D&D 5E What’s the highest level character you’ve played in 5E?

[Seramus]

NOT including games that started at 20? 1-18 was the highest, with a 17 and a 16 mixed in.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Level 13, so far. He will probably go at least to 17ish.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not a fan of the entire concept of CR and I am all for dropping it from the game.

CR in 3e & 5e is slightly different from level in other eds. It doesn't map cleanly. A CR = level monster is a fairly standard threat for a party of that level, and facing multiple monsters is less intuitive to calculate, from there.
In 3e the idea was your character level = CR, so the heroic default battle was a 5:1 beat-down. In practice class & build made a huge difference.
In 5e, nominally-higher level PC equivalents can have CR well below their notional level.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Highest has been 18.

Most other campaigns end between level 6 and 12, however, so I absolutely believe it.

 

[pukunui]

As a player, I’ve made it to level 20 + epic boons once so far. That was when we played through a conversion of Age of Worms. It looks like our current campaign is going to 20 as well. (We’re at 18th level at the moment.)

As a DM, I haven’t DMed any PCs past 14th level (Tyranny of Dragons). I hope to DM a group up to 20 once I start running Odyssey of the Dragonlords (still waiting on my physical rewards).

 

[DND_Reborn]

11th. First vote LOL. Of course, she might go higher before we're done, but I don't know after today if I'll get to player her again or not--only time will tell.

So, update:

After our session today, it isn't over! We had one character hit 12th today, and with everything that happened the group decided there was still to much to do before we could retire them.

So, another player is prepping more of CoS for next session and we will play that for a wihle, but then we're returning to this campaign!

 

[Longspeak]

20th. Started at 3rd. Though the leveling up process was quicker for this GM than most I've played with in the past.

 

[Ogre Mage]

20th level but with the caveat it was a 3 session mini-campaign. In terms of a long-running campaign, the highest was 16th level.

 

[Esker]

Currently playing a 13th level character who started at level 3 about 18 months ago (with a few months off at one point to give the DM a break, during which I DMed an 8 session or so mini-campaign). I expect that campaign to continue for awhile yet. Maybe not all the way to 20th, but probably a few more levels anyway.

For what it's worth, we're three couples plus one guy whose wife doesn't play, and every single one of us has kids, ranging in age from 4 months to 7 years. (Two new babies born during this campaign) One couple who both play had a baby in May and have mostly been Skyping in since then. We're off for a few weeks now for the holidays but generally play 2 or 3 3-hour sessions a month, leveling (by milestone or just fiat) about every 4 sessions.

We collectively spend a lot on babysitting, but rotate hosting to spread it out. If it's a high enough priority it's definitely possible not to have life get too much in the way.

 

[Azzy]

So far the furthest we've gotten in 5e is 14th level. This seems more due to DM fatigue than anything else.