D&D 5E How many of your campaigns ACTUALLY ever get to 20th level?

[Agamon]

My Age of Worms game got that high. Actually, maybe only 18/19; I fast-tracked the end of the campaign when playing the game felt more like work than fun. And that's when my personal motto became, "Never Again."

 

[jace]

I had a BEMCI (later converted to 2nd Edition) character years and years ago who reached 20th level. That was my only one. I later had a 2nd Edition AD&D character who reached about 14th or 15th, I think, but then I graduated high school and that campaign ended.

 

[Raith5]

I had a 1e campaign get to about 26 - but it was an uber monty haul campaign. For some reason my dude made a tower in the Vault of the drow.

2e and 3e ground to halt about 13th level - essentially because magic began to overpower the story and the game.

4e is at 27th level and going strong.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

In 25+ years, basically two.

One in 2nd Edition, though we were young and I'm pretty sure bonus xp was given out liberally. I seem to recall raising a level or two from a deck of many things with all the bad cards taken out. Sheesh.

And my first 4e campaign went all the way to 30. Epic was pretty terrible, though, and I had to rebuild every encounter because they would have been boring otherwise, so I'm not 100% sure I didn't speed things up a bit.

That's it.

 

[the Jester]

How many of your campaigns ACTUALLY ever get to 20th level?

We find all kinds of cool combinations and broken goodness at upper levels, but honestly, I usually get bored or burned out around 12th. How frequently do you guys ever get your D&D/Pathfinder campaigns up to 20th level?

Let's see... I'll examine my games for the last long time.

My current 4e group is mid-epic, so about 26th level. So, that's 1/1.

My current 1e group is 1st to 2nd level, but they haven't been at it long enough to count for whether they will get there or not.

My last 4e group ended at high-paragon. So 1/2.

Before that, we played a 3e game (continuing some pcs over from 2e) up to the high 30's. So 2/3.

Concurrent with that at different points, we played, among other things, a halfling game that went into the mid-high teens. So 2/4.

Also, a low-magic game that went into the low teens IIRC. 2/5.

Also, a game I ran with a separate group that ended around 6th or 7th. So 2/6.

Before that... a game that started off with orcs and evolved over time, ending in the teens as well. Some pcs later joined the game that went epic, but... 2/7.

Before that, a game that ended up as a Firestorm Peak game for a while. Ended in the teens as well. This was the first 3.0 game I ran. 2/8.

So back to the 2e game. Ended in mid-high teens, which was pretty darn high in 2e! Still- 2/9.

Then my last game before I moved to Davis. Hmm, high single digits was the top IIRC. 2/10.

Before that, the evil pcs/Apocalypse game that ended my old campaign world. Some of those pcs were in the 20s or higher. 3/11.

Before that, hmmm... the game with my new player group. Ended at fairly low levels, about 9th. 3/12.

Before that.... let's see... that would be the main Oerth 2e campaign. Ended up with a fight vs. Vecna and several pcs in the 20s. 4/13.

Before that... we're back to 1e. The Mervin party included a pc wizard 20 by the end. 5/14.

Before that, the "next generation" party. Ended in the 5-7 range. 5/15.

Before that, the "Old 1e" game. A number of 20+ pcs by the end. 6/16.

Before that, the homebrewed setting that ended up as a knock-off of the Adept series by Piers Anthony. Ugh. It started so promising. Ah, high school. 6/17.

Before that, my Monty Haul days. 7/18.

So, for me at least, I get to 20th level or higher in my games about 7 out of 18 times, when I'm running non-one-shot groups. I'm sure I've missed several, but that's approximately right.

 

[Wolfskin]

None. Highest level every reached in a campaign was 14, and it was an exception- most of my campaigns start at low level (1st to 3rd) ant rarely go up above 8th level.

 

[Snapdragyn]

I think the highest I've ever gotten a character (with a couple of retcons along the way) was 12th.

I started 1 character at 20th in an insanely homebrewed non-D&D game that attempted to merge any play system the characters wanted to use (D&D, Heroes, etc.) & allow any published material from said system. I went w/ 3.5 for my character, which is why I mention this here. I forget just how many character classes I had, major use of char-op boards to build him... and we played exactly once. OTOH, I did solo a pit fiend, so that was kinda nice.

 

[steeldragons]

To be precise...exactly zero.

I recall one that was up to mid-high teens...some lengthy demony and drowy home-brew that was all mixed up with Descent to the depths of the earth and Queen of the Demonweb pits thrown in (but truthfully the stuff the DM came up with was way worse than those). But I don't recall if we actually started that at 1st level or not. I'm pretty sure we never made it to actual 20.

I, personally, from BECM on have never had a PC exceed 17th [unless I'm forgetting someone]. I'd also note that the fair majority of campaigns from 1e onward were not necessarily begun at 1st level.

 

[Evenglare]

From level 1 - 20? None that I know of. However, I have played in MANY level 20+ games. So balance and high level play still are VERY important to me. I think it's a fallacy to say that just because most games don't reach that level doesn't mean most people don't play that level. One implies advancement which is simply not the case sometimes when you want to start at high levels.

 

[carmachu]

How many of your campaigns ACTUALLY ever get to 20th level?

We find all kinds of cool combinations and broken goodness at upper levels, but honestly, I usually get bored or burned out around 12th. How frequently do you guys ever get your D&D/Pathfinder campaigns up to 20th level?

jh

One. The Ptolus game I was involved in for 5 years got to that point in 3.5 rules.