D&D 5E Levels of play

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[*]What levels would you consider the classes to be most balanced at?

20th - since the classes aren't designed to be balanced at any particular point (some are front-loaded, others wait for their best features), but are intended to be balanced overall, 20th is the only level I actually expect should feel anything near as balanced as most folk that prize balance would consider balanced.

[*]What levels do you usually think are boring to play?

Levels are only as boring as the collective you make them.

[*]At what levels does your campaign usually end while you start over?

The end of my campaigns isn't even coincidentally tied to the level of the characters within them in 5th edition - which is a distinct difference from the two most recent prior editions of D&D.

 

[mellored]

I read somewhere that 4e players shifted towards pathfinder and other games and now with them coming back to feel the "classic feel"

• What levels would you consider the classes to be most balanced at?
• What levels do you usually think are boring to play?
• At what levels does your campaign usually end while you start over?
  
  Thanks

I would say the overall feel...
1-4: Average Joe
5-10: Mortal Hero (batman)
11-16: Super Hero (x-men)
17-20: Godly (Superman, Dragonball Z)


1: I would say 5-16.
Early class features (1-3) aren't consistent in power, and some feats at 4 change make a huge difference for some classes, but everything levels out by 5.
At 17, you get some game breaking things (level 9 spells, quivering palm), that just let's you go wild.

That said, it's not bad to have a few newbie levels and a few crazy levels.

2: Anything past 17. It's fun for a few sessions, to get the crazy powers, but then it fades quickly.

3: I think we average 3-13.

 

[Tony Vargas]

20th - since the classes aren't designed to be balanced at any particular point (some are front-loaded, others wait for their best features), but are intended to be balanced overall, 20th is the only level I actually expect should feel anything near as balanced as most folk that prize balance would consider balanced.

In the old-school sense of balance-over-time, sure. You look back on the campaign from the final adventure, and you see that the magic-user's early struggles 'balanced' his later god-like power, and the fighter's kick-ass low/mid level makes up for his status as fungible magic-item-platform ever since. That sort of thing.

The end of my campaigns isn't even coincidentally tied to the level of the characters within them in 5th edition - which is a distinct difference from the two most recent prior editions of D&D.

What is it tied to, then? Predetermined story arc?

Random thought from the thread... It occurs to me that perhaps the balance, challenge, or fun of playing at any particular level has very little to do with people ending a campaign and starting a new one. Instead, I wouldn't be surprised if the major motivation was simply being, essentially, bored with their current characters/campaign, and wanting to try something new. "Campaign fatigue" as I've heard it.

The former tends to lead to the latter. If the game becomes stilted, too easy, or otherwise less playable, the players may very well get bored with it. Perhaps the cumulative nature of leveling can also add to characters becoming 'boring,' every level or few you get something new/interesting, but relative to what came before, the new is a smaller & smaller part of the character? If leveling changed as a well as added to what the character could do, that boredom-factor could be reduced.

If that is actually a major contributing factor, that it's only due to the fact that most games start at 1st level that they aren't generally going all the way to 20th level. Start at 10th level, and see if most campaigns make it to 20th level.

Since 3.0, there have been fairly straightforward guidelines to start a campaign above 1st level. 5e's lack of wealth/level or magic-item dependence makes it particularly suitable for that sort of thing, so we can expect that groups wanting higher level play will have tried it in 5e.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

In the old-school sense of balance-over-time, sure. You look back on the campaign from the final adventure, and you see that the magic-user's early struggles 'balanced' his later god-like power, and the fighter's kick-ass low/mid level makes up for his status as fungible magic-item-platform ever since. That sort of thing.

Right, except that the gulf between both is much narrower at any given point even though a fighter gets their kick-ass at level 3 and a magic-user doesn't really match that until around 9th level, and never really exceeds it by much since all of the "god-like power" spell levels are only once or twice a day rather than the old-school 6-9 times.

What is it tied to, then? Predetermined story arc?

Story arc, yes. Predetermined, not usually. When I run a campaign based on published materials, there is usually a clear end that is predetermined (i.e. once you stop Lolth from landing her spider-ship and doing bad stuff to the world, or fail in a likely lethal way, roll credits because this show is over - even if a later sequel happens to be made). However, it is not that often that I run a campaign based on published materials, and when I am not doing that, nothing at all is predetermined for any value of pre- that is greater than "I thought this up on the fly at the table in response to what the players were having their characters do."

Even a complete improvised story has its end though - like that feeling a player occasionally gets where they feel like they've done what they wanted with a character and it is time to move on, but on a campaign-wide scope. A collective "That feels like a good place to end this." Then we file the characters away, and sometimes bring them back out later (sometimes years later) because I've thought of some interesting continuation of the tale (often at the request of players that miss their old characters and would simply like to play them again, even if they have to start over at level 1).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Right, except that the gulf between both is much narrower at any given point.

It's a little muted by comparison, but the same basic idea & feel, which was always a major goal of 5e, anyway, classic feel.

Story arc, yes. Predetermined, not usually.
Even a complete improvised story has its end though - like that feeling a player occasionally gets where they feel like they've done what they wanted with a character and it is time to move on, but on a campaign-wide scope. A collective "That feels like a good place to end this."

OK, but that gets back to all kinds of things might contribute to that 'feeling' - including how well the game is holding up at that level.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

OK, but that gets back to all kinds of things might contribute to that 'feeling' - including how well the game is holding up at that level.

True... except for that 5th edition reads as though it holds up all the way through (and plays as holding up as far through as I've run thus far without any indicators of failing to hold up any time soon).

I've got players telling me how excited they are at the prospect of actually reaching 14th level (one higher than they've managed in the two most recent prior editions and Pathfinder), rather than them telling me things are starting to feel wonky (as they have done a few levels before this point in the two most recent prior editions and Pathfinder).

 

[Tony Vargas]

True... except for that 5th edition reads as though it holds up all the way through

Not remotely, IMHO. Not that I'd ever trust just that, even if I ever did have that reaction to an edition of D&D. ;P

(and plays as holding up as far through as I've run thus far without any indicators of failing to hold up any time soon).

IMX, it starts coming together quickly after 1st. 5th seems high for the start of the 'sweet spot,' I'd consider 3rd.

I've got players telling me how excited they are at the prospect of actually reaching 14th level , rather than them telling me things are starting to feel wonky (as they have done a few levels before this point in the two most recent prior editions and Pathfinder).

In 3rd/3.5 I would start players at 5th so their characters wouldn't die from a single critical hit delivered by an orc, and the mechanics of the game would collapse around 12th level - but my preference, to be honest, was to play other games instead.

In 4th, I'd have to say my preferred level range would have to be 1st-7th because those were the levels my group played through before the game not fitting our style became unignorable and soured the game for us.

I see.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The former tends to lead to the latter. If the game becomes stilted, too easy, or otherwise less playable, the players may very well get bored with it. Perhaps the cumulative nature of leveling can also add to characters becoming 'boring,' every level or few you get something new/interesting, but relative to what came before, the new is a smaller & smaller part of the character? If leveling changed as a well as added to what the character could do, that boredom-factor could be reduced.

It definitely can. I think it is only one possibility, though. Others include exploring a character concept sufficiently that you are just done with it. For me this tends to happen when the part of myself I am exploring through the character is pretty much explored for the time being, and I'm ready to move on to something else. I don't think I've ever gotten bored with the actual mechanical rewards in a game I've played. For other people, they just might not have a sufficiently long interest span to continue with a campaign no matter what. Those are edition/game neutral observations, as I haven't really been a player in 5e--just DMed it ever since the playtest.

Since 3.0, there have been fairly straightforward guidelines to start a campaign above 1st level. 5e's lack of wealth/level or magic-item dependence makes it particularly suitable for that sort of thing, so we can expect that groups wanting higher level play will have tried it in 5e.

We can hope, but I wouldn't expect. A lot of people seem to assume that you just need to start at 1st level. My groups have tended to start any game we play (again, regardless of system) at whichever power level makes sense for what we are going for with the game, but that's probably the exception rather than the rule.

 

[ccs]

I read somewhere that 4e players shifted towards pathfinder and other games and now with them coming back to feel the "classic feel"

No, 4e players pretty much stuck with 4e. It was the rest of us who left for greener pastures. There's a difference.
Though a lot of us DID give it a shot.

[*]What levels would you consider the classes to be most balanced at?

Lv1? Lv20? I don't know. We all start off & end relatively the same. In-between it'll bounce around. But it doesn't really matter to me. If it did I'd be playing 4e. (my order of preference rules wise is: 1e, 5e, PF/3x, 2e, BECMI)

[*]What levels do you usually think are boring to play?

Whenever we reach a lv that's just beyond where the campaign should have ended. Every campaign has that point. But it varies wildly & it's more of a "feeling" than anything mechanical.

[*]At what levels does your campaign usually end while you start over?

Somewhere about 12th. Reasons vary.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It definitely can. I think it is only one possibility, though. Others include exploring a character concept sufficiently that you are just done with it. For other people, they just might not have a sufficiently long interest span to continue with a campaign no matter what.

And there are completely exogenous ones, like interpersonal conflicts, the DM taking a job in another state, players getting married to non-gamers, all sorts of things. But those don't make the game end at a given level, they just make it end. In most eds of D&D, games tend not to go high into double-digits, that seems to be a given. Yet, there have been some very different rates of advancement, the possibility of starting at higher levels, and different editions have stayed in print for different lengths of time. Classic D&D had very slow progression beyond name level, so even if those eds had very long runs, you might not have every gotten to some crazy-high level like 20+. But 3e didn't have as dramatic a high-level slow down, and you could start beyond first. People did play it to high level, even Epic. But most campaigns still ended by 10th or so - and a very popular way to play became E6. 5e has faster advancement than ever, and we're seeing 5-9 as the preferred level range.

Those are edition/game neutral observations, as I haven't really been a player in 5e--just DMed it ever since the playtest.

We're in basically the same boat, then.

We can hope, but I wouldn't expect. A lot of people seem to assume that you just need to start at 1st level.

It's a natural assumption, especially the first time you play (which is unfortunate, since the game has real issues at 1st level - I just hope most genuinely-new players are wise enough to try the game with an experienced DM).

My groups have tended to start any game we play (again, regardless of system) at whichever power level makes sense for what we are going for with the game, but that's probably the exception rather than the rule.

I'd like to think it's not a rare exception.