D&D 5E How many people start at 20th level?

[Sacrosanct]

This is a question that's been bouncing around in my head for a long time. When I look at forums around class discussion, I see a lot of people talk about various builds, always at 20th level.

"The F6/W14 build is awesome because of x, y, z!"

But how many people actually start and play at level 20? Or get to level 20 fast? I admit I have a hard time getting my head around it because in natural progression from level 1 or so (how I always have played), none of our PCs even got close to level 20. Ever, in more than 30 years. That would take forever. Most often by the time we get in the low teens, we've moved to a different campaign or want to try out different PCs.

But apparently lots of people do play 20th level or we wouldn't have so many people talk about builds. After all, what good does it do to talk about a level 20 build if you never get there? And playing a bi-weekly session for 2 years of not having fun with my PC just get to level 20 when it finally does what I want doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. I want to have fun every session, and not feel....gimped I guess?...for a LONG time before I get to that level where the build finally shines. I'm guessing most people don't, so they skip to level 20. The only other thing I can think of is that people who talk about their awesome level 20 builds never actually play with them, but just theorize. I guess that's why I'm assuming all these people start at, or near, level 20. Or play a monty haul style where level advancement is way faster than RAW.

So I'm trying to get a feeling on just how many people actually do play at level 20.

 

[Ezequielramone]

I have never play at 20th lvl. Even the long term campaign I did was rise of the Runelords. It reaches lvl 17 if you pay all the stuffs in the book. That was the longer campaign I dmed (I don't think that's is the past form of dming). I have always started my games at lvl 1.and I'm always the dm.
that is my experience.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Well, when you're playing at 20 and rolling along, where can you go from there? Nowhere. So what we do is advance to 21. One higher.

 

[TerraDave]

In a 4E game we got over 20. After RL years of play.

Of course everyone was talking about level 30.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well, when you're playing at 20 and rolling along, where can you go from there? Nowhere. So what we do is advance to 21. One higher.

In all seriousness though, that brings up a good point. If people play to gain levels, and therefore stop when you hit 20 (because you can't go higher), what would be the point of playing a PC all the way up to level 20 when your build finally reaches peak, if no one else is going to play with them?

 

[Agamon]

I've been running games since '81, and any group I've played with only reached the top level according to the core rules once. That was a 3.5 game, running the Age of Worms AP.

My highest level PCs are a duel-classed AD&D PC that was lvl 9/14, and a BECMI pc that got to lvl 22 (that system goes to 36) from back when playing multiple times per week or all-weekend sessions were things.

I honestly have paid no mind to what powers classes get at level 20 in 5e, nor the corresponding MB threads (this one aside, I suppose), as I have no intention of running a game that high. High level D&D has been the opposite of fun in my own experience.

 

[neobolts]

99% of games I've played in started at 1st level. In 3e, the only two epic level characters I've had were played over the course of a decade (One was a carryover from 2e). In 4e, I DMed a game where players hit around level 25. A Pathfinder game went to 15th. In 5e, we hit 5th level running LMoP.

I can't recall starting at 20th level specifically. I've had *one-shots* where the level was up there thought. Never a proper campaign.

 

[iserith]

But apparently lots of people do play 20th level or we wouldn't have so many people talk about builds. After all, what good does it do to talk about a level 20 build if you never get there?

And playing a bi-weekly session for 2 years of not having fun with my PC just get to level 20 when it finally does what I want doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. I want to have fun every session, and not feel....gimped I guess?...for a LONG time before I get to that level where the build finally shines. I'm guessing most people don't, so they skip to level 20. The only other thing I can think of is that people who talk about their awesome level 20 builds never actually play with them, but just theorize. I guess that's why I'm assuming all these people start at, or near, level 20. Or play a monty haul style where level advancement is way faster than RAW.

A lot of these discussions are about theoretical character optimization. Cribbing from the Theoretical Optimization Manifesto, it's a fun discussion to have for some people, it's a useful resource for learning how to build effective characters, it highlights rules issues, and encourages good rules comprehension.

So I'm trying to get a feeling on just how many people actually do play at level 20.

Never. I prefer shorter run campaigns in terms of real time and a standard game from 1 to 20 would take too long. I might consider an episodic D&D 5e campaign - one level per session - like I did in D&D 4e for my pulpy Eberron campaign, "Serial Hero," at some point though.

 

[Shiroiken]

I started a 3.0 game at 20th level. It was a min-campaign, playing through some Master Level adventures (BECMI). We did it to see how well the system would work under such high levels, and found it... wanting...

I thought about doing the same thing for 5E, but since we'd playtested it from the beginning, we wanted to have the "full" experience (we DID start at Level 3, and will probably always start at level 3 unless we want to be apprentices). Interestingly, we may go many sessions without gaining a level (a dozen sessions or so to gain 3 levels), and no one seems to care. It's become much more about the actual adventure than the "tech" that you get by leveling

 

[Dausuul]

In my experience: Next to none. In 27 years of gaming, I've seen exactly one game that hit the level 20 mark, and that one started at level 18. Most of the campaigns I've played in topped out somewhere around 9-12.

WotC has done surveys showing that this experience is fairly typical, so I think it's safe to say that debating 20th-level builds is a theoretical exercise for almost everyone who does it. Which is fine, but it does get annoying when people start using those builds as benchmarks to judge the relative power levels of classes (and then proceed to argue that X needs to be powered-down because look what you can do with it at level 20).