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.

 

[Don Durito]

Nope. Just a chicken situation.

And your certainty is based on....what exactly?

 

[Tiggerunner]

Nope. Just a chicken situation.

I feel like Steve Rogers. "I got that reference."

Chicken game

A chicken game is a game theory set up that typically decribes two players heading toward each other. If the players continue on the same path, they bump into each other; if one swerves out of the way and other doesn't, the swerve "loses" and is labeled the chicken, while the second, implicitly...

economics.fandom.com

 

[Tiggerunner]

And your certainty is based on....what exactly?

Publishers only want to make things they know players will buy, but players can only buy what publishers make.

It's a game of chicken where the publisher has to risk making something without being sure there's a market for it. Hence market research and data analytics, but it can be tricky if the metrics aren't measuring what you think they are.

 

[Don Durito]

Nope. Just a chicken situation.

I'm the one asking for more information and using hedging. You're the guy saying things are "obviously" so.

 

[Don Durito]

Publishers only want to make things they know players will buy, but players can only buy what publishers make.

It's a game of chicken where the publisher has to risk making something without being sure there's a market for it. Hence market research and data analytics, but it can be tricky if the metrics aren't measuring what you think they are.

Well yes. It's a reasonable hypothesis. But it doesn't tell us what would actually happen were WOTC to publish more high level adventures.

No doubt we'd see some kind of bump in people playing higher level campaingns, - but how much is hard to say.

 

[Morrus]

Nothing. I'm the one asking for more information and using hedging. You're the guy saying things are "obviously" so.

You’re responding to a joke about chickens.

 

[Lanefan]

This ties into ddb as well. There are all kinds of changes you can implement in your game to help weight the scales or put scaling into other areas, but ddb doesn't support WotC's own variant phb/dmg rules & fails even worse if you as the gm start wanting to make system changes. It's bad enough that my next campaign is shifting from "I want you to use pen(cil) & paper or editable pdf sheets" to "ddb character sheets are simply not allowed in any form so there are no longer any excuses to continue resisting the rulesets I've been trying to extend around 5e's limitations we will be using x y & z."

This is a valid point, and leads me to a thought: if DDB only supports the base rules as written and doesn't do variants or houserules then speculative extension kind of suggests that it'll end up defaulting to a user base of more casual players and-or players playing under more casual DMs.

Why do I say this? Because one of the hallmarks of harder-core DMs and-or groups is that they're likely going to start tinkering with the ruleset and-or system, which - as is the case with the poster I quoted - will quickly render DDB as relatively useless for them.

It's not a big jump from there to think that more casual DMs and-or groups are likely to run shorter campaigns, or pack it in before getting to a high level.....or, if they do become harder-core, continue playing but stop using DDB for their character sheets. This would skew the DDB data downward from reality as an in-play 15th level character might only show on DDB as going to 5th, after which the player made (or had to make) his-her own character sheets for that character as that game started developing its own rules.

 

[ENWorldUser]

Could be because there hasn't much support for higher level play, haven't seen any supplements from Wizards.

Higher level play hasn't been done very well since the BECMI days.

 

[Oofta]

There's also the issue that DDB has limitations on customization of presentation. In other words, if I fill out my own document I can put little reminders for myself, notations that are front and center on how to run my character.

The higher the level you get, the more problematic this becomes because I find more idiosyncrasies creeping in. By there very nature high level PCs are more complex and I want my character sheet to bring those complex features to the fore.

As far as WOTC polling knowing what people play, as far as we know they're still relying on that extremely flawed survey that @Lanefan linked to.

 

[Lanefan]

As far as WOTC polling knowing what people play, as far as we know they're still relying on that extremely flawed survey that @Lanefan linked to.

To be fair, they've done other surveys since on more limited aspects of the game - we see a notice for one every few months on these boards, for example - but I'm not sure they've ever done another one as broad-reaching as that 1999 one was trying to be.

Thing is, a repeat now of that 1999 survey would generate results caused in no small part directly by - you guessed it - that 1999 survey!