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

[Maxperson]

My best guess here is that most people don't want to play at higher levels.

There are like 20 million players or something. 12-15 million in North America alone. That means that around a million people play tier 4. That's a lot of tier 4 players.

 

[Maxperson]

They probably don't, I agree. But anyone who's like "Oh, I want to play higher levels, but our games never get there" is being a little silly.

Yep. The one time I got to play an AD&D PC with double digit levels was when we all started at 18th level, because we wanted to play high level.

 

[Minigiant]

We need levels 11-20.

The problem is the community and designers.

It took 50 years for the Ranger class to get the ability to turn invisible and back away like the Predator.

50 years for the class whose whole gimmick is "I track down the raiders, leap out the X in ambush, and kill them all" to be able to stand near a bush and be unseen.

D&D doesn't know what the game above level 11 and can't agree on all of it.

 

[TiQuinn]

As much as I would pay any amount of money for WotC to invent a way for my DnD groups to stop falling apart due to people having other obligations, I'm not sure that's a reasonable ask

Not everyone’s group falls apart. Mike Mearls pointed out that a lot of groups simply restart with new characters after level 10.

 

[Mistborn]

But actually why don't people want to play at higher levels?

Is it a problem of lack of content?

Boredom with the game and a desire to start a new group after reaching level 1-12?

Problems keeping the same group composition for a long time?

Or is it that D&D with each new level, each new spell that limits story options, increasing power level, is no longer what they get at levels 1-10?

 

[payn]

But actually why don't people want to play at higher levels?

Is it a problem of lack of content?

Boredom with the game and a desire to start a new group after reaching level 1-12?

Problems keeping the same group composition for a long time?

Or is it that D&D with each new level, each new spell that limits story options, increasing power level, is no longer what they get at levels 1-10?

Yes.

 

[AlViking]

No. 1% I think was level 20. Tier 4, which are the highest levels, is 5%.

Thread '90% of D&D Games Stop By Level 10; Wizards More Popular At Higher Levels'

Feb 7, 2019

D&D Beyond has released some more data mined from usage of its platform. A couple of weeks ago, it published some stats on the most viewed D&D adventures, from Dragon Heist and Strahd all the way down to Rise of Tiamat. This time, it's a look at player characters by tier of play.

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Tier 1 is levels 1-4, Tier 2 is levels 5-10, Tier 3 is levels 11-16, and Tier 4 is levels 17-20.

Tier 1 contains the most characters created on the platform (as you would expect), followed in order by Tiers 2-4. About 90% of games do not make it...

• Morrus
• Replies: 165
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 

That data is also from 2019 and there's no telling how accurate it is, dndbeyond was released in August 2017. If getting to 20th level takes a couple of years for most groups then the odds were that they had been tracking characters somewhere else all along. We'd have to have current numbers to have a good idea I'm sure the 5.4% has grown by now. By how much we don't know.

But there's also a lack of support at the high end. If a DM is unwilling or unable to create custom campaigns and monsters there's not much out there.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

But actually why don't people want to play at higher levels?

Is it a problem of lack of content?

Boredom with the game and a desire to start a new group after reaching level 1-12?

Problems keeping the same group composition for a long time?

Or is it that D&D with each new level, each new spell that limits story options, increasing power level, is no longer what they get at levels 1-10?

This is the question I'm more interested in. I've already suggested that the default character sheet itself isn't conducive to organizing the larger number of options available at higher levels, which could be a factor.

 

[el-remmen]

I’ve played and run D&D of various kinds since 1983. The highest level any PCs in any game I’ve run (including years long ones) is 11th level.

It is usually more like 7th.

For my own homebrew rules et project I stopped at 10th but kept higher CR monster and higher level spells through other means.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

We dont even need levels 8-10. The game should be focused on where people actually prefer to play - levels 1-7 - and where the lengths of campaigns reach their natural conclusions.