D&D General Highest level PC you've achieved.

[Sacrosanct]

In a legitimate manner. I.e., advancing uses rules as written/intended, starting at level 1. If you started at level 10 or so, or played Monty Haul, not really looking for those answers.

I'm looking for the highest level PC you've had, and roughly how long it took you to get there.

In AD&D, I've had a couple PCs reach the low teens, and each took a few years to regular (weekly or bi-weekly sessions) to get there. This is largely due to the style of play we had--multiple PCs that would go in and out of the campaign as they were busy doing other in-game stuff (resting, or just wanting to play a different PC). That, and just getting a PC to survive that long

My highest level 2e PC was level 7. When you get rid of XP for treasure and keep the same XP tables and lethality, it took a long time to get even that high. That was also slightly less frequent playing as I was overseas in the Army at that time and free time was less than it was as a teenager lol.

In 5e, it took about a year to get a level 15 PC. Right at at the start of 5e actually. In a game where the DM played Tyranny of Dragons all the way through. That took about a year as well, but seemed to level up much faster than my AD&D experiences.

 

[Rabbitbait]

Not me, but my players. I ran a semi-homebrew campaign set in Eberron for 4th edition and it finished at level 25, re-imprisoning Bel-Shelor who had been released as a side effect of the heroes defeating Acererak. One of the characters had to sacrifice themselves to become a new silver flame.

The next campaign was set 30 years later (as a 5e semi-homebrew campaign) when the lands were starting to recover from the effects of the release of Bel-Shalor.

I usually find I prefer to end a game at about level 14. As characters get above that level it gets too unwieldy and becomes less fun as a DM.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Let's see...

1e: Level 3. Didn't play 1e for long.
2e: Level 16 legitimately, something like 22 after playing with a monty haul DM.
3e: Like Level 7? I mostly DMed, and even so, I didn't like the edition above that Level.
4e: Two campaigns that went through the full 1 to 30.
5e: Level 12.

All of them: Lots of other, lower-level characters and a few jumps to higher, but not many. I prefer lower level games.

 

[Tessarael]

Starting at level 1, suffered a few character deaths, then the same character for me from about level 3 onward, we made it to level 27. We started with AD&D, through 3E, to 3.5E D&D using the epic level rules. That was over the course of about 15 years of roleplaying, rough every 2 weeks, but with some intermittent breaks as players and DM shifted location, subsequently playing over the internet with the group. We then went on with that campaign furthers as immortals using the Exalted rules for about another decade. Kudos to the DM for putting up with us and making it all work. We're still a good group of friends and roleplay regularly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

6th level in 4e (campaign ended because GM had massive IRL family disaster to address)
11th level in 5e (LMoP/PaB; I know it was 11th because I got to use eyebite all of one time, and it was mostly useless because my targets were all immune to nearly all of its effects)

Would be higher, but the so-called "legitimately earned"/"rules as written/intended" issue gets in the way.

(Though it is worth noting that 5e was expressly, by its own authors' direct statements, intended that people would actually start at 3rd level once they were well-experienced with the system unless they wanted to play the first two levels. So it's...really not correct to say that it's rules as intended to always start at level 1....but that false belief is, I will completely grant, EXTREMELY widespread, to my near-infinite consternation.)

 

[Lanefan]

As player:

From raw 1st and adventured all the way through? 11th, over a 6-year career in a 3e game (the level-advancement speed was intentionally slowed down greatly by the DM in order to make the campaign run longer).

Any character? 13th, in a 1e-adjacent game. Started in late 2011 at 6th (party average at the time was about 7.5), has been active on and off since, and is still going.

Worth noting perhaps that TSR-era characters may have in some cases earned more levels than they show, having had a few drained along the way.

 

[Marc17]

Playing AD&D, I had a thief that got to 17th level, but that was with several levels of end of campaign level ups, so probably 14th actually keeping track of XP. Started at level 1 with the rest of the party much higher for a game of weekly 12+ hours play (it was college).

Had a 3.x/PF game where we reached 13th level with everybody just leveling up when we felt it was time to level up. I was in that game for about two or three years of its five year rule of weekly 4 hour play and I came in at 7 or 8th level.

 

[Richards]

I ran a 3.5 PC - a human fighter - through a full campaign, 1st through 20th.

I ran a 3.5 PC - a lizardfolk fighter/barbarian - through a different full campaign, 1st through 20th.

Those would be my highest, as we never dip into epic levels.

Johnathan

 

[Zardnaar]

Level 12 1E. Druid. Cant remember starting level wasnt 12 but it wasnt that high either.

Otherwise 10 from level 1. 10-12 memory is hazy on exact starting level. Definitely hit 10 though from 1.

As DM 19 2E munchkin/Monty haul game. Mostly low teens.

We used to play a lot in holidays. 8 hour sessions with a 27 hour record.

6 months in 5E level 10, school/tertiary holidays a month or two going hard eg almost daily long sessions. Play again at night. A few months level 13 5E playing up to 5 times a week.

 

[Shiroiken]

Overall, my primary 1E character was my highest, but I technically didn't start with the character (it was one of the DMs, who gifted it to me so I could play in the current adventure). He had run it from level 1/1 Druid/Thief to about level 5/7 when I took it over, then played it for about 5 years until she was level 36 Thief (Druid capped out in 1E, but I don't remember at what level).

Assuming you don't count that one, my highest level character was a 4E Warlord I took to level 30 in a Dark Sun campaign. The DM basically ran us through the novels as the protagonists.

Other editions:
2E: capped levels for an elf fighter/mage, but I don't remember what the level limit was (mage was mid-teens)
3E: highest only got to level 15 before the campaign collapsed under itself
5E: got a dwarf cleric up to level 18, which was a ton of fun