Ondath
Hero
I'm honestly surprised by people's negative reaction to the XP curve. Ever since I first discovered it, I thought it was a clever piece of design. What you call "blurting out stuff", I call "giving the players the chance to actually see high levels for once".
It's not like 5e is singular in not giving proper support for high levels. For older editions, the XP requirements for level 11+ were so high that a lot of people never attained them despite years of playing. Even Gygax's own group had reached only level 14 or so after 5-7 years of playing, IIRC. And 3e and its variants had the problem of numbers going so high that you'd have Fighters having +15 BAB to add to a d20 roll. Bounded accuracy and the XP curve, both 5e's innovations, help higher level play stay more viable. Both of my 3-year campaigns were able to see Tier 4 and be playable thanks to those. And if it took both my parties 3 years to even see level 17, I really don't think the speed of level up from 11 onwards is as problematic as people make it.
That said, does 5e have problems at high level? Absolutely. No official adventure support, a small number or high level threats (even for something like Spelljammer, which to me screams high-level play), and things that break bounded accuracy and thus make high-level unplayable (expertise doubling proficiency bonus, spell save DC items introduced in Tasha's etc.). But the XP curve is not one of those problems.
It's not like 5e is singular in not giving proper support for high levels. For older editions, the XP requirements for level 11+ were so high that a lot of people never attained them despite years of playing. Even Gygax's own group had reached only level 14 or so after 5-7 years of playing, IIRC. And 3e and its variants had the problem of numbers going so high that you'd have Fighters having +15 BAB to add to a d20 roll. Bounded accuracy and the XP curve, both 5e's innovations, help higher level play stay more viable. Both of my 3-year campaigns were able to see Tier 4 and be playable thanks to those. And if it took both my parties 3 years to even see level 17, I really don't think the speed of level up from 11 onwards is as problematic as people make it.
That said, does 5e have problems at high level? Absolutely. No official adventure support, a small number or high level threats (even for something like Spelljammer, which to me screams high-level play), and things that break bounded accuracy and thus make high-level unplayable (expertise doubling proficiency bonus, spell save DC items introduced in Tasha's etc.). But the XP curve is not one of those problems.