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View Full Version : What's the average level you play D&D at?



Saph
2007-03-19, 12:11 PM
This is just out of curiosity. I'd like to know how many people actually use the high-level builds you see around the Internet.

If you play at different levels over different groups/campaigns/times, average it out. So if you've spent a total of 20 sessions playing at levels 1-5, 20 sessions playing at levels 6-10, and 10 sessions playing at 11-15, the average level you play at would be 6-10.

- Saph

Krellen
2007-03-19, 12:17 PM
Most of my campaigns end before a lot of advancement is completed. I've run one from 1-20, and several that ended before anyone got past level 4. We always start at level 1.

Mennayr
2007-03-19, 12:19 PM
My groups usually start at level 1-3 but progress quite far. Campaigns usually last a year or more and characters are routinely high 20s/low 30s in level. Our last campaign ended with the highest level member of the group at level 38.

Characters reach 21 probably about 6 months in, and the rest of each campaign (1 session per week) is all epic.

Ranis
2007-03-19, 12:21 PM
I think a big thing that I've noticed about other people's games is that there is often a lack of group cohesivity within the gaming group, due to one reason or another. Just my two cents.

Khantalas
2007-03-19, 12:21 PM
At 6-8. That makes the heroes relatively weak, but still tough enough to beat a pitiful thug. And no one wastes points on Temporal Movement, which is not very useful in battle.

Oh, you were talking about D&D. My mistake.

Flawless
2007-03-19, 12:57 PM
High levels most of the time. Although we start at level 1 every campaign we spend a lot of time in the level 15 to 18 range.

Emperor Tippy
2007-03-19, 01:06 PM
Start at 5 most of the time and go until level 25 or so.

Galathir
2007-03-19, 01:12 PM
Most of our campaigns are around level 5-8 however, this semester I am playing in a campaign where we just hit level 12 and I am finding it a lot of fun. We occasionally do one shots at high levels but we generally don't get past level 8. I am running a campaign for some new guys and started out at level 1 and they just hit level four. I don't think they will get past level 6 this semester though.

kpenguin
2007-03-19, 01:15 PM
the campaigns I've run have had characters at lvls 4-6. It think that at 10+, the game becomes way too unbalanced between casters and noncasters. At less than 10, that imbalance in manageable.

Jade_Tarem
2007-03-19, 01:19 PM
For a while, with my old group, almost everything we did was level 10. Now it's mostly around 6ish, but we've run one campaign that started at level 18, and I've DM'ed one (still running but on hiatus) where the players have progressed across 15 levels, starting at level one, and may finish the campaign epic. A number of our newest campaigns start at level 1.

The one that started at level 18 crashed in two sessions. The DM's first clue that something was amiss was when the monk started laying waste to high-power opponents with enough time left over to start cooking, and the second was when I turned into a colossal sized intelligent tornado for a fight. The third was probably about the time that the treant warrior thing successfully grappled the tarrasque. Oh, yes... it was a cheese game. Ever since then, games have started lower where the DM could monitor progression.

LotharBot
2007-03-19, 01:46 PM
Campaigns that ended: one went 1-4, one went 12-13, one at 10 for one session
Current campaigns: played levels 1-12 so far, expect to go to 20. Another played levels 1-14, expect to go to 15-16. Another played 1-4, no idea where it'll end (can only play it when I visit family 1500 miles away.)

I think that puts our average in the 6-10 range.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-19, 01:54 PM
Most of my games start between 3 and 8, and run all the way up to 15-20. I have yet to run an epic game.

Person_Man
2007-03-19, 01:56 PM
I've played and DM'd campaigns that went from 1-20, but I find that the sweet spot for D&D mechanics is around levels 6-12.

clericwithnogod
2007-03-19, 02:22 PM
I voted 11-15, but 9-13 would be more accurate. Levels below four as a start point are kind of a drag for me at this point. If things drag out at lower levels I get kind of bored.

Talya
2007-03-19, 02:24 PM
Currently at 13, but we started at level 4, so averaged out, it's around 8 or 9.

Quietus
2007-03-19, 02:39 PM
My players and I all start at level 1 almost always, and work our way up from there. Right now, I've got one character who just reached 3, and one who just hit 6 (Yay!). I also have a character who was created for an epic campaign that started at level 20, and in two sessions has gone to level 30 (wacky DM craziness, guess he figured I needed the extra oomph to take out Tiamat). But I also run two online play-by-post games, in which none of the players are past level 2, so that balances everything out. I really don't count the epic guy 'cause he's basically a very small fry in the grand scheme of things. Of course, there's something entertaining about calling someone who casts as 27 psion/27 cleric a small fry...

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-03-19, 02:43 PM
We almost always start at level 1. I can count every instance where we didn't on one hand, and without half the fingers.

PnP Fan
2007-03-19, 03:04 PM
We generally start at about 5th level (to avoid the fragility of low level characters, and the nice level of competence a 5th level character has).
Our campaigns run typically 6 mos to 1 year, meeting once per two weeks, and we will advance to about 10th level, sometimes higher depending on the GM.

Druid
2007-03-19, 03:08 PM
Most of my group's campaiogns don't last too long and everyone insists on starting at level one so that's where the majrity of our time is spent. I'm getting sick of eing perpetualy low leveled though.

Tormsskull
2007-03-19, 03:08 PM
I think a more interesting question would be what are people's rate of advancement. My groups almost always start at level 1, there have been a couple of times where we started at level 3. After a few months of playing (1 time per week, about 4 hour sessions) they have increased two or three levels.

The longest running campaign I was ever in started at level 1 and ended at around level 13 and that was a 2 year campaign.

Whisper
2007-03-19, 03:11 PM
We were running some quick games with mid level characters 9-12 but lately we have been starting new games at level one.

LotharBot
2007-03-19, 03:20 PM
My current campaign meets once a week for about a 5 hour session. It took us 2 sessions per level, all the way to 12. (Level 11 actually took us two sessions plus one more fight, and level 12 took two sessions minus that fight.)

Kantolin
2007-03-19, 03:50 PM
We tend to start lowish, and end highish.

Never have hit 20 before, though... highest a campaign has gotten is 16. Of course, we normally don't start at level 1 (and ramp out of it quickly when we do).

So I guess somewhere in the middle.

d12
2007-03-19, 04:43 PM
Games I'm involved in tend to be played mostly at 1-5. That's not by choice, mind you. I'm thoroughly sick of the same mook-level crap. Part of the problem is that I get involved in most of the games I ever play through a friend of mine who I swear must be married to level 1. He started DMing a year or two ago and I got involved in two games he runs. One of them kind of fell apart around level 3, and the other came back after a hiatus and is currently at level 5. Not much has happened in the last couple months though, because he constructed some manner of investigative scenario and there really is only one of us who's interested in or good at those kinds of things. So that's been dragging lately. Hopefully we should have it resolved by the end of the next session, with a healthy dose of flurries and sneak attacks (my monk is the closest thing we have to a frontline fighter, so it's not exactly a group composed of optimal class selections).

The DM and I are also doing a mock dungeon crawl with classes we were interested in exploring, because neither of us gets to play enough to really look at things we're interested in. That's currently at level 4. He's running a psychic warrior and a ninja; I'm running a duskblade and a cleric. We alternate who handles the mobs so that he can get a taste of playerdom for a change.

A couple of years ago a mutual friend of ours invited us into a game he was running at level 9, so I got a taste of sweet, sweet competence for a while. That one didn't last nearly as long as I would like. It was fun being able to one-round a dire bear while I was hasted. :smallbiggrin: I've since made a personal vow to not get involved with any game that starts below level 5-6, cuz being good now is a hell of a lot better than maybe being good at some time in the future, if the game actually survives that long.

Lemur
2007-03-19, 05:06 PM
Practically all the games I've been in that weren't one-offs have started at level 1. The highest I've gotten to in such a campaign was about 13 or 14. Most of the time characters don't even make it to level 10, let alone 20. I did enter one game in mid-progress at about level 12, and went to around 16 or 17 before the campaign ended entirely.

Vodun
2007-03-19, 07:12 PM
I usually start at level one, which progresses to about 5 or six before getting serious, but Ive played a game starting at level 10, which isnt unusual at all, except its a first time DM whos played about 6 games in his whole life. that was less than organized.

Erom
2007-03-19, 07:30 PM
I tend to start games in the 3-4 range, just to avoid the "oops" deaths L1 characters are prone too, and end at 8-10. This allows a decent amount of progression, but keeps the campaign short (I tend to usually only game over summer or winter vacation.) and avoids most of the worst wizard cheese at higher levels.

Lord Tataraus
2007-03-19, 07:40 PM
The games I play and DM usually start at level 3 and we get tried with it after 15 or so, but most of the fun game play is in the 6-12 range.

Vortling
2007-03-19, 08:35 PM
We start in the 3-5 range and rarely make it past 7 because we have a hard time keeping groups playing for very long.

DaMullet
2007-03-19, 08:36 PM
I generally start at 5, but then I get bored with marginal encounters and give everyone a 2 level boost so we can fight fun things, like two trolls at once, or Morhgs.

dorshe1
2007-03-19, 08:38 PM
We start at 1 and work our way up. The highest we've made it to that way was lvl 12.

Of course, my other gaming group if you died, you always came back at level 1. Which is interesting when you are running around with a lvl 10 group!

Nifft
2007-03-19, 08:45 PM
Our main game started at 3rd level and now (three or four years later) has just hit 16th. I have high hopes for continuing it through Epic (30th or so). Hopefully by the time we get there, someone will have nice sane Epic rules... :smallannoyed:

Cheers, -- N

Dorni
2007-03-19, 08:53 PM
My group rotates DMs and we all have different tastes, so not every campaign is the same length. While we always begins at lv 1, our shortest campaign ended at lv 7 and our longest lasted all the way to 52. One character died of old age in the latter.

Generally, our campgains end at high level or just barely epic.

brian c
2007-03-19, 08:59 PM
I've been in a campaign from 1-4, then TPK and we all made new characters from level 4-10. Another campaign got from lvl 1 to... well it was fun but there were scheduling difficulties. Another was 1-2 then the semester and game ended. Just starting one now at lvl5. I put 6-10 for the poll, because that first game was the one I played the most, plus this new one is going to be mostly in that range.

Sir_Banjo
2007-03-19, 09:24 PM
One of the things I've noticed is that ist's hard to keep a game going. Everyone has demands on their time that may cause the game to be put on the back shelf. You need to have a really committed and disciplined dm otherwise you may just stop playing. If you've got 1 or 2 players who are just along for the ride, this becomes doubly so.

Thrawn183
2007-03-19, 10:06 PM
Campaign's I've played in:
10-13 (may be continued at 18th level)
6-8 (continuing)
5-11 (continuing and leveling at 3x normal speed)

No one in my group wants to play at level one.
My DM is always willing to show up, now if only she'd go to class... the other DM is.... amazing... that's all I can say.

sethdarkwater
2007-03-19, 10:17 PM
We generally start at level 1, but come up with a better campaign before anyone gets to lv.7. So alot of 2-5 playing.

Saph
2007-03-21, 07:29 AM
Huh. 87% in the 1-10 range.

I was expecting most to vote in that half, but that's even more than I thought.

- Saph

Telonius
2007-03-21, 10:03 AM
We usually run adventures from level 1-20 (sometimes slightly higher), with about equal time at each level. So... 11-15?

Kython
2007-03-21, 10:07 AM
I personally hate the low levels (1-4) and almost always start my players at lvl 5+