High Level Play - Your Experience

[Celebrim]

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.

 

[S'mon]

Of my recent campaigns:

Wilderlands (4 years 2015-2019) went 1st to 20th (for one PC) in 5e, then 1st to 10th, then 1st to 10th
Crimson Throne (2 years 2014-15) went 1st to 14th in Pathfinder
Loudwater (5.5 years 2011-2016) went 1st to 29th in 4e, reaching 30th at end of last session (Orcus RIP).
Runelords of the Shattered Star (2 years 2015-2017) went 1st to 18th in 5e, recently restarted.

So I normally start at 1st and play well into double digits.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did some high level stuff in AD&D and 2Ed- some of it what would be considered “Epic” in 3.5Ed- mostly in a single campaign world that was run by 3 rotating DMs over @15+ years.

In 3.5Ed, we did one that started off in RTtToEE, and went from there.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

How many of you have played in and/or enjoyed D&D campaigns that began at (or made it to) higher than 10th level?

Back in the day a few 1E/2E games reached teen levels and one very long running 1E game reached upper teens with one PC even crossing to 20/21st, but most of the campaigns tended to fizzle out well before teen levels when players wanted to spend summer weekends doing stuff other than D&D. They were not too bad at the upper levels but definitely not as satisfying as the mid-to-upper single digit levels. At that time we were heavy on the combat side of things but were not "powergamers" as such. Nobody was TRYING to break the game, and the things we exploited weren't all that clever. And if things did get a bit out of hand the DM would simply put an end to it and we'd move on.

Had one 3E campaign that I deliberately ran up to 20th level with the intent at the outset being to end it when it got there. I suspected it would get somewhat out of control because I'd read enough online to grasp the big picture but I said, "I want to see it unfold the way it was actually written before I start to houserule it a lot." It was a real mess once levels got into the teens. The players were so overwhelmed with choices that they never even used. They couldn't maintain their characters or level them up without software to prompt them and track everything. They COULD have done it themselves but it was so tedious and they lost interest in ensuring their PC's were "being all they could be". So they stuck to the simple and reliable tactics and abilities that they'd established early on and mostly ignored all the extraneous options. They mostly ran through the AP modules with a few side jaunts I cooked up. I had some challenges keeping them challenged and engaged. It was quite the eye-opener for me as DM. Never really looked at the game the same way since and certainly haven't approached any edition as cavalierly.

Anyway yeah I'm getting the impression that actually having played D&D with a 11th-19th (or whatever) level party is pretty rare, and I want to see how much that's the case, across the various editions. Thanks.

Depends on how you structure a campaign and how the players approach things, but with 3E requiring only 13.5 encounters on average to level up, you can hit 20th in a blink. My big 3E game took 1 year of weekly play to finish. There hardly seemed time for PC's to breathe much less kick around for a while at a given power level. It was a downhill run towards 20th level and continually picked up speed the whole way and I REALLY disliked that. The players didn't care for it much either. Like getting on a merry-go-round and realizing at some point you can't get off without getting hurt.

Played just a little bit of 5E but I don't think I'll ever run it as DM. 1E/2E I have so many house rules for even I don't like it no matter how much I try to trim them down. What I really want to try at this point is E6 for 3E. I really think that might be what best fits what I at least am looking for from D&D as a DM. My players seem not overly interested or enthusiastic though. Whatever.

For ME, beyond "title" level, say 13th and up, is just not where I want to run a game at anymore, or even play at as a player. Mechanics just break down and get out of control. That applies to pretty much every version of D&D IME. The only version I don't know about and don't care about AT ALL is 4th. I could be convinced to try playing it I suppose but I'll never run it and it will never be a version of the rules I prefer.

 

[Tony Vargas]

How many of you have played in and/or enjoyed D&D campaigns that began at (or made it to) higher than 10th level?

Certainly. Depending on ed, it can be quite a challenge, mainly for the DM, but sure, a number of times.

My main D&D is 3.5 so that will always be my primary frame of reference for things like how many levels there even are (30, but the last 10 can be safely ignored as virtually no one plays at that level) ... I'm honestly unsure what level some older editions (AD&D etc) even went up to, although my gut says not 20.

5e hard-caps at 20, like 3.x did before the Epic rules, 4e capped at 30, like 3.x did with the Epic rules, only playable.

AD&D had hard caps for some classes and most non-/demi- human race/class combos. But the basics - Human Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief, etc - had no stated level cap. Advancement beyond 'name' level (8-12, depending on class), though, was glacial.

Thanks. but let me know which edition you were playing.

So, I've extensively played every edition from 1e AD&D through 5e. That's leaving out 0D&D, which I played the odd one-shot game with nostalgic old timers back in the 80s (they were all being nostalgic for the old times of only 10 years previous!), Basic D&D, which also has different versions, the c1979 version I played (a little, with friends who did not understand the game, at all) being significantly different from the peak-popularity 'Red Box,' it seems, and BECMI, which I never touched and barely heard of. Also, while I ran 2e for about 5 years, I rarely played it, when it did, it was usually with a converted 1e character, and I'd given up on it by the time all the ______Option books were out.

So, that said.
AD&D: I've seen two kinds of high-level AD&D games 1) the kinds that were heavily modified, and 2) the kind that fell apart (and, to be fair, the kind that were both kinds).

I played in several games that started at around 9th and made it over 10th, but not a lot over - IIRC, the Thief in one made it to 14, my Druid managed enough exp for 12 but never got to fight his little duel - they all fell apart quite quickly. I even played some high-level one-shots or short campaigns, which didn't last long enough for leveling, and they were prettymuch fiascos, with wild characters pulled from a variety of heavily-modified and/or 'Monty Haul' campaigns under different DMs.

I ran an AD&D game that spanned 1e & 2e, going just over 10 years, was heavily modified, and had most characters reach 14th level (one hit 18th, but it was a 2e custom class that had few abilities and needed little exp to level, and one ran aground on race/class level limits). It was hardly recognizable as D&D by the end, though.

3.x: I played in two campaigns that went up through 14th level. By 11th they were in pretty rough shape, and clearly falling apart at the seams by the end. But, by then then characters were so beloved it was worth it to wrap their stories. I ran a 3.0 campaign, but it did not reach 10th. Our group experimented with a characters-built-at-15th campaign - it didn't reach 16th.

4e: I Played in two campaigns that made it to Paragon; several mini-campaigns at Paragon or Epic that intentionally lasted only the span of level or few; A campaign that went from 2nd (IDK why it didn't start at 1st) through 23rd and is still going (though meeting infrequently due to RL); and I ran a campaign from 2012 to 2018 that started as an Encounters season (levels 1-4) and just kept going - it's on indefinite hiatus due to my health, but the characters were 25th level when I threw in the towel.
The basic math of 4e remained neatly workable at all levels, and it didn't give out campaign-wrecking abilities to specific classes the way other eds have. Paragon and Epic did introduce some dramatic up-ticks in what PCs could do, but nothing nearly so problematic as 1e Wish or 3e Polymorph, for instance, and typically in a somewhat more-balanced(? ... OK,less imbalanced) way, with no class being entirely left out in the cold that way.

5e: I Ran lots of introductory games and some AL, always at low level. Played a few one-shots here & there, no higher than 8th, IIRC.
5e's basic "bounded accuracy" math /should/ hold up to higher level play better than AD&D or 3.x did, but I haven't seen a game last long enough to test that theory.

Anyway yeah I'm getting the impression that actually having played D&D with a 11th-19th (or whatever) level party is pretty rare, and I want to see how much that's the case, across the various editions.

Your impression is broadly correct, or, at least, it's a time-honored truism. High level D&D back in the day was unworkable: it degenerated into mechanical dysfunction, cosmic one-upmanship, deep paranoia, and general insanity. DMs would make it work through sheer determination, at times, but it was generally easier to "retire" at name level, and slog through 1st-3rd again (& again) until a decent set of fun characters emerged, and have fun playing them, until they, too, all-too-soon, reached name level.

One of the subtle, perverse, but most damning of classic D&D's (0e, BECMI, AD&D) many failings was the pacing implicit in the exp tables. Advancement was a slow, brutal, crawl through a lethal gauntlet at 1st level. By the time a character (possibly the nth of many) survived to 2nd or 3rd, it could start getting fun - but, the exp chart relative to the threats you could take on meant that advancement at that point became a lot faster - by the time the system really started showing cracks, say 9th or 11th, "Name Level," the exp tables topped out at huge amounts to reach your next level even relative to the exp high level monsters & treasures were worth, so, just as the game was starting to really suck, it slowed way down, so you could savor the dysfunction.

So by the time the 80s fad had flopped and TSR folded, it was a well-known & popular fact that high-level D&D just didn't get played that much.

As a result, when they were playtesting 3e, they didn't bother going much beyond 10th. 3e was still a bit innovative, though: it maintained a more even pace of advancement, as the exp gained from overcoming challenges remained more or less in proportion to that required to advance to the next level - and everyone was on the same exp table, too. So even if 3e did fall apart by the time you were in double digits, it at least didn't slow advancement to a crawl so you didn't have to spend 15 years getting to 'retirement' at 20th before starting to have fun again.

Likewise, 4e wasn't heavily playtest at high levels (I'm not sure it was heavily playtested, at all achieved comparatively (though compared to other eds of D&D may not be saying much) robust balance at all levels, to go with 3e-style even advancement. It was by far the most functional version of the game, in terms of balance at any level, and playability at high level, particularly - so much so that it was barely recognizable as D&D. ;P

5e may have returned to an advancement scheme that makes high level play problematic, but it also does a few things to ameliorate the issue of dysfunctional high level play/class imbalance (which was, by the time 4e fixed it, one of those bugs that had evolved into not just a feature, but a sacred cow). For instance, while casters are still superior to non-casters, the grim fate of non-casting is inflicted upon only a handful of sub-classes. And, of course, the DM is given great latitude to arbitrarily redress any such issues - if there's one poor schmuck playing a fighter at 15th level, the McGuffin artifact central to the campaign can just happen to be his signature weapon, for instance.
But the most systematic is the exp table. As in 4e & 3e, there's just one, but it's not even relative to the exp you get for overcoming 'level appropriate' challenges. First level goes the fastest, you can even emerge from then muck in a single session. The rest of apprentice tier is still pretty fast, an 'adventuring day' can see you make a level. Once the game starts getting good, around 4th or 5th, it slows down substantially, from 4th through until you hit 11th, it takes more than twice (between 2.13 and 2.333) as many 'level appropriate' encounters to go up a level than it did in apprentice tier. After 11th, it speeds back up (1.43 to 1.74 'days'/level), but is still slower than at the beginning.

If you were to fight through a 'standard' adventuring day for your level, every single day, your adventuring career would span about a month. But, you would be 3rd level by the morning of day 3, 6th level on day 10, 12th on day 22, and 18th on the 31st (in February, you'd comfortably reach 16th).
To put it another way, you're Heroic Tier for 2 weeks, but Epic Tier for little more than a long weekend (maybe a 5-day work-week if you spend another day doing stuff at 20th).

So, at least you spend more time at the best levels.

That is, if you don't let organizers keep talking you into running 1st level games. :|

 

[Greenfield]

My current 3.5 game/campaign started at 1st level. Several PCs just hit 17th level.

I've played in campaigns that went Epic (levels 20 plus). It can be hard to challenge player characters at the higher levels, but a little creativity makes just about anything possible.

The key is avoiding "grind" games and situations, adventures or campaigns that are little more than a race up the ranks. Those get boring all too quickly.

We quit our 4E game at 10th level because of that. Despite our best efforts to keep the campaign interesting, we'd started without an overall goal, no final victory conditions, and at that point PCs become the stereotypical "murder hobos".

So the key, in my experience, is to make it about the story, not the levels, items or power.

 

[Shasarak]

My favourite campaign was a 3.5 game that went up to 16th level before finishing because a player left the group.

Ah good times, good times.

 

[ParanoydStyle]

Many of your high level experiences are pretty gonzo and off the wall but of course I expected that considering the question I asked. About one in two D&D players has a story about one campaign in which they essentially "broke"/ and/or "won" D&D. Like I read "Level 60" in 3rd Edition and I think something in my brain snapped lol.

Anyway, the short answer is: it's silly. It absolutely, fundamentally throws all efforts at taking a game seriously right out the window, with several babies going out with the bathwater.

For party context, we had a 20+cleric, a 20+druid and a 20+sorcerer. Nothing stood in our way. Nothing could stand in our way save for gods and even they had trouble. Which again, goes back to "we killed a god by accident". It was terribly fun, but terribly silly fun, beer and pretzels was the only way to play at this level. It couldn't not be funny when some god showed up and started talking smack to us.

Technically speaking, level 20 is not the level cap in 3.X. There is no level cap, even discounting the ELH. There are plenty of prestige classes to take up space as well as simply multiclassing.

A number of my other games have gone past 10th, and we can keep sanity on the rails up till about 15th for casters, and well above that for non-casters. But most games ended somewhere between 14 and 17.

Yeah, I ought to have clarified that by high level I meant the equivalent of reaching or starting at the 12th-20th level range in 3rd, not the Level 20+ level range, which I am sure is gibberish mcnonsense. What I'm personally jonesing for is to DM some 3.5 or PF starting at about 10th-12th level and going to about 15th-16th. But my hopes for that campaign if I ever do get to run it is that it be, like most things I DM, on the serious end of things, and done with the straightest of faces.

 

[Maxperson]

5e hard-caps at 20, like 3.x did before the Epic rules, 4e capped at 30, like 3.x did with the Epic rules, only playable.

Just a nitpick, but the Epic rules had no level cap. That's why the most powerful epic spell had a spellcraft DC of 419, and some skill checks had DCs up in the 100's to do things.

 

[Immortal Sun]

Yeah, I ought to have clarified that by high level I meant the equivalent of reaching or starting at the 12th-20th level range in 3rd, not the Level 20+ level range, which I am sure is gibberish mcnonsense. What I'm personally jonesing for is to DM some 3.5 or PF starting at about 10th-12th level and going to about 15th-16th. But my hopes for that campaign if I ever do get to run it is that it be, like most things I DM, on the serious end of things, and done with the straightest of faces.

I actually just started a game at 10th level. I've smoothed out my leveling scheme so the party shouldn't level more than once every couple months (at 10th, they can start dishing out some serious anti-monster firepower). I know I know some people like decade long games, but I prefer my campaigns to be about a year, tops. My friends are all goofballs so it's hard to do serious games at all but we have our moments. It's an intrigue-style game so we'll see if people sober up.