Why don't more people play high level campaigns? 13th+

[Pants]

Well, a couple of my players will probably be breaching the level 11 boundary soon so I'll be seeing how I do at running a pseudo-high level campaign again.

The only problem I've noticed so far is that, if you use a lot of humanoid opponents, you HAVE to bulk them up with tons and tons of gear to make them effective, especially fighter types. I know that I usually end up slapping on a bunch of repetitive gear that gets sold the moment the PC's kill them and take their stuff (ie cloaks of resistance +1/+2, rings of protection +1, +1 swords, etc) and even then they don't end up lasting long enough.

Which is probably why I'll be switching over to less gear-dependent foes from now on.

Other than that, bring on the high levels!

 

[wayne62682]

IIRC it has to do with the insane power of high level spells that essentially let you bypass most adventures unless the DM deliberately tries to screw you over. You can teleport right to the heart of the dungeon, bypassing it completely. You can abuse various sources to teleport to plane where time moves quicker, so you can rest/heal up and then pop right back in as though nothing happened. You can use Time Stop and then cast several Meteor Swarms to obliterate anything. Polymorph into a dragon/dire bear/efreet/whatever and smash things AND cast spells. The list goes on and on.. I'm not saying ALL high level games are like this, but most of these things aren't even abuses but common usage.

 

[Particle_Man]

This is part of why I like Bo9S.

Martial Adepts have a limited list of "magic" options, most of which are encounter based. In addition, they often take up a standard or full round action, so stops the multiple rolling of iterative attacks in many cases.

I wonder if a campaign that only allowed Martial Adept classes would do better at high levels?

 

[I'm A Banana]

#1: People don't like the feel of high level adventures. While it works fine with the right approach, the capabilities that are in the PC's hands makes short-cutting stories and plots somewhat easier than most DM's like.

#2: High level takes a long time to prepare. A lot of number-crunching. I know *I* don't have time to bother with much of that.

#3: High level adventures have less support. While there's a smattering of good stuff up there, most designers are more comfortable in the lower levels, so the high-powered stuff isn't addressed.

It might take until 4e to get these addressed, but IMHO, the fact that a high-level or epic-level campaign is even viable (albeit a lot of hard work) is one of the great accomplishments of 3e.

 

[Squire James]

I think part of the problem is that most players and DMs aren't comfortable role-playing major mythological figures and the scope of the problems they face. In other words, they have trouble writing stories about Hercules and his three equally-powerful friends. The only people like that in modern thought are superheroes, so high-level adventurers are thought of in that framework rather than the Jason and the Argonauts framework that was probably intended. Of course, one should note that Jason and the Argonauts are sometimes portrayed as getting rid of Hercules to make sure there was still sufficent glory for themselves (because Herc could do as much as all the others put together, and then some).

I guess the "hero myth" is that One Man, The Hero, a Mostly Unremarkable Man that Could be One of Us, saves the world from Unspeakable Evil (how many action movie trailers have a narration starting with "One Man"?). I guess a high-level character party would be: Four Men and Women, the Heroes, Remarkable People who Coincidentally have Equal Power, All of Which Have Much More Power than We Can Imagine Ourselves Having, save the world from something that rates as Merely Average Evil by their standards. Not as much zing, I suppose.

 

[Tclynch]

I'd love to play in one. Especially if there are alot of politics involved. Care to run it?

 

[phindar]

The various versions of "there's always a bigger fish" argument doesn't help, because if the PCs don't heed it, it's very difficult to do the kind of game you have been playing and enjoying from level 1 up.

I think this is because the nature of the game changes every 5 levels. It starts out as gritty low fantasy, ramps up to heroic fantasy, and then past 10th it becomes a superhero game. If you start your character out as a regular guy and you play him up to a Great Warrior (or whatever), its a little disconcerting when that character becomes Superman.

Its like if you were a big fan of Batman comics, and one day you were reading one and Batman was flying through Gotham and firing laser beams out of his eyes. When did he learn to do that, he's Batman for the love of jeez! (Batman as he is written is pretty superhuman, but thats not the point, if you wanted to read a comic about a flying guy with heat vision, there are others out there.) Now imagine a comic where Batman could hit a level where he could have his parents resurrected.

 

[Morrow]

I don't really see the problem with high level spells. Sure, you've got to pay attention when you design your adventures, but its a good thing. When the party cleric lay a harm smackdown on the Yuan-ti abomination cleric I was thrilled. When the party used scrying and teleport spells to rescue the noblewoman without battling the pirates who had kidnapped her I congratulated them for their effective planning, and filed away those pirate stat blocks to use later. By the time PCs have access to upper level spells, I don't want to run the same old adventures I ran at low levels. I want them to challenge me to come up with exciting new adventures and deadly new opponents. It keeps the game fresh.

 

[Nifft]

It takes a while to get there.

My group just cracked 16th level. They are quite happy with high-level play.

For me as the DM, it's just getting to the good part -- where they know there's no one higher level to hold their hands, and no where that's safe from the level of enemies that they're making.

, -- N

 

[Sigurd]

For me one of the serious flaws of high levels is that the players drop out of most of the social context of the game.

They never faced 5th and 12th level shopkeepers and commoners. Now they are uber powers able to kill everyone in a city block and the world at large has no natural relationship with them, except maybe as supplicants.

The opportunity for adventure has now changed from a whole city to maybe 5-20 individuals that might be on par with the players. Most of the 'laws' are conveniences. Either you have to progress their whole setting with all the stat blocks or they outstrip everyone they would typically meet.

If players act strategically they do huge damage fast, allowing them to drop the uber foes. If their opponents act with the same ruthlessness the players drop like flies and are not happy about it.

s