Heya everyone! Kinda early to make this call but it looks like this might be one of those videos where people don't agree, SO quick reminder: Totally okay to disagree with me. ALL of my videos are discussions and I fully accept that I have every possibility of being wrong just like everyone else. BUT be respectful, kind, and keep the conversation one that everyone can learn from! I may not respond to arguments because people can be assholes, but I promise I am reading them and learning from them! Have a wonderful day and continue to learn!
I have my players create their characters at level 20, and allow them to create a material/achievements list they attained around their end goals. The list they have provided, I blend into rewards throughout the campaign. then they make that character up at level one and that’s our session 0 Basically, I use their level 20 characters as information for their character goals to build my adventures around for them to attain.
The only thing that really slows combat down is not knowing what your character does nor preparing your turn prior to taking it. *Edit* Generally Speaking
This is THE TRUTH. We like to complain about conjure animals and summoning 32 raptors, but that player finishes his turn faster than 90% of dnd players. “I can cast a spell and I have one bonus action only…hmmmmm *thinks for 10 minutes*. Ok I cast Fireball”
Like VolantEngima highlights. There is an issue that you can have a plan and that mean nothing once one other player does something. Plus knowing your character can make the problem worse due to been aware of just how much you could do and still not been sure what the best choice is because you can't crunch the math quickly enough
Seems to be a hot take based on the video and comments, but high level characters doesn't make combats easier. What makes combat easier is when a DM sets up an encounter for high level characters as if they were low or mid level. Your strategy needs to advance with the characters. Stop living by CR and think tactically. Find ways to make them burn resources early. Use a wide variety and several conditions. Find their strengths and turn it against them. It's not that it's boring, it's that it requires a different tactic.
Pretty much this, but also another thing that drastically slows down high level play is people not knowing their characters abilities very well. (which is why lvl 20 one shots will often be slower than say, a lvl 20 combat in a long running campaign where the players know their characters well.) Even way before 20 , unprepared casters or other players with more comprehensive combat options and indecisiveness will grind your combat to a screeching halt. Also lets not kid ourselves, what's considered "appropriate" levels of challenges for parties don't actually challenge them in most cases, because 5E's monsters are basically wet paper towels to make it easier for players to "win".
@@giantsbane8439 highly agree with everything you said. In my current table, my 4 players are level 13 and have been playing these for more than a year every week. They are much more efficient than our one shot combats.
Revisiting characters in general is a great narrative tool for tables that run multiple, connected world campaigns. I've done it in a few campaigns: it's fun with very limited exposure. However, Not Playing HIgh Levels isn't really a solution to the challenge of playing high levels. Running high level games and learning from the inevitable mistakes is the most reliable solution. Even tips from yt channels can only point out potholes. The table has to be committed to learning. Regardless, it's fun to revisit old characters. Keep swinging, my dude!
So for high level play, you're basically saying turn it into a huge one-shot adventure? I think that's a pretty great idea actually! It's essentially the same thing when D&D came out with that level 20 adventure with Vecna not that long ago. I suppose ending a campaign at around level 15ish then as you stated have a "this is what my character has been up to since the "end" of the campaign" just to have everyone come together for one final massive fight that has incredible implications for the world they live in. This is why you are one of my absolute favorite content creators on this platform! But you know what character would definitely be ready for level 20 gameplay? If you guessed John Cena then you are correct sir! Congrats! Have a cookie.
I've actually run a lot of one shot adventures that are higher level, and they've been a blast! Only once have I run a campaign that went that high level and it got... tiring, for sure
An alternative is to start diversifying the nature of the content: Instead of quests where the party has to go deal with a singular entity and its subordinates, start transitioning the content into something like a kingdom builder, with the party founding an organization/group to achieve their goals, and also it would allow you to play into the longer lifespans most can get at higher levels.
I mean Wish is broken, but it does explicitly say “your DM has final say”. So as long as you keep this in mind, it makes Wish powerful but not overpowering.
To be fair, everything in the game technically has an invisible "your DM has final say" at the bottom of the text, but it being explicit in wish does really drive home like "you, as the DM, really gotta step up on this one cause this is fucking busted, on purpose"
And to go with this, anything outside the safe list runs the risk of losing use of the spell. Narratively, this is the barrier Mystra put in place creating feedback as it prevents your magic from tearing apart the world again. The DM twisting the wish is real world consequences to players trying to be too smart, so they have to really think about what they want to do.
All versions of D&D break down at higher levels, which is why many AD&D high level adventures took place in areas that changed how abilities and spells acted!
I've heard some people say that since adventuring got boring at high levels, the wizard in his new tower kept making shopping lists for hirelings that became the party's next caracters.
@@colbyboucher6391 honestly at high level especially with time to prep unless your dm is purposefully just trying to tpk there are no threats in the game a party of 3 to 5 lvl 20 cant be killed unless you shit spam something that auto drops hp to 0 on failed saving throws like a bunch of banshees etc
it is a big reason i went to spell casting without spell slots. making sure the casters dont need to worry about which slot to use when saves sooooo much time, ngl. just toss a chance to fail on that bad boy for balance and it works out
I'll use a videogame analogy: Remember the progression of difficulty when playing games like TLOZ Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring. In the beginning you are completely outmatched by many of the enemies around the map, or outright unable to do certain things because you haven't progressed far enough. In this beginning phase progress is fast, but the gameplay is often the most punishing at this stage, because any mistake could kill. By the end of both of those games you reach a phase where you are essentially a god among mortals All but the strongest creatures will be obliterated by you. Maybe one or two things still provide a slight challenge. You could view it as unsatisfying to run around with powers and strength that make the entire game trivial, but there is no need. This late game overpowered stage is fun precisely because you had to work so hard to get there. You faced all the challenges, got all the equipment/upgrades, fought almost every boss and came out as a beastly warrior. You had the fun of overcoming obstacles and your reward is to obliterate, to hack and slash, to rip and tear like a true paragon of war. In a DnD context this would be equivalent to DMs creating scenarios which function as sandboxes for players to go crazy with their powers.
I would almost agree with you. However, there are two issues that I reasonably see with this perspective. Firstly, D&D is not designed like those games. Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild are designed so that there is still plenty of adversity at those endgame levels of play. In the case of Elden Ring it is bosses like Malenia. These bosses end up becoming the game, often taking the time it would take to beat entire areas to kill just once. Then, even after, there are the pvp aspects of the game or even NG+. In the case of Breath of the Wild, much of the game's difficulty at the end-game comes from exploration and the tangential mechanics to combat. With the exception of the combat challenge shrines, much of the gameplay will be completing Korok puzzles, your last few shrines, taking photos, and finding locations. It doesn't matter that you are unkillable because the point of the game isn't killing things anymore. D&D isn't like this at all. Half the game is combat. It can't take the Elden ring route because then you are missing out on the RP in RPG. It can't take the BotW route because 90% of your character sheet is combat. Sure, if this was fate or some other combat-light system that would be fine, but then the problem wouldn't exist in the first place. Even further, nothing in either of those games gets close to the sheer power of a level 20 D&D character. Want anything? Wish. Can't wish? Well no mortal can stop you from just taking what you want. Pacifist? Just hop to another plane. Or, dream of the blue veil to another reality where what you want is more likely to happen (Then watch the DM cry as they struggle to get notes together at the pace necessary to support any of those options). Second, that gets boring. I am now at 3 separate campaigns which I have taken / am taking from level 1 to 20 (1 complete, 1 at 19 with 4 sessions left, 1 at 18). In each of them there have been moments where the parties have tried to tie up loose ends or clear out a dungeon they left at lower level. One wanted to build a city. Another wanted to free a lesser god that nobody outside the party really cared about. Each task was accomplished in line with their overwhelming power. The first time felt great. The second was okay. Now they hate it. They would rather go out and fight elder gods, risking getting characters killed, than wander about the ''mundane' world as, essentially, gods themselves. The things that make D&D fun are just not conducive to being that powerful. D&D requires tension and drama. Being a god makes that difficult. After a few real life months, the novelty of being that powerful wears off and then all you are left with is a campaign with less tension. Then, if you really feel like reaching level 20, you have to keep playing that campaign for another 4 or so levels. Moral of the story: It is fun to be powerful, just not when you are unopposed in D&D.
The reason I wouldn't recommend skipping levels to do a one shot with players is that it takes time and experience to get good at your mechanics and abilities and get into the flow of using your character to the utmost. I think certainly the Mighty Nein campaign did get bogged down when they got to higher levels, but I don't think Vox Machina did. It takes planning from the DM, certainly, and I do think if a campaign happens to end earlier there is nothing wrong with one shots revisiting them, but I don't think higher level play in your campaign is a death sentence.
vm also had a fuck ton of homebrew they also didnt have as many spell casters pretty much everyone but baeu was a spellcaster so it could bog it out also the stakes where completely different in c 2. c1 they had the conclave then vecna all back to back with little time for getting side tracked where as c2 focused a lot more into cads quests then fjords then calebs with the main threat lurking in the back ground. where with c1 it was the opposite where the bbeg was in the fore front and the pcs quests where sprinkled in here and there
@@mitchellmiller6644 I am always confused by all this homebrew VM had, there was a little bit but no more then any campaign i have ever run myself, maybe a bit less. I have yet to play in and DnD game that didn’t have some homebrew.
@@Ginric99 its not necessarily home brew but that they switched editions that lead to a lot of the confusion for that campaign it was a mix of 3.5 and 5
@@ashadder795 for sure but compare vm to mn vm had 3 spell casters then a bunch of people who hit things til they die. on the flip side vm had almost all spellcasters so anytime someone did something it would completely change the battle and make all them have to think up new plans. its the issue with spell casters especially at higher lvls they change the battlefield so much it messes up your plans and you have to think on the fly
This is a really good idea. I've found that in my games, especially in combat, high level play tends to slow things down with all the dice and the class features(not to mention multiclassing). I like dming for high level but it just gets exhausting long term. Perhaps, doing it like this can be a good solution for me. Thanks!
I'll say this: it's better to begin from low levels, yes, level 1, and slowly level up from there, even up to high levels. You learn and understand your features and spells better this way. Furthermore, you don't have much at low levels, so you really have to squeeze your features out in order to make it, and this gives you better knowledge of your stuff, as you progress. Even high level players get lost in features and spells if they start their character on high level, and this applies when they're awarded multiple levels that they don't get to play through. It's not like playing one-shots with 20 level characters isn't fun. It's immensely fun. But playing a character that slowly leveled up from levels 3 to 15 and playing a 20 level one-shot character was a very different experience. In the first instance, I knew every little thing I could do and could optimally use it. In the second instance, I was stumbling all over myself. And I am a pretty experienced player that likes to get deep with class features and guides etc. I noticed that with many other players as well.
@@Bam_bone Level 3 is a great jumping point for experiences players who don't want to struggle through the early levels and want to jump right in the concept of their character, which for most, revolves around their subclass. Great for some multiclass builds too, that couldn't work if you started from level 1. For example, I started my Paladin/Warlock multiclass character from level 3.
Yeah. I just did a level 20 one-shot, and it's hard breaking out of the resource hoarding mindset and remember all my features. I did a Rune Knight. I invoked most of my runes, but I forgot about Indominatable a lot, as well as Runic Shield. Both have six uses. And if we'd played these characters up, we'd be more familiar with each other's tactics to develop synergy. I'm also the kind of DM that throws situations at players so they can see what their features do. Like if the Cleric just got Destroy Undead, I'd overload on zombies with some more powerful undead just to give them that clutch moment of decimating the encounter from deadly to manageable.
I’m gonna agree that level three is a great place to start because you have just enough to not be overwhelmed by new features while still having enough not to lose a character idea you like to random chance unless that random chance is sort of epic.
We did this in my group, we played a campaign across multiple modules (with heavy homebrew from the DM’s side) form levels 1-16 and finished the campaign. After our second campaign (same world) wrapped up around level 12, we revisited our characters from the first campaign at 20th level set after the events of our second campaign and it was really fun.
In D&D, we used to play high level start at 20th to 36th level. At that point your way past Mystara, the Hollow World, or even the 4 elemental planes and the astral plane. You're jumping between the 9 hells, happy hunting grounds and Elysium.
As a DM who has run a level 1-20 game, enemies often feel like they have no impact, so here are some tips; 1) Firstly, to get it out of the way, Sometimes it is good to have easy fights. It helps to show how truely strong the players are and, by extension, how powerful the main threat is. 2) Second, increasing AC and Health beyond what some of the creatures in official books have, can really slow down combat. Instead double the damage the creature does, it may sound excessive but it really isn't. 3) When homebrewing abilities, go to the point where you think it could actually kill someone, and then go one step further. Players always have abilities to reduce damage or heal or ressurect.
I think that the second point is very campaign dependent. If I doubled the damage that monsters do in my campaign then the majority of the fights would have resulted in a total party kill.
Someone probably said it already, but i really liked critical role calamity as well, and it is another example of fun interesting high level play with some (but not all) of the dynamics you mention in the video (no established characters, for one)
Fantastic video! I love this so much! For my players to get to level 20 they absorbed the memories and experience of their lives from different realities. Based on the story and situation it worked out.
I feel like it's not as unsupported as people think... for example, see Matt Colville's thoughts on the subject. It just takes a different mindset, that's all
Especially when you're party consists of 6 to 8 players. Of course you think it's not supported for your table. You have twice what the system was balanced for. Some monsters are designed to stronger as groups. And nothing is stopping you from having a breeding pair of Ancient Red Dragons being encountered together if you don't want kobold minions.
With high level play, it seems to be more of an issue with just losing track with *all* of your available abilities. Since many players aren’t gonna think to make a flow chart in their notes of what available actions they can take, of course it’ll begin to slow things down.
Eh, this isn't really a good solution for everyone, though. Like, it could totally work for some tables/players. I can see the point of it. But for others, like myself, who can get into the roleplay aspect of it, just having the one or two shot at high-level, where we aren't really able to BE the character at that level with that kind of power and whatever social aspects that would come with it? That'd be unsatisfying, at least for a character that I'd been with for a while at that point.
Having a separate game for high level play was a really good call for Critical Role. In all the campaigns I've seen and played, you basically have to make your own balance when it comes to anything 16+, as opposed to lower tier play, and it can be really jarring for players and DMs. This way, you can just let your players be overpowered. You can let every encounter be against an Avenger's level threat and their goons. Have them make deals with gods and demons and pit them against such a massive BBEG (or BBEGs) that they have to make decisions that have massive world implications. I ran a campaign like this where my player's reused their characters from previous campaigns, and threw them all in a cross dimensional airship that they ran alongside all of the major factions they met in previous games as they worked together to fight a cosmic threat. They had control of the helm and went across the planes, they mediated the relationships between the factions, and I gave all of their PC's an overpowered weapon (I was playing WoW: Legion at the time) with a straight up League of Legends style ultimate ability tied to them that we designed together. Was their favorite campaign in DnD 5e that they ever played and was the most fun I had running it.
I really appreciated this analysis and explanation of why this could work for a one-shot but not an ongoing campaign. At the end of the video I found myself wishing for just 3-5 more minutes where you outlined how to make high level play work for an ongoing game, and suggestions on how to have the legendary power fantasies manifest in ways that didn't bog down the story. I have a feeling the best way to balance raw combat power at T4 isn't through villain power creep, but through dilemmas and moral quandaries where the heroes don't have to prove their strength but their worthiness to wield it.
I watched the entire video waiting for something that wasn’t “Just run a one shot!” That’s not really a revelation, that’s what 90% of high level play IS. I was hoping for tips on actually running a campaign at high levels
Love this idea cause it also takes some stress off the DM. Do you have to plan a whole campaign from 1 to 20? No. Just plan 1 to 10 or 12 or 15 (whatever you feel good about). Then at the end you can jump to the next big moment as one shot opportunities present themselves.
Honestly I run mine in chunks. I plan out "seasons" that are composed of 4 to 6 levels each, and we pause between seasons. That's also when we hold a meeting to determine whether if we continue playing, and what tone or theme the group is looking for in the next season. It's like a chain of smaller campaigns. I commit to these chunks one at a time instead of the whole 1-20 thing.
I'm not sure I agree. You seem to say that the increased stakes just slow things down, but that simply isn't always true. It all comes down to the DM and the narrative. If you want to skip some things like travel because you're high enough level that normal travel is no longer a hassle, just random roll some fun things that happen along the way. But once the players get there, they can still RP and play however they want. Revisiting old characters is totally fine, but not required. They don't have to be side tracked by every new lead if they know they have something more important to be doing, and that comes down to your narrative ability and reading your players, not just saying out of game "make sure you focus on the main quest cause this is just a one shot". That's such a garbage solution to what isn't a problem in my mind. Sure, the players might get sidetracked anyway, but that happens at low levels too. They don't always follow the thread you want them to... so why is this only okay at low levels and not high ones? Because the stakes of the world are up in the air? Sure, but either convince the players in-game that they need to prioritize the main quest for some actually reasonable reason or let them get a bit sidetracked because they're still having fun, and eventually, the heroes will complete the narrative anyway. When it comes to balance though... Yeah 9th level spells compared to some other abilities can feel a bit overwhelming... but the characters have been getting better at what they are good at over time. Hopefully everyone has a grasp of what their character is capable of and is okay with it. And if you aren't skipping levels I find many players and DMs will be accommodating to this. If you go through a few sessions and hear your fighter exclaim how they feel they aren't useful anymore, then put the players in a situation where the fighter will feel useful, and maybe the mage will try to tone back a bit, even if they aren't specifically asked to do so. There are times where it might require a talk, and of course the mage can always say no, but the Mage self restraining isn't the only solution. Big spells can be a setup rather than the only thing that matters. I do think there is some merit to what you're saying, and if your table has problems that this fixes, then by all means, use this as the solution. But I wholeheartedly disagree if you think this is the only, or even just the best solution.
This is more a decently fun alternative for experiencing high level play, but some people want the JRPG style where they are there for the entire journey of becoming godslaying badasses. Also in my own opinion high level watch outs slow things down more because people aren't familiar with the mechanics and how to use the variety of them. Something that continous growth of power over time would diminish. Not a bad idea but not an all expanding solution
If I can add some insight as a DM with some experience with high level play it would be : Don't avoid difficult challenges as a DM or as a group. Yes, high level is difficult. Players teleport all over the world, you need to prep and improvise a lot, they will use spells that require you to know a lot of things, you will need to balance your campaign so certain players don't feel left behind, you will need to create high level challenges and very hard dungeons and accept that half of it gets skipped by a spell or capacity. But learning how to handle high level campaigns will make you a better DM ! Don't skip it because it's hard ! Sure doing a One Shot, or a short adventure instead will be more manageable, but you won't learn that much from it. When a campaign reach high level, a lot of things that didn't really matter begin to gain a lot of importance. Players planning their turn and combat being efficient is one of them. Balancing also becomes very important, like giving strong magical items to martial classes. Learning how to protect your dungeon against specific spells or magics, but still allowing the players to be clever and skip content. Making your players work for their rests, and knowing how to create a need for ressource management. Basically, high level is another dynamic of play, and it's very fun when player reach that content. As a gaming group, you just need to learn and adapt to it. Don't reject it because it's difficult.
This is not a 5e problem, this is a role playing problem. When characters reach the point that they can deal with world shattering problems, no matter the version or even system, they are infinitely overpowered for a campaign. You can't build many moderately hard encounters when a hard encounter is "we beat a demigod". The options and powers available to deal with truly high level threats make "normal" threats of that level trivial. This has been the case all the way back to 1st Edition, and yes I have been playing and DMing that long, this isn't theory it's lived experience. With D&D in general, I have found you are able to do the best playing from 6-12 level, below that you tend to be too fragile, above too powerful to make things interesting very long. Above 15th level, 1 shots are about all you can do, and all you ever could. Even then they either turn out to be to easily navigated or TPKs because of a small mistake. High level adventures are generally very unforgiving in that regard. I've seen similar issues in the entire White Wolf line, Hero System/Campions, LUC: Star Trek, and d6 and WotC Star Wars. Is seems like somewhere in the middle of the proposed power range works best, the low end is doable if less exciting and the upper power curve gets broken. My solution is just to avoid the really high level stuff. As very few campaigns ever get there, this has never been a problem for me. I'm probably just too old to care about high level play anymore.
I just want to pop in and say, it is actually pretty system dependent. In Godbound you start as reality-changing divine heroes, so solving regional political issues at level 1 is just part of the game, and the challenges only get harder from there. Rogue Trader is similar, while your individual characters are quite capable, their real strength comes from the fact that they have a ship, crew and authority on their side, and that means the issues they deal with are regularly planetary in scale, but they have the tools to deal with it.
To be fair, there are more systems out there besides the ones you listed. And some that dont have this issue, at least not this extent. WWN, Fria Lagen games, PF2e... And it's not exclusive to 5e, but 5e definitely suffers from it, badly.
The system not being balanced is definitely a system problem not a role play problem. You can't role play your output better. You can optimise but if everyone's optimised then the imbalance will remain. And you can't role play your monsters to be able to equal out to that imbalance you simply need to have those abilities
I mean the only reason why critical role lagged a bit was really just they haven't played those characters in a long while. Many of them not running casters for a while.
I ran a High level campaign and the way I dealt with it was that characters level up super fast and you just need to give the options enough options at the offset and give them a checklist of things they need to accomplish in order to deal with a problem they have coming up, I don't know like a set of potions that allow the characters to use magic in an anti-magic field from the Beholder Headed Ancient Shadow Red Dragolich Necromancer. honestly the thing that speeds the game up the fastest is when players know what their abilities do and if they think about what they are going to do when it isn't their turn to act, one way I helped a player stay involved in a game was I gave them a magic item that allowed them to have a legendary action to cast a cantrip or move without taking attacks of opportunity, they were then constantly thinking about what and when they wanted to use their legendary action and how that would interact with their turn and the game actually sped up as the one player who was being "problematic" by taking a lot of time (sometimes like 5 minutes) on their turn matched the time the other players were taking on their turn (which was like 30 seconds, to 1 minute 30 seconds)
I’m a fan of campaigns ending lvl 10 or less, then moving on to a new one. This idea of revisiting for a one shot seems great if you have the regular group for it.
I'm in the final sessions of a high level mini campaign. Lvl 18, all of the players are gods who rule their own regions and territories. It's mainly been political, players handling political situations; their people being manipulated/held hostage, trying to gain information, secret enemies and shadow organizations, communing with other gods, their peers. The final boss is a Mythic Aberration who is trying to invade the world. Tl;Dr, The Old One, the true god slumbered some time ago and left his Archangels to watch over humanity. The Archangels would then find ascended mortals, often time heroes, to Shepard specific areas and combat chaos. Chaos gets too out of hands, the barrier between planes gets thin and phenomenon bleed over; so the Archangels command the gods to handle whatever situation is causing the chaos. A cult wants the old one to return, so they've been trying to kill the gods and sow chaos. But, the chaos doesn't just cause the planes to thin and overlap, it also causes the greater bubble that protects the world to weaken as well. And an Aberration want to break into the world to do... evil stuff
SO might I suggest, if you want to see some good stuff for high level play. 3.5 meshes very well with 5e, and 3.5 has an entire book for even going beyond level 20 and 10th level spells and how to make spells as epic wizards.
I have never played dnd and never gotten to high levels in the systems that I did play. Something I have noticed from binge watching critical role over the past few month is that dnd feels more board gamey than any of the systems I have played so far. And the higher level it gets the stronger that board game vibe comes through. I am not all that intrested in playing dnd, because I prefer my ttrpgs to feel less like a board game, but I imagine it would be a blast to build some high level characters and play a one shot, that I approach with the mindset of playing a board game with some roleplay as the cherry on top. That seems to be something that dnd would excell at. From what I have learned about dnd in the past few month, the issues with high level play that you adress here, seem to be left overs from the dungeon crawl type style of play that dnd was originally build for. With less narrative focused play styles high levels probably don't become an issue. When your focus is on those epic battels, it might be more of a feature than a bug, that battles take longer and longer the more you advance in level.
What I found as a DM was that making the uber bad-guys NPC characters who can do the same kind of stuff the players can do, is the easiest way to challenge the party.
I'm currently running a 1-20 campaign (DotMM) and my players are at level 15. I'm not gonna lie, the real difficulty for me is balancing providing a challenge for the players without making every encounter a near TPK. The issues of high level play balance in 5e are clear in DotMM as almost all Teir 3 and 4 encounters are cakewalk for the players so I need to adjust most of them.
Accidentally created a way to satisfyingly retire characters. Around levek 15, the aquire a fortress, assemble a druid circle, found an order ect. Play ledgers and wagons for a session to work out how their business ventures move forward. The accidental epilogue alliws then to ride off into the sunset, making their legacy part of the campaign world.
1) It’s not high level play that’s hard to balance. It’s having enough combats and mid combat…puzzles and MECHANICS that drain action economy and resources from the players to make it rewarding. Keep in mind video game style “mechanics” rules don’t exist at all. So it makes it even harder to balance. 2) No for real. Go run 6-8 medium to severe encounters a day against a high level party. Now do it for months on end. Let me know when you run out of monsters that make thematic sense for your campaign. It should only be about 4 adventuring days. If you’re running those multiple combats. 3) narratively, at those levels, WHY OR HOW are you even fighting that many times per day? BBEG just throwing things at you? Why haven’t all these super high leveled monsters just conquered the world yet? Combat has to have NARRATIVE teeth to have any tension. Or it’s just another combat. That’s why the math breaks down at high levels. It’s the pyramid theory. The strongest stuff at the top there should be less of. But the game is balanced for those 6-8 encounters over a day. So, for example, players have to travel to X to stop the BBEG from completing an arcane ritual to summon a god, or an avatar of a god, or something super high CR. So players go. It’s going to take X time. They’re level 17-20. If players warp right to the front door, the BBEG didn’t do a very good job hiding. If they have to travel for weeks in game time, how many days of combats are you settling for? What “other” resource draining encounters can you possibility set for a high level party. Skill checks? Negated by the over abundance of charisma casters for face skills, or rogues for everything else. Or spells. This is why bounded accuracy was bad. The math in the game is not tight enough. It should be balanced for LESS encounters. But they should be harder as you go up in level. More AC more HP. Monsters should have MULTIPLE move actions and multiple rounds of abilities. But only if you’re fighting singles. As it stands, they knew the balance was this bad from the get go. That’s the only reason legendary resistances and actions exist. That’s the only way to fight PC’s at that level because the 6-8 encounters doesn’t work. It’s why, while I love the system for rules and system mastery, no one REALLY loves high level Pathfinder 1E because it’s rocket tag. 5E is the same. Pathfinder 2E showed me the light.
I can't really agree for my group at least (I dm heavy homebrew, lvl 40 characters) the players are at level 40 rn and are currently finishing off the last of the bbeg's triad
There's two things I'd add to the idea that most high level play should be one shots. 1. Structure the campaign similar to a westmarches style campaign. 2. Track XP the way it's handled in Cypher System. Center the campaign around an organization, academy, mercenary company, military order, or some combination of the above. Players make parties of characters at varying levels. Each party is sent out on various missions. Rewards vary with degree of success. If a player has to miss a game then their character from that party was pulled away at the last minute and asigned to another squad. In Cypher System games XP is tracked like milestone XP is in D&D. X number of XP can be traded in to level up. Typically 12 to 16 depending on the version of Cypher you're running. XP is also treated as inspiration tokens to be traded in for rerolls, and it's handed out in game based on rolls and player behavior that moves the story forward. Basically anything D&D says would reward inspiration Rewards XP. Also rolling a nat 1 gives you two XP. One to keep. One to give to a party member. Or give both back to the DM to undo the complication caused by the nat 1. Hand out XP for nat 1s, nat 20s, int or wis checks to find stuff out or just find stuff, and any other player behaviors you want to encourage. Let players assign their XP to any of their characters or trade them with other players.
@caedutiger9362 The Monte Cook Games website has a Cypher System Rules Primer pdf that is free and probably has all the official rules for their XP system. Westmarches campaigns are detailed by a few different UA-camrs and probably a bunch of different D&D outlets and commentators. I think Westmarches began as a setting in D&D and the name just got adopted as a style of play where the play group is large but divided up among multiple DMs that allow players to migrate their PCs around the different game nights/groups. The main idea for using Westmarches to run high level I got from an early Dimension 20 Adventuring Academy episode where Brennan Lee Mulligan explained that in his long running 3.5 campaign the high level PCs suffered a total party defeat. No one was killed but everyone was captured or banished. The result was the archer character was blinded and lost so Brennan had everyone make level 5 backup characters that could help the archer track down the other PCs and break their multiple curses and whatnot. Since then I've used the sidekick rules and other tricks to have players make 2 to 3 characters for campaigns. First string, the B Team, and maybe a kooky character build the players want to experiment with. The party is the main combat force or leadership of a larger organization. Like the guilds listed in the Ravnica book the organization often provides NPCs that can be sent on errands or used as backup. If a player wants to retire a character they aren't feeling anymore they can swap to a backup character and their old one becomes an NPC that stays in the base and hands out adventure hooks and consumable items. Imagine if any CR high level reunion episode began in the castle full of teleportation circles that all three teams use as a Guildhall and Travis gets to decide if Grog, Fjord, or Chetney gets to go on that week's mission.
High level play can show things down. Key as others have said is that it works best if players grow with their characters and know their abilities. Otherwise, there are too many choices and abilities to pick from. The number of players and bad guys also affects high-level play.
One aspect of high level play I noticed is that high level adventures are rare, like very rare. This was mentioned in a 3.5 edition book, on your planet/realm there is supposed to be only like 1 or 2 level 20 characters at any point of time. By the time a character is level 15 or higher they should be famous/infamous. Like your average farmer has met, at most, a level 3 character. They should be so well known, that people are trying to get their help, they have enemies and people that want to fight them to prove themselves. So yeah it is hard to make an average adventure around them.
I wouldn't mind seeing two story based games play out as a timeline, like the first game can start off when their younger like 18-20 years old, unless their other races like halfs orcs, elves and so on , but the first game can end as they defeated the dark lord, but game two happens like 20 years later and it could be written off as a new dark lord came out to defeat their kingdom, but the new party gotten capture so the king calls back for the old members who already defeated one dark lord to save the young new party and defeat the new dark lord, (a twisted end, the new dark lord is the original dark lord and he wants revenge on the party that defeated him already) In story wise it would be cool to see the characters grow, like when starting out the Fighter player job could be a simple soldier, but now because he lived through life, hes no longer a soldier, so you would have to changer your background to a commander or folk hero or a hermit.....to show character growth and seeing what family people would make up for their characters would be cool too
I don't really understand what this fixes. Combat is still going to be lvl 20 combat without changing rules, all that seems to be hopefully remedied by a 1 off is the idea of consequence for your actions narratively since as 1 offs are you typically don't care about long term ramifications of your actions since after the adventure is over so is the story, so you incinerating an entire town doesn't matter, so player decisions naturally are quicker. Which is actually not what happens in critical role as its still canon to the world what happens in their 1 off and a world built off of multiple campaigns with the same people is a rare form of DnD that most groups don't partake in since its very heavy on the DM to build the world and compile notes from each session.
I played with a group for over 3 years with exp growth. This was pathfinder. 1) after 8th lvl, there was so many buffs on the field, it bogged down the combat entirely. 2) our dm was still throwing human cultists at us at lvl 11 *avg lvl* but instead of making a bbeg, it was a numbers game and we would still wipe the floor with them. 3) then the enviable massive lvl surge where he threw so many enemies at us, got frustrated, then put a timer on it to where we had to fight an ancient red dragon with 0 rest at lvl 11. And that's where it dissolved. He couldn't balance our growth with the story. So instead of fighting the dragon after an onslaught on 30+ cultists, a portion of the continent was scorched in a matter on 8 in game hours cuz we were tapped
Amazing video as always! Yeah I’ve been running a campaign for a while now. The group are level 11. They’re going to be approaching the high levels soon and I know how much of a potential bog it can be especially for those who still get shaky on mechanics. The players say they’ll be fine, but I don’t know. Just looking for ways to handle it I suppose, your video helped! 😁
I dont agree. The difference is between dms in high level is if they can handle high level play or give up.what i mean is u will make mistakes for the first time but after its time for you to decide if u are gonna go with it and learn or give up a high-level play.
3/3.5 suffered a similar problem (not much support for high-level, and actually also the "I have so many options I on't know which to choose); at least they eventually put out an Epic Level Handbook. We might see the same with 5E.
Although high level play can be a slog, I would still encourage everyone to give it a shot at least once. Just played a 1-20 campaign over the last 2 years and finished a little over a week ago. Let me tell you, the first time I got to cast a 9th level spell felt unbelievable. The set piece battles we got to do, the drama and stakes at 20th level. It was worth the slog.
I don't hate this idea. While I've never done anything like this, partially because either a campaign hasn't ended enough to be able to "revist" higher level versions of them, or because we just keep going in the campaign and don't want to stop, if I had an opportunity to try something like this, I definitely would. Whether I'd have a group that would go along with it, that's another thing, lol. And yeah, I really wish they would have more content for higher level play. My current campaign is in Tier 3, so we're already above the average adventure content that is put out there.
The campaign I'm running I plan to end at level 16 and eventually bring them back to fight an ancient diety and level them up to 18 so I can see what they're made of.
The critical role ukatoa oneshot is a terrible example. Math threw a t4 party at a big bad without taxing their resources at all, he did that for most of c2 too. If you look back at the vecna fight they battled their way though a mountain and the briarwoods(again) before getting the the big bad.
What’s the point of having all those spells and levels and not get to use them? Or learn how to use them? I run a high level campaign (levels 10-20), were at 16 now. It’s been challenging for me to balance it, but only at first. Keeping the players engaged IS part of the job of the DM. So is balancing. It’s totally doable with a little bit of work and tweaking on the fly. Run that super powered campaign! You got this! ❤️🔥
I think a lot of people approach high level (post level 12ish) play in D&D the wrong way. As Brennan Lee Mulligan once said, what makes high level D&D compelling isn't about being a god in combat, it's about the decisions that the players make with all the power they have and the consequences/results of those decisions. When your group agrees to do a high level campaign, there will always come a point where the players will become too powerful, and not just in damage-dealing sense, but also utility and healing. At a certain point, even death becomes more like a status effect than a permanent consequence if we're going by rules as written. That's why I think Brennan makes a great point. For me as a player, combat and dungeon exploration isn't fun anymore when the Paladin can just nova the bosses down for half or all their HP in one turn, or when the Rogue literally can't fail a skill check because the lowest they can roll is 20 and above.
It is like the Movies after the Series is over. Star Trek is a prime example. Original series, ST:NG, now Strange New Worlds prequels, Discovery, they may all have the Movie Reunion show that essentially what we’re talking about. Come to think about it, most jumps in power in the MCU is after a gap. Perhaps finding or making a Gap in the campaign for downtime and an extra level(s)-up. Let their fame grow a little, or notoriety, you do you as GM. Let them develop a bit in a state of unfettered clarity. You could allow them to retrain a level or feature. If long enough let them train a proficiency/tool/language. IMHO, growth and character development during the campaign is the most fun in any game. As your character develops they gain knowledge, abilities, experiences, tactical options, the ability to move mountains or inspire cities, it is a Trip!
As a solely Roll20 DM I find using digital dice rather then physical ones have probably saved our group dozens of hours. Counting dice takes time, messy, you need to concentrate, some people aren't the best at math on the fly so I get why people swear by digital platform
Power creep is the problem with high level play. It ends up being an issue because casters are minion mashers who can wipe out armies with single spells, while martials are single target killers who will kill a BBEG in one round if they land all their attacks. You have a warlock casting maddening darkness on an army for 10 minuets 8D8 times 100 about 3500 damage to every creature in the effect, half on a good save every 6 seconds for 100 rounds. A warlock with some specific items can have a 19+ spell DC, making it nearly impossible to resist the spell effect. Then you have a fighter doing 8+ attacks every round for 3 rounds who can add who knows what bonuses to the damage. Or a paladin who multi classed their last two levels dropping all their smites in one round with an action surge. It is hard to fight one god. How do you challenge 4+?
I think a problem with high level play is that Wotc hasn’t put any content out for levels 14-20 to help give examples of high level play and how to run those types of games
Gotta give you credit for the clickbait on this one: I was ready to tear you a new one cause I thought, based on the title and thumbnail, that you would say something along the lines of how the reunion was boring or something because it absolutely wasn't. Glad this was the direction you took it instead, kudos
The one thing I found odd is that I think I remember them advertising the return to mighty nein as being 4 episodes, but they just up & killed ukoatoa in ep 2 and it felt kinda anticlimactic IDK.
I'm in 3 campaigns now and my characters cap stone Abilitys are either great or shit. Fiend warlock: at 14 throw anyone through hell for 1 minute(10 ROUNDS) and deal 10d10 Phychic damage with a save for half damage. This is amazing as 10 rounds to heal, clear out the other enemies while the big bad is out and ready attacks for the moment of return. After that wait 3 levels for a level 9 spell then multi class as there's not much After that. War claric: there cap stone Ability is resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. That's what the barb gets at level 1. Bad Or at 20 you can call up your god to drop a divine nuke of the big bad. Great depending on the dm. You can multi class at 14 or wait till 17 if you want a 9th level but my war claric is multi classing in fighter for extra attack and action surge. Star druid:at 14 they become incorporeal, giving them resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Ok if the dm allows the incorporeal can allow you to move through walls and people. But that depends on the dm if so then good. At 20 infinite wild shape not needed as a short rest gets them back and you don't need that many at this level as cr 1 beasts aren't doing much here. Multi class at 17 for the 9th level then move on.
This video just saved my campaign! I came in fully disagreeing on the Critical Role aspect; I live for their RP and watching consequences unfold over several sessions, and I missed the dramatic build-up to a fight with Uk'otoa. I still very much enjoyed the two-shot and watching the cast revisit their characters, but part of me would have loved to see it play out like C1 and Vecna. But CR is my entertainment, not my campaign. The module I'm running is very different than what we were expecting, and wasn't exactly our style of play. I've been reworking and homebrewing most of it, and we were all ready to move towards a natural conclusion to the game. In plotting out the final story beats for the campaign and looking into D&D lore for inspiration, I discovered I had enough material to keep the campaign interesting and alive for MUCH longer...but since we are trying to wrap up, I have been trying to cram a lot of really cool lore into a few sessions and it hasn't felt like it would be a satisfying end. Jay, you have inspired me to make things much simpler for the "end" of the campaign and leave the rest open for the days when we will want to revisit our characters. I already feel a weight off my shoulders about not needing to tie up every thread, and instead leave exciting strands to come back to.
There are plenty of ways to challenge higher level players with lower level enemies, but it definitely requires a different style of play than what I see from a lot of tables. You need to have buy-in from both DM and Players. 5e is actually a bit more reasonable about it than say 3.5e where levels 17+ you're basically playing high-speed rocket tag.
and don't forget "and rapidly closing in on rules to become an actual god". Pathfinder did this a bit better with Mythic level play, and those rules could actually be appropriated to make more interesting high level play by making more standard gooks "mythic", but still, when closing in on god balance is just gonna be off.
I feel like people that think of level 20 characters as gods have never actually played at that level. Or just had DMs that couldn't figure out how to challenge them in any way. It's like they saw a spell does 20d6 compared to the 2d8 they can do with their low level character and thought of that hitting the enemies they're having problems with now.
I make my campaigns avengers style, they are rigth now at lvl 8 and i needed to homebrew a CR13, the campaign is designed to end at lvl 16 at least but looking for lvl 20 since unless something really bad happen we are able and compromised to reach lvl 20. Anyways, the fucking last boss is going to be absolutely savage at this point, somewhat at CR 40 or 30 with multiple phases
High level D&D characters require a high level of creativity from the DM. The easiest method is to throw ever increasing thick brutes at the party like demigods and dragons. A harder method is having them face off against a highly organized and dangerous group like an assassins guild, which requires clever tactics, traps, special equipment, and an actually competent strategy and backup plan(s). Either way, they can't be too OP, the goal is for the players to have fun.
I've always wanted to throw unusual encounters. Party goes to a cave where there are goblin tracks but no goblins. Exploring shows it's empty until they reach a large cavern with a fissure near the top open to the sky. It was a goblin horde until that dragon took it over. The party goes all out on the dragon, then have to fight their way out through the goblins that have been waiting for an opportunity. Low-level mobs become scary when you're out of resources.
@@bryanwoods3373 Mmhm, when the enemy has the action economy then it's funny how the game flips on its head. At first it was the party outnumbering a big bad, now it's the big bads outnumbering the party.
A: I don't understand what you mean by "side tracking". Massive reveals aren't sidetracking from yhr story it's just part of the story B: If you finish this oneshot excited for the next oneshot to continue it and that's not a one shot that's a campaign.
Critical Role ended the 2nd Campaign at 16th level. They started The Mighty Nein, Reunited at level 17. They went up 1 level not several, please check your facts, Jay!
i had to tell my players to start using their high spell slots and stop just spamming cantrips cus encounters were taking forever and it really wasn't fun for anyone They kept holding onto them "just in case" despite the fact that we've been on this campaign 3 years and just about always have 1 encounter per day
The issue with high level play isn't that 5e is poorly suited to it, it's that it requires a more skilled DM to properly balance it. By the nature of the game, one of the people at the table is serving as an amateur game designer. Game design usually has a bunch of highly specialized people working on different parts that come together to form a cohesive whole. DMs are doing it all by themselves, often in real time as unexpected developments occur. It's hard. One issue is, 5e's mechanical balance is focused on the resources a party can use without resting. This makes it extremely difficult for one encounter to ever be a threat at high level play, because a threatening encounter isn't one-shotting party members, it's depriving them of resources over the course of time. We can even see this theme reinforced with Legendary Actions and Legendary Resistances. High level parties have a LOT of resources at their disposal, and that's the real issue. It's hard to keep people engaged for the 10-15 rounds of combat you'd need to exhaust the wizard's spell slots.
They also didn’t play up to that level, so everyone is trying to figure out how to use the character. Especially Talesin, poor guy went from dead at level 4 or 5 to level 17 after a year plus.
TLDW; don't do high-level campaigns, just to one-shots. Which is just a cop-out imho. But the final word was useful - keep the action moving and roll with the high stakes.
I'd like to see instead of having a ton of spells available for people to use instead have low level spells get additional effects with higher level spell slots and not just more damage o healing or more targets so it would make it better for people to have a character use their "signature" spells even at higher levels and have less wondering about what spell out of their dictionary long spell list they'd use and instead have more emphasis on using the same spells on different levels
I’ve watched quite a lot of your videos today, and I like your insight. I can’t help wondering, do you have a background in psychology or addiction (counseling) or something? 😅
Nope, but much of it is personal experience haha. Been around the block, and helped others arpund the block. ALSO I was raised by marriage counselors so that might contribute?
High level play sucks because of failed attempts to balance it. If you're gonna play at hogh levels you should prolly just accept it being *broken*. Just let it happen
so basically dont permantly exists in 15+ levels for more then a couple sesions, have those setions be fairly easy to follow on what the characters need to do. likly explain the way into higher levels with a time skip.
Doesn't matter your level. As a DM I ran up to level 30 campaign. (Homebrewed above 20). What it takes is focus on story, not raw stats. Higher levels mean more options of cool things to do for the players and the DM.
Heya everyone! Kinda early to make this call but it looks like this might be one of those videos where people don't agree, SO quick reminder: Totally okay to disagree with me. ALL of my videos are discussions and I fully accept that I have every possibility of being wrong just like everyone else. BUT be respectful, kind, and keep the conversation one that everyone can learn from! I may not respond to arguments because people can be assholes, but I promise I am reading them and learning from them! Have a wonderful day and continue to learn!
Well said
I have my players create their characters at level 20, and allow them to create a material/achievements list they attained around their end goals.
The list they have provided, I blend into rewards throughout the campaign.
then they make that character up at level one and that’s our session 0 Basically, I use their level 20 characters as information for their character goals to build my adventures around for them to attain.
The only thing that really slows combat down is not knowing what your character does nor preparing your turn prior to taking it.
*Edit*
Generally Speaking
True!
Spellcasters who rely on AOE are hard to play around as a Fighter 😅
This is THE TRUTH. We like to complain about conjure animals and summoning 32 raptors, but that player finishes his turn faster than 90% of dnd players. “I can cast a spell and I have one bonus action only…hmmmmm *thinks for 10 minutes*. Ok I cast Fireball”
Yes and no. You have to adjust your plan every time someone else does anything, and at high level play someone can change the battle in a single turn
Like VolantEngima highlights. There is an issue that you can have a plan and that mean nothing once one other player does something. Plus knowing your character can make the problem worse due to been aware of just how much you could do and still not been sure what the best choice is because you can't crunch the math quickly enough
Seems to be a hot take based on the video and comments, but high level characters doesn't make combats easier. What makes combat easier is when a DM sets up an encounter for high level characters as if they were low or mid level. Your strategy needs to advance with the characters. Stop living by CR and think tactically. Find ways to make them burn resources early. Use a wide variety and several conditions. Find their strengths and turn it against them. It's not that it's boring, it's that it requires a different tactic.
Pretty much this, but also another thing that drastically slows down high level play is people not knowing their characters abilities very well. (which is why lvl 20 one shots will often be slower than say, a lvl 20 combat in a long running campaign where the players know their characters well.)
Even way before 20 , unprepared casters or other players with more comprehensive combat options and indecisiveness will grind your combat to a screeching halt.
Also lets not kid ourselves, what's considered "appropriate" levels of challenges for parties don't actually challenge them in most cases, because 5E's monsters are basically wet paper towels to make it easier for players to "win".
@@giantsbane8439 highly agree with everything you said. In my current table, my 4 players are level 13 and have been playing these for more than a year every week. They are much more efficient than our one shot combats.
Revisiting characters in general is a great narrative tool for tables that run multiple, connected world campaigns. I've done it in a few campaigns: it's fun with very limited exposure.
However, Not Playing HIgh Levels isn't really a solution to the challenge of playing high levels.
Running high level games and learning from the inevitable mistakes is the most reliable solution.
Even tips from yt channels can only point out potholes. The table has to be committed to learning.
Regardless, it's fun to revisit old characters. Keep swinging, my dude!
So for high level play, you're basically saying turn it into a huge one-shot adventure? I think that's a pretty great idea actually! It's essentially the same thing when D&D came out with that level 20 adventure with Vecna not that long ago. I suppose ending a campaign at around level 15ish then as you stated have a "this is what my character has been up to since the "end" of the campaign" just to have everyone come together for one final massive fight that has incredible implications for the world they live in. This is why you are one of my absolute favorite content creators on this platform! But you know what character would definitely be ready for level 20 gameplay? If you guessed John Cena then you are correct sir! Congrats! Have a cookie.
I've actually run a lot of one shot adventures that are higher level, and they've been a blast! Only once have I run a campaign that went that high level and it got... tiring, for sure
An alternative is to start diversifying the nature of the content: Instead of quests where the party has to go deal with a singular entity and its subordinates, start transitioning the content into something like a kingdom builder, with the party founding an organization/group to achieve their goals, and also it would allow you to play into the longer lifespans most can get at higher levels.
@@dylanpalmer5151 that's an interesting idea!
I mean Wish is broken, but it does explicitly say “your DM has final say”. So as long as you keep this in mind, it makes Wish powerful but not overpowering.
To be fair, everything in the game technically has an invisible "your DM has final say" at the bottom of the text, but it being explicit in wish does really drive home like "you, as the DM, really gotta step up on this one cause this is fucking busted, on purpose"
And to go with this, anything outside the safe list runs the risk of losing use of the spell. Narratively, this is the barrier Mystra put in place creating feedback as it prevents your magic from tearing apart the world again. The DM twisting the wish is real world consequences to players trying to be too smart, so they have to really think about what they want to do.
All versions of D&D break down at higher levels, which is why many AD&D high level adventures took place in areas that changed how abilities and spells acted!
I've heard some people say that since adventuring got boring at high levels, the wizard in his new tower kept making shopping lists for hirelings that became the party's next caracters.
@@colbyboucher6391 honestly at high level especially with time to prep unless your dm is purposefully just trying to tpk there are no threats in the game a party of 3 to 5 lvl 20 cant be killed unless you shit spam something that auto drops hp to 0 on failed saving throws like a bunch of banshees etc
3.5 and pathfinder both 1 and 2 have good adventures that goes to high levels
@@mitchellmiller6644it's just time to bust out the CR35+ dragons and other epic level creatures you can convert into 5e
it is a big reason i went to spell casting without spell slots. making sure the casters dont need to worry about which slot to use when saves sooooo much time, ngl. just toss a chance to fail on that bad boy for balance and it works out
I'll use a videogame analogy:
Remember the progression of difficulty when playing games like TLOZ Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring.
In the beginning you are completely outmatched by many of the enemies around the map, or outright unable to do certain things because you haven't progressed far enough.
In this beginning phase progress is fast, but the gameplay is often the most punishing at this stage, because any mistake could kill.
By the end of both of those games you reach a phase where you are essentially a god among mortals
All but the strongest creatures will be obliterated by you.
Maybe one or two things still provide a slight challenge.
You could view it as unsatisfying to run around with powers and strength that make the entire game trivial, but there is no need.
This late game overpowered stage is fun precisely because you had to work so hard to get there.
You faced all the challenges, got all the equipment/upgrades, fought almost every boss and came out as a beastly warrior.
You had the fun of overcoming obstacles and your reward is to obliterate, to hack and slash, to rip and tear like a true paragon of war.
In a DnD context this would be equivalent to DMs creating scenarios which function as sandboxes for players to go crazy with their powers.
I would almost agree with you. However, there are two issues that I reasonably see with this perspective.
Firstly, D&D is not designed like those games. Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild are designed so that there is still plenty of adversity at those endgame levels of play. In the case of Elden Ring it is bosses like Malenia. These bosses end up becoming the game, often taking the time it would take to beat entire areas to kill just once. Then, even after, there are the pvp aspects of the game or even NG+.
In the case of Breath of the Wild, much of the game's difficulty at the end-game comes from exploration and the tangential mechanics to combat. With the exception of the combat challenge shrines, much of the gameplay will be completing Korok puzzles, your last few shrines, taking photos, and finding locations. It doesn't matter that you are unkillable because the point of the game isn't killing things anymore.
D&D isn't like this at all. Half the game is combat. It can't take the Elden ring route because then you are missing out on the RP in RPG. It can't take the BotW route because 90% of your character sheet is combat. Sure, if this was fate or some other combat-light system that would be fine, but then the problem wouldn't exist in the first place. Even further, nothing in either of those games gets close to the sheer power of a level 20 D&D character. Want anything? Wish. Can't wish? Well no mortal can stop you from just taking what you want. Pacifist? Just hop to another plane. Or, dream of the blue veil to another reality where what you want is more likely to happen (Then watch the DM cry as they struggle to get notes together at the pace necessary to support any of those options).
Second, that gets boring. I am now at 3 separate campaigns which I have taken / am taking from level 1 to 20 (1 complete, 1 at 19 with 4 sessions left, 1 at 18). In each of them there have been moments where the parties have tried to tie up loose ends or clear out a dungeon they left at lower level. One wanted to build a city. Another wanted to free a lesser god that nobody outside the party really cared about. Each task was accomplished in line with their overwhelming power. The first time felt great. The second was okay. Now they hate it. They would rather go out and fight elder gods, risking getting characters killed, than wander about the ''mundane' world as, essentially, gods themselves. The things that make D&D fun are just not conducive to being that powerful. D&D requires tension and drama. Being a god makes that difficult. After a few real life months, the novelty of being that powerful wears off and then all you are left with is a campaign with less tension. Then, if you really feel like reaching level 20, you have to keep playing that campaign for another 4 or so levels.
Moral of the story: It is fun to be powerful, just not when you are unopposed in D&D.
I agree. All the hours and effort you put into the game should be rewarded.
The reason I wouldn't recommend skipping levels to do a one shot with players is that it takes time and experience to get good at your mechanics and abilities and get into the flow of using your character to the utmost.
I think certainly the Mighty Nein campaign did get bogged down when they got to higher levels, but I don't think Vox Machina did. It takes planning from the DM, certainly, and I do think if a campaign happens to end earlier there is nothing wrong with one shots revisiting them, but I don't think higher level play in your campaign is a death sentence.
vm also had a fuck ton of homebrew they also didnt have as many spell casters pretty much everyone but baeu was a spellcaster so it could bog it out also the stakes where completely different in c 2. c1 they had the conclave then vecna all back to back with little time for getting side tracked where as c2 focused a lot more into cads quests then fjords then calebs with the main threat lurking in the back ground. where with c1 it was the opposite where the bbeg was in the fore front and the pcs quests where sprinkled in here and there
@@mitchellmiller6644 I am always confused by all this homebrew VM had, there was a little bit but no more then any campaign i have ever run myself, maybe a bit less. I have yet to play in and DnD game that didn’t have some homebrew.
@@Ginric99 its not necessarily home brew but that they switched editions that lead to a lot of the confusion for that campaign it was a mix of 3.5 and 5
there was also like a multiple *months* hiatus between episode 99 and 100 due to covid. That definitely would would leave some rust in your gears
@@ashadder795 for sure but compare vm to mn vm had 3 spell casters then a bunch of people who hit things til they die. on the flip side vm had almost all spellcasters so anytime someone did something it would completely change the battle and make all them have to think up new plans. its the issue with spell casters especially at higher lvls they change the battlefield so much it messes up your plans and you have to think on the fly
This is a really good idea. I've found that in my games, especially in combat, high level play tends to slow things down with all the dice and the class features(not to mention multiclassing). I like dming for high level but it just gets exhausting long term. Perhaps, doing it like this can be a good solution for me. Thanks!
Of course! That's exactly my experience, it gets too slow, but in short bursts it can be exciting!
I'll say this: it's better to begin from low levels, yes, level 1, and slowly level up from there, even up to high levels. You learn and understand your features and spells better this way. Furthermore, you don't have much at low levels, so you really have to squeeze your features out in order to make it, and this gives you better knowledge of your stuff, as you progress. Even high level players get lost in features and spells if they start their character on high level, and this applies when they're awarded multiple levels that they don't get to play through. It's not like playing one-shots with 20 level characters isn't fun. It's immensely fun. But playing a character that slowly leveled up from levels 3 to 15 and playing a 20 level one-shot character was a very different experience. In the first instance, I knew every little thing I could do and could optimally use it. In the second instance, I was stumbling all over myself. And I am a pretty experienced player that likes to get deep with class features and guides etc. I noticed that with many other players as well.
I personally always like to start from lvl3 for story reasons. Some of the sub classes are hard explain all of a sudden
@@Bam_bone Level 3 is a great jumping point for experiences players who don't want to struggle through the early levels and want to jump right in the concept of their character, which for most, revolves around their subclass. Great for some multiclass builds too, that couldn't work if you started from level 1. For example, I started my Paladin/Warlock multiclass character from level 3.
Yeah. I just did a level 20 one-shot, and it's hard breaking out of the resource hoarding mindset and remember all my features. I did a Rune Knight. I invoked most of my runes, but I forgot about Indominatable a lot, as well as Runic Shield. Both have six uses. And if we'd played these characters up, we'd be more familiar with each other's tactics to develop synergy.
I'm also the kind of DM that throws situations at players so they can see what their features do. Like if the Cleric just got Destroy Undead, I'd overload on zombies with some more powerful undead just to give them that clutch moment of decimating the encounter from deadly to manageable.
Τα λες πολύ καλά φίλε 10/10.
I’m gonna agree that level three is a great place to start because you have just enough to not be overwhelmed by new features while still having enough not to lose a character idea you like to random chance unless that random chance is sort of epic.
I... can't agree, I think that showed me how FUN High Level DND is
We did this in my group, we played a campaign across multiple modules (with heavy homebrew from the DM’s side) form levels 1-16 and finished the campaign. After our second campaign (same world) wrapped up around level 12, we revisited our characters from the first campaign at 20th level set after the events of our second campaign and it was really fun.
In D&D, we used to play high level start at 20th to 36th level. At that point your way past Mystara, the Hollow World, or even the 4 elemental planes and the astral plane. You're jumping between the 9 hells, happy hunting grounds and Elysium.
As a DM who has run a level 1-20 game, enemies often feel like they have no impact, so here are some tips;
1) Firstly, to get it out of the way, Sometimes it is good to have easy fights. It helps to show how truely strong the players are and, by extension, how powerful the main threat is.
2) Second, increasing AC and Health beyond what some of the creatures in official books have, can really slow down combat. Instead double the damage the creature does, it may sound excessive but it really isn't.
3) When homebrewing abilities, go to the point where you think it could actually kill someone, and then go one step further. Players always have abilities to reduce damage or heal or ressurect.
I think that the second point is very campaign dependent.
If I doubled the damage that monsters do in my campaign then the majority of the fights would have resulted in a total party kill.
@@masterfreeman117 Perhaps excessive, but you get the point. don't add more hp, add more damage. makes it more tense and less of a slog.
Love this video! Very insightful. Personally, I've never played past level 12.
Someone probably said it already, but i really liked critical role calamity as well, and it is another example of fun interesting high level play with some (but not all) of the dynamics you mention in the video (no established characters, for one)
Fantastic video! I love this so much! For my players to get to level 20 they absorbed the memories and experience of their lives from different realities. Based on the story and situation it worked out.
I feel like it's not as unsupported as people think... for example, see Matt Colville's thoughts on the subject.
It just takes a different mindset, that's all
Especially when you're party consists of 6 to 8 players. Of course you think it's not supported for your table. You have twice what the system was balanced for. Some monsters are designed to stronger as groups. And nothing is stopping you from having a breeding pair of Ancient Red Dragons being encountered together if you don't want kobold minions.
So you're advice is don't play at high levels at all unless they're one shots? 10/10 great advice chief.
With high level play, it seems to be more of an issue with just losing track with *all* of your available abilities. Since many players aren’t gonna think to make a flow chart in their notes of what available actions they can take, of course it’ll begin to slow things down.
Eh, this isn't really a good solution for everyone, though. Like, it could totally work for some tables/players. I can see the point of it. But for others, like myself, who can get into the roleplay aspect of it, just having the one or two shot at high-level, where we aren't really able to BE the character at that level with that kind of power and whatever social aspects that would come with it? That'd be unsatisfying, at least for a character that I'd been with for a while at that point.
Having a separate game for high level play was a really good call for Critical Role. In all the campaigns I've seen and played, you basically have to make your own balance when it comes to anything 16+, as opposed to lower tier play, and it can be really jarring for players and DMs. This way, you can just let your players be overpowered. You can let every encounter be against an Avenger's level threat and their goons. Have them make deals with gods and demons and pit them against such a massive BBEG (or BBEGs) that they have to make decisions that have massive world implications.
I ran a campaign like this where my player's reused their characters from previous campaigns, and threw them all in a cross dimensional airship that they ran alongside all of the major factions they met in previous games as they worked together to fight a cosmic threat. They had control of the helm and went across the planes, they mediated the relationships between the factions, and I gave all of their PC's an overpowered weapon (I was playing WoW: Legion at the time) with a straight up League of Legends style ultimate ability tied to them that we designed together.
Was their favorite campaign in DnD 5e that they ever played and was the most fun I had running it.
I really appreciated this analysis and explanation of why this could work for a one-shot but not an ongoing campaign. At the end of the video I found myself wishing for just 3-5 more minutes where you outlined how to make high level play work for an ongoing game, and suggestions on how to have the legendary power fantasies manifest in ways that didn't bog down the story. I have a feeling the best way to balance raw combat power at T4 isn't through villain power creep, but through dilemmas and moral quandaries where the heroes don't have to prove their strength but their worthiness to wield it.
I watched the entire video waiting for something that wasn’t “Just run a one shot!”
That’s not really a revelation, that’s what 90% of high level play IS. I was hoping for tips on actually running a campaign at high levels
Love this idea cause it also takes some stress off the DM. Do you have to plan a whole campaign from 1 to 20? No. Just plan 1 to 10 or 12 or 15 (whatever you feel good about). Then at the end you can jump to the next big moment as one shot opportunities present themselves.
So true! Just plan one, super awesome moment, and lean into it!
Honestly I run mine in chunks. I plan out "seasons" that are composed of 4 to 6 levels each, and we pause between seasons. That's also when we hold a meeting to determine whether if we continue playing, and what tone or theme the group is looking for in the next season. It's like a chain of smaller campaigns. I commit to these chunks one at a time instead of the whole 1-20 thing.
I am still a beginner who's only played D&D for less than a year. But this is so cool!
I'm not sure I agree. You seem to say that the increased stakes just slow things down, but that simply isn't always true. It all comes down to the DM and the narrative. If you want to skip some things like travel because you're high enough level that normal travel is no longer a hassle, just random roll some fun things that happen along the way. But once the players get there, they can still RP and play however they want. Revisiting old characters is totally fine, but not required. They don't have to be side tracked by every new lead if they know they have something more important to be doing, and that comes down to your narrative ability and reading your players, not just saying out of game "make sure you focus on the main quest cause this is just a one shot". That's such a garbage solution to what isn't a problem in my mind. Sure, the players might get sidetracked anyway, but that happens at low levels too. They don't always follow the thread you want them to... so why is this only okay at low levels and not high ones? Because the stakes of the world are up in the air? Sure, but either convince the players in-game that they need to prioritize the main quest for some actually reasonable reason or let them get a bit sidetracked because they're still having fun, and eventually, the heroes will complete the narrative anyway.
When it comes to balance though... Yeah 9th level spells compared to some other abilities can feel a bit overwhelming... but the characters have been getting better at what they are good at over time. Hopefully everyone has a grasp of what their character is capable of and is okay with it. And if you aren't skipping levels I find many players and DMs will be accommodating to this. If you go through a few sessions and hear your fighter exclaim how they feel they aren't useful anymore, then put the players in a situation where the fighter will feel useful, and maybe the mage will try to tone back a bit, even if they aren't specifically asked to do so. There are times where it might require a talk, and of course the mage can always say no, but the Mage self restraining isn't the only solution. Big spells can be a setup rather than the only thing that matters.
I do think there is some merit to what you're saying, and if your table has problems that this fixes, then by all means, use this as the solution. But I wholeheartedly disagree if you think this is the only, or even just the best solution.
This is more a decently fun alternative for experiencing high level play, but some people want the JRPG style where they are there for the entire journey of becoming godslaying badasses. Also in my own opinion high level watch outs slow things down more because people aren't familiar with the mechanics and how to use the variety of them. Something that continous growth of power over time would diminish. Not a bad idea but not an all expanding solution
I thought I was gonna receive some tips on how to DM a high level campaign and instead got a guy telling me to play one-shots. Great
0:44 its cathartic to hear that im not the only one who thinks this
If I can add some insight as a DM with some experience with high level play it would be : Don't avoid difficult challenges as a DM or as a group.
Yes, high level is difficult.
Players teleport all over the world, you need to prep and improvise a lot, they will use spells that require you to know a lot of things, you will need to balance your campaign so certain players don't feel left behind, you will need to create high level challenges and very hard dungeons and accept that half of it gets skipped by a spell or capacity.
But learning how to handle high level campaigns will make you a better DM ! Don't skip it because it's hard ! Sure doing a One Shot, or a short adventure instead will be more manageable, but you won't learn that much from it.
When a campaign reach high level, a lot of things that didn't really matter begin to gain a lot of importance.
Players planning their turn and combat being efficient is one of them.
Balancing also becomes very important, like giving strong magical items to martial classes.
Learning how to protect your dungeon against specific spells or magics, but still allowing the players to be clever and skip content.
Making your players work for their rests, and knowing how to create a need for ressource management.
Basically, high level is another dynamic of play, and it's very fun when player reach that content. As a gaming group, you just need to learn and adapt to it. Don't reject it because it's difficult.
This is not a 5e problem, this is a role playing problem. When characters reach the point that they can deal with world shattering problems, no matter the version or even system, they are infinitely overpowered for a campaign. You can't build many moderately hard encounters when a hard encounter is "we beat a demigod". The options and powers available to deal with truly high level threats make "normal" threats of that level trivial. This has been the case all the way back to 1st Edition, and yes I have been playing and DMing that long, this isn't theory it's lived experience. With D&D in general, I have found you are able to do the best playing from 6-12 level, below that you tend to be too fragile, above too powerful to make things interesting very long. Above 15th level, 1 shots are about all you can do, and all you ever could. Even then they either turn out to be to easily navigated or TPKs because of a small mistake. High level adventures are generally very unforgiving in that regard. I've seen similar issues in the entire White Wolf line, Hero System/Campions, LUC: Star Trek, and d6 and WotC Star Wars. Is seems like somewhere in the middle of the proposed power range works best, the low end is doable if less exciting and the upper power curve gets broken. My solution is just to avoid the really high level stuff. As very few campaigns ever get there, this has never been a problem for me. I'm probably just too old to care about high level play anymore.
I just want to pop in and say, it is actually pretty system dependent. In Godbound you start as reality-changing divine heroes, so solving regional political issues at level 1 is just part of the game, and the challenges only get harder from there. Rogue Trader is similar, while your individual characters are quite capable, their real strength comes from the fact that they have a ship, crew and authority on their side, and that means the issues they deal with are regularly planetary in scale, but they have the tools to deal with it.
To be fair, there are more systems out there besides the ones you listed. And some that dont have this issue, at least not this extent. WWN, Fria Lagen games, PF2e... And it's not exclusive to 5e, but 5e definitely suffers from it, badly.
The system not being balanced is definitely a system problem not a role play problem. You can't role play your output better. You can optimise but if everyone's optimised then the imbalance will remain. And you can't role play your monsters to be able to equal out to that imbalance you simply need to have those abilities
Star Wars D20 is a meat grinder for low level play. IIRC my wookie bounty hunter's bow caster was 3d10. One shot was my entire hit die at level 3.
This is absolutely a 5e problem
I mean the only reason why critical role lagged a bit was really just they haven't played those characters in a long while. Many of them not running casters for a while.
Pretty sure Jester can't copy a spell through all the duplicates....
Which is why in 1st edition the Wish Spell aged a character years to cast.
I ran a High level campaign and the way I dealt with it was that characters level up super fast and you just need to give the options enough options at the offset and give them a checklist of things they need to accomplish in order to deal with a problem they have coming up, I don't know like a set of potions that allow the characters to use magic in an anti-magic field from the Beholder Headed Ancient Shadow Red Dragolich Necromancer. honestly the thing that speeds the game up the fastest is when players know what their abilities do and if they think about what they are going to do when it isn't their turn to act, one way I helped a player stay involved in a game was I gave them a magic item that allowed them to have a legendary action to cast a cantrip or move without taking attacks of opportunity, they were then constantly thinking about what and when they wanted to use their legendary action and how that would interact with their turn and the game actually sped up as the one player who was being "problematic" by taking a lot of time (sometimes like 5 minutes) on their turn matched the time the other players were taking on their turn (which was like 30 seconds, to 1 minute 30 seconds)
I’m a fan of campaigns ending lvl 10 or less, then moving on to a new one. This idea of revisiting for a one shot seems great if you have the regular group for it.
I'm in the final sessions of a high level mini campaign. Lvl 18, all of the players are gods who rule their own regions and territories. It's mainly been political, players handling political situations; their people being manipulated/held hostage, trying to gain information, secret enemies and shadow organizations, communing with other gods, their peers.
The final boss is a Mythic Aberration who is trying to invade the world.
Tl;Dr, The Old One, the true god slumbered some time ago and left his Archangels to watch over humanity. The Archangels would then find ascended mortals, often time heroes, to Shepard specific areas and combat chaos. Chaos gets too out of hands, the barrier between planes gets thin and phenomenon bleed over; so the Archangels command the gods to handle whatever situation is causing the chaos. A cult wants the old one to return, so they've been trying to kill the gods and sow chaos.
But, the chaos doesn't just cause the planes to thin and overlap, it also causes the greater bubble that protects the world to weaken as well. And an Aberration want to break into the world to do... evil stuff
SO might I suggest, if you want to see some good stuff for high level play. 3.5 meshes very well with 5e, and 3.5 has an entire book for even going beyond level 20 and 10th level spells and how to make spells as epic wizards.
I have never played dnd and never gotten to high levels in the systems that I did play. Something I have noticed from binge watching critical role over the past few month is that dnd feels more board gamey than any of the systems I have played so far. And the higher level it gets the stronger that board game vibe comes through.
I am not all that intrested in playing dnd, because I prefer my ttrpgs to feel less like a board game, but I imagine it would be a blast to build some high level characters and play a one shot, that I approach with the mindset of playing a board game with some roleplay as the cherry on top. That seems to be something that dnd would excell at.
From what I have learned about dnd in the past few month, the issues with high level play that you adress here, seem to be left overs from the dungeon crawl type style of play that dnd was originally build for. With less narrative focused play styles high levels probably don't become an issue. When your focus is on those epic battels, it might be more of a feature than a bug, that battles take longer and longer the more you advance in level.
What I found as a DM was that making the uber bad-guys NPC characters who can do the same kind of stuff the players can do, is the easiest way to challenge the party.
I'm currently running a 1-20 campaign (DotMM) and my players are at level 15. I'm not gonna lie, the real difficulty for me is balancing providing a challenge for the players without making every encounter a near TPK. The issues of high level play balance in 5e are clear in DotMM as almost all Teir 3 and 4 encounters are cakewalk for the players so I need to adjust most of them.
In the current campaign I am playing, I am intentionally multiclassing into as many classes as I can, as a sort of fun-challenge-thing.
Combats with multiple mass heals on both sides sound so exciting. "We start over... again... great. To another 10 rounds of fun."
Did you ever think the problem is not "high level " but the system.? Where a skill base would handle these long-term campaigns better.
Accidentally created a way to satisfyingly retire characters.
Around levek 15, the aquire a fortress, assemble a druid circle, found an order ect.
Play ledgers and wagons for a session to work out how their business ventures move forward. The accidental epilogue alliws then to ride off into the sunset, making their legacy part of the campaign world.
A following of different oneshots, isn't that just a campaign with down time
1) It’s not high level play that’s hard to balance. It’s having enough combats and mid combat…puzzles and MECHANICS that drain action economy and resources from the players to make it rewarding. Keep in mind video game style “mechanics” rules don’t exist at all. So it makes it even harder to balance.
2) No for real. Go run 6-8 medium to severe encounters a day against a high level party. Now do it for months on end. Let me know when you run out of monsters that make thematic sense for your campaign. It should only be about 4 adventuring days. If you’re running those multiple combats.
3) narratively, at those levels, WHY OR HOW are you even fighting that many times per day? BBEG just throwing things at you? Why haven’t all these super high leveled monsters just conquered the world yet? Combat has to have NARRATIVE teeth to have any tension. Or it’s just another combat.
That’s why the math breaks down at high levels. It’s the pyramid theory. The strongest stuff at the top there should be less of. But the game is balanced for those 6-8 encounters over a day.
So, for example, players have to travel to X to stop the BBEG from completing an arcane ritual to summon a god, or an avatar of a god, or something super high CR. So players go. It’s going to take X time. They’re level 17-20. If players warp right to the front door, the BBEG didn’t do a very good job hiding. If they have to travel for weeks in game time, how many days of combats are you settling for? What “other” resource draining encounters can you possibility set for a high level party. Skill checks? Negated by the over abundance of charisma casters for face skills, or rogues for everything else. Or spells.
This is why bounded accuracy was bad. The math in the game is not tight enough.
It should be balanced for LESS encounters. But they should be harder as you go up in level. More AC more HP. Monsters should have MULTIPLE move actions and multiple rounds of abilities.
But only if you’re fighting singles.
As it stands, they knew the balance was this bad from the get go. That’s the only reason legendary resistances and actions exist.
That’s the only way to fight PC’s at that level because the 6-8 encounters doesn’t work. It’s why, while I love the system for rules and system mastery, no one REALLY loves high level Pathfinder 1E because it’s rocket tag. 5E is the same.
Pathfinder 2E showed me the light.
I can't really agree for my group at least (I dm heavy homebrew, lvl 40 characters) the players are at level 40 rn and are currently finishing off the last of the bbeg's triad
There's two things I'd add to the idea that most high level play should be one shots.
1. Structure the campaign similar to a westmarches style campaign.
2. Track XP the way it's handled in Cypher System.
Center the campaign around an organization, academy, mercenary company, military order, or some combination of the above. Players make parties of characters at varying levels. Each party is sent out on various missions. Rewards vary with degree of success. If a player has to miss a game then their character from that party was pulled away at the last minute and asigned to another squad.
In Cypher System games XP is tracked like milestone XP is in D&D. X number of XP can be traded in to level up. Typically 12 to 16 depending on the version of Cypher you're running. XP is also treated as inspiration tokens to be traded in for rerolls, and it's handed out in game based on rolls and player behavior that moves the story forward. Basically anything D&D says would reward inspiration Rewards XP. Also rolling a nat 1 gives you two XP. One to keep. One to give to a party member. Or give both back to the DM to undo the complication caused by the nat 1.
Hand out XP for nat 1s, nat 20s, int or wis checks to find stuff out or just find stuff, and any other player behaviors you want to encourage. Let players assign their XP to any of their characters or trade them with other players.
Wait that's really smart, there is a pdf for this?
Wait that's really smart, there is a pdf for this?
@caedutiger9362 The Monte Cook Games website has a Cypher System Rules Primer pdf that is free and probably has all the official rules for their XP system.
Westmarches campaigns are detailed by a few different UA-camrs and probably a bunch of different D&D outlets and commentators.
I think Westmarches began as a setting in D&D and the name just got adopted as a style of play where the play group is large but divided up among multiple DMs that allow players to migrate their PCs around the different game nights/groups.
The main idea for using Westmarches to run high level I got from an early Dimension 20 Adventuring Academy episode where Brennan Lee Mulligan explained that in his long running 3.5 campaign the high level PCs suffered a total party defeat. No one was killed but everyone was captured or banished. The result was the archer character was blinded and lost so Brennan had everyone make level 5 backup characters that could help the archer track down the other PCs and break their multiple curses and whatnot.
Since then I've used the sidekick rules and other tricks to have players make 2 to 3 characters for campaigns. First string, the B Team, and maybe a kooky character build the players want to experiment with. The party is the main combat force or leadership of a larger organization. Like the guilds listed in the Ravnica book the organization often provides NPCs that can be sent on errands or used as backup. If a player wants to retire a character they aren't feeling anymore they can swap to a backup character and their old one becomes an NPC that stays in the base and hands out adventure hooks and consumable items.
Imagine if any CR high level reunion episode began in the castle full of teleportation circles that all three teams use as a Guildhall and Travis gets to decide if Grog, Fjord, or Chetney gets to go on that week's mission.
High level play can show things down. Key as others have said is that it works best if players grow with their characters and know their abilities. Otherwise, there are too many choices and abilities to pick from. The number of players and bad guys also affects high-level play.
One aspect of high level play I noticed is that high level adventures are rare, like very rare. This was mentioned in a 3.5 edition book, on your planet/realm there is supposed to be only like 1 or 2 level 20 characters at any point of time. By the time a character is level 15 or higher they should be famous/infamous. Like your average farmer has met, at most, a level 3 character. They should be so well known, that people are trying to get their help, they have enemies and people that want to fight them to prove themselves. So yeah it is hard to make an average adventure around them.
I wouldn't mind seeing two story based games play out as a timeline, like the first game can start off when their younger like 18-20 years old, unless their other races like halfs orcs, elves and so on , but the first game can end as they defeated the dark lord, but game two happens like 20 years later and it could be written off as a new dark lord came out to defeat their kingdom, but the new party gotten capture so the king calls back for the old members who already defeated one dark lord to save the young new party and defeat the new dark lord, (a twisted end, the new dark lord is the original dark lord and he wants revenge on the party that defeated him already)
In story wise it would be cool to see the characters grow, like when starting out the Fighter player job could be a simple soldier, but now because he lived through life, hes no longer a soldier, so you would have to changer your background to a commander or folk hero or a hermit.....to show character growth and seeing what family people would make up for their characters would be cool too
I don't really understand what this fixes. Combat is still going to be lvl 20 combat without changing rules, all that seems to be hopefully remedied by a 1 off is the idea of consequence for your actions narratively since as 1 offs are you typically don't care about long term ramifications of your actions since after the adventure is over so is the story, so you incinerating an entire town doesn't matter, so player decisions naturally are quicker. Which is actually not what happens in critical role as its still canon to the world what happens in their 1 off and a world built off of multiple campaigns with the same people is a rare form of DnD that most groups don't partake in since its very heavy on the DM to build the world and compile notes from each session.
In both of the last campaigns I enjoyed watching the lower level portions of the campaign more than the higher level stuff.
I played with a group for over 3 years with exp growth. This was pathfinder. 1) after 8th lvl, there was so many buffs on the field, it bogged down the combat entirely. 2) our dm was still throwing human cultists at us at lvl 11 *avg lvl* but instead of making a bbeg, it was a numbers game and we would still wipe the floor with them. 3) then the enviable massive lvl surge where he threw so many enemies at us, got frustrated, then put a timer on it to where we had to fight an ancient red dragon with 0 rest at lvl 11. And that's where it dissolved. He couldn't balance our growth with the story. So instead of fighting the dragon after an onslaught on 30+ cultists, a portion of the continent was scorched in a matter on 8 in game hours cuz we were tapped
Amazing video as always! Yeah I’ve been running a campaign for a while now. The group are level 11. They’re going to be approaching the high levels soon and I know how much of a potential bog it can be especially for those who still get shaky on mechanics. The players say they’ll be fine, but I don’t know. Just looking for ways to handle it I suppose, your video helped! 😁
I dont agree. The difference is between dms in high level is if they can handle high level play or give up.what i mean is u will make mistakes for the first time but after its time for you to decide if u are gonna go with it and learn or give up a high-level play.
They played up to level 15 and the “one shot” was 16. Not a huge jump at all. Almost like they gained a level for finishing the regular campaign
3/3.5 suffered a similar problem (not much support for high-level, and actually also the "I have so many options I on't know which to choose); at least they eventually put out an Epic Level Handbook. We might see the same with 5E.
Im sad that one DND is probably taking all their focus and we won't get any support for high level campaigns for 5th edition
Although high level play can be a slog, I would still encourage everyone to give it a shot at least once. Just played a 1-20 campaign over the last 2 years and finished a little over a week ago. Let me tell you, the first time I got to cast a 9th level spell felt unbelievable. The set piece battles we got to do, the drama and stakes at 20th level. It was worth the slog.
I don't hate this idea. While I've never done anything like this, partially because either a campaign hasn't ended enough to be able to "revist" higher level versions of them, or because we just keep going in the campaign and don't want to stop, if I had an opportunity to try something like this, I definitely would. Whether I'd have a group that would go along with it, that's another thing, lol. And yeah, I really wish they would have more content for higher level play. My current campaign is in Tier 3, so we're already above the average adventure content that is put out there.
The campaign I'm running I plan to end at level 16 and eventually bring them back to fight an ancient diety and level them up to 18 so I can see what they're made of.
The wish spell IS the wizard capstone ability.
The critical role ukatoa oneshot is a terrible example. Math threw a t4 party at a big bad without taxing their resources at all, he did that for most of c2 too. If you look back at the vecna fight they battled their way though a mountain and the briarwoods(again) before getting the the big bad.
What’s the point of having all those spells and levels and not get to use them? Or learn how to use them? I run a high level campaign (levels 10-20), were at 16 now. It’s been challenging for me to balance it, but only at first. Keeping the players engaged IS part of the job of the DM. So is balancing. It’s totally doable with a little bit of work and tweaking on the fly. Run that super powered campaign! You got this! ❤️🔥
I think a lot of people approach high level (post level 12ish) play in D&D the wrong way.
As Brennan Lee Mulligan once said, what makes high level D&D compelling isn't about being a god in combat, it's about the decisions that the players make with all the power they have and the consequences/results of those decisions. When your group agrees to do a high level campaign, there will always come a point where the players will become too powerful, and not just in damage-dealing sense, but also utility and healing. At a certain point, even death becomes more like a status effect than a permanent consequence if we're going by rules as written.
That's why I think Brennan makes a great point. For me as a player, combat and dungeon exploration isn't fun anymore when the Paladin can just nova the bosses down for half or all their HP in one turn, or when the Rogue literally can't fail a skill check because the lowest they can roll is 20 and above.
It is like the Movies after the Series is over. Star Trek is a prime example. Original series, ST:NG, now Strange New Worlds prequels, Discovery, they may all have the Movie Reunion show that essentially what we’re talking about.
Come to think about it, most jumps in power in the MCU is after a gap. Perhaps finding or making a Gap in the campaign for downtime and an extra level(s)-up. Let their fame grow a little, or notoriety, you do you as GM. Let them develop a bit in a state of unfettered clarity. You could allow them to retrain a level or feature. If long enough let them train a proficiency/tool/language. IMHO, growth and character development during the campaign is the most fun in any game. As your character develops they gain knowledge, abilities, experiences, tactical options, the ability to move mountains or inspire cities, it is a Trip!
can't bog the story down if there was no story to begin with 💀. my DM's game hasn't had much of a story since the beginning
As a solely Roll20 DM I find using digital dice rather then physical ones have probably saved our group dozens of hours. Counting dice takes time, messy, you need to concentrate, some people aren't the best at math on the fly so I get why people swear by digital platform
Mass Heal is the only 9th level cleric spell worth casting in combat though. Maybe Power Word Heal.
Power creep is the problem with high level play. It ends up being an issue because casters are minion mashers who can wipe out armies with single spells, while martials are single target killers who will kill a BBEG in one round if they land all their attacks. You have a warlock casting maddening darkness on an army for 10 minuets 8D8 times 100 about 3500 damage to every creature in the effect, half on a good save every 6 seconds for 100 rounds. A warlock with some specific items can have a 19+ spell DC, making it nearly impossible to resist the spell effect. Then you have a fighter doing 8+ attacks every round for 3 rounds who can add who knows what bonuses to the damage. Or a paladin who multi classed their last two levels dropping all their smites in one round with an action surge. It is hard to fight one god. How do you challenge 4+?
I think a problem with high level play is that Wotc hasn’t put any content out for levels 14-20 to help give examples of high level play and how to run those types of games
The other great example of this is EXU Calamity. They were all HIGH SOCIETY leaders having to basically stop the apocalypse.
Gotta give you credit for the clickbait on this one: I was ready to tear you a new one cause I thought, based on the title and thumbnail, that you would say something along the lines of how the reunion was boring or something because it absolutely wasn't. Glad this was the direction you took it instead, kudos
The one thing I found odd is that I think I remember them advertising the return to mighty nein as being 4 episodes, but they just up & killed ukoatoa in ep 2 and it felt kinda anticlimactic IDK.
I'm in 3 campaigns now and my characters cap stone Abilitys are either great or shit.
Fiend warlock: at 14 throw anyone through hell for 1 minute(10 ROUNDS) and deal 10d10 Phychic damage with a save for half damage.
This is amazing as 10 rounds to heal, clear out the other enemies while the big bad is out and ready attacks for the moment of return.
After that wait 3 levels for a level 9 spell then multi class as there's not much After that.
War claric: there cap stone Ability is resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. That's what the barb gets at level 1. Bad
Or at 20 you can call up your god to drop a divine nuke of the big bad. Great depending on the dm.
You can multi class at 14 or wait till 17 if you want a 9th level but my war claric is multi classing in fighter for extra attack and action surge.
Star druid:at 14 they become incorporeal, giving them resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Ok if the dm allows the incorporeal can allow you to move through walls and people. But that depends on the dm if so then good.
At 20 infinite wild shape not needed as a short rest gets them back and you don't need that many at this level as cr 1 beasts aren't doing much here. Multi class at 17 for the 9th level then move on.
As someone only 40 episodes in when does the spoilers end?
This video just saved my campaign!
I came in fully disagreeing on the Critical Role aspect; I live for their RP and watching consequences unfold over several sessions, and I missed the dramatic build-up to a fight with Uk'otoa. I still very much enjoyed the two-shot and watching the cast revisit their characters, but part of me would have loved to see it play out like C1 and Vecna.
But CR is my entertainment, not my campaign. The module I'm running is very different than what we were expecting, and wasn't exactly our style of play. I've been reworking and homebrewing most of it, and we were all ready to move towards a natural conclusion to the game. In plotting out the final story beats for the campaign and looking into D&D lore for inspiration, I discovered I had enough material to keep the campaign interesting and alive for MUCH longer...but since we are trying to wrap up, I have been trying to cram a lot of really cool lore into a few sessions and it hasn't felt like it would be a satisfying end. Jay, you have inspired me to make things much simpler for the "end" of the campaign and leave the rest open for the days when we will want to revisit our characters. I already feel a weight off my shoulders about not needing to tie up every thread, and instead leave exciting strands to come back to.
There are plenty of ways to challenge higher level players with lower level enemies, but it definitely requires a different style of play than what I see from a lot of tables. You need to have buy-in from both DM and Players. 5e is actually a bit more reasonable about it than say 3.5e where levels 17+ you're basically playing high-speed rocket tag.
and don't forget "and rapidly closing in on rules to become an actual god". Pathfinder did this a bit better with Mythic level play, and those rules could actually be appropriated to make more interesting high level play by making more standard gooks "mythic", but still, when closing in on god balance is just gonna be off.
I feel like people that think of level 20 characters as gods have never actually played at that level. Or just had DMs that couldn't figure out how to challenge them in any way. It's like they saw a spell does 20d6 compared to the 2d8 they can do with their low level character and thought of that hitting the enemies they're having problems with now.
I make my campaigns avengers style, they are rigth now at lvl 8 and i needed to homebrew a CR13, the campaign is designed to end at lvl 16 at least but looking for lvl 20 since unless something really bad happen we are able and compromised to reach lvl 20. Anyways, the fucking last boss is going to be absolutely savage at this point, somewhat at CR 40 or 30 with multiple phases
Pshht just be a chad DM and skip their turn
take a shot everytime he says "revisit old characters"
You'll never grow strong enough to reach higher levels if your don't EAT YOUR BEANS.
High level D&D characters require a high level of creativity from the DM. The easiest method is to throw ever increasing thick brutes at the party like demigods and dragons. A harder method is having them face off against a highly organized and dangerous group like an assassins guild, which requires clever tactics, traps, special equipment, and an actually competent strategy and backup plan(s). Either way, they can't be too OP, the goal is for the players to have fun.
I've always wanted to throw unusual encounters. Party goes to a cave where there are goblin tracks but no goblins. Exploring shows it's empty until they reach a large cavern with a fissure near the top open to the sky. It was a goblin horde until that dragon took it over. The party goes all out on the dragon, then have to fight their way out through the goblins that have been waiting for an opportunity. Low-level mobs become scary when you're out of resources.
@@bryanwoods3373 Mmhm, when the enemy has the action economy then it's funny how the game flips on its head. At first it was the party outnumbering a big bad, now it's the big bads outnumbering the party.
A: I don't understand what you mean by "side tracking". Massive reveals aren't sidetracking from yhr story it's just part of the story
B: If you finish this oneshot excited for the next oneshot to continue it and that's not a one shot that's a campaign.
Critical Role ended the 2nd Campaign at 16th level. They started The Mighty Nein, Reunited at level 17. They went up 1 level not several, please check your facts, Jay!
Unless I missed something, he didn't say that critical role did it, but that you can do it, as more of a general statement.
i had to tell my players to start using their high spell slots and stop just spamming cantrips cus encounters were taking forever and it really wasn't fun for anyone
They kept holding onto them "just in case" despite the fact that we've been on this campaign 3 years and just about always have 1 encounter per day
You should watch EXU: Calamity... ;)
The issue with high level play isn't that 5e is poorly suited to it, it's that it requires a more skilled DM to properly balance it. By the nature of the game, one of the people at the table is serving as an amateur game designer. Game design usually has a bunch of highly specialized people working on different parts that come together to form a cohesive whole. DMs are doing it all by themselves, often in real time as unexpected developments occur. It's hard.
One issue is, 5e's mechanical balance is focused on the resources a party can use without resting. This makes it extremely difficult for one encounter to ever be a threat at high level play, because a threatening encounter isn't one-shotting party members, it's depriving them of resources over the course of time. We can even see this theme reinforced with Legendary Actions and Legendary Resistances. High level parties have a LOT of resources at their disposal, and that's the real issue. It's hard to keep people engaged for the 10-15 rounds of combat you'd need to exhaust the wizard's spell slots.
They also didn’t play up to that level, so everyone is trying to figure out how to use the character. Especially Talesin, poor guy went from dead at level 4 or 5 to level 17 after a year plus.
TLDW; don't do high-level campaigns, just to one-shots. Which is just a cop-out imho. But the final word was useful - keep the action moving and roll with the high stakes.
I'd like to see instead of having a ton of spells available for people to use instead have low level spells get additional effects with higher level spell slots and not just more damage o healing or more targets so it would make it better for people to have a character use their "signature" spells even at higher levels and have less wondering about what spell out of their dictionary long spell list they'd use and instead have more emphasis on using the same spells on different levels
I’ve watched quite a lot of your videos today, and I like your insight. I can’t help wondering, do you have a background in psychology or addiction (counseling) or something? 😅
Nope, but much of it is personal experience haha. Been around the block, and helped others arpund the block. ALSO I was raised by marriage counselors so that might contribute?
High level play sucks because of failed attempts to balance it. If you're gonna play at hogh levels you should prolly just accept it being *broken*. Just let it happen
so basically dont permantly exists in 15+ levels for more then a couple sesions, have those setions be fairly easy to follow on what the characters need to do. likly explain the way into higher levels with a time skip.
Eh no, Ashely not knowing how to count to 60 damage was slowing them :D .
Doesn't matter your level. As a DM I ran up to level 30 campaign. (Homebrewed above 20). What it takes is focus on story, not raw stats. Higher levels mean more options of cool things to do for the players and the DM.