Average final party level?

[SnowleopardVK]

A random thought crossed my mind earlier today; "what is the average level parties reach before they either get TPKed or the game ends?"

Now, I would assume the results are skewed because there would obviously be a lot more parties dropping at 1st level than 2nd, a lot more dropping at 2nd than 3rd, a lot more dropping at 3rd than 4th, and so on.

I honestly don't know if there is a math way to account for that in answering this question. Probably there's data missing since the answer would already be based, at least partly, on what each answering person thinks. Regardless of that though; assuming you weren't including one-shots, those parties that tend to only last a session or two before starting anew and then only lasting a session or two again, and games ending to to major unforseen circumstances (essentially games that could have kept going if players and GM had kept showing up), and assuming that you're only counting the parties that start at 1st level and work their way up, what do you think the average level most parties end their campaign at (whether by win, loss, or otherwise) is?

 

[RoryN]

The only recent TPK I've been involved with we had all just gotten to 4th level. It wouldn't have been a TPK if the rest of the party hadn't tried to rescue my doomed cleric from the badguys, but they did.

Another group almost had a TPK at 1st level against some wild boars, but our wizard managed to save the day. We were lucky to hit the ground with our sweat in that particular encounter. lol

 

[paradox42]

The last game-end I was involved with was a party that TPKed at 10th, due to a vampire (and apparently also a couple of other behind-scenes villains we never met who were watching us) that Dominated or Magic Jarred half the party, and of the remaining 3 characters (one of which was mine), the only caster who could cast Dispel Magic failed his save (with a natural 1 no less) against a Suffocation spell in the surprise round and dropped dead a couple rounds later as a result. My guy opted to soldier on with the party's remaining tank (an Oracle of Battle), in the hopes of taking out the vamp and thus freeing the guy who was under its control, but sadly we ran into an Elder Mud Elemental and rolled ourselves three natural 1s at critical points during the ensuing combat.

In other words, the dice were just Out To Get Us that night. I don't know whether the two of us honestly could have taken out the vamp on our own, of course, but I do know we were up to the challenge of killing the Elemental if we hadn't rolled those nat1s. We had it close to death when it managed to encase us.

The game that started up after that one sort of petered out at level 2, when half the players who had originally joined the group stopped being able to make games for one reason or another, and those of us who were left got together with a couple of other people and started a new game that began at 10th and is still going.

Prior to the TPK group, I was the DM of a 9-1/2 year 3.0->3.5->houseruled/Immortal's Handbook game that went (during its entire storyline) from 1st level all the way up to 999th, and ended with the player characters all "winning the game" for lack of a better way to explain things. That was one of the most satisfying (if occasionally exhausting) gaming experiences I've ever been involved with.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I don't know if I have ever been involved in a TPK as a player or DM. Lots of PC deaths sure but the whole party? Hasn't happened in D&D to my recollection.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

My last pc made lv 23 at the end of rise of runelords. There were some extra adventuring there with some houserules up to lv 52). The game is almost finished just missing some final stuff. Oh, well, that happens where there is sudden excess of RL load.

I run solo campaing in Golarion with of of my players, it got to lv 17.

I am currently dm:ing Concil of Thieves, characters just hit lv 6.

I am soon starting to my more quit group something, probably Serpent's skull, I rather do Crimson Crown but I dont' want to run two similarish city adventures side by side.

Yep, we like running adventure paths with a twist and few modules and own stuff here and there.

 

[basaipete]

In almost 25 years of DM'ing I have never presided over a TPK during my ongoing campaigns (I have done it twice with one-off sessions of Tomb of Horrors, but that almost goes without saying ).

During my years of running games I have run 8 campaigns, of which 5 ran the course of the story I was trying to tell. The two most recent were run under Pathfinder and the previous were various AD&D (1ed - 3.5ed). In most of those cases the party reached between 13-15 level. My experience has been that after about 15th level the player power and rule complexity just makes realistic and interesting challenges difficult. Most of my players enjoy the sword and sorcery aspects of the game and those start to break down at high levels. When the main challenge becomes politics, nation building, and extra-planar threats, most of my players just lose interest (which I am fully willing to admit is a flaw in my overall skills as a DM).

 

[Burn_Boy]

For the longest time I had a sadistic DM who would give us very challenging but very fair fights and quests and the like until about level 5. Once we hit level five however he pulled out all the stops. I don't know about you but pitting four level five PCs, even if two of them are a paladin and cleric, against a small army of Vampire spawn and a full fledged vampire (all sixth level or higher) is NOT an appropiate encounter.

Since we've gotten rid of him and have FAIR DMs we've experienced the world past level five. Our last major campaign ended with the PCs at level 8 before breaking for some time and then moving on to pick up an older campaign where they were rocking at level 15.

The only problem we now seem to have is digging in the Beastiaries trying to find challenges that aren't dragons and Gibbering Mouthers. The secret is class levels and templates!