D&D 5E Why stop at Level 20?

[The Crimson Binome]

Your facts seem a bit skewed. You wouldn't face a bandit or skeleton at level 23 in 4e, it would be an astral reaver or a reanimated titan. This formula has existed and worked in every edition of D&D; at low levels you might fight bands of goblins whereas at high levels you are fighting bands of giants.

At level 5 you could fight a Ghoul, and at level 23 you could fight an Abyssal Ghoul Myrmidon. At level 5 you could fight a Legion Devil Grunt, and at level 21 you could fight a Legion Devil Legionnaire.

It's the same sort of trick as you might find in a Final Fantasy game, where you would eventually stop finding Imps entirely and only find Imp Captains (later replaced by Imp Princes), but it serves its purpose well enough.

 

[Guest 6801328]

In my ideal system the levels would become exponentially more difficult to achieve (with increasing powers based on infinitely extensible formulae, not tables) but would have sub-linear power progression. In other words, level 3 to 4 would take only a tiny fraction of the effort that 31 to 32 would have, and you wouldn't really notice the difference from 31 to 32.

The characteristics I would be looking for:
- Decreasing incentive to try to level, placing the emphasis on fun rather than powering up, while at the same time making players feel vested in their characters.
- Characters of drastically different levels could adventure together without the lower levels ones feeling useless, and those level 1 monsters can still be fun or even challenging at level 20.

 

[Fanaelialae]

At level 5 you could fight a Ghoul, and at level 23 you could fight an Abyssal Ghoul Myrmidon. At level 5 you could fight a Legion Devil Grunt, and at level 21 you could fight a Legion Devil Legionnaire.

It's the same sort of trick as you might find in a Final Fantasy game, where you would eventually stop finding Imps entirely and only find Imp Captains (later replaced by Imp Princes), but it serves its purpose well enough.

4e may have been more upfront about this than previous editions, but it did not innovate the idea of scaling creatures.

Look in the 1e MM2 and you'll see many creatures (like the Azer or the Barghest) with variable Hit Dice and XP values.

Look at the elementals in the 3.5e MM and you'll see small, medium, large, huge, greater, and elder elementals that span the range from CRs 1 to 11. Similarly, you might fight a CR 4 minotaur early in the game, and a CR 14 half-fiend vampire minotaur later in the game.

 

[Zardnaar]

You have to design a heap of crap most players won't use. I would rather have them focus on lvl 1-10 rather than 11-20 let alone 21-30.

 

[akr71]

You have to design a heap of crap most players won't use. I would rather have them focus on lvl 1-10 rather than 11-20 let alone 21-30.

I agree 100% However it would be nice, if after a few years (as in right now), the focus was shifted from levels 5-15. The published adventures sort of do that I suppose...

As much as I like LMoP, it would be nice to have a few more 'starter' adventures. Maybe it is time to change what is in the starter set.

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree 100% However it would be nice, if after a few years (as in right now), the focus was shifted from levels 5-15. The published adventures sort of do that I suppose...

As much as I like LMoP, it would be nice to have a few more 'starter' adventures. Maybe it is time to change what is in the starter set.

New adventure in the starter set along with a level 5-10 one would be nice.

 

[akr71]

Heck, if that is too much work, they could include a coupon for the DM's Guild.

 

[S'mon]

As far as 5e goes, with Epic Boons it means I can play indefinitely with level 20 PCs and still use the same material as before - eg IMC a 19th level Barbarian is about to enter the Forge of Fury .

In 3e & 4e you couldn't use low level stuff with high level PCs anyway, so less benefit in setting a cap.

 

[Oofta]

Having run a 4E campaign all the way to 30th, I will just say that it gets a little weird after a while. You end up hopping the planes, fighting avatars of demigods. While I had an epic story for the campaign, coming up with such story arcs is difficult.

Think of it this way. At 1st level you're just a nobody. Maybe some locals know who you are and respect you, but that's it. You might deal with leaders of smaller towns but probably not with even a regional leaer. Around 10th level you're getting fairly well known in your region, and meeting with their leaders if you want. By 20th level? At that point your fame (or infamy) has spread far and wide, you may even get into the history books.

So where do you go from there? What kind of threats do you face? You've slain the ancient dragon and crushed the arch-lich. If you go beyond that you're facing foes that could take out small kingdoms single-handedly, and hanging out with the gods. It gets really difficult to have a campaign that's grounded in any sort of reality. So what to do? Your options are limited. You can just move the campaign to some sort of planar campaign where the "orc" equivalent now have hundreds of hit points that can do 150 points of damage per round. You can have a world-ending enemy show up that only the heroes can face.

But it just becomes a treadmill. Instead of dealing with lords and kings, now you're dealing with planar beings. Your campaign loses any sense of being grounded in a standard fantasy world. Encounters that are actually a challenge become more difficult.

That's fine for some campaigns. I had fun with mine ... but it was a once-in-a-decade type of campaign that I would not want to run very often. In addition, after a while the characters and the campaign have a tendency to become stale after a while. As much as I love Grobnar the Barbarian, after a while I start thinking it might be fun to play Pipsaqueak the Halfling Sorcerer.

 

[TallIan]

Why is there an assumed stopping place of level 20 in 5e?

- Does the math break?

- Nobody plays that long?

- Was it lesson learned from 4e?

- Casters' spell progressions?

All of the above.

The maths, especially with the desire for bounded accuracy, becomes harder to control. 3.x was bad for this in that later levels had so many pluses to the roll that you basically rolled the die to see if you crit of fumbled the roll. +5 ability score bonus +6 proficiency bonus is already 55% of the range of the die. Throw in magic weapons (another +3) and expertise (+6) and you can see why any more pluses destroys the idea.

As much as I would like a high level game, they are VERY hard to come by. Almost every group I have ever played with wants to start at low levels and develop their character, rather than start out the box with a god like hero, and they've never lasted long enough to run from 1 to 20 or even ~3 to 20 if you start slightly higher to avoid 1 hit kill problems.

I like to think that it's lessons learned from all previous editions.

I think caster spell progression is made to fit a level 20 cap as much as the other way round, character balance issues come into play here, but if you went higher, you could either stretch the same progression over more levels or have more spells, ie 4 slots for level 2, 3, 4 and 5; 3 or even 4 slots for level 6 and 7; etc. but all that is dependant on what non casters get past level 20.