DM's: Highest Level Campaign?

[kigmatzomat]

My 3e game just hit 18th (started at 1st) and is still going strong. I ran a 2e game from 3rd 'til about 20 (more for rogues, less for paladins) and I've run a number of other 2e games for a half-dozen levels each though most of those topped out at 10th level or so.

 

[Aethelstan]

As a DM, I've found that things start bogging down after 10th level. The prep time for sessions gets impossibly long and it gets much harder whip up encounters on the fly. Balancing adventure also gets a lot more dicy. I've also found that most players can or don't want to manage high level PCs. They can't add up their bonuses correctly and can't remember how all their spells and special abilities work. Getting through a round of combat starts to take a painfully long time. 4th - 8th is the real sweet spot IMHO: PCs become powerful and versitile with being buried under massive stat blocks.

 

[D+1]

In 1E we had only 1 PC ever crest 20th level, though we had a number of others in the 17-19 kind of range after 10-15 YEARS of play. That of course was before "epic" was invented. It was "epic" just by the things our characters did.

In 2E, I can't remember. Campaigns tended to die out just a little too frequently to maintain a long-term PC so low teens was generally the highest we had. But they got there a little faster because of changes in the XP awards structure in the game.

In 3E the first campaign I ran went for about a year, year and a half and took the PC's to high teens in levels again in a small fraction of the time it would have taken to do so in older editions. But I wouldn't call it even "near-epic" because "Epic" was never really the goal. In point of fact, an overarching goal that I had set for the campaign at the outset was that it would begin, play out, and reach a CONCLUSION, preferably before PC's reached 20th level.

 

[D+1]

I'm pretty surprised that almost 50% of the voters haven't gotten to 15th level. Seems like you're missing out on a pretty cool part of the book.

It's fun to at least ONCE get to throw some of those high-level spells and have a fighter really lay out the damage like a blender set to frappe', but in a sense you're not actually "missing out". It's not the abilities themselves but what you do with them.

I have CONSISTENTLY had more fun playing and DMing at PC levels below 10th than above that. The few times it has gotten above that by a significant amount (unless PC's begin to retire and get replaced by 1st/low levels) the entire tone of the campaign changes - by necessity as has been pointed out by others - simply because the PC capabilities no longer scale well to the things they've been doing. The power level has to spike considerably to keep PC's challenged. Also, in 3E, PC's seem to end up with so MANY capabilities, so many magic items, that they can hardly even track it all, much less make decent use of much of it. So much of the shiny new whupass they've been opening up simply goes unused until those moments when they are absolutely scrambling and digging deep to try and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

THAT is what "epic" is by the way. It has little to do with simply having more than 20 levels.

 

[Psion]

My major full length 3e campaign ran to 22nd level.

(It started out as a 1st level 2e game, which I converted to 3e at 2nd level.)

 

[Davelozzi]

Most of the characters in my current game will be hitting 8th level after this week's session. That'll be the record for me, but just barely. My longest running 2e campaign lasted until right around this point - one or two characters made it to 8th but most were still 7th. Of course, my current campaign is still going strong and will likely carry into double digits

(knock on virtual wood)

A character in our Shadow Chasers game just hit 12th level.

Wow, Tom, I knew that Shadow Chasers game had been going for a while, but I'm surprised to hear that you guys are hitting 12th...did you start at 1st?

Dave

 

[Mixmaster]

Once it gets to about 12th level, bad luck always happens.

Plus, the party can never remember all those toys that they get (spells, magic items), so they forget at key points.

 

[Ellie_the_Elf]

I'm currently DMing a FR campaign which started at first level, and average party level is now around 24th. We're planning to go on with it for a while yet

We actually stopped playing when the PCs first hit epic, and started a new campaign but after about a month we were all missing the old characters and in the mood to sort out the remaining plot threads that had been left behind, so we went back to the old campaign and haven't looked back. There's so much campaign history that I can build on I'm finding it ridiculously easy to continue writing adventures for the game and have had no problems challenging the PCs when necessary.

There's still one PC around who was there when the campaign first started at first level, and another who joined early on, around fifth, as well as a number of NPCs who've been their allies or enemies almost since the beginning.

Yes, occasionally the PCs will forget some of their abilities (or more often, I'll forget something the bad guys can do) - but we haven't found it enough of a problem to stop us from playing.

Ellie.

 

[Nifft]

13th level Homebrew. Started at 3rd level (twice!).

It's just starting to get really interesting for me as a DM, because the PCs are just starting to be real movers and shakers.

-- N

 

[Dagger75]

Played 3e every week for a year and a half. I was pretty generous with the XP. My group got to level 21-22. After a few epic games we all decided it wasn't for us.

My favorite levels are like 9-12ish. Powerful PCs yet still afraid of dragons