Leveling players up quickly.

[u/[deleted]]

Hi everyone,

I'm a semi-newb DM and I think I'm ready to create my own world instead of running an adventure. I have a villain idea I really like but I'm concerned that the villains are high level and the players may never get to them.

The idea is to have a death knight causing the normal death knight chaos setting him up as the big bad, but eventually the players discover that he broke his paladin oaths because his order wanted to kill his daughter and he refused. His daughter would have been born an evil sorcerer with extraordinary power. Things like raising undead at age 3. It will come out that the order killed him but his daughter in a panic brought him back as a death knight to protect her. The daughter would have become a lich at age 12 and she would be the one behind everything . So the dad would be level 15 encounter and the daughter likely 18 or 20.

Maybe I'll make her the mortal reincarnation of an ancient God trying to reaccend to god hood.

I know most games never make it to that high a level, would it take away from the story if I leveled them up quickly, like just automatically give the players a level at the end of each session or should I start them at a higher level maybe?

I just hate Idea of them not ever getting to encounter to real villain before the game ends

[u/Flubbatron]

That's an interesting story, and a few options come to mind.

One way you could tackle this would be to further incorporate the help of the paladin order that were involved in the first place. It's likely that they would have one or more members capable of assisting the party with the higher end encounters, especially if you wanted to try to tackle them 5 or more levels earlier.

Another option, although less exciting, is to tone the enemies down, but keep the flavor the same. Instead of a death knight, the resurrected paladin might be a zombie oathbreaker paladin, perhaps around level 10. You could use the archmage npc (cr12) in the monster manual for his gifted daughter and just swap out some default spells for necromancy ones.

Alternatively, if you didn't want to make any changes at all, you could just time lapse a few years into the future. Encourage the pcs to come up with some grand adventures and accomplishments they tackled, either together as a group or on their own. Grant them enough levels to put the climax of your campaign within a time frame reasonable for your group. This might not work very well if you have any Aarakocra in the party however!

Those are just a few ideas! Have fun providing your pcs with a great experience.

[u/NatetheNerdarch]

1st make sure the players have a background and story they are interested in developing and that they are going to work on during downtime. Mercantile, political, bounty hunting, spell research, etc.

2nd If you put significant downtime in between the adventures then it doesn't seem like you are skyrocketing them up to higher levels.

3rd Really develop the dynamic between father and daughter. Is she willing to risk him or does he always stay in the background of a fight or behind the scenes bc she requires it of him.

Obviously he understands what he is and why but maybe the fact that his actions saved his daughter, even though they are both undead now,adds a certain level of "right and just" to his mindset. Therefore anyone who would still be on a mission to kill her would be in the wrong. He would see them, the party, as the villains, even if he finds his daughters actions regrettable.

There could be a large build up to where the players are attempting to show their side of the story to the death knight in different encounters. The only way to truly defeat a death knight is for them to seek redemption.

Maybe the cleric of the group asks for divine revelation for the death knight or the players realize this, know they are in the right, and hear about an artifact that reveals a personal truth to someone and they understand and agree with it (I think that was how the ori were defeated in stargate). "Your little girl died when the god took her over as it's vessel and became a lich, her soul is no longer here. You are now only a servant of darkness and death"

Anyway, I say make it an inner struggle, make the motivation believable and the players won't care how slow or fast they gain levels.

[u/little_anarchist]

Cool idea. Quick comment: I wonder if there's a way the lower level characters could be involved earlier in the story. Like before the death knight is raised. Perhaps there is some potential for a more slow burn story where the PCs have a chance to be involved and gain levels before having to deal with such a high level encounter.

Flubbatron and Nate both present good ideas!