We Played D&D at Level 20 for Two Hours 

Lars reminded me that... Cthrion Uroniziir opened by using the psionic power ANOTHER WORLD on James and Lars. "What if things had been different? Maybe in another world, I’m the wizard and you’re the fighter! "Target two enemies. Both must succeed on an Intelligence saving throw or swap character sheets until they finish a long rest." Then James, playing Lars' character, used Divine Intervention to swap them back. :D :D :D

I love how other RU-vidrs strive to make these thumbnails showing their face with a ridiculous expression fOr tHe aLgOrItHm, meanwhile RU-vid's autogenerated thumbnails do the exact same thing for me with no effort....

The fact that you, as a DM, were able to utter the phrase “milky white fluid” to your group without being wviscerated with pubescent laughter is amazing in itself. My group would have destroyed me

"This world is *mine* to end!" is the rawest fucking line and I want to design a whole adventure/campaign around that concept.

"The Titan of Ix has failed. Ynixquichcauitl awakes. This is the end. All hope is lost unless you can reach the Heart of the World, and stop the End of Time."

“Is this story interesting?” *Chat is just a sea of rapt faces, eyes reflecting the shimmering firelight, forgotten s’mores in hand, captivated by the greatest camp counselor in this or any age, holding court with a ghost story that will live on in memory for as long as the last forest still stands.*

High level is always intimidating to me as a DM because it's such a high concept, mindset change. I'm excited because I really think that yours is the best channel for discussing high concept and mindset!

I think a lesser DM would have tried to foil the players here, particularly resurrecting godzilla "Does godzilla have a soul? Could mortal magic really restore something of this scale and power?"... but this is just a fun one-shot with level 20 PCs, so honestly the ideal game situation is that the players *do* break the game at every possible moment, that's why it's fun. I loved the story we got here.

"I remembered it without looking at the word! - That means it's real now." Is so perfect. That is exactly how it feels as a DM to have players reference locations, people and phenomena in the world you share. Love how you captured that in a sidenote.

"Dead universes inside her..." Damn. That is cool, and existentially terrifying, but mostly cool.

We think this room is the heart of the house... This house has many hearts. -- Poltergeist

I love the idea of you saving some twitch streams, finding the juicy bits, and uploading them to RU-vid. The extemporaneous camera talk takes me back to the earlier days of this channel and booooy is that dopamine hit real tasty these days

i appreciate the BBC LOTR streams being saved (and linked in the description here) since they've all started at 3AM my time and i kinda regret not being able to be there

I ran a modified Rise of Tiamat campaign for several years that I extended to level 20, ending with a massive siege battle at Waterdeep from an army of dragons, red wizards, zombies, cultists, dragonspawn and several custom ancient+ dragons vs Waterdeep's army, faction armies, and others they'd rallied along the way including freed kobolds, Selune's good werewolves, a dragon turtle, metallic dragons, and the reactivated Walking Statues (all using your Warfare rules!). From there, it moved to infiltrating the Well of Dragons to fight the high level cult leaders, reserve dragons, and Arkhan the Cruel's improved Dark Order (the anti-party of the campaign), slaying Tiamat's avatar, then jumping into Avernus to slay Tiamat herself and her consorts. A Scroll of Tarrasque Summoning and a Scroll of the Comet were used, legendary dragons were defeated, Waterdeep was left battered but standing, and Tiamat was slain, though her godly essence would be left to reincarnate through Arkhan the Cruel, who escaped and ascended to fill the role of God of Evil Dragons for the future of my world: a future which they managed to save. Level 20 is tricky, but it's doable.

A big benefit of Gate that is oft overlooked is the fact you don't need a tuning fork for it. Plane shift is the interplanar Teleportation Circle, Gate is the interplanar Teleport

Kelsey Dionne is a marvelous author of D&D adventures and she's creating an OSR-inspired RPG called Shadowdark now! Its already got a couple of homebrewn stuff created for it by some dedicated fans!

I run high level one shots to break up the long-form campaigns, and they have some of the best stories. My best was playing a "What if" where the question was "What if Gandalf was right and the Balrog had a ring of power." I made two versions of a action oriented balrog, one flame and one shadow, and boy did my players have a blast!

This makes me realise how much i miss the campaign diaries. I hope we get to hear the climax of this 1 shot

Hope you guys have the time and energy to finish this level 20 adventure sometime, because the combination of learning more about level 20 play *plus* some lore about the truly terrifying shit hiding in Matt's world at that level just sounds interesting as all hell. 😤

I'd be really interested in seeing more support for high level play. I've played at level 20 and run at level 17 but it's always seemed like high level play isn't viable in the long term. Sure it's fun and it's flashy but it's hard to have a sustainable camping at those levels.

Holy shit, Kelsey's lvl 20 adventure is getting a shout out from MCDM! Everyone should check out the Arcane Library for other great adventures at all tiers!

I have most fun running level 17-20 content in Adventurers League, you see so much insane stuff. Combats that seem impossible and are won in 3 turns cause someone turned all the enemies into rats and then use the pipes of the sewers on them. Just insane crap, I love it.

Oh yay! I’m running a level 16 campaign right now because I decided to yeet my novice DM self into the deep end of running the game. Not a whole lot out there for running higher level games, thank you!

I wonder if this is the first time anyone has played a lv20 beast master after it’s release.

Nothing like some Colville content to go with my midday coffee

I love the Arcane Library’s stuff!!! Glad you got to play of it

Gate is more useful for zerg-rushing; it lasts for 1 minute and any number of people can move through it. It's useful for army movements, or large mercenary company movements. 4 people can move through a 20-foot wide space simultaneously. 24 people per round. 240 people per minute. More if there's flyers involved.

I love seeing you so excited about your game. It was great watching you retell the crazy adventure

Your enjoyment of this story is palpable. Thanks for this man.

Ok, I just want to acknowledge that Din Tai Fung reservations not only are MORE worthy of the sacrifice of a D&D session than most other reservations but also that they further mark Matt as a man of the finest taste. On good nights, I dream of xiao long bao

Just wanted to extend my thanks to you for all of the content,information, suggestions,tips and tricks. I just finished up my first one shot/5 session game as DM and it was quite enjoyable for everyone involved.

More specifically, the Latin for "We work in Secret" (or rather hidden) is Occulte Laboramus. Sounds like you had an awesome time! Nice to hear 5th Edition working smoothly, even at 20th level.

The resurrection is a real "rise my Galactus" moment

I like diplomacy more than persuasion. Persuasion is more the perview of things that are resolved via fictional positioning most of the time. Diplomacy is the scale of things that justify rolling.

Man this is great, brings me back to the old days of Matt doing campaign diaries and me just imagining how cool it would be to play in this campaign. Would love to see this more and want more of this adventure!

So glad content is flowing again, love the dune series!!

Since most groups never reach level 20, it should be a fun treat to start a campaign world with a 20th level encounter, the outcome of which informs the campaign world set some time in the future. Many many fantasy worlds have epic events in the past that shaped the world of the current storyline; so why not give the players a personal connection to those events.

My primary group I used to play with frequently had campaigns get to 20th level, but we typically would go for very long form campaigns, and had a very regular play schedule that almost never got interrupted. We played once a week 4 hours on Saturdays for about 10 years, and frequently a single campaign would go on for about a year, and sometimes even longer. So with 52 4 hour sessions a year, hitting 20th level was almost inevitable, but it was a ton of fun because it really allowed us to build a history in the DnD settings around the characters that our group had developed. A group of 4 out of 7 of our standard players had an entire Dwarven Clan they had developed with a complex family history composed of their different player characters, and how they related to each other called Clan Axegrinder. One family line generally produced Dwarven Battleragers of varying levels of crazy, for example, each with their own unique quirks, though one of that line was a pariah that was a Dwarven Mage who constructed a magical mech suit with different wands and rods built into to cast varying types of spells. We also had a tongue in cheek line of Taverns that had effectively become the largest chain Tavern in the Forgotten Realms within our campaigns called the Drunken Dragon Taverns, and you could basically find one in any city. Playing campaigns that regularly get to 20th level do frequently require that you develop a lot of internal house rules just to keep combat somewhat balanced, and keep players from coming up with just some truly ridiculous builds that trivialize combat, but it's still a ton of fun. For example, back in 2nd Edition, we had to limit the number of attacks that a player could get up to, to 4 just because we had a player who ended up creating a Monk who could do 16 attacks per turn and destroy an Adult Red Dragon in a single turn of combat. We did briefly try 4e but ran into similar issues with damage in general in 4e, in that even with the inflated health pools that 4e monsters had, frequently the party was killing even large boss level monsters like Astral Dreadnoughts in a single turn, eliminating a lot of the challenge and we had to further inflate boss health pools to keep fights interesting past that. 5e seems to in general strike a nice balance of player freedom and ability to do cool things without allowing them to just 1 turn bosses as often.

dope video, cool to get some perspective on what stakes and threats are like narratively at such high levels.

First: Always love when a new Colville video pops up in my notifications of any variety, what a blessed day Second: (and likely irrelevant) but casting Gate over Plane Shift can be the go to move if you only have the diamonds for Gate, and not the Tuning Forks required for Plane Shift.

I am a big fan of high level adventures. Every time I run it, its the best improv session. Whatever your story is, it happened. I run them like the adventure was completed and we're all just ad libbing what developments and successes our characters had. Filling in plot holes with fun.

I had a 20th level campaign (1-20) that I organized lazily. With one exception, it was more of an adventurers guild style where we play once a month and level up after each session. At level 1 the party got recruited on a crusade preparing for an invasion of the 9 hells. Level 19 was the emotional peak, as most of the party had more of a conflict with Tiamat and that's where she died. Level 20 was probably more rough in mechanics but everyone enjoyed it because it was more of a celebration. We played online starting during lockdown. At level 20 we were around the table for 9 hours in person having a great time.

I loved this thanks. It reminds me of your old d&d campaign diaries which I loved btw

My only experience with 5e 20th level play was an 8 hour PvP battle royale that started with 14 players before being whittled down to about 4. Both the eye and hand of Vecna were in the arena and got used, someone shapechanged into an ancient bronze dragon that survived about a round and a half as all of the other players ganged up on them, it was wild. It was the last session to finish a Westmarches campaign and everybody could use their own characters, provided they had reached level 20, or create new ones that had to be underpowered (item wise) to prevent everybody making new OP builds. I hadn't reached 20 so I created a fire genasi 1 fighter 19 war wizard with signature spell shield and misty step, incredibly I came 2nd to a minmaxed triton vengeance paladin, that I nearly managed to kill, played by a good friend and DM, so I think I did pretty well.

I like the idea of twitch highlights, and this was a fun story. The end felt a little abrupt. A quick 10 second outro might be worth considering in the future if it's not too much editing effort.

Wow, that kicks so much azz. Just having the decades of world building to back up the universal plate tectonics.

You guys truly are living your best life and I love to see it

What an awesome video. Thanks for posting this! Please do more!

The group I play in went through this adventure (w/o modifications) between one long-term (& much lower-level) campaign & another. It was fun in that form, too!

Oh my god, Matt I miss these! I've been surprised not to see Campaign Diary style breakdowns for your Dusk series as well

Loved the story, loved how it evolved from a Danger Room to a campaign, and I especially loved how you ended with Din Thai Fung which is hands down my favorite place for dumplings. 😃

Planeshift requires a tuning fork for the plane while Gate doesn't, right? Could explain part of the reason why it's a difference in spell level.

Ran a level 19 adventure last weekend (Eberron Oracle of War, back to the mud), running a level 20 adventure tomorrow night (Dreams of Red Wizards, the Death of Szass Tam), and playing in a level 20 on Sunday. Tier 4 content is a ton of fun. In the lvl 19 adventure, the party of five wrapped up with multiple death saves, almost every spell slot spent (paladin was empty, cleric had only 1st level slots, monk had 4 ki remaining) everyone was bloodied. There were multiple times where the players were positive they were heading for a TPK, but they managed to get the job done. If you have a character who's played a lot of tier 4 though, they can really crank the numbers as they slowly accumulate wishes and boons.

We just did a 20th level one shot and we used your Beastheart! If any one wants to check it out our channel is called Creatures and Corridors. Vod isn't up just yet but should be up soon!

I decided to go out of my comfort zone and ask two different friend group to play a lvl 20 one shot in hopes of understanding lvl 20. Bit better. Hopefully it helps me in the future for my current campaign that is at lvl 8, crossing my fingers we continue all the way to 20 .

This was awesome, thanks for sharing it Matt

As a DM, I honestly find higher level play to be easier to manage, but I think what people find easier or harder is entirely based on their own experiences and what types of media they consume regularly.

This is a great development - so much viewing gold unearthed in your life streams - all easily 'worthy' of a RU-vid release. More, please, more!

I loved BBC's radio dramatisation of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. As you say this is your definitive version of LotR, that is my definitive version of Narnia. But thank you for showing me that this exists as well, it will surely lead me down a rabbit hole of dramatisations! Also your level 20 D&D video/story/game sounds awesome too. As always, love your work

You are a damn good DM, a great storyteller, and an awesome creator!

Loved it on the stream, love hearing it again!

Imo, high level play is the best. I was in 4 "3 season" (Spring through Fall) campaigns that began in 1st Ed & ran through 2nd Ed. High level play is the most satisfying because of many reasons; everyone deeply knows the world that they are in, and the people which inhabit it. Important NPC's are a part of the characters lives; their goals can become just as important as the players. The dangerous elements of low level play have returned; the stakes are high as usually your group succeeds spectacularly or fails with great consequences. You're trying to think how to secure your characters legacy, which may be the most important plot point in any game.

What a great voice you have! (And terrific content as well!)

That's a dope story. Sounds like a lot of fun. I need to go back and watch the Chain. You have such a flair for drama and I need to get better at that

Din Tai Fung - so good you'll pause a session of high level combat. An excellent choice.

This is now one of my favorite videos on this entire channel 😂😂

THANK YOU for uploading this. As someone who uses Premium to download your videos to listen to whole driving long hours at work, I often feel like I miss out on a lot of chill, conversational content that I would enjoy but don't get because it's on Twitch. Whether it is stuff like this, or 'story time with uncle Matt' or talking about media I really enjoy it and it helps pass the hundreds of hours I spend on the road. So thank you for uploading and please consider doing some more when you can.

High level play is amazing with the right DM that understands how to get over the common roadblocks. 15+ is where things are spicy. More people should try running it!

I would listen to Matt tell a story about waiting in line at the DMV

I will say Gate is mostly for summoning and mass transit. Basically Gate moves other people, Planeshift is for moving yourself and your party.

I'm not connected to the author of the adventure, but I am thankful Matt that you talked about the Arcane Library! I haven't bought the adventure you talked about, but I think I have about 15 of her adventures and just about every one of her adventures has been a total blast. I hope she gets more support because she makes awesome stuff. Any DM's on here should definitely consider checking out that site if possible. My favorite so far has been The Monastery of the Shadow Sorcerers. Thank you Matt! I will definitely check this adventure out!

So... No comment about hitting 2 million yet? Been waiting all day to hear from you!

Old-school vide from home. Nostalgic. cool Viper Probe Droid model in the background too! And the topic is fun. What not to love!

Matt i wont lie. Id love to just have a list of the batshit crazy awesome names you make

"This world has many hearts." Like a certain house might...

The idea that anyone would willingly stop such an adventure for something as mundane as *food* is utterly beyond me. 🤣 I just love the stories, Matt. Thanks!

Gate is 9th level because you can both teleport to a perfectly precise location on any plane while plane shift only takes you to a general location, there's no limit to how many creatures can traverse the portal whereas plane shift specifies a maximum of 8 creatures who must be linking hands while the spell is being cast, and gate can bring creatures to you while plane shift can only take you and a few others somewhere else. So there are actually quite a few differences that make gate a more powerful spell.

I think level 20 dnd is some of the best dnd if your DM is willing to roll with the punches of how powerful the heroes are. My DM a few years ago did a level 20 one shot where the far realms were encroaching into the other planes. I played a shadow monk, there was a paladin of bahamut and a bard, enough I can't remember their subclasses. The first encounter was a hit team of six mind flayers and three powerful warriors who were riding full ass adult dragons. The bard force caged the mindflayers and we took the three dragon riders down then dealt with the mindflayers. As the story went on, we realized that we might all die saving the multiverse. There were people we failed save, my monk was possessed by the corrupting nature of the far realms and we finally defeated the final boss. These were characters that we had all played for years but never all together and never at level 20 before. So this could have easily been the end. But our DM gave us a choice. If we wanted to do one more adventure as these characters, our names and appearances would be struck from history and the final adventure would be about finding a new epic destiny. So we all took the deal and found ourselves at a tournament that is used to elevate a hero to godhood. My monk became the god of martial arts and paths after accidentally killing her own father but reuniting with her long lost mother. The only person still in existence that recognized her. The paladin became a dragon himself in the service of Bahamut And the bard became the new fucking Santa Claus. Now my monk is still the god of martial arts and paths and my new monk in the new campaign follows her teachings. No one remembers her how she lived, but now many people follow the paths she laid out. At no point did we feel like the adventures were like a cake walk. They felt like the sort of adventures that epic adventurers would get into. World changing, divine, huge events. If you go to high level dnd with the mindset that you're essentially DMing those last few books/chapters of the biggest of high fantasy, you'll have a good time.

Wow, how is it after 3 years watching you tube videos I've never come across you? Had it not been for another utuber mentioning you I'd still not know about you. Well you were highly recommended so I plan to check out much of your content.

Gate is a higher level than Plane Shift because Plane Shift requires you to have a separate (pre-attuned) tuning fork for each plane you want to go to, whereas to cast Gate, you say where you want to go and it just works. Gate also allows you to go to a precise location, whereas if you Plane Shift without a teleportation circle as your destination, you could end up anywhere on that plane (narrowing it down as far as 'in or near a specified area the size of a city' at the GM's discretion). (There's also the more obvious benefits of being able to summon another creature _to you_ with Gate, or transport more than 8 people.)

Super excited to hear about high level play. My current group is 13th level. Also psyched for The Talent. Love psionics since 3.5 and haven't been able to fall in love with a mystic or psion yet in 5. Thanks for putting out delicious content to be consumed.

Dude, you are very entertaining, thank you for your contribution to my life

I wonder what Matt would think to know, that he's the one who really inspired me to hone my craft. As a DM I often ask my players many questions about their preferences and basically view myself as getting to be a game developer that plays in the game and develops the game at the same time. But I have found that I only do the broadest kind of campaign prep, and never use literature like adventure modules, because I find it most fun to run the game almost purely through improvisation. Matt has taught me many ideas about ratcheting up the tension for the players, challenging them, tweaking the math, and implementing a level of lethality in the game best suited to my own specific player's fun. So Matt, you've really gotten us into a head space where we can have loads of fun with the game, and we'd like to thank you for that.

At the 9:00 mark when you talk about the differences between Plane Shift and Gate, Plane Shift is used for a small group. Gate is used as a portal that can transfer armies, given enough time. Also the material component for Plane Shift is a rod attuned to that plane of existence, which means you usually have to premeditate where you're going to Plane Shift to, whereas Gate can just be compulsively cast.

08:31 I happened to have captions on - 'younique's quiche coil' - is the name of my bard's new SKA band.

Love high level dnd! I also love DMing it. You are basically playing anime in the final season, every session.

Gate, like many high-level spells, is extremely useful when used in the right context. But is overkill without that context.

While in art school my Dm had me make four level 20 characters in 3.5 dnd and went into the epic level handbook. The characters lived until they hit level 28 until they all died in a vampire lair. It was only about ten sessions but those characters will live in my mind forever

Lars' neg of Tiamat is #chefskiss

Thats so cool. I have almost no DMing experience, but now I want to run one of these

Just keep talking at us Matt, we love your stories.

I ran a Pathfinder game from 1 to 20 and it was a lot of fun. At 20th there were starting to be some cracks in the system, partly due to magic items but also saving throws.

Just finished a campaign at lvl 20 on Monday! Was epic! Good end to a 3 year long campaign that started at level 3. I actually often prefer the DM giving us insane problems to solve as lvl 20 characters. We are all wargamers at heart, so the campaign escalating to that point is always fun when it happens.

Against the Wyrm of the World's End sounds like the logical conclusion of a game that starts with Against the Cult of the Reptile God...

One of the most interesting aspects of this is so many of the players chose human as the character race/ancestry. This runs counter to almost every other experience, direct or virtual, I've had of 5E, as most 5E players I've known or watched seem to want to play anything BUT humans.

I am now fully aware of how rare it is that I've been part of a table who successfully played/ran multiple 1-20 games.

running a campaign for characters that are now beyond level 20 after two years (they are multiclassed, 16th level in main class anf 5th level in a second class) the party of 3 players completely stomped a tarrasque that i ran as maximally difficult as i am capable of doing

Diplomacy can also include veiled references to a Large Stick, wielded by you, or someone else. Thats why I like it!

I listened to this before I had gotten to the sapphire sky in the chain. Absolutely crazy to understand these references

The quipy quote is "things that are dead should stay dead".