D&D 5E What is your preferred level of play?

What is your preferred level range to play

  • 1-4th

    Votes: 15 10.1%
  • 5th-9th

    Votes: 99 66.4%
  • 10th-14th

    Votes: 23 15.4%
  • 15th-20th

    Votes: 12 8.1%

Sacrosanct

Legend
Over the past 35 years of playing, I've found that by the time our PCs get past level 10 or so, we tend to retire them. Campaigns are usually completed by then, and most of use want to try out new PC types. In AD&D, my sweet spot was levels 5-8. In 5e terms, that's probably 5-10
 

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I like 5-9 as well. You've started getting some sweet abilities, should have stockpiled a pretty nice treasure haul and a handful of magic items. You can still 'fly under the radar' and not get involved with politics or world shaping events if you don't want to.

Big fish in a little pond kinda stuff, with out all the "I guess we have to go save everyone's hide yet again."
 

Not past level 4 yet but not been playing regularly enough. Tonight the first off out bi monthly meet with a new home brew. Session 0 tonight rolling new characters
 

I like all lvs.
Unfortunately most of the games I've ever played in have ended by about 12th lv. If not earlier.
Some have simply reached the (or a) natural stopping point, some have ended in tpks, others stall out unrecoverabley, and many just end as the DM burns out.
Then the next person runs a game & rinse/repeat.

What I DON'T like is the assumption that as we lv the consequences of our adventures have to grow from dungeon delving/local event to saving the whole kingdom/world/cosmos etc. Some of that's fine, but not every 12-18 months....
I especially don't like super long APs. I don't WANT to fight against the forces of Tiamat/do one thing continuously for 15 lvs.
 





I personally prefer 1-4. At those levels, everything matters. At higher level, things start to average out a bit more, and no one is hanging on the edge of their seat for routine attack rolls. When one hit wit a high damage roll could drop a PC, it's very exciting. And I like when resources are limited enough that any non-cantrip spell is an important decision. Not to mention things go a bit faster when very few characters have more than one attack.

I'm currently running a game that has just reached level 19, and it's definitely still a lot of fun, but I wouldn't want to play at that level very often. It's big and epic and cool, but complicated and time consuming (though nothing compared to older editions, which were hell at high level). I've mostly been sticking to larger narrative decisions and a few big, important fights to keep things from getting bogged down, but I think that's what playing characters at that level should be all about. The minutia falls away in favor of the most important stuff.
 


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