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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7156584" data-attributes="member: 6787650">It's partly because 5E is a modern D&D edition, which means that many people play it as a finite game (where the prize is to "beat" the game) instead of an infinite game (where the prize is the right to continue playing). If you play as an infinite game, you don't need a stopping point--play will simply stop at whatever point the players can no longer handle the increased difficulty. But if you play it as a finite game, there's no point in preparing for infinite progression. You just set the win condition at some point before level 20, e.g. level 15 for WotC adventure paths.5E kinda sorta supports infinite progression via epic boons and ASIs after 20th, but if you were seriously playing beyond 20th level for extended periods you'd probably wind up homebrewing a progression system, because otherwise you run into the battlemaster problem: the first Epic Boon is exciting, but by the sixth one you've already got all the Epic Boons you really cared about and the marginal utility of additional boons is low.I would someday like to run a level 20-oriented sandbox, where difficulty from the very beginning is "appropriate" for level 20 characters, regardless of the PC level. (I've had good results previously from throwing 3rd level characters into a level 20 encounter. Sink or swim.) The ambition would be to play it as an infinite game. You spend the first part of the game clawing your way up, by hook or by crook, to level 20 where you are "competent" by the standards of everyone else on the playing board. At that point, instead of abandoning the game because you're "done", you begin participating in earnest in the game because now you're finally on an even footing with everyone else, until eventually you die and have to bring in a new PC. (Getting to level 20 with subsequent characters would probably be easier than the first time because now you've probably got help from other PCs.)I don't have any definite ideas for what a level 20 infinite game would look like except that I suspect it would feel sort of like GURPS, and I'd want to set up game structures which made the other NPCs in the game very active participants--perhaps it will feel a bit like massive multiplayer chess or Stratego at the metagame level, with heavy Combat As War elements during the roleplaying phase. But 5E is a really good edition for this kind of thing because it's totally possible, and more than possible, for a level 20 Archmage to get robbed and murdered by a bunch of 3rd level nobodies.I think I'd like to call that game Demigods and Dragons.</blockquote>

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