1st to 20th with same character

[Qaballa]

Yes. I DM'd Shackled City, and the entire group made it from 1 - 20, a halfling arcane trickster, human radiant servant, half orc ranger / fighter, human fighter / paladin, and an elf druid. Were quite a few deaths / rezzes on the way, the halfling got reincarnated as a human and the half orc as a dwarf, but apart from that, they all made it through the entire thing.

The same group of players is now just about to finish part 9 of Age of Worms and I fully expect the 4 remaining characters (a human fighter, a half elf warlock, a gnome favoured soul and a catfolk rogue / Nightsong enforcer) who started it to make it to 20, the other guy had an early casualty.

Neither of these tho is my longest running, thats was a 2nd Ed game that lasted about 4 years and they barely made it from 1-14th

I consider myself to be a very fortunate DM, I've got two very stable weekly groups, one for about 8 years and three of those players making up the core of another group they've been in for 15 or so, with others flitting in and out as time permits.

 

[diaglo]

Close. My very first character, Olaf the Stout, got from 1st level to 16th or 17th level before I had to leave the group to concentrate on my final year of high school. I managed not to get him killed in that time (although he did lose all of his possessions once), even surviving an Ettercap ambush that killed all but 2 PC's. I have played him a couple of times since then but he still hasn't made 20th level yet (I think he's still only 17th level).

Olaf the Stout

in the 2000ed i played in a campaign where we reached lvl 18 after about 9 months. i gave it up. but my PC was still alive at the time.

all i could do was roll my eyes at the level progression.

it was totally the DM's fault. but he was playing the newest (at the time) edition as if it were still 2edADnD. he was a big fan of 2edADnD. and he loved to give magic items out too specific to each PC.

heck, iirc, he forced a homebrewed PrC on me. Messiahic Avatar i think it was called.

 

[cmrscorpio]

I've been playing 3e since it came out, and I've never seen it happen in one of my groups, mostly because I live in a college town and our campaigns are forced to occur during the August-May school year. The closest I've seen is where I was in a group that went from 1st to 13th while gaming every other weekend for 6 months. The DM threw alot of higher CR stuff at us. Everyone died multiple times except my character who never died, was the last man (or, half-orc in this case) standing at the end of more than battle, which meant that he was more than 2 levels above everyone else in the group.

 

[DragonLancer]

Yes, on three occasions.

 

[jasin]

Our first 3E game went from 3rd (and that was just because one player wanted to play a drow) to ~20th (depending on the character). Only one of the starting characters dropped out about 4th or 5th, and his replacement stayed from then until the end.

Other than a few embarassing glitches at the start, most of our AoW group has been there from the beginning, and I expect us to stick it out until the end.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

Voted No.

Never get to play as often as I would like.

Only played from 1st to 10th once.

Most fizzle out by 6th or 7th level.

I've never even played high level D&d.

When I was in junior high, I DM'ed players
1st to 36th level in BECMI D&D, but it was
a very Monty Haul game in loot and exp
(what can I say, I was 12 or 13 and just
discovered gaming).

edit: I was wrong, I forgot I played a 12th
level Duergar Fighter for a bit, but that doesn't
count in my opnion, as I came into an exsisting
campaign at 6th level.

 

[drothgery]

Hmm... the largest level span I ever played one character was 1st to 14th; the current campaign has gone from 1st to 16th/17th (the players with zero and one PC deaths are 17th level, the players with two PC deaths -- I'm on my third PC and the other PC has been raised twice -- are 16th level).

 

[Wombat]

I haven't done this and I have very little interest in doing so.

I lose all interest in playing D&D abover about 13th or 14th level.

 

[Ace32]

Yes, they all survived from first to 20th. I think. A couple of characters in the games I DMed were probably "replaced" at some point. I know that at least 3 in each of those campaigns I DMed made it from 1st level.

All the ones I played were played from 1st to their final level. The 48th level was a Warlock in the Warcraft RPG, the 68th level was a Rokugan Samurai.

I'm really curious about the level progression / time spent in those games? My current group only meets for 4 hours every other week and we use standard DMG progression, so its been slow goings (I do give experience for skills encounters too). We've gone from level 2 to level 3 in the course of two and a half months...

 

[Siegfried Niemand]

We've just reached 21st level in a campaign that started at 1st with free modules from the WotC site, into Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, through Dragon Mountain, and, lastly, to Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

On Sunday, we begin an epic version of Day of Al'Akbar.

Through all of this, only two characters have survived the whole way: an exalted human saint monk-initiate of Pistis Sophia-paladin and my maenad telepath-fighter.

I think it's taken us about three years of real time (and 12-1/2 years of game time).