High Level Play - The Eternal Question

[500 Toads]

nods That's true to a fair degree of PF2e. There's a lot of custom monsters in high-level official adventures to help mitigate that. For instance, a search on on AoN for level 17-25 creatures in the rulebooks and Lost Omens setting material yields 152 results, which does include a considerable number of dragons. Toss in adventure and adventure path content, and that count more than doubles to 351.

I do think that PF2e is likely easier to design high-level content for than D&D 5E from a mechanical perspective, since there's more attention paid towards keeping character power within certain ranges, and that it's less likely for a party to be wildly stronger or weaker than what the author had in mind so long as it's as reasonable complement.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I tend to find it works better with non-exception-based design, but it can work with that; I've played in two PF2e campaigns to 20th level, and while there was a bit more stuff to keep track of (because of the aforementioned exception-based design) it wasn't unmanagable and worked well enough.

(As noted, sometimes there's the question of what "high level" means, especially outside class-and-level systems.)

 

[dbm]

I tend to find it works better with non-exception-based design

I think that is a good observation - with exception-based design you are getting more instances of exception and more extreme exceptions at ‘higher levels’. So there is more to remember, more to look up, and more potential for misunderstanding. Effect-based, modular designs (which HERO is the exemplar of) still has the same rules in use for big powers and lower-strength ones.

Conversely that means the base-level of complexity tends to be higher, of course.

 

[GrimCo]

The issue is variety. A huge chunk of the high level monsters are just some variety of dragon, giant, undead, or fiend. There is a far greater variety of monsters to pick from at low levels

This. Regular humanoids stop at CR12 as far as i know.

 

[Vrindlevine]

(As noted, sometimes there's the question of what "high level" means, especially outside class-and-level systems.)

Yes I was definitely aiming to leave it as an exercise for the reader, especially since I almost totally lack experience with high-level play outside of DnD and its adjacent.

I think that is a good observation - with exception-based design you are getting more instances of exception and more extreme exceptions at ‘higher levels’. So there is more to remember, more to look up, and more potential for misunderstanding. Effect-based, modular designs (which HERO is the exemplar of) still has the same rules in use for big powers and lower-strength ones.

Another good point. I have found most non-exception based systems don't really work for me at high level, if we started at lower level then by the time we get to high level we have seen most of the system in action, maybe more than most. In something like PF2e you are unlocking new options basically the entire length of the game. What really attracts me to the curve of low-medium-high is the way the entire game evolves and escalates as it progresses.

Of course your modular system can still do this, but its more focused on the setting, the story, the scenarios etc, rather than the characters and even then they still increase in power, just not complexity, but I guess that does really matter to me especially in combat-focused games.

This. Regular humanoids stop at CR12 as far as i know.

I wonder if this is because at a certain point most systems expect you to just fight other characters as high level humanoids. Its fairly easy to extrapolate characters into bosses, though depending on the system this can be very dangerous for the players.

Most of my highest level combats have been with essentially the players opposing numbers with character levels, sometimes empowered by ye-old special relic or other boss-booster of your choice.

 

[500 Toads]

The convenient thing about high-power extraplanar threats -- daemons, fae, cosmic horrors, jinn, invae, et cetera -- is that their inclusion as an emerging high-level threat in quantity can be explained via some sort of recent planar breach or other form of incursion. That makes it easier to explain why they're becoming more common and more active, rather than running amok taking over whatever when the player characters can't possibly deal with them.

"Awakening threat" also could be applied to, say, an long-forgotten army of golem-style automatons or undead horrors or w/e, belonging to a previous age and only "reactivating" because somebody recently dug too deep or fiddled with the wrong magical ward or some other cliché, sure.

Extremely high-level bandits emerging in notable quantity (i.e. being as frequent as low-level characters might run into low-level bandits of the sort that might accost travelers and particularly weakly-defended caravans, not the well-hidden leadership of de facto bandit empires that characters are eventually tracking down) is... weirder, at least to my eyes.

 

[Vrindlevine]

Extremely high-level bandits emerging in notable quantity (i.e. being as frequent as low-level characters might run into low-level bandits of the sort that might accost travelers and particularly weakly-defended caravans, not the well-hidden leadership of de facto bandit empires that characters are eventually tracking down) is... weirder, at least to my eyes.

Most of the time yes, but think about what most bandits typically are- Ex-Soldiers. After a war for example (a pretty common mid-campaign event) there would probably be a increase in the number of high-level bandits after the fact.

I also like both my rival organizations, hostile factions (or nations) and mercenary companies, all of which are likely to be of higher level then the typical bandit and significantly more organized. Think an evil campaign in Fearun where you go against Harpers or a good campaign where you go against Zhentarim or Red Wizards.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Also, some bandits/warbands might be refugees from far off wars or an invasion force that becomes a nomadic army. The Vandals come to mind, a people who went from central Europe to North Africa in 35 years. 430AD no Vandals within hundreds of miles of Carthage. 440AD, Vandals rule Carthage

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that is a good observation - with exception-based design you are getting more instances of exception and more extreme exceptions at ‘higher levels’. So there is more to remember, more to look up, and more potential for misunderstanding. Effect-based, modular designs (which HERO is the exemplar of) still has the same rules in use for big powers and lower-strength ones.

Conversely that means the base-level of complexity tends to be higher, of course.

Sure, but how bad that is tends to depend on character type. And it doesn't have to be quite as far as Hero to work; there are games that are generally built to a common metric that still have some exceptions that are still much easier to keep track of as they progress than the typical modern D20 derived game. The usual price is limiting how wide a range of options there are, but that's a separate issue from whether they can handle "high level" play. An RQ game with rune priests and rune lord is pretty high level in many ways, but there are just less moving parts to keep track of.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes I was definitely aiming to leave it as an exercise for the reader, especially since I almost totally lack experience with high-level play outside of DnD and its adjacent.

Part of the issue is, of course, outside class and level systems the tendency for zero-to-hero is much less a default, so you'll often get starting characters who are the equivelent to a lot of 5-10th level D&D characters, but then progress very incrementally, so the gap between a starting and very experienced character looks much less pronounced, and requires a lot less of picking up new understanding as you go. That doesn't mean there's no difference, but it doesn't feel as pronounced.