D&D 5E No One Plays High Level?

[Reynard]

no you are wrong. The elves are all just one step below the Mair. Heaven is on the other side of the undying lands and the elves live in the undying lands and what we call middle earth is where all the mortals who will die go. Elves are outer planar beings. When they die they reform in the undying lands. As the silmarillion and all the other books are a bit all over the place it gets confusing but that part is not. The reason the elves had to leave in the third age is they aren't mortals and it's not thier realm. After the elves all left the undying lands and heaven were completely seperated from middle earth that's the reason the ones who stayed became mortal. They lost thier link to the undying lands and thier only path was on to the afterlife mortals went too and the elves didn't get to go there they had no idea what it was like. The creations story, the first age and the second age are all part of the creation of the world. It's not done till middle earth is handed over to the Humans. Then all that celestial magic, or infernal magic from morkoth fades away and it become a boring old non magic world.

Almost none of this is correct. Elves are immortal, but they are beings of Middle Earth, the First Born. There's a reason it is a big deal that some of them went across the sea after Awakening and saw the Light of the Trees.

You should probably reread your Silmarillion before asserting such things.

 

[TheSword]

a few edits to add my opinion.

To be honest I’d rather you make edits much clearer rather than just changing my text. Someone might read your post and assume I have written some or all of those points. Some of lines were already in bold and some already in brackets.

Regarding your edits. I don’t believe removing the randomness means it is planned in advance. The results emanate from the players decisions not from whether a 1 or 20 comes up. The DM doesn’t determine the players choices so the outcome isn’t planned in advance.

Limiting magic is about understanding what magic can and can’t do, and understanding the logical impacts of using magic at high levels. It’s not about removing fun stuff, it’s about spamming simulacrum having logical consequences.

 

[Minigiant]

Then I stand corrected. Obviously instead of saying you don't skip levels 2-19, you don't skip 6-14.

You don't skip anything.

However you can't learn how to play a flying PC or murder machine PC until you have access to cheap flight or easy murder or are taught it.

You can't learn how to DM for a flying PC or murder machine PC until your PCs have access to cheap flight or easy murder or are taught it.

Now if you play from level 1-20, you are less likely to have issues as people don't tend to adjust their characters much as they level. Rarely do I see players swap out all their spells or equipment I'd not forced. So players tend to know their PCs well, speeding them up and minimizing surprise on both sides of the DM screen. So the walk to weirdness is gradual and slow.

The problems tend to when PCs die and are replaced or if you start at a mid or high level or if players do swap out stuff. This is when analysis paralysis, online tactics, cheese builds, and lopsided gameplay becomes the norm.

It's funny. It's harder to kill a high level PC for good. But as a DM, you almost don't want to kill a high level PC due to the potential trouble running for a player running a brand new high level PC could invoke.

 

[Maxperson]

no you are wrong. The elves are all just one step below the Mair. Heaven is on the other side of the undying lands and the elves live in the undying lands and what we call middle earth is where all the mortals who will die go. Elves are outer planar beings. When they die they reform in the undying lands. As the silmarillion and all the other books are a bit all over the place it gets confusing but that part is not. The reason the elves had to leave in the third age is they aren't mortals and it's not thier realm. After the elves all left the undying lands and heaven were completely seperated from middle earth that's the reason the ones who stayed became mortal. They lost thier link to the undying lands and thier only path was on to the afterlife mortals went too and the elves didn't get to go there they had no idea what it was like. The creations story, the first age and the second age are all part of the creation of the world. It's not done till middle earth is handed over to the Humans. Then all that celestial magic, or infernal magic from morkoth fades away and it become a boring old non magic world.

They started in Middle Earth. That is where the Valar found them. They were not born in the undying lands. They are very spiritual beings, yes. And yes when they die they go to the undying lands to dwell in the Halls of Mandos as spirits, not reborn. They will eventually be granted bodies again, but that doesn't make them outer planar beings. Further, all of the elves didn't leave middle earth at the end of the third age. Most did, but some stayed and went into a long decline.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Plus rituals, plus item powers, plus racials. It's just a lot.

Seems to me that that is moving the goalposts. And either way, rituals absolutely shouldn't count--purely opt-in system, unlike all the other stuff you've mentioned.

Because if we're going there, then we need to add magic items, and regular equipment, and consumables, and basic attacks, and...

Yeaaah... our number of powers got into the teens well before our levels did.

Not from class, unless one level is "well before" teens. You get a total of 13 powers from class (and PP) at level 12, and two of those are bread-and-butter at-wills. Hardly what I would call dramatic.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Seems to me that that is moving the goalposts.

No... we never restricted this to 'only strict class abilities count'. We definitely need to include magic item powers and all that, because in 4e (well, DnD) the assumption is that you get all that stuff as you level up.

If it'd be a separate power card in front of you, it counts. If you need to track tons of things doing different things, that's tracking tons of things, it doesn't matter where they came from.

 

[ECMO3]

It probably would have been best if the max complexity of a character was maintain to that of a mid-level PC. From level 1-20, you get the most 10 things. Spells, Cantrips, maneuvers, masteries, expertise, rages, runes, tricks, etc. As you level, you swap out lower level stuff for high level stuff or upgrade the low level stuff.

Pick a starting level. Choose race, background, and class. Roll Scores. Roll HP. Fill your 10 slots. Play.

From level 1 all the way to level 50.

I think this is a good idea for an RPG but I think it actually works best if you eliminate classes and just have a list of level-based features to select from.

 

[ECMO3]

I think high level combat is fundamentally different than low level combat, but I don't think the other pillars are much different. Skill checks are easier if you have a good Rogue or a Bard but other than combat the play is not fundamentally different IMO.

Combat is different because your strengths are stronger, your weaknesses are weaker and things that you were ok at are now weaknesses. In combat play you really need to work to mitigate your weaknesses. For example your fighter with a 16 Wisdom is great at Wisdom saves in tier 1, still ok in teir 2, but at high level they are rarely going to succeed, even with indominable.

Where classes and subclasses rank in combat power also swings at high level. Wizards, Bards and Sorcerers open a pretty large gap with all other classes, with Bards going from a weak spellcaster to probably the second strongest. In tier 2 all Monks are pretty weak, but at very high level the best Monk subclasses become some of the strongest non-casters. Rangers also become the strongest half-casters at high level, opening up a pretty large gap between them and Paladin.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I think this is a good idea for an RPG but I think it actually works best if you eliminate classes and just have a list of level-based features to select from.

I think giving people huge lists of features isn't very user-friendly. It's easier to pick 'which of these 4 do you want?' than from everything that exists.

I don't think the other pillars are much different. Skill checks are easier if you have a good Rogue or a Bard but the play is not fundamentally different IMO.

The more spells you have, the less skill checks you need to make. I think that's a bit different.

 

[ECMO3]

The more spells you have, the less skill checks you need to make. I think that's a bit different.

I've played 2 campaigns to 20th level and a 20th level 1-shot. All of those had at least 1 full caster (one had 3 full casters out of 5) and we were making a ton of skill checks at high levels in all three of those games. We had a Soul Knife Rogue in one of them who almost never failed a check of any kinds at high level, even ones he was not proficient in, but we were still making a lot of checks.

IME it is actually easier to use spells to bypass skill checks at low levels.

There are a lot of spells available to bypass skill checks (fly, spider climb, knock, see invisibility, identify, legend lore, suggestion ....) but there are not typically enough preparations available to have an appreciable number of these ready to cast. At high levels the number of spells you can prepare or know becomes a real issue and you don't have a lot of room for "nice to have" spells, especially if you want more than one option for your high level slots. You can mitigate this with a multiclass to another full caster, but then you lose high level spells and your capstone.

A Wizard, Sorcerer or Bard you can always use Wish to replicate a lower level spell she didn't prepare, but that is only once a day and it is a heck of a high price to pay to avoid rolling a skill check someone in the party will probably pass anyway.

In the games I played, we used Wish a lot to replicate spells, but it was usually to cast non-combat spells in combat Wish-Planar Binding and Wish-Simulacrum were the two most common. We never used it to pass a skill check.