High-Level Play

1. Could the designers provide a workable option for spells / day for gamers who don't want at-wills, signature spells, or rituals?

2. Making rituals easier to cast makes magic users more powerful, which in turn gets rebalanced by making spells less powerful. Fewer offered can solve this problem, but great utility for creative purposes is what makes high level play intriguing to hard core gamers.

3. Is there any thought being given to an Orders System? The kind where the players tell NPCs what to do. Then, temporarily out of PC sensory range, the NPC stats and other world stats are compared to the objective(s) and instructions the players/characters gave. And finally a result is determined? Something with the possibility where the PCs might get tired of waiting and search (or send a search party) for the missing NPCs? ...because the result didn't end with the PCs being informed of what happened.

4. Kudos on mentioning using TempPcs or character pools or whatever. That can be a fun way of having high and low level play in the same campaign.

5. Increasing complexity was built into the game with increasing levels as the game was designed for all characters to begin at 1st level, no matter what XP totals other PCs might have. None were born into 10th level class status. Racial abilities maybe, but not learned abilities. The reasoning was players started the game on easy difficulty, but they were challenged as it became harder harder. More options meant more liberty as one's character progressed, but their management on a self-created character log was part of player growth - something different than character growth.

DMs prepping & their campaign settings creation also progressed this way: starting small and easy and incrementally growing in size during and after every session. 100 pages of setting material is completely unnecessary to start and far too much of a roadblock to play. But after 100 session of play? You probably have that much. Designing high level adventure modules for the much more intricate complexity of high level play does take a good deal of work, but then those, like a lot of campaign setting resources, can be purchased.

6. All of the activities mentioned for high level play could easily be introduced at 1st level, just on a smaller scale. That's what I think about the major difference of high level play. It has similar activities to those at low level, but their scale is much bigger.
Today we find a cave to camp in. Tomorrow we build ourselves The Pyramids.
Today we hired a guy to carry our stuff. Tomorrow we amass our army of Huns.
Today we try a fist-elbow combination for the first time. Tomorrow we teach Cloud Giant Tipping to our elite guard.
Today we mentor an ally who will follow us into deadly danger. Tomorrow we overthrow the emperor and put the crown on our own head.

Badapple said:

I would like to see the core books cover levels 1-10, and cover them well. To have core "adventurer tier" characters be roughly similar no matter what during those levels.

I would then like to one or two future campaign sets that cover high level rules unique to those campaign sets released about a year later.

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No- please, no.

Let's not screw over people playing above 10th level who'd like to convert on day 1.

the Jester said:

No- please, no.

Let's not screw over people playing above 10th level who'd like to convert on day 1.

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If given the choice would you rather meh-bad rules day 1 or good-great rules 1 year later, or delay the whole book 6-9 months?

the Jester said:

No- please, no.

Let's not screw over people playing above 10th level who'd like to convert on day 1.

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ya the higher level characters have to able h=able to convert just as easily as the low level characters.

GMforPowergamers said:

If given the choice would you rather meh-bad rules day 1 or good-great rules 1 year later, or delay the whole book 6-9 months?

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isnt the point of the playtest to make sure we have good rules on day one?

My thinking is play doesn't need to break down at high levels due to faulty design. High level play is simply that much more difficult in complexity for players (though not number of options necessarily).

So, like Tetris' speed increase every level, D&D increases in player difficulty every level and that's how it naturally tops out for players. It would be like playing Chess against Deep Blue. You might not start at Difficulty Level 1, but you're probably not Kasparov either. IOW, there will be plenty of challenge for you no matter how much XP you get.

EDIT: As said in my first post, in this way we all high level play options are part of D&D at every level. Combat, environments, traps, dungeon delving, magical effects/spells, structure/stronghold building, NPC hiring and leading, amassing followers to mentor, researching new spells & maneuvers, gaining authority, bartering for goods and services, and other kinds of adventuring.

I like the ideas for a Legacy, and I like that they may be bringing this down into the early-double-digits.

But they gotta keep in mind that most people probably won't see that content, anyway.

So spreading out abilities may work against them. There might be a lot of promises that they don't wind up delivering on, if it takes too long to go from Zero to Hero. It sounds neat, but if only a small fraction ever gets to play it...

I also am still not a fan of signature spells and at-will spells, so continuing to talk as if they're a solution to everyone's problem of a wizard who must constantly do magical things isn't winning them any bonus points on this side of the screen.

And if they're looking to balance noncombat, I can perhaps help them.

I see the system of 1- 10th level being like the Basic and Expert level. Then the levels after would be like the Companion and Master levels.

I have never liked high level play in D&D. In 1e -3e, it was the spells. I don't like many of the high level spells including (but not limited to) Bigsby Spells, Prismatic Sprays, Storm of Vengeance, Miracle, Wish. By the book, 3e also removed a lot of restrictions on spellcasters and opened abuse. In 4e was paragon paths and epic destinies being required to play those tiers which was one of the main turn offs of the game.

As for Mearls article, it sounds like he assumes that, below tenth level, everyone plays to loot the dungeon and kill all the monsters and all the non-monster bashing and dungeon looting starts at level 10. If so, Mike here is a tip: Many of us stopped doing that during the mid-eighties. There was a whole movement in Dragon Magazine at the time to move the game "Beyond the Dungeon" and it is how many of us still play the game- little to no dungeon crawling and without several monster killing encounters . In our games, there are political intrigue, mysteries, rival making etc from the earliest levels and, sometimes, even building guilds and strongholds between levels 5-10. There may be only one combat in a session and, sometimes, none for multiple sessions.

One of the areas that 4e dropped the ball in my opinion and that of others was milestones. Early on, the designers of 4e had thought of doing something similar to Rel's story based milestones, but went with a method that supported dungeon crawling. The dungeon based milestones cut off a lot of other types of adventures. The design team needs to ensure that the games support more styles than just dungeon crawling and killing monsters during the first ten levels or risk failing to attract a segment of past DMs and players (Unlike 3e, this time around, I am not going to wait for Unearthed Arcana and other supplements to fill in spells that support my style. If the game, can't do it from the start, I have other games that can. Others on this site and others have stated similar positions).

mattcolville said:

For me, the tiers were like this;

Third Level: You're not going to die trivially to something stupid. Congratulations. It's worth taking the time to name yourself!

Fifth level: It is now within the bounds of reason for your teammates to cobble together enough cash to raise you should you die, but don't count on it.

Seventh Level: People know who you are. You probably have a keep or a tower. Maybe a title.

Ninth Level: You are now important enough that an NPC will probably want to Raise you, should you die.

Thirteenth Level: You are no longer an adventurer, you've got enough plans and research to manage. Though you will still come out of 'retirement' when the world or your friends are threatened.

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For me 3rd - you don't have to cower in fear of a fight.
5th - you are actually up to fights that get a little hair.
7th - People are beginning to know your name.
9th - Mover and shaking in a City level.
11th - moving out of city and into region areas, and starting planar adventuring.
13th - moving into king level, more planer, and interacting with middle level lower planar and minor servants of the Gods.
15 - start to make a name on a country level, and knowing kings and being recognized by minor servants.
17 - major player in country/world events, lots of interactions with planar creatures.
20 - Moving to major world events - major planar and inter-world stuff
25 - Major mover and shaker in planer (including fighting name demons and interacting with the gods

Retirement is never an automatic thing - it happens when the player gets tired of playing the character.

This article leaves my preferred high level play not mentioned. Although a module could do it.