D&D General Does D&D Really Need 20 Levels?

[Mistborn]

Would D&D be better if a future edition of the Player’s Handbook covered only levels 1–10?

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether D&D really benefits from having 20 levels in its core progression. Most players seem to spend the vast majority of their time below level 11 anyway, and this is also the range where the game seems to work best.

What if a future edition simply concentrated on levels 1–10, but made character development within those levels much richer?

Leveling could be slower, while characters could gain smaller improvements between levels: feats, new maneuvers, skill improvements, spell options, class choices, contacts, reputation, followers, strongholds, or other forms of horizontal progression. You would still have frequent character development without needing a full level every few sessions.

This could also help with one of D&D’s long-standing problems: at higher levels, characters become so powerful that both encounter balance and the assumptions of many traditional fantasy settings begin to break down. Abilities such as teleportation, resurrection, powerful divination, flight and other high-level magic can fundamentally change how the world should work.

High-level play wouldn’t have to disappear. It could become a separate form of “Epic D&D”, specifically designed around characters of that power, with different assumptions and additional rules for things like domains, armies, powerful organizations, planar travel and conflicts involving truly supernatural powers.

In other words, instead of stretching the same core game from fighting goblins to challenging gods, perhaps D&D would be better off making levels 1–10 deeper, slower and more varied, while treating truly high-level play as something that requires a different framework.

Would you prefer something like this, or do you think levels 1–20 are essential to D&D?

 

[Zardnaar]

Need nope. Game would likely be better 10 levels. B/X went to 14.

20 levels wasn't standard until 2E.

So objectively nope not at all.

Subjectively maybe or some combination of inertia, expectations or the dream you might make it. Sacred cow etc.

The biggest variety you'll encounter most games would be something like an adult dragon if that.

 

[Scribe]

Would D&D be better if a future edition of the Player’s Handbook covered only levels 1–10?

Yes.

 

[Tigris]

No it does not, but DnD fans are really defensive when it comes to changes. And Hasbro would not risk this.


13th age which is "DnD but for theater of mind" made by 3e and 4e DnD lead designer has 10 levels. It works great. Every levelup is meaningfull.


And it even has "quarter level ups" (like every long rest you get a small part of next level 4th time the full level).

It has 3 clear tiers of play and can do everything else DnD can.



Edit: In case you dont know it, it has a free SRD (and had recently its second edition): 13th Age SRD



Also with just 10 levels, spell levels finally make sense!

Level 1spells you get at level 1, level 9 spells at level 9.

 

[overgeeked]

Epic 5 and 6 are popular for a reason.

A lot of people really want the numbers to go up no matter how little sense it makes. It’s just one more ingrained tradition.

At least collapsing character levels down to match spell levels would make sense.

 

[Lanefan]

Anything that makes level progression slower (and thus less of a focus of ongoing play and more just an occasional side benefit) is fine with me. A level every half-year in real time? Great! That way, most of that time is spent with the players having internalized the mechanics of what the new level provides, meaning they can just get on with playing their characters.

The hard part with fewer levels, though, would be keeping the power curve halfway reasonable. The unpopular solution is to make level 10* characters not be superheroes, but more like 9th-level characters in 1e or 12th-level characters in 5e: powerful, yes, but still grounded in their setting and an integral part of same. Sign me up.

More likely, though, the end result would be massive leaps in power from each level to the next, making a 10th* level character here as powerful as a 20th-level in 5e or a 30th in 4e. Even worse would be in effect those 10 levels representing the upper half of the current range: you start out as near-superheroes and go up from there. No thanks.

* - or whatever the capstone level might be.

 

[Minigiant]

YES​

Address the problems and quit avoiding them

 

[Tigris]

Anything that makes level progression slower (and thus less of a focus of ongoing play and more just an occasional side benefit) is fine with me. A level every half-year in real time? Great! That way, most of that time is spent with the players having internalized the mechanics of what the new level provides, meaning they can just get on with playing their characters.

This is not great this is boring for players. RPGs are liked because of character progression. Having less advancements does not fit heroic fantasy like DnD and thus would be just bad gamedesign. It is not just GMs playing also players need fun and its known that they like advancement.

The hard part with fewer levels, though, would be keeping the power curve halfway reasonable. The unpopular solution is to make level 10* characters not be superheroes, but more like 9th-level characters in 1e or 12th-level characters in 5e: powerful, yes, but still grounded in their setting and an integral part of same. Sign me up.

This part is not hard. 13th age does it. Its easy if you hire people with math knowledge. And it makes also things more logical. Level 9 spells at level 9.

And the unpopular oppinion is unpopular for a reason.

More likely, though, the end result would be massive leaps in power from each level to the next, making a 10th* level character here as powerful as a 20th-level in 5e or a 30th in 4e. Even worse would be in effect those 10 levels representing the upper half of the current range: you start out as near-superheroes and go up from there. No thanks.

* - or whatever the capstone level might be.

13th age has exactly the same steep power increase as pathfinder 2 and DnD 3e (at least what it tried to do). And both have 20 levels.

The trick is to start at "level 3/4" compared to 5e and 3.5 and pf2. (Which 5.5 now officially does as well and the same thing 4e did, so normal modern gamedesign for heroic fantasy).

Also it does have incremental increases. So you gain some power of your next level before you gain the level. This makes it have less junps in power than most other RPGs.


These things are really simple when one uses modern gamedesign and math.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Or we go back to ad&d 1e & 2e where each class had their own progression. Thieves were at 24th level when fighters were 20th and magic users were 18th. No worries about per-level balance just per-xp balance.

 

[payn]

Would D&D be better if a future edition of the Player’s Handbook covered only levels 1–10?

Better for me? Yeah I think so.

Yes.