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

[nevin]

That kind of 2e stype would make for a super useful optional rule

Not wanting to go back to 1e but I always liked the segments for spell casting and if you took damage you either lost the spell (gygax way), or had to start over (some table rules I played). I think that was better than concentration which just sucks all the way around. that and memorization time made casters far less likely to cast multiple buffs unless everything was on the line. Though modern games with one big encounter then go rest kind of ruin anything like that.

 

[ezo]

It's why I laugh at all the threads on how wizards are overpowered. I tend to play casters and in high level games I find I'm more often whining I didn't memorize the spell I need than ending the DM's great plan. I suspect most of those guys have either never played a caster at high level or played where thier DM didn't make them right down their choices and force them to stick with them.

When in high level games you have 20+ spells you can prepare and likely a dozen or so rituals at your disposal without preparation, I find wizards who don't have " the right spell" either unimaginative or lacking insight. Wizards, especially, rule when it comes to utility and with a good dozen or so selected spells you have the right spell for 99% of the occasions.

Not wanting to go back to 1e but I always liked the segments for spell casting and if you took damage you either lost the spell (gygax way), or had to start over (some table rules I played). I think that was better than concentration which just sucks all the way around. that and memorization time made casters far less likely to cast multiple buffs unless everything was on the line. Though modern games with one big encounter then go rest kind of ruin anything like that.

I like the house-rule that spells of 1 action take that many counts of initiative before completing. During that time, if you get hit you must make a concentration check or the spell is ruined. For example, if my initiative is 14 and I am casting slow (3rd-level) then on 14, 13, and 12 I am "casting" and on 11 it is completed. Any damage on 12-14 would require the concentraction check.

Harsher games include the lost of the spell slot in that case.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's also important to actually have a good game. When the game is good people will prioritize attending the game over other fun opportunities that appear.

If you have a game that happens consistently every other week for years, then it's probably a good game

Nah, I’m a rubbish DM.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Did WoTC ever give official stats for Elminster, Simbul and characters like that? Cause if i'm not mistaken, PC and NPC/Monsters aren't following same creation rules in 5e.

And while they did cap levels at 20 by not having concrete rules for epic level games and advancement, beside epic boons, that unofficially just means that once you hit lv 20, you are done with game. You are top kahuna, big boss. Easy retirement unless there is world ending stuff you need to sort out.

Neither Elminster or the Simbul yet, but two other of the Seven Sisters - Alustriel and Laeral - have had their stats published. I'm going to guess that Elminster will be statted out in one of the upcoming FR books this year, as the Dalelands are going to be a featured region.

On the high-level enemy side, Halaster Blackcloak was given a stat block in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which seems reasonable, as he's the mad mage in question.

 

[Zardnaar]

Voted for DM burnout and IRL time it takes to get there.

 

[kigmatzomat]

1. DM has to be able to pull an elephant out of his ass at any moment because someone might do something he forgot they could do. ..... you can spend 3 weeks tuning the encounters to prepare for the parties abilities and one mid to high level ability can screw all that tuning up.

I don't care if players defeat my enemies. I mean, I kind of expect them to. And I don't care how. Nor do I tune encounters for weeks. I don't try for "the perfect fight". I generally crank the dial up a few ticks past their last fight and move on. I sometimes think "I wonder how they'll survive this" and wait and see.

They don't know if the fight was supposed to be easy or hard. Did I intend that? Who knows. And don't care, as long as we're all having fun.

Plus I am perfectly willing to kill an entire high level party in a fight....because it doesn't end the campaign. It just slows them down and steals their gear. The clones get out of their vats, pull on their backup gear and head out.

2. High level games if you play in campaigns generally have consequences.

Yeah, low level ones have consequences too. And honestly, death is less of a consequence at high levels.

or the Paladin get the uber relics and becomes completely invincible

This gets to the fact this edition doesn't identify what "balanced gear" looks like. In 3e there was a chart. You might not like it, but it provided guidelines. Which also provided, indirectly, rules for giving enemies gear. Lots of +3 Widgets had to be pried out of their previous weilders' cold dead hands.

....
or the one secret evil character kills everyone and walks away whistling into the night.
....
It takes tons, and I means 100's of tons of effort to make sure the characters all have thier niche

This falls into my "don't play with jerks" table rule. Characters can evolve and grow, but don't try to powergame the uber character. And no secret evil characters. My games have had very clearly known evil characters, but they are team-oriented evil. Oh, they skim some a few extra jewels off the top and are willing to kill that villain the nicer members would negotiate with but they generally agree with the party's goals even if they think the methods are "soft".

PCs don't actually want to thwart the party. Those become NPCs.

But at the same time at that level every single character at some point is going to take over a scenario and single handedly "hulk smash" your planning and win far faster than you thought possible. And you have to remember at High level's that's the game as intended.

Imo that's the game at all levels. The players surprise us DMs. I'm all for it. I count on it. I don't know how the players will win some fights. Sometimes they realize they should run away. Sometimes they win big. Other times, a wet clone pops out of a vat.

4. Too many people have only played high level where the DM kneecapped everything

Yeah, this misses the point.

Be happy as a DM the party dosn't have to slog through forests for days. Lean into accelerated timelines. Have fun with the teleportation. Set weird traps, like a painting of a place the PCs need so they can teleport somewhere they have never been and have it be mislabeled so they go to the wrong place or add a Glyph of Warding in the painting that casts a Seeming on the party so they look like villains on arrival or maybe Mass Polymorph as birds so they fly away in different directions.

6. Another problem of High level games are the guys that think the bad guys doing the same kinds of things the PC's will do is lame and unfair. .... Was it unfair hijinks when Sauron Froze the mountains and forced the party to go through Moria? Of course it was nothing is fair at High Level.

Also falls under "don't play with jerks". Players should be prepared for smart villains. Villains are evil, they will do the stuff players do plus more horrible things.

Like turning your family to statues and hiding them in a permanent Nondetection field. Or even turning their own family into statues and hiding them in the Nondetection to "protect" them. Or maybe it's an elven "hero" who rather than killing "villains", simply "time shifts" them by a century, making the victim start from scratch with no resources.

Sometimes at high level play "antagonist" is more appropriate than "villain". Nothing like a determined 3rd level paladin to flummox a party of heroes.

Unless someone cracks what they tried to do with the epic level handbook in 3rd or pathfinders Mythic Paths (which are much better but still really hinky) I don't think High level play will ever be a large part of the games played.

I agree. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy that people won't play high levels if every GM had to figure out high level play on their own.

I find it sad that the original WotC stand-out product was Primal Order, a capstone meta-system for running gods on top of other games, like 2e. I think by the time the ELH was in development for 3e, the pre-TSR WotC designers had cashed out and moved on.

 

[tetrasodium]

I disagree. Teaching the DMs how to run high level campaigns outside of the rulebooks would be a mistake. They can't assume people are going to want to run published adventures, and it would seem like a cash grab to tell DMs in the DMG to buy other books if they want to learn how to run the game at the levels listed in the PHB.

No. They need to teach the DMs how to build high level campaigns in the DMG or they have failed at their job in teaching new DMs.

Running high let gameplay without just treating it like a high level one shotis a totally different skill set that needs a lot of mechanical support that usually only starts becoming somewhere in tier2 of play andsn't really have it's value start to bloom until the solar death ray of tier3 starts charging up. Having a book to provide those mechanics targeted at gameplay earlier than the ELH did would be a reasonable thing.

Here are some very low hanging examples that probably don't need much context

• Take the old bonus type and slot conflicts. Prior to that level range above players just don't have enough magic items for those things to provide much in the way of functional value. For a game that is going to continue but longer than seven to ten though it becomes super valuable but needs to start being in place long before it's needed on order for players to work and plan around limitations in ways that allow for meaningful horizontal growth before the wheels start coming off the system. Without that shift from vertical to horizontal growth∆ I'm tier2 you wind up with PCs blasting past the system's capabilities by the time they get to high levels & the game turns into one of holding the system together rather than weaving s story together.
• Old style per attack flat DR/$thing where it can take something about the PCs (ie alignment/race/etc) or what the weapon itself is made from. At low levels it's ok to just add more hp bump the ac or whatever... As levels progress though it adds room for horizontal advancement and foes that can laugh at someone's metaphorical plus five holy avenger§ analog without completely shutting down everyone else who might have a +0 or masterwork weapon made from a special material. Bob can still use Link's masterwork, it's just not capable of trivializing foes the other perty members can contribute to
• Old style per attack flat resist/element(s). Similar to DR with spells but adds a category of horizontal growth. A +0 or +1 weapon that includes a d6 of a given element might not be as good as s +2 +3 or whatever, but it's going to be reliable in the vast majority of situations till you start reaching edge cases.
• Those last two need to start before they are needed to allow prep that feels more organic than a sudden shift to some kinds of New game plus.
• The vancian prep and more time consuming hurdles on prepped lists discussed a few postd back

∆likely a mix of both
§ that was a real thing at one point and not just a meme.

 

[Staffan]

I find it sad that the original WotC stand-out product was Primal Order, a capstone meta-system for running gods on top of other games, like 2e. I think by the time the ELH was in development for 3e, the pre-TSR WotC designers had cashed out and moved on.

I believe Primal Order was Peter Adkison's baby, but you're not wrong otherwise. When Wizards first struck big with Magic, they went on a buying spree acquiring moderately successful RPGs (e.g. Talislanta and Ars Magica) as well as making some of their own (Everway), but pretty soon their financial advisors told them to stop spending money on low-ROI things like RPGs and focus on Magic which was making huge piles of cash. So they shuttered their RPG department, but made pretty good efforts to give the games new homes.

 

[MGibster]

Higher levels get less play because most people don't find them as fun to play as some of the lower levels. As a DM, it's more work on my part to keep track of creature abilities and hit points during combat that doesn't actually add to my enjoyment of the game. It's also a bit more difficult to actually challenge the players because of the myriad of abilities they have at their fingertips. For the players, they keep having abilities piled on them that it can really slow down their turns.

It's trivially easy to just start a game at level 10, so I don't think the problem is DMs getting burned before the campaign can progress to higher levels. I think most people just look at those higher levels and say, "Meh. No, thanks."

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't care if players defeat my enemies. I mean, I kind of expect them to. And I don't care how. Nor do I tune encounters for weeks. I don't try for "the perfect fight". I generally crank the dial up a few ticks past their last fight and move on. I sometimes think "I wonder how they'll survive this" and wait and see.

They don't know if the fight was supposed to be easy or hard. Did I intend that? Who knows. And don't care, as long as we're all having fun..

I don't think Nevin was taking about the GM needing to pull out that elephant because the players used high level abilities to win a fight. High level abilities are things that reshape the very foundations that reality is built on and the rest of his post gives multiple great examples of NPC countermeasures like geographically distant feints and lead lined transports showing that