Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to the adventures of Vox Machina, who just recently found themselves hellbound in search of a plate armor vestige. Determined to avoid letting the relic fall into the Chroma Concord’s hands, J’Mon Sa Ord apparently tucked it away with an accommodating demon, who now holds it within the infernal City of Dis.

This seems about on-pace for their adventure so far, as we enter the third act of their overall journey. DnD’s leveling system naturally accommodates a certain scaling of challenges; characters between levels one and six generally confront local villains, seven through twelve constitute the “wandering age” of traveling do-gooders, and anything beyond that is the realm of seasoned heroes, characters who, like Vox Machina, are coming into their own as history-shaping figures. Among DnD’s many efforts to square mechanical and narrative drama, its leveling system is one of the most concrete and coherent, and smart DMs will scale the scope and threat of their stories accordingly.

Of course, things get a little wonkier even higher in the level scale, once you reach the mid-teens and beyond. At that point, things like physical environmental challenges and most mundane foes are simply no threat to a party of properly equipped heroes; they have scaled beyond the fundamentals of your average adventure, and most campaigns will accordingly retire them well before they hit twenty. This is the challenge I am currently facing, with my players demanding post-game content even after their victory over the forces of hell. I’ve been doing my best to accommodate these requests, and am currently in the process of weaving in an eldritch adversary that expresses itself largely within the most fraught landscapes of the world, be they magically corrupted cities, temples at the bottom of the ocean, or active volcanoes. It’s a tricky thing to balance pacing and tone at this scale, particularly since I’m now one among several writers, basically just handling the big plot-centric beats while my players take turns running side quests. But anyway, I’ve rambled enough about scaling – let’s go to hell!

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