D&D 5E Why stop at Level 20?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

What would one do at that level? Fight gods? IMC at L11'ish they were whipping a full powered max HP+ Demogorgon, who is pretty much a demigod.. I'm sure I could have done it differently and had the Immortal Price of Demons have to fight a cat and mouse battle, constantly trying to run from a mid level party, but that seemed silly. I ended the campaign at that point as to try and top that would be like the show Supernatural after they beat Satan but had to find bigger baddies to keep it going and it just got stupid. I figured a group of 100 Paladins would just raid the Abyss and clean it out. In that game universe its used as a vacation spot, like a huge theme dimension. Evil is over.

 

[Oofta]

What would one do at that level? Fight gods? IMC at L11'ish they were whipping a full powered max HP+ Demogorgon, who is pretty much a demigod.. I'm sure I could have done it differently and had the Immortal Price of Demons have to fight a cat and mouse battle, constantly trying to run from a mid level party, but that seemed silly. I ended the campaign at that point as to try and top that would be like the show Supernatural after they beat Satan but had to find bigger baddies to keep it going and it just got stupid. I figured a group of 100 Paladins would just raid the Abyss and clean it out. In that game universe its used as a vacation spot, like a huge theme dimension. Evil is over.

Well, for every 100 paladins there may be 100 anti-paladins. They cancel each other out kind of like matter and anti-matter. Or pasta and antipasto. Why do you think only the good guys have epic level individuals?

But in my epic campaign, the PCs rarely fought solos, they've never worked very well. In addition, demon/devil lords are a paranoid bunch and aren't going to be caught without support. But it would not be reasonable to get to an actual demi-god, you would have to mow down armies of demons. Yes, the first few fights might be easy, but those would just be the early skirmishes with the patrols. Think thousands or millions of demons, not dozens.

So the group went to demi-planes to retrieve McGuffins or rescue the princess or to close the rift to protect the realm. The actual story arcs weren't really all that different, they were just on a different scale. In some cases they had to fight a war of attrition against hundreds of orcs that had been blessed by dark powers. Yes those orcs died with a single hit and while they did more damage than normal orcs. Individually they weren't a threat but I treated them as mobs.

The scale changed. The "scenery" changed. Instead of fighting orcs they were fighting "super orcs" or swarms of Vrocks or whatever was appropriate. In 5E I'd probably create a lot of custom "champion" versions of existing monsters (see the custom monster section in the DMG) and use mob rules (swarms of larger creatures) to speed up combat.

So my issue is not how but why and what story I would tell.

 

[Henry]

I think the reason the game doesn't go that high is because there's a point of diminishing returns for the player base - I've played all of two games in my life that went above 20th level, and one we started with 17th level characters with the express purpose of getting to epic levels.

For the majority of my play experience, by the time I've gotten to the mid-to-late-teens for levels, I've been playing the character or story line of a campaign for two to three years, likely the composition of my player group has changed either once or twice, and I'm just tired of the existing setting or story, and want to do something entirely new. If D&D or Pathfinder (or any other F20 game) put a lot of effort into 20+ level content, it would be wasted on me and most any group to which I've ever been attached.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

People like to see the level numbers rise. It's more fun in my opinion to get those feats and stat increases along with hitting level 21 or 24, than it is to just have everyone be level 20 but with a bit more.

Weird. But I got started with D&D and D&D CRPGs rather than the types that had hundreds of levels and hundreds of hit points of damage per attack. So for me, 20th level is just where levels are supposed to stop.

I also think 5e's DMG handles epic levels better than any other edition. You can choose exactly what benefits you want. You can increase your hp, attack bonuses, skills, etc, or you can take completely new special features. You can literally raise your stats to all 30 given enough time. You can do everything epic levels should let you do, but you don't have to keep increasing the numbers. For me, increasing the number lessens the awesome rather than contributes to it. The more levels you have the less a level matters.

I still can't stomach video games with more than about 30 levels. It's just wrong on some level.

PS: Although if someone really needs the number to go up, you could just say that every 600k xp past 20th level you go up a level, and what you gain from that is two Epic Boons to spend as you desire. It would be exactly the same as the rules in the book, except that every other boon is delayed so you can get two at a time at points that fit the leveling scheme better. It would allow people to write "Level 25" on their character sheet if they want, it would just mean they get 10 epic boons. There is rarely any specific function tied to the level number in 5e anyway.

 

[Yunru]

I still can't stomach video games with more than about 30 levels. It's just wrong on some level.

Try Disgaea, where every character and item can go up to level 9999.

 

[pogre]

I used to think high level play did not appeal to me and then I read Sepulchrave II's story hour years ago. He no longer updates it, but it is an amazing gaming tale and describes how to do high level right IMO. It has been all collected in one thread by Cheiromancer called Tales-of-Wyre.

It is a given that Sepulchrave II is an amazing writer and story teller, but it is at truly an epic level eye opener.

 

[Henry]

I used to think high level play did not appeal to me and then I read Sepulchrave II's story hour years ago. He no longer updates it, but it is an amazing gaming tale and describes how to do high level right IMO. It has been all collected in one thread by Cheiromancer called Tales-of-Wyre.

It is a given that Sepulchrave II is an amazing writer and story teller, but it is at truly an epic level eye opener.

While true that the Tales of Wyre are fantastic, I'll note that they're pretty exceptional, having taken something like close to 15 years of real-time to tell, counting the 2nd edition and 3rd edition incarnations of some of the characters. Very rare is the gaming group who can play one campaign that long.

Man, I'd forgotten how much I loved those things -- and from the look of it, there was more added after I quit following them! Thank you!