D&D 5E (2014) No One Plays High Level?

[Shardstone]

Yeah... we're not allowed that.

Can I interest you in the same wolves from level 2 instead?

Are they at least dire wolves?

 

[Shardstone]

We'll just have to disagree on that. no magic means no short rests. you get hurt your hurt till you heal.

Well if you're bringing out variant rules, I might as well just bust open Aces & Eights because that'd make a lot more sense for a Western!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Are they at least dire wolves?

No.

Cool wolves would be too literature.

 

[nevin]

Man that's all whatever. I can pick up Theros and have all the PCs be a bunch of demigods RAW, or even just make up custom backgrounds and use the Lineage feature to do the same thing. The point is, when I personally imagine high level, that is what I imagine. I don't really care that you can't imagine that, because I don't think you'll ever run a game for me. But for me, when things are getting high level, I'm imagining me and my pals fighting 10 pit fiends riding ancient dragons and afterwards slapping the naughty word out of Evil God.

no I can imagine it but D&D is never going to match up to anyone's favorite literature unless it was written as a D&D book was my only point

But once you pass 15 for sure you should be dealing with stuff like that.

 

[Reynard]

Using high level abilities.

When PCs advance to the higher level they gat access to abilities, often magic, that trivialize many things. As discussed above, many DMs tend to try to negate or limit these capabilities in order to run a games that are like lower level games. When the DM does this, they often prevent the higher level PC fromn using their powerful abilities by saying that they just don't work, or someone has some countering magic, or some other folley. Rather than celebrate what makes a high level PC different, they attempt to make the high level PC fit into the cookie mold of a lower level PC. Absolutely not. One result is not indicative of all results - and that is exactly the mentality I counsel against for enjoyable high level play.

None of that has anything to do with what I said. How do you think they got to the demiplane? How do you think they are going to investigate deicide?

 

[Shardstone]

no I can imagine it but D&D is never going to match up to anyone's favorite literature unless it was written as a D&D book was my only point

But once you pass 15 for sure you should be dealing with stuff like that.

What are you talking about? When I run high level games, it matches up to this kind of stuff. I mean, yeah, we're not writing the Silmarillion, but the epic feel that comes with doing absolutely insane things is doable. But I'm also a big experimenter so I come up with...interesting monsters and other challenges that don't often rely on the Monster Manual.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Man that's all whatever. I can pick up Theros and have all the PCs be a bunch of demigods RAW, or even just make up custom backgrounds and use the Lineage feature to do the same thing. The point is, when I personally imagine high level, that is what I imagine. I don't really care that you can't imagine that, because I don't think you'll ever run a game for me. But for me, when things are getting high level, I'm imagining me and my pals fighting 10 pit fiends riding ancient dragons and afterwards slapping the naughty word out of Evil God.

That's awesome, and I'm glad it works for you. I have a very hard time relating to high level characters with that much personal power outside of the superhero genre (which isn't D&D to me), so I don't much enjoy that kind of play.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The only edition that I legit played every level in was 4e, where I did TWO campaigns that went 1-30.

4e was very good for high-level play on the PCs side, for the most part. Monster design was easy to tweak and it NEEDED it. Most fights would have been a pretty boring grind, IMO, if we'd played them "By the Book", but by the higher levels, I'd long-since started redesigning Monsters, by severely upping their Damage and lowering their HP. The fights I ran at high level were EPIC (no pun intended).

So I guess, even though I came here to say that 4e was good at high level, I modded it too much to say if that could have been remotely universally true.

 

[MichaelSomething]

How about no one buys high level material??

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

For those with experience in the following games, how would you rate or summarize high level play in each?

D&D 3.0
D&D 3.5
Pathfinder 1E
D&D 4E
D&D 5E
Pathfinder 2E
LevelUp A5E

I have only ever played a level 1 Pathfinder one-shot at a convention. Never played Pathfinder again. I enjoyed D&D just fine.

I have played in lots of games, but will touch on only the High level stuff.

3.5 - Natural progression Level 20 Eberron game was lots of fun. The one problem later in the game was the power-gamer/deep-roleplayer in the group. He played a Warlock, but got tired of it and respec'd into Psion (I later found out he discovered some busted RAW psion combos he wanted to powergame at high level). It was frustrating for both him and myself.

3.5 - Played in a 30th level adventure campaign (create our characters at L30) using the 3.0 Epic Level Handbook. The DM was the aforementioned power-gamer of our group and no one else wanted to run Epic, so he volunteered. He wanted us to make Epic spells and magic items because he wanted to do that for his bad guys like they were his characters. It was him showing off his awesome builds. Absolutely terrible experience and after several sessions, people bailed.

4E - I DM'd an FR campaign to level 30, embedding people's Epic Destinies. The story was wonderful (people cried at the end), but some of the Epic combats took three 3-hour evening sessions to get through. I was ready for a change after the hyper-inflated numbers of 4E.

5E - I DM'd two side-by-side campaigns for a homebrew world to level 20, and the heroes from both tables saved the world. 5E has consistently provided my favorite mechanical high-level experiences ever. One group almost killed Asmodeus, but it ended up a draw. They still technically won and most of them became Gods for the new world.

5E - I DM'd the next generation of heroes for that the last 5E campaign, where the campaign goes multiversal. Got to level 18 before we got to a natural long downtime, and another player wanted to run something (that is what we are playing now, and we're level 9, and he chose our shared campaign setting for this game). The characters are still alive and we may return to them for an Epic romp to wrap up some Epic Destinies.