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

[GreyLord]

I play what others may consider High Level Campaigns. Not as much in 5e as other versions of D&D as 5e really doesn't reward people as much in high level play as other versions do.

5e is more geared for levels 4 to 8 and....well...yeah. It's good for 5 to 20 sessions and then it isn't. It's not really a game for long term play...though I HAVE played longer term campaigns in it, none them really come close to how long my TSR D&D campaigns go. Normally we hit level 20 and then it's off to epic boons and such, but there comes a point where it's basically a lackless return.

Even 4e has plausible paths beyond (immortality, deification, lichification, etc), where as 5e...basically just sticks with what it wants people to be at...

That's not a bad thing, it's just a different game and style than things that came before.

In that light, what 5.5 should have done was increase the XP tremendously between levels 5-10 to extend that play time there.

Or...horrors of horror, pump up the early game and increase XP to go up levels by a factor of 5 to 10.

IF you pumped up the amount of XP required to level, pumped down the XP monsters and combat gave, and gave other options (XP for Platinum???, 1XP per skill challenge passed???) for advancement, the focus of the game could change in ways unforeseen, and how you handle things could change as well.

In that instance I could see lowering the covered levels to 1-10, as there would be so much more time spent in those levels with a focus more on other things rather than just killing things and leveling up...or conversely...simply getting to the next milestone so you can level up.

 

[prabe]

it’s a combination of both

I suppose some players might feel as though they want to get to level 20 ... then decide that running a 4.5-hour, eleven-round combat isn't what they want from that.

(Five 20th-level PCs with Epic Boons against a CR30 Mythic thing, I am coming from experience, here.)

 

[TwoSix]

I suppose some players might feel as though they want to get to level 20 ... then decide that running a 4.5-hour, eleven-round combat isn't what they want from that.

(Five 20th-level PCs with Epic Boons against a CR30 Mythic thing, I am coming from experience, here.)

Since I'm planning on running something similar soon, I'm curious. What causes the major dilation in combat time? Is there more decision time required because of the number of options, or do those decisions simply take more time to execute?

 

[Deset Gled]

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...

For me, the problem is that the chicken is fully grown by level 10.

That is to say, in 5e, you basically have a character complete and fully developed by around level 10. Say you want to play a wizard. At level 1, you're just learning magic. By around level 6, you're a pretty competent caster. By level 10 you're essentially a full blown wizard. There may be few high level spells to learn, but nothing really new in terms of mechanics. No more epochs. No major growth. No built in reason to continue. Most classes have essentially the same trajectory.

I grew into D&D mainly in 3e, where a level 10 character was still an adolescent. If your character had a long terms goal, it typically took until very high levels to reach that goal. A monk, for example, ascended to being an Outsider at level 20. Lots of Prestige Classes had major conclusions at the end (e.g. the Dragon Disciple became a full Half Dragon at level 10). You started the PrC around level 5-8, so your character didn't really "become" their final class until the later teen levels. We didn't always play to those higher levels, but the goal was to get there.

Some may call this a mechanics issue with level design. Some may call it a narrative issue where characters need long term stories. But whatever you want to call it, I would love to see more happening in the later levels that gives real meaning to playing there. It seems to me that 5e has really pushed for a "sweet spot" of play-ability that focuses on levels ~3-10, which is at the detriment to later level play.

Now, the other side of this coin is that level 1 keeps getting more and more powerful over time. Level 1 in 5e 2024 is practically level 3-4 in 3e. That's obviously a different discussion that what this thread is about, but it's an issue that needs to be tackled if you're looking at character growth over multiple levels.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I spent so long daydreaming about how awesome it would be when my 1e ranger got to those epic heights. When, after a few years, he got high enough level to get followers, I felt like I'd made it. Even more so when he managed to get a storm giant follower with a lucky roll!*** But I never managed to get him to truly rarified levels.

***Note: storm giant follower is extremely overrated. You can't really take them anywhere.

Followers for the win!

I had a 10th level Lawful Good cleric of tyr. Making it to “high priest” was such a big deal!

He had a whopping 13 str but a +2 mace was the bomb! So fun…

 

[Zardnaar]

Followers for the win!

I had a 10th level Lawful Good cleric of tyr. Making it to “high priest” was such a big deal!

He had a whopping 13 str but a +2 mace was the bomb! So fun…

Ours made it to 14 or 15. Probably had a better mace and gauntlets of ogre power.

 

[prabe]

Since I'm planning on running something similar soon, I'm curious. What causes the major dilation in combat time? Is there more decision time required because of the number of options, or do those decisions simply take more time to execute?

Some of both, I think, including on the DM side. (Deciding what Legendary Action, when, does take some bandwidth.) In my case I had told the players this was a nasty fight and I was going to play it as hard as I could, so they were probably being a little careful, and therefore a little slow.

The fact I run on a battlemat with a webcam, so people have to tell me where they want to move to and I have to move their token, might also be a factor.

 

[TwoSix]

For me, the problem is that the chicken is fully grown by level 10.

That is to say, in 5e, you basically have a character complete and fully developed by around level 10. Say you want to play a wizard. At level 1, you're just learning magic. By around level 6, you're a pretty competent caster. By level 10 you're essentially a full blown wizard. There may be few high level spells to learn, but nothing really new in terms of mechanics. No more epochs. No major growth. No built in reason to continue. Most classes have essentially the same trajectory.

Agreed. I think a core issue for D&D in general is the fact that class is a singular identity the character stays in from level 1 all the way to the end of the game (whenever that is). Transformation and evolution of the character should be part and parcel of the system in play.

 

[TwoSix]

Some of both, I think, including on the DM side. (Deciding what Legendary Action, when, does take some bandwidth.) In my case I had told the players this was a nasty fight and I was going to play it as hard as I could, so they were probably being a little careful, and therefore a little slow.

The fact I run on a battlemat with a webcam, so people have to tell me where they want to move to and I have to move their token, might also be a factor.

The ramping up of complexity of the monsters, as opposed to the characters, taking a good amount of extra time makes a lot of sense to me.

I haven't really played Tier 4 in 5e, but I've done a lot of sessions in Tier 3. Characters don't really change that much throughout Tier 3 in terms of new and defining features, IME. A level 16 isn't wildly different from a level 10 character. So I'm just wondering if anything added in Tier 4 really ramps up their complexity and time to process turns.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Some of both, I think, including on the DM side. (Deciding what Legendary Action, when, does take some bandwidth.) In my case I had told the players this was a nasty fight and I was going to play it as hard as I could, so they were probably being a little careful, and therefore a little slow.

The fact I run on a battlemat with a webcam, so people have to tell me where they want to move to and I have to move their token, might also be a factor.

I've long since adopted pre-rolling damage on the DM side to make things go much faster. I go to AnyDice.com to quickly pre-roll damage and then save it to a document to print off and check off in sequence with every hit.

For example, say a creature hits for 2d6+4 damage. I type that into AnyDice and ask it to roll a result twenty times and get the following: 7, 12, 13, 12, 9, 11, 14, 10, 15, 13, 11, 11, 15, 11, 12, 11, 13, 15, 15, 9. When I hit I mark out the seven, them the 12, and so on.

I've also experimented with other time savers, like pre-rolling initiative and then putting abbreviated enemy statblocks in the resulting order on a single page. Basically, every amount of time I can spend before the session instead of during the session I try to take advantage of. My goal is for my time spent on all monsters' turns combined is to be shorter than one player's turn.