Why is the mid-level sweet spot sweet?

[loseth]

Regardless of edition, many players & DMs believe that D&D has a sweet spot. They don't agree on where it is. Some (like me) place it low, in something like the 1-4 range, but the majority seem to place it at the mid-levels, giving ranges like 5-10, 6-8 or 9-12. So, I'm wondering:

Considering the interaction of game mechanics and player fun in particular (but not exclusively), what makes the mid-level sweet spot so sweet?

So far, posters have suggested:

B]Lower levels are less sweet because...[/B]

…you’re not powerful enough to do useful/interesting things.
…you don’t have enough options to make things interesting (esp. mage-types).
…you don’t have enough HP to avoid the effects of short bursts of bad luck.
…you feel wimpy rather than heroic/you're just 'regular folks.'
…the math isn’t quite balanced yet.

Higher levels are less sweet because...

…the rate of improvement is no longer rapid enough.
…the power-ups you get start to distort your play-style & change the feel of the game (e.g. teleport)/magic starts to become too much of an easy fix.
…you’re overwhelmed by options/have to keep track of too many diverse powers.
…you’re too powerful to be seriously threatened (note: this can obviously be circumvented by presenting newer, bigger, more bizarre challenges, but this isn’t to everyone’s taste).
...you've gone beyond 'heores' and become 'superheroes'/the genre seems to change from epic fantasy to supers in a fantasy medieval world.
...you are powerful enough that you can just ignore society
...PCs start to become unbalanced with regard to each other (esp. spellcaters vs. non).
…the PCs have an increasing number of options that can ‘break’ the game or bypass the GM’s intentions in unfun ways (e.g. divinations).
…the math gets out of whack.
…the characters are under threat from more save or die effects, and from very high damage, increasing the luck factor in combat.
…buffs, multiple attacks & whole bunches of modifiers in general tend to slow combat down.
…GM prep time gets out of hand and the GM’s ability to run the game on the fly is impeded by the increasing complexity.
…the focus swings away from doing heroic deeds toward carefully planning/preparing for heroic deeds.

What can you add?

 

[Victim]

Enough power and options to do/have interesting things but not enough to be overwhelming.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Basically, I agree with Victim.

It is that zone where the players feel a relatively rapid improvement in the PCs' abilities, both qualitatively and quantitatively, but have not yet gained nor met those abilities that distort the group's preferred play style.

Some people really do not like magic more powerful than a Fireball, and grimace at the thought of daily Divinations, or, gods forfend, the Raise Dead spell cast by a PC.

Other people do not think you are really playing the game until you have a couple Fireballs in your arsenal.

 

[billd91]

I'm more or less in agreement here. You have enough hp to be fairly durable against bizarre luck and a single bad roll or two. You also don't have too many wacked out or extreme powers to keep track of. You are also not always going up against things that also have lots of obscure and powerful abilities.

 

[Lanefan]

You're powerful and tough enough that you think you can do something useful, but still not powerful enough to not be seriously threatened. My range is about 3-9 for this, in 1e.

Lanefan

 

[blargney the second]

My sweet spot is at the table with dice in my hand.
-blarg

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

An example of the end of the sweet spot is the spell "Teleport". The nature of the campaign changes quite a bit if a PC mage (or Travel cleric) takes that spell.

On the other hand, being a 1st-level character is kind of wimpy. It's more fun being higher level.

 

[KenSeg]

I agree that there is a sweet spot and it has remained pretty much the same regardless of which edition you play. Generally from about 3rd, 4th level up to about 9th to 11th.

-KenSeg
gaming since 1978

 

[Delta]

…the power-ups you get start to distort your play-style & change the feel of the game (e.g. teleport)/magic starts to become too much of an easy fix.

Agree with a lot of previous posters. To expand, it's a lot of those traditional 5th-level spells (9th level casters) that really transmogrify things away from a standard literary-type fantasy campaign setting into superherodom -- teleport, wall of force, permanency, commune, flame strike, plane shift, raise dead, (clerical) scrying.

 

[Ilium]

Yep. I define it as the PCs being noticeably better/more powerful than "regular folk," but not so powerful that they can ignore society with impunity. The PCs in my current group are 12th level and I fear they are about to exit my sweet spot, since the most powerful recurring NPCs in the campaign are 15th level or so.