It's often the climax of months of time with friends and between the insanely powerful magical weapons and the culmination of all your class skills, you can make some truly unique and fully fleshed out characters. Tier 4 is the tier where the web of lies your Changeling has spread across multiple kingdoms comes together to put him on the throne of the New World, the tier where your Shadow Monk Assassin can teleport behind someone and say those four little words before multi attacking with sneak attack, assassinate, and death strike all at once, the tier where your entire party gets into a debate about the wording of wishes with the wizard, and so, SO much more. It's just so insanely awesome to finally be able to go full anime with some of your attacks and the plot opportunities you get by interacting with the beings that drive the expansive lore of D&D are just unbelievable. Things can certainly get a lot grittier in the lower tiers, but nothing beats the climax of an adventure in my eyes. It's just so rare to actually make it all to this tier and it's just so rewarding and has so much potential that I can't imagine it being lower than any other tier. That being said, it is fairly easy to mess up Tier 4 games. If you're still trying to run your game like a "normal" D&D adventure and don't fully embrace every aspect of the power of the players and take advantage of both the lore of the game and the plot threads you've been seeding throughout the story, it can start to get a bit generic and underwhelming. You can do basically whatever you want with your story at this tier of play and if you're not using that to create a truly unique experience for your players that acts as the pinnacle of their tale, I don't think it really holds up against tiers 1 or 2.

I think it’s overrated and needlessly restrictive.

Wonderful! Thank you! Let us know if you have any questions about worldbuilding. This is a topic we want to cover in a future video! Hope your world and campaign really capture your players imaginations!

Thank you!

Awesome! Thank you!

We are so flattered to be even remotely compared to the mighty Matt Colville. Thank you!

Thank you for the awesome comment, and for sharing your experience with high-level play (especially a wizard -- a VERY complex class to play at 20th level!). Any other overlooked topics you like to see us tackle in a future video?

great video btw

Thank you!

This is very common, but Tier 2 is very much the "sweet spot". Maybe you could try planning a shorter campaign that starts at a higher level to try out the higher tiers!

True. Having a short tier 4 campaign might be fun. Everyone would get a chance to try out some high level characters and the DM could throw out some of those big monsters at us. I will have to run this by the group.

I mean a level one fighter can take the two-weapon fighting style.

So, you can fight liches, but can not become one themselves.