D&D 5E Beyond Level 20?

[Upper_Krust]

Ahoy there!

My gaming group just leveled up, and everyone is 17th level. Everyone is having a great time, and there are tons of adventure threads still out there to investigate, so the odds are good that everyone will be 20th level and still going strong in a few more months. This is awesome! But I have a concern.

All character advancement stops at 20th level. How do I keep things interesting for my growth-oriented players?

In our current campaign we are Level 20 with 10 or 11 Epic Boons each. So we are pushing the boundaries of official play.

These are the sorts of players who plan out their characters several levels in advance, and have spreadsheets and advancement charts. I worry that without some kind of character growth to look forward to every so often, they will get bored. I want to keep the story going, and I want the heroes to enjoy their 20th level status for many more adventures.

Without much 3rd party support its tricky to pull off.

Obviously I am still dragging my heels on my (now up to 444 page) GOD RULES: Players Guide with a bazillion player options of boons, spells, magic items and all sorts of goodies for epic and immortal tier play. But I suspect when its finished (don't ask...but soon-ish ) it will give players the tools to go as high as they want.

Has anyone ever had experience with this situation? Have you ever reached the max level and just...kept going?

Yes, a few times. I think the bigger problem (than player options) is decent epic Challenge Rating monsters and tangentially epic CR monsters who are not "Boss Monsters", so you can create lots of epic encounters getting to a Boss with some new interesting opponents your players will not be familiar with.

 

[AnotherGuy]

[1] Epic Boons
[2] Introduce another attribute: Sanity. Allow them to rejiggle their stats. This also slows down maximums on every stat.
[3] Expand the class levels, with other options from subclasses within an existing class.
[4] Perhaps characters gain those supernatural skill abilities released in that Unearthed Arcana a while back.
[5] Feats

 

[Horwath]

just adding feats or class levels without HP/HD addition is also good variant to stacking epic boons.

 

[Nod_Hero]

The War of the Burning Sky campaign we've been playing for years reached level 20 and is still going strong.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Due to the limitation that it must be 5e, I had to answer "no."

I have played an epic-level character before in 3.PF1 rules.