D&D General Level 1-20 and the gulf between aspirations and reality

[Sword of Spirit]

Back in the day the same character ventured into the caves of chaos, then into the unknown, defeated the Slave Lords, solved the mystery of the ghost tower of Inverness, released Strahd from his curse, slew the hill giant chieftain, entered the desert of desolation etc. it felt like your character had numerous different stories to tell when they finally retired at 18th level.

That's what I consider a real D&D campaign. It saddens me that most newer players have never even heard of such a thing, much less had the opportunity to give it a shot and see if they like it.

 

[Don Durito]

Or just open-ended. Indeed, why have levels at all?

I think, d20 has 20 levels, because symmetry, makes about as much sense as D&D has 20 levels because 2e had 20-level tables. That is, it's arbitrary, and doesn't really matter. (What might be said to matter, if, indeed, anything about mechanics does, is what the presented level range covers, the whole '0 to hero' thing, with the understanding that 'hero' isn't the same for every class, and that the fighter's gonna be linear and the full-casters quadratic, or else edition warring, of course.)

It would be. Much. But it wouldn't be familiar enough to the old-timers, who would therefore view it as "too complicated for new players," and tell them so, all over the internet.

13A went with that, it is more intuitive. And, it covers about the same tiers as 5e, in concept, and your character grow more by the numbers, since it's also using the more intuitive +1/1 leveling bonus, rather than 5e's 2+(level/5) or 4e's level/2.

I love the 13th Age innovation (not as fully worked through as I would have liked but workable) of partial level ups. This means you can give players some kind of micro-advance after every session (or every second session) and delay the level ups for a longer campaign. (It probably should be pointed out that while 13th Age has 10 levels, if you look at the hit dice progression compared to traditional D&D those levels cover a spread from level 3 to level 24).

The Cypher system uses a similiar kind of system for level ups as did Earthdawn.

Shadow of a Demon Lord and Dungeon Crawl Classics also both use 10 levels.

Personally I'd go with 12 as it divides a little more neatly into tiers.

 

[David Howery]

never played 5E, but it seems to be a lot more 'time compressed' than the early editions. As in, PCs will climb through the levels a lot faster. 1E/2E advancement could really be adjusted by the DM a lot, with the 'gp=xp' rule...

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

There is the option of just making 20th level characters and playing those. I've never done it. I've proposed it but my gaming buddies rejected it! Oh well.

I have run an entire Pathfinder Adventure Path from level 1 to 18. It was five years of legendary gaming, but I don't think I'll ever do it again, the high levels were just too much work. Too bad.

 

[Ogre Mage]

There is the option of just making 20th level characters and playing those. I've never done it. I've proposed it but my gaming buddies rejected it! Oh well.

My 5e group tried this. We created 20th level characters for a three-session story. To date it is the only time I have played a 20th level character. Because we did not build these characters from the ground up, it got a little confusing trying to keep track of all our abilities. Our DM did a decent job of balancing the encounters but things did get off at points. Still, I was glad we did it just to have the experience for once. Shapechanging into an Ancient Brass Dragon was fun.

 

[werecorpse]

never played 5E, but it seems to be a lot more 'time compressed' than the early editions. As in, PCs will climb through the levels a lot faster. 1E/2E advancement could really be adjusted by the DM a lot, with the 'gp=xp' rule...

It’s more time compressed than 1e/2e ime but on par with 3e (apart from the minor level acceleration at level 11). The advancement in 5e can be adjusted by the DM as well through reducing xp awards or just using milestones. I am Running 2 campaigns atm one with normal xp award and one with 1/10 to 1/5 the book xp. I think the next one I run will be somewhere in the middle, maybe 1/2 to 1/4 book xp.

 

[David Howery]

in 1E/2E, DMs were really tempted to rush the PCs through the lower levels, just to get them to survive. With the 'gp=xp' and 'magic items=xp' rules, you could do that. Once the PCs finally got up to a survivable level, you could slow advancement down too...

 

[Blue]

So why do publishers still design systems and publish campaigns with a default assumption of level 1-20? Why make the default something that only a fraction of groups will experience?

Publishers don't seem to design adventures (and adventure paths, etc.) around them, so there's no money lost on that side.

And having the system support up to heights of imagination is precious little investment but pays psychological dividends. The amount fo character build discussions I've seen talking about capstones and such shows a lot fo players headspace is there at the top and that has value. Capture their imagination.

So if it's negligent development cost for positive headspace returns, it makes perfect sense to design them that high.