D&D 5E Avoiding High Level Play - Player or DM Preference?

[ad_hoc]

Both for me.

I like the game best from 5-10. 3-4 is fun too to appreciate the 5th level abilities and see the character grow. Level 11 is a great way to have one final adventure where the characters are super powerful.

Beyond that I lose interest. The narrative is too far away from what I can relate to. The game itself is also more complicated in ways which detract from the social interaction that I really like.

 

[ad_hoc]

Just to add one more thing:

I haven't met a player (and when I am one myself) who doesn't want to reach level 20. I think that is everyone's desire in playing the game.

That has definitely not been my experience.

 

[Nebulous]

As DM, I like to end by 10th level. After that, D&D becomes a superheroes game and I would play Mutant and Masterminds if I wanted that kind of gameplay.

Hell, I wish there was a way to slowly level PCs from 1st to 5th as they incrementally get better bit by bit so they still have a sense of progress and achievement.

 

[MNblockhead]

One style that I like which allows players to play their characters at all levels without me burning out at DM is to do episodic-style campaigns with milestone leveling. Basically we play longer 6-8 hour sessions. One episode/adventure will last either just one session or, at most 2 sessions. Each episode the players start at another level. The conceit is that the adventurers are off doing other things between adventures and then they are called together to investigate something, defeat someone, save the world again, etc., depending on their level. I find this format works well.

I've only run one WotC published adventure, Curse of Strahd which we played from 3rd to 10th.

 

[Oofta]

I think it's a combination of things. I've DMed and played in campaigns that went to 20th and it can take a long time. It's great if you can play once a week, that's just not realistic for a lot of people. In addition, it tends to take longer to plan for high level play from the DM's side of things.

It's also a question of what level people enjoy. I kind of like low level play since combat tends to be faster and there are fewer complicated decisions, especially for casters.

As far as high level play not being deadly, I guess that hasn't been my experience. Then again I structure my games so we get in 5-10 encounters between long rests and raise dead is extremely limited. I also limit a couple of problematic spells like banish that make it difficult to plan evenly challenging encounters.

 

[aco175]

I find that the players, or rather half of them, want to stop before the PCs become too powerful. My table likes the way that 5e spreads out the mid levels. As a DM, I tend to make adventures for as long as the players or time allows. One of the 5e campaigns went to 11th level and was running out of ideas on its own, but the summer started, and my son could play from school, so we started a new campaign. I think we could have dragged it out another level or two, but I recall the 4e DMG saying to not be afraid to end a campaign once the idea runs out.

 

[Vael]

As a player, I'd love to play at a higher level, but between DMs always starting a low levels and campaigns falling apart, I've yet to get very far.

As a DM, most of the 1-20 adventures I've attempted to run sputter out. I crashed and burned out of running Tyranny of Dragons and Age of Worms (3.5, though that was more my inexperience as a DM). So I prefer to run shorter adventures, but I wouldn't mind trying higher level stuff.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

As a DM or player? Totally agree with your second observation about adventures.

Both. High level magic, and magic gear, makes so many challenges, and plots, just irrelevant.

 

[robus]

Players at level 19 here (or so, a couple are multi-classed) we’ve been playing the same campaign for about 3.5 years. I’ve thrown out the encounter guidelines and just fling what I hope are interesting encounters at them. I’m worried my multiclassers want to take their characters to level 20...

 

[jsaving]

I think very different skillsets are required for low-level and high-level play. At low levels a DM need to be able to populate dungeons with monsters and handle situations where players fight those monsters and perhaps do a bit of role-playing as they receive rewards from local authorities. Most likely he was picked for the job of DM because he was really good at handling those things and keeping the game flowing. But high-level play requires a much deeper campaign setting in which players can participate in political intrigue that alters the course of the campaign world. Most DMs aren't going to be too interested in that and many who are quickly discover they're simply out of their depth trying to track the motivations, aspirations, etc of hundreds of influential NPCs and the Game of Thrones type maneuverings high level play requires.

Likewise for players, many got into D&D because they enjoyed dungeoneering but have little interest in doing more than that. Even if their DM happens to be good at high-level play, the players may just want to keep entering dungeons and bashing randomly generated monsters, which becomes increasingly boring as characters hit high levels.

In my experience most groups that do high level play are composed of people who most enjoy the storytelling element of the game and from the very beginning were motivated mainly by role-playing rather than dungeoneering and were even at low levels trying to shape political developments in their local areas. And the kind of DM who'd be attracted to that kind of campaign would be exactly the type who'd be well-suited to handle high-level play.