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.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

In most games I see players start to get to around level 5 or 6 and they begin flicking through books and thinking about multiclassing. They get to the point where the character is basically established and they start looking for ways to grow or branch out, to learn new tricks and take their character in a slightly different direction.

It's the 6 level itch.

Yes, this is very much a problem with one of the the design principles of D&D, which strongly enforces niche protection. It's exacerbated by the zero-to-hero mentality. One thing that can help is to be fairly generous with rebuilding or character swaps.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

In different sessions? How much time do you have to play RPGs, that you can play multiple characters in the same campaign and have either of them get any where in reasonable time?

Because it's more work than people are willing to go to, or groups aren't willing to run two different campaigns concurrently, or people can only find one group to join, or...

You act as though gaming and free time are infinitely-deep wells from which one may draw.

Seriously, it's not that hard if one can break through the wall of motivated skepticism that seems to get thrown up whenever something even slightly off the worn track gets suggested.

The DM says "Hey, the next three sessions will be with B team characters" or plan adventures in a four session arc and allow swaps, with only one. A player who doesn't want to swap doesn't have to. For advancement, just assume that when the characters are off-screen they're doing "something relevant" that justifies their advancement, if that matters. This can be blue-booked between sessions or provided with some kind of brief, few sentence narrative about how an off-screen character did something important. "While the rest of the group was driving off the horde of Xandu the Terrible, Yoshi was scouting the Badlands of P'Krunk. He had some really close escapes but managed to bring back the key to the gate. Meanwhile Mystical Q was busy doing some really intricate spell research and potion brewing using the large cache of alchemical supplies that were captured...." Blue-booking can help keep players engaged between gaps in real life, too.

 

[Carmen Sbordone]

It just hit me it seems data is a bit flawed.

Yeah noone is playing high level because it takes years to get there. I mean the game is coming up on its 6th year anniversary in 2020?

It took that long to get to 19th/20th level at that point back in our 3.5 days. I only played one character by that point in the same time period.

 

[ChaosOS]

5 years was about the lifespan of the last two editions.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

It just hit me it seems data is a bit flawed.

It probably is.

Yeah noone is playing high level because it takes years to get there. I mean the game is coming up on its 6th year anniversary in 2020?

That assumes one starts at level 1 and goes up. Someone else upthread pointed out that a good way to run a higher level game is to explicitly start there. Say, choose the tier of play and start at the bottom of each tier. Supers games tend to work this way because the GM chooses the point total or general build level.

Trying to crawl all the way through every level is a recipe for DM and/or player fatigue.

 

[Anoth]

It probably is.


That assumes one starts at level 1 and goes up. Someone else upthread pointed out that a good way to run a higher level game is to explicitly start there. Say, choose the tier of play and start at the bottom of each tier. Supers games tend to work this way because the GM chooses the point total or general build level.

Trying to crawl all the way through every level is a recipe for DM and/or player fatigue.

That is the joy of the game for me

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

That is the joy of the game for me

(Referencing crawling through all the levels.)

Don't get me wrong, I like a long campaign, too. I'm still running something I started in 1999, which ran off and on until 2007, then restarted in 2013 with more substantial biweekly sessions from 2016 on. The PCs started at level 4 in Saltmarsh and they're now level 11 in some really bizarre planar weirdness. (This game is still a heavily modified 2E.) I was in all honestly on the verge of giving up D&D in 2013, which was the utter doldrums of the tail end of 4E for me.

As much as it does have a certain appeal, a lot of times I find folks have moved on from a character or the game, or some folks have left the game, etc. The other thing that can happen is that the burden of a really long, intricate adventure path can start to feel like a grind.

In my own very long-lived game there's some big themes but there isn't a overall, guiding story. The PCs choose different directions, events happen to them, and so on, and the vast majority of their rewards are story rewards. There are some adversaries they fear but are unlikely to truly ever be able to defeat, but they've foiled plans locally, which is satisfying.

I have no idea if this would work for anyone else, but it did for me and I'd definitely be interested in hearing how other people have managed to keep a game going for a long time.

 

[Umbran]

Seriously, it's not that hard if one can break through the wall of motivated skepticism that seems to get thrown up whenever something even slightly off the worn track gets suggested.

This isn't about "hard". It is about TIME, that most limiting resource.

I get one session every two weeks with my main group, for about 3 hours a shot. If I start swapping between teams, neither team is going to get very far. If players start swapping characters around, we lose continuity, and those characters will stall in development (character development, if not mechanical development, because they don't experience much story).

 

[Anoth]

This isn't about "hard". It is about TIME, that most limiting resource.

I get one session every two weeks with my main group, for about 3 hours a shot. If I start swapping between teams, neither team is going to get very far. If players start swapping characters around, we lose continuity, and those characters will stall in development (character development, if not mechanical development, because they don't experience much story).

What works for one group may not work for another.

 

[Umbran]

What works for one group may not work for another.

Sure. Not saying it cannot work for someone. I'm saying the "it isn't hard if you break through your skepticism" is nonsense. I will double-down on it, and suggest that time is likely the major issue with reaching upper level play at all - which is the issue at hand for the thread. Splitting your time between two different characters will only slow down the exploration of upper level play.