D&D 5E Why Do Higher Levels Get Less Play?

[Maxperson]

Gotcha...yeah. I have only experienced the campaign book play and haven't looked at the MM. Are there more than one for 5E? Seems strange to not have a lot of monsters even if the rule books are kept to glacial release pace.

There are a few for 5e, but most of the high level new monsters are..............................dragons, giants and outsiders. They do add some more that aren't those things, though.

 

[Minigiant]

It's really simple

High level D&D is ..

1) High level magic spells
2) Low level everything else with 200-300% power

60% of the group don't get a new experience.
So they start over with new campaigns once the campaign arc ends

 

[DragonLancer]

My thoughts and my votes...

* High level PC spells make the game harder for DMs to account for:​

An inexperienced DM problem. I've seen newer DM's plan overland encounters and scenes only for the players to call teleport or overland flight, bypassing everything the DM had planned. It's why our 1st and 2nd edition campaigns came down to ending around 12th level. Spells undid everything planned. But experienced DMs should have this planned for. I always check with my players now what they have gained after each level so I can adapt to their capabilities.

* DMs lose interest in long-running campaigns and want to make new ones:​

I get this. I have so many campaign ideas and I'm always planning for the next one. After a while you do get that drive to start something new.

* Other :​

I stick to what I said in the other discussion that there aren't enough high level adventures. There are one off adventures but they don't always fit into an existing campaign or setting.

I try not to run one off adventures in my campaigns. I like the Adventure Path format that Paizo has used. A fully worked campaign that runs 1st to at least 16th level, if not occasionally higher. Pathfinder 1 has these but it seems no one does them for D&D5 or if they do they are a bit weird or come with their own setting in built.

Then there is the issue that low to mid level adventures tend to be fairly straight forward... dungeons, caves, courtly intrigue, dark woods...etc. By the time you get to the high levels, you are supposed to be doing adventures in the Outer Planes or Multiverse. It's a kind of sudden change in the nature of the game and isn't all that easy to plan adventures around.

 

[Gradine]

I went with two "lose interest" reasons because that really seems to be driving force behind it. I will say that I did have a 3.5 campaign that went into the mid-teens and I had an increasingly difficult time balancing encounters.

Of course I'm much more likely to start a new campaign with new PCs in the same setting and timeline as the previous campaign, so that the players get to experience the changes to the world they created themselves.

 

[Maxperson]

Then there is the issue that low to mid level adventures tend to be fairly straight forward... dungeons, caves, courtly intrigue, dark woods...etc. By the time you get to the high levels, you are supposed to be doing adventures in the Outer Planes or Multiverse. It's a kind of sudden change in the nature of the game and isn't all that easy to plan adventures around.

Yeah. Low level play is often the DM prepping things to encounter, adventure hooks, etc. for places where the part will be going(usually on foot or horse). High level play as you note often makes that a huge waste of time.

High level play is more along the lines of... The king needs you to cure his daughter who was cursed by Mab, the faerie Queen of Air and Darkness. Normal methods have all failed. Globos the wizard remembers the Great Sage they encountered when they were 6th level. Maybe he knows how to accomplish it. They go to the Great Sage who knows, but refuses to answer because last time they were there, the wizard burned down his vegetable garden with a fireball and it hasn't recovered. The party druid gets the necessary seeds and quickly regrows the plants to maturity. The Great Sage then tells them that the secret lies in the vault of GiggityGiggity, a demigod who dwells somewhere on Elysium, but he doesn't know where. Then more adventuring to find GiggityGiggity's location.

 

[Lazybones]

I'm running two high level campaigns at the moment, and for me, it's genuinely because it's just less fun.

Prep is a weird thing where it takes less time, and yet more time (depending on the session/encounters). Sometimes it is genuinely better to prep next to nothing, because you almost have little-to-no control over what your party can do (other than managing their threats). Sometimes, you're spending a ton of prep-time just on managing statblocks and numbers.

Spellcasters become "mini-DMs", where they can tell you, "hey, 50 sessions ago I picked up a demon's dagger. I'm going to use it to go to hell real quick" and then yeah - better be quick on your feet to improv that out-of-nowhere decision.

Plot/narrative wise, I lose interest hard. You've gotta up the stakes - world threats, plane threats, multiverse threats. You can work hard to tie character plot and motivations to it, but it isn't easy. It's really easy to care about that village you've been staying at for the past few weeks. It's much harder to care about the death of a multiverse (it's too big; less personal).

Fights take so long. And even worse - you're either looking at super-dangerous rocket tag fights, or you're using multiple encounters (which, combined with longer fights, means you're spending more time in initiative then outside of it).

All of this. I recently wrapped up a campaign where the group had reached 17th level, even though I had enough content for another level or two. Combats took forever and it was really hard to create challenges for the group without gimping one or more of their abilities (there were six players, which made it even harder).

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah. Low level play is often the DM prepping things to encounter, adventure hooks, etc. for places where the part will be going(usually on foot or horse). High level play as you note often makes that a huge waste of time.

High level play is more along the lines of... The king needs you to cure his daughter who was cursed by Mab, the faerie Queen of Air and Darkness. Normal methods have all failed. Globos the wizard remembers the Great Sage they encountered when they were 6th level. Maybe he knows how to accomplish it. They go to the Great Sage who knows, but refuses to answer because last time they were there, the wizard burned down his vegetable garden with a fireball and it hasn't recovered. The party druid gets the necessary seeds and quickly regrows the plants to maturity. The Great Sage then tells them that the secret lies in the vault of GiggityGiggity, a demigod who dwells somewhere on Elysium, but he doesn't know where. Then more adventuring to find GiggityGiggity's location.

Indeed.

High level play gives Players a lot of choice so it's less planning adventures and more planning NPCs and throwing together a location when the PCs choose to deal with that PC.

So you don't make a pyramid dungeon until the party decides to go so the Phyre Pharaoh in the Plane of fire.

But then you need good CR 11-20 monster to quickly populate the pyramid and ..

Let's start over at level 1. The evil wizard is dead anyways.

 

[Maxperson]

Indeed.

High level play gives Players a lot of choice so it's less planning adventures and more planning NPCs and throwing together a location when the PCs choose to deal with that PC.

So you don't make a pyramid dungeon until the party decides to go so the Phyre Pharaoh in the Plane of fire.

But then you need good CR 11-20 monster to quickly populate the pyramid and ..

Let's start over at level 1. The evil wizard is dead anyways.

Nah. I'm pretty good at improvising until the end of the night if I'm caught off guard, and then prepping more once I know where they are going. And that's only if I haven't already been able to prep since they likely needed to find out where the Phyre Pharaoh was in the first place, and that takes time.

Remember, it's generally not like they just poofed in at 17th level and are going to the plane of fire to visit the Pharaoh. They've been adventuring consistently since level 3 and I will generally know in advance what their plans are, or are likely to be.

 

[Minigiant]

Nah. I'm pretty good at improvising until the end of the night if I'm caught off guard, and then prepping more once I know where they are going. And that's only if I haven't already been able to prep since they likely needed to find out where the Phyre Pharaoh was in the first place, and that takes time.

Remember, it's generally not like they just poofed in at 17th level and are going to the plane of fire to visit the Pharaoh. They've been adventuring consistently since level 3 and I will generally know in advance what their plans are, or are likely to be.

I'm more mean that you would have to do a lot of it from scratch Because there will be very limited adventures to copy ideas from and limited monsters and traps within those levels in a theme.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm more mean that you would have to do a lot of it from scratch Because there will be very limited adventures to copy ideas from and limited monsters and traps within those levels in a theme.

Ahh. I don't use premade adventures for my high level stuff anyway, so no extra work there!! And yes, the limited high level monsters for 5e does hamper things.