D&D 5E No One Plays High Level?

[Oofta]

The video was good, and title not too much clickbaity (in a sense, is not those "You are playing the game wrong" or "You will not belive that..."), some good points too.

5e is one of the most popular edition, and the start for many people, including me. As a DMs, there is little guidance for new ones, but at low level errors don't matter. Forgetting a spell component, not reading well in a spell... happens.

But high level? There is so scarcity of teaching material, you can not simply "try, error, retry" in high level. An error can ruin a campaign. Rules wise the game supports high level (with one caveat: for me, every spell after 5th level should not be a level-up freebie, but should researched or granted with difficult). DMs need a book reference before entering to high level.

To me, a book of this should have:
1)General Advices on running the high level of the game
2)A run down of all spells of the game 6th level and up: What a party with that spell can do in an single phrase, what a NPC / BBEG can do with that spell, common counter tactics. Think of "The monsters know what they are doing", but with spells.
3)Same for magic items.
4)A way to prepare a "DMs Characters Sheet": a mirror of the players' ones but with information that helps a DM during the play, like what a caster could use, the common tactic of a melee player, and so on.
5)Lot of high level adventures seeds to give you inspiration
6)Example of high level encounters, combat and not.

That would encurage people to at least try high level.

I think most people, including the people who wrote it, believe the DMG needs improvement. However, sometimes the best and only teacher is experience. If you're not very well versed in the game you should be starting play at level 1. By the time you get to high levels, you should have enough experience to play high level. You will all make mistakes of course, but that's nothing new and nothing that can be 100% avoided. Depending on budget, most of the things you list are best handled by a DndBeyond subscription. There is no way a book is going to keep up with new spells being added. If someone casts a spell I'm not familiar with I may take a moment to read it to ensure that I understand it. But counter it? Nah. I don't do that, what happens happens. Instead I build in flexibility, which is a separate topic.

As far as specific advice this is a forum where if you have a question you can ask for advice. You might even get some answers that will help!

 

[Oofta]

I've only played high-level 5e in a westmarch, so mostly one-shots.

Was pretty fun, but kinda ridiculous, monsters were pretty much all homebrew, and had insane abilities. One of them was like:

• Magic Resistance, Legendary Resistance, the normal stuff.
• Legendary Action teleport.
• 31 AC at base
• Could cast Shield, Absorb Elements and Counterspell at-will
• Had the Rogue's Uncanny Dodge
• Had the Reactive ability, giving him 1 reaction per turn, instead of per round (So those spells and uncanny dodge were up all the time)
• Had super high saves, I think the lowest was +15.
• Had the Avoidance ability, meaning he didn't take damage when he succeded on a save.
• Had the Foresight spell passively, that was only turned off for a round if he took damage (pretty hard to do).

And that was only phase 1 of 3. I think we were around level 15, and did manage to beat him somehow. He was also the weakest general of the enemy faction, out of, like, six.

The really crazy quests was when DMs just let players stack buffs with Glyphs of Warding, and bring summons, then it was a whole party with True Polymorph, Foresight, 9th level Aid, Simulacrum, riding Ancient Dragons, and with about fifty elementals following.

Fun to play, DMing was a nightmare. I mostly stuck to low level quests.

Edit: I'd say, ironically, that martials were the biggest issue at the non-insane-prep quest, at high-levels and with the homebrew weapons/boons they got, they slaughtered any monster's hp so quickly that casters didn't do as much. I had quests where my 18th level Wizard did basically nothing, DMs mostly made monsters immune to the easy caster tricks, so most of my turns were just spent on teleporting the martials to the enemy, blowing up mooks, or countering debuffs.

In all my years of D&D, including other editions like 4E where we went to 30th level, I don't remember anything quite that gonzo. This is not typical of high level play in my experience. At 20th level the big bad was an ancient dragon with several levels of sorcerer at the party. The dragon had allies of course, as did the PCs but I never needed to cheese out the monsters or the PCs like this.

That doesn't make it wrong of course, just that the DM in this case turned the dial up to 11 and then kept turning.

 

[Alzrius]

The video was good, and title not too much clickbaity (in a sense, is not those "You are playing the game wrong" or "You will not belive that..."), some good points too.

I don't mean to pick on you, personally, but I've never understood the frustration some people seem to have with video titles. Judging a video by its title is, to me, like judging a book by its cover, or the tagline, etc. If there's an action story that bills itself as "the greatest tale ever told!" I don't hold that against it, because it's understood (at least to me) that it's not supposed to be taken literally, and so isn't trying to "bait" you into anything. And yet there are some people who treat "clickbait" titles like they were just sold a handful of magic beans (which didn't grow into a giant beanstalk).

/rant

 

[Stormonu]

Has anyone ever found benefit from this old book? (And, more importantly, is its advice of any value today?)

 

[Quickleaf]

Has anyone ever found benefit from this old book? (And, more importantly, is its advice of any value today?)

View attachment 328462

I wasn't impressed by it personally – it read like a weird mix of material so vague as to be not useful to an experienced GM & material super-specific to the mechanics of AD&D. I think the true dweomers were kind of neat, but I didn't get much out of that book.

 

[Retreater]

Maybe we can just convert the same characters from 1st level Basic, 1st level AD&D 1e, 1st level 3e, 1st level 5e, and then end in "high level" 1st level 4e?

 

[Alzrius]

Has anyone ever found benefit from this old book? (And, more importantly, is its advice of any value today?)

View attachment 328462

I overviewed it (fairly generally) a little while ago in my "looking back" thread for AD&D 2E "limited series" books.

 

[Minigiant]

I think most people, including the people who wrote it, believe the DMG needs improvement. However, sometimes the best and only teacher is experience. If you're not very well versed in the game you should be starting play at level 1. By the time you get to high levels, you should have enough experience to play high level. You will all make mistakes of course, but that's nothing new and nothing that can be 100% avoided. Depending on budget, most of the things you list are best handled by a DndBeyond subscription. There is no way a book is going to keep up with new spells being added. If someone casts a spell I'm not familiar with I may take a moment to read it to ensure that I understand it. But counter it? Nah. I don't do that, what happens happens. Instead I build in flexibility, which is a separate topic.

As far as specific advice this is a forum where if you have a question you can ask for advice. You might even get some answers that will help!

The issue with gaining experience in high level 5e is that low level play is not like high level play. So you can run a dozen level 1-10 campaigns and still not know how to run 5e at level 14.

This was mostly the issue for WOTC. They playtested 5e from low to mid levels with KOTB. Then they and most 3PP extrapolate new adventures or convert old adventures based on the gameplay of low levels.

 

[delericho]

I wasn't impressed by it personally – it read like a weird mix of material so vague as to be not useful to an experienced GM & material super-specific to the mechanics of AD&D. I think the true dweomers were kind of neat, but I didn't get much out of that book.

Agreed. I really wanted to like it, but... didn't.

 

[nevin]

The issue with gaining experience in high level 5e is that low level play is not like high level play. So you can run a dozen level 1-10 campaigns and still not know how to run 5e at level 14.

This was mostly the issue for WOTC. They playtested 5e from low to mid levels with KOTB. Then they and most 3PP extrapolate new adventures or convert old adventures based on the gameplay of low levels.

well if you skip to 14 and don't take the time to run games with all the spells and abilities then of course not. As others have said playing from low level through to the high level is the best way to do it. and yes the first game or two will be a mess as you figure out what works for you as DM. But as DM at high level you need to be either a very flexible DM or very very aware of what the PC's can do. It's a lot to keep straight.