D&D General Mike Mearls says control spells are ruining 5th Edition

[Minigiant]

4e is level 3-10 stretched out only if you are going by numbers.

By effects, it's D&D levels 3-45. Except a lot of it is "gold based". In 4e, gold is power because gold fuels rituals. The more gold you had, the more you can punch reality.

Thats why the combat numbers didn't grow too much barring to hit and Defenses. You can't spend gold during combat normally.

4e actually made dungeoneering make sense. You delved to get the gold to beat your foes with. The BBEG was just a evil guy too rich for your poor behind to kill yet.

 

[Zardnaar]

4e is level 3-10 stretched out only if you are going by numbers.

By effects, it's D&D levels 3-45. Except a lot of it is "gold based". In 4e, gold is power because gold fuels rituals. The more gold you had, the more you can punch reality.

Thats why the combat numbers didn't grow too much barring to hit and Defenses. You can't spend gold during combat normally.

4e actually made dungeoneering make sense. You delved to get the gold to beat your foes with. The BBEG was just a evil guy too rich for your poor behind to kill yet.

Red Ferrari with 19 painted on side. Red Toyota with 19 painted on the side.

Theyre both cars, Red and have a 19 on the side. Not exactly the same comparison.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4E wasn't really high level play. It was level 3-10 stretched over 30 levels with some minor bits bolted on. May as well make a 10 level game instead.

Except that it was still high level play. That's part of the problem here. Folks reject certain things as being "not high level play" when they demonstrably are.

As pemerton said, the difference between low and high level is communicated through increasing severity, heightened stakes (it's expected that each character is going to be rolling death saves at least once per day!), access to powerful ritual spells, and adventuring through more inherently dangerous places (like the Elemental Chaos or Astral Sea). Those are real differences.

And if your barometer is set by what spellcasters can do...maybe just maybe consider that 7th level spells and above are part of the problem with D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Except that it was still high level play. That's part of the problem here. Folks reject certain things as being "not high level play" when they demonstrably are.

As pemerton said, the difference between low and high level is communicated through increasing severity, heightened stakes (it's expected that each character is going to be rolling death saves at least once per day!), access to powerful ritual spells, and adventuring through more inherently dangerous places (like the Elemental Chaos or Astral Sea). Those are real differences.

And if your barometer is set by what spellcasters can do...maybe just maybe consider that 7th level spells and above are part of the problem with D&D.

It would be an interesting exercise sometime to throw various combinations of parties (or even individual characters) of the same level but from different editions into a pit and let 'em fight it out, using a system-agnostic initiative system.

For example, and assuming initial core release characters only as accounting for all the splats and expansions just gets too cumbersome:

--- take a well-rounded party of 1st-level characters from each edition and face them off against each other in a round-robin format (my guess: the 4e characters would win against all the others and only 5e would even keep it close)
--- same but each group is 5th level (tough call, though I suspect 1e and 2e would be at a disadvantage)
--- same but each group is 12th level (my guess: the 3e characters would win overall)
--- (etc.)

All those combinations would take a crazy long time to play out, this might be a place where an AI combat simulator could help.

 

[mamba]

And if your barometer is set by what spellcasters can do...maybe just maybe consider that 7th level spells and above are part of the problem with D&D.

I agree, I kinda draw the line at 5th level spells at the latest

 

[Incenjucar]

4E epic was delightful except that it was half gap levels, so it was really 5 levels instead of 10.

 

[Zardnaar]

Except that it was still high level play. That's part of the problem here. Folks reject certain things as being "not high level play" when they demonstrably are.

As pemerton said, the difference between low and high level is communicated through increasing severity, heightened stakes (it's expected that each character is going to be rolling death saves at least once per day!), access to powerful ritual spells, and adventuring through more inherently dangerous places (like the Elemental Chaos or Astral Sea). Those are real differences.

And if your barometer is set by what spellcasters can do...maybe just maybe consider that 7th level spells and above are part of the problem with D&D.

It doesn't compare well to other editions either.

You can do that approach sure. You could also do E6 or make a 10 level game.

 

[Maxperson]

Or maybe some thing in the setting just aren't meant to be defeated, or even fought for that matter.

Deities*, for example, shouldn't be defeatable by anyone who isn't also a deity. And if you want the PCs to become deities two things need to happen: the game needs clear guidance for how ascension from mortality to divinity is supposed to work, and an entirely separate system needs to be released for deity-level play.

* - and deity-grade creatures e.g. Orcus, Tiamat, the major Devils, etc.

Or you have the MacGuffin to do it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It doesn't compare well to other editions either.

You can do that approach sure. You could also do E6 or make a 10 level game.

Not really sure why it doesn't compare.

And sure, there are multiple approaches, one of which is to slash levels or the like. But there is no inherent virtue to only having 6 levels, or 10 levels, or what-have-you, rather than 20 (or 30 or whatever).

I do, personally, think it would be productive to consider publishing books in 10-level brackets rather than doing all 20 right away. But my point was that there really isn't much daylight between Epic-tier 4e and (say) levels 16-20 in 3e or 5e...other than stuff like wish where you're rewriting reality.

Or maybe some thing in the setting just aren't meant to be defeated, or even fought for that matter.

Deities*, for example, shouldn't be defeatable by anyone who isn't also a deity. And if you want the PCs to become deities two things need to happen: the game needs clear guidance for how ascension from mortality to divinity is supposed to work, and an entirely separate system needs to be released for deity-level play.

* - and deity-grade creatures e.g. Orcus, Tiamat, the major Devils, etc.

I'm with @Maxperson on this one. An artifact, a complicated ritual, the aid of one or more deities--these are the kinds of things that can make slaying a god possible for the best of the best, but only just. It doesn't have to be becoming a god yourself. Now, that should be a campaign-finale type fight, the kind of thing where there's really nowhere else to go after that--except, as you say, to become a god yourself.

So, as a literally once-a-campaign thing, the capstone to a truly epic journey whether or not the game has "epic" levels, yes, I can see it--but it should be a hard-fought victory only barely made possible by those special things, not something idly taken up.

 

[Distracted DM]

"4e had fake high level play," "4e had high level play," I think this just depends on how you define high level play.

Obviously number-wise, yes. It went to 30. Basically epic levels... By numbers.
4e had you fighting gods. Literally it had rules for how you could permanently kill bahamut (and others). I'd call that high level play... But I can also see how people would think such an encounter-focused game was not genuine DnD high level play.
I'd disagree, but I can see the point.

Largely because I think what determines PC power in a system is the monsters they're put up against. So yeah, killing gods... That's high level stuff in DND context, by my standards.