D&D 5E Why Do Higher Levels Get Less Play?

IME the primary reason successful campaigns don't go to high level is because their story has been told. I've run three successful campaigns in 5E, ending at levels 18, 7, and 9 respectively. The first one was an epic tale told in 3 arcs, plus I had an additional one-shot callback adventure using those characters. The second one had a bit of an open ending, but while I could have taken it to a second arc and into high level, I felt the primary story of the characters had been told. The third was a self contained tale that had no more to be said for it, so pushing to high level was pointless. Most APs are written this way as well, with their story being completed before high level is achieved.

Unsuccessful campaigns don't reach high level for a variety of reasons, but IME typically it's because the DM just gets tired of it, or worse, suffering from burnout. I don't think the challenge of high level DMing 5E is quite the deterrent that the online community seems to think it is, but I'm sure it's a factor.

Personally, I think there are 2 core issues:

1) Theme and Support: there have been more books and adventures to fill out the local and regional play styles than the world and multiplanar play styles of high level play.

2) Progression: People like numbers going up and getting new abilities. Starting at low levels gives you time to get to know your character and their abilities. Starting at higher levels often feels more like a one shot, not the beginning of a long story.

4th Edition's DMG had a lot of info on making heroic tier (1-10) adventures (probably equivalent to 5E's 5-10), and the DMG2 had advice for paragon (11-20) tier (probably 11-16 in 5E). We never got a DMG3 for epic (21-30) adventure. It's been a really long time since the Epic Level Handbook in 3E.

More people would play high level if they 1) thought it was balanced (in fun, casters have more toys and thus more fun than non casters at high level) and 2) there were more high level adventures/source books to play or to inspire DMs to run high level adventures.

Xeviat said:

More people would play high level if they 1) thought it was balanced (in fun, casters have more toys and thus more fun than non casters at high level)

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1. More magic items, including relaxed attunement limits. Vorpal swords, Hammers of Thunderbolts, Swords of Kas, etc.
2. Better Epic Boons. I don't know what 2024 added, but the 2014 boons were really uneven.

Scheduling.

J-H said:

1. More magic items, including relaxed attunement limits. Vorpal swords, Hammers of Thunderbolts, Swords of Kas, etc.
2. Better Epic Boons. I don't know what 2024 added, but the 2014 boons were really uneven.

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Epic books could really be made into little sets for the different classic roles (warrior, mage, expert, priest), with the mixed classes getting access to both. Then it's not just "which one will I pick?" but "I can't wait to get another".

Shiroiken said:

IME the primary reason successful campaigns don't go to high level is because their story has been told. I've run three successful campaigns in 5E, ending at levels 18, 7, and 9 respectively. The first one was an epic tale told in 3 arcs, plus I had an additional one-shot callback adventure using those characters. The second one had a bit of an open ending, but while I could have taken it to a second arc and into high level, I felt the primary story of the characters had been told. The third was a self contained tale that had no more to be said for it, so pushing to high level was pointless. Most APs are written this way as well, with their story being completed before high level is achieved

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I think that's part of it too

The stories tend to tend once the party defeats X, saves Y, or gets Z.

High levels world really be a sequel or sequel series which are harder to keep interesting.

My best experience DMing high levels as when the party were basically planar privateers. So they'd work with various extraplanar empires and planar pirates. And as they killed, sunk, or captured the leaders of various fleets, other leaders would feast on the open space, grow stronger, and reveal themselves. It let them go hogwild with their powers and organically continue the story.

Maxperson said:

3e had supported high level play, though. The epic handbook was very poorly done, but high level play started before you became epic and there were tons of high level monsters, spells, magic items, etc.

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There were some high level monsters in the books, especially later books; but there were very few high level adventures for 3e. (Of course, there weren't many adventures at any level, but that's another thing.) And like I said, there was never a published epic level adventure, except for a single epic adventure in Dungeon, as far as I can recall.

I will say that the high level adventures we got in Dungeon during the 3e era were some of the best designed high level adventures I have seen, though. They really leaned into some important design principles for high level adventures, such as "assume that high level pcs have high level abilities".

Even so, there was, as is usually the case for dnd, a LOT more support for lower level stuff. I think almost all the high level adventures were in Dungeon (though to be fair, there was a real dearth of published adventures from WotC in 3e period).

Maxperson said:

4e went to 30th and had a lot of high level monsters from what I heard, what made that edition's high levels poorly supported?

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Again, there were almost no adventures for high level characters, and what there were were... well... let's just say that 4e's adventures were largely awful. There were a few gems among the muck, but the high level adventures were not among them. I could go on at length about the delve format that all the early 4e adventures were pushed into, but let's just say that they focused on encounters to the point of overlooking pretty basic elements of the adventure as a whole. (Keep on the Shadowfell has an infamous encounter at an excavation site that is supposed to be important, but it makes no difference whatsoever to the adventure as a whole if you just skip that encounter completely, to point at one particularly egregious example off the top of my head.)

4e's epic tier rules were great; but the game never really used them to any degree. Epic destinies were an amazing innovation- but nobody did anything with them. It's a real shame, too; they added a layer to dnd that made epic level characters very important and very special in a way that no other edition has done.

Maxperson said:

5e is the only edition I've played where high level has been poorly supported.

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I would disagree, but I agree that it is probably the edition with the least high level support.

I put the two dealing with Interest.
I also put Other. Like @THEMNGMNT says above, Scheduling can be a big factor - the longer a campaign goes, the bigger chance that the DM or one or more players runs into some life change that prohibits them playing at certain times (or at all).

As for the complaint that there are not enough high level adventures out there to "support" high level D&D, here is what I found with about 15 minutes of research...

As of today, on the DMsGuild there are the following number of published adventures:

• 64 for levels 11-16 published by WotC
• 100+ for levels 11-16 published by the Community
• 19 for levels 17+ published by WotC
• 100+ for levels 17+ published by the Community

Furthermore:

• Several of the official WotC hardback adventures go at least to level 15
• ENPublishing has Zeitgeist (to level 20) and War of the Burning Sky (level 19+)
• Kobold Press has 13 adventures that go to level 15 or higher

Swarmkeeper said:

ENPublishing has Zeitgeist (to level 20) and War of the Burning Sky (level 19+)

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I never looked at Zeitgeist but I did run War of the Burning Sky for Pathfinder 1st a good few years back. My group enjoyed Burning Sky but the one minor niggle was that it was a campaign based around it's own setting. We would prefer a campaign that can be dropped into an established setting or homebrew world with just a little tweaking.

There's no mystery here. Mathematically speaking, it's inevitable.

You can always start at high levels, of course. But most campaigns don't. So getting there takes significant time and commitment, which means a lot of different opportunities for attrition. The game is designed such that, if you don't skip ahead, few campaigns will reach high levels just because of natural attrition.

It's why we're so impressed by campaigns that last for decades.

It doesn't have to be that way. World of Warcraft makes levelling relatively fast and easy, and then puts most of the effort into the end game experience. That approach seems to work out better for a video game than for a TTRPG.