Celebrim
Legend
I have played at high levels, but relatively little of my high level play was 'earned' - that is to say began at low levels and worked my way up to high levels as the game was 'intended' to be played.
I have played 1e AD&D up to 12th level. I have some higher level play at up to 18th level, but in those occasions characters were created as high level characters as a 'one shot'.
Generally speaking, the RAW of D&D for all editions of the game starts breaking down around when 6th level spells come online, and it requires a great deal of skill and inventiveness on the part of the DM to not have a skilled group of players with high level characters just running wild with little real challenges. In 1e AD&D the biggest problem was that the capacity of a high level PC party to generate damage vastly exceeded the ability of 1e AD&D monsters to defend against damage, and few good solutions to that problem existed (several bad solutions are observable in published modules for that level of play). A party of 1e AD&D fighters backed with spellcasters for healing, buffing and battlefield control could ginsu cleaver just about anything in fractions of a round, and creative spellcasters could generally solve any problem that couldn't be hammered by the fighters.
It should also be noted that since I know this to be true, when I play D&D I am in no hurry to rush out of the sweet spot. Gaining a level is treated as a real accomplishment and happens only after many sessions, especially during high level play. The aforementioned AD&D game that hit 12th level took five years of weekly gaming.
I have played 3e D&D up to 10th level. That took 7 years of biweekly gaming. Playing 3e D&D at higher level is IMO mostly an exercise in limiting the chargen options players have available, as if you have access to all the books it is trivially easy to build 3e D&D characters of high level that break the game wide open in various ways. Also, it helps if the players playing the tier 1 classes don't have a whole lot of system mastery and if you don't have fungible magic items in your game so that players can optimally kit up their characters.
I certainly can imagine higher level play working, and I wouldn't mind doing it at some point, but it's an extremely lucky and dedicated group that can get there fairly if the DM is not just Monte Hall and deliberately powering them up to high level.
I have played 1e AD&D up to 12th level. I have some higher level play at up to 18th level, but in those occasions characters were created as high level characters as a 'one shot'.
Generally speaking, the RAW of D&D for all editions of the game starts breaking down around when 6th level spells come online, and it requires a great deal of skill and inventiveness on the part of the DM to not have a skilled group of players with high level characters just running wild with little real challenges. In 1e AD&D the biggest problem was that the capacity of a high level PC party to generate damage vastly exceeded the ability of 1e AD&D monsters to defend against damage, and few good solutions to that problem existed (several bad solutions are observable in published modules for that level of play). A party of 1e AD&D fighters backed with spellcasters for healing, buffing and battlefield control could ginsu cleaver just about anything in fractions of a round, and creative spellcasters could generally solve any problem that couldn't be hammered by the fighters.
It should also be noted that since I know this to be true, when I play D&D I am in no hurry to rush out of the sweet spot. Gaining a level is treated as a real accomplishment and happens only after many sessions, especially during high level play. The aforementioned AD&D game that hit 12th level took five years of weekly gaming.
I have played 3e D&D up to 10th level. That took 7 years of biweekly gaming. Playing 3e D&D at higher level is IMO mostly an exercise in limiting the chargen options players have available, as if you have access to all the books it is trivially easy to build 3e D&D characters of high level that break the game wide open in various ways. Also, it helps if the players playing the tier 1 classes don't have a whole lot of system mastery and if you don't have fungible magic items in your game so that players can optimally kit up their characters.
I certainly can imagine higher level play working, and I wouldn't mind doing it at some point, but it's an extremely lucky and dedicated group that can get there fairly if the DM is not just Monte Hall and deliberately powering them up to high level.