D&D 5E No One Plays High Level?

[Mort]

Charged items IMO were better when they had actual limited charges and just stopped working when they ran out. If you really wanted a way to recharge them, make it an expensive, lengthy, and/or hard to research ritual.

In fact, the ritual option would be a great way to deal with high level magic in general, which would also allow you to cap level advancement (insofar as personal power goes) at a lower, somewhat more manageable and relatable level. Continued advancement after that point could move into something like the domain game.

Guys! I've fixed D&D!

Gating the TRULY powerful spells as being rituals is something I'm definitely a fan of.

You can then make casting the spell a big adventure itself, the correct components, the correct situation, etc.

 

[jgsugden]

Let's go over this one more time.

People. Play. High. Level. Successfully. And. Enjoy. It.

I do it. A lot of other players have told their stories. It is undeniable that it takes place.

So - why do so many games fail and end at 10th to 13th level? Because people have not learned how to play high level games. They try to run them like low level games - and they are very different beasts. If you try to run a murder mystery at high level it will fail. If you try to design a dungeon with the expectation the PCs will slog through it you will fail. The PCs have abilities that trivialize these challenges, usually, at higher level. As such, you should not try to put these challenges before the PCs and expect them to struggle.

Instead, you want to celebrate the ability of the PCs to dominate these challenges. High five the party that teleports past the dungeon. Have the NPCs be amazed that the powerful divinations solved the murder mystery. The PCs have risen up the highest levels of power and should feel like it.

So what do you throw at the PCs at higher levels? More open challenges for one.

The PCs may need to contend with an army on the march. What will the PCs do about that? Are they going to single handedly try to take on 5,000 troops? Will they try to convince thre enemy leaders not to march? What else might they do? Don't come at them with problems with a single answer - come at them with large problems that they can be creative in solving and praise them for coming up with solutions.

Look at Matt Mercer's high level games in Critical Role for inspiration. What did he expect Vox Machina to do against The Whispered One. Answer: they had a lot of options. What did he expect the Mighty Nein to do againsy Uk'otoa and heavily armed Archmages? They had to come up with solutions to the problems. It wasn't a "walk this path" situation ... it was a "here is a problem, figure it out" situation.

If you don't enjoy high level games - watch successful ones and ask why the DM made the decisions they did - and what the PCs could have done differently (and how that might have changed everything).

 

[Reynard]

Let's go over this one more time.

People. Play. High. Level. Successfully. And. Enjoy. It.

I do it. A lot of other players have told their stories. It is undeniable that it takes place.

So - why do so many games fail and end at 10th to 13th level? Because people have not learned how to play high level games. They try to run them like low level games - and they are very different beasts. If you try to run a murder mystery at high level it will fail. If you try to design a dungeon with the expectation the PCs will slog through it you will fail. The PCs have abilities that trivialize these challenges, usually, at higher level. As such, you should not try to put these challenges before the PCs and expect them to struggle.

Instead, you want to celebrate the ability of the PCs to dominate these challenges. High five the party that teleports past the dungeon. Have the NPCs be amazed that the powerful divinations solved the murder mystery. The PCs have risen up the highest levels of power and should feel like it.

So what do you throw at the PCs at higher levels? More open challenges for one.

The PCs may need to contend with an army on the march. What will the PCs do about that? Are they going to single handedly try to take on 5,000 troops? Will they try to convince thre enemy leaders not to march? What else might they do? Don't come at them with problems with a single answer - come at them with large problems that they can be creative in solving and praise them for coming up with solutions.

Look at Matt Mercer's high level games in Critical Role for inspiration. What did he expect Vox Machina to do against The Whispered One. Answer: they had a lot of options. What did he expect the Mighty Nein to do againsy Uk'otoa and heavily armed Archmages? They had to come up with solutions to the problems. It wasn't a "walk this path" situation ... it was a "here is a problem, figure it out" situation.

If you don't enjoy high level games - watch successful ones and ask why the DM made the decisions they did - and what the PCs could have done differently (and how that might have changed everything).

I don't think any type of adventure is off the table because the PCs are high level. You just have to account for the PCs' abilities. More specifically, you have to account for YOUR PCs' abilities. This is why publishing high level adventures is hard.

High level murder mystery: Who Killed The God of Death? Investigating the murder of a deity is not going to be trivialized by some high level spells.

High level dungeon crawl: Demiplane of the Archartificer. You can't teleport past the dungeon if it is the entire plane, and teleporting to the end doesn't do you any good if there are 13 levers that have to pulled throughout it to resolve the reason they are there.

It doesn't have to stop being D&D just because they are high level.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Let's go over this one more time.

People. Play. High. Level. Successfully. And. Enjoy. It.

I do it. A lot of other players have told their stories. It is undeniable that it takes place.

So - why do so many games fail and end at 10th to 13th level? Because people have not learned how to play high level games. They try to run them like low level games - and they are very different beasts. If you try to run a murder mystery at high level it will fail. If you try to design a dungeon with the expectation the PCs will slog through it you will fail. The PCs have abilities that trivialize these challenges, usually, at higher level. As such, you should not try to put these challenges before the PCs and expect them to struggle.

Instead, you want to celebrate the ability of the PCs to dominate these challenges. High five the party that teleports past the dungeon. Have the NPCs be amazed that the powerful divinations solved the murder mystery. The PCs have risen up the highest levels of power and should feel like it.

So what do you throw at the PCs at higher levels? More open challenges for one.

The PCs may need to contend with an army on the march. What will the PCs do about that? Are they going to single handedly try to take on 5,000 troops? Will they try to convince thre enemy leaders not to march? What else might they do? Don't come at them with problems with a single answer - come at them with large problems that they can be creative in solving and praise them for coming up with solutions.

Look at Matt Mercer's high level games in Critical Role for inspiration. What did he expect Vox Machina to do against The Whispered One. Answer: they had a lot of options. What did he expect the Mighty Nein to do againsy Uk'otoa and heavily armed Archmages? They had to come up with solutions to the problems. It wasn't a "walk this path" situation ... it was a "here is a problem, figure it out" situation.

If you don't enjoy high level games - watch successful ones and ask why the DM made the decisions they did - and what the PCs could have done differently (and how that might have changed everything).

To be fair, Mercer's high level games still tend to end with a big but otherwise pretty standard 5e combat.

 

[Mort]

To be fair, Mercer's high level games still tend to end with a big but otherwise pretty standard 5e combat.

I remember the Vecna fight being pretty epic, with quite a few elements that would have been unlikely in lower level play. Once you have a big bad slinging 9th level spells - that's hopefully not something seen in a standard 5e combat!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I remember the Vecna fight being pretty epic, with quite a few elements that would have been unlikely in lower level play. Once you have a big bad slinging 9th level spells - that's hopefully not something seen in a standard 5e combat!

My point is that the game didn't really change much. In a lot of ways Vox Machina was doing the same sorts of stuff as they were at lower levels, just bigger and with higher numbers.

 

[Oofta]

My point is that the game didn't really change much. In a lot of ways Vox Machina was doing the same sorts of stuff as they were at lower levels, just bigger and with higher numbers.

Which honestly is my experience with high level play as well. If you can teleport across the world that's great, but it just means the McGuffin is halfway across the world not just down the block.

 

[Quickleaf]

A big part of the paucity of high level play is the lack of high level content. But a large part of the lack of high level content is the fact that it's very easy for a high level party to set a very personalized agenda. For instance, instead of going out to save some town from a monster, the high level party might set out to change the town's government, use plant growth to end famines, use widespread lesser restorations to end disease, and try to create a Utopia. Or they might decide to go destroy the evil empire that is their nation's primary rival. Or go on a quest to kill Graz'zt because they had an adventure involving his cultists back when they were 5th level and really disliked him as a result.

I do think high levels are important and need more support. The bastion system is a start, though I think we also need a system for mass combat, and a strong set of rules for political maneuvering and social engagement in general would be cool. Good example adventures, including a good example of one that is highly customized to the pcs, would be very helpful for DMs who have little experience in high level play. Advice for navigating high level magic, as well as for customizing high level play to various playstyles (i.e. do you want high level martial characters to be anime style, badass realism style, or what?), would be good.

It's not about limiting teleportation and plane shifting and whatnot, it's about writing adventures to accommodate them. 3e was pretty good for this, especially the stuff in Dungeon Magazine. But a high level game run by the RAW, that allows all the high level abilities, is hard to run. Some guidance for DMs who haven't gotten experience doing so might help encourage them to try it.

A big part of high level play, in my experience, is gaming out the consequences of pcs' choices from earlier in their careers.

You're describing the tension in designing high-level adventures for publication – the weight of past choices/stories VS. need for good example adventures at high-level. How do you think a published adventure can navigate this tension?

It's something I've been thinking about for a few years off-and-on, because eventually I would like to write a high-level adventure that provides at least something of a template/example for how to do it in a way that helps GMs run high-level. And personalizing/customizing the hooks for high-level PCs is really tricky precisely because of primarily (a) the greater impact of their past choices/stories, and secondarily (b) their ability to "nope" out of something that fails to hook them thanks to greater nope-ing" capabilities.

 

[Enrico Poli1]

Actually, I love high level play, and I can say that 5e is easier then all previous editions at high level.
My favourite campaigns ever are Age of Worms and Savage Tide (D&D3.5), both ending at Lvl 21-23.
Or you could try Rappan Athuk, Sword of Air or City of Brass, all from Frog god Games, good campaigns ending at very high level.
Regarding previous editions, Die Vecna Die! and Return ti the Tomb of Horrors are fantastic.

 

[Distracted DM]

I've run multiple campaigns to max or near-max level.

High tiers are definitely NOT my favorite tiers of play (I'd be happy if characters leveled out at 9-10), but many players really enjoy hitting that level of power so I do it.

It's a much greater mental load to manage though, for many reasons. That, and if you started at low level it means you've been playing the same campaign for 1-3 years.

Players may get really invested in their characters, but as the DM it can be a challenge to stay excited about the same game for so long.
I manage, but it requires a lot of effort.

Edit: I'll also add that you may see a lot of PF1+2e players/DMs saying that they reach high level... Because the adventure paths actually go that high.
And they're usually decently written, or have a lot of community support.

Those are big factors.