D&D General Why does D&D still have 16th to 20th level?

[Asisreo]

Why would you get worn out? And if you're worn out playing D&D, how is playing yet more D&D at low levels any less wearing?

Playing High-Level D&D requires a much tighter understanding of lore, settings, spells, and game structure. At low levels, you can say "Hey, there was an ancient King that traveled to the northern mountains of Loridyne and he was imprisoned for all eternity for his greed," and the players kinda just now know a chunk of history.

At high levels, that king isn't just someone they can visit, its possible that they have the resources and abilities to un-imprison, resurrect, and speak with this ancient king and you, as the DM, have to figure out what he would say and exactly what he knows.

Lower levels have inherently more restrictions for the players but high levels remove many of those restrictions and a DM must take account of that.

 

[Asisreo]

The intended rate of levelling up in D&D 5E (as explicitly stated in the rules) is:
Levels 1 & 2: gain a level after one session (4-hours)
Levels 3 through 20: gain a level after two to three sessions

So, to gain level 20 should take 36-53 four-hour sessions. You could do it in a year.

Its true that this is a system assumption but its pretty difficult to actually emulate that.

I've done it, but its not your bread-and-butter LoTR's campaign.

 

[Yaarel]

Tier, Population Impacted by Character

• 1-4: Basic, population 3-100 (friends, family, neighborhood)
• 5-8: Expert, population 300-10,000 (school, community, town)
• 9-12: Champion, population 30,000-1,000,000 (city, small nation)

• 13-16: Master, population 3,000,000-100,000,000 (large nation)
• 17-20: Legend, population 300,000,000-10,000,000,000 (superpower, planet)
• 21-24: Immortal, population (planets, plane)



Formula: 10^level/2

 

[Reynard]

Conan proved that conquering a kingdom was "easy" but ruling it was hard. I'm totally fine with D&D reflecting that.

 

[pogre]

We enjoy high level campaigns. We don't always go to 20, but we have.

The experience point table seems to work very well for us. 1st and 2nd levels fly by. Levels 3 - 11 are slower. Levels 14+ go pretty quickly again. I do use XP and our group gets most of its XP from defeating foes. 1st to 20th usually take us about a year-and-a-half playing on a weekly basis.

There is no denying the game changes, but PCs can do some really fun and interesting stuff.

 

[grimslade]

I am going to answer the original post, as fascinating as the tangents have been. D&D goes to level 20 for tradition and the synergy with the 20 sided die. The fact that we are only discussing if levels 16-20, instead of 10 to 20 is telling. The top 20% is not for everyone, but it is a nice rounding of the power curve over 20 levels. You could have smaller PHBs, maybe one for every tier of play? I think at that point it gets silly. Have the game in one book and options to deepen play, not extend play.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Honestly I effectively cut out the first two levels when I DM and tell the players to make 3rd Level PCs. The first two levels just don't give you much at all to work with and PCs can die too easily.

 

[Blue Orange]

Given the heated discussion here, if I were Hasbro I'd keep the high levels around given there's such interest in them. I mean, why not? You only lose a few pages since you need the spells and such for high-level enemies anyway, and lots of people who want to play them anyway.

Amusingly, Dungeon Crawl Classics goes the other direction and starts you at 0th level with multiple characters, only some of whom are expected to survive, to give your 1st-level PC some backstory.

I remember with FRUA (the 1st-ed goldbox game design tool) back in the 90s people kept arguing over whether levels 30-40 were useful. Someone just released a game where your 35th level characters fight Cthulhu...

 

[Don Durito]

20th level seems like the natural endpoint because there's not really any spells higher than 9th level.

There doesn't seem much point continuing to level up a caster beyond that - how do you top Wish really?

You can have less levels, but if you want more you need to either change the spell progression and slow it down or ditch the Vancian magic system like 4e did.

 

[Malmuria]

I am going to answer the original post, as fascinating as the tangents have been. D&D goes to level 20 for tradition and the synergy with the 20 sided die. The fact that we are only discussing if levels 16-20, instead of 10 to 20 is telling. The top 20% is not for everyone, but it is a nice rounding of the power curve over 20 levels. You could have smaller PHBs, maybe one for every tier of play? I think at that point it gets silly. Have the game in one book and options to deepen play, not extend play.

"synergy with the 20 sided die" makes sense from a marketing perspective but not from a game design perspective. Maybe that's the crux of it: stopping at level 20, rather than at level 14 or level 30, has nothing to do with how people actually play the game, but just because it's a game that uses a 20-sided die for a lot of things. They'll actually design most content for play up to 12/13th levels, and if individual groups/dms want to homebrew up to 20 then great. smh