What is "high level" for your D&D game usually?

[Basement Cat]

I've played D&D (and other RPGs) since Basic D&D came out in the 70's and I've rarely gotten a character above 10th level without the DM basically "helping" the players along by being overly generous with gold and XP awards or just plain smothering players with XP so they'd get to "the real power levels".

Aside from some campaigns where we essentially started overpowered, i.e. well above 10th level to begin with, I've only once reached 13th level with a character and that was 20 years ago during a very long Role Master campaign.

Much of it had to do with players getting bored playing the same characters for months on end. Character mortality contributed heavily to it, as well.

That said I must admit--upon reflection--that none of us were really up to DM'ing higher level games that didn't end up TPK's straight away or Monte Hauls (I myself tended towards the latter, I'm afraid).

So the question is, all things considered, how high in levels do you normally get with "legitimate" campaigns?

Note: Long campaigns were twice weekly 4 to 6 hour sessions for 3 to 4 months, usually. And we weren't joking around and wasting time, though there were break periods with plenty of that. :smallwink:

[Theodoxus]

Non-monte games, I've had 2 - one is currently going, an OotA game, where we hit 9th level a month ago. It started at a friends house, but he's stationed in South Korea, so we use Roll20 now. It's been going, off and on, for about 18 months. It's pretty by RAW, with the singular exception that we can Concentrate on a number of spells equal to our Proficiency Bonus (but in play, that's really just actually allowed us to ignore Concentration when we forget that we have one up and are casting a second Conc spell...)

The other, was over a decade ago, and we got to 13th level in a 3.5 game. The game fizzled when the DM moved out of state - otherwise, we'd still probably be playing - he ran and played in Epic Level games, so we were pretty confident we'd get there eventually.

I've run 'start at 20th level' before, which is a fun distraction, but I prefer speed gaming - gain a level a session type games, with built-in artifact items and such that gain power as the character levels, tailored to the class and concept of the player.

As a player, I haven't found a similar DM, so most games tend to be lower powered and peter out somewhere between 5th and 10th level, primarily for reasons you discuss.

[Kane0]

One shots aside the highest I've ever gotten is the 13-15 range. All three cases are campaigns that have lasted years (two of them 2 years, one still going after its 3rd).

[pwykersotz]

We usually run two year campaigns that end well beyond level 20. My table is currently level 14 after a year and a quarter, so we're a little behind.

[Phoenix042]

I've DM'd a few campaigns and played in a few. My personal highest level character has just reached level 7.

Three of the games I've DM'd have reached level 7 or higher, and one of those is just now reaching level 11, which is the highest our group has ever gotten by... well, 4 levels.

And we're about to play it again this weekend, and I think the party is likely to reach level 12 based on what they're planning to do.


EDIT: The level 12 campaign started out at level 3, and there's been absolutely NO push on my part to get them to higher level. It's just been running for like, 5 years.
Also, that campaign is meant to be a really long one, with every PC having plans that will require them to reach a higher level.

[Zman]

Double digits, haha.

Personally, I'm a fan of low to mid level play and don't like the feel of 11+, IMO I can't rationalize the world.

My current game is my E10 variant, just getting under way.

[JumboWheat01]

We try to get as high as we can. We've only hit 20 once, but that was a while ago. My DM's enacted a slower-exp gain right now, so we're staying at a lower level, but as far as I can tell, if we play them enough, we could get our latest batch up to level 20.

As my DM says (and I agree,) "What's the point of the levels going to 20 if you don't use 'em?" Though I'm sure he's planning on dropping a god or something on us at some end point or another.

[TrinculoLives]

I've never been above 7th level as a player, and never DM'd for a group beyond 7th level. I've been playing the game for two and a half years, off and on. My current campaign has everyone teetering on the brink of 7th-level, and I'm experiencing the kind of DM burn-out that usually accompanies the campaign being cut short. In this case, I'm going to take a break from DMing, and then start up again in a couple months. If all goes to plan, my party should be moving towards 9th level by the fall.

[Zakhara]

As a player, the first group I was ever in did the full 1-20 back in 3.0 (but we were young--and given the system it was "over" well before 20). Otherwise our games rarely exceed 10 before we feel powerful "enough".

As a DM, my 5e game has been going mostly unbroken for close to two years, weekly, with some fits and starts around the holidays. They started at 3rd, and are 11th now. We played experience RAW. We've switched to milestones recently, so whether we'll rush past 13 is another matter.

I'm still tallying experience for now, so the milestones don't 'feel' off, but once they finish their present dungeon crawl they'll likely hit 13 and I'll probably take the training wheels off for good.

[furby076]

In pathfinder we did a ten (about) year campaign that started at lvl 1...on a boat heading to sharn. Ended at level 20. We had 1 near tpk, but our druid fled and got us true rezzed. Had 2 more tpks...in one case an archmage brought us back, and in the other case, the keeper of the flame brought us back (we were very high level). Campaign ended when we hit level 20 and destroyed the aberration evils and sealed the portals. To do this, we had to sacrifice our levels, and could sacrifice it all the way down to 0 level (perm death). My paladin and co players druid went to lvl 1. The rest of the party went to 0.

It was the only campaign i ever went from 1 to 20. We were very powerful and had tons of magic, but the DMs monsters were just vicious, so it was a challenge

[Malifice]

IME most DMs quit campaigns at around 13th level.

Its more work to DM high level parties than low level parties and few DMs have any experience doing it (because they quit at around 13th level). Its a vicious cycle.

Highest I've gone was a rolemaster campaign played for 5 years straight every weekend on all nighters. One PC got to 60th level, and there were several 20th+ level PCs.

Plenty of deaths though. We were an evil party(ies).

[Ogre Mage]

Tier 3 (Levels 11-15) has always been high level in our games. The majority of our campaigns collapsed before then, but a significant minority managed to get that far (but no further). I plan my characters with the assumption that Level 15 is the max.

[Malifice]

It almost always goes the same way. Just past 10th (11th-13th).

DMs are always prone to burnout, and this is exacerbated by high level abilities entering the fray, that the DM has had next to zero experience dealing with.

It usually starts with the DM constructing an adventure that the players proceed to steamroll with very little effort using new found high level abilities that the DM has never DM'd before (the classic example is the DM designing a tower dungeon with layers of monsters and the BBEG at the top... then the players simply fly or teleport to the top and meld into stone straight into the BBEGs lair, or they simply disintegrate the tower. Flooding a dungeon is another one I've seen, as is using ethereal travel to circumvent encounters entirely).

DMs promptly rage quit, and the campaign ends because it just becomes too hard.

In a nutshell DMs struggle with the transition from hero tier to 11th+. The 'here is the dungeon, clear out the encounters, find the secret doors, answer the riddles, avoid the traps, kill the BBEG, get the loot' methodology that carried them through to 11th level, doesnt really work anymore, and the DM is faced with brand new potent abilities entering the fray every other level. Teleport, divination, scrying, feat combos coming online that allow ubercharging or grapple lockdowns or huge amounts of damage, or invulnerable defences.

The DM hasnt cottoned on to the fact that 11th+ level PCs need totally different challenges. At this level they should be starting to travel the planes and be dealing with potent foes and hordes of monsters that cant be defeated by force of arms alone. Gods are starting to take notice of what they do, and may intervene from time to time. The outcomes of their quests should have consequences for the entire realm.

Sadly when DMs quit at this point, the make their own problem of not knowing how to DM high level parties worse becuase then they have no experience DMing characters of this level. Ultimately he's missing the best bit about DMing.

Players dont tell stories about that campaign that ran for 3 months and they got to 7th level before it fell apart when the DM got a new girlfriend. They tell stories about that campaign that ran for 4 years, and they got to 20th level and beyond, some going on to become gods (and then their next PC was a cleric of their own former PC) or Kings of the realm, or whatever. They relive stories of events that happened in game as if they were real for years to follow.

The satisfaction of running that campaign is why you should by DMing. Its the holy grail of our hobby.

[Asha Leu]

For 3.5, we got a bit above level 10 once or twice, but generally it was an event if we reached double digits, even when starting the campaign at a higher level. While it was probably the most me and my friends had ever played D&D (ah, high school... only I understand how much free time we had back then), most campaigns tended to peter out pretty quickly as the DM or players got bored and we moved onto a flashy new campaign (again, high school.)

There was one campaign where we got from level 3 to 18 in the space of two weekends, but that was almost certainly due to the DM calculating the challenge ratings and XP wrong. We were literally levelling up once or twice after every battle once we reached the mid-teens.

With 4E, I don't remember a single game where we got past level 6 or so. Partly due to how slow 4E's level progression was and how long the combat took, but also just because we weren't playing much.

As for 5E, one game I'm DMing has made it from level 1-7 in a bit over a year, and I'm playing in a couple of others where I'm around 7-8, but in the latter cases the party was already close to that level when I joined.

[MrStabby]

I find the comments about high level play interesting. I am having difficulty at about the level 13-15 mark. I am experiencing the challenges of high level encounter design that were mentioned but my bigger headache is narrative.

At low levels you can kill a bunch of orcs and then there can be more orcs. At high level what are your mooks for players to fight and how do you manage a world in which the players have such power? When they have slaughtered their way through a couple of cohorts of lesser adventurers what should the effect be on the world? There is no longer any security through obscurity and the PCs should expect a cohort of angry dragons on their doorstep?

The problems are not insurmountable but narratively I feel that stories are less organic, more railroady and less varied at higher levels. I also find it less creatively rewarding to DM very high levels - why would the PCs explore a world rather than teleport to the end of it (OK, this is largely my fault for having campaigns with time pressures to avoid the 5 min adventuring day problem).

Edit:

Also high level play makes it really difficult to do prep work. "Hey, that efreet we met three years ago might know something about this - lets go see him" and suddenly your adventure veers off onto another plane with unprepared NCS and the need to have challenges appropriate for the party whilst also consistent with what happened last time they spoke. When PCs can teleport about and shift between planes it gets impossible to give even cursory thought to everyone they might meet, every NPC they met there before and every situation in which they might find themselves. At least on a lower level campaign you only have to worry (roughly) about immediate events in a 50 mile radius.

That said I now have a stock of high level NPCs in storage to wheel out to populate new areas (with some minor adjustments) and some of my players favourite NPCs have been created at short notice, but all in all it is a bit of a problem.

[CaptainSarathai]

I've DM'd a 5e game to 20, twice. I usually plan to "cut" around level 15.
The first run to 20 was unplanned and pretty fun. We played HotDQ and they were defeated by Tiamat. This marked the start of the 15-20 section of the Tiamat campaign, with them reprising their old characters, 25 years after their failure and confronting a world ruled by dragons.

Taking what I learned from the Tiamat campaign, I recently finished running a group of 6 from 5-20 (after they'd gone through LMoP with another DM) set in Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms. This campaign went far more smoothly, and I learned a lot about DMing that I now use at all tiers of the game.

Lessons learned:

1. Know your Characters
I have copies of everyone's character sheets at all times. Tedious? Yes. But it's so worth it. Especially if you have spell casters in the group.
If you know that your party has access to Meld with Stone, you know that a stone wall isn't gonna slow them down. If they can levitate and fly, don't expect them to fight their way up a tower. If someone can Grapple-lock an opponent, then don't make your bosses small enough to be grabbed.

2. Be ready to adjudicate. A lot.
One of the first things out of my mouth was that there would be no Planes-Hopping, don't even take the spell. Also, Teleport could only take you to places that you had been previously - if it was a new location, you needed alternate means of travel.
Multiclassed characters start getting seemingly ludicrous combos online at the 11-15 range, and you need to be ready to handle that.
Things that kind of start leaning toward unbalanced at level 5, are going to be missing the balance by miles at level 17. Be ready to step in and fix it.

3. Characters get boring, and should die
One of my favorite DM quotes (and Pirates of the Caribbean quotes) comes from the real life Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard:
"If I don't kill somebody now and then, you'll forget who I am!"
As a DM, I'm pretty accepting of players choosing to swap characters. One thing I like to do, is have chapter breaks. Generally they're centered around the tiers of play from the DMG or using the Proficiency Bonus system. The players become minor barons in the courts, and I handwaive about a year's time before they go out adventuring again. During this time, players are welcome to swap characters, with the proviso that they be attached to the former character or another party member somehow.
"Oh, Magister Ruxbridge won't be rejoining us. He's taken ill in the interim. I am his nephew, Peregrine - please allow me to join your company in his stead."
Otherwise, if a player is looking bored or dissatisfied, I try to address it. If I can, I keep their character alive, and modify the game to engage them. A Cleric who never has a chance to set foot in a church is an easy fix - add some churches. A player who feels like his Cleric is underpowered is slightly more difficult, because it might be the fault of the player, so help them reorganize their character sheet. Rewriting Theogonist Valeria as a Cleric of War instead of a Cleric of Life, and letting her change her Feats or even some stats around, is acceptable to me when I expect players to stick with a character for 20 levels. If the player decides that being a Cleric was a bad idea in the first place, and would rather be a Barbarian, we handle that away from the group and arrange to make the swap. If the player can a bit, we excuse Valeria from the group at the next town. If they cannot wait, I kill the character. The party is much more forgiving of "shoe-horning in" a new character at odd times (mid dungeon) after a death.

4. If you're going to 20, go to 20
The leveling in 5e is different than previous editions. From 1-5 you are screaming, gaining a level just about every session. From 5-10 you're leveling at what most veterans consider the standard rate. From 10+, things start to slow down, and from about 16+ things absolutely crawl.
I believe this was intentional, for a few reasons.
1. To keep players from attempting to "grind" and lengthen the campaign before the BBEG in a sub-20 campaign
2. To allow DMs to write longer, high-level adventures leading up to the final confrontation with the BBEG, and not have to worry about the characters gaining levels halfway though it. Again, in a sub-20 campaign.
But you're not playing a sub-20 game. So that slow level curve is a death knell for campaigns. By the time the characters hit 15, they're aware that they're in the home-stretch, they want to get on with it, get it over with. If I'm going to level 20, I start running Milestones somewhere in 10-15. Once the typical roadside encounter stops being a challenge, that's when you hit Milestone leveling, because at that point, the only way you'll have meaningful encounters is if you start randomly stumbling in to angry dragons- and that gets hard to believe after the first time.

5. Be as prepared to fall short, as you are to hit 20
When I ran the Tiamat game, it was supposed to end around 15. When I started the FR campaign, it was touch and go. I said, "let's get to level 10, and see if we want to keep going from there." Then 15. So when they said they wanted to keep going at 10, I made a plan to get them 15 and then thought
"Sure, maybe they'll want to go to 20."
So as they approached 15, I began to lay subtle groundwork for there being an even bigger enemy on the horizon. When they defeated the BBEG at 15, they said that they wanted to keep going if I had anything. And I had all those seeds planted, so I just had to raise them up into flowers. Flowers of evil, "les Fleurs du Mal."
If a campaign burns out before 20, the players are left with a sour taste. It may have been a great campaign but they never defeated the BBEG, the story didn't conclude in a satisfying way. So I plan for the story to fall short and then gauge the players - or just ask - to see if they want more. Sometimes they say no, they're done. That's okay - I might be a little disappointed at not getting to tell the next part of my story, but at least we tied up the loose ends. We're also at a good stopping point, with nothing really going on, so if they want to pick back up after several months, I know to say
"When we left off, you had just defeated Nalavara, and retired to your castles to rest and recover. Now, 5 years have passed."

6. Don't Go Epic
This is a holdover from 4e and from 3.5e 20-30 god tier play. You don't need to do this in 5e.
WotC seemed to have learned that DMs had a hard time with the massive, world-spanning, Planes-Hopping, reality-breaking high-level play. They've toned that way down in 5e. I eliminated Planes Jumping in my campaigns because there were still plenty of threats that I could throw at the players in the realms they were in. A Liche or Ancient Dragon in their lairs can still pose a challenge to a 20th level party if you add minions and hazards to the fight, and situate it toward the end of an encounter day.
Heck, if you want to skip all that, a Terrasque will pose a threat to any high-level party and give your players a story worthy of memory. Everyone should go Terrasque hunting at least once.

[Zman]

I find the comments about high level play interesting. I am having difficulty at about the level 13-15 mark. I am experiencing the challenges of high level encounter design that were mentioned but my bigger headache is narrative.

At low levels you can kill a bunch of orcs and then there can be more orcs. At high level what are your mooks for players to fight and how do you manage a world in which the players have such power? When they have slaughtered their way through a couple of cohorts of lesser adventurers what should the effect be on the world? There is no longer any security through obscurity and the PCs should expect a cohort of angry dragons on their doorstep?

The problems are not insurmountable but narratively I feel that stories are less organic, more railroady and less varied at higher levels. I also find it less creatively rewarding to DM very high levels - why would the PCs explore a world rather than teleport to the end of it (OK, this is largely my fault for having campaigns with time pressures to avoid the 5 min adventuring day problem).

Edit:

Also high level play makes it really difficult to do prep work. "Hey, that efreet we met three years ago might know something about this - lets go see him" and suddenly your adventure veers off onto another plane with unprepared NCS and the need to have challenges appropriate for the party whilst also consistent with what happened last time they spoke. When PCs can teleport about and shift between planes it gets impossible to give even cursory thought to everyone they might meet, every NPC they met there before and every situation in which they might find themselves. At least on a lower level campaign you only have to worry (roughly) about immediate events in a 50 mile radius.

That said I now have a stock of high level NPCs in storage to wheel out to populate new areas (with some minor adjustments) and some of my players favourite NPCs have been created at short notice, but all in all it is a bit of a problem.

I agree with you here. It's less about mechanically challenging the party, but more about explaining how the world still works. I mean, the world is just filled with gaping plot holes once high level spells hit the table.

It's easy to conceptialize how a band of Orc raiders can threaten a town and how it can be saved. But, a whole hot harder to explain why the BBEG didn't just Meteor Swarm where the party was sleeping from a mile away. Or how do you fill the ranks of the bad guys army, all of a sudden they have birds of CR10s at their disposal.

How do kingsoms exist when a single person could just overthrow them. Or why do kings ever die when someone can just resurrect thm? From hundreds of years after they died? Hey aren't powerful people just killing of threats before they grow in power, old scy and fry.

Why was a lower level sorry even necessary when a powerful character could have completed their levels 1-10 quest spanning years in an afternoon? What are these hordes of powerful people doing while the haracters level up.

[Krestus]

There was a survey on this not all that long ago. I believe the results showed that the VAST majority of games never go beyond the low teens in level. Level 9 is about where things take a serious drop-off (pretty sure I'm remembering this correctly lol)

I've played d&d pretty much my whole life, and I have never once played a character above level 13 (and he started that way!). I think it's hilarious when people plan out their characters beyond level 10. Never gonna happen, gents. The fact is, sorry to say, the game design doesn't work well at high levels. People want their characters to change as they level, and for it to be noticeable. But if it's noticeable every time, it adds up to ridiculous pretty fast. And the roleplaying aspect falls apart, too. "You encounter a dwarf merchant with 35 Dexterity who can make 6 attacks with his coinpurse!" It isn't as bad in 5e, but it's still there

You can't play a game where every single character is superman- "more hitpoints" falls away as a solution pretty quickly.

[hymer]

So the question is, all things considered, how high in levels do you normally get with "legitimate" campaigns?

I've DMed a 3.5 game where the highest level PCs made it to ECL 17. It had stopped being fun for me at least two levels previously, though, as the time it took to prepare for that, especially creating NPCs, ugh... Anyway, that started at level one and went legitimately all the way, West Marches style, over a period of about two-three years.
But that's the outlier. I usually let the PCs advance at a regular pace from level 2 (I rarely start them out at 1 to avoid the worst swinginess), and then slow things down when they get to level 5, and slowing it down more as they advance from there. Back in 2nd edition, leveling was slower to start with, and for the first eight or ten levels usually doubled the XP needed to advance. It was a far, far slower pace, particularly at high level.
Between five and nine or something like that is where the best play is in my opinion, and my campaigns rarely go above nine these days.

[NecroDancer]

We just hit 9th level in our CoS campaign and are currently battling a powerful fiend in an amazingly tense fight.

[mephnick]

I actually cap my settings at 11-13ish because D&D turns into a different kind of fantasy once high levels hit the table and I don't enjoy it much. My highest level humanoid NPC's are generally about CR 9 and those are like...famous mages and warrior kings who travel with a bunch of mooks. Now, high level magic is obviously the main offender (reliable teleport, resurrection, divination, planeshift etc basically destroys any concept of low/mid fantasy) but high level characters in general are a problem. 20th Level Fighters are still Gods compared to your average CR 1/8 Guard or even your CR 3 Knight. Thankfully bounded accuracy reigns it in a bit in 5e (hence why I cap at 13 and not 6 like in 3.5) but it only helps so much.

Now, I'm the guy who's always telling people they're playing the wrong system when they try and twist D&D to fit their needs too much. I admit that maybe it's a bit hypocritical of me to ignore half the game and tell people that. But level 2-11 D&D just works so well for what I want. It's like it goes off a cliff and becomes a completely different system at high levels. D&D (to me) is about exploring sites, killing monsters and taking their stuff. High level D&D removes the exploration sites (it's nearly impossible narrative to make a believable level 18 dungeon) and negates 95% of the monsters in the MM. So what are we even playing at that point?

[Zman]

I've DMed a 3.5 game where the highest level PCs made it to ECL 17. It had stopped being fun for me at least two levels previously, though, as the time it took to prepare for that, especially creating NPCs, ugh... Anyway, that started at level one and went legitimately all the way, West Marches style, over a period of about two-three years.
But that's the outlier. I usually let the PCs advance at a regular pace from level 2 (I rarely start them out at 1 to avoid the worst swinginess), and then slow things down when they get to level 5, and slowing it down more as they advance from there. Back in 2nd edition, leveling was slower to start with, and for the first eight or ten levels usually doubled the XP needed to advance. It was a far, far slower pace, particularly at high level.
Between five and nine or something like that is where the best play is in my opinion, and my campaigns rarely go above nine these days.



I actually cap my settings at 11-13ish because D&D turns into a different kind of fantasy once high levels hit the table and I don't enjoy it much. My highest level humanoid NPC's are generally about CR 9 and those are like...famous mages and warrior kings who travel with a bunch of mooks. Now, high level magic is obviously the main offender (reliable teleport, resurrection, divination, planeshift etc basically destroys any concept of low/mid fantasy) but high level characters in general are a problem. 20th Level Fighters are still Gods compared to your average CR 1/8 Guard or even your CR 3 Knight. Thankfully bounded accuracy reigns it in a bit in 5e (hence why I cap at 13 and not 6 like in 3.5) but it only helps so much.

Now, I'm the guy who's always telling people they're playing the wrong system when they try and twist D&D to fit their needs too much. I admit that maybe it's a bit hypocritical of me to ignore half the game and tell people that. But level 2-11 D&D just works so well for what I want. It's like it goes off a cliff and becomes a completely different system at high levels. D&D (to me) is about exploring sites, killing monsters and taking their stuff. High level D&D removes the exploration sites (it's nearly impossible narrative to make a believable level 18 dungeon) and negates 95% of the monsters in the MM. So what are we even playing at that point?

Both of you might like the E10 variant I made. It accelerates the game to level 5, then slows it down and draws out levels 5-10 with extra Feat/ASIs, and a version of Multiclassing that spends feats to access class abilities. There is now Multiclassing your Starting Class. Essentially there is similar game play time to playing out levels 1-15ish, but most of that time is spent between levels 5-10 in your Primary Class. The Extra Feats and ASIs allow for a more developed and fleshed out character, greatly aids the viability of MAD classes, makes less hard choices, and eventually you are more likely to spend feats for fun things. As you can't go past 10 level class features in your starting class it keeps the scope of the game roughly where you want it, I figure that end game characters are similar in capability to level 12/13 stock characters. Strong enough to take on Adult and maybe some Ancient Dragons, but generally not strong enough to roll through the ~CR20s in the MM.

The entire goal was to double down on the span of the game that I have found most people and especially myself enjoy the most, make making the advancement rewarding and granular enough to keep you interested. IMO once we start hitting 5th level spells and worse 6th-9th the game just changes and the type of fantasy realm you're living in changes.

[cotofpoffee]

I've run a campaign up to level 15. We started around level 6ish, following up on two separate, shorter campaigns. It would've gone on longer but it was out of table problem players that destroyed it.

Dnd runs into the problem that there's no (or incredibly few) published campaigns where you go into the really high levels (17-20) and so there's this attitude of "Well high levels are meaningless because there's no adventures," and "There are no high level adventures because people seem to hate high levels." Then there are those people who try to run high levels but don't understand how so they throw a lot of limitations so characters are less "godlike" which just makes people wonder why they're playing high levels when you don't get to properly get to use your high level toys.

I'd really like to see an official tier 4 adventure where you're doing like intergalactic battles against cosmically powerful enemies or something. Just at least so we get a sense of what kind of cool stuff can be accomplished at high levels that can't be done at low levels.

[jitzul]

Threads like this make you wonder why the game still has 20 levels. It is obvious that the vast majority only play d&d up to at most 8 some times 10. I for one am part of the minority and would love love love to play in a campaign that makes it to the high levels. I guess it's because I am part of the younger generation that played videos for before I knew what dungeons and dragons was. I also love the shonen genre so going from a regular joe to a one man army is something I have a deep fondness for.


Edit: Wotc really needs to get their ish together and actually make a effort to do high level adventures instead of letting this vicious cycle they have continue. For the love of crap do something like make a published adventure and make a tier 4 version of it for the "few people" that play that tier. Its pretty obvious at this point that wotc is gonna have to herd a few cattle into the higher levels of play.

[NecroDancer]

Threads like this make you wonder why the game still has 20 levels. It is obvious that the vast majority only play d&d up to at most 8 some times 10. I for one am part of the minority and would love love love to play in a campaign that makes it to the high levels. I guess it's because I am part of the younger generation that played videos for before I knew what dungeons and dragons was. I also love the shonen genre so going from a regular joe to a one man army is something I have a deep fondness for.

Didn't 4e have 30 levels?

[jitzul]

Didn't 4e have 30 levels?

Never played 4e but even if it did i'm pretty sure people had the same problems with those levels as they do now.

[JumboWheat01]

Didn't 4e have 30 levels?

Yes it did, and it tiered them too. Levels 1 - 10 were "Heroic" levels, 11 - 20 were "Paragon" levels, and 21 - 30 were "Epic" levels.

[Decstarr]

This post has made me curious.

We started D&D about a year ago with LMoP. We're all pretty hardcore nerds in terms of video games, movies, books, comics etc, but none of us had any tabletop experience prior to that.

After finishing LMoP, I took on the job as DM with my own setting and we started playing. Since about 8 Months now we play once a week, sometimes we have a second session a week and my guys just reached level 13. They are all very attached to their characters, the story is pretty epic in scope and each arc is connected to at least one of the party members, if not to several or to NPCs/locations that they care about. So they have a lot of incentives to keep playing and I have a lot of incentives to keep DMing. I can see us playing even beyond level 20, I for sure got sufficient material for that.

We've all been close friends long before we started d&d, are all in our 30s, most with wives, jobs etc. So it could be that we keep playing with such joy because we just like hanging out with each other and sharing this awesome hobby with each other. Maybe that's the reason we're already high level and will continue to level up further.

Also, so far, none of the guys has tried any fast travel exploration shennanigans that would make my DMing harder. None of them is a power-gamer either, we're pretty much all just there to enjoy the game. Before reading this, I wasn't really nervous or even aware of the whole "super hero" situation. Sure, it does make sense, but I think if you invest too much time thinking about this, you just make you own DM's life harder than necessary. My guys have been hanging around the same time since level 7 and while I don't actively discourage them from going anywhere else, so far they haven't really shown too much interest in exploring the rest of the world (mainly because there is a lot of interesting stuff in the immediate area). And it even fits within the main story line that more and more strong badass villains keep popping up around them, so we don't really have a problem here.

Bottom Line: Highest Level = 13, likely to reach 20.

[CaptainSarathai]

Well, that's just it: a ton of people are in here talking about how hard DMing the high levels is.
Most polls and so on, don't show people playing into those high levels...

Where's the experience coming from?
5e doesn't get that ridiculous, honestly.
Someone, tell me how high-level D&D abused you.

[MrStabby]

.
Someone, tell me how high-level D&D abused you.

People cast powerful divination spells and movement spells like teleport and wind walk removing the exploration pillar from the game (at least within the realm we had been playing in and had grown attached to). People learned spells like clone, removing the sense of risk and excitement from any more casual encounter. The party had the power to cow kingdoms, removing the need for diplomacy and social skills from interactions with 95% of the world.

Yeah, it was fun for a few sessions with all the new abilities but once you have gated the bad guy into the elemental plane of fire once it kind of loses it's appeal. It isn't a disaster, just not as fun as the levels before.

[cotofpoffee]

High level abilities don't remove from a game. They add to it. The only problem comes from if you try to situate high level players and their capabilities in what is normally lower level territory.

Of course, if you simply don't like high level play that's fine. But there's just so little high level adventures out there that I doubt a lot of people know what proper high level play should be.

[Shadowbane13]

I've been playing for nearly 15 years now. I tend to DM but have sat on the other side a few times. Unfortunately none of my games have ever made it past 12. People always seem to lose interest. I'm currently in a game and we're approaching 9th level. Everyone seems to really be into it so it seems like it may be something we can reach 20th with. But it's hard to keep everyone interested. I myself when DMing would do level by session as long as the session broke 3hours. Ours were once a week so it would happen fast but it also depended on what the players would be doing.

[MrStabby]

High level abilities don't remove from a game. They add to it. The only problem comes from if you try to situate high level players and their capabilities in what is normally lower level territory.


I think you miss out on what you lose if you relocate players to different territory. When a party has built up relationships with many NPCs, is invested in locations has the history of many plot arcs in a location then there is a lot to lose by taking the players away from the environment in which they are invested.

[cotofpoffee]

I think you miss out on what you lose if you relocate players to different territory. When a party has built up relationships with many NPCs, is invested in locations has the history of many plot arcs in a location then there is a lot to lose by taking the players away from the environment in which they are invested.

Wait, I don't understand. Nowhere did I say that you needed to give up on story, relationships, and settings that you've been playing with. That would be a mistake. My comment was in response to a person who said that high level abilities negate certain adventures like exploration. I disagreed.

I also remember a comment earlier on in the thread that said you couldn't do high level dungeons because of the abilities that you got at high levels so therefore high level play was bad. After I read that comment I wondered if people thought DnD had to be about dungeons in order to be DnD. It was weird. Some of my play sessions that i enjoyed the most had nothing to do with dungeons.

[McNinja]

The game I'm currently running has players between 12-16th level. They would all be at 12, but they got their hands on a Deck of Many Things.

[Hrugner]

With 5e we've never gotten beyond 5th level honestly. We get distracted when playing this version and rarely get much playing in over several hours. With the same group we capped at 13th in 2nd ed, 20+ in 3.5 12th in pathfinder and played one session of 4th. I'm not sure it's any fault of 5e though.

[mephnick]

. My comment was in response to a person who said that high level abilities negate certain adventures like exploration. I disagreed.
.

You disagreed but didn't provide examples. How would you run an exploration site based adventure at high level that isn't completely bypassed by high level magic? The "explore dark forest, find the wizard's tower, fight to top" type quest is kind of what D&D is about. The entire system is set up around it.

Sure you could change it to "explore Plane of Fire, find Demon tower, fight to top" but high level characters can just find the tower immediately, teleport there, and nuke it from orbit instead. For all intents and purposes, that kind of adventure ceases to exist at high levels regardless of where it's set. So sure you have to play different kinds of adventures, but I'd say it limits the kinds of adventures that D&D is generally designed to handle or that people expect from it, so to say you don't lose anything is silly.

[Telwar]

My group is very, very comfortable with high-level play, which seems to be something of an aberration from groups I see here and on other boards.

Let's see...campaigns I remember are:

3.0 - 3.5 Birthright - Ended with the party about 24th level or so.
3.5 Eberron - Ended with the party about 20th, 21st.
3.5 Al Qadim - Ended with the party about 19th level.

4e Mazticberron (Maztica shows up to the west of Khorvaire) - Ended at 24th level.
4e Eberron - Ended at 24th level.
4e Al Qadim - Ended at 23rd level
4e ...uh, whatever is the one with the frogs - Ended at 22nd level.

Before I joined, they had 2e campaigns going pretty high as well.

Honestly, I like high-level play; it's just more fun to me to have more options available as a player than it is to grub around with one thing I can do per fight and then sit there just swinging.

[cotofpoffee]

You disagreed but didn't provide examples. How would you run an exploration site based adventure at high level that isn't completely bypassed by high level magic? The "explore dark forest, find the wizard's tower, fight to top" type quest is kind of what D&D is about. The entire system is set up around it.

Sure you could change it to "explore Plane of Fire, find Demon tower, fight to top" but high level characters can just find the tower immediately, teleport there, and nuke it from orbit instead. For all intents and purposes, that kind of adventure ceases to exist at high levels regardless of where it's set. So sure you have to play different kinds of adventures, but I'd say it limits the kinds of adventures that D&D is generally designed to handle or that people expect from it, so to say you don't lose anything is silly. DnD is certainly not only dungeon crawling. If it was, then I suppose every game I've played doesn't exist. I didn't write a long example because I didn't want to write it for someone who I didn't know would read it or not.

But let's say I'm arguing for a dungeon like you described, and this is arguing from a weakened stance, that strategy doesn't work. Magic exists, at a lower level than scrying, divination, and teleportation, to prevent a scry-and-fry. For instance, Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum blocks both scrying and teleportation. If a party has the capability of teleportation and scrying, then the enemy should logically also have the spells to prevent it. Unless, of course, you're frying a bunch of low level mooks, then yeah it'd go like you described. Now I'm of the opinion that dungeon crawling does and should evolve past what you do at low levels. You shouldn't just be doing the same thing that you've been doing at low levels only with bigger numbers. Your adventures should evolve, just as your characters do.

That being said, if you want an example of a high level campaign, Pathfinder's Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth is a pretty good example. The brief summary is that you're at war with powerful demon lords. That version of Baphomet has kidnapped a LG's god's herald and you're tasked to rescue him. The dungeon is Baphomet's entire realm, a plane of the abyss that's a maze the size of a planet. You can't just scry him because he's protected, and you can't just teleport because the maze shunts anyone who does so into a prison part of the maze, which is how Baphomet keeps his enemies from just going wherever they want. It's an adventure meant for epic levels but works mechanically and thematically as like a 17+ dungeon crawl.

I realized now this post is a mess because I'm arguing two points, and I apologize. But here's the tl;dr: DnD isn't just a dungeon crawler and that high level dungeons still work anyway.

[MrStabby]

Ah the good old "you can have high level abilities but they won't work when you want them to" approach to adventure building.

Some of it I agree with - there should be high level wizards in the world and they should use every spell they can to protect themselves. On the other hand how many archmages do you have to defeat to go from level 13 to level 20? Is this a credible number for the world? In reality not every encounter will have access to these spells because if you did this it would narrow down the range of encounters enough to make it pretty dull.

[mephnick]

Ah the good old "you can have high level abilities but they won't work when you want them to" approach to adventure building.

Yeah, pretty much the only way to make a high level dungeon is to ban anything high level from interacting with it. Doesn't really count IMO.

[cotofpoffee]

Yeah, pretty much the only way to make a high level dungeon is to ban anything high level from interacting with it. Doesn't really count IMO. I more or less agree with this. I just wanted to respond to one saying that high level people could just scry and fry every dungeon.

I don't think high level play should really involve dungeon crawling anyway. There isn't a point to high levels unless you get to do amazingly powerful stuff. Leave the dungeon crawling to the low levels.

[ZorroGames]

Highest I ever achieved was 16th level Cleric/5th level Mage in OD&D, 16th (different) Mage in same, then 7th thru 9th for other characters - OD&D and AD&D 1st.

For the former we met as a rather large club weekly so that helped. As did taking out Dragons in lair thrice. Don't forget treasure was EP largely in the early days.

Waiting to start 5th Edition. 2nd never happened due to move, Third and Fourth never appealed to me.

Brave New World...

[pwykersotz]

Yeah, pretty much the only way to make a high level dungeon is to ban anything high level from interacting with it. Doesn't really count IMO.

This strikes me as an odd thing to say. Low level dungeons are the same way. That pit trap stops your character from using their walking skills alone to bypass this area of the dungeon. That reinforced stone wall stops you from knocking it down and bypassing the dungeon walls. What on earth is the point of an obstacle if it doesn't obstruct an objective? And what on earth is the point of high level play if the DM doesn't put obstacles that are difficult for your level in there?

Look at it this way. In the above mentioned maze, Teleportation doesn't fail. It does something. It teleports you to a prison section of the maze. That is what your tool has become. You can now manipulate it. Teleport something else and have it end up there instead. Or use the very prison meant to obstruct you as a safehouse when something bad goes down. If your Fabricate spell now only creates wooden objects, then fantastic, that's a tool in your toolkit. You have been obstructed, and the challenge is in how to deal with it. It's not about reducing characters to effectively low level ones, it's about creating problems that are difficult enough to warrant attention.

I have an area in my current campaign where force spells don't work. They explode in shards of force shrapnel instead. The party discovered that and they figured out how to work with it, difficult though it was without their Leomund's Tiny Hut that they had come to depend on so heavily. There is functionally no difference in these obstacles, in that they all inhibit an otherwise given ability in some way and force the players to play around it. You can of course, screw it up. If you simply say "No that doesn't work" to all the character's powers instead of making the situation interesting, then yeah, that sucks.

I play a Monk in one of my current games, and my GM loves adding sci-fi elements. I will be very surprised if at some point I don't enter an area of enhanced gravity or hyper-inertia or something and take damage on a fall regardless of my slow fall ability. That's not bad design. That's fun to play around.

[Misterwhisper]

Usually 12+

I have played d&d for 19 years, but I have never made it to level 20.

Highest I have made is were 3 games to 16.

2 games In 3.5 and 1 in pathfinder.


Most die at about 12.