D&D 5E Nobody Is Playing High Level Characters

According to stats from D&D Beyond, above 5th level characters start to drop off sharply, and above 10th level, the figures are very low. The exception is level 20, which looks like it's probably people creating experimental 20th-level builds.

Some of them say 0%; this isn't strictly accurate, but levels 16-19 are used by an insignificant number of players. Interestingly, there are more 3rd-5th level characters than there are 1st-2nd level.

D&D Beyond has said before that under 10% of games make it past 10th level, but these figures show the break point as being bit lower than that. DDB used over 30 million characters to compile these stats.

 

[Tony Vargas]

feels like a bit of a chicken and egg thing.

That's what an information cascade looks like.

Nope. Just a chicken situation.

Eggs, sheep, chickens, whatever.

It's true that there's not as much high level play.

It's true there's not as much support* for high level play.

It seems obvious they're related, but you can't point to one as being 'at fault' for the situation.






* most editions have had severe balance problems at high levels, and/or fewer choices at high level, and/or lacked DM resources for high levels, and/or had modules/adventures concentrated at lower levels, etc...

 

[Carmen Sbordone]

Meh. Levels 1 thru 5 dont take that much time investment. Getting past 10th takes alot more time and investment. Back in my last campaign played it took 5 to 6 years playing 2 to 3 times a month to get to 19th level. I could have played many many characters from 1st to 5th in the same time period

 

[ChaosOS]

I believe this data. My personal experience is attention spans for characters burn out at the two year mark, and my group at least prefers to restart at low levels than do a full roster swap but continue at higher levels.

 

[Oofta]

"Variant: Skills with different abilities" is detailed on PHB175. "let me setup a thing & struggle with it so I can tell you the results of my barbarian's strength(intimidate) roll"

I can't speak for the rest of it, but you can add custom skill(s) which does what you need.

Give DDB a few years ... the rest of the stuff you discuss is complex and only necessary for a small portion of people. Before I figured this out I just hand wrote a couple of notes.

 

[Umbran]

Eggs, sheep, chickens, whatever.

It's true that there's not as much high level play.

It's true there's not as much support* for high level play.

It seems obvious they're related, but you can't point to one as being 'at fault' for the situation.

Well, let us look at the WotC survey data from 20 years ago for a little insight...

Look at the chart below, which looks as some of the gaming behavior (Session length, number of players in the group, and average sessions between restarts) of people who have been gaming for various lengths of time.

            Typical     4 or More     Average Sessions
            Session     Gamers In     before Restart
            5+ Hours    Group         (New Characters)
Total       28%         62%           15.4
<=1 Year    10%         48%           8.8
>1-5 Years  14%         60%           12.9
(*)>5 Years 42%         71%           19.6

The relevant bit here is the average number of sessions before restarting with new characters. For all groups, the number of sessions was under 20.

This was a survey of folks playing 1e and 2e. It took way more than 20 sessions to reach high level play. Speaking broadly - unless you were gaining something close to one level per session, your campaign wouldn't get to high enough level to use high level support if it existed. If something about the game were causing folks to reset their campaigns, it was an effect before you reached high level.

 

[Tiggerunner]

I'm glad that our summary data provokes this kind of interesting discussion, but it definitely is not provided to appease data scientists.

(Although our internal data scientists do plenty of their own research that would be far less exciting/accessible for the community.)

I'm well aware the data is selectively provided as part of a corporate information strategy to manage the community and justify decisions to the consumers. Which is one of the reasons it's fun to overanalyze. Especially when someone with insider information pops in to rebut by citing NDA-protected analysis in the same breath.

My point from the beginning has been that there is a niche, but profitable group of intermediate players who would like to start campaigns at level 10 (or 15) and finish at level 20 just to see what it's like, but there isn't an official, hardcover, printed campaign that does that, so the only people who play those levels are dedicated players finishing OOTA, Tyranny of Dragons, TOA, etc; those playing higher teired AL, or those in their garage doing homebrew. Most of the people who use DDB are probably newer players who probably started at an LGS or the Starter Set/Essentials Kit at level 1, so the data set is not representative of the entire player base.

Now, if there is some additional analysis that WoTC did that says players don't like high level games and would not buy campaigns geared toward them, then I'd love to see the data on that, because my players won't shut up about how cool it would be to play high level characters instead of starting over at level 1 every time we start a new campaign. The DDB data isn't making the argument to me because it's skewed.

Does it make intuitive sense that most players are low level and play in low level games? Absolutely.

Would more players play in high level games if it had more support with products?

I think so, and it's money on the table. Paizos used to do that sort of thing with their Adventure Paths, so it's not unheard of.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

According to an April 2019 Washington Post article, there are 40 million D&D players worldwide. I don't know how many are playing 5e, though a safe bet would be the majority are playing 5e.

I haven't seen any public data from D&D Beyond about number of users/subscribers, but in the December 19, 2019 D&D Beyond Dev Update – where that image @Morrus posted about campaign level spread in the OP comes from – Adam Bradford mentions that their recent data accounts for 30 million characters on D&D Beyond. EDIT: Around the 10:00 mark.

One player at our table indicated he has created over 150 characters on DDB. He has shared several with us through links - and those were all 9-13th level. Except for his current character and one other, none of them have seen the light of play.

So, it’s hard to say how many active characters (or players) the 30M characters really represents, I suppose. Maybe there’s data to show how the characters are updated over time? How does one know if a DDB character is being used in a campaign or just something built for the fun of it?

On another point, said player with many a never-played PC on DDB is often the least knowledgeable about his character’s abilities and spells of the players at our table. Anecdotal evidence to support DDB is (mainly) for the casual character building player as others here have suggested... current company excepted, of course. I doubt any of us posting here on ENWorld who use DDB are “casual” players.

 

[Azzy]

Guess that means the Realms are doomed when the High Level BBEG appears.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 

[Quickleaf]

One player at our table indicated he has created over 150 characters on DDB. He has shared several with us through links - and those were all 9-13th level. Except for his current character and one other, none of them have seen the light of play.

So, it’s hard to say how many active characters the 30M characters really represents, I suppose. Maybe there’s data to show how the characters are updated over time? How does one know if a DDB character is being used in a campaign or just something built for the fun of it?

On another point, said player with many a never-played PC on DDB is often the least knowledgeable about his character’s abilities and spells of the players at our table. Anecdotal evidence to support DDB is (mainly) for the casual character building player as others here have suggested... current company excepted, of course. I doubt any of us posting here on ENWorld who use DDB are “casual” players.

I think that's exactly the sort of question that should be posed of the DDB team when they put out public data like this.

Whenever I see data without answering entirely reasonable questions about the data, that is one of my early warning signs that the data's presentation is being manipulated for a non-scientific goal. Not saying that's the case here – but as @Lanefan points out it certainly has happened in the gaming community before.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Interestingly, there are more 3rd-5th level characters than there are 1st-2nd level.

I was heartened to see that because I despise 1st level characters and am constantly pushing my group to start at 4th or 5th level. We have done that a few times but 3rd level usually winds up being the compromise position.

Really fascinated by that level 20 spike. I wonder if that's people just building level 20 versions of their characters for planning, or people playing campaigns starting at level 20 just to see what it's like, or maybe bringing their characters in an older campaign onto D&DB that are already 20, or something else altogether?

My group did a 3-shot session of 20th level characters to see what it was like. To date it is the only time I have played a 20th level character. It was fun but starting at 20th level we had trouble keeping track of character abilities and the DM had some encounter balance issues. I was glad for the experience but I don't think a long-term campaign starting at 20th level would have worked well. I would consider another 3-5 session mini-campaign of 20th level PCs, however.