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.

 

[Lanefan]

No. It was right at the beginning of the survey write up.

From the copy google found for me ( RPGnet News )

"Section 1: The Segmentation Study
...
A two phase approach was used to determine information about trading card
games (TCGs), role playing games (RPGs) and miniatures wargames (MWG) in the
general US population between the ages of 12 and 35. For the rest of this
document, this group is referred to as “the marketplace” or “the market”, or
“the consumers”.

This age bracket was arbitrarily chosen on the basis of internal analysis
regarding the probable target customers for the company’s products. We know
for certain that there are lots of gamers older than 35, especially for
games like Dungeons & Dragons; however, we wanted to keep the study to a
manageable size and profile. Perhaps in a few years a more detailed study
will be done of the entire population."

Yes, this excludes anyone who was born before 1964. Today, those gamers are over 56 years old.

But at the time (1999) they certainly weren't, and were a major part of such player base as remained by the end of the 2e era.

Remember, the game overall was dying at the time; it thus seems more than passing strange to ignore the voices of those who were in all likelihood most responsible for keeping it going at all.

 

[OldeTalamar]

As a social scientist and an epistemologist/philosopher of science, I'll raise you.

I'd like to point out this data is not a random sample of D&D players, but rather is biased by the sorts of players D&D Beyond is marketed towards. It's entirely possible that D&D Beyond is less likely to be used by veteran DMs and longtime grognards, and consequently, there's a false generalization that because most new/young DMs and their parties don't go beyond level 10, that ALL DMs and their parties don't. I'd hate to see WoTC not make products for people who would like higher level campaigns just because it doesn't appeal to recruitment of new players.

As a DM for over half a decade, I can attest that my campaigns typically start at level 1 and end at level 10. I actually would like to start a campaign at level 10 and end at level 20 for a change of pace, but I can't find any good resources for lessons learned at running high level campaigns.

I welcome advice, to include campaign recommendations for a DM that wants to explore high level play for the first time.

Add character levels to BBEG A Red dragon with 5 levels of spellcaster can be brutal. A 10 man flying Kobald 20th level party of mixed classes brings the pain

 

[Mirtek]

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.

Was it 40 million active players or 40 million players who ever played the game at some point?

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Re: Badeye:

As in, you're a DDB developer? Cool!

Badeye is Adam Bradford, the lead/co-founder/Head honcho of DNDBeyond.

 

[Stormonu]

I've been playing this game since '80 or so, and the highest level my campaign ever reached was about 14th level (just barely; the group played 3 years, just about every weekend for 6-10 hours. Unfortunately, that was back in 2E and the players took their sheets home - not likely to be able to check their actual level). Most games/groups I had fizzled out before 9th before we started a new campaign or switched to a different game.

Personally, since I got my hands on the Epic handbook back in 3E (and saw what a mess that was), I realized I had no desire to run high-level games, and I am perfectly happy to start seeing the final threads resolve for my D&D campaigns at 8th-9th level.

 

[Glaxton]

This is 100% because it's so freaking hard to make high level campaigns challenging and fun. I've been GMing a came in Ptolus (Ptolus) where we started at 3rd level, because we've played so much before, and all 6 characters are 10th level. They are insanely powerful! Big bad guys they are just blowing through. As the GM, high level play is seriously a TON OF WORK. Our last fight was against an adult red dragon and an evil Planetar (Monte Cooks Banewarrens). Red dragon had an AC of 40 with 6 attacks per round. There is just so much to do and keep track of. Even though they are only 10th level, I'm already reading the epic level handbook to better think of ways to challenge these PCs. Yeah, high level play is just a LOT of work. I'm sure that's why, coupled with it taking a long time to make it that high, and most groups fizzle and fall apart.

 

[Umbran]

Remember, the game overall was dying at the time; it thus seems more than passing strange to ignore the voices of those who were in all likelihood most responsible for keeping it going at all.

I don't find it strange at all. Broadly speaking - you cannot please everyone. That means companies typically have to pick the market they are going to go after. They had reasons they don't talk about in the study for that choice. We can speculate on why they made that choice, but it would be speculation.

But, overall, making a choice like this is normal.

 

[Tiggerunner]

Add character levels to BBEG A Red dragon with 5 levels of spellcaster can be brutal. A 10 man flying Kobald 20th level party of mixed classes brings the pain

Oh, this isn't even my final form. I didn't mention my day job.

 

[Myrhdraak]

You see, I'm on the opposite direction on this: I would rather the game only focused on 10th level, with level 11-20 be in a later supplement. Start all archetypes at 1st level and dont make level 1-3 unimportant training wheels levels. Give stat bumps ASI at level 4 and 8, but also give class features at those levels.

Anyway, just to say that tastes in D&D vary a lot indeed

I like this idea a lot. Maybe good input for WotC. Imagine that the first PHB have all the classes from day one, but only for level 1-10. When PHB 2 comes out it focus on level 11-20, etc. An easy way for the publishers to add new flavour to each tier of play.

 

[Von Ether]

But at the time (1999) they certainly weren't, and were a major part of such player base as remained by the end of the 2e era.

Remember, the game overall was dying at the time; it thus seems more than passing strange to ignore the voices of those who were in all likelihood most responsible for keeping it going at all.

The answer is new blood since the old guard is either likely to maintain brand loyalties OR that their numbers are so small that catering to them is keeping the game on life support. (See Battletech the boardgame.)

That gamble paid off for 3e. I am a personal example having avoided D&D for a decade until 3e came back.

And since it took 4e to really spark the retroclone/Pathfinder movement, you could say that's futher anecdotal evidence. (And the big retroclone before that was basically streamlined and hacked d20, not an attempt at a faithful recreation/retro heartbreaker.)

'Cause one would assume such a big movement to happen a decade earlier if the old guard was bigger/much more upset with the changes.

I can't speak to 5e, I noticed that:
1. PF Adventure Paths started capping out at 15th
2. Their pblished high level games ended on the same high note, meet the final boss(es) in the planes.

Something that held no appeal to me. Not just for the prep, but also my style of play and learning new mythologies.