High Level Play - The Eternal Question

[Benjamin Olson]

When are people playing the high levels of a game? Either they have slogged all the way there, perhaps over years, in which case they are probably bored of the game or just itching to do something new (if they really love the game their itch to try new characters, scenarios, etc is all the greater). Alternatively they have rolled up the characters starting at high level and don't really know how to play them. I think this is the biggest factor in people bouncing off high level play: their subjective experience of it is just likely to be worse because of the circumstances they come to it in. But then to make things worse there are a number of reasons why high level play is probably just not really as good as some earlier level play.

A game is just almost never going to be as well playtested in the high levels as the low or medium ones, and players and gamemasters are rarely going to be as experienced with high level play. So it's just rarely going to be quite as tight and polished as a gaming experience. The more PC build options a game presents the more improbable it becomes that that the high level ones received more than perfunctory playtesting and the more unlikely it is that people playing have system mastery at high levels.

While some MMOs require you to grind out 60 levels or something before they get to the good part, TTRPGs are not generally made to maximize player timewaste. They try to get to their best gameplay ideas immediately or early on so that groups stick with them. Particularly in a D&D class type model of continuing to recieve semi-unique abilities at high levels you're not going to have a limitless supply of ideas for abilities that are fun, flavorful, worthwhile, and balance-able, so you don't want to waste the A material for high levels.

Games involving numerical advancement and dice are just, almost intrinsically going to have some sort of sweetspot where the math works out best to provide a satisfying mix of success and failure. Sadly there are just limits to what can elegantly be done with the odd assortment of ranges produced by platonic solids and how they interact with each other. Wasting the math sweetspot on more rarely played high levels is a design mistake.

High levels often have semi-purposely (or at least knowingly) unbalancing features, because dangling "maybe one day after you have a million XP you'll get to turn into a Dragon" is really more important to player engagement than whether it is actually fun to play the game as a dragon. For a very high level ability sounding cool may actually be more important than being cool.

Often a game is too complicated at high levels for a typical ttrpg playing human not devoting their life to that specific game. The individual elements may be cool, but the collective cognitive load of managing them all becomes too onerous. Sadly it is the games that work the hardest to give you something cool and new at every level-up that are likely to suffer most from this.

 

[Vrindlevine]

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.

Of course. One of the only games I have a decent amount of experience with outside of DnD is Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, where a starting character is probably half as strong as a starting character in 5e and the highest level one would be maybe equivalent to level 10.

A game is just almost never going to be as well playtested in the high levels as the low or medium ones, and players and gamemasters are rarely going to be as experienced with high level play. So it's just rarely going to be quite as tight and polished as a gaming experience. The more PC build options a game presents the more improbable it becomes that that the high level ones received more than perfunctory playtesting and the more unlikely it is that people playing have system mastery at high levels.

Absolutely. I would file this under "GM/Players lack experience." Lack of playtesting is slightly different but I think it falls under the same general area. Maybe GM/Players and Designers lack experience.

Games involving numerical advancement and dice are just, almost intrinsically going to have some sort of sweetspot where the math works out best to provide a satisfying mix of success and failure. Sadly there are just limits to what can elegantly be done with the odd assortment of ranges produced by platonic solids and how they interact with each other. Wasting the math sweetspot on more rarely played high levels is a design mistake.

Allegedly PF2e fixes this, 4e also does as well by not having much change over the course of the game outside of some specific classes, paragon paths and epic destinies (most of which revolve around defensive abilities from my memory). My own system has performed fairly well at higher levels but is more complex then the aformentioned.

High levels often have semi-purposely (or at least knowingly) unbalancing features, because dangling "maybe one day after you have a million XP you'll get to turn into a Dragon" is really more important to player engagement than whether it is actually fun to play the game as a dragon. For a very high level ability sounding cool may actually be more important than being cool.

Very true. I have on many situations had to rework something from the higher levels DnD 3.5 (often by buffing them actually) and occasionally by nerfing them.

Often a game is too complicated at high levels for a typical ttrpg playing human not devoting their life to that specific game. The individual elements may be cool, but the collective cognitive load of managing them all becomes too onerous. Sadly it is the games that work the hardest to give you something cool and new at every level-up that are likely to suffer most from this.

Agreed again. Hopefully you voted for "lack of experience" haha.

 

[bloodtide]

High level play has lots of problems:

1.Most games are made only for Low to Middle level play. The core rules only cover low and middle levels of game play. Abilities, monsters, treasure, spells, abilities and everything else get small and smaller each level. Picking a low level whatever and you have lots of choices, beyond that you have less and less.

And, worse, once you get to even middle level, the choices get bad, poor, useless or worse. It is easy to make cool low level things, and maybe a few mid level. But then there is a sharp drop off. You see this in so many games. You get to a nice level, and then find there is nothing in the rules to pick from.

Of course, there are few high level foes and monsters and such too. So there is not much for a character to do.

Nearly all games are built around the trope of a small band of heroes doing direct personal tasks. Specifically like The Fellowship of the Ring or The Seven Samurai. Anything more then that simply has almost no support.

2. High level games are complex. Just with the simple fact that characters will have more abilities and powerful abilities adds a whole level or two of complexity to the game. Teleporting in DND is an easy example. After a level or two, characters can just teleport across the world. This makes any sort of simple story or plot impossible. As soon as the characters know the location of X, they will just teleport there.

Keeping track of pages and pages of items and abilities and such is also hard for a lot of players. Worse is the players need to be able to understand all the rules of everything their character has and can use and how to use everything.

DM have to craft complex, hard story plots that the characters can not just solve in a few minutes.

3.Rules Lite. Most games are rules lite. It's the big fad. The nice simple game without piles of rules. Games like fast and easy games. Of course, rules lite games have to be simple. They go hand in hand.

High level games are complex and need lots of rules. Lots and lots of rules.

4.The big NO problem. This is a huge problem with modern gaming: DMs that don't want to say "No". This is already a thing even at low level. DMs don't want to say to the players "your character can't open the locked door". They want characters able to do anything. Low level play places the limits of game reality. Low level characters only have a few limited abilities. So things balance out enough.

A high level complex game with lots of rules will require the DM to say 'No' to the players.....often. You can't avoid it.

 

[Akira Whitlock]

I just finished gming a pf1e/Spheres of homebrew campaign that went from 1-40
Was a blast, and wasnt much of a struggle on the player side but was plenty of work on my end until I figured a method of automating everything, my style of GMing incorporates adventuring, rp scenarios and mechanical/combat excitement.
Some of the most fun in my campaigns are my epic encounters where I throw something wild at them.
Or in the case of RP events, just allowing them to stand toe to toe with named powerhouses in the pantheons was fun.
Took me 5 years and several people moving on because life happens.
Would do again though my players wish to rest and try something different, something not epic play.

 

[Vrindlevine]

1.Most games are made only for Low to Middle level play.

Never thought about this, but its absolutely true, even PF2e does not have an even distribution of "high level" options across all its classes. Though this is something that 4e fixes and also my own 4e inspired system.

2. High level games are complex.

Agree 100%. My session tonight (not me GMing) was 3 1/2 hours and I think were just over the halfway point on a boss fight?

3.Rules Lite.

Partially agree here. I think you can do high level with simple rules, nothing immedietely comes to mind, but it would probably involve a lot of "domain play".

4.The big NO problem.

Another interesting one, this is probably true but I think it ties into the complexity thing, in order to say no somewhat, you need to make increasingly complicated scenarios.

Took me 5 years and several people moving on because life happens.

Sounds amazing. Hopefully you don't regret it. I'm getting towards 3 years on my current campaign and its been a load of fun, not quite at high levels yet though, but eventually.

 

[AnotherGuy]

High level play is fun...my advice is to modify and design the elements which are (to you as DM) troublesome or necessary and absent respectively.
Once that is sorted 50% of your job is done.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

4.The big NO problem. This is a huge problem with modern gaming: DMs that don't want to say "No". This is already a thing even at low level. DMs don't want to say to the players "your character can't open the locked door". They want characters able to do anything. Low level play places the limits of game reality. Low level characters only have a few limited abilities. So things balance out enough.

A high level complex game with lots of rules will require the DM to say 'No' to the players.....often. You can't avoid it.

Saying no is such a crucial boundary for any DM that it saddens me it has become so passé.

 

[Eric V]

2. High level games are complex. Just with the simple fact that characters will have more abilities and powerful abilities adds a whole level or two of complexity to the game. Teleporting in DND is an easy example. After a level or two, characters can just teleport across the world. This makes any sort of simple story or plot impossible. As soon as the characters know the location of X, they will just teleport there.

This one jumped out at me...can people weigh in on teleport being that disruptive? In 5e, it's a 7th level spell, so you only ever have 1 of them per long rest (2 at 20)...that's a big opportunity cost. Simply knowing the location of something would qualify as "described," meaning a high chance of a mishap, so that's a problem too (though really, not a huge one).

I don't know...teleport doesn't seem like the breaker it used to be; I'm not shy about criticizing 5e, but this seems like one of the areas they sufficiently addressed...is there an aspect I am overlooking?

 

[SteveC]

In our recently ended game that went from 1-20, two things stood out to me:

Our rogue critically hit Vecna with the Rod of Seven Parts while sneak-attacking. That was a huge pile of damage.

And later, my bard cast a Wish spell, combined with that same Rod in the right place to save the original mother gem dragon and unite Bahamat and Tiamat. Which reshaped the multiverse.

That first one was the numbers go brrrrr part of high-level play, which is fun in its own right. The second one will become the focus of the next campaign that DM runs.

I'm sure that second one was not an intended ending for the campaign, but it flowed naturally from the Fiction. I had made a promise in exchange for a piece of that rod, and we spent a fair bit of time trying to find out if it was a good thing or not. Turns out the people we asked had a specific agenda.

That first one was pure high-level 5E. The second was following the Fiction to a logical (if unwise) end. I wish 5E was more focused on that second part of telling interesting stories that flowed from the Fiction, but there are plenty of options for getting there.

 

[Maxperson]

In our recently ended game that went from 1-20, two things stood out to me:

Our rogue critically hit Vecna with the Rod of Seven Parts while sneak-attacking. That was a huge pile of damage.

And later, my bard cast a Wish spell, combined with that same Rod in the right place to save the original mother gem dragon and unite Bahamat and Tiamat. Which reshaped the multiverse.

That first one was the numbers go brrrrr part of high-level play, which is fun in its own right. The second one will become the focus of the next campaign that DM runs.

I'm sure that second one was not an intended ending for the campaign, but it flowed naturally from the Fiction. I had made a promise in exchange for a piece of that rod, and we spent a fair bit of time trying to find out if it was a good thing or not. Turns out the people we asked had a specific agenda.

That first one was pure high-level 5E. The second was following the Fiction to a logical (if unwise) end. I wish 5E was more focused on that second part of telling interesting stories that flowed from the Fiction, but there are plenty of options for getting there.

That there is the big reason why I say that DM Fiat is the best tool in the DM's toolbox. Sometimes the DM needs/should step outside of the rules to have something happen because it makes sense in the fiction, and when the DM does that, good stories become great ones.

The DM just needs to be aware that DM Fiat is also easily abusable, even without meaning to, and be hyper vigilant to use it properly.