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D&D (2024) Do We Really Need Levels 11-20?
- Thread starter MGibster
- Start date
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Guest 7037866
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I have at least one kinda slow-player who doesn't seem to even consider his actions before his turn. Only one player at that table pre-rolls, really, or rolls damage at the same time as their attack roll. So things have often tended to take us a little longer.
My sense is that PCs do get more complicated with higher level, more than you seem to think (which just means we have a difference in experience/opinion, here) but I'll admit I've never played a 5e character past like 7th: I don't have the player-side experience to compare.
Hexmage-EN
Legend
The highest level I've played as a PC outside of a one-shot is probably 14th, I think. In one shots I've played three separate 20th level characters and one 16th level character.
Swarmkeeper
Hero
Not trying to be opaque here but I think it might be helpful for folks to define what is meant by "high level play is not well supported". Does that generally mean there is a dearth of published adventures for 10th level and above? And/or does it mean something else?
DragonLancer
Hero
For me, pretty much this. There are few and fare between high level adventures, and I've yet to find a full adventure path style campaign that goes 1st to 20th for 5th edition.
There aren't a lot of official published adventures for higher-level, or even well-thought-out published monsters. Arguably the higher levels aren't really exciting, in the sense that, as @TwoSix pointed out a 16th-level PC plays a lot like a 10th-level one (which doesn't have to be bad). I think a typical 5e DM who's looking at PCs starting to approach high-level play might go looking for ideas, like to start from or bounce off of, and ... not find a lot.
I am aware there are third-party adventures written for high-level play. I think those tend to have problems in the direction of decentering the PCs (because these aren't PCs the adventure writers have been at the table with for 100+ sessions) but that's probably mostly a me-thing, and I'm sure at least some of those adventures are minable for things that will fit into a more homebrew campaign.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
For me, decentering the PCs is the reason I eschew published adventures in the first place, no matter the level.
I would also think the freedom to roam granted by spells like wind walk or teleport or plane shift also makes an adventure path built around exploring a specific "dungeon site" pretty challenging.
At present, my current Greyhawk 5E campaign is at 17th level after 2.5 years of fortnightly play.
My previous Greyhawk 5E campaign reached 20th level.
The campaign before that was 10th level, and everyone was surprised when I ended it.
The campaign before that was 4E, and it reached 30th level.
A recent battle (taking an entire session) was this level 16 party against ten CR 7 foes. Ended up being very finely balanced, as they had to deal with the foes taking hidden passages and otherwise attacking from range. Most characters were badly damaged, at least one was unconscious at one point. CR7s challenging level 16 characters.
The fact is that it is entirely possible to run high-level D&D and have fun with it. A lot of the problem spells people talk about tend not to come up in real life that much. Occasionally you get "that player", and you need to adjust. (But, honestly, "that player" was probably causing you issues long before).
And then it's just being more flexible with adventures and their resolutions. Wizards has had a lot of trouble trusting DMs with its adventures - many of them are VERY scripted. It was interesting - when I first read Descent into Avernus, I read the last chapter very early on, and was really enthused by what it said. I expected there'd be a lot of freeform play before we reached the conclusion, where various deals would allow all the potential solutions to be possible. Of course, the adventure that actually appeared in the book was incredibly linear and didn't lead to those potential conclusions at all!
You can see more of "trust the DM" in the finale for Tyranny of Dragons, which I'm sure one reason some people don't react well to it. It's actually very bare. There's a tunnel complex, and a ritual chamber, and all these battles going on around - you can work out how to handle it. It's not that scripted, and a few more notes on how to run it would be welcome. But it gets out of the way of the players' mad plans and doesn't stop them from trying stuff.
There's a level of flexibility you need as a DM. More preparing situations into which the players can throw their special kind of chaos, rather than very structured "encounters". Of course, you could design a set of scenes - I do all the time - but with an underlying understanding of the situation so that when the high-level chaos ensues, you can react.
But there's also the question of how long groups have to play. I run my campaigns for typically about 3 years. (Some of my players have been with me for 25 years). It's not going to be that way for everyone. But are you then saying that D&D is only for people who can't play for more than 6 months?
I am curious about campaign story patterns, though. I rarely run "this campaign has one story" and do that, save when running a published adventure. I have several strands weave through the campaign's life. (My 10-level 5E campaign was an exception, where it was all about the liberation of Onnwal, and ended when they succeeded).
I must say I love seeing the players get to play with the high-level stuff.
My previous Greyhawk 5E campaign reached 20th level.
The campaign before that was 10th level, and everyone was surprised when I ended it.
The campaign before that was 4E, and it reached 30th level.
A recent battle (taking an entire session) was this level 16 party against ten CR 7 foes. Ended up being very finely balanced, as they had to deal with the foes taking hidden passages and otherwise attacking from range. Most characters were badly damaged, at least one was unconscious at one point. CR7s challenging level 16 characters.
The fact is that it is entirely possible to run high-level D&D and have fun with it. A lot of the problem spells people talk about tend not to come up in real life that much. Occasionally you get "that player", and you need to adjust. (But, honestly, "that player" was probably causing you issues long before).
And then it's just being more flexible with adventures and their resolutions. Wizards has had a lot of trouble trusting DMs with its adventures - many of them are VERY scripted. It was interesting - when I first read Descent into Avernus, I read the last chapter very early on, and was really enthused by what it said. I expected there'd be a lot of freeform play before we reached the conclusion, where various deals would allow all the potential solutions to be possible. Of course, the adventure that actually appeared in the book was incredibly linear and didn't lead to those potential conclusions at all!
You can see more of "trust the DM" in the finale for Tyranny of Dragons, which I'm sure one reason some people don't react well to it. It's actually very bare. There's a tunnel complex, and a ritual chamber, and all these battles going on around - you can work out how to handle it. It's not that scripted, and a few more notes on how to run it would be welcome. But it gets out of the way of the players' mad plans and doesn't stop them from trying stuff.
There's a level of flexibility you need as a DM. More preparing situations into which the players can throw their special kind of chaos, rather than very structured "encounters". Of course, you could design a set of scenes - I do all the time - but with an underlying understanding of the situation so that when the high-level chaos ensues, you can react.
But there's also the question of how long groups have to play. I run my campaigns for typically about 3 years. (Some of my players have been with me for 25 years). It's not going to be that way for everyone. But are you then saying that D&D is only for people who can't play for more than 6 months?
I am curious about campaign story patterns, though. I rarely run "this campaign has one story" and do that, save when running a published adventure. I have several strands weave through the campaign's life. (My 10-level 5E campaign was an exception, where it was all about the liberation of Onnwal, and ended when they succeeded).
I must say I love seeing the players get to play with the high-level stuff.
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