How do you expect high level play to differ from low level play in a high fantasy RPG?

[Campbell]

In general I expect a lot more freedom of action, temporal power to go along with the personal power, less rote adventuring, and higher stakes. The big appeal to level based games to me has always been the idea that as you ascend in power your importance in the setting would also be on the upswing.

 

[RangerWickett]

Y'know honestly, I've not done a ton of thinking about how it could be versus how it is.

I mean, sometimes you watch an anime and a bunch of teenagers can throw people through walls during a high school sports tournament, and the stakes are whether Yuichi will believe in himself. There's no fate of the world, but the power level is high.

Then you've got shows like The Expanse where no one ever gets any sort of exceptional fighting ability, but based on their connections and where they happen to put themselves, they have the leverage to make a difference in conflicts spanning multiple worlds.

You can have Godzilla and Kong destroying cities and possibly saving the whole world, or you can just have Kong wrestling some monsters on an island, hoping to save a tiny human he has taken a liking to. Power level and what's at stake don't have to go hand in hand.

I once ran a high-level adventure that was just some 20th level PCs trying to find a recipe for some really nice beer that happened to be in a lost brewery that became the nest of some horrific eldritch entities. The fights zipped between parallel worlds and destroyed huge swaths of the landscape, but at the end of the day the PCs just managed to achieve a personal goal.

Whatever the stakes, I simply want the rules in a high powered game to be fast. I came to loathe playing my 17th level Brawler in a Pathfinder campaign, because the efficient thing to do was make a ton of attacks and roll a ton of dice while standing put and doing nothing interesting. High level martial combat wasn't exciting. On the flip side, high-level 4e fighters could do amazing things, but the balance was borked, and in one round the PCs had debuffed Lolth the Spider Queen so hard that despite being a level 38 solo she couldn't hit a single level 30 PC, and she took damage for even bothering to try.

High power needs to be wedded with good playability.

 

[Emerikol]

I've found some basic changes can help high level play a lot. Now I like the variety of abilities so that may just be a preference.

I do think the following can definitely help with old school games.
1. Severely limit scrying of all sorts. It can exist but make it limited in a variety of ways. Range for example. Locate Object, Clairvoyance, etc.. are just other forms of scrying.
2. Teleport is often too fast and easy. Make it a ten minute ritual with 2 rounds stunned upon arrival. Remove all the other downsides. You go exactly where you want to go.

 

[nevin]

So, as a player or as a DM, how do you expect the experience of high level play differs from low and mid level play? Is play similar but with higher numbers, do we see new abilities but they are just needed to match PCs and foes - for example flying PCs and flying foes, or do you want fundamental differences in play to the point where trying to do a high-level one-shot requires a mental shift on both the players and the DM's part.

I expect the players to shatter plans, drive politics, religion, and in general drive the game as much or even more than I do.

At that level I expect them to consider the world around them and the consequences of their actions.

I also expect them to roll with any DM fiat because I have yet to see a system that "feels" like high level that doesn't crack or even break if the rules aren't flexed or modified.

I basically consider my plans guaranteed to not survive contact with the players and my villains learn what the players can do and take it into account.

 

[nevin]

I think there needs to be something of a shift in at least high level D&D.

Over the last few years, I've been seeing people repeat how stuff in the game tends to break down after name or 10th level. It's most pronounced with 3e, but I've seen similar arguments with classic D&D, 1e and 2e. Regardless of edition, it seems that at a certain point, nearly always around 10th level, the game has to shift focus if it's not already gradually doing that. The challenges of dungeon and wilderness adventuring stop being serious challenges at that point in the game, and it's futile to keep forcing those challenges to remain in the game.

Old school D&D basically shifted the game over to stronghold building and domain management, but that's something that's been on a decline since the days of 2e. I blame the 2e DMG for leaving out that material from the 1e DMG as well as the Expert sets (and perhaps Companion as well), and there's no good excuse here since Zeb Cook both wrote the original Expert set and was the lead designer on 2e. Possibly the focus on more narrative gaming that was all the rage at the time played a part, but I don't really know. Some OSR material has taken a look at this stuff, especially stuff inspired by the old D&D game.

However, there is a downside, and that is domain management and such doesn't always really lend itself very well to a full party and tends to be a more individualized thing. You have to set things up to be cooperative, so the fighter is in charge of the soldiers, the cleric runs his own chapel, the wizard's got a personal laboratory up in a tower or down in a dungeon, and the rogue is handling the scouts, spies and such. Even then, not all the players might want to do this, so it fragments things and makes the game harder to run anyway.

I view all that as things that should holistically happen as the game progresses. Players should pick up followers, build fortresses,or become political players, or go build that remote wizard tower to do cutting edge research.
This does two things. One it gives players ability to feel high level, it also gives them weaknesses that can be exploited.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm not sure I can explain it very well, but I expect, in "high-level" play, for the characters/players' decisions to affect something more than themselves. They might not be the leaders of groups themselves, but they're probably involved with the world in ways that "novice" PCs aren't and as such the things they do, the opinions they express, and what is expected of them creates a different set of stakes than is mostly the case for beginning characters. Which isn't to say that characters starting out can't be leaders in a community and I've been in a very fun game based around that exact premise, but it's something that's more common and more expected when the characters are powerful.

 

[innerdude]

I expect it to be harder to run, harder to prep for, harder to adjudicate, more time-consuming, for equal or lesser amounts of fun.

 

[Marc_C]

I don't have expectations since my D&D campaigns always ended around level 10-12 (if they don't crash before that).

 

[aramis erak]

So, as a player or as a DM, how do you expect the experience of high level play differs from low and mid level play? Is play similar but with higher numbers, do we see new abilities but they are just needed to match PCs and foes - for example flying PCs and flying foes, or do you want fundamental differences in play to the point where trying to do a high-level one-shot requires a mental shift on both the players and the DM's part.

In a class and level game...
I expect high level players to have a wider array of mechanical options to wield. I expect them to be tougher, too.

In a non-C&L game, I expect both wider and deeper skill sets.

But I like to switch games 2-4 times a year, so I can avoid high level.

 

[John Dallman]

I'm not sure I can explain it very well, but I expect, in "high-level" play, for the characters/players' decisions to affect something more than themselves.

I think of it as "what we do matters more." Low-level characters try to make money and solve local problems. High-level characters make history.