D&D 5E No One Plays High Level?

[Minigiant]

What made 4E a pain in the posterior at high levels was that a single turn could take an hour. When every action can trigger a reaction, when there are dozens of conditions you have to track, when every power is unique and needs to be reviewed because some things were open to interpretation .... nope. D&D 4E was not easier to run or play once you got past heroic tier. Not in any game I've ever played and I ran and played in 4E up to 30th

That's kinda false.
Most of the classes have straight damage or healing powers or power with little to track.

The best defenders just attack attack attack mark.
The best striker is the ranger that just attacks at lot.

But nooooooooo

Everyone wants to pick the stuff that grows thorns, and creates zones and inflict 3 different conditions.

D&D fans mostly either pick the complex stuff or force TSR/WOTC/3PPs to include complex stuff.

The guy who just chucks fireballs or firebolts depending on the number of foes justs their character fast and has fast turn.

But nooooooooo

People have to take all the weird stuff or complex stuff that all use different rules you have to look up of analyze constantly. Then complain that the turns are long. This happens in every edition

So went you start at high level, your PCs and monsters are filled with complex stuff and it become too complex to learn or play quickly.

A noticeable amount of the community want to have aspects in the game which keep them from playing the game.

 

[Oofta]

That's kinda false.
Most of the classes have straight damage or healing powers or power with little to track.

The best defenders just attack attack attack mark.
The best striker is the ranger that just attacks at lot.

But nooooooooo

Everyone wants to pick the stuff that grows thorns, and creates zones and inflict 3 different conditions.

D&D fans mostly either pick the complex stuff or force TSR/WOTC/3PPs to include complex stuff.

The guy who just chucks fireballs or firebolts depending on the number of foes justs their character fast and has fast turn.

But nooooooooo

People have to take all the weird stuff or complex stuff that all use different rules you have to look up of analyze constantly. Then complain that the turns are long. This happens in every edition

So went you start at high level, your PCs and monsters are filled with complex stuff and it become too complex to learn or play quickly.

A noticeable amount of the community want to have aspects in the game which keep them from playing the game.

I actually played in two groups to 30th (long story) and DMed 1 to 30th in 4E. You don't get to tell me what I did or did not experience. My fighter did a lot more than hit things and mark and I kept them fairly simple. Same with my cleric. In all 3 groups, combat practically ground to a halt at higher levels it was just the reality.

In 5E you can also run characters that are more simple PCs but then people complain that they can't "do anything". Whether the character options chosen are either too complex or too simple seems to depend on what point you're trying to prove.

So what, exactly is false? My experience with 3 different games, 3 different DMs?

 

[Minigiant]

I actually played in two groups to 30th (long story) and DMed 1 to 30th in 4E. You don't get to tell me what I did or did not experience. My fighter did a lot more than hit things and mark and I kept them fairly simple. Same with my cleric. In all 3 groups, combat practically ground to a halt at higher levels it was just the reality.

In 5E you can also run characters that are more simple PCs but then people complain that they can't "do anything". Whether the character options chosen are either too complex or too simple seems to depend on what point you're trying to prove.

So what, exactly is false? My experience with 3 different games, 3 different DMs?

Your character did more than hit things and mark.

That's the point

You choose to do more than hit things and mark.

 

[James Gasik]

As much as I enjoyed 4e, I have to say, yes, absolutely, combat could take awhile. My level 22 Ranger's first turn in combat would be, at a minimum, 4 attacks. Nova turns would be 7. Our Sorcerer would make 3 attacks with Demon-Soul Bolts (6 on a nova turn). Our Cleric would typically open with an area Daze (being a Pacifist). The hybrid Warlock/Sorcerer would typically make 2 attacks with Chains of Fire, meaning only our Fighter and Paladin could be relied on to make a single attack (though they had area attacks they could use).

Then each one of us had at least one reaction that would be made at some point during the encounter. But this was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Opponents making multiple attacks wasn't uncommon, nor were enemies who had at-will reactions (unlike our encounter reactions). Dazing enemies so they couldn't use their reactions was a vital part of our party's strategy.

If we were facing a small group of foes, we could usually end them inside of 2 rounds. But larger setpiece battles with lots of moving parts took a long time to resolve, mostly on the DM's end. For there to be ten minutes between your turns wasn't unusual, and of course, that much time between turns can cause people's attention to drift, making it harder for them to make quick turns.

When I played a controller it was worse, I'd have my turn all planned out, and usually the turn right before mine would force me to discard those plans, lol. But this isn't unique to 4e. Most any time I play a spellcaster in other games, because my spells are limited, it takes time to select the right one for the job, and to figure out how to get maximum effectiveness out of it. Even with my current 5e Wizard (my party usually tells me to just cast fireball, lol, but I rarely can, either due to wanting to avoid friendly fire/not getting enough targets, or, especially lately, magic resistance and fire resistance/immunity on enemies.

 

[Oofta]

Your character did more than hit things and mark.

As did every single player that ran a fighter that I knew, which since I ran or helped run 2 game days in a major metro area numbered the dozens.

Then again, fighter complexity was only part of the issue. It was because every PC sitting at the table had reactions and interrupts they could do, not to mention the half dozen or so conditions and counters going on every single turn.

That's the point


You choose to do more than hit things and mark.

If you keep 5E character simple, high level combat is also simple. For that matter unless you go completely gonzo with 5E it's still simple. So given a choice of playing simplified characters in 4E I never saw played or playing the characters I've seen in every 5E game I've played to higher levels, my opinion stands.

Unless you ran the simplest possible PCs in 4E (or perhaps played strictly with the 4.5 version) and had no magic items that did anything but add plusses to AC or to hit, maybe it would have run a bit faster. Maybe. I don't know because I never experienced it.

Meanwhile? In 5E? People play whatever they want and in my experience it works just fine. Whether people choose to play high level 5E is a whole other issue.

 

[Minigiant]

As much as I enjoyed 4e, I have to say, yes, absolutely, combat could take awhile. My level 22 Ranger's first turn in combat would be, at a minimum, 4 attacks. Nova turns would be 7. Our Sorcerer would make 3 attacks with Demon-Soul Bolts (6 on a nova turn). Our Cleric would typically open with an area Daze (being a Pacifist). The hybrid Warlock/Sorcerer would typically make 2 attacks with Chains of Fire, meaning only our Fighter and Paladin could be relied on to make a single attack (though they had area attacks they could use).

Then each one of us had at least one reaction that would be made at some point during the encounter. But this was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Opponents making multiple attacks wasn't uncommon, nor were enemies who had at-will reactions (unlike our encounter reactions). Dazing enemies so they couldn't use their reactions was a vital part of our party's strategy.

If we were facing a small group of foes, we could usually end them inside of 2 rounds. But larger setpiece battles with lots of moving parts took a long time to resolve, mostly on the DM's end. For there to be ten minutes between your turns wasn't unusual, and of course, that much time between turns can cause people's attention to drift, making it harder for them to make quick turns.

When I played a controller it was worse, I'd have my turn all planned out, and usually the turn right before mine would force me to discard those plans, lol. But this isn't unique to 4e. Most any time I play a spellcaster in other games, because my spells are limited, it takes time to select the right one for the job, and to figure out how to get maximum effectiveness out of it. Even with my current 5e Wizard (my party usually tells me to just cast fireball, lol, but I rarely can, either due to wanting to avoid friendly fire/not getting enough targets, or, especially lately, magic resistance and fire resistance/immunity on enemies.

A turn taking a while because your Ranger has to roll 2-8 attacks
And
A turn taking a while because your Wizard has to choose between 6-10 spells, reread their rules, then roll them

are two different things.

For one, the first can be automated.
Two, the second typical requires more system mastery
Three, the second typically requires more knowledge of exception based design elements.

Given a dice roller or having a quicker grasp of math, the warrior, striker, and defender characters in 3e, 4e, and 5e games regularly have the quickest turns and fastest decision making.

 

[SteveC]

I've been thinking about this issue a bit because I just missed our high level game where the group was very much challenged once again. I wasn't there for the session where our cleric rolled a 1 on an Athletics check and plummeted 200 feet for 20D6 damage. And this hurt extra much because, yes, I had Feather Fall. We just had a combat with three Demodands that brutalized the group due to difficult positioning. That session was absolutely challenging.

I honestly think the biggest reason why people don't play high level campaigns is the assumption that the game starts at first level. If you're using a standard rate of progression and aren't high school or college students, getting to high levels can take years of playing. And during that time, you have all sorts of reasons that the game can combust or fail due to real life concerns.

And that means that fewer games get to those levels, and WotC puts less resources into them since there's less of an audience for them. And I suspect that less playtesting went into them. I think it's pretty much that simple.

I'd suggest putting out a guidebook for starting the game at higher levels to make that an expanded entry point for the game. It could fit very well with the Planescape theme of the multiverse where the characters were agents of a faction and had to deal with big problems.

I think a lot of the suggestions in the thread would make for good "not D&D" games, and many of them exist already. But you still have the problem that if you need to play for a year or longer you're still not likely to get to the altered high level stuff.

 

[payn]

I've been thinking about this issue a bit because I just missed our high level game where the group was very much challenged once again. I wasn't there for the session where our cleric rolled a 1 on an Athletics check and plummeted 200 feet for 20D6 damage. And this hurt extra much because, yes, I had Feather Fall. We just had a combat with three Demodands that brutalized the group due to difficult positioning. That session was absolutely challenging.

I honestly think the biggest reason why people don't play high level campaigns is the assumption that the game starts at first level. If you're using a standard rate of progression and aren't high school or college students, getting to high levels can take years of playing. And during that time, you have all sorts of reasons that the game can combust or fail due to real life concerns.

And that means that fewer games get to those levels, and WotC puts less resources into them since there's less of an audience for them. And I suspect that less playtesting went into them. I think it's pretty much that simple.

I'd suggest putting out a guidebook for starting the game at higher levels to make that an expanded entry point for the game. It could fit very well with the Planescape theme of the multiverse where the characters were agents of a faction and had to deal with big problems.

I think a lot of the suggestions in the thread would make for good "not D&D" games, and many of them exist already. But you still have the problem that if you need to play for a year or longer you're still not likely to get to the altered high level stuff.

I've been a Pathfinder guy for awhile. For about a decade we ran numerous APs. It took us about 2 years to complete one playing twice a month for about 4-6 hours a session. So, yeah, you do need time investment and a stable group to boot. Paizo provides a good amount of high level adventure material too. Not sure how WotC compares?

 

[James Gasik]

A turn taking a while because your Ranger has to roll 2-8 attacks
And
A turn taking a while because your Wizard has to choose between 6-10 spells, reread their rules, then roll them

are two different things.

For one, the first can be automated.
Two, the second typical requires more system mastery
Three, the second typically requires more knowledge of exception based design elements.

Given a dice roller or having a quicker grasp of math, the warrior, striker, and defender characters in 3e, 4e, and 5e games regularly have the quickest turns and fastest decision making.

A dice roller! Blasphemy!

 

[Minigiant]

A dice roller! Blasphemy!

Purging the heretics is why few can level up enough to run the inquisition correctly.