D&D 5E What about D&D 5e levels 21-30?

[abirdcall]

There's a lot of third party stuff out there, but at least they could make an official 5e high level handbook. That would be cool.

I don't think that will ever happen.

As people have said DM's Guild seems like your solution.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

There's a lot of third party stuff out there, but at least they could make an official 5e high level handbook. That would be cool.

I kind of disagree mate, surveys show most people don't even play material from 11-20. That's why Dungeon of the Mad Mage is the only 5e adventure that goes that high.

 

[BookBarbarian]

CR's go past 20 but I don't see official 5e material for character levels past 20. That should change.

CRs aren't equivalent to levels for a good reason. Fighting one monster of equivalent CR to the party's level is typically an Easy encounter.

I've personally seen a party of 5 level 5 PCs wallop an Adult Black Dragon of CR 14 in its lair. Just crushed it. That's a Deadly encounter, an encounter that could be deadly for one or more PCs. It's still one the PCs can win with good tactics.

Oh I wouldn't mind seeing epic levels, but they are far from necessary. But then to make the game not a cakewalk I would need CRs that go higher than 30.

 

[dave2008]

That sounds cool to me.

Well I will keep you posted when Issue one comes out.

 

[pukunui]

Whenever I see writeups of D&D characters I notice they almost always stop at level 20, but the game continues on to higher levels like 30. Can anyone suggest any resources or handbooks for higher level material? Why can't we see spells levels higher than 9 officially? Where are those higher level characters?

I wonder if maybe you're confusing 5e with 4e? The latter edition raised the level cap to 30, but with 5e, they dropped it back to 20 again. The only other edition of D&D that I know of that had more than 20 levels baked in was BECMI. Yes, 3e allowed for epic level play, but it was only an optional add-on thing. The default was still 20 levels.

 

[Rafael Martin]

I wonder if maybe you're confusing 5e with 4e? The latter edition raised the level cap to 30, but with 5e, they dropped it back to 20 again. The only other edition of D&D that I know of that had more than 20 levels baked in was BECMI. Yes, 3e allowed for epic level play, but it was only an optional add-on thing. The default was still 20 levels.

In the 5e DMG it discusses levels higher than 20 and it talks about giving Boons. I suggest a actual handbook that has information for levels 21-30 plus the appropriate monsters, magical items, and other stuff needed to play. I don't think it's hard for the Wizards of the Coast to make one. They should.

 

[abirdcall]

In the 5e DMG it discusses levels higher than 20 and it talks about giving Boons. I suggest a actual handbook that has information for levels 21-30 plus the appropriate monsters, magical items, and other stuff needed to play. I don't think it's hard for the Wizards of the Coast to make one. They should.

That's a lot more work than you're making it out to be and very few people will be paying for it.

It's a guranteed money loss and won't increase the player base (might even negatively effect it).

I doubt there will be a lot of support for levels 15-20 let alone 21+.

 

[S'mon]

In the 5e DMG it discusses levels higher than 20 and it talks about giving Boons.

It does not discuss levels higher than 20. It suggests XP or epic achievements giving level 20 PCs Epic Boons, Feats, and/or Attribute increases.

The way the game is designed, a level 20 group without Boons can already defeat CR 30 monsters. So for level 21+ PCs you would need to see CR 31+ monsters. Personally I think the game works well as-is, I use the Epic Boon rules in my level 20 Runelords campaign.

 

[drl2]

It seems to me that it would be really difficult to build compelling, interesting adventures around level 20+ characters who in many cases can change the world with a single action. It's the Superman problem - characters so powerful that you have to either constantly throw them up against god-like entities or you have to invent (and over-use) Kryptonite.

"Sorry, your wish spell failed because the hobgoblin is carrying Kryp-- ... er... uh... Thauma... turgium? Yeah, Thaumaturgium! It blocks all inconvenient spellcasting."

The old AD&D rules I played back in the 80s allowed for unlimited levels, but they felt boring to me. The one high-level adventure I read through back then (and it's been many years, so I remember almost none of the details, but it was in... the Abyss, maybe?) actually had to resort to listing a bunch of spells that wouldn't work correctly in that plane of existence. It Kryptonited spellcasters for playability.

I find low to mid range characters/adventures (in 5e parlance up to around mid teens) much more compelling in general than the upper level stuff. (That said, I'm probably going to try to take my current campaign up to 20 just to see how it goes.)

 

[Rafael Martin]

That's a lot more work than you're making it out to be and very few people will be paying for it.

It's a guaranteed money loss and won't increase the player base (might even negatively effect it).

I doubt there will be a lot of support for levels 15-20 let alone 21+.

What is someone did a Kickstarter? Also, I do not agree that its a guaranteed money loss.