D&D 5E Nobody Is Playing High Level Characters

According to stats from D&D Beyond, above 5th level characters start to drop off sharply, and above 10th level, the figures are very low. The exception is level 20, which looks like it's probably people creating experimental 20th-level builds.

Some of them say 0%; this isn't strictly accurate, but levels 16-19 are used by an insignificant number of players. Interestingly, there are more 3rd-5th level characters than there are 1st-2nd level.

D&D Beyond has said before that under 10% of games make it past 10th level, but these figures show the break point as being bit lower than that. DDB used over 30 million characters to compile these stats.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Uh, ok. Conspiracy theory it is, then.

 

[Tiggerunner]

Uh, ok. Conspiracy theory it is, then.

It appears he succeeded. I guess I should just retreat now and go back to playing Trail of Chutulu...

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Actually, @Tiggerunner , you should just play whatever suits you and you think is fun. These boards (and others) will just make games give you a sour stomach if you take other posters (including me) seriously.

I was just curious if you knew some third-party provider who was getting big enough to be a threat to WotC. I was gonna check them out.

 

[Tiggerunner]

Actually, @Tiggerunner , you should just play whatever suits you and you think is fun. These boards (and others) will just make games give you a sour stomach if you take other posters (including me) seriously.

I was just curious if you knew some third-party provider who was getting big enough to be a threat to WotC. I was gonna check them out.

Well, this one (Enworld), if they published something first for a small, but profitable market of players.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

But couldn't you or someone else do that? That is what DMsGuild is for, right?

 

[Tiggerunner]

But couldn't you or someone else do that? That is what DMsGuild is for, right?

As much as I'd like to do professional game design someday, I'm not qualified to write the book, as I'd be the target audience.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Well, this one (Enworld), if they published something first for a small, but profitable market of players.

Lots of people have point out that it is a profitable market. Even Badeye, I think, stated such. The question really is: is it profitable enough to pull resources off of other things and/or add to the workload. Would those workerhours be better utilized somewhere else? If so, it doesn't matter if it would be profitable, because it wouldn't be profitable enough.

 

[Tiggerunner]

Lots of people have point out that it is a profitable market. Even Badeye, I think, stated such. The question really is: is it profitable enough to pull resources off of other things and/or add to the workload. Would those workerhours be better utilized somewhere else? If so, it doesn't matter if it would be profitable, because it wouldn't be profitable enough.

You hit on the million dollar (or I guess in this industry, hundred thousand) dollar question.

 

[vpuigdoller]

This is very interesting. We finished Tomb of Annihilation almost 8 months ago and it took us a year and a half to go thru. My players TPKed on the tomb. It was lost of fun but by the end, my players were so tired that they only want to play LVL 1 to 6 adventures now. If it is anything higher than that they don't wish to play it.

I can understand that player fatigue is a real thing and busy adult lives make it very hard to do a weekly game (we play twice a month for a total of 10 hours). I think their sweet spot should be around 15 to 20 sessions total then jump to something new.

In the other hand, we played a six years campaign back in 3e era and we didn't reach LVL 20 we stopped about LVL 14ish. It was very slow-paced hence the low levelling rate. It was lots of fun but I no longer think we can achieve that level of commitment. Twice a month for six years, yah I won't be able to do it.

 

[tetrasodium]

3) Assume WoTC wants to corner the market on a supplement targeting players in the 10-20 level character range and selectively released misleading statistics to their third party competitors.

Edit: oh, I meant "partners."

An awful lot of the adventures on dmguild were some gm's adventure/campaign notes that got cleaned up & put into a nicer state before getting "published". The fact that most of them are on the lower end of the scale likely has more to do with the scaling problems in 5e than your conspiracy theory there