Sacrosanct
Legend
Probably 5-8 or 9. Highest was 14.
D&D 5E What's Your Level Sweet Spot?
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Zardnaar
Legend
I understand just fine tyvm.
It's not worth the amount of effort to put in as a DM vs starting over.
More or less told my players session 0 in August at best it's level 12, probably wrap up around 10.
If they want to play higher pick featless game or OSR game.
I've run and played in campaigns up to 20 (30th in 4E), for me there is no one sweet spot. It depends on whether or not you can tell an interesting story.
It's like with super hero stories. You have your street level heroes (DareDevil), all the way up to Superman level (or above). Then you have some oddballs like Spider-Man who just does street level stuff because other people take care of the more global threats.
In general the story has to shift at higher levels and that can be a bit difficult. But I like the challenge as a DM coming up with high level opponents that can truly be a threat. Sleeping gods stirring in their slumber, cabals of ancient red dragons, demonic armies readying for invasion, that sort of thing.
But it does change the nature of the story, so unless you can pull a Peter Parker you're probably going to be doing some wacky stuff.
It's like with super hero stories. You have your street level heroes (DareDevil), all the way up to Superman level (or above). Then you have some oddballs like Spider-Man who just does street level stuff because other people take care of the more global threats.
In general the story has to shift at higher levels and that can be a bit difficult. But I like the challenge as a DM coming up with high level opponents that can truly be a threat. Sleeping gods stirring in their slumber, cabals of ancient red dragons, demonic armies readying for invasion, that sort of thing.
But it does change the nature of the story, so unless you can pull a Peter Parker you're probably going to be doing some wacky stuff.
I'm very much in the 3-5 range. Anything past that just has too many PC hit points and healing capability at the table, and the damage capabilities of the monsters in their MM statblocks start losing any sort of power as written. Levels above 6 I have to start manually adding in extra damage or even max out damage rolls just to start being threatening.
I'm actually considering the idea for my next campaign of having all PCs start with the HP of a level 3 character and then never going up (unless their CON mod gets raised.) Everything else continues to advance, but their HP total remains constant. Yes, at some point they might face off against high CR monsters that can one-shot them if they get lucky... but that just means the players will have to change how they interact and play with those creatures, not just defaulting to combat by attrition. And honestly, with the amount of healing and revivify spells my tables can usually have on hand... even PCs getting one-shotted won't be that big of a deal.
Having now spent a half-dozen different campaigns with my same groups of players having to try and whittle down their massive HP pools from all their PCs at the table over and over and over... the idea that a Fighter with a +2 CON mod and only 3rd level hit points (total of 28) is exactly at the point of being insta-killed by an adult green dragon's average breath weapon (56 poison damage) should it fail his saving throw is looking more and more like a good thing at this point. An adult dragon should be scary... and being able to one-shot a fighter who tries to go toe-to-toe with it is a win-win in my book.
I'm actually considering the idea for my next campaign of having all PCs start with the HP of a level 3 character and then never going up (unless their CON mod gets raised.) Everything else continues to advance, but their HP total remains constant. Yes, at some point they might face off against high CR monsters that can one-shot them if they get lucky... but that just means the players will have to change how they interact and play with those creatures, not just defaulting to combat by attrition. And honestly, with the amount of healing and revivify spells my tables can usually have on hand... even PCs getting one-shotted won't be that big of a deal.
Having now spent a half-dozen different campaigns with my same groups of players having to try and whittle down their massive HP pools from all their PCs at the table over and over and over... the idea that a Fighter with a +2 CON mod and only 3rd level hit points (total of 28) is exactly at the point of being insta-killed by an adult green dragon's average breath weapon (56 poison damage) should it fail his saving throw is looking more and more like a good thing at this point. An adult dragon should be scary... and being able to one-shot a fighter who tries to go toe-to-toe with it is a win-win in my book.
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TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
Over time, I've become a fan of Tier 3 (11-16). Martials are pretty heavily differentiated from casters in overall damage by this point. Casters have encounter shifting level 6+ spells, but not that many of them.
Monsters become much more interesting at CR 10+, if not quite at 4E levels, and the characters can survive much harder challenges. And if, as the DM, you overtune the encounters, revivify, raise dead and resurrection can fix up mistakes without derailing the campaign.
Assuming a fairly "normal" magic item distribution, by Tier 3 attunement actually comes into play and requires the PCs to make hard choices about their items. I've already had PCs give up items like a cloak of protection in order to get different capabilities.
Monsters become much more interesting at CR 10+, if not quite at 4E levels, and the characters can survive much harder challenges. And if, as the DM, you overtune the encounters, revivify, raise dead and resurrection can fix up mistakes without derailing the campaign.
Assuming a fairly "normal" magic item distribution, by Tier 3 attunement actually comes into play and requires the PCs to make hard choices about their items. I've already had PCs give up items like a cloak of protection in order to get different capabilities.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
Heh. That's why I enjoy it! I just grab monsters out of Mordenkainen's, and then I throw a few more in just for fun.
At low levels, I actually have to worry about the encounter math. At high levels, I just don't care.
My current campaign has 12th level characters, which is the highest level I've seen first-hand. I like it. In fact, I'm pretty happy at every level except for 1st, when due to the fragility of the characters I feel somewhat constrained as a DM in the types of stories I can tell.
aco175
Legend
I also like the 3-7 range. Typical campaign starts at level 1 and it takes only a few nights to get to level 3 before things slow down a bit. Hitting 5th is a point in itself since this is when things like a 2nd attack or 3rd level spells kick in. We tend to hit a few more levels before the group starts to look for a close to the campaign. This tends to run about 1 year to 1.5 years. Each game tends to run to level 11-12 before ending. We never ran a 5e game above this.
Nebulous
Legend
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