NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9210286" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think high-level is still played. More rarely, but it happens. And it'd maybe happen more if there was good support for it. And the reason there's not good support for it is because it's more rare. Chicken and egg, a bit.I think "important to the game" is a more interesting question.D&D, IMO, should be like a 10 level game. (I could see a case for 12/13 or maybe 15 if you're a coward, and for 5 if you're a madman. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)The main reason I think this is because I think the main reason high-level isn't more played is because people like to start at Level 1, and it takes more than a year of straight D&D play (at a typical pace of about 1 level / month) to see those high levels.That does happen. But it's not common. Your group falls apart. You go on summer break. Nobody can get together in December. Someone has a baby. You get bored of the same characters and the same campaign. A new adventure catches your eye. You change DMs. Blah blah blah.I also think it's weirdly better for D&D as a business if high-level play isn't common. The more you restart, the more character options and adventures you have. The more stuff WotC can sell you. It's a bit like a time slot for a TV show. If the D&D game is "one year long", then you fill that time slot with different characters and adventures each year. If the game is two years long, that's half the "new" content (and requires bigger, more expensive up-front costs for longer-lasting content - bigger adventures, more complex character options, etc.).I think criticizing the power of high levels is kind of missing the mark. The power level is a little arbitrary. You can have weak characters with 12,000 levels because each level doesn't add much. You can have zero-to-hero with 5 levels because each level jumps you up a whole friggin' tier. And gaining lots of ability to impact the world is fun and narratively satisfying and yeah, it's fun to be powerful, it's fun to gain power over time, growth is a fun mechanic, "number get big" is compelling game design.But I do think that D&D is very time intensive as a hobby, and practically speaking, there's only so much time your average person can invest in getting bigger numbers before they fall off for one reason or another. You only get about 80 of these years if you're lucky, and probably about 60 of them where you can play D&D functionally. That's only 30 two-year 1-20 campaigns. Most of us are going to get a lot less than that, in practice. It takes work to get that. If the game was only 1-5 or 1-10, you could get a LOT more reps in.I also think the historical reason D&D has 20 levels is another interesting question, but I've babbled on long enough for one post. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I don't think it's JUST fantasy wish fulfillment, though I also don't think it's a problem if it's about 80% fantasy wish fulfillment. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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