What's the top level in your campaign world?

[HeavenShallBurn]

In my campaign, "high level" is around 8-10. I scale my campaign on the assumption that level 10 is about as high as the most powerful mortals typically get. Threats that require heroes of that level are rare, and typically do not bother the world at large (e.g. the ancient red dragon sleeps for centuries, the demi-lich lies hidden in his tomb, et cetera).

Once power levels advance into the teens, I'd start thinking about extra-planar adventures as a better type of challenge -- perhaps as the climax to the campaign, prior to PC retirement.

Which just shows how flexible the game is, when the same basic system can support a game like E6 and a setting like mine where a CR41 Harvest God rules a city-state of a quarter million from atop a ziggurat temple big as the great pyramid.

 

[Nifft]

My game goes from 3-30. Current PCs are 16.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Quartz]

How do you "justify" the existence of such powerful creatures in a world with 1st-level commoners?

They're not normally in the same part of the world. They've been cleared out by previous generations. Occasionally, some horror may rampage in, but in the bigger scheme of things, the loss of a village or two before the beast is dealt with is no big deal. And the intelligent ones often have shapechanging magic so they can stay unobserved. Until they get found out, of course.

 

[Imp]

Well, I'm retooling it, but I kicked the action offplane at level 12-14. As in, had a cabal of powerful NPCs chase adventurers off the prime plane at that level. Or persuade them to retire. Or "persuade" them to "retire."

 

[green slime]

IMC, the highest level NPCs are around 60th level. The campaign world was designed to accommodate characters of up to level 30.

High level characters (NPC & PC) are limited by a variety of issues:
1) they can't physically be in two places at the same time, and therefore always relying on underlings to some extent.
2) there are other high level characters whose exact capabilities they are wary of.
3) there are organisations (religious or otherwise), which demand respect, due to their popular base.
4) Areas which amplify or negate magical effects, which may also wax and wan by an indeterminate pattern and powerful artifacts which are not completely understood, and whose whereabouts cannot be determined with complete accuracy.

I should perhaps point out the non-existance of ressurection magic, and that the discovery and use of life-extending abilities for Epic characters plays an important role.

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm running an Eberron campaign. They're 12th level now, so for Eberron they're practically Epic level adventurers since more people top out about 6th. They're 12th and there's probably, oh, 100-200 people there with them. When they hit 15th, there will be a about three dozen up there with them. A good chunk of those in both cases will be the bad-ass monster mastermind-types.

I also have the idea that not everything exists everywhere; it might just exist singly, as well. Most of the things they are running into now are singular creations of someone, so I don't worry or care about it's ecology - it's just the one thing - or their range is limited. They're in the Icehorn Mountains (I'm actually adapting the recent online Dungeon Adventure for them, where the Horn of Iggqilv is The Icehorn that the entire range is named for, a demon-haunted hellhole) about to meet Frost Giants for the first time. There are maybe, oh, a colony of 50 up there. If they managed to hunt down and wipe out the four villages of Frost Giants, then they've wiped out all the Frost Giants of the Icehorn Mountains.

 

[Warren Okuma]

At what level would/will/have PCs in your campaign world "topped out" of the challenges available in the Material Plane world? What I mean is, at what level will they stop finding challenges without going off plane?

30

And if your world has high-level challenges (10+, 15+, 20+, 30+, etc.) what has kept these challenges from totally wrecking the world before the PCs were around?

Balance of terror, other epic people, and doing stuff behind the scenes.

The things that challenge a 20th-level group could completely wipe out most cities smaller than metropolises -- why haven't they?

Active scry and fry NPC groups. Plus ancient oaths. Some places do get wiped out.

Are there any things in the world that "always have been, always will be"? Like a guardian that has never been passed (and could never be passed)?

Nope. I believe in the dynamic change model.

If you have such a thing, do you ever expect the PCs to level up to where they can defeat the thing?

Yup.

If so, why hasn't some NPCs ever leveled up enough to kill it?

NPC's don't know everything. They kill tons of stuff the PC's will never find. They will clean out tons of places the PC's will never hear about.

Do PCs ever retire?

They did.

Are there always "bigger fish" in the campaign world?

Yup. Titans. Not the CR 20, but the planet making kind.

 

[Ahnehnois]

My levels go way up. I had PCs play at around 40 for a brief stint, but the mover and shaker NPCs are much higher. They had retired from an earlier campaign, but I let the players pick them back up at the end of the world. I arbitrarily made one of the big NPCs around level 200.

So how do regular folks subsist in such a world? Well, dragons dominate all characters, keeping a certain sense of order because the dragons can intervene if they dislike what's happening. The world's government is fairly unified, so many high level NPCs are there to protect the lesser ones. And the world does seem to have a lot of death, carnage, and wars, so civilizations are in fact wiped out periodically, say every few hundred or thousand years. Most powerful NPCs and monsters are more interested in themselves anyway (see level 200 drow who time travels to quiet places with his dragon cohort).

The ultimate creature would be a diamond dragon left over from the early days of the world. No one has killed it because they can't-it could easily slaughter the entire pantheon of deities if it wasn't trapped on the Material Plane. Besides diamonds, there are always a few other dragons more powerful than the PCs, as well as the elder deities. I suppose they could theoretically top the ranks of mortals, but that would take a while.

 

[Nellisir]

No characters have ever hit it, but I'd probably cap "ordinary" adventuring around level 20. There are certainly plenty of more powerful threats, but they'd become rarer and more unique after that point. 20+ adventuring would involve the Envidier and the Typhos, two rival quasi-deity "families" (for lack of a better word), and their machinations on the prime materal. Plus things like diamond or typhoon elementals, genie lords, battle fiends, and the fey court.

Hrm. Maybe I should run a 20+ game.

All those factions do impact the prime world, but usually not in a massively destructive manner, and those that do face retaliation from their peers. Areas that routinely experience alot of incursion are typically not settings for lower-level play.

 

[Nifft]

At what level would/will/have PCs in your campaign world "topped out" of the challenges available in the Material Plane world?
30

What I mean is, at what level will they stop finding challenges without going off plane?
Actually, 30 is the cap for off-plane too. By 30, they're damn near demi-gods.

And if your world has high-level challenges (10+, 15+, 20+, 30+, etc.) what has kept these challenges from totally wrecking the world before the PCs were around?
Nothing. The world has been wrecked several times, twice while the PCs were unable to do much except survive.

The things that challenge a 20th-level group could completely wipe out most cities smaller than metropolises -- why haven't they?
They have. The ones that remain do so because of (1) luck and (2) the many 20th level NPCs who give their lives to protect them.

Are there any things in the world that "always have been, always will be"? Like a guardian that has never been passed (and could never be passed)?
Yes.

If you have such a thing, do you ever expect the PCs to level up to where they can defeat the thing? If so, why hasn't some NPCs ever leveled up enough to kill it?
No. Things that "always have been, always will be" must be unkillable or must self-incarnate if destroyed.

Do PCs ever retire? Are there always "bigger fish" in the campaign world?
If a player wants his PC to retire, he does so. (I guess I don't understand this one.)
Since I'm not interested in running games above level 30, but the CRs for critters in my world go up to 57, the answer to that last one is "pretty much".

(Commoners? NPCs?)
Extinct. They all got eaten by demons a thousand years ago. Humanity is smaller in numbers than in our world, but each human is individually powerful. Average NPC level is 10; max NPC level is 20. Each city has 5-30 NPCs of 20th level. The world has around 40 Archmagi (20th level Wizards or Sorcerers); their names are fairly well known.

(Why don't these 20th level NPCs do everything?)
In addition to possibly having some NPC class levels, NPCs lack one thing all PCs seem to have: a deathwish. NPCs are mostly sensible folks cowards who are delighted to pay someone else to raid the goblin lair, while the NPCs merely defend their own homes, and only fight as a last resort.

Cheers, -- N