D&D 5E What about D&D 5e levels 21-30?

[abirdcall]

What is someone did a Kickstarter? Also, I do not agree that its a guaranteed money loss.

Right, then we're not talking about WotC.

As has been said, DM's Guild or 3rd party publishers in general are your best bet here.

I'm sure you could find someone doing a small scale project out of it.

WotC won't though. Only one adventure currently supports levels 16-20. There is a lot of room for support for those upper levels but there probably isn't the demand for it. I imagine we will continue to see a trickle of support for 16+, basically every now and then as they saturate the lower levels.

The demand for 21+ is minuscule. I don't think it will ever happen.

 

[abirdcall]

Tier 4, levels 17-20, is described in the PHB as "...even the fundamental order of the multiverse might hang in the balance during their adventures"

How do you get bigger than the multiverse?

 

[Umbran]

How do you get bigger than the multiverse?

Megaverse!

 

[Rafael Martin]

Tier 4, levels 17-20, is described in the PHB as "...even the fundamental order of the multiverse might hang in the balance during their adventures"
How do you get bigger than the multiverse?

Easy you rewrite the Tiers. My idea for the WOTC is to put out an official epic level handbook. I would make it for levels 21-30 and it would include monsters with appropriate CR's. This can happen and I think with enough effort we can convince the WOTC to create this product for us. Have faith.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Most people don't play past 10 so I doubt there will be anything.

Agreed, although I always wondered if that was simply because 'epic play' (in the past) was not designed to introduce anything new from a fundamental roleplaying standpoint. For instance in AD&D at roughly 10th-level at least one of the PCs is likely to have Lordship over a Keep or similar estate. High-level could mix in political ambition and leadership over vast armies/territories. While epic play could encompass running your own religion.

Also while only a small percentage of D&D players game at high-level that still might be 10-50k players at any one time.

 

[drl2]

How do you get bigger than the multiverse?

Double secret multiverse. Shhhh.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Howdy dave amigo!

There is nothing official past lvl 20, except blessings, boons, charms, and continued AI & feats offered as options in the DMG.

There are at least 2 resources on the DM’s guild, and I have seen more in UA reddit. I hear good things about the DMsGuild products and I think that is in line with what you are probably looking for.

However, I had successful kickstarter this spring to convert the BECMI “Immortal Rules” to 5e and the first issue is coming out in about a month. But my rules are much different than simply leveling up characters, you are playing as demigods and gods.

Best of luck with the project.

Considering a 'small' 5E project myself (an adventury/monster book with a few rules tacked on for Levels 16-20...

...knowing me though it might take a while.

I think the big problem for someone expanding the rules above Level 20 is that they don't have enough monster options to really flesh it out enough.

Added to which a Level 20 party as it stands probably crushes even Level 30 monsters. You could probably expand the CR's up to 40 to give players (at Level 20) an actual challenge. Meaning if you extend PC Levels to Level 30 even, you'll need monsters up to CR 50.

 

[Upper_Krust]

It seems to me that it would be really difficult to build compelling, interesting adventures around level 20+ characters who in many cases can change the world with a single action. It's the Superman problem - characters so powerful that you have to either constantly throw them up against god-like entities or you have to invent (and over-use) Kryptonite.

The third option might be to marry epic power with worshippers and with that, things get interesting.

This way you can still have the occasional 'god-like entity' battles but you can contrast that with political maneouvering, territorial disputes, natural disasters, inveigling from other deities/religions etc.

I remember that one of the 'diversion adventures' under the auspices of my Lesser God character was that of a Church Spy trying to infiltrate a Death Cult seeking to overthrow the State religion (ie. my character).

It was the contrast between the Lower Level and Deity-Level play that really made the latter stand out.

The old AD&D rules I played back in the 80s allowed for unlimited levels, but they felt boring to me. The one high-level adventure I read through back then (and it's been many years, so I remember almost none of the details, but it was in... the Abyss, maybe?) actually had to resort to listing a bunch of spells that wouldn't work correctly in that plane of existence. It Kryptonited spellcasters for playability.

AD&D was never really designed for play beyond 18th or thereabouts, but unlimited levels worked because of various 'caps' on the rules.

I find low to mid range characters/adventures (in 5e parlance up to around mid teens) much more compelling in general than the upper level stuff. (That said, I'm probably going to try to take my current campaign up to 20 just to see how it goes.)

5E seems a fairly robust system for levels 1 thru 20.

 

[Upper_Krust]

It does not discuss levels higher than 20. It suggests XP or epic achievements giving level 20 PCs Epic Boons, Feats, and/or Attribute increases.

The way the game is designed, a level 20 group without Boons can already defeat CR 30 monsters. So for level 21+ PCs you would need to see CR 31+ monsters. Personally I think the game works well as-is, I use the Epic Boon rules in my level 20 Runelords campaign.

Didn't you mention that the CR21+ monsters in the various books were underwhelming in terms of a threat (for Level 20 characters) and also underwhelming in terms of choice, since the majority seem to be comprised of Unique individual enemies rather than stuff you can just 'encounter'?

I vaguely recall you said "...there's only so many times I can use the bloody* Kraken..."

* I added the word bloody myself, re-interpreting your sigh at that juncture.

 

[pogre]

While I would love to see an Epic Handbook (21-30) the market is just not there to support it. I wish it were different. As someone on the edge of running another epic campaign (PCs in T4), I would love to see more resources for high level play.