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Why is level 5-10 the "sweet spot" in D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6864881" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>The consensus is mostly born out of the math for pre-4e editions of the game.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>By level 10 or so, historically, the higher-level spells kick in and change the math of the dungeon crawl such that tactics like <em>teleport</em> 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. </p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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 <em>consciously</em> rather than stumbled into it. The XP progression keeps PC's in those more robust middle levels for most of the play experience. </p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6864881, member: 2067"] 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 [I]teleport[/I] 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 [I]consciously[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Why is level 5-10 the "sweet spot" in D&D
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