D&D 5E (2014) Who's played 5e to high level? How was the variable progression rate in play?

[S'mon]

The PC's are now level 12, and aside from going from 11-12, which I think took less than two full sessions, the leveling has felt pretty steady overall, with the party leveling up every 3-4 sessions.

So it looks like progression rate 11+ may be double that of the earlier levels?

 

[S'mon]

Worked fine for our group. 1-17 with post-Tiamat XP.

How did the rate of advancement change? Were you levelling up twice as fast 11-17 as 5-10?

 

[S'mon]

An interesting thread, and I'd love to hear opinions from DMs with experience. I've managed to get two groups up to level 6, but never beyond; my vague estimation of levels 11+ is that you're going to spend a lot of time tossing groups of devils, demons and giants at the players, as solo monsters don't really work.

I have a small group & it's a pretty low magic campaign, I don't have any fear that adult
dragons and other Legendary creatures won't challenge them. We lost an 8th level PC to some
CR 1/2 shadows session before last, then last session a young red dragon nearly TPK'd them.

 

[S'mon]

I have two thoughts on this.

Back in the day, when I was young, carefree, and had the time, I did the 1e. And boy, did that take a while. But because I had the time, and my peers had the time, that was fine. Getting to the extreme high levels was both fun and a challenge. But we couldn't do that now.

Now, with 5e, we are getting to the high levels way more quickly. Which is also fun, and a challenge, and *manageable given my schedule.* It's just built differently.

More basically, it's engineered to advance PCs faster, and allow for more infrequent play (IMO) while keeping interest. I would say it has succeeded.

I run a face to face Mentzer Classic game, the PCs are 6th level after 6 months and around 23
sessions. About 4-5 sessions/level. My 5e game is online text-chat, highest PC just reached 9th after 40 sessions, 5 sessions/level. I've been finding that the faster progression rate of 5e so far works great for the slower text-chat format (about half the speed of tabletop), but I'm a bit worried that after 10th it may feel *too* fast. I do remember level 1 - kill an orc, get halfway to 2nd level - and I don't really want that at high level. One easy way to reduce XP though is just to use lots of low level foes, in 5e they still threaten but give meagre XP.

 

[psychophipps]

We actually had more problems fighting two young green dragons than fighting a single ancient green dragon. I think our group of 7 punked down the great wurm in about 6 rounds, IIRC.

 

[Prism]

In our high level campaign we are already maxed out at 20th (it was a conversion) and so can't really comment on progression but what I can say is that for many levels we have had very little combat. Much of our play is planning, plotting, learning, exploring. To be honest there aren't that many high CR creatures around that we need or want to fight. Therefore the progression is a little slower if anything, although maybe not as slow as 4th - 6th level which is taking an age in our other campaigns (a good thing)

If we played standard adventure modules which are usually more combat heavy it could be noticeable I would say.

 

[MostlyDm]

I think some of you may be looking at this different than I do.

The reduced XP requirements may not be intended to dramatically scale up the rate of advancement, but rather keep it mostly the same. Due to Bounded Accuracy, the expectation at higher levels is not that you will be constantly fighting ever-higher CR foes. Much more often you'll be fighting greater and greater numbers of lower CR foes. This much is an intentional, stated goal. But the lower CR XP values mean that the XP value from 30 orcs isn't that much more than the XP from 15 orcs. Not compared to the value of, say, an Adult Dragon. And you can fight Adult Dragons even at lower levels, again due to Bounded Accuracy.

So the XP rewards and requirements don't necessarily need to be ever-expanding.

In the E6 variant of 3e (aka The Best Variant), after 6th level all advancement comes in the form of feats or feat-like increments of ability (in my home brew we call them tiers). By default, each new feat/tier costs the same as the one before (I wanted slowed advancement so at the very highest "levels" I slowed it down a bit but the point remains). So the requirements are largely static... But the XP rewards also don't change substantially, because your effective threats remain similar. A bit tougher as you grow in tiers, but not dramatically so.

As I've said many times, in a lot of respects 5e feels like the designers took E6 and stretched that style of play out across 20 levels. So I think this comparison is useful. YMMV of course.

 

[psychophipps]

How did the rate of advancement change? Were you levelling up twice as fast 11-17 as 5-10?

We play about once a month for a good 8-9 hours. We averaged about a level a session or so all the way through. Had a few where we didn't level and a few where we leveled twice. Nothing too onerous about gaining levels. It was a great overall experience.

 

[Tony Vargas]

As I've said many times, in a lot of respects 5e feels like the designers took E6 and stretched that style of play out across 20 levels. So I think this comparison is useful.

This is the first time I've heard you say it - and it's an interesting insight. I always thought bounded accuracy, especially the earliest forms, with no progress at all, seemed like the treadmill without the numbers, even when they finally added some real advancement, because everyone gets the same proficiency bonus at the same level. Now that you mention it, E6 seems like a very plausible pedigree for Bounded Accuracy.