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

[Upper_Krust]

Im curious. What playing itch is scratched at level 20 that isnt scratchable at level 12 ?

Anything where the collateral damage is more than the effects of a fireball.

Pick the anime, comic book, manga, movie or sci-fi of your choice. Are the Avengers capped at Level 12? Does Goku destroy planets at Level 12? Was the TARDIS built by Level 12 characters?

You might want to: take the good fight to a Demon Prince, wrestle a Kaiju, time travel, battle a Great Old One, invade Hell and shave Asmodeus' moustache.

Another question might be: Why would anyone want to play Level 12 when they could play Level 20...or beyond!

 

[NN]

Aha. Well theres your answer.

Most D&D Players want to be Aragorn, not The Silver Surfer.

 

[Clint_L]

Anything where the collateral damage is more than the effects of a fireball.

Pick the anime, comic book, manga, movie or sci-fi of your choice. Are the Avengers capped at Level 12? Does Goku destroy planets at Level 12? Was the TARDIS built by Level 12 characters?

You might want to: take the good fight to a Demon Prince, wrestle a Kaiju, time travel, battle a Great Old One, invade Hell and shave Asmodeus' moustache.

Another question might be: Why would anyone want to play Level 12 when they could play Level 20...or beyond!

All the stories I care about have personal stakes. This sounds more like banging action figures together, which is fun on occasion but doesn’t sustain my interest. I suspect most people feel the same, which is why high level characters are more fun to think about than to actually play.

 

[TiQuinn]

Aha. Well theres your answer.

Most D&D Players want to be Aragorn, not The Silver Surfer.

You must have talked to a lot of players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Aha. Well theres your answer.

Most D&D Players want to be Aragorn, not The Silver Surfer.

The Surfer is one of my favorite Marvel characters. Insane cosmic power coupled with a high moral center and a philosophical soul, exploring the universe.

 

[Laurefindel]

For me the reason is simple; players have too many resources - mostly too many hp and too many spell slots.

Either the DM has to force a constant break-neck pace to prevent PCs from refreshing their resources too often, or they must face super-deadly encounters that take hours of game-time to complete to be properly challenged.

It takes more and more consideration from the DM to plan suitable encounters, often to the detriment of building a good campaign (because energy and time investment is finite). Also, playing monsters/NPC antagonists properly and efficiently against 3-5 players who have only one character to run, and which they know inside and out, takes a lot of brain-juice. I find it more exhausting than rewarding.

Some DMs achieve all this remarkably well - some even find it easy - but it really isn’t easy. So as I tip my hat to DMs who can run high level adventures and still have fun, I’m not surprised that campaigns stop when PCs reach level 12-13.

 

[Clint_L]

You must have talked to a lot of players.

Well, the thread is specifically exploring why most players don’t do high level play, and he posited a reason, in response to a specific point someone made. Seems reasonable.

 

[TiQuinn]

Well, the thread is specifically exploring why most players don’t do high level play, and he posited a reason, in response to a specific point someone made. Seems reasonable.

No, he asked a question supposing curiosity and when someone gave him an answer from their perspective, he dunked on it.

 

[Maxperson]

There is a wide ocean of difference between running a one shot or even a series of pseudo one shots that happens to be done at a high level compared to actually running an ongoing game at high levels that leans closer to sandbox than one shot. The mechanics I mentioned are examples of mechanical hooks and levers that provide the gm with beneficial functional tools for keeping that sandbox from collapsing under the gravitational pull of high level PCs who are equipped like PCs who walked the whole path and played in the hands of players experienced working/growing their characters alongside each other through that whole path.

The default "high level" play in the core books is pretty much committed to accepting that high level play is the exclusive domain of oke shots and collapsing campaigns in the process of rocketing towards the next campaign with new lower level PCs. You keep talking about if the dmg does/can teach a GM to run high level [campaigns]... Because of that acceptance it's impossible for the dmg to teach the gm to do something the system has accepted is a totally unsupported play style that exists well outside the realm of accepted play.

Any book attempting to teach a GM to run high level campaigns that aren't simple one shots and strings of one shots that happen to have high level PCs needs to bring with it the tools needed to support the gm it is attempting to "teach". Unfortunately wotc has so far shown a level of interest bordering on disdain when it comes to significant change and robust gm support.

I don't think they've defaulted to one shot for high level. I think they've ignored any sort of high level altogether. They've just told DMs it exists and left them to fend for themselves and then point to 90% as if that means something. It doesn't unless they fully support it and THEN look to see how many play.

As for being impossible, it's not. Whether they've accepted one shot only or not, they could still have changed their mind and done it differently. It's not impossible for them to support high level play. They just haven't chosen to.

 

[NN]

The Surfer is one of my favorite Marvel characters. Insane cosmic power coupled with a high moral center and a philosophical soul, exploring the universe.

Aha! so you don’t like The Surfer because they efficiently despatch a conveyor belt of CR(loads) foes, but because they grapple with the cosmic paradoxes of Reality, Existence, Morality, etc