Best character level to stop at?

[Zyrxan]

Hey all, I'm a new DM running a homebrew campaign for a group of my friends. They are currently 5th level (started at 3rd) and have been progressing by milestones rather than EXP, and I've been trying to figure out what level this should stop at. The campaign is meant to be on the higher end of the power scale, but I want my players to use their heads rather than their stats, so I want to halt level gain at a certain point.

After a certain level they would stop gaining actual levels but still gain certain features at certain points (such as the Fighter still getting his third and fourth attack.) Would this be a reasonable course of action? I don't want to fall into the territory of only being able to challenge the party by throwing 3000 goblins at them, and want to keep higher-end monsters a threat at all times.

I've been considering stopping them at 9th level, as that's when everyone has good HP, and when spellcasters get 5th level spells.

Essentially: I want the players to feel powerful in the game, but for them to know that there are others still better than them, so they have to think through encounters instead of using just their stats.

Any thoughts?

[BW022]

20th is about the maximum level of the rules. Even at 4 gaming session per level, it would still take 18 months of weekly gaming to reach that level. That is also an extremely fast paced game in which players would be leveling typically faster than they would have an opportunity to utilize abilities or learn to use them effectively. In reality, even meeting twice a week would likely take a year or more. Given people's schedules, lives, moving, vacations, work, etc. you are going great if you can keep a group together and going that long. Usually after a year or two... players may want to try a different campaign with new characters.

Given this... there is typically no reason to ever stop the campaign before this... if they players are enjoying it. If they make it to level 20 and people are still enjoying the game... by all means keep going. There are challenges beyond combat -- you can have a high-level campaign where they are give their own province, lead a rebellion, deal with political, murder mysteries, travel to other planes, etc. which doesn't specifically rely on combat challenges. You can look at alternate rules for going above 20th -- allowing them to multi-class. For challenges, you can give dragons class levels, fight multiple high-level NPCs, lots of CR 17+ creatures, or start putting in demi-gods.

[NewDM]

Stopping at about level 15 keeps most of the more broken spells out of players hands. You could continue to let them level but they don't gain new features or spell slots, only hp and proficiency bonus.

[Zyrxan]

The group has been playing for ~8 months now, as we all go to the same college. We've played two campaigns with Pathfinder (both of which ended really quickly because we hated the system and the DM for both was a jerk who ran them into the ground by railroading us) and four with 5e (an old module the new DM redid for 5e, HotDQ which we stopped playing because it was disgustingly imbalanced, OotA which I wasn't there to play, and my campaign,) and so far everyone has loved my campaign.

I'm running it in a weird low/high-magic homebrew world loosely based on Fire Emblem (because I'm unoriginal) so it is unlikely that the party will ever be able to access other planes of existence except through adventure hooks. I've had a NPC already tell them that they are not going to be able to get to the Astral Plane. It focuses more on the conflicts between (at the moment) three kingdoms, and they helped broker a peace between two that had been a war for years. They want to go to the third in search of possible magic items (they shall find none) which will lead to a plot point concerning one of the PCs, and his decision would shape how the rest of the campaign will progress.

I feel like I'm trying to keep the campaign grounded but not. My group in general likes roleplaying and combat in equal doses, and I want to keep character levels under control so they don't get to a point where the absolute best answer is "stab it, ask questions after." I'd rather keep that as an option, but if they do that in certain situations they had better have an escape route, because there WILL BE characters who are much better than them (they've already met a maid who is apparently skilled in combat to the point where she allegedly beat an 8th level Fighter in a duel with ease.)

Just as an example of what my party did and is actually helping me with encounter design: a port town was being attacked by pirates. The party clears out the pirates in typical DnD fashion of leaving a bloody trail, and comes to the docks where the captain's ship is. They are faced with 12 Thugs, which I calculated to be a Hard encounter for them, which I deemed reasonable for the final encounter in the town. Rather than fight the thugs, the Monk, Bard, and Druid jump onto the ship that is beginning to sail away, leaving the Sorcerer and the Fighter on the docks with the NPC cleric. The Monk doesn't make it on and returns to the docks, while the other two do, and fight the captain. It is very obvious that they can't beat him in a fair fight (he nearly one-rounds the Druid in bear form) so they do something I was completely not expecting: the Druid grapples the captain, and jumps off the ship, dives down to the bottom of the harbor, casts Entangle to trap the captain down there, and drowns him.

I was both irritated and amazed that they pulled it off (it was a 10 round fight to get the captain down there and trap him.)

[Gtdead]

I'm not sure why would you want to do that. Just let them level naturally. It's not like a lvl 20 character is strong because of the health pool.

It would be smarter if you went the other way around. Letting them get more health but stop their class features at a particular level. That way you won't have to deal with wishes, clones, simulacrums etc.

For this I'd consider lvl 11 as the cap.

[Zyrxan]

I'm not sure why would you want to do that. Just let them level naturally. It's not like a lvl 20 character is strong because of the health pool.

It would be smarter if you went the other way around. Letting them get more health but stop their class features at a particular level. That way you won't have to deal with wishes, clones, simulacrums etc.

For this I'd consider lvl 11 as the cap.

Okay, that's a much better idea.

[Firechanter]

20.
That's what Bounded Acc has been designed for, so that you can actually play through all the levels without the game turning into a juggernaut like 3E.
No reason to cut that short.

[Foxhound438]

(...) game in which players would be leveling typically faster than they would have an opportunity to utilize abilities or learn to use them effectively.

eh, not really. two problems with that.

1) you get x feature at level y. 7 sessions later, you're only one level higher, and you still have x feature, and can still learn to use it effectively. and regardless of what it is, it's still relevant, or else it was never relevant to begin with.

2) it gets pretty boring when you get to ranger 6 and have literally nothing new. So now you're "learning how to use" extra attack for 8 weeks before you get another mechanically interesting feature. Other examples of this issue would be brutal critical for barbs, indomitable for fighters, tongue of S&M for monks.... Or more prominently, any time you go +2 to a stat. Yep, takes a whole 4 weeks in an "extremely fast paced" game to learn how to use that.

Granted, you're not wrong about that being relatively fast paced in general, but your claim that leveling up faster than once in 4 weeks makes players unable to learn their abilities is unfounded. Also would point out that session length is a major factor, if you have 4 hour sessions you would expect fewer sessions to level up than a campaign with 1 hour sessions.



To the OP, I'd have to agree with everyone who's said high levels call for high challenges. I certainly wouldn't break out "you can't level up anymore" after 8 months of play, it's quite possible people have been eyeing those highest level abilities and built characters with the hope to eventually get to play with them.

[Firechanter]

Yeah, at any rate you should talk to your players _before_ the game begins about the levels you expect to reach.

FWIW, we also use milestones instead of xp and we're leveling up roouughly every third session. Sometimes bit faster, sometimes slower. Good pacing, really no need to go any slower.