D&D (2024) Do We Really Need Levels 11-20?

[dave2008]

Yes, but I think they should perhaps be more distinct in mechanics and/or adventure design from 1-10. Right now high level adventures are designed like low level adventures with bigger numbers, that should change.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm guessing the 97% thing is less "97% of players only like 1-10" and more "97% of campaigns only last long enough to get to 10th level or lower."

 

[Zardnaar]

No but they're to entrenched to cut imho.

 

[Parmandur]

I think "the levels people normally play" are more or less "the levels there's the most support/materials for." Of course, I enjoy running high-level D&D, so I'm definitely something of an outlier.

There is a certain chicken and egg priblem: from what Perkins has said over the years, when they tried building out to 15, people did not come and restarted after 10 still.

Do people not play because of a lack of support, or does support for high level play not sell because people don't play it?

The fact that most people are doing homebrew and still not going past 10 seems to suggest the latter, but we may never know for sure...

 

[Parmandur]

I'm guessing the 97% thing is less "97% of players only like 1-10" and more "97% of campaigns only last long enough to get to 10th level or lower."

And yet that is after the 2014 rules were specifically designed to make getting to 20 feasible in a school year of semi-regular play.

 

[prabe]

Yes, but I think they should perhaps be more distinct in mechanics and/or adventure design from 1-10. Right now high level adventures are designed like low level adventures with bigger numbers, that should change.

I think writing adventures for high-level play is probably harder than for low-level play, simply because the characters have greater and more varied capabilities. I more or less free-write as I GM, so I only need to account for the PCs I have, not all the PCs I could possibly have (if that distinction makes sense).

 

[Parmandur]

I think writing adventures for high-level play is probably harder than for low-level play, simply because the characters have greater and more varied capabilities. I more or less free-write as I GM, so I only need to account for the PCs I have, not all the PCs I could possibly have (if that distinction makes sense).

Yeah, the higher Level the more varied the possibilities become, and the level of investment people have in their characters and the Familiarity the DM has with their abilities will no doubt change.

 

[AlViking]

I've done up to level 20 in 5 and we had fun doing it. It seems to work better than 3 or 4 although the DM does sometimes have to get a bit creative with monsters and challenges. I would miss playing the higher levels personally.

 

[prabe]

There is a certain chicken and egg priblem: from what Perkins has said over the years, when they tried building out to 15, people did not come and restarted after 10 still.

Do people not play because of a lack of support, or does support for high level play not sell because people don't play it?

The fact that most people are doing homebrew and still not going past 10 seems to suggest the latter, but we may never know for sure...

It plausibly comes to who decides to end the campaign and why. The sense I get is that most of the time it's the GM, and in the case of D&D it's usually because they don't want to run any higher level than [X]. I'm homebrewing my campaigns all the way to 20th level (in the current case with Epic Boons, even).

 

[aco175]

I've repeated this a lot lately, but fairly recently WoTC informed us that, per their tracking (DDB?) 97% of campaigns end before level 10 (someone please correct if I've got it wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's the gist of it, and the number was 97%).

I'm not sure how Wizards can track my campaigns to make these kind of declarations. I'm guessing them mean online campaigns similar to their character generators. Seems a bit flawed in their assertions. If I took every campaign (whatever that means) and push them together, that number feels right. I recall starting a campaign when I was in middle school that lasted one night and another that lasted 4-5 nights until someone moved away. I can see where online campaigns might run into the same thing and last only a few nights.

Nowadays, my home campaigns last about 2 years and go to levels 13-15ish before starting a new campaign.