[POLL] What levels do you normally play through at your table?

[thoroughlyS]

In another thread, the question was raised about what levels players experience the game at. I have heard the quote that "90% of games end by 10th level", but that is a misleading representation of the data it draws from. That number came from a breakdown by D&D Beyond of the levels of characters on their service. I am legitimately interested in what levels you have personally played. I have included a link to a strawpoll to get some data.



https://strawpoll.com/polls/jVyGJqLA6Z7



To aid in the discussion, I have created a chart which better represents the data. This chart was created using a snapshot of the data as it was at 2:00 PM CST Mar 17, 2022. The colors represent each tier of play.
https://i.imgur.com/lrcIEBZ.png



Total Respondents
394


1st
255


2nd
269


3rd
353


4th
338


5th
348


6th
334


7th
315


8th
296


9th
275


10th
260


11th
228


12th
210


13th
161


14th
129


15th
112


16th
76


17th
68


18th
58


19th
54


20th
67

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

Played and ran 2 games that ran 5-20 and 1-20 in the last 3 years. Have 3 games running now at level 7, one from level 3 and 2 from level 1. Another game just hit level 4 from level 1

Am playing in alternating games that have gone from 1-3 (about to be 4) and 1-5.

Intend to take 4 of those games at least until level 15, possibly 20, and hope at least one of those low level ones gets to level 20.

In the last 5 years took 2 other campaigns from 1-5.

I like tier 3 play the best I think, especially as a DM.

[Kane0]

Simple poll but happy to contribute

[Forevaxp]

Filled out the poll!
I’m playing a series of campaigns with the same DM and their level ranges are as following (currently, using expected levels for groups I know will level up soon): 3-15, 8-13, 7-8, 4-12

Another DM: 5-8

The DM for my family is doing things a bit differently. The campaign is split into 4 chunks, in which characters grow in level, but get a “soft reset” after each chunk with their levels, subclass, and race getting reset or changed.
So far, we’re at level 5 out of 7, which at that point, we’ll have a soft reset.

[Telok]

So pretty normal results even given that this is the hardcore & long term player base on this forum. The vast majority run the 1-12 range.

[NotPrior]

3rd-15th is the normal range for me. Nobody in my community has any interest in below 3rd anymore, and it's unusual for a campaign to last past 15th.

[False God]

5-15.

Admittedly, it's basically 1-10, but for people who don't need the training wheels of level 1-5.

I play at level 1 when I have new folks, and my games sometimes go longer, but change tune for more heavily towards conquest and castles than pure "adventuring". I typically need a certain sort of player to have already shown interest in a less "wander around and take quests to beat up monsters" type of game to want to play my games above level 15.

[Wasp]

1 to 12. But i have quite often skipped directly to 3 as a starter level and i would say it's quite common for campaigns to kind of peter out around level 8...

[Kane0]

1 to 12. But i have quite often skipped directly to 3 as a starter level and i would say it's quite common for campaigns to kind of peter out around level 8...

Same here.

[Yora]

I remain convinced that material for 11th level and higher should be put into an Epic Level Handbook for the handful of people who actually want it. Class and spell descriptions could so easily be reduced to half their length, leading to a much smaller Player's Handbook that becomes much more practical to use and more accessible to new players.

[Sparky McDibben]

1 - 20. Multiple times, and on one occasion, we went to level 26.

[elyktsorb]

My regular game group went from 1st to 15th one game.

Then 1st to 15th again on our second game

Currently on the third one and we've gone from 1st to 3rd so far.

[J-H]

None of the results were clickable in either Pale Moon or Brave.

Campaign 1+2 (same characters): 3-20
Other campaign: 2-?? game will probably end when they get the Deck of Many Things and blow the party up

Planned future campaign: 1-20

[Tanarii]

I remain convinced that material for 11th level and higher should be put into an Epic Level Handbook for the handful of people who actually want it. Class and spell descriptions could so easily be reduced to half their length, leading to a much smaller Player's Handbook that becomes much more practical to use and more accessible to new players.
Agreed. That and maybe lowering the leveling speed a little bit. It should probably take a year to reach 10th level, not 6 months. Assuming weekly play. (Or maybe not, weekly play may not be a reasonable assumption for the majority of players any more.)

[RogueJK]

3-12ish has been the most common in my experience. Occasionally one has started at 1 or 2. Occasionally one has gone into later Tier 3. One involved some related one-off sessions with pregenerated Tier 4 characters in the same world as the primary campaign.

None of the campaigns in which I've been involved have gone to 20, or even leveled the characters into Tier 4.

[Keravath]

My highest level character is 17 and still going.

The campaign I am running is currently level 7-8 and will go to 20 assuming everyone continues to play. The biggest issue I find with high level campaigns these days is the on going time commitment. Playing 20 levels can take years and it takes interest and commitment from both the players and DM to keep that up. However, with 5e, high level campaigns seem very playable while in the earlier editions (I played mostly AD&D) the high levels became much more a save or die type experience in many cases.

In addition, if people are playing published campaigns rather than homebrew, most of these end in the level 10-15 range so unless the DM wants to develop their own material to continue playing the characters, the end of a published campaign can often represent the start of a new adventure with new characters. If there was more published 5e material at higher levels, there might be more high level play.

[strangebloke]

1 to 12. But i have quite often skipped directly to 3 as a starter level and i would say it's quite common for campaigns to kind of peter out around level 8...

yup. I would say most campaigns I play are in T2 for most of their life, but the ones that get to T3 spend a lot of time there.

[Dork_Forge]

I like to start players at 8th level for short arcs and a lot of one shots, but one shots also frequently go into Tier 3/sometimes Tier 4.

Campaigns are started at 3 as the earliest for enjoyment reasons.

Current two campaigns:

3rd level-9th level currently (10th not too far off) Sept 2020-ongoing (1 year 5 months)

8th level-14th level currently April 2020-ongoing (1 year 11 months)

For what I play: primarily one shots, I'll take what I can get on the other side of the screen.

[Thunderous Mojo]

I remain convinced that material for 11th level and higher should be put into an Epic Level Handbook for the handful of people who actually want it. Class and spell descriptions could so easily be reduced to half their length, leading to a much smaller Player's Handbook that becomes much more practical to use and more accessible to new players.

So some player’s fear of 6th level spells, means other players have to buy two books? Hard Pass, on my end.

You are welcome to play BECMI, all you want…with expensive books/box sets for each segment.

I’m fine with a single PHB…AD&D style.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Of my 15 5e campaigns (not including one shots):

2 went 1-20 (at about 14 months of mostly weekly play each)
2 are in progress, both 2-X (currently 5-6). And will go as high as scheduling allows.
1 went 1-15, until I moved away.
1 went 1-9 (my one linear-ish adventure).
The rest have been 1-7ish (sometimes 6, sometimes 8). But that's because they were hard locked to a school year as part of a school club, which really only allows a dozen 1-1.5 hour sessions total. They'd have gone longer if they could.

And while yes, the ones into t3+ have definitely been broader scope with more jumping around places. But fundamentally, they've not been substantially different or harder to plan for. But then I don't do either linear plots or lots of dungeon delving, with most of the driving force being the players deciding where to go and how to interact with the world and me just deciding how the world reacts and what it contains.

[Tanarii]

So some player’s fear of 6th level spells, means other players have to buy two books? Hard Pass, on my end.

You are welcome to play BECMI, all you want…with expensive books/box sets for each segment.

I’m fine with a single PHB…AD&D style.A PHB and a Epic Level Handbook at 1/2 the price each of the 5e PHB serves all players.

Even at 2/3 the price of the PHB and 1/2 the price for an epic level handbook, the vast majority of players would be served better. Since only those few that needed the extra content would invest in it. Everyone else that never uses the content wouldn't be paying for wasted ink.

Incidental benefit of increased speed of locating what you're looking for and not owning such a bulk book would be nice too.

When it comes to picking an edition to base your decisions on, BECMI is a far better model to follow than AD&D in almost every regard.

[Chaos Jackal]

I remain convinced that material for 11th level and higher should be put into an Epic Level Handbook for the handful of people who actually want it. Class and spell descriptions could so easily be reduced to half their length, leading to a much smaller Player's Handbook that becomes much more practical to use and more accessible to new players.

Classes and subclasses alike tend to be frontloaded, and plenty of high level abilities are just extra uses or minor boosts to early level features. 75-80% of spells are of 5th-level and lower (yes, it's true for PHB-only too). Even published adventures often go at least a few levels into tier 3 and there's actually a decent number of people who'll play tier 3 (tier 4 I guess does have something closer to "handful").

So what you're proposing affects more than just "a handful" of players and doesn't actually solve your perceived issue to boot. Half the levels doesn't mean half the material. Even if the PHB was just class and spell descriptions, you'd cut about 25% of it if you removed levels 11-20. Noticeably less since there are more things than class and spell descriptions in it.

[Thunderous Mojo]

A PHB and a Epic Level Handbook at 1/2 the price each of the 5e PHB serves all players.

Even at 2/3 the price of the PHB and 1/2 the price for an epic level handbook, the vast majority of players would be served better. Since only those few that needed the extra content would invest in it. Everyone else that never uses the content wouldn't be paying for wasted ink..

“Vast majority of players”?

May I see your polling data?

I think we can both agree, the quote above is opinion speech, not factual speech.

There is a certain satisfaction that comes with retiring a character or campaign that has been long running, and has ran from 1-20, (or thereabouts).

It makes me sad, quite frankly, to imagine people, willfully removing the chance to have that experience. There is so much life, left in a campaign after level 8, it seems such a shameful waste to never explore that untapped potential.

[LudicSavant]

People play high level games.

Even in this poll (which has a wording of "what do you normally play" instead of "what levels have you played" that discourages people from mentioning levels that they might experience, but just not all the time), current results from 322 participants say level 20 is normally played by ~26.5% as many respondents as level 1. To say that these levels don't matter are basically telling those respondents to go take a hike. That their experiences just don't matter much. That they should get gatekeeping behind an extra book purchase (and it wouldn't be just one book impacted... there are supplements to consider, too). And I think (IMHO) that would be a bad take even if that number was 5%, let alone as big as 26.5%.

Another thing I'll note, just from personal experience as well as from some testimonials I see (including even in this thread), the groups that don't peter out in tier 2 often spend a lot of time in tier 3 or 4, because those are often the more stable and successful groups that want to be spending time with each other.

What's more, attrition of players over time is just a normal thing that games face. For example, go to basically any steam game and take a look at the achievements -- the achievements that are later in the game will have dramatically less people. 70% of your players might never see that awesome final boss, or see the resolution of your story. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't put care into those parts of your game. People thinking overmuch about what the majority of players will get to experience are falling into a trap. By contrast, say, the designers of Elden Ring don't care if 99% of people miss out on some of the content they design. In fact, they specifically count on it. They specifically design things to be more optional, more easily missable. They do this so that you can set out in any direction, have your own highly polished experience, and it'll be your own. They do this so that you know that if you dedicated 100 more hours to this game, there'd still be more for you to experience.

I could give examples like this from all kinds of games, with considerably rarer player experiences. For example, by its very nature, almost no players will reach tournament-level play in League of Legends, Street Fighter, or other games that give love to their esports communities. And yet, if these games didn't create a great competitive-tier experience, they would not enjoy such enduring success. There's a reason people still care about Smash Bros Melee but not so much Smash Bros Brawl. Heck, how about another thing. What percentage of players do you think actually completed a Genocide playthrough in Undertale? And yet, how much of an icon is the fight against Sans? Games like Metroid Dread (one of the most successful Metroid games to date) even specifically put extra cutscenes and boss mechanics in the game for the speedrunner community (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOpjh7UokuEa). What percentage of people are speedrunners? Not a lot. But when speedrunners get what they want, they create excitement in the community, they create dedicated, long-term fans.

Edit: I think (IMHO) that good game designers, and even good marketing people, understand that.

Remember when the marketing guys for 5e talked about how a big part of their model for 5e was to try and grab dedicated players and make it easier for those guys to teach/pull new people into the hobby? The way I remember them talking about it, it was like they saw the dedicated players as their salesmen. And sure enough, those are the guys making youtube shows and such. Like, you know Critical Role? Those guys play high level games! And they pull in tons of players with this content.

And this applies to some of the other games I mentioned too. There's a reason marketing guys for things like Street Fighter love the competitive gaming community. It doesn't matter if most players won't get to that level. Those player experiences are valuable, even if they're not "the majority."


yup. I would say most campaigns I play are in T2 for most of their life, but the ones that get to T3 spend a lot of time there.

Yeah. Just anecdotally, I know multiple people where a player would play like 5+ campaigns, only get to high levels in one of them, but spend more time in those high levels than all of their other campaigns combined. Because that was the group that worked, that stayed together, that stuck it out through thick and thin.


“Vast majority of players”?

May I see your polling data?

I think we can both agree, the quote above is opinion speech, not factual speech.

There is a certain satisfaction that comes with retiring a character or campaign that has been long running, and has ran from 1-20, (or thereabouts).

It makes me sad, quite frankly, to imagine people, willfully removing the chance to have that experience. There is so much life, left in a campaign after level 8, it seems such a shameful waste to never explore that untapped potential.

Very much so. Especially on the satisfaction that comes with retiring a character from a 1-20 campaign. There's no substitute for that feeling for me!

I know many players will never get that feeling. Heck, it took years of involvement in the hobby before I got to experience it the first time. But if that opportunity wasn't in the game, it would be far lesser for it. Speaking just for myself and a few others I know, that's the kind of experience that will make someone stick with a game for years or even decades and bring others into the hobby.

There is something to be said for crafting experiences for dedicated, long-term fans, even if not everyone will get them. Indeed, this is part of why games like Dark Souls or Street Fighter or Final Fantasy gain enduring success. Oh sure, many people won't stick through 100 hours to see the ending of Final Fantasy. But do you think that if they cut out that story, we'd still be talking about Final Fantasy 6 or 7 in the year 2022? I don't think so.

[Catullus64]

I am of very mixed mind about level ranges in this game. I have run games that ranged from levels 1-20, and have mostly good memories; but looking back on those same games, it's hard not to develop the impression that they would have worked better as level 1-10.

Some of the difficulty comes from the fact that there are very strong narrative implications attached to the full 20-level range. This isn't me speculating, the game comes right out and says this on page 15 of the PHB, Tiers of Play. Over the course of 20 levels, you are meant to go from solving local problems, to dealing with kingdom-wide threats, to saving the world, to fighting battles on a cosmic scale. Experiencing the full scale of what the game's classes offer means experiencing a specific type of story, one that involves this immense growth in scale, stakes, and overall weirdness.

I do appreciate the allure of taking a character all the way through the power levels that the game offers, and the sentimental value of having done so. But if you're a DM or player who wants to tell and experience a more specific story, the full 20-level range is often a hinderance. If you love the wild, high-power light show of high levels, and want a story in that realm, getting there can be a slog as the XP curve slows dramatically. If you like grounded stories of personal adventure with heroes closer to the ordinary (this is my jam) you'll struggle to carry that anywhere past level 9 or so.

I wish that experiencing the game's full range of character features wasn't locked together with this huge change in the type of story that can be told. To offer an imperfect analogy to superhero comics, if all superheroes eventually quit their street-level crimefighting in order to deal with Crisis events all the time, I'd probably stop reading them (this is actually somewhat close to the reason I really did stop reading superhero comics.)

[False God]

I am of very mixed mind about level ranges in this game. I have run games that ranged from levels 1-20, and have mostly good memories; but looking back on those same games, it's hard not to develop the impression that they would have worked better as level 1-10.

Some of the difficulty comes from the fact that there are very strong narrative implications attached to the full 20-level range. This isn't me speculating, the game comes right out and says this on page 15 of the PHB, Tiers of Play. Over the course of 20 levels, you are meant to go from solving local problems, to dealing with kingdom-wide threats, to saving the world, to fighting battles on a cosmic scale. Experiencing the full scale of what the game's classes offer means experiencing a specific type of story, one that involves this immense growth in scale, stakes, and overall weirdness.

I do appreciate the allure of taking a character all the way through the power levels that the game offers, and the sentimental value of having done so. But if you're a DM or player who wants to tell and experience a more specific story, the full 20-level range is often a hinderance. If you love the wild, high-power light show of high levels, and want a story in that realm, getting there can be a slog as the XP curve slows dramatically. If you like grounded stories of personal adventure with heroes closer to the ordinary (this is my jam) you'll struggle to carry that anywhere past level 9 or so.

I wish that experiencing the game's full range of character features wasn't locked together with this huge change in the type of story that can be told. To offer an imperfect analogy to superhero comics, if all superheroes eventually quit their street-level crimefighting in order to deal with Crisis events all the time, I'd probably stop reading them (this is actually somewhat close to the reason I really did stop reading superhero comics.)

I mean, just ignore the book's "advice" on how the game should be played?

I've certainly run 20th level as crazy supers adventures, saving the universe, fighting crazy high threats, but it's not my cup of tea.

So when I don't want to do that but also want to be high level, I just ignore all that and don't.

D&D's nice for being able to supply multiple types of gameplay within the same system.

[Catullus64]

I mean, just ignore the book's "advice" on how the game should be played?

I've certainly run 20th level as crazy supers adventures, saving the universe, fighting crazy high threats, but it's not my cup of tea.

So when I don't want to do that but also want to be high level, I just ignore all that and don't.

D&D's nice for being able to supply multiple types of gameplay within the same system.

Being high level in D&D means something within the world, though. Spellcasters can penetrate time, space, thought, and mortality with ease. Warriors can duel with giants and slaughter lesser foes by the dozen. The change in narrative scope as you level up doesn't just come from arbitrary convention, but from what your characters are capable of. There are entire low-level adventures that could be solved trivially by a single high-level spell, final bosses that could be slain by a high-level fighter without breaking a sweat. How do you suggest importing the feel of low-to-mid-level adventure into higher level games, exactly?

[Tanarii]

“Vast majority of players”?

May I see your polling data?

I think we can both agree, the quote above is opinion speech, not factual speech.

This poll alone is showing my statement to be correct, and WotC has echoed it for a long time. It's well known at this point that majority of players and play occur in Tier 2.

Ten might be a bit low, they might need to do 1-12 or so.

Edit:
THAT SAID ... I do not expect that Wotc would ever consider this. The core PHB containing levels 1-20 is now a tradition that goes back to AD&D 2e.

[Sparky McDibben]

I am of very mixed mind about level ranges in this game. I have run games that ranged from levels 1-20, and have mostly good memories; but looking back on those same games, it's hard not to develop the impression that they would have worked better as level 1-10.

Some of the difficulty comes from the fact that there are very strong narrative implications attached to the full 20-level range. This isn't me speculating, the game comes right out and says this on page 15 of the PHB, Tiers of Play. Over the course of 20 levels, you are meant to go from solving local problems, to dealing with kingdom-wide threats, to saving the world, to fighting battles on a cosmic scale. Experiencing the full scale of what the game's classes offer means experiencing a specific type of story, one that involves this immense growth in scale, stakes, and overall weirdness.

I do appreciate the allure of taking a character all the way through the power levels that the game offers, and the sentimental value of having done so. But if you're a DM or player who wants to tell and experience a more specific story, the full 20-level range is often a hinderance. If you love the wild, high-power light show of high levels, and want a story in that realm, getting there can be a slog as the XP curve slows dramatically. If you like grounded stories of personal adventure with heroes closer to the ordinary (this is my jam) you'll struggle to carry that anywhere past level 9 or so.

A few thoughts I have on this:

1) Does the game have to be combined in a single package? I mean, if your group wants an adventure best suited to 15-20 levels, just start at level 14 with a tune-up encounter or two to get the kinks out, then level up to 15 and BAM! You're off. Or, hell, during the session zero, just say, "I'm capping XP at level 10. For every [some amount] of XP past that, you get an epic boon, or the ability to pick an extra spell or something."

Hell, you could split these up! Just go, "Guys, we're going to run a low-level campaign from 1 - 5 here, and then we're going to do a timeskip of 5 years. When we pick back up, we're going to be doing a different campaign from levels 12 - 18 over there."

2) I have a sneaking suspicion (not of you, Catullus, just from testimonials I've seen on here), that many DMs have issues at higher levels because they try to run them the same way they run low levels. And that's just not really possible. Once 6th level spells come online, the game fundamentally changes, and the PCs have to have agendas - they're movers and shakers. And you have to embed that behavior in your players early on - reward them for looking for adventures, being active agents, and pursuing goals in the setting.

As an example from a recent campaign, at about 8th level the PCs had defeated a major boss, but they all had backstory stuff that I'd been foreshadowing. One of my PCs came to me and asked, "Hey, when can we start my backstory stuff?" My response was simply, "Whenever you get the party on board with pursuing it." And that was all it took. Once the PCs realized it was on them to start their quest, they all started bargaining to do "their thing" next.

3) Higher levels fundamentally shift world-building power from the DM to the PCs. And if we're not ready for that, with solid improv tools for when the PCs decide to build an airship, or teleport halfway across the world, or use some downtime to astrally project into Gehenna, of course we're going to have trouble. It's a challenge, but it's actually quite fun, once you're used to it, to start kit-bashing some of this stuff on the fly. See Worlds Without Number for some really good tools for this stuff.

4) Finally, I think there's a focus on narrative for DMs. Specifically, that the narrative is something of which the DM is in control. And, as the PCs start gaining more power, they can start doing things that "break the story." They can start using speak with dead to bypass difficulty in murder mysteries, for example. Or passwall to just tunnel into the bottom level of the dungeon. And now, all that crap you've been stressing about, like game balance, or resource depletion, or the three-act structure, all starts to come apart because the PCs can just go around it.

There are really three things you can do about this tendency.

The first option is to ban all play above whatever level range you're comfortable with. I personally don't like this solution because it feels lazy from the player's perspective, but it definitely works if you just don't have the time for the other approaches.

The second option is to examine every special ability and have the bad guys plan for them. Not necessarily shut the PCs' powers down, but enough to keep the challenge up. I don't like this approach because, done poorly, it can feel world-breaking, and even done well it can create some really bad assumptions ("The PCs will only be able to progress through combat," for example). But for the right bad guy, it can be an excellent approach.

The third option is to prep what resources the bad guys have, lay out general goals, plug them into the world, and then let them react to the PCs organically. I prefer this approach because it's scalable (it works just as well for low-level bad guys as high-level ones), it's low prep (all I need is a list of resources and goals), and it creates emergent situations based on player choices.

[LudicSavant]

It is a major mistake to tunnel vision on "the majority" and marginalize anyone in your audience categorized as "the minority." Especially if that category is largely comprised of dedicated, long-term fans (the ones who will stick it out for the years it can take for some 1-20 campaigns).

Like... let me put it this way. You know how many people actually complete Final Fantasy VII according to the steam achievements? Less than 10% complete the JRPG. Now what do you think would happen if they spurned those less than 10% of players? Even in a short game, like Cuphead, the completion rate in the steam achievements is like 30%.

According to this poll, level 20 is 'played normally' about 26.5% as often as level 1. That's not a small percentage by any means, for something like this. It's unjustified for a couple of people to react like that's nothing.


D&D's nice for being able to supply multiple types of gameplay within the same system.

Indeed. There's no perfect pasta sauce. There are perfect pasta sauces.

If Prego only wanted one kind of pasta sauce to appeal to "the majority," well then I hope you like Plain, because that's what you get. But by also offering Spicy and Extra Chunky, they get a whole lot more customers.

[Tanarii]

According to this poll, level 20 is 'played normally' about 26.5% as often as level 1. That's not a small percentage by any means, for something like this. It's unjustified for a couple of people to react like that's nothing.

You must be looking at a different poll, because this one shows that less than 2%.

[LudicSavant]

You must be looking at a different poll, because this one shows that less than 2%.

No, it's the same poll.

Let's look at the current count:

Level 1: 217 votes.
Level 20: 59 votes.

59/217= ~27.2%

Therefore, according to this poll, Level 20 is "played normally" about 27.2% as often as level 1.

The number you're looking at that's "less than 2%" is just about 8% for the most "normally played" level (level 3). And that number is not "percentage of people who play that level" it's "how big a slice on the pie chart it gets." Which represents share of votes, NOT share of people (because people can vote for more than one level at a time in this poll).

For example, level 3 got 295 votes. That's ~8% of the votes cast... but it means that of the 334 who voted (and could vote on as many levels as they wanted), ~88% voted for level 3.

However, someone who did not notice that could easily have printed a headline like "just 8% of players play level 3!" And that wouldn't be true. Because what really happened is that they got 8% of the 3542 votes... and those 3542 votes were cast by only 334 participants (who didn't even vote the same number of times as each other). That 2% and 8% figure is thus basically meaningless. What you should be looking at is percentage of respondents, not percentage of votes.

The fact that someone could look at this and think level 20 got 2% of responding players (when that's not even close) is a perfect example of how easily statistics are misinterpreted.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Ludic Savant receives Inspiration!

Failure to appreciate the details of polling, leads to misinformation and a potential wrong view of the subject matter being polled.

[Tanarii]

No, it's the same poll.

Let's look at the current count:

Level 1: 217 votes.
Level 20: 59 votes.

59/217= ~27.2%

Therefore, according to this poll, Level 20 is "played normally" about 27.2% as often as level 1.
Ah yes, okay. But the 27% of level 1 number is also not representative of anything particularly useful. This multi vote thing throws off a lot of potential data analysis.

What we need for a percentage is "what's the highest Tier you normally play to", so there's a 1 vote per person and percentage of the whole.

[LudicSavant]

Ah yes, okay. But the 27% of level 1 number is also not representative of anything particularly useful. This multi vote thing throws off a lot of potential data analysis.

What we need for a percentage is "what's the highest Tier you normally play to", so there's a 1 vote per person and percentage of the whole.

The 27% number I gave is representative of how many persons "normally play" level 20 vs how many persons "normally play" level 1. Said figure ignores the "multi-vote thing."

[KorvinStarmast]

People play high level games. Most of my Tier 4 play has been in one shots. I was lucky to get into a campaign that went 1-20. RL rarely allows for that.

[Tanarii]

The 27% number I gave is representative of how many persons "normally play" level 20 vs how many persons "normally play" level 1. Said figure ignores the "multi-vote thing."
Yes, but it's a meaningless statistic.

What's interesting to me is apparently there are a number of people getting to level 20 without playing through levels 18 & 19 first.

[Thunderous Mojo]

Most of my Tier 4 play has been in one shots. I was lucky to get into a campaign that went 1-20. RL rarely allows for that.

Yet, I wouldn’t characterize you as being opposed to High Level play, Korvin. Your High Tier experience, supports an important observation that Ludic made:

Often, the most limiting factor to high level play, has nothing to do with game mechanics, but with Real World social factors.

Given this, a case may be made, that since it is a precarious proposition to reach High Level play due to real world factors, that High Level play is more precious than low level play.

If one has a cohesive D&D group, that works well together, then one should try to reach high level play, since based off anecdotal evidence from the internet…the conditions needed for high level play are rarely in alignment.

To put it another way…quite a few things had to Go Right, for Frodo to destroy the One Ring. Thus, if you are feeling Fellowship vibes from your gaming group, one might as well take a run at T4….you might not get the chance again.🃏

To Tanarii: how is knowing the frequency of players playing at different levels a “Meaningless statistic”?

Strikes me, this type of datum, is extremely meaningful.

[LudicSavant]

Yes, but it's a meaningless statistic.

What's interesting to me is apparently there are a number of people getting to level 20 without playing through levels 18 & 19 first.

Possibly because of experiences like Korvin's:

Most of my Tier 4 play has been in one shots.
I personally have not done a level 20 1-shot in 5e, oddly enough. I have played games that go from Tier 1 to level 20, though, and they were amazing! Which is, of course, why people stuck around for the whole thing. :smallsmile:


Yes, but it's a meaningless statistic.
It means people (or at least, respondents to this poll) play level 20 relative to level 1 much, much more often than was expected by a number of people in this thread, including yourself.

[Tanarii]

Possibly because of experiences like Korvin's:


Personally, I don't share this experience. I personally have not done a level 20 1-shot in 5e. I have played games that go from Tier 1 to level 20, though! :smallsmile:


It means people (or at least, respondents to this poll) play level 20 relative to level 1 much, much more often than was expected by a number of people in this thread, including yourself.
If that's the case, it's irrelevant to considerations of what level cap should be considered for publication in a core rules. Folks jumping straight to the 'top level' will use whatever the highest level is that is available.

What would be important for a level cap other than the traditional 20 is what level folks play up to. If this poll is capturing something other than starting at 1 and what level do you usually play up to, it's definitely needs to be restructured to provide useful information. (I did think it was weirdly structured that you needed to check every box from 1 on upwards.)

[Gryndle]

All of our 5E campaigns thus far have started at either 1st or 3rd level and ran until 16th-18th level.

[LudicSavant]

If that's the case, it's irrelevant to considerations of what level cap should be considered for publication in a core rules. Folks jumping straight to the 'top level' will use whatever the highest level is that is available.

Note that level 20 only has a few more respondents than level 19. So the skipping looks like the exception to the rule.

Also, this could be representative of at least two things: 1) A few people skipping to level 20 or 2) A few people thinking that they were just supposed to click the beginning and endpoint of their campaign, not all the levels in between.


(I did think it was weirdly structured that you needed to check every box from 1 on upwards.)

Yes. This could have potentially led to possibility #2: People thinking that they were just supposed to click the beginning and endpoint of their campaign, not all the levels in between.

[tokek]

Yes, but it's a meaningless statistic.

What's interesting to me is apparently there are a number of people getting to level 20 without playing through levels 18 & 19 first.

I think we would have guessed that some people never play a 1-20 but have played a level 20 one-shot and I think the poll reflects that. So we would have guessed correctly, after all who ever heard of a level 19 one-shot?

The survey did not really allow any other way to discern the difference between campaign play with advancement and one-shots.

[LudicSavant]

Ludic Savant receives Inspiration!

Failure to appreciate the details of polling, leads to misinformation and a potential wrong view of the subject matter being polled.

Man, that bolded part should be a disclaimer on basically every poll ever. xD

[Wasp]

Especially if that category is largely comprised of dedicated, long-term fans (the ones who will stick it out for the years it can take for some 1-20 campaigns).

With all the fervor to defend high level play this sounds very dismissive of the fans that do not or do not want to play to level 20 as lesser fans which I do not like.

I don't like the cosmology shattering high level play. I like going on adventures, doing quests, following backgrounds. High level play is just too far away from that and i don't like that it is implied that not wanting to do that makes me casual and less committed.

[JNAProductions]

With all the fervor to defend high level play this sounds very dismissive of the fans that do not or do not want to play to level 20 as lesser fans which I do not like.

I don't like the cosmology shattering high level play. I like going on adventures, doing quests, following backgrounds. High level play is just too far away from that and i don't like that it is implied that not wanting to do that makes me casual and less committed.

You and I must be reading different threads then.

What I’m seeing is “High level play is fun, hard to achieve through natural growth, but is still worth including in the game.”
Nothing about low-level play being bad.

[Wasp]

The paragraph I edited in basically implies that the high level players are the committed fans who invest in the game in contrast to those fans that are not as committed.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yet, I wouldn’t characterize you as being opposed to High Level play, Korvin. Your High Tier experience, supports an important observation that Ludic made:

Often, the most limiting factor to high level play, has nothing to do with game mechanics, but with Real World social factors. Indeed, I am not opposed to high level play. And RL has DC of 35 when it comes to keeping a group together and scheduling stuff.


Given this, a case may be made, that since it is a precarious proposition to reach High Level play due to real world factors, that High Level play is more precious than low level play.
More rare, yes, more precious? That's a value judgment that I am not prepared to make.


If one has a cohesive D&D group, that works well together, then one should try to reach high level play, Let the campaign run until its conclusion arises by its own logic. Not every DM/World Builder has the desire to develop content that goes deep into Tier 3 and 4.
The wrap up need not be at level 20.
If the DM and players find a good stopping point at level 15, or 17, that has grown organically through play, then stop when it makes sense.
If there's more to explore, then by all means Lay On MacDuff!
Don't force it just because there's another number out there to chase.

[LudicSavant]

You and I must be reading different threads then.

What I’m seeing is “High level play is fun, hard to achieve through natural growth, but is still worth including in the game.”
Nothing about low-level play being bad.

Yep. Exactly this.


The paragraph I edited in basically implies that the high level players are the committed fans who invest in the game in contrast to those fans that are not as committed.

What the what? :smallconfused: It's not implying that at all.

People who play 1-20 are generally committed players who invest in the game, by virtue of the sheer time requirement involved. But they are not the only committed players.

People who intentionally avoid high levels also include committed players who invest in the game. They are no lesser than those who play 1-20, and if anyone says they are I will defend them as fervently as I defend those who enjoy high level play!

However, the overall percentage of players who are highly committed fans who invest that much in the game is... low. Like, remember what I said about 10% of people finishing Final Fantasy VII? Yeah. Playing 1-20 requires more time than that. And not just a little more, either.

The point being made is that even if the percentage of people playing all the way through to high levels appears small, those people might represent a larger percentage of your diehard audience than you expect. And a developer disregards their diehard fans -- even subsections thereof -- at their peril.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Our group has started at 1st for pretty much every campaign, largely I suppose because that's where the published content we tend to use starts. However, some mods are basically handwaving level 1 and, to some extent, level 2. Certainly that's the case with the last one I DMed, DiA.
In reading some of the responses 3rd seems to be a pretty common starting point as well. I'd be interested to know why this is; I'd surmise that some players find play too simple while some just find combat too swingy and lethal.
For me I'd agree with the 2nd reason; a single crit, even from a low CR monster can be enough to intstantly kill a 1st level character. I'd disagree that low levels are too simple though. In fact I've found players have had to get pretty creative to be successful at low levels. Using cantrips to create distractions, setting traps out of common items, using fire, and just generally having to use everything their disposal have been more common at early tier 1.

[J-H]

Agreed, time is the big factor.

Castle Dracula, levels 3-13:
Took about 1 year, about 22-24 sessions.
Originally 5:30pm-10pm, later shifted to more like 7pm-10:30pm., so 4.5-3.5 hr sessions.
Started with 7 players, lost 1 along the way.

Against the Idol of the Sun, levels 13-20+, same characters:
14 months in, about 22 sessions and probably needs another 10-15 sessions to finish, depending on party choices. Lots of exploration, hexcrawl, kingdom-level issues, so not a fast railroad.
Running 7-7:30pm to about 10:30-11pm, so only 3-3.5 hr sessions.
Started with 6 players, have lost 3 of the originals to RL, gained 1 replacement who dropped out due to RL, just gained 2 more replacements to put us back up to 5.

[Keravath]

A PHB and a Epic Level Handbook at 1/2 the price each of the 5e PHB serves all players.

Even at 2/3 the price of the PHB and 1/2 the price for an epic level handbook, the vast majority of players would be served better. Since only those few that needed the extra content would invest in it. Everyone else that never uses the content wouldn't be paying for wasted ink.

Incidental benefit of increased speed of locating what you're looking for and not owning such a bulk book would be nice too.

When it comes to picking an edition to base your decisions on, BECMI is a far better model to follow than AD&D in almost every regard.

If you consider epic level to be level 20+ ... I completely agree.

If you consider "epic" to be level 10+ ... I would completely disagree :)

D&D has always been built to provide the ability to build powerful characters from start to finish and beyond. Just because some players/DM prefer to play only until tier 2 doesn't mean that information to play beyond that for all players should be found in a secondary source. Just having the sources can be inspiration enough to encourage play at higher levels. In addition, at least in my experience, 5e is better constructed to accommodate higher levels of play than previous editions so I don't see why biases developed in previous versions of the game should limit what people should be given in a product in this version of the game.

I am currently DMing a group of friends with whom I have played since AD&D. The reluctance to level at times is palpable. They expect the game to end at level 7 or 8 or 9. The highest AD&D game I ever played went to about 11 or 12 because it started to get unmanageable - too much power - too many magic items - too many save or die effects. These all tended to drain some of the fun. However, they are all mitigated to some extent or another in 5e. In the game I am running, so far, everyone is still enjoying playing. The characters are developing, getting more powerful, but in no way broken. The players are having to decide which magic items to attune and are finding it to be very limiting compared to dripping with magic items from previous editions.

Sorry for the digression :) ... my point is that without the source material for higher levels readily available folks will miss out on playing some very fun parts of the game just because someone else decides that the higher levels aren't really fun for them and shouldn't be sold together.

[Ogre Mage]

3-12ish has been the most common in my experience. Occasionally one has started at 1 or 2. Occasionally one has gone into later Tier 3.

None of the campaigns in which I've been involved have gone to 20, or even leveled the characters into Tier 4.

This is similar to my experience. Outside of my very first 5E campaign in 2015 which started at level 1 and two others which started at level 2, the vast majority the campaigns I have played in began at level 3. This seems to be true of many given that level 3 is the most popular answer in the poll and is way ahead of levels 1-2.

And our campaigns generally ended around 12. The highest I ever got in a regular campaign was 15.

My one experience in Tier 4 was a three-shot story run by our DM using 20th level characters.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

I remain convinced that material for 11th level and higher should be put into an Epic Level Handbook for the handful of people who actually want it. Class and spell descriptions could so easily be reduced to half their length, leading to a much smaller Player's Handbook that becomes much more practical to use and more accessible to new players.

I’m inclined to agree. I’d much prefer a “Basic” book that covered T1 and included the core rules, a bestiary and classes up to level 5.

Then an “Advanced” set of books that covered higher level play, introduced more complex systems (feats? A maneuvers for all Martials anyone? Robust skill rules? Social mechanics? And high level spells).

That way the chocolate crowd can have the stripped down OSR, introductory, Rules Lite, Blackmoor, whatever system that is easy to learn, play and engenders a certain kind of play, but built on a chassis that can support crunch without demanding it.

Then the peanut butter crowd can get all the cool toys that make the game heavy and require system mastery to run smoothly, and there’s a clear systemic line.


So some player’s fear of 6th level spells, means other players have to buy two books? Hard Pass, on my end.

You are welcome to play BECMI, all you want…with expensive books/box sets for each segment.

I’m fine with a single PHB…AD&D style.

BECMI was the king of sales vs AD&D for a reason. It’s not like there isn’t a starter set already. Starter=Basic, 1-10 Core=Expert, 11-20=Champion.


A PHB and a Epic Level Handbook at 1/2 the price each of the 5e PHB serves all players.

Even at 2/3 the price of the PHB and 1/2 the price for an epic level handbook, the vast majority of players would be served better. Since only those few that needed the extra content would invest in it. Everyone else that never uses the content wouldn't be paying for wasted ink.

Incidental benefit of increased speed of locating what you're looking for and not owning such a bulk book would be nice too.

When it comes to picking an edition to base your decisions on, BECMI is a far better model to follow than AD&D in almost every regard.

While I doubt the prices would decrease, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. A beginners book, an Advanced set of the trad 3 and an Epic book.


“ It makes me sad, quite frankly, to imagine people, willfully removing the chance to have that experience. There is so much life, left in a campaign after level 8, it seems such a shameful waste to never explore that untapped potential.

Who is arguing to wilfully remove it?

The argument is to separate it from the basic rules, which allows players to play the game where it mostly lives, and offers more interesting “options” for high level played designed for high level play, when players have mastered the system to be ready for high level play.


People play high level games.

Remember when the marketing guys for 5e talked about how a big part of their model for 5e was to try and grab dedicated players and make it easier for those guys to teach/pull new people into the hobby? The way I remember them talking about it, it was like they saw the dedicated players as their salesmen. And sure enough, those are the guys making youtube shows and such. Like, you know Critical Role? Those guys play high level games! And they pull in tons of players with this content.

Yeah, they do, which is why having a rule set calibrated for that kind of play would be great. Not having to concern themselves with DC 30 skill checks and wish spells and slapping bad capstones onto underdeveloped classes that were designed for levels 1-5



Very much so. Especially on the satisfaction that comes with retiring a character from a 1-20 campaign. There's no substitute for that feeling for me!

I dare say playing through to Immortal might scratch that itch.


I know many players will never get that feeling. Heck, it took years of involvement in the hobby before I got to experience it the first time. But if that opportunity wasn't in the game, it would be far lesser for it. Speaking just for myself and a few others I know, that's the kind of experience that will make someone stick with a game for years or even decades and bring others into the hobby.

There is something to be said for crafting experiences for dedicated, long-term fans, even if not everyone will get them. Indeed, this is part of why games like Dark Souls or Street Fighter or Final Fantasy gain enduring success. Oh sure, many people won't stick through 100 hours to see the ending of Final Fantasy. But do you think that if they cut out that story, we'd still be talking about Final Fantasy 6 or 7 in the year 2022? I don't think so.

No one wants to cut that out. I’m arguing for improving the experience the way BECMI did (there’s a reason B/X is so revered in the OSR community)




D&D has always been built to provide the ability to build powerful characters from start to finish and beyond.

But that’s not always been contained in a single book.

BECMI was the longest running edition, and it certainly didn’t offer that promise until the Rules Cyclopedia.


Just because some players/DM prefer to play only until tier 2 doesn't mean that information to play beyond that for all players should be found in a secondary source. Just having the sources can be inspiration enough to encourage play at higher levels. In addition, at least in my experience, 5e is better constructed to accommodate higher levels of play than previous editions so I don't see why biases developed in previous versions of the game should limit what people should be given in a product in this version of the game. [/QUOTE]

See, I disagree with that. Having played high level in 3 different editions, 5e’s top tier play is actually some of the worst constructed. While CODzilla and XMas Tree Wizards were a balance issue in 3E, they also enabled a bunch of play that 5E disables.

And in AD&D, there were high tier mechanics baked right into the class design. Now becoming an Archdruid isn’t a mechanical goal with world shaping consequences: it’s a capstone that lets you do magic better.

I don’t get to have a keep at level 9 as a fighter, or followers. I just get extra attacks.

It’s a black eye of this edition: it was obviously designed for Tiers 1 and 2. Except for spells, 99% of which are legacy spells.

I mean, what’s the coolest new 9th level spell in this edition?

[Jophiel]

So pretty normal results even given that this is the hardcore & long term player base on this forum. The vast majority run the 1-12 range.

Yeah, I assume this poll isn't exactly representative since people who play D&D at 20th level are probably more likely to hang out on D&D forums than people who only ever casually play from 1-5th. Though, to be fair, I don't know how you would arrive at a really representative sample of the entire 5e community.

But, for all that, the clear leader is still the 1-12th game. Or 3rd-8th, really. I'm a little surprised that many people skip 1 & 2. I understand why they would but I'm surprised it's that frequent. This is why I can't find anyone to kill the giant rats in my tavern's basement.

[Keravath]

Yes, but it's a meaningless statistic.

What's interesting to me is apparently there are a number of people getting to level 20 without playing through levels 18 & 19 first.

Two easy explanations.
1) Some folks play level 20 one shots.
2) Some folks misread the poll and only clicked the lowest and highest levels they typically play in a campaign. e.g. clicking 1 and 20 or level 3 and 20 when they should have clicked every level in between.

[Keravath]

I’m inclined to agree. I’d much prefer a “Basic” book that covered T1 and included the core rules, a bestiary and classes up to level 5.

Then an “Advanced” set of books that covered higher level play, introduced more complex systems (feats? A maneuvers for all Martials anyone? Robust skill rules? Social mechanics? And high level spells).

That way the chocolate crowd can have the stripped down OSR, introductory, Rules Lite, Blackmoor, whatever system that is easy to learn, play and engenders a certain kind of play, but built on a chassis that can support crunch without demanding it.

Then the peanut butter crowd can get all the cool toys that make the game heavy and require system mastery to run smoothly, and there’s a clear systemic line.



Isn't this exactly the role of the Starter Kit and the Essentials Kit? Both give you everything needed to play the game up to level 5-7. It is exactly what you are looking for if all you want is the introductory materials. These sources are then followed by the PHB as the more "Advanced" text if a group of players/DM find themselves interested in the game and want more.

I have both the Starter Kit and the Essentials Kit and both provide pretty much everything a new player would need to get a decent feel for the game and 5e without a huge amount of added complexity. They also both include fairly simple adventures, somewhat sand boxy with the quest board type system but also not so open as to intimidate a new DM.

I really don't see any point in a text aimed at T1/T2 when the introductory kits are available and cover most of that niche.

[Keravath]

"Just because some players/DM prefer to play only until tier 2 doesn't mean that information to play beyond that for all players should be found in a secondary source. Just having the sources can be inspiration enough to encourage play at higher levels. In addition, at least in my experience, 5e is better constructed to accommodate higher levels of play than previous editions so I don't see why biases developed in previous versions of the game should limit what people should be given in a product in this version of the game." Keravath

See, I disagree with that. Having played high level in 3 different editions, 5e’s top tier play is actually some of the worst constructed. While CODzilla and XMas Tree Wizards were a balance issue in 3E, they also enabled a bunch of play that 5E disables.

And in AD&D, there were high tier mechanics baked right into the class design. Now becoming an Archdruid isn’t a mechanical goal with world shaping consequences: it’s a capstone that lets you do magic better.

I don’t get to have a keep at level 9 as a fighter, or followers. I just get extra attacks.

It’s a black eye of this edition: it was obviously designed for Tiers 1 and 2. Except for spells, 99% of which are legacy spells.

I mean, what’s the coolest new 9th level spell in this edition?

Interesting take.

If someone wants to play CODzilla or XMas Tree Wizards in 5e - all a DM has to do is drop the attunement limits and hand out magic items.

If all your DM gives you is extra attacks as a fighter (it is level 11 by the way not 9) then you need a better campaign. There is no reason a character or group can't or won't have a castle or other residence or even followers if that is what they want and it fits the game world. However, clerics aren't limited to temples, fighters to castles, rogues to a modest tower that must be within a mile of a city.

AD&D baked role playing assumptions into the description of the character classes. Keeps, followers, becoming the single Archdruid or the lone Master of Assassins or Master of Flowers - how can there be only one? These should never have been class characteristics since they are fundamentally role play and campaign dependent.

In addition, all of these building options (towers, castles, temples ...) were usually qualified by "may" - there was no requirement that the characters do so though a DM faced with a character demanding their castle because it was in the rule book might have caused some issues.

5e, quite correctly in my opinion, leaves the role playing and world building up to the players and DM. Characters can develop into local lords or heroes with keeps/houses/followers/employees even small armies if they like - but it is a role playing and campaign decision - not something in the character class. A character could end up with a keep at level 5 in 5e in one campaign but decide never to have one if that is the character's preference in a different campaign. It happened in AD&D too to be honest since most of the folks I played with ignored the role playing/campaign elements of the classes as being suggestions - if they fit the campaign, great! if not both the DM and the players would do something else that was fun.

Just comparing game systems - there is an argument for the level of detail in 3.5e in terms of perhaps being able to come up with one particular character concept - however, for 90% of players and DMs the added complexity isn't worth it. Looking up tables of modifiers trying to maximize BAB and number of attacks or other characteristics and sometimes finding a character "trapped" by less than optimal decisions isn't that much fun for many folks.

AD&D was great at one point - I have a soft spot for it - but THAC0, exceptional strength (maximum strength for a female human of 18/50 vs 18/00 for male - there were a lot of biases in the earlier editions), weapon "to hit" adjustments table vs AC, utter lack of balance of classes across levels etc were all shortcomings.

I find 5e actually comes closest to the feel of AD&D with a much more accessible rule set and considering the popularity of the game these days - I think that accessibility is a contributing factor.

Finally, I haven't found any type of game play from earlier editions that I could not emulate in 5e if I really wanted to, usually with a lot less overhead. The one big difference is that a 5e level 20 character is not nearly as invincible as in earlier editions and I think that is a good thing from both a role playing and world building perspective.

[Thunderous Mojo]

It’s not like there isn’t a starter set already. Starter=Basic, 1-10 Core=Expert, 11-20=Champion.

The 5e Starter set is geared to first time players and new DMs.
The rules provided are the free SRD rules, which are available online.
The Starter set does not provide sample characters or rules for all the classes, it is a very limited product.

D&D concepts such as Armor Class and Hit Points are pervasive in modern products. The 10 year olds, I DM for, are familiar with many D&D concepts from the non-D&D games they already have played.

My experience is that it is trivial to teach an American 10 year old, D&D. A Starter set is not required, nor is the limited rules set even helpful.

OD&D’s focus on Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief is a bit passé to current 10 year olds, based off the 10 year old children I’ve played D&D with.

The 5e Starter Set, is in part an homage to the past, not necessarily designed with maximizing it’s appeal to future players.

As to BECMI out selling AD&D, we would have to look at TSR financials.
From 1979-1983, it has been reported by some that Basic D&D did out sell AD&D, ( approximately 5 million Basic D&D units vs 3 million AD&D units).

Yet, what makes TSR a case study, is the fact that TSR created a split in their customer base in the first place. A unified D&D line could have sold more product, and would have been more profitable, from printing costs at the very least.

AD&D exists, because Gary G was trying to cut out Dave A.

Wizards of the Coast is past this snarl. Competing with yourself for your own customers and creating divisions between the player base is the worst way, to grow the game.

[LudicSavant]

(there’s a reason B/X is so revered in the OSR community)

What is B/X?

[Amechra]

What is B/X?

The Moldvay Basic/Expert rules.

[Dr. Murgunstrum]

Isn't this exactly the role of the Starter Kit and the Essentials Kit? Both give you everything needed to play the game up to level 5-7. It is exactly what you are looking for if all you want is the introductory materials. These sources are then followed by the PHB as the more "Advanced" text if a group of players/DM find themselves interested in the game and want more.

Yeah, but they did it backwards: Essentials was released way, way into the product cycle.

I’m discussing something more along the lines of a 5.5 or 6E (though fixing the embarrassing capstone issues might be too much for this edition)

The other issue is that the PHB doesn’t offer many more advanced mechanics (beyond spells)or offer any different modes of play the way Champion, Master and Immortal did.

A 17th level fighter plays like a 5th level fighter, nothing advanced about that.



I have both the Starter Kit and the Essentials Kit and both provide pretty much everything a new player would need to get a decent feel for the game and 5e without a huge amount of added complexity. They also both include fairly simple adventures, somewhat sand boxy with the quest board type system but also not so open as to intimidate a new DM.

I’m proposing putting a little more into it so it can feel like a more complete game, the way the Redbox did.


I really don't see any point in a text aimed at T1/T2 when the introductory kits are available and cover most of that niche.

The idea would be those texts would be what covers T1, the PHB T1/2 and the epic book T3/4


Interesting take.

If someone wants to play CODzilla or XMas Tree Wizards in 5e - all a DM has to do is drop the attunement limits and hand out magic items.

And drop concentration, and add the permanency spell. And a couple other things.

It’s possible, but Casters ARE more limited in this edition (Martials more so) than in AD&D and 3 in terms of agency.


If all your DM gives you is extra attacks as a fighter (it is level 11 by the way not 9) then you need a better campaign. There is no reason a character or group can't or won't have a castle or other residence or even followers if that is what they want and it fits the game world. However, clerics aren't limited to temples, fighters to castles, rogues to a modest tower that must be within a mile of a city.

Sorry, the DM?

I’m discussing the rules. Homebrew is not an excuse for bad design. You can get a castle or other residence by DM fiat in ANY edition.

So far Acq Inc is the only rulebook that covers that kind of agency, and it’s an “official Third Party” content, banned in AL and it’s class agnostic, relying instead on Roles to interact with the mechanics. It’s a very good book, the kind of thing that should be in the core rules for T3 or higher play.


AD&D baked role playing assumptions into the description of the character classes. Keeps, followers, becoming the single Archdruid or the lone Master of Assassins or Master of Flowers - how can there be only one? These should never have been class characteristics since they are fundamentally role play and campaign dependent.

Disagree. These role playing assumptions fostered interesting play. Mechanical goals are super valuable in games: it drives a player to become the Archdruid, the Master of Flowers, etc. Thats an endgame that can be a default assumption of every campaign. Which is great, as it creates a play structure rather than having to invent one out of whole cloths

A player and DM can agree to eschew that, which is the beauty of homebrew. Doesn’t mean the game can’t have a baseline.

5E lacks a baseline endgame, beyond big monsters like the Tarrasque.


In addition, all of these building options (towers, castles, temples ...) were usually qualified by "may" - there was no requirement that the characters do so though a DM faced with a character demanding their castle because it was in the rule book might have caused some issues.

Sure. Homebrewing out class mechanics is an adult conversation and totally fine.

This is why having a tier 1-2 rule book and a tier 3-4 rule book could be valuable: the modes of play in the 1-2 book don’t have to stop in 3-4, 3-4 just offers more modes of play.


5e, quite correctly in my opinion, leaves the role playing and world building up to the players and DM. Characters can develop into local lords or heroes with keeps/houses/followers/employees even small armies if they like - but it is a role playing and campaign decision - not something in the character class. A character could end up with a keep at level 5 in 5e in one campaign but decide never to have one if that is the character's preference in a different campaign. It happened in AD&D too to be honest since most of the folks I played with ignored the role playing/campaign elements of the classes as being suggestions - if they fit the campaign, great! if not both the DM and the players would do something else that was fun.

I disagree. Homebrew isn’t an excuse for bad design. As it stands, Casters have agency in t3-4 that Martials lack, and on a whole, the mechanical support for becoming a leader or force of any kind in the game world is woefully underdeveloped.

I’d rather have the option to homebrew mechanics out than have to implement them in.


Just comparing game systems - there is an argument for the level of detail in 3.5e in terms of perhaps being able to come up with one particular character concept - however, for 90% of players and DMs the added complexity isn't worth it. Looking up tables of modifiers trying to maximize BAB and number of attacks or other characteristics and sometimes finding a character "trapped" by less than optimal decisions isn't that much fun for many folks.

The issues you highlight are the issues with taking something designed for Tier 1 and extrapolating it to Tier 4.

What if: your BAB and HP stopped increasing at level 5? A 5th level fighter and a 10th had the same skill and toughness, but the 10th simply had more access to resources, to techniques, to opportunities not available to a 5th.

Wide design that doesn’t break the math, rather than tall design that does. 5E is full of traps too, due to under designed higher level stuff.

3E didn’t really suffer from a lack of a fanbase. There’s a reason 3.75 outsold 4E.


AD&D was great at one point - I have a soft spot for it - but THAC0, exceptional strength (maximum strength for a female human of 18/50 vs 18/00 for male - there were a lot of biases in the earlier editions), weapon "to hit" adjustments table vs AC, utter lack of balance of classes across levels etc were all shortcomings.

I’d argue THAC0 gets a bad rap, it’s just poorly explained, rather than poorly designed. It’s bounded accuracy with a paper matrix.

But on the whole, there were definitely design failures. But it doesn’t mean that it was worthless as a whole.



Finally, I haven't found any type of game play from earlier editions that I could not emulate in 5e if I really wanted to, usually with a lot less overhead. The one big difference is that a 5e level 20 character is not nearly as invincible as in earlier editions and I think that is a good thing from both a role playing and world building perspective.

Well, AD&D characters are more fragile than 5E ones. A MU would be lucky if they had 50 HP by level 20. Fighter with 100HP was lucky. Those are rookie numbers in 5E.

And I’m not sure what rules in 5E let you emulate the building of a castle or the running of a fiefdom with followers. No mechanics are provided in that regard.

The astral plane and other plane jaunting rules are also fairly underdeveloped and not well though out: for instance, how does one traverse the elemental plane of fire without fire immunity?


The 5e Starter set is geared to first time players and new DMs.
The rules provided are the free SRD rules, which are available online.
The Starter set does not provide sample characters or rules for all the classes, it is a very limited product.

It doesn’t provide sample characters? Are you certain? I’ve definitely seen a set that did.

But that’s all the more an argument for a Redbox/book that does, putting the basic game in one place, then the advanced and expanded rules elsewhere.


D&D concepts such as Armor Class and Hit Points are pervasive in modern products. The 10 year olds, I DM for, are familiar with many D&D concepts from the non-D&D games they already have played.

Yep. Super easy to pick up, though still a little complicated for a basic game. Stuff like melee weapon attacks vs attacks with a melee weapon and similarly worded but differently adjudicated spell interactions and such. 5E is a pretty heavy game, rules wise.

Especially after T1x


My experience has been it is trivial to teach an American 10 year old, D&D. A Starter set is not required, nor is the limited rules set even helpful.

I think you’re misinterpreting me.

I feel the “Basic” Set should include the core rules of the game, as designed for tiers 1 and perhaps 2, where most play occurs.

Then T3 and 4 should be in an Epic book, with rules governing Epic and more complex modes of play.



OD&D’s focus on Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Thief is a bit passé to current 10 year olds, it would seem, based off the 10 year old children I’ve played D&D with.

Eh, fighter, black mage, white mage and expert are still pretty dominant archetypes in most fantasy.



As to BECMI out selling AD&D, we would have to look at TSR financials.
From 1979-1983, it has been reported by some that Basic D&D did out sell AD&D, ( approximately 5 million Basic D&D units vs 3 million AD&D units).

Yep. The BECMI model was more successful: present easy to parse rules and systems, with more elaborate ones as expansions.

That’s what I’m advocating for.


Yet, what makes TSR a case study, is the fact that TSR created a split in their customer base in the first place. A unified D&D line could have sold more product, and would have been more profitable, from printing costs at the very least.

Yep. They abandoned that after the rules cyclopedia. 3E was a huge success in part due to that.

I’m definitely not advocating for a return to that.


AD&D exists, because Gary G was trying to cut out Dave A.

Partially. AD&D was also the game he wanted to make, leaving BECMI in the hands of more junior designers.


Wizards of the Coast is past this snarl. Competing with yourself for your own customers and creating divisions between the player base is the worst way, to grow the game.

Yeah, I don’t think anyone wants two separate lines.

Advocating for the BECMI model isn’t advocating for another, parallel edition to 5E. It’s advocating for 5.5 or even 6 to take an approach that makes the game more modular and accessible without over complicating or under designing it

[Tawmis]

I played in an Out of the Abyss (with some custom elements added to it), to level 20.

I am currently DMing three homebrew games - one is at 8th (about to go 9th), one is 5th (or 6th?), and one is 5th or 6th.

None of which, I have any end plans.

So probably, the gods willing, to Level 20 for each.

[thoroughlyS]

The discussions about how WotC should handle tiers of play/releases is off-topic. Please move it to a different thread. This thread is only supposed to discuss the poll linked in the first post.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Looking at the poll, there is a decline with increased levels, which I suppose is to some degree expected since most groups start low (seems like 1st or 3rd is pretty common) then progress until they don't.
The most significant drop is from 12th to 13th though, more than a full percent, with other levels around this also having big drops. Given that this is right about the point where most published content ends I'd wonder how much of an impact that has. More recent content, RotFM and DiA, seem to follow this pattern, while older content, like RoT and OotA at least made an attempt to get players to the end of Tier 3/ beginning of Tier 4. It's disappointing to me, as we generally play (somewhat modified) published content, and the lack of support with higher leveled mods is one of the things that has me looking to just create my own stuff from here on out.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Looking at the poll, there is a decline with increased levels, which I suppose is to some degree expected since most groups start low (seems like 1st or 3rd is pretty common) then progress until they don't.
The most significant drop is from 12th to 13th though, more than a full percent, with other levels around this also having big drops. Given that this is right about the point where most published content ends I'd wonder how much of an impact that has. More recent content, RotFM and DiA, seem to follow this pattern, while older content, like RoT and OotA at least made an attempt to get players to the end of Tier 3/ beginning of Tier 4. It's disappointing to me, as we generally play (somewhat modified) published content, and the lack of support with higher leveled mods is one of the things that has me looking to just create my own stuff from here on out.

I think that's a very valid issue.

It'd be interesting to cross-reference "what level do you usually play with" and "do you usually play modules vs hardcovers vs AL vs homebrew (partial) vs homebrew (total)".

Personally, I only do homebrew, and I don't generally insist on a single-thread story (preferring much more arc-structure, often with substantial disconnects other than party between arcs). So "highest level" only really depends on scheduling. The only one of my campaigns that didn't end on scheduling (or other logistics like moving away) was my only "linear, single-thread" story.

[thoroughlyS]

I have added the following chart to the initial post. I will try to update the chart once a day, until I stop seeing notable increases in responses.



https://i.imgur.com/gOdyESb.png



Total Respondents
383


1st
249


2nd
261


3rd
342


4th
328


5th
338


6th
324


7th
306


8th
288


9th
267


10th
253


1th
222


12th
204


13th
158


14th
126


15th
109


16th
74


17th
66


18th
56


19th
52


20th
64

[Bphill561]

This thread has been an interesting read.

I guess I have two different answers to the question.

I have unstable groups I play with online that start between 1-5 and fall apart by level 8 because people start disappearing. Nothing to do with mechanics.

The IRL local group plays every campaign from 1-20(+). We spend more time at the higher levels.

This has been pretty much the same from 2nd edition on (although the unstable groups were not online back then).

[Ogre Mage]

Looking at the poll, there is a decline with increased levels, which I suppose is to some degree expected since most groups start low (seems like 1st or 3rd is pretty common) then progress until they don't.

The most significant drop is from 12th to 13th though, more than a full percent, with other levels around this also having big drops. Given that this is right about the point where most published content ends I'd wonder how much of an impact that has. More recent content, RotFM and DiA, seem to follow this pattern, while older content, like RoT and OotA at least made an attempt to get players to the end of Tier 3/ beginning of Tier 4. It's disappointing to me, as we generally play (somewhat modified) published content, and the lack of support with higher leveled mods is one of the things that has me looking to just create my own stuff from here on out.

I suspect part of the big drop between 12th and 13th level has to do with the fact that 13th level is when PCs get access to 7th level spells. These include some of the most game/plot breaking ones: etherealness, forcecage, plane shift, simulacrum, teleport. This creates new headaches for the DM and many cannot make the transition.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I suspect part of the big drop between 12th and 13th level has to do with the fact that 13th level is when PCs get access to 7th level spells. These include some of the most game/plot breaking ones: etherealness, forcecage, plane shift, simulacrum, teleport. This creates new headaches for the DM and many cannot make the transition.

I'd need evidence for that. It's a common online assertion, but two other (non exclusive) options are:
1. Scheduling difficulties have cumulative chances of causing issues with time. More chance for the group to fall apart.
2. Most printed adventures go though early T3, but not much further.

Personally, I've not seen any substantial change crossing the 7th level spell boundary. But sample of 1 and all...

And looking at the raw numbers, the gap between 12 and 13 is only a bit larger than that between 11 and 12, and the trend is downward from about 6th or 7th.

[Ogre Mage]

I'd need evidence for that. It's a common online assertion, but two other (non exclusive) options are:
Personally, I've not seen any substantial change crossing the 7th level spell boundary. But sample of 1 and all...


I have played under at least three different DMs who ended campaigns around the time or not long after PCs began slinging those spells around. While the DMs did not specifically mention those spells as the reason for the game ending, I did notice an increased difficulty in managing encounters. Oftentimes, the solution was simply to create situations where the spell did not work at all, i.e. a location which was teleport-proof. This felt unsatisfying as a player.

[thoroughlyS]

And looking at the raw numbers, the gap between 12 and 13 is only a bit larger than that between 11 and 12, and the trend is downward from about 6th or 7th.
Purely looking at the numbers, the drop from 12th to 13th level is the largest overall, dropping by 46 respondents.

The largest drops in order are:

12th to 13th: 46
15th to 16th: 35
13th to 14th: 32
10th to 11th: 31
8th to 9th: 21



This doesn't really mean much on its own, though. I guess the most you can say is Tier 3 is where the biggest drop-offs happen.

[TyGuy]

The level 20 uptick suggests people aren't just answering campaign levels, but one-shot play as well. I suspect levels 1, 3, and 5 are both prime starting levels and one-shot levels.

[thoroughlyS]

I have updated the chart. As far as I can tell, there have been no new responses since March 15th.



https://i.imgur.com/lrcIEBZ.png



Total Respondents
394


1st
255


2nd
269


3rd
353


4th
338


5th
348


6th
334


7th
315


8th
296


9th
275


10th
260


11th
228


12th
210


13th
161


14th
129


15th
112


16th
76


17th
68


18th
58


19th
54


20th
67

[LudicSavant]

The level 20 uptick suggests people aren't just answering campaign levels, but one-shot play as well. I suspect levels 1, 3, and 5 are both prime starting levels and one-shot levels.

Either that or they thought they were supposed to mark the beginning and endpoints of their campaigns, rather than everything in-between.

[thoroughlyS]

What's kind of annoying is that the scientist in me recognizes that there are so many factors that could be potentially skewing the data (e.g. the survey is only linked on sites where more dedicated players are likely to see it, only ~400 responses have been collected, people might not read or might misinterpret the instructions) that you basically can't draw any reliable information from this.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What's kind of annoying is that the scientist in me recognizes that there are so many factors that could be potentially skewing the data (e.g. the survey is only linked on sites where more dedicated players are likely to see it, only ~400 responses have been collected, people might not read or might misinterpret the instructions) that you basically can't draw any reliable information from this.

Welcome to social science data gathering! :smalltongue:

As a fellow hard scientist (turned educator turned app developer[1]), I feel your pain.

[1] who has to deal with trying to figure out what in the world the (potential) customers really want...

[Ogre Mage]

The results certainly do NOT suggest that "90% of D&D games end by 10th level." But it does appear heavy attrition sets in sometime during Tier 3. That tracks with my own experience.

[Cheesegear]

TL;DR. 1 through 12.

DM of three tables here:

I always start at Level 1. My players like to complain and want to start at Level 2 or 3...No.

My games typically peter out at Level 12. I've never DM'd a game above Level 15 except as one shots.

[Tanarii]

The results certainly do NOT suggest that "90% of D&D games end by 10th level."
Neither do they eliminate it. If the poll collected "levels which you've played in 90% of your games" it certainly would.

[Telok]

Welcome to social science data gathering! :smalltongue:

As a fellow hard scientist (turned educator turned app developer[1]), I feel your pain.

[1] who has to deal with trying to figure out what in the world the (potential) customers really want...

Welcome to program development, we have a thriving side industry churning out a constant stream of books & advice & consultants on "what they said they wanted, what they really wanted, what we can give them with the available time & money". Figure out the secret and you can get rich.

[KorvinStarmast]

I always start at Level 1. My players like to complain and want to start at Level 2 or 3...No. I wanted to start the players at level 3. This was our group's 5th campaign beginning (Game 1 was DM 1, Game 2 was Nephew (he started us at level 3 thank goodness) Game 3 was DM 1, Game 4 was Brother DM, Game 5 was Me DM).
So I asked them if they wanted to start at level 2 or 3 to get past the beginner stuff.
The insisted on starting at level 1.
*scratches head*
So that's what we did.
this did allow me to run The Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury one after the other, though, with a few 'custom' adventures tossed in.