D&D 5E No One Plays High Level?

[SteveC]

I've been a Pathfinder guy for awhile. For about a decade we ran numerous APs. It took us about 2 years to complete one playing twice a month for about 4-6 hours a session. So, yeah, you do need time investment and a stable group to boot. Paizo provides a good amount of high level adventure material too. Not sure how WotC compares?

That's a good point. I've been following all of the APs for Pathfinder 2 and it seems that Paizo has sort of followed in the lower level area. Most of their APs have been 1-10, to the point where people have commented on it. I haven't played PF2 at high levels yet, but I have listened to enough actual play podcasts to see that it does work reasonably well there, better I'd say than PF1.

It will be a couple of years before I am able to comment on that for myself.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Sorry. I didn't realize we were just talking about one of those tiny desk cannons that's really just an oddly shaped gun. I thought we were talking about an actual cannon like you'd see on a pirate ship which isn't going to be loaded in 1 round, let alone 3 actions. And would also take multiple rounds to aim. Firing is pretty quick, though.

Naval cannon fire is often limited by the sea. You have to time the shot so that wave action doesn't send your shots into the ocean or over the enemy decks.

Per the Vicksburg National Military Park website, a civil war crew could fire their 12 pounder 3-4 times a minute. That's faster than load-aim-fire. But that's the 1860s. (Firing the 12-pdr Napoleon - Vicksburg National Military Park (U.S. National Park Service))

Going back 50+ years, Napoleon's field cannons got 2-3 shots per minute on average. Smaller guns fire faster, larger ones slower. That means a fresh, practiced crew on a light field piece could get shots off in 3 rounds. Load, aim, fire.

The 9lb cannons could get 3 aimed shots every two minutes while the largest 12 pound cannons got 1 aimed shot per minute.

Aiming a cannon that weighs a couple hundred pounds at specific target (like the enemy's cannons a half mile away) took time. When firing without needing to aim (i.e. firing at a massed enemy at a range you have already identified, using cannister, etc), that rate of fire could be doubled or even tripled for short periods.

 

[pogre]

Level 1 passes quickly in our games too (thank god) but we tend to sit at Levels 2-4 for quite some time. Level 4 in particular seems to take forever but maybe that is partially because it is right before the game gets interesting for me. I would say on average we hit Level 5 after a dozen sessions of play. That's 12 sessions of me not liking it much.

That's understandable we go a lot faster than that. We also play weekly, which helps. My players really enjoy combat and our combats go pretty quickly, A dungeon adventure can rack up a lot of XP in a hurry!

We just wrapped up another campaign. Most of the party hit 19th or 20th level by the end.

We're starting a new campaign next week, but switching systems. My players are pretty much murder-hobos when we play D&D, but play much differently when we play other systems - looking forward to more roleplay and social interactions. Not blaming the D&D rules - that's just how it goes at my table.

 

[Maxperson]

Naval cannon fire is often limited by the sea. You have to time the shot so that wave action doesn't send your shots into the ocean or over the enemy decks.

Per the Vicksburg National Military Park website, a civil war crew could fire their 12 pounder 3-4 times a minute. That's faster than load-aim-fire. But that's the 1860s. (Firing the 12-pdr Napoleon - Vicksburg National Military Park (U.S. National Park Service))

Yes. I already said that unaimed was faster. It's also............unaimed and isn't going to be hitting a small party of heroes. Cannons are pretty much useless against PCs.

Going back 50+ years, Napoleon's field cannons got 2-3 shots per minute on average. Smaller guns fire faster, larger ones slower. That means a fresh, practiced crew on a light field piece could get shots off in 3 rounds. Load, aim, fire.

The 9lb cannons could get 3 aimed shots every two minutes while the largest 12 pound cannons got 1 aimed shot per minute.

A 9 pound cannon is basically just a big gun. So sure.

The BBEG might as well just swing a big sword.

 

[Ogre Mage]

That's understandable we go a lot faster than that. We also play weekly, which helps. My players really enjoy combat and our combats go pretty quickly, A dungeon adventure can rack up a lot of XP in a hurry!

We just wrapped up another campaign. Most of the party hit 19th or 20th level by the end.

We're starting a new campaign next week, but switching systems. My players are pretty much murder-hobos when we play D&D, but play much differently when we play other systems - looking forward to more roleplay and social interactions. Not blaming the D&D rules - that's just how it goes at my table.

That's impressive. I started with 5E in 2015 after sitting out 4E. I have never played in an ongoing 5E campaign that reached 19th-20th level. The closest we ever came was a campaign which started at 3rd level and ran to 15th. Then the DM jumped us to 17th level for a final story arc which ended the campaign. But I don't feel that I'm missing out -- I haven't been enthused with the few experiences I've had playing characters in Tier 4.

The murder hobo thing is interesting. I've seen a variety of approaches throughout my time playing 5E. Interestingly, the campaign where the PCs were the most powerful due to being semi-gestalt characters was the one where we were the least aggressive and most likely to take a diplomacy approach first. We had the power to roll over the opposition but we just wouldn't. NPCs who tried to take advantage of this seeming "weakness" learned the hard way.

 

[kigmatzomat]

A 9 pound cannon is basically just a big gun. So sure.
The BBEG might as well just swing a big sword.

......i dont think you know what those terms mean. A 9 pound cannon fires a 4" diameter iron ball weighing 9lbs with a range of 2,400 ft. Or a similar weight of cannister up to 1600ft. (Though french pounds were slightly heavier than modern imperial units so the officially designation was 8 pounders)

The actual cannon would weigh around 2400lbs, not including the carraige. The gun weight depended on materials and manufacturing technique.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A turn taking a while because your Ranger has to roll 2-8 attacks
And
A turn taking a while because your Wizard has to choose between 6-10 spells, reread their rules, then roll them

are two different things.

For one, the first can be automated.
Two, the second typical requires more system mastery
Three, the second typically requires more knowledge of exception based design elements.

Given a dice roller or having a quicker grasp of math, the warrior, striker, and defender characters in 3e, 4e, and 5e games regularly have the quickest turns and fastest decision making.

Indeed.

And with the way tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc. have infiltrated daily life? It's a bit silly to say that games shouldn't be considering how technology should be factored into how the game is played.

 

[kigmatzomat]

A turn taking a while because your Ranger has to roll 2-8 attacks
And
A turn taking a while because your Wizard has to choose between 6-10 spells, reread their rules, then roll them

are two different things.

For one, the first can be automated.
Two, the second typical requires more system mastery
Three, the second typically requires more knowledge of exception based design elements.

Given a dice roller or having a quicker grasp of math, the warrior, striker, and defender characters in 3e, 4e, and 5e games regularly have the quickest turns and fastest decision making.

Dice rollers don't assist casters a lot (though adding up 12d6 can take a while), a digital character sheet makes a huge impact. No flipping through books or notecards. A player can see the basics (like ranges, casting time and AoE) of what they know/have prepared in one simple list. A click gives the nuanced rules and what upcasting does. Spells at levels where all slots are consumed get greyed out so they don't distract.

Heck, many includes spells from wands and other items so a player doesn't have to search through inventory.

And GM style is a factor to player decision time. IME, one of the biggest impediments to casters are GMs who use "group initiative" for NPCs. If the caster has the misfortune to go after the monsters, all planning is moot. In one turn the entire battle landscape changes. Range, clustering, which allies are adjacent to which enemies, etc. More granular initiative lets the caster think through changes instead of being pole-axed.

 

[Maxperson]

......i dont think you know what those terms mean. A 9 pound cannon fires a 4" diameter iron ball weighing 9lbs with a range of 2,400 ft. Or a similar weight of cannister up to 1600ft. (Though french pounds were slightly heavier than modern imperial units so the officially designation was 8 pounders)

The actual cannon would weigh around 2400lbs, not including the carraige. The gun weight depended on materials and manufacturing technique.

Fair enough. I just looked them up and it says that the 12 pounder was a 1 per minute rate of fire and the 8 pounder was 2 per minute. The 4 pounder shows 2-3 per minute. None of which are fast enough to take out a group of mid to high level PCs.

 

[Quickleaf]

That's understandable we go a lot faster than that. We also play weekly, which helps. My players really enjoy combat and our combats go pretty quickly, A dungeon adventure can rack up a lot of XP in a hurry!

We just wrapped up another campaign. Most of the party hit 19th or 20th level by the end.

We're starting a new campaign next week, but switching systems. My players are pretty much murder-hobos when we play D&D, but play much differently when we play other systems - looking forward to more roleplay and social interactions. Not blaming the D&D rules - that's just how it goes at my table.

Pogre, did you talk anywhere (another post I missed maybe) about the high level campaign you just wrapped up? If not, uh, can I pick your brain apart right here?