D&D 5E No One Plays High Level?

[Minigiant]

It was explicitly said before that passives counted:

Have you changed your mind about that?

Class passives versus Treasure passives

The core point is to minimize active abilities on both sides of the DM screen during encounters.

Look at the Evoker wizard in MOTM

Before build as a PC wizad, it would a caster with 5+ cantrips,awhole lot of spellsslots and TWENTY FIVE prepared spells to think about.

The MOTM version?

1. Arcane Burst (4d10+3 force)
2. Multi attack: 3 Arcane Bursts
3. Sculpted Explosion (recharge 4-6)
4. Wall of Ice (1)
5. Ice Storm (2)
6. Lightning Bolt (2)
7. Magic Armor (2)
8. Light (at will)
9. Mage hand (at will)
10. Message (at will)
11. Prestidigitation (at will)

11 abilities. Easy for a DM. And you only have to think about 1-7 in a fight. And not really 7 because it's passive. You can play that monster toned down and have fun as player. And since 8-11 wont matter in most combats you and combine them and add more for a player.

1. Offensive Cantrip: Arcane Burst (4 Bursts of 1d10+8 force damage)
2. Sculpted Explosion (recharge 4-6)
3. Wall of Ice (1)
4. Ice Storm (2)
5. Lightning Bolt (2)
6. Magic Armor (4)
7. Utility Cantrips: Light, Mage hand, Message, Prestidigitation
8. Ritual Caster
9. Skill Expert: Arcana
10. Potent Cantrip (added to Arcane burst)

Wanna change magic armor to shield for defense? Sure.
Passive magic items are calculated into your stats on your sheet. Active magic items just has to be kept at a minimum by the DM.

I've reduced monsters and NPCs to index cards of ~10 features like how my family Urban Fantasy game works as a conversion for a high level one shot and it worked great. I can pull out and drop monsters or NPCs out on the fly without having to parse through a ton of info. And the payers grasped their PCs fast. Less "Ummm... I'm gonna"

 

[Ogre Mage]

I understand your point, and I can only speak to my games, but for us levels one through four zip by. My PCs are never level one for more than a single session.

I don't bring this up to argue against your position, but to explain why we continue to start at 1st level.

I do have one player that wishes we would stay in tier one longer, but the rest are content with our speedy ascent to the second tier.

Level 1 passes quickly in our games too (thank god) but we tend to sit at Levels 2-4 for quite some time. Level 4 in particular seems to take forever but maybe that is partially because it is right before the game gets interesting for me. I would say on average we hit Level 5 after a dozen sessions of play. That's 12 sessions of me not liking it much.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Class passives versus Treasure passives

The core point is to minimize active abilities on both sides of the DM screen during encounters.

Look at the Evoker wizard in MOTM

Before build as a PC wizad, it would a caster with 5+ cantrips,awhole lot of spellsslots and TWENTY FIVE prepared spells to think about.

The MOTM version?

1. Arcane Burst (4d10+3 force)
2. Multi attack: 3 Arcane Bursts
3. Sculpted Explosion (recharge 4-6)
4. Wall of Ice (1)
5. Ice Storm (2)
6. Lightning Bolt (2)
7. Magic Armor (2)
8. Light (at will)
9. Mage hand (at will)
10. Message (at will)
11. Prestidigitation (at will)

11 abilities. Easy for a DM. And you only have to think about 1-7 in a fight. And not really 7 because it's passive. You can play that monster toned down and have fun as player. And since 8-11 wont matter in most combats you and combine them and add more for a player.

1. Offensive Cantrip: Arcane Burst (4 Bursts of 1d10+8 force damage)
2. Sculpted Explosion (recharge 4-6)
3. Wall of Ice (1)
4. Ice Storm (2)
5. Lightning Bolt (2)
6. Magic Armor (4)
7. Utility Cantrips: Light, Mage hand, Message, Prestidigitation
8. Ritual Caster
9. Skill Expert: Arcana
10. Potent Cantrip (added to Arcane burst)

Wanna change magic armor to shield for defense? Sure.
Passive magic items are calculated into your stats on your sheet. Active magic items just has to be kept at a minimum by the DM.

I've reduced monsters and NPCs to index cards of ~10 features like how my family Urban Fantasy game works as a conversion for a high level one shot and it worked great. I can pull out and drop monsters or NPCs out on the fly without having to parse through a ton of info. And the payers grasped their PCs fast. Less "Ummm... I'm gonna"

And that's, what, a third-level wizard?

You've even made class features eat up things on this list! Plus, you're now forking out combat vs non-combat, and clumping ALL rituals under a single heading, and...

It just comes across as a very arbitrary categorization to fit the mold you have already supplied, rather than actually showing "this is how you can get the same experience but with a smaller subset."

If you lump together a 4e character's Utility powers (many of which are skill-related, and thus irrelevant to combat), you would already have this. 4e characters never get more than 10 powers, two of which are (essentially) un-changing at-wills. In other words, they already did that. And it was allegedly the worst thing ever.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Level 1 passes quickly in our games too (thank god) but we tend to sit at Levels 2-4 for quite some time. Level 4 in particular seems to take forever but maybe that is partially because it is right before the game gets interesting for me. I would say on average we hit Level 5 after a dozen sessions of play. That's 12 sessions of me not liking it much.

God, what I wouldn't give to have a character reach level three within 12 sessions.

 

[Minigiant]

And that's, what, a third-level wizard?

Statistically about 13.

You've even made class features eat up things on this list! Plus, you're now forking out combat vs non-combat, and clumping ALL rituals under a single heading, and...

That's what I said from the start. The player and nonplayer character would have 10 slots of features to play with. Some passive some active. Passive class features would take up slots to boost active features.

Again the goal was to minimize active abilities on both sides of the DM screen during encounters.

No Analysis Paralysis if you only have 4-7 active options to choose from at a given time.

 

[billd91]

I wish the "start at Level 1-2" sacred cow would die but I first started playing D&D in 1986 and it shows no signs of dissipating. Frankly, I hate 1st level characters.

I gather there are a lot of 5e groups that start at 3rd since that’s a major choice point for most classes. Maybe you can make it a firm request, maybe even a condition for your participation, next time someone pitches a campaign. Get enough fellow players on board and your DM will probably go along with it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Whereas for me, I've never had a 5e game that did work that way. The average is something like 3-4 sessions just on level 1.

And maybe 10% of all 5e games I've tried to join, let alone actually played, start at anything other than level 1.

I have never been part of a 5e game that lasted long enough to reach level 4 (unless it started higher, I mean; but there was only one of those.)

I guess I get your dislike of low level play more now.

I like low level play, yet in my current campaign the characters got to second level at the end of the first sessions and to the fifth at the end of the tenth, and that to me seemed like pretty decent pacing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I gather there are a lot of 5e groups that start at 3rd since that’s a major choice point for most classes. Maybe you can make it a firm request, maybe even a condition for your participation, next time someone pitches a campaign. Get enough fellow players on board and your DM will probably go along with it.

Had I made it a "firm request, maybe even a condition for my participation," I would basically never be able to find a game. I have few friends who run D&D (but of course many who play), and, as noted, no amount of begging, pleading, or "firm requesting" made any of the people I actually knew personally do more than a polite dismissal, followed by not changing anything.

I tried to join easily two to three dozen games over the course of a year across multiple forums, and I was actively avoiding anything that looked like a poor fit for me. I gave up. No one was interested in offering higher level play and, as noted, it never took less than two sessions to reach level 2, usually three or four. Some games never even reached level 2 before collapsing.

People swear up and down there's a lot of appetite for starting at 3 or even higher. I've never seen more than a very rare interest in doing so, in all the time since 5e launched. It's more than a little hard to believe that years of effort have failed to turn up something that's supposed to be extremely common.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess I get your dislike of low level play more now.

I like low level play, yet in my current campaign the characters got to second level at the end of the first sessions and to the fifth at the end of the tenth, and that to me seemed like pretty decent pacing.

That would be quite reasonable. And about twice as fast as any 5e game I've played. Admittedly, many games I managed to join didn't make it to third level, so I can't be sure the pattern would hold. What took you two and a half months would have taken these games around five and a half. Maybe four for the ones that only spent three sessions at level 1.

Out of curiosity, how did you get enough XP to level in one session? 300 is quite a lot to gain purely from combat. I assume this means you got some from non-combat stuff? If so, that would be another thing I hear claimed as commonly used, but which I have never actually seen in person.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That would be quite reasonable. And about twice as fast as any 5e game I've played. Admittedly, many games I managed to join didn't make it to third level, so I can't be sure the pattern would hold. What took you two and a half months would have taken these games around five and a half. Maybe four for the ones that only spent three sessions at level 1.

Out of curiosity, how did you get enough XP to level in one session? 300 is quite a lot to gain purely from combat. I assume this means you got some from non-combat stuff? If so, that would be another thing I hear claimed as commonly used, but which I have never actually seen in person.

I can’t be bothered to use XP, it is milestone leveling. But if I used XP, of course there would be XP gained from stuff other than combat as that’s at least half the game.