D&D 5E Why stop at Level 20?

[TheCosmicKid]

So you can have high level threats, but in general I think you cannot have those same high level threats on the prime material plane. Otherwise they'd logically have conquered the world already; after all, anything that requires level 18+ characters is usually invincible to normal humans and Orcs and whatnot.

You're absolutely right that this is a major worldbuilding concern in general and is not helped by the mechanics of many games, particularly MMOs. However, 5E's mechanics do actually provide something of a safety valve in the form of bounded accuracy: even an ancient dragon is not invincible and can potentially be brought down by a large unit of mundane archers. Sure, it's a crapshoot: a dragon can kill a lot of archers very quickly, so there's a good chance it wins anyway. But it's at least a plausible reason for dragons and similar threats to avoid direct attacks on large population centers without strong provocation.

(The tarrasque is notable because it actually is immune to nonmagical weapons. This, I think, is a large part of why the tarrasque is so dreaded.)

 

[Charles Rampant]

The 5e MM, for all the complaints made about its lack of high level threats, does manage I think to avoid the MMO issue of high level monsters logically taking over the world but not doing so for 'reasons'. As you note, even Ancient Dragons have reasonable limits on their ability to just take over the place, even if you have to squint a little to justify why Elminster or other high level NPCs haven't already defeated them.

The Monster Manual, as written, depicts a world that makes perfect sense for level 7 characters: Dragons can be killed, but only with great care; Orcs are dangerous in groups; Kobolds are only really a threat if the party are arrogant and careless; Demons can be monstrously dangerous threats both individually and in groups, but can be defeated.

It just doesn't make a lot of sense when viewed from the perspective of level 16 characters. Suddenly it's now full of weaklings, and the only real threats are either vanishingly rare, or live in Hell, where you could arguably just let them be.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

It just doesn't make a lot of sense when viewed from the perspective of level 16 characters. Suddenly it's now full of weaklings, and the only real threats are either vanishingly rare, or live in Hell, where you could arguably just let them be.

Again, with bounded accuracy, weaklings in large numbers are still real threats. You could run a D&D campaign with nothing but orcs, going from small skirmishes at low levels up to the party having to defeat entire hordes at high levels. It'd be boring because, y'know, nothing but orcs, but it would be mechanically challenging.

Also, high-level characters are also likely to be world travelers, making the vanishing rarity of high-level monsters less of an issue as the radius of their attention expands.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Again, with bounded accuracy, weaklings in large numbers are still real threats. You could run a D&D campaign with nothing but orcs, going from small skirmishes at low levels up to the party having to defeat entire hordes at high levels. It'd be boring because, y'know, nothing but orcs, but it would be mechanically challenging.

Also, high-level characters are also likely to be world travelers, making the vanishing rarity of high-level monsters less of an issue as the radius of their attention expands.

Bounded Accuracy does indeed let you use lower level creatures against higher level ones; but the downside is that it takes MUCH longer to run a combat that way. I recently had a combat with 4 level 18 characters against a Warlord, Abjurer, Diviner, two Fire Elementals, two Githyanki Knights and six Githyanki Warriors - and the party won fairly easily, but it took three hours in real life to resolve. A fight against two level 18 creatures would probably have taken half that. So while you are right to note this benefit of 5e, it doesn't come without cost.

 

[Mephista]

Most modern fantasy games that I see actually run for just 10 levels, and not 20, and they work great for the majority of games. If anything, I'm going to say that 20 levels is overkill, and we could have had a game that compacted down to 10 levels instead of 20.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Again, with bounded accuracy, weaklings in large numbers are still real threats. You could run a D&D campaign with nothing but orcs, going from small skirmishes at low levels up to the party having to defeat entire hordes at high levels. It'd be boring because, y'know, nothing but orcs, but it would be mechanically challenging.

The daily budget for a level 20 character is 40 thousand XP, but there's a multiplier of x4 in effect since we'll be encountering more than 15 at a time, so it's effectively only 10 thousand XP worth of orcs per day per character. An orc is worth 100 XP, so each character could reasonably be expected to defeat a hundred orcs per adventuring day.

That might take a little while to play out, but it should be doable in a session. (It might get boring to play that out more than once, though). The real question is whether those orcs would pose any threat at all; even if you engaged them in a convenient melee, the orcs would need to average four damage each in order to counter a barbarian, and that's simply not going to happen.

 

[Oofta]

Bounded Accuracy does indeed let you use lower level creatures against higher level ones; but the downside is that it takes MUCH longer to run a combat that way. I recently had a combat with 4 level 18 characters against a Warlord, Abjurer, Diviner, two Fire Elementals, two Githyanki Knights and six Githyanki Warriors - and the party won fairly easily, but it took three hours in real life to resolve. A fight against two level 18 creatures would probably have taken half that. So while you are right to note this benefit of 5e, it doesn't come without cost.

One of the things you can do to make such fights faster is to use the rules from the DMG to treat the enemy as a mob on page 250. You can also implement cleave rules on page 272.

 

[Lost Soul]

The problem with 20th level is that it is hard to compensate for PC magic items. They make the game very swingy. A DM can handle that in his world craft but published modules have a hard time of it.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Are epic boons and the associated ability cap removals not working for you?

There is no need to increase the "level" stat on your character sheet if you have access to powerful stuff that you can keep getting beyond level 20. In 5e, you can literally have a 30 (the highest value--even gods don't get higher) in every ability score, every feat in the game you qualify for, and a wide selection of cool special abilities.

What more do you want?

 

[S'mon]

5e allows you to move onto fighting mostly planar enemies in the teens - Demons, Devils, Illithids, Githyanki, Slaad, and Giants are the Monster Manual entries that make sense both as high level opponents and as opponents that come in groups. You can't keep fighting Dragons, and fighting more than one dragon at once quickly drains them of any majesty.

I somewhat disagree re dragons; wings of dragons seems fine to me, and was pretty routine
pre-2e, though 5e Legendary Actions make this trickier for Adult & Ancient dragons. A
wing of young dragons ridden by Champions & a Warlord leader would work fine though.

I agree Giants are the one non-planar foe you can use at high level in large numbers without
straining credibility; my Varisia campaign features this a lot - PCs got their ass kicked ca
10th-12th level by a stone giant squad, and they know there are hundreds of the buggers out
there...

With 5e rules I think groups of stone (ATT+9), frost (ATT+9) and fire (ATT+11) giants can be a credible threat to max-level (20th) PCs, which I like a lot.