D&D 5E Why is level 5-10 the "sweet spot" in D&D

[Ancalagon]

Hello

A comment in passing in another thread made me think. It seems that in 5e the "sweet spot" is level 5-10. Now is it *exactly* 5-10? (4-9? 5-9? etc etc) but let's not worry about the exact value. The thing that is remarkable about this is that the "sweet spot" for 2e and 3e were *also* level 5-10 (roughly speaking). I don't think that everyone would agree (it would be a miracle ha!) but there seems to be a general consensus.

Why is that?

 

[I'm A Banana]

The consensus is mostly born out of the math for pre-4e editions of the game.

At low levels, HP totals are small on both sides, making combat very "swingy:" first one to hit wins. PC's are fragile, so it doesn't feel like they can take risks. They have kind of a limited pool of resources to cope with potential problems. Etc.

Starting at level 5 (historically, with access to 3rd-level spells), PC's have a good breadth of resources and some staying power, and so can absorb some catastrophe without going off the rails.

By level 10 or so, historically, the higher-level spells kick in and change the math of the dungeon crawl such that tactics like teleport are viable. Combat becomes swingy again (save-or-die / save-or-suck spells and attacks become prominent), and the math gets to be a pain in the butt.

4e mitigated a lot of these problems, though it still had a bit of a math headache / option mess as levels went up. Less so than any e before it, though!

5e I think has improved on 4e's successes here by keeping low levels viable and high levels from being dominated by certain spell selections while keeping the essence of many of these tactics (so, for instance, save-or-suck spells still exist, but often are Concentration, so have a cost and a method for disruption). I've yet to see if 5e gets math-y at high levels (most campaigns I've played in so far peter out at level 8 or so), but I suspect it is less so than 4e in this regard.

But also, 5e seems to embrace the idea of a 20-level arc of play that goes from "fragile and risky" at low levels to "I win" at higher levels. It merely seems to have made this decision consciously rather than stumbled into it. The XP progression keeps PC's in those more robust middle levels for most of the play experience.

Folks who still run with their assumptions from previous editions probably presume that this sweet spot is still in place and still about the same, and while 5e's sweet spot is bigger (though not as big as 4e's "potentially the entire game"), it preserves the low-level-fragile and high-level-dominant strategies at the ends of the bell curve.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

I'll give it a go.

First, why is there a sweet spot at all? There are different mechanics for different kinds of class features, and not everyone gets everything. Tuning each mechanic so that class features are perfectly balanced across all levels isn't easy. (The easiest way to do this, of course, is to make everything identical.) At best, there will be an extended sweet spot, in which everything is good but in different ways, and the kinds of things that monsters and antagonists can do is also good, though sometimes in still more different ways.

Why from 5-10? Characters start having a good 'shtick' around level 5. Maybe it's a second attack, maybe it's a fireball, maybe it's something else that's good. By around level 10 or so, a character tends to have refined what he is; further levels either don't provide very much or provide too much.

So tuning the system to really shine at 5-12 makes good sense.

Anyway,

Ken

 

[Rhenny]

During the playtest I remember taking a survey asking about levels of campaigns run, etc. I think the data showed a pretty consistent sweet spot throughout editions (give or take a few levels). I think most gaming groups simply don't have campaigns that last so long so 10th becomes a pretty reliable top level.

Personally, I enjoy the fragility and relative simplicity of early levels. For one, they are easier to DM for. And, playing at lower levels gives players mor opportunity to try out different characters. I may be an outlier though.

Part of the sweet spot has to do with balancing complexity with ease of play ( for both DM and player). That balance is most likely the middle levels.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Um....it's not?

It's all sweet.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Because your PCs start to feel like heroes compared to the world around them, and by the time you get to 10th level, they've done plenty of heroic things and you want to try out a different archetype to play

 

[Psikerlord#]

I believe the number one reason is simple interest span. After hitting say level 10 or 11, GMs and players might be getting a bit bored of the campaign, or the system, or particular PCs, or they simply want to try something new. Or real life gets in the way for whatever reason and the game stalls. It's fun to start fresh. By 10th - 12th level the party might have a castle etc; those PCs made it, they get to retire, woot! Maybe you'll come back to them another day for a one off adventure.

(2) I think power wise there is a good balance with lots of interesting choices to be made during the game from level about 3 - 9. You can feel the PC progression vs the usual monsters, and there are still plenty of higher level (15+) monsters that scare the bejezus out of the party. Resources management matters and meaningful decisions need to be made. In earlier editions there was a good bounded accuracy in this level span.

(3) From about 11+, magic is overpowered. Reliable teleports, disintegration, info gathering spells, wishes, massive summons, passing through walls, changing memories, etc. It simply makes the game too easy without magical countermeasures (which works poorly in a low magic game, for example). It isn't as fun. Some martial aspects are also OP, like fighters only missing on a 1. Resources are too plentiful, there are fewer hard decisions to make encounter to encounter.

(4) The game can also get a bit gonzo in the back half (level 11+). Instead of fighting ogres or giants or dragons, you start fighting demon lords and demi gods and whatever. If you want a game grounded a little more in traditional/realistic (?) fantasy, you start to lose that at higher levels.

 

[Jester David]

I second [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION].
I also think there's a bit of a narrative reason. You have a feel for your character and can get invested, the story has moved passed set-up and exposition, but you haven't quite gotten tired of the characters and campaign yet, which can happen after 10+ levels.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Hello

A comment in passing in another thread made me think. It seems that in 5e the "sweet spot" is level 5-10. Now is it *exactly* 5-10? (4-9? 5-9? etc etc) but let's not worry about the exact value. The thing that is remarkable about this is that the "sweet spot" for 2e and 3e were *also* level 5-10 (roughly speaking). I don't think that everyone would agree (it would be a miracle ha!) but there seems to be a general consensus.

Why is that?

Because those are the levels Gygax and Arneson intended play with something approaching the modern playstyle.

In oD&D when you are low level most of the game is about NPC management. Can you and your team of armed and dangerous schlubs raid and rob the dungeon. The wizard has one spell at level 1 - and the fighter falls easily. Instead you bring a collection of fighters and as many war dogs as you can to do your fighting. The level 1 five PC party was never intended to work in oD&D - you instead went in mob handed and your most important stat was Charisma because it controlled how many hirelings you could bring with you.

At level 5 the wizard had fireball level spells. The fighter was on the verge of the next attack - and had enough magic items to put them on a whole different level to the hirelings you had with you. Meanwhile the 0th level hirelings were by this point chaff that monsters would one-hit without breaking a sweat and would be foolish to enter dungeons which 5th level PCs would find challenging. Which meant that from level 5 to level 9 the intended mode of the game was adventuring as a small team of PCs - strong enough that the wizard didn't just die to a stray blow, and against opposition hirelings couldn't handle.

Level 10 was the soft-cap. Almost all classes (let's not talk about the 1e Monk) gained land and followers. And stopped gaining hit points (seriously, go back to your AD&D books and check). The game after that point was intended to be domain management and the highest level PC in Greyhawk was Sir Robilar at IIRC level 13. PCs did sometimes go adventuring - but it was intended to be a change from the normal course of play.

2e largely removed the hirelings from prominance in 1e meaning that post-2e you were intended to play levels 1-4 in the same way as levels 5-9 despite them having been playtested for a very different game.

3e then removed the endgame. Unlike AD&D 3e decides, without thinking about it. to remove the level soft-cap and assumes you can keep playing levels 10 to the utterly un-playtested level 20 in exactly the same way you were intended to play levels 5-9. It did, however, improve the 1-4 experience at the cost of lowering the end of the sweet spot for this style of play (there's a reason E6 was a popular version).

5e at least thought about levels 10-20 and tapered off the way casters gained power. It has a better 1-4 experience than 3.X or especially 2e - and a better 11-20 experience than 3e. But this doesn't change the underlying fact that there were meant to be three related games cross-fading into each other and by 3.0 it was reduced to one single game. And mysteriously the sweet spot of 5e is exactly where oD&D and 1e intended you to play that game and not one of the other two that were a part of D&D. Funny, that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Because your PCs start to feel like heroes compared to the world around them, and by the time you get to 10th level, they've done plenty of heroic things and you want to try out a different archetype to play

It's worth mentioning that 10 levels is probably about how many levels you get through in 1 year of semi-regular D&D play if you level about 1/month or so, so there's probably a lot of truth to this reason for change, too.