D&D 5E (2024) Mearls has some Interesting Ideals about how to fix high level wizards.

[Yaarel]

There should be two players handbooks, one for low tiers and one for high tiers.

Low Tiers
. level zero (species, languages, skills, origin feat)
. levels 1-4
. levels 5-8

High Tiers
. levels 9-12 (Batman)
. levels 13-16 (Flash)
. levels 17-20 (Superman) (note 20 is epic)

The low tiers are how most gamers experience D&D. It tends to be frontloaded, and needs to explain and set up much of the mechanics.

The high tiers are supplemental to the low tiers. They need to stop being an afterthought and only be published when a well-working gaming system is put together. The various powers are few, but versatily useful and increasingly effective. In other words, the superhero genre.

 

[mearls]

Everything Mike said in that post of his that you quoted makes perfect sense. And it easily explains why and how a project he is designing would be made.

The only issue will of course end up being that he's going to print a game that I still personally believe has barely any market. I just don't think most people care about playing "high-level" games because that don't gain you anything substantially over what you get at lower ones. And the people who DO play those games seem perfectly capable and happy to run them using the tools they already have at their disposal and don't need ways to make it easier.

But if Mike wants to try... more power to him! Hope it works out for him!

The nice thing about this all being a side gig is that I can do what I want. I want to run high level D&D! I want a dungeon that is the abandoned domain of a god who was infected by a mind flayer tadpole! I want a fighter to suplex Thor off the top of Mount Celestia!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm pretty sure we do indeed have different playstyles (I'm very much a "don't worry about mechanics, let's tell the story and just futz with any mechanics that get in the way with that as we go"... moreso than advancing quickly being my "thing")... but my opinions on the potential audience for Mike's high-level work I don't see it being as a result of my playstyle really. It's more just observing how the game of D&D has progressed over the last several decades. Despite the game being made that allows for high-level play (Level 20 for 3E and 5E, Level 30 for 4E)... most tables don't seem to embrace it and have never seemed to embrace it. And that is evident based on all the efforts (or lack thereof) people and companies have made to make high-level play a thing.

People use the phrase 'chicken and the egg scenario' to describe the situation (people don't play high-level games because companies do not make product for it, and companies don't make product for it because no one plays it)... but that phrase is really just describing the reality. And we can tell just based upon how few high-level products get made. Because if any company actually saw any of those high-level products of theirs actually sell... they'd make more, because they'd have an audience for it. But if they don't, then they aren't going to. And if more players want high-level material... then they should be buying as much of it that they can that is available... this isn't a situation where they can afford to be picky and choosey. If more people really want WotC to make more high-level adventures, they should have bought Vecna: Eve of Ruin regardless of how they might have felt about it-- just to prove to WotC there indeed is a market for books like that. But based on the fact that that book hasn't blown the doors off of sales records tells us both that not enough players actually care/want high-level material... and that those that do want it have very specific needs which this book did not serve.

And I don't think what I'm suggesting is all that odd or shocking. High-level games come about usually after quite a long amount of campaign playtime, and thus have very specific narrative directions they find themselves in. And thus high-level product have an exceedingly tight window to make their product being the one that would prove useful. And if it's not useful... then no one will buy it. Thus the circle continues.

To be honest... I do not think it is game complexity that makes people not want to run and play high-level games... it is narrative complexity. The story situations that DMs and players find themselves in after X amount of time (weeks, months, years) having played through levels 1 through 12 make the opportunity to continue their stories harder to continue because of whatever whackado areas and situations the characters now find themselves in. And those situations are so whackado and specific to what this party has done that you NEED a DM who is willing to create the further scenarios and stories that work for where that party now finds themselves in. Because the odds of some other company having created a high-level product that actually fits in to the situation the party finds themselves is so long that those companies realize it's probably a waste of their time and money to try.

This is a good point, I think there is a certain challenge in still creating scenarios for high level play that match your campaign. If you're doing an adventure path from Level 1-20 (or 30) it's possible, but if you are just making a single adventure for Level 14-16 or something like that, there is so much past history that the adventure can't account for.
Especially since it can be weird to suddenly have several high level foes appearing in the game world that were never alluded to. 18th Level Wizards or Barbarians but also Elder Dragons should be so rare that they should be somewhat "known" entities probably. But you kinda need such entities to have dangerous challenges for the PCs to deal with.
Unless it really is all deep inside the Underdark dungeons (and this is the first foray into them) or Elemental Planes or something perhaps. But the latter has problems of another kind - they lack the relatibility and relevance of stuff happening on the regular plane of existence. They might simply be too fantastic and extraordinary compared to the low level existence.

That said, I also think high level play needs better game design, too. Numbers you add to your die roll can get as high as they want, it is still the same thing in the end, but number of options per turn or level however can easily become too much.

 

[J-H]

So, here is what I see three core issues with high level play:

• Speed of Play. At high levels, character sheets become character books. The option progression that worked in the sweet spot, say up until level 8, leads to increasingly cluttered character sheets as it layers more and more stuff on to a character. At high level, characters need to focus on the key, powerful abilities that let them take on might enemies and adventure in exotic locations. The clutter needs to go.
• Appropriate Challenges. By my count, there are about 80 monsters at CR 11 and higher in the Monster Manual. That's not a lot for the entire second half of a campaign! Compounding things, the CR system assumes that characters spread their resources out over 20 or more rounds of combat per day. It fails to account for the party's ability to unload their most powerful options and win the action economy. It is very difficult to challenge a high level party with the CR system, and the lack of options puts enormous weight on DMs.
• Worldbuilding. The lack of a clear framework makes it hard to envision how a high level campaign works. From levels 1 to 10, most DMs can envision how dragons, chimeras, orcs, and giants fit into the campaign world. At low levels, you handle creatures that feel like a part of the world. You can see how they fit in. At high levels, the world building shows its cracks. Is a high level dungeon just a hole in the ground with tougher monsters and bigger treasure? Are high level fighters just warriors who swing their swords more often? I think that undermines the feeling of high level play as an epic tier of power. I want high level play to embrace the heroic.

Speed of Play: Aside from spells, there really aren't that many high level class features that get more complex for most classes. Rogue gets better defenses and more dice, cleric gets better divine strike & divine intervention, wizard/sorc get maybe 1 subclass feature after 10, Fighters get more of the same, barbarians get harder to kill.
I'm not seeing it outside of a few spells.
Monsters: "We can't do high level combat because we didn't put enough high level monsters in the monster manual we wrote." That's pretty easy to fix.
High level worldbuilding: One chapter in the DMG? Publish some actual high level adventures to show the way? I have a couple on the DM's Guild for level 14-15, a campaign for 13-20, and I'm playtesting something for level 20 (Forbiddance, oddly enough, has caused me the most headaches), and there are plenty of others.

I don't see anything that causes a system re-write... just some failures to follow through by WOTC that never got rectified.

 

[Stalker0]

Then original 5e released with an almost non functional ranger which needed several years to fix and with really not well working encounter building math. And overall reintroducing soo many problems which 4e did solve before.

We can nitpick OG 5e but the edition has been wildly successful. So it’s hard to look at that with the same lens of failure you are applying to other products.

 

[Zardnaar]

We can nitpick OG 5e but the edition has been wildly successful. So it’s hard to look at that with the same lens of failure you are applying to other products.

Beastmaster ranger was a dude. Saw sone nasty hunter rangers with sharpshooter.

Relative to what they were fighting 5E ranger was a better striker in terms of foe being dead.

Beastmaster was crap though. Pet classes need to go bye bye imho. They're generally OP or crap.

 

[mamba]

There should be two players handbooks, one for low tiers and one for high tiers.

Low Tiers
. level zero (species, languages, skills, origin feat)
. levels 1-4
. levels 5-8

High Tiers
. levels 9-12 (Batman)
. levels 13-16 (Flash)
. levels 17-20 (Superman) (note 20 is epic)

I am not sure if that is exactly where I would have the cut-off point, but I am fine with there being two books, makes it easier to ignore the higher one

 

[DEFCON 1]

The nice thing about this all being a side gig is that I can do what I want. I want to run high level D&D! I want a dungeon that is the abandoned domain of a god who was infected by a mind flayer tadpole! I want a fighter to suplex Thor off the top of Mount Celestia!

Absolutely! And if you are happy with whatever you produce and whomever and however many folks pick it up, then that's all anyone can ask.

Oh, but by the way... I think taking Thor down off of Mt Celestial would more technically be called a superplex, not your run-of-the-mill 'suplex'.