It says levels 1-20 on the tin, but rarely have I seen a game that went over 10th without starting to show it's seams ripping.

So deities have been statted-out since 1e. There must be a reason. I've never played Godbound or ACKS, but supposedly they embrace high level play. 4e tried to make it "balanced", but it just doesn't make sense to me that DCs just increase as PCs level up. Mythic Pathfinder is just more fiddliness on top of crunchy accounting.

We all know the "sweet spot" in D&D (or retroclones) is 1-6 or so. But what about high level?

We played a campaign of 5e that ran from 4th to 18th level and the game worked fine throughout. Now, we aren't people who try to break the system, but neither are we walking on eggshells to avoid it.

The changes to magic in 5e (power based on slot rather than caster level, fewer high-level slots, the Concentration mechanism) really help to reign magic in. The non-casters were all contributing and enjoying their characters. The Bonus action rules mean you have round-by-round tactical choices to make for characters like rogues.

The most 'meh' character was probably a Druid / Barbarian multiclass build who majored in having huge numbers of HP to act as a damage sink and not much else.

I've been through three 5e campaigns that went to level 18 for most of us. And went pretty well.
Ive been in an ongoing Spelljammer campaign thats hit 18+ on the levels and still chugging along.
Ive been in BX campaigns that topped out at 14 and no trouble.

Its not a matter of the system as it is a problem of players and more often a DM. If you have players out to break the system or DMs who are too generous with magic items and spells then challenging such PCs will get harder.

Not that I've played. Though 5E sucks somewhat less at high level than other editions. Still, one of the things that irks me about 5E is that many of the iconic monsters only come into play at extremely high levels.

I honestly don't get the system support in every edition for high-level play, when so few campaigns ever reach those levels. There's a reason why so few adventures above 12th level are ever published - the market for them is so small that they're not commercially viable.

The basic problem is that most actions are resolved using a d20, so either (1) you have to limit how fast a character can get bonuses, or (2) the system will break somewhat at high levels. This isn't just a function of D&D, but is a byproduct of the mathematics. I remember tinkering with Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG, which I thought was cool until I realized how fast a 2d6 dice rolling range gets "broken" and that kind of took the fun out of it for me. Games based on a d20 die roll have the same philosophical issue, but it doesn't come into play quite as quickly because the number range is larger.

I think that 5E has done a nice job of limiting the bonuses, but I have to confess that I've only played a couple of sessions at levels 10+.

I think all of the pre 3E editions (which I know better in this respect) are good at high level, IF (and only if) you keep the magic items down to a dull roar. It isn't level based powers that trash D&D campaigns, it is items.

You don't know hard it was to resist inverting that thread title question...

I wouldn't say 4e "sucks" at high level so much as it's started to get kind of monotonous at that point.

5e published campaigns run to about level 15 and are quite playable all the way through. I haven't played past level 16, but I don't see anything in the books that would make 17-20 broken. As someone else said, the limits on casters do a pretty effective job of keeping things in a nice place, and the martials really do a lot of damage.

B/X-BECMI was very playable at the Companion Level 15+, with the Test of the Warlords series of adventures.

AD&D was also very playable in the teens.  It took forever to get there but was worth it.

With all the widgets in WotC D&D, it's much harder to play at highest levels, but like anything else, once you get proficient with the sheer number of options and have internalized the rules, 3.5 was manageable.

My honest answer is I don't know whether D&D sucks at higher levels any more than it sucks at lower levels, it really probably depends in how well you like D&D to begin with. My friends and I never found epic high-level games very exciting and usually retired a PC if he managed to obtain a castle and retinue and such lordly trappings. I've always found games are the most fun in the earlier stages where the PCs are just starting their way in the world. Obviously other people like playing the king and his court and affairs of state.

I am curious about that comment about certain monsters not being used at lower levels...says who and since when? I can drop a red dragon on a 1st-level party if I want to...

Quote from: Dumarest;967777My honest answer is I don't know whether D&D sucks at higher levels any more than it sucks at lower levels, it really probably depends in how well you like D&D to begin with. My friends and I never found epic high-level games very exciting and usually retired a PC if he managed to obtain a castle and retinue and such lordly trappings. I've always found games are the most fun in the earlier stages where the PCs are just starting their way in the world. Obviously other people like playing the king and his court and affairs of state.

I am curious about that comment about certain monsters not being used at lower levels...says who and since when? I can drop a red dragon on a 1st-level party if I want to...

Ideally, the PCs should at least get their orientation gameplay before being charred to ashes by a god-monster. I mean, ideally, right?

I've played and run 5e up to around 13th level, and it seems to hold up fairly well. I would say that increasing class abilities tend to overwhelm things like background, which was a little disappointing for me. I still have my doubts about 4th tier (levels 17+).

As finarvyn notes, you have to limit the bonuses to avoid breaking things, and 5e did that.

Quote from: Robyo;967721It says levels 1-20 on the tin, but rarely have I seen a game that went over 10th without starting to show it's seams ripping.

So deities have been statted-out since 1e. There must be a reason. I've never played Godbound or ACKS, but supposedly they embrace high level play. 4e tried to make it "balanced", but it just doesn't make sense to me that DCs just increase as PCs level up. Mythic Pathfinder is just more fiddliness on top of crunchy accounting.

We all know the "sweet spot" in D&D (or retroclones) is 1-6 or so. But what about high level?

5e seems fine at high level; I have one group 12th-14th and another goes up to 18th, game works fine. Mind you I think 4e can work fine to about 20th (I ran one 4e game 1st-29th), but it needs a bit of tweaking on the monster stats. I just ran a BECM game to ca 19th and it works fine, Mentzer includes plenty for high level PCs to do. I ran super high 1e BiTD, god-killing stuff, it still worked if you threw in enough Pit Fiends...

Really only 3e/PF breaks down at high level. My double digit 3e & PF games (to ca 19th & 14th respectively) are the only ones I've said "This game system sucks, I don't want to run it anymore".

Quote from: dbm;967730We played a campaign of 5e that ran from 4th to 18th level and the game worked fine throughout. Now, we aren't people who try to break the system, but neither are we walking on eggshells to avoid it.

The changes to magic in 5e (power based on slot rather than caster level, fewer high-level slots, the Concentration mechanism) really help to reign magic in. The non-casters were all contributing and enjoying their characters. The Bonus action rules mean you have round-by-round tactical choices to make for characters like rogues.

The most 'meh' character was probably a Druid / Barbarian multiclass build who majored in having huge numbers of HP to act as a damage sink and not much else.

We went from 1st to 19th in 5e and it worked great. That was with Rogue, Barbarian and Ranger PCs. And similar: No one was trying to break anything, but no one was avoiding things to prevent "problems", either.

Actually, D&D's sweet spot has always been around level 7.  Lower and it's fun, if somewhat brutal but a fair amount of games try and get out of that as fast as possible, however any higher and it slowly becomes a slog and a grind.