To what levels do you actually play?

[Firechanter]

On any D&D forum you will find lots of discussions about level 20 builds.
So I've been wondering: do your campaigns actually go uo to level 20?

If so, what happens when the party gets to level 20? Your characters are maxed out, so gathering more XP is pointless. Do you keep playing to enjoy their awesomeness, or do you finish the campaign quickly and switch to fresh characters?
Or do you actually play into Epic levels... that option seems to be unpopular, from what I read here, and I can understand it.

Personally, I have to say that up to now, no pen&paper game has gone further than level 13-ish. Only time I've played into Epic levels was on a NWN multiplayer RP server, whether that counts or not.

In May we're going to start a new campaign, and this time I hope to keep it going until level 20, but my co-players seem skeptical.
What are your experiences?

EDIT:
Bonus questions:

1. If your campaigns tend to "stay low", what's the reason for this? Do you as a group prefer the lowest levels? Does the DM deliberately keep you small, or doesn't he understand how XP works? Etc.

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

[Tvtyrant]

Level 6 tends to be where we quit unless we start at a higher level then 1. I should say more accurately that we play through around 6 levels and then quit as we are tired out of our characters/the campaign by then.

[Undercroft]

I prefer my players ranging around 6-12. Higher than that and i tend to have difficulty challenging them appropriately

[Essence_of_War]

I'm making my first foray into high levels of DM'ing with Gygax's Necropolis soon.

I'm frightened.

[HalfDragonCube]

All the campaigns I have been in have been at low levels. My first character was level one. My highest level character has been level four, which is the level the campaign started at.

[ustus]

I'm currently gamemastering the first game my group has played with double digit levels. And both loving it and regretting it.

Usually, we're a bunch of college students who play a game that lasts a semester. Usually, we gain experience fast enough to level up three to five times, and usually we start at about 5. I have more of a heroic/epic taste in story than our usual GM, so I decided to run a more heroic/epic power-level game I'm having trouble with party balance, simply because we're not optimizers (at all, I see some things on this forum that seem incredibly convoluted to me, and most of our group just looks at the normal GM or I and says "I want to play a ___________") so some of the gaps in understanding of the mechanics are more pronounced at higher levels than lower levels. Though, this goes a bit more into "why do you play at those levels" than "what levels do you play at". I'm also pretty new to the idea of a PnP RPG, though, so I'm just starting to understand the implications of starting at any given level.

[Tyndmyr]

Current campaign is guaranteed to go till 20. We started at 1, are currently at 7. The DM has run it twice previously, so I have faith it'll do so.

After that, I'll run a sandbox D20M that'll run for...at least a dozen levels if the players are interested. Then a D&D setting that's good for 30+.

[NichG]

I've played a DCC module where you start as 'level 0' (you have a single level in an NPC class), and then also play a moment from the adventurers' careers where they're level 8ish, then another moment when they're I think somewhere around level 15. Sort of an interesting premise, since you're trying to figure out what sort of adventurer they're going to become when you pick them at level 0.

For more extended campaigns, a good portion that I've seen or run have started in the level 7-9 range, and go until level 12-13. However, the outliers are worth mentioning: I'm in a campaign that started at level 5 and the current highest level in the party is something like ECL 45. It also has an amusing level spread since on a whim one of the players brought in a level 1 character last game. There was also a Slayers d20 game I played in that ran from level 1 to approximately level 21 (though I joined it around level 8).

The game I'm currently running has a similar insane level spread, with the highest level person in the party being at 50, having completed the Dragon Ascendant PrC, and the lowest level person is around 8 because he has invested xp into a ton of custom homebrew stuff. Of course in this game, the level 8 can do things like dominate non-sentient objects or even local concepts at will, immediate-action save people from attacks, and summon 10^8 lbs of fairy gold into an enemy's pockets (until they burst, at least), so its unclear whether thats a real handicap or not.

[Yukitsu]

Generally 3 to technically 21. Last fight before the curtain closes would technically push us over, but the game ends.

[XianTheCoder]

I've been playing for probably 13 years, and I've been to level 11 once, otherwise getting to level 5-6 is a BIG deal. The 2 common DM's in my group love low power, minimum magic games, where the player wealth level barely exceeds poverty.

[Aharon]

Highest level ever? 2nd edition, we reached about level 200 or 2000 or something similarly ridiculous. That was with homebrewed classes that advanced attributes beyond 25, and added XP boni for high attributes :smallbiggrin:

In actual, serious campaigns? Highest was 16th. I had to quit because of a residence, I believe the campaign went on to 18th without me and then fell apart because other players left.

[Si-on]

The game I play in is expected to reach level 21/22. We are currently 17th or 18th level. The DM is having problems balancing encounters to challenge the party without outright killing some of us. This has been a problem for a few levels now and I think it is mostly due to the composition of the group rather than the fact the we are high level.
EDIT: spelling.

[Telonius]

My groups tend to use the adventure paths, so it's pretty common to go from 1-20.

[Tekren]

Games I play in usually either go from at one to four, or from five to nine.

That being said, there are outliers.
Epic game that started at 21 and went to 36ish.
Lost count of games that only played 2 sessions of, and never got past 1st level.

Games I DM (that weren't one shots) start at one and go until the players' lives interfere, usually around level 9. One went to twelve and actually concluded.

That 1-12 game had a player who optimized his build for a fifth level character. He had to adapt when it went beyond that.

[Dsurion]

I've never played above level 6, and those low levels I enjoyed a lot. I like starting at level one, but I think my preferred play level is hovering at level two, maybe three. We generally play with low-to-no magic, though, so that probably has something to do with it.

[Amphetryon]

I'm making my first foray into high levels of DM'ing with Gygax's Necropolis soon.

I'm frightened.

I've played in Necropolis. I'm frightened for you. It has a rather "old-school" feel to it.

On topic, I'll play 1-20, but the game changes so much around level 14 that I personally don't get a lot of enjoyment from anything higher than that.

[Lateral]

I've played in Necropolis. I'm frightened for you. It has a rather "old-school" feel to it.

...Gygaxian old-school? Like, Tomb of Horrors-style old-school? :smalleek:

I generally start anywhere from level 1 to level 12, although I prefer to start from around level two or three. I find level one boring.

[Amphetryon]

...Gygaxian old-school? Like, Tomb of Horrors-style old-school? :smalleek:


It may have been partly my old-school DM running a Gygax module, but we stumbled through a lot of 'guess what Garry's thinking?'

[Infernalbargain]

I've spent most of my time in the 5-10 regime.

In a game I'm GM'ing it is expected to end somewhere around 10-12. It was meant to be a 4 man game, but two had schedule changes before the first session so I've had to level the party faster than expected.

[Kansaschaser]

I normally start my games at level 3, and we play until about level 25-30. I really like the epic game. I get to put my players up against all sorts of difficult and strange stuff in the epic levels. :smallbiggrin:

I've never been able to play in someone elses game where we made it to the epic levels. When I'm the player, we normally stop at level 18, or close to it. :smallyuk:

[Garagos]

I believe my highest level character has made it to 31 and the campaign isn't over yet, but we're giving the DM a break so he can play a little bit in other campaigns. He said he expects to end the campaign around level 35 before starting a new one with the children or grandchildren of our epic heroes.

[Lastgrasp]

Well back into my 2nd Edition days I actually got a Mage to 20th level, but the DM was over the top and it turned out to be Monty Haul type of campaign. Exp and magic item were like water.

As a DM since 2nd Edition I've never ran a character higher then level 13. Most of my game start at level 1 and get to about 10 before ending.

[peacenlove]

1st level due to beginner players.
Enjoyed a shadowcaster from 6th to 15th level but with heavy adjustments (see sig)
When players got a grasp of DnD we usually played from 4th to 10th, with the exception of a 1,5 year campaign that spanned from 10th to 16th level (Melee and CoDzilla builds so manageable even at those levels).
At 2nd edition (which till this day i have complete ignorance of the rules) we played a campaign from 1st level to 9th level.

[Eldariel]

I've played a few epic campaigns. Generally, we play until 15-16 tho; from 1 only once. Usual start is like level 3-9

[PollyOliver]

My RL group usually starts in the 1-3 range, sometimes at 5. I've played more than one 1-20 game before, one of them also going epic, but not very far into epic, because at that point the rule become moderately irrelevant.

[Rei_Jin]

Pen and Paper games I've played in over the last few years have started at level 1, and gone to level 25-30. It takes a long time to get there, but it's fun because the characters develop naturally, rather than being optimised.

[BillyBobJoe]

... Is it sad that I've played a game up to level 48? Starting from first. And gestalt. God, that was the best game I ever played. Went on since about Unearthed Arcana came out to a little bit ago.

[Pentachoron]

but it's fun because the characters develop naturally, rather than being optimised.

I swear to ****** if this thread derails into another optimization debate I'm holding you personally responsible.

Anyway, my games tend to be lower level because I like to have that gritty feel that <lvl6 play delivers well. I've played ECL20 games before and they were okay, but they aren't the type of game I'm into running.

I will say I typically don't have an end level goal in mind, I end games once the story is over.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Highest level campaign I have played... ran from level 4 to 10 (I am really mad with that campaign, we let it fall appart an encounter away from level to 11 :smallfurious:)

Normally my group tries to start games that go from level 1 and are supposed to go till level 20; but in reality we are lucky to play more than 3 sessions (yes my 3.5 group is bad; but my Anima group is much better)

Oh and once I "played" in a level 17 One-Shot against a Dracolich and it's devil army. And I say "played" cause my character was a Soul Knife 12/Psion 3/Quori Nightmare...

[AslanCross]

In games I've DMed, 12. We once did a Lv 18 one-shot.

[Bang!]

I had a character get to level 6 once.

ETA: I played D&D a lot for 6-7 years; this post wasn't meant to be totally content-free.

[under_score]

I think most of the games I've been in have lived between 4 and 12 or so, as seems to be a trend for people. The game I'm running right now, however, started at 3 and has most of the party at 19 right now, looking to go into epic levels for a bit. Though I think circa 4-12 is pretty much the hot stuff, it's nice to have a game last a goodly bit of character and power growth. I certainly hope to have most of the games I DM run 3-20+.

[Gamer Girl]

My games go on until around 40th level or so. My game world is a very, very powerful game world and it's all status que. Nothing in my game world is 'scaled and balanced' to fit the characters. Gork is a 11th level ogre thug bandit even when the players are first level and one slap from his hand can kill them. And I'm a killer DM too. Should the characters get into trouble or bite off more then they can chew, they know they will die. Very often the game will go on until each character has done one major goal.


Some times the goal is immortality. This is a great goal for players as it's near impossible(as per the Ye Old Gold Box D&D Immortality Rules). Dozens of my players have tried, but only a handful have ever succeeded(and as you should note from the above paragraph I'm a HARD DM).

[Curmudgeon]

Low Epic (stopping in the 20s), with no Epic spell seed stuff. I like being to pull out most of the stops, and there are a couple of characters I've developed to that point all the way from level 1.

[RndmNumGen]

I've only played a few games, but so far the farthest I've gotten was going from 1-3. I got to play a 5th level character once, but the campaign started at lv5, and only lasted two sessions.

[myancey]

The campaign I'm currently dm'ing is going to level 15. I started them out at level 2. I usually will pair two campaigns together and give players the opportunity to change out characters if they'd like to. I reward players who maintain the same characters in both, however, because of the effort I put into writing RP-dependent side plots.

My next campaign is supposedly going to run from levels 1-25. I'm using the FR campaign setting. The breakdown I'm using is:
Mysteries of the Moonsea + Side Quests, levels 1-5
Red Hand of Doom, throwing in Tomb of Horror, 6-11
City of the Spider Queen, 12-18
Bastion of Broken Souls, 19
And then a self-created campaign involving Ironfang Keep, 20-25

[LordBlades]

Usually my group's campaigns are designed to start around lvl 3-5(we find lower level to be too dice dependent for survival and limiting) and go up to lvl 15-16 (9th level spells on optimized spellcasters turn the world upside down rather quickly).
However I think most of the time we've spent playing in the 6-12 level range.

[OrganicGolem]

I almost never start at level 1, I feel like it's too prone to accidental death, and with resurrection/raise dead out of the range of things available to characters of that level it feels like it becomes a game of chance to write a character that makes it to level 3.
The farthest I've PCd was 17 (which last all of one 9th rank spell cast), but I've DMed games that started at 3 to level 27, and I once ran an epic game that started at level 21, and ended something like 38.
Currently I'm running a huge dungeon that will go until the PCs can beat my custom built avatar guarding the exit... whatever level that ends up.

[tiercel]

The last campaign I DM'ed started at level 1 and climbed all the way to level 17, which was the first time I'd ever even played characters above level 12.

The vast majority of the time I've played has been between ~4th-10th levels; even low level campaigns tend to not spend too much time at 1st-2nd levels.

In addition to avoiding the issue of high-level PC capabilities, campaigns often can stop well short of 20 to avoid the problem of high-level BBEGs (who are typically of a level/CR a bit higher than the party level for the Final Fight, assuming the campaign has a planned end). The higher level you go, the more you are forced to confront questions like "if the BBEG has access to blasphemy and plenty of caster level boosters, why *wouldn't* he one-shot TPK the PCs?"

[Gwendol]

In my games characters normally begin play at level 3. I have one character levelled all the way up to 7, and the rest are at 6 and 4.

I don't expect to go above 12. Ever.

[Firechanter]

Interesting to read all the different replies.
Especially that some people seem to play for years and never get out of the lowlevel section. Some of these posts don't make it clear whether for them it's a group decision to "stay low", or the DM is just keeping them small.

Reminds me of one group that one of my fellow players once was in. They started out at level 1, almost died in the first encounter (one or more Boars), barely won and at the end of the whole session received _17XP apiece_.
(The DM uses XP _distribution_ guidelines from another game, but sticks to the _advancement_ tables of 3E. Effectively this means about tenfold slowed advancement.)
In the middle of the second session, after something similar happened, my co-player stood up from the table, ripped his sheet in half, and left.
That was several years ago; last I heard was a couple of weeks ago that this group was still active and had made level 2 by now. :p To be fair they only play once a month or so, but still.

For us, it always used to be customary to make level 2 at the end of the first session. That was in the old days when we played AD&D or Dark Eye and didn't dare to even _think_ about starting higher.
Now we've emancipated from this nonsense; we skip those bullcrap "help a rat is killing me" levels entirely and start at least on level 3, sometimes higher.

[Blackjackg]

Most campaigns I've played or run have started at level one and finished somewhere between level 10 and 14.

[Dsurion]

Interesting to read all the different replies.
Especially that some people seem to play for years and never get out of the lowlevel section. Some of these posts don't make it clear whether for them it's a group decision to "stay low", or the DM is just keeping them small.You ought to edit something to this effect into the OP to get more full replies :smallsmile:

To answer more directly...

For us, it was a combination of the group deliberately staying low and the DM not understanding how experience works. Sometimes he'd just end a session staring intently over his notes like he was doing calculations, then he'd calmly put everything down and say, "Screw it. You get 200 experience." Half the time he'd be of the mind that it was 200 to split, and the other half it was 200 each. But we always remembered getting 200 XP.

But who were we to complain? None of us owned any books at all (just played off the SRD), he was the only one willing to DM, and even if the experience point thing was botched and we realized it later, the guy sure did run an entertaining set of games, so no one complained.

Later, once we got into the fifth and sixth levels, we realized we enjoyed the high risk of lethality at levels one and two. In fact, our group favorite encounter was when the DM set us four level one characters against six ghouls that really should have overpowered us easily. There was a lot of lucky rolling.

[Firechanter]

You ought to edit something to this effect into the OP to get more full replies :smallsmile:


Done. New Bonus Questions edited into the OP, both regarding low- and highlevel play.

[Wings of Peace]

I personally have played up to and (once or twice) beyond level 40. Once we get higher in level a lot of the problems aren't as hard so it ends up becoming a matter of how power affects the character's themselves.

My level 40 Wizard was pretty much king of the universe, but what made playing him interesting was playing out how having all that power changed his outlook. Frequently for example he would ignore his job in fights because he would simply forget that the other character's and people in general weren't always heavily enchanted. Other character's had their own quirks but that was my Wizard's most notable one.

[OrganicGolem]

I should also say, generally when I got into epic levels with games I ran, the PCs shift from a touch anything, attack anyone, damn the consequences kind of party to one that genuinely cares about their two 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper. Combine that with that gameplay becomes a great deal more political (influencing lords, or even lesser deities to change the world in some way) rather than stab monster, acquire loot. That's my group of players anyway.

[Rei_Jin]

Bonus questions:

1. If your campaigns tend to "stay low", what's the reason for this? Do you as a group prefer the lowest levels? Does the DM deliberately keep you small, or doesn't he understand how XP works? Etc.

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

When I've been involved with lower level campaigns, it's been because there was a wider range of players involved, and less ability for the DM/DMs to be involved in the development of characters. When as a DM, you open things up to a wider range of options, and you have a wider mix of players, you're going to end up with some very underpowered and some very overpowered characters. Being a lower level helps minimise the differences.

When we play higher levels, it's with a tight knit group and a mature DM who has houserules and controls in place through RP to make sure that you don't have Tippy wizards and CoDzillas. Honestly, there's a mix of optimization from low to mid in this group, with no ToB (they don't like the feel of it) and very few if any spellcasters (they're not as fun as being beatsticks). Because of that, high level play is normally just a more powerful version of low level play without rocket launcher tag. Our current party has a Ranger who uses gauntlets, a Monk/Fighter, a non-combat Cleric, a Ninja, and a Barbarian who likes to set himself on fire. As you can probably tell from that list, there's not really any optimization there.

[The Boz]

I prefer the 4-14 area myself. That's when most classes get their basic tools up, the useless ones can still contribute, and casters aren't gods yet.

[Eldariel]

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

We embrace it. We've learned to avoid playing bad classes and working the character concepts onto good mechanical chassises allowing us all to play on high levels. When opposition has the same tools, you're game. Rocket tag is hardly the name of the game; yes, people die if they're hit but there are billions of ways to avoid being hit so in that sense, you generally get to control everything and it really comes down to strategy.

EDIT: Though we've used various banlists in the past. Polymorph-line, for example. And some big changes to spell functionality like AD&D Gate.

[Curmudgeon]

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?
All metamagic cost reducers are banned (and there's certainly no "free" metamagic a la Incantatrix); that removes a lot of headaches.
Beyond those spells that a class gets for free, spell access is limited. Wizards have free choice of 2 spells per level, and everything else is hard to get. The same goes for Sorcerers who want to swap out spells. Scrolls are 1/10th as common in treasure, and the costs for buying scrolls on the rare occasion that they're offered for sale are 5x as high as in standard rules. Finding someone who will allow copying their spellbook is rare, and the fees are at minimum 10x as high. Even finding out the name of a particular spell that will accomplish some desired aim can involve a quest for a spellcasting character, because magical knowledge is hoarded.
Individual spells are scrutinized. For instance, the whole Alter Self-Polymorph-Shapechange line is dependent on knowing about particular forms, and those spells do not incorporate the various Monster Manuals. A spellcaster has to follow the standard skill rules:

They've got to Spot a creature of a particular type.
They've got to make the associated Knowledge check to know what type of creature it is.
Only then will the character know about that form; player knowledge of monsters is metagaming. :smallmad: Similarly, the power of the Shatter spell is dependent on the meaning of "solid", and any DM who lets a player get away with the anachronistic "neither liquid nor gas" chemical definition instead of "rigid, not flexible" should have Jello dumped in their pants. :smallyuk: Enlarge Person increases the weight of a character and their gear by a factor of 8, so they'll be stronger but (usually) slowed down by encumbrance. Scrutiny is important to keep spells from being abused.
In a game where magical boosts are common, dispel attacks are equally common. We've learned not to depend on temporary boosts.
I tend to be the most enthusiastic about optimization among those I game with. They generally play spellcasters and I generally play Rogues, and it works out pretty evenly.

[Aricandor]

I'm the DM, and my games have ran up to 13th level at most, started at around 3 at the time. Start levels vary between 1-3 depending on players.

I tend to prefer the 6-10 bracket for allowing reasonably complex villain builds and powers, while not becoming overwhelming to create. After that it feels like NPC-creation just takes too long to be feasible, when I'd rather concentrate my efforts on the basic plot and side hooks.
I like throwing in lots of various things, be it as small as bounty hunting or as large as a mysterious chain of kidnappings and murders players can bite on, so I don't want the NPCs to take too long or I'll just lose focus on it and start working on another of my planned hooks. :smallsmile:

The "buildup levels" 1-5 are also okay too with me, especially when doing particularly RP- or story-heavy adventures. Forcing players to caution and careful planning is always fun when DMing a group whose melee characters rarely even bring a ranged weapon at all. :smallbiggrin:

[Bang!]

1. If your campaigns tend to "stay low", what's the reason for this? Do you as a group prefer the lowest levels? Does the DM deliberately keep you small, or doesn't he understand how XP works? Etc.I mentioned my group plays exclusively at low levels. It wasn't a conscious decision on anyone's part, and the only variance from DMG experience procedures was shelling it out according to average party level rather than individual character level (doing that "correctly" was just too much work).

We started new characters at level 1, because it's level 1. That's just the level where you start. :smalltongue: That might have been a carryover from older editions, where nobody wanted to deal with the experience tables for starting characters and where PCs weren't expected to survive very long.

Also, character death was frequent, and kept the average level floating around 2-4.

It also had to do with our schedules. D&D 3e was something we did maybe once a week -- its character-building is intensely unfriendly for one-offs, so if we couldn't get all 4-6 players' schedules to align in a given week, we'd just use a different game.

[Tyndmyr]

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

Anything infinite(like wish loops) is banned. Arguing over the difference between infinite and arbitrarily high gets a DMG thrown at you.

Tainted Scholar, Beholder Mage, and Illithid Savant are banned. Diplomacy gets used more in line with the giant's rules. Otherwise, not much in the way of bannings, though certain games are limited to certain settings and the like.

Optimization levels range from "pretty good" to "impressive". A typical encounter is party level +4 or so. +6-+8 is not unusual. Someone who wants to play a sword and board fighter or a VoP monk gets pointed to better options. A DMM cleric or an incantatrix wizard have both been played, for instance. The current party at level seven included a gish wizard for melee, a DMM cleric in a support role, an ubercharger barbarian with ridiculous health and damage, and an ultimate magus stacking MM reducers of different types.


There is a certain amount of rocket tag, if you keep in mind rocket deflecting shields, ablative defenses, rocket dodging, and automatic rocket machine-guns.

[Telonius]

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

Some houserules do a lot to address this, particularly these:

"Do not try to break my game."
"Add Pun-Pun as an overdeity of cheese, metagaming, and exploits. He does not allow other characters to approach his power."

I remove or nerf the worst offenders (Contingency line, DMM shenanigans, Gate, only Shapeshift Druid, etc), power up the lower classes (Lots of love given to Monk and TWF characters, though I still haven't figure out what to do about Archers).

I usually run encounters with several moderately strong foes, rather than one big foe. This is more work on my part, but it cuts down on "rocket tag."

[NichG]

Bonus questions:

1. If your campaigns tend to "stay low", what's the reason for this? Do you as a group prefer the lowest levels? Does the DM deliberately keep you small, or doesn't he understand how XP works? Etc.

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

I've found that I'm unwilling to do what it takes to run for PCs above 11th level without extensive homebrewing and houseruling. It takes enough thought to make real threats and challenges for them that I lose the ability to do a lot of stuff on the fly without making it over-CR'd, which means more loot and xp, which just accelerates the cycle.

However, with modifications, the game need not devolve into rocket tag or fall apart even far above Lv20. The two super-high level games I'm involved in (one I'm running, one I'm playing in) are both what I'd call quirky medium-high optimization by the standards of this board. Basically, we stop a bit short of the chain-gating Solars, abusing Wish for item generation, and having all buff spells Persisted all the time levels of optimization. But on the other hand, we've had characters who can throw salvos of letter openers dealing about a thousand damage a round (abusing Palm Throw and X stat to Y), an omni-caster via Chameleon -> spellcasting advancing PrCs (he can cast all spells in the book spontaneously, a true Schroedinger Wizard), etc.

Essentially the things I've needed to do to let challenges keep up while still being easy to generate on the fly:

- Creatures have bags of hitpoints (10000 or so) and multiple full round actions a round: three or four in the case of things that are intended to be a serious threat.

- Creatures that are intended as solo fights for the party have mechanically weird resistances to save-or-lose abilities. Save DCs are staged, one at the full normal DC and one at half of that. If they make the half-DC (even on a natural 1) they take scaling ability damage/drain instead of suffering the actual lose effect. Similarly, things like Daze or Stun only take out one of their full round actions a round.

- Most creatures have a variety of abilities so they can respond to PC tactics and defenses:
- Melee full attack with a nasty special effect on hit
- Some ranged touch attack
- Some weaker auto-hit attack with minor special effects, such as a clinging damage aura or bad luck aura
- Single target specials that allow a save but are really horrendous to be hit by.
- Some source of battlefield teleportation or extremely fast movement
- Some sort of self-buff or contingent buff.
- Some sort of mook summoning ability, mostly to introduce extra chaff on the field as ablative distraction.

- Situations tend to be bigger in scale and scope. Ask a Lv20 party to stop the moon from causing massive tidal waves that destroy civilization after it was hit by a rogue asteroid. Or ask them to stop time from ending as potentiality is being consumed by a being that exists entirely as fluctuations in the underlying nature of probability. Or ask them to solve the decline of magic as its fundamental energy source begins to fade away.

- Non-combat challenges tend to be more about figuring out how to actually make contact with the challenge instead of what vastly powerful effect to throw at it to batter it down. More things mess with the mind of the player than the PC at this level. Get them to question what is real, etc. At this level, they're among the ranks of beings that answer divinations, so if they don't know then a divination probably won't know either. Surreal metaphysical stuff is good too.

[Yukitsu]

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

For people who know the rules well enough, running 17-20 is the same as running low levels.

We play moderate to high op. Myself and one other are the higher end, 2 are sort of in the middle, and two keep asking me to build their characters for them. Partly because they know I'm willing to break other people's characters, but not my own.

Rocket tag is a nice theory, but falls flat at higher levels of optimization where everyone carries enough chaffe to just laugh at rocket tag users. When both sides are high end optimization, higher levels have longer fights, and more intense ones. Generally, the better tacticians or best prepared players win the combats, not the most optimized characters.

[PollyOliver]

2. Particularly those who play to very high levels, say 17-20, how do you avoid the whole game coming apart due to broken spells etc.? At what levels of optimization do you play? Does your game devolve to rocket tag?

At least in my RL group, we tend to consciously nerf or overoptimize ourselves depending on the party makeup and our chosen classes. I've been on a bit of a caster binge lately, but I almost always play melee types normally, as do a couple other members of our group. Since we almost always have fully non-casters in the party, they optimize up and the people who play casters tone themselves down, and only pull out the stops when its really desperate. Also, our DM goes by the general rule that if it's admissible for the PC's it's admissible for the NPC's, so we tend to avoid slinging around the really bad one-shot encounter enders lest they be slung right back at us next encounter. Negative levels and dominate are, IMO, pretty much no fun whatsoever for the PC's to deal with unless they're plot-significant, so we don't use them on the NPC's either. If the group is leery of some of the worst save or die and save or lose effects, rocket tag is a lot less of a problem.

[Alaris]

Well, my current game has the highest level PC I've EVER played. And that is LEVEL 14.

In most of my games though, it's been between levels 1 and 9. The only reason we've hit the level cap of 14 in the most recent chapter of one of my games is that I've been playing this character for SEVERAL years...

The game isn't exactly optimized, (Heck, my character is Monk 2, Wizard 8, Fatespinner 4), but it is High Magic, and some cheese spells are used, but it's not to the point of breaking things. Heck, the PCs ARE actually some of the most powerful characters in the world as it is right now. If we wanted to, we could take down cities. But... we're good, alas.

[Ormur]

I've only really played in two games where I've levelled. The first and longest running started at level 1 and is now on level 17 where I imagine it'll end, at least before epic. The second is a gestalt game that started at level 2 and is now on level 8.

I'm also a DM in a long running campaign that started at level 4 and is now on level 12. I think it could possibly go on until level 20, the goal is 9th level spells at least.

I really like campaigns that go on for long enough for the character (or at least the player) to go from being an insignificant peon to a world-shattering history making legend.

[Trinoya]

If we wanted to, we could take down cities. But... we're good, alas.

I've been telling you guys to go evil for YEARS. *sigh* no one listens to their DM...

:P

[Malimar]

The only game I've played in that lasted more than 1d6 sessions, I joined at 3, and it fizzled out when my character was 8.

The first campaign I DMed started at 4 and ended in a total party wipe and seizure of the macguffins by the bad guys with the characters in the 7-9 range.

I'm recently running a new thing, starting at level 1. A player dinged level 2 last session, I expect at least one or two more dings to 2 tomorrow.


So I don't even know what the double digits look like, much less 20.