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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7139436" data-attributes="member: 996">Right off, you're putting preference ahead of reality, Zard.  No, as much as you may love it, 2e did not handle high-level any better than 1e before it nor 3e after, let alone 4e or 5e. Kinda like 2e, that way, really.  Multiple attacks and haste/speed effects and static damage bonuses and, wow, the DPR snowballs.  But magic (both spells and items) really do make mere damage pall by comparison, with just the sheer arbitrary game-breaking stuff they can just make happen.   Getting away from 3e rocket tag was as much a goal of 4e as getting away from 'slow' combats became a 5e goal.  If ever there was an example of a pendulum swinging... <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=";)" />  But it was not really related to handling high-level games, it was more, well, getting away from rocket-tag and 'static' combats.   If we did want to take 4e high-level playability to heart we could, it wouldn't necessarily mean having slow combats again, it probably would mean 'nerfing' casters to a tremendous degree, though, FWTW, and be beyond the scope of any reasonable 5e variant.  :shrug: A problem at all levels, really, but probably worst at very low and high ones.  almost all classes  the afore-mentioned 'power creep,' yes. There is that.  In AD&D, saves got better as you leveled across the board.  For some reason 3.0 thought it would be good for one or two of your saves to stay just terrible forever, so you had no chance in heck of making one of those saves at high level, especially since it also linked the DC to caster stat & spell level.  Wow.  (One of your non-AC defenses was gauranteed to lag in 4e, too, though that wasn't nearly the same magnitude of vulnerability, even the high-watermark of D&D balance couldn't get it as right as old AD&D did back in the day, in that regard.)  5e rolled with that, but doubled the number of saves, you have four 'bad' saves just languising, with no prof bonus and little hope of a stat bump, while DCs climb steadily (more or less tracking the 8 + stat + prof formula of casters).   That's really kinda a dismal record for the WotC era of the game.Sure, and that could be a serious problem, if the DM played them with maximum system mastery and malice.   The supposed default assumption of 5e, and possibly a bad idea if you have any PCs that are lagging the others at high level.  Magic items can be a great way to bring a languishing PC up to snuff. A fair dodge, now as it was then.  There just aren't a lot of rules to the other two pillars, so such adventures end up being a fair amount of setting high DCs for skill checks, spells (even mere rituals) being used 'creatively' to solve various non-combat challenges, and just plain DM judgement.  One problem with mostly side-lining combat like that is that you sideline any more combat-oriented/less-flexible PCs (the full neo-Vancian casters and, when Expertise can be brought to bear, the Rogue & Bard, will tend to dominate).  The other is that less frequent combats mean combats get nova'd in a big way. Tend to be either trivialized by magic (items or spells) or else a hard stop or party split.  We need to go under water?  Either provide spells/items so everyone can breath or don't take everyone or don't go.  Not wonderful. Which is fine, really.  In AD&D, instant death was always a thing, but so were saves vs that instant death you were unlikely to fail, and ways to come back to life. :shrug:   See Tomb of Horrors for an object lesson in not-all-dungeons-are-worth-exploring.  Or watch War Games ("the only way to win is not to play..").  ;P Works to up difficulty at almost any level, really.  The higher the level, the more an AE can sweep away numerical superiority or 'creative spell use' undermine some clever combo, though. Yes. Nod. Monkeywrenching the things players have gotten used to is a classic thing to resort to.  A crazy environment can always add some interest, but you might want to make sure it won't leave some of the party just sitting the whole thing out...  They'll just come back. Of course, you could just not run high levels.  You can get a pretty great campaign out of levels 3-12 or there'bouts, so just start a new campaign when the cracks start to show.  Advance the campaign world a generation or few and the old party become heroes of legend.</blockquote>

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