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.

 

[Umbran]

There are certainly objective measures of game designs, but quantitative and qualitative. There are very clear objective differences between, say, Tic-Tac-Toe, Draughts, or Monopoly OT1H, and Chess, Go, or Catan, OTO.

Right. So, pedantic is how you want it? Fine.

Those are measures in game design. They are not measures of game design. As in, you cannot call up a doctor of philosophy in game design, and have them do an assessment and say your product has a Design Merit Measure of 33.2 Catans, or something. The phrase de gustibus non est disputandum applies.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Right. So, pedantic is how you want it? Fine.

Those are measures in game design. They are not measures of game design. As in, you cannot call up a doctor of philosophy in game design, and have them do an assessment and say your product has a Design Merit Measure of 33.2 Catans, or something. The phrase de gustibus non est disputandum applies.

I'm not sure what you're saying.

Are you trying to assert that there's no objective difference between a solved game like Tic-Tac-Toe and a comparably simple yet incredibly deep game like Go?

Because, while the designers of both games are presumably lost to history, the designs remain, in the form of the games, themselves...

 

[Ace]

I just want to play a high level game with lots of teleporting darn it and Jedi mind tricks.

So would I. The problem is that very few DM's don't want to run that type of game. IMO here is most high level D&D material is read and daydreamed about but few have the skill or will to make much use of it.

Castles and Crusades 1e which is a D&D variant for the uninitiated never had levels past 12 by design and Basic/Expert and its retro cousin Adventurer Conqueror King stopped at 14 if anyone wanted it which few did.

Frankly again just an opinion most gamers really want a relatable low fantasy experience and rules to support it but do the market dominance of D&D and to a degree the quality of rules are playing that but only up to early levels.

To be fair, I'm not much better. I don't have a consistent player group right now and when I did and was DM ran D&D type games it was Epic 6 Pathfinder by preference.

This has always been my style so you could make an argument that I am part of the problem I guess

Still is been a long running once since I've never run or played much of anything past L8 and I've played since Holmes and AD&D 1e.

As an aside, this is hardly a new thing. Vin Diesel a regular D&D player once remarked that he didn't think anyone had legitimately achieved any levels much over 8th in regular play and if what Beyond is showing us this is entirely true.

As far as a fix, its a two way street.

If I were to try and run 5e I'd need a patient group willing to work with me as I got the hang of higher level play, Since almost no one has legit experience with it, errors will happen.

This issue goes beyond real world attendance issues. Those I can work with.

What I'm
seeing is way too many players lack the patience to work up or the ability to trust anyone to be the DM over a long haul.

Everyone wants the "control" or to craft a story or do their own thing and the old maybe deprecated heirachy or X and Y are DM's and everyone else plays that allowed for rules mastery is gone. Too many cooks not enough diners if you will.

This makes us all rules novices and browsers and impacts the general quality of play and players, again IMO

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not sure the relevance of market size. Neither my post nor the one that started the tangent was saying that it was a bad choice or that the "casual" crowd is a bad thing, just that wotc may have gone too far in some ways.

In some ways yes, they may have oversimplified; but in others they didn't go nearly far enough for my liking.

Put another way, the question goes beyond whether to simplify and runs around on what to simplify.

For example, IMO they oversimplified bonuses and penalties (and types thereof) into straight advantage-disadvantage, but left in skills and feats which to me are 90% needless mechanical complication.

 

[Anoth]

I think any ongoing campaign is both hard work and rewarding in it's own way. But I sympathize with anyone trying to write a high level campaign for a module. I don't see how it could be done in any way that wouldn't feel like a railroad.

When doing a home campaign I can lay out options and let the players choose their direction which means the campaign can branch in any direction it needs to.

Yes. And they will think of options and branches that didn’t even occur to you.

 

[Lanefan]

I think whether or not high level campaigns work for you group depends on your campaign setting. In my campaigns the higher level challenges change in theme, but it should. Sometimes the group is fighting an ancient red dragon and his armies who is trying to take over the region. Sometimes they're preventing a powerful lich from ascending to godhood. Sometimes it's a threat that requires them to travel to other planes of existence like the old "Paladin in Hell" drawing.

I ran campaigns up to 30th level in 4E where it was explicitly intended that you were getting to levels where the threat was not just to your world, but crossed multiple planes of existence. Compared to that, high level 5E can be relatively tame.

It's not for everyone, and it doesn't seem like they pulled significant resources in to support the highest levels. In my experience, you need to have an experienced DM who is willing and able to create evocative opponents and scenarios. That's not a slam against WOTC, they had to make a choice of where to focus. I kind of like the freedom it gives me. It seems to me that the people who would most need that support are the least likely to be running the kind of gonzo encounters that justifies it anyway. Which doesn't mean I couldn't create a wish list of things to add to the game, can't everyone?

I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb and guess that there's quite a number of both DMs and players who would like to see high-level play but still have it occur on a more "local" level in the setting, i.e. limited or no plane-hopping or far-distant travel, and with opponents that can still be somewhat related to.

One way to achieve this might be to, as the game goes along and PCs gain levels, slowly shift the focus away from straight combat and more toward diplomacy and stealth, perhaps bringing in as "high level foes" some of the nobility they've been hearing about all along and thus already have a bit of both in-fiction and at-table connection with. Not for everyone, but maybe for some... ?

 

[Oofta]

I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb and guess that there's quite a number of both DMs and players who would like to see high-level play but still have it occur on a more "local" level in the setting, i.e. limited or no plane-hopping or far-distant travel, and with opponents that can still be somewhat related to.

One way to achieve this might be to, as the game goes along and PCs gain levels, slowly shift the focus away from straight combat and more toward diplomacy and stealth, perhaps bringing in as "high level foes" some of the nobility they've been hearing about all along and thus already have a bit of both in-fiction and at-table connection with. Not for everyone, but maybe for some... ?

On my wish list would be better rules for mass combat and resource management with followers and castle building guidelines. Because I agree, I rarely want to shift planes except for the Feywild and Shadowfell because of the way my campaign world works. I did it for my 4E campaign because, as I stated above, that's kind of the gonzo game play 4E expected when you got to epic levels.

But it would be fantastic to have rules where sometimes you're building up an army, or helping build and then defend critical structures. Then switch roles and lead that army or lead a strike force while the rest of the army is doing one of those Star Wars "the good guys are all getting massacred except for a handful of NPCs with plot armor" scenes. Right now if we get into that we just kind of RP some high level stuff and make it up as we go along.

Oh well, if wishes were rule books horses.

 

[tetrasodium]

@Anoth Eberron adds in that "lots of teleporting" at low levels with lightning rails & Orien teleport networks(2500gp/pop!) paid for by patrons . You might try drawing from it for the 1-10 range you mention. Not only would focusing on a smaller level range "save space in the [phb]", it would allow room for other interesting stuff in it's place. It might not seem like much if your only looking at what would be saved from chapter3(classes), but there are a lot of spells levels six through nine. Then if they decide to release a level 11-?? book later it could use the pages of stuff nort needed for 1-10 stuff to gointo he various dials & knobs a dm may be interested in using to adjust the 11+ game to fit the kind of world/story/game they want to be running.

@Lanefan I agree entirely on the penalties/bonuses. wrt your gripe about feats, I find that you can just use individual bullet points from the overly condensed feat chains turned feats as magic items with most feats

 

[Ace]

I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb and guess that there's quite a number of both DMs and players who would like to see high-level play but still have it occur on a more "local" level in the setting, i.e. limited or no plane-hopping or far-distant travel, and with opponents that can still be somewhat related to.

FWIW I've never seen anyone even look at plane hopping, Lots of people bought and read say Planescape back in the day but did anyone much actually play it?

I allowed some alternate world shenanigans in a game of mine, GURPS as it happened along with some other rather crazy stuff RIFTS level madness

That game is still remembered today but I remember having trouble keeping the game within boundaries.

The inablity to maintain tone or basic game stability is a vexing thing to many a DM

Now in fairness when AD&D was created and backstory was not a thing. A typical starting PC say a human fighter was 17-18 years old and while his level title was Veteran, he was not some guy with a history.

Story was what you did in game and with your group and a DM wasn't assumed to be a novelist but a Ref.

This mindset of strong player/DM division and what you played is your story ala Hackmaster facilitated high level play in ways that modern styles do not.

 

[Anoth]

FWIW I've never seen anyone even look at plane hopping, Lots of people bought and read say Planescape back in the day but did anyone much actually play it?

I allowed some alternate world shenanigans in a game of mine, GURPS as it happened along with some other rather crazy stuff RIFTS level madness

That game is still remembered today but I remember having trouble keeping the game within boundaries.

The inablity to maintain tone or basic game stability is a vexing thing to many a DM

Now in fairness when AD&D was created and backstory was not a thing. A typical starting PC say a human fighter was 17-18 years old and while his level title was Veteran, he was not some guy with a history.

Story was what you did in game and with your group and a DM wasn't assumed to be a novelist but a Ref.

This mindset of strong player/DM division and what you played is your story ala Hackmaster facilitated high level play in ways that modern styles do not.

I played the hell out of planescape. It was my favorite setting with ravenloft being a close second. And we planehopped all over mystara, krynn, Toril, Oerth, Cecilia, Athas, and later Eberron. As well as many others like wonderland and Oz and neverland. And many other worlds. Including Elanthia if anyone knows that place. And we mixed it up with some chronomancer handbook at times.