Jake Hamilton
First Post
I've never been 20, hell I've never been a double digit. Seems like most games I've been in, they end it at 8-9 and make us re-roll new characters. Is this normal for most games?
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D&D 5E [5e] Lvl 20 dilemma
- Thread starter Jake Hamilton
- Start date
LordEntrails
Hero
Normal? Not really. But it is common. Many people think higher level play is broken. You can search the forums for hundred or thousands of posts on the topic 
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
In my experience, yes, it's normal. With normal XP rules and a standard adult life, it can take a very long time to achieve those kinds of levels and few people in my experience like to stick it out even if the game is very compelling. Me, I like to run a given campaign no longer than 6 months of real time which is about 20-25 sessions including off-weeks. Unless I level up the PCs every session, there's no way we're making 20th level.
And for me personally, I won't make characters over 10th level for a one-shot since it will take a long time for me to make the character relative to the time spent playing it and I won't be very good at playing it because I've not had time at the table getting to know how it works as I leveled it up.
And for me personally, I won't make characters over 10th level for a one-shot since it will take a long time for me to make the character relative to the time spent playing it and I won't be very good at playing it because I've not had time at the table getting to know how it works as I leveled it up.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Yes.
OK, maybe not exactly 8th or 9th. Maybe 10th or 11th, or even 15th (the APs go that high).
And, not just for 5e, either, but for D&D in general.*
Back in the TSR era of AD&D, too (though the 'MI' in BECMI may have been another story, entirely). In 3e, there were rules for over-20th-level, and 'normal' was prettymuch to play RAW until you couldn't stand it anymore, but the designs were based on surveys that indicated play beyond 10th was uncommon, and the probably the most popular variant (in a RAW-obessed era, so that's saying something) was 'E6' which wasn't actually stopping at 6th level, exactly.
* Yes, there's the red-headed stepchild edition, but, really, how much longer is it even going to warrant a footnote?
Jake Hamilton
First Post
Interesting. I guess my view is skewed. Does any one give the players more chances to say feel more powerful than what raw does?
This is a new thing. And by new I mean last 10 or 20 years.
The fact is, if you are still playing with the same group, there is no reason you can't break out your previous characters and start playing them again up to higher levels. It just takes a DM that is willing to create a campaign for you.
Keep in mind that the game does change. You aren't going to be dungeon crawling. Why would you? You are probably fabulously wealthy by now. (If you aren't, what the heck have you been doing! )
Most of our high level games dealt with hunting down powerful enemies and/or artifacts and setting up defenses against the same. We would buy, build or conjure towers, fortresses, keeps or whatever. Reinforce them with magical defenses. Hire NPCs as guards or other professionals. And other stuff like that. Honestly we had a lot of fun with that.
The fact is, if you are still playing with the same group, there is no reason you can't break out your previous characters and start playing them again up to higher levels. It just takes a DM that is willing to create a campaign for you.
Keep in mind that the game does change. You aren't going to be dungeon crawling. Why would you? You are probably fabulously wealthy by now. (If you aren't, what the heck have you been doing!
)Most of our high level games dealt with hunting down powerful enemies and/or artifacts and setting up defenses against the same. We would buy, build or conjure towers, fortresses, keeps or whatever. Reinforce them with magical defenses. Hire NPCs as guards or other professionals. And other stuff like that. Honestly we had a lot of fun with that.
Tony Vargas
Legend
IMX, campaigns petering out was a thing back in the day ('80s), too, often before 'name level' (below 9th). Long before I heard 'sweet spot' on line, I felt D&D was at it's best in the 3rd-7th level range. (In retrospect, I have no idea why I thought '7th' rather than 8th, nothing terrible happened at 8th that I recall, maybe it was just a common level range back in the day.)
When WotC was developing 3.0, they did their surveys and market research and concluded most campaigns quit by 10th level. For 3.x, that became a self-fulfilling prophesy, as they didn't bother to do a lot of playtesting beyond 10th. At least, that's the common oft-repeated wisdom. Not sure what insider said it originally...
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Sure, not all campaigns lasted to high levels in AD&D, but they didn't just assume that you wouldn't. They left the door open for high level play. Gygax and his group certainly played to very high levels. That's how we got Mordenkainen, Robilar, Tenser and all of the others. They were just high level characters from Gygax's games.
My own AD&D games saw characters get to the high teens and a friend had characters in the 30s. I'm sure you are familiar with the type. They started working their way through the Deities and Demigods book...
In more "modern" games I had a 3.0 game that went to level 17 and a 3.5 game that went all the way to 20. After that my regular group fell apart and I haven't been part of a game like that since.
I guess the point is, that you don't need to start over with new characters when you run out of published adventures. A good DM can keep it going.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Oh, you mean new with WotC, on the producer side. Sure. They did their research, determined the game wasn't played a lot at higher levels, and made their design decisions on the assumption* that wouldn't change. Un-amazingly, it didn't* change.
Sure, there are always exceptions. It took the entire run of 3.x, but my old group did get to 14th in two campaigns. And some groups think, well, there's Epic, we must need to play through epic.
I'm currently running and playing in campaigns that are over 20, but they're "not really D&D."** the usual exception to blanket statements about 'all editions of D&D' applies, of course.
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