5e probably runs the best at high level among all editions. Granted, I don't think I've played past 16, and the powers do stack and stack. There are some significant issues with spell balance and brokenness to watch out for, but that's hardly unusual for D&D.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;967876We 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.

I would say that non-spellcaster high level 5e is a thing of beauty. It does "swords against sorcery" far better than any other edition.
High level spellcasters do present some issues if you're hoping to run 4e-style dramatic cinematic combat, they do have spells like Banishment that can immediately shut down any* individual opponent , and unlike high level 1e-2e those spells usually work.

*except maybe Legendaries, but even there there are some spells that don't allow a save so Legendary Resistance is ineffective. There's a Cleric-5 touch attack 'Contagion' which can inflict 'Slimy Doom', causing a foe who takes damage to be Stunned for 1 turn. With Cleric + combat PC that's an unbeatable lockdown. Even a Legendary will take 3 rounds to blow it off, and then only by spending all their 3 Legendary Resistances on it. Then the Cleric can just do it again.

Quote from: S'mon;967920I would say that non-spellcaster high level 5e is a thing of beauty. It does "swords against sorcery" far better than any other edition.
High level spellcasters do present some issues if you're hoping to run 4e-style dramatic cinematic combat, they do have spells like Banishment that can immediately shut down any* individual opponent , and unlike high level 1e-2e those spells usually work.

*except maybe Legendaries, but even there there are some spells that don't allow a save so Legendary Resistance is ineffective. There's a Cleric-5 touch attack 'Contagion' which can inflict 'Slimy Doom', causing a foe who takes damage to be Stunned for 1 turn. With Cleric + combat PC that's an unbeatable lockdown. Even a Legendary will take 3 rounds to blow it off, and then only by spending all their 3 Legendary Resistances on it. Then the Cleric can just do it again.

Depends. Ancient dragons have between +14 and +16 to CON saves, so even with disadvantage imposed by the effect, they still have a pretty good chance of making the DC 19 throw. But still, three rounds locked down by Stun, taking martial auto-crits is brutal.

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?

There's a lot to unpack there. First, the gods were statted out in oD&D as well, but that's really beside the point. Second, I don't know that "we all know" that the sweet spot is level 1-6. There's lots of complaints about levels 1-3 or so. And levels 5+, and probably level 4 as well. Frankly, gamers really like to complain . But my point is, if you ask 4 gamers, you'll get 5 or more mutually incompatible opinions about where the sweet spot of any given edition (much less the game as a whole) is.

Quote from: S'mon;967920I would say that non-spellcaster high level 5e is a thing of beauty. It does "swords against sorcery" far better than any other edition.
High level spellcasters do present some issues if you're hoping to run 4e-style dramatic cinematic combat, they do have spells like Banishment that can immediately shut down any* individual opponent , and unlike high level 1e-2e those spells usually work.

 *except maybe Legendaries, but even there there are some spells that don't allow a save so Legendary Resistance is ineffective. There's a Cleric-5 touch attack 'Contagion' which can inflict 'Slimy Doom', causing a foe who takes damage to be Stunned for 1 turn. With Cleric + combat PC that's an unbeatable lockdown. Even a Legendary will take 3 rounds to blow it off, and then only by spending all their 3 Legendary Resistances on it. Then the Cleric can just do it again.

5e has a couple of broke-right-out-of-the-gate issues ('slimy doom' contagion, simulacrum-wish -spam, and whatever 3rd example I'm not thinking of right now) that are absolutely there, are undoubtedly unintentional, and easily fixable by DM decree. When it comes to judging a system, I'm much more likely to criticize an edition for a systematic didn't-think-this-through in the system than a highly specific unfortunate-implication-wording in a spell or two.

To the OP's main point -- I think the editions and/or editions+playstyle that have issues with high level are as such:

• In all the TSR editions, there is an assumption in the rules that while the spellcasters move from being able to put a room of orcs to sleep to being able to travel between dimensions and kill with a word, fighters start leading armies. But..., lots of people decide that they don't want to play that way. So fighters (and thieves, plus whatever other martials are in the edition of discussion) lose a benefit. In 1e AD&D, of course, there's another stop on high level casters: the initiative system makes it hard to get off high level spells. So the MUs are busy watching the segments tick off, waiting for their spell to get off, hoping that no one breaks through the hopefully-there spear-line of henchmen, and that no stray arrow turns their carefully memorized earth-shattering spell into a puff of smoke. But...[/b] lots of people choose not to use the 1e initiative system. So while the system as written in the books seems to have plenty of inter-class balance, the game as many people played it seems to have some real problems for fighters at higher levels.
  And yet...[/b] I really don't remember a lot of people complaining about fighter-spellcaster imbalance until 3e came out. I don't know if that was because inter-class balance was not a priority, or the imbalance just didn't show up as much as white-room analysis would suggest. I know my original TSR A/D&D experience (mostly BECM and 2e) we didn't really complain about it, but 1) we did do a bunch of rulership stuff post name-level, 2) we played with plenty of house rules, and 3) played multiple characters apiece.
  
  
  
• 3e (especially 3.5). There are lots of complaints about 3e that I just don't care about (see systematic-to-highly-specific above). Oh, yes, if you fall into water with negative hp, you can heal yourself before you drown. That proves so much. The monk isn't proficient in their own unarmed attacks? Great, you've successfully proven that they needed a better editor. You can combine the exact right race+3 prestige classes with the exact right feats and magic items (purchased) to make a build which can toss great wyrms about willy nilly? Fine, dude, all hail your white-room fu. Etc. Etc. But the argument that high level play becomes a game of rocket tag where spellcasters see who can get up the right immunity spells up and lob the right save-or-dies/sucks at their opposition? Yeah, that really seems to play out, and seems to be a lot harder to cut out of the system through house rules or simple DM fiat.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;967937Depends. Ancient dragons have between +14 and +16 to CON saves, so even with disadvantage imposed by the effect, they still have a pretty good chance of making the DC 19 throw. But still, three rounds locked down by Stun, taking martial auto-crits is brutal.

At first I thought "But Stun doesn't Incapacitate?!" - but checking the SRD I see it does Incapacitate, but SRD-Incapacitate just says that means no Action/Reaction. Stunned grants advantage, but no auto-crits vs Stunned.

Re fixing Slimy Doom, maybe allow a DC 15 CON save against being stunned, each hit? Or a Concentration check (DC = half dmg, min 10)? With Disadvantage that's still nasty, but legendary dragons should probably be ok.

Quote from: finarvyn;967753The 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+.

As an interesting thought experiment, I wonder what a D30 based D&D might look like.

I think dice pools are the way to go if you want a basically unlimited range of probabilities.


Don't overthink this example, because I'm just spitballing, but something like the current Bounded Accuracy system, except instead of increasing Proficiency Bonus, you increase the number of dice you roll on an attack. And on the flip side, you might also want to introduce defenses/DCs that require multiple successes.

For example, instead of a +3 Proficiency bonus at Level 5, the Fighter always rolls 2d20 on an attack. Tough monsters will require both rolls to hit. Similarly, now a monster must hit with 2d20 vs the Fighter's AC.

I suppose you'd want to have a mechanic to do simultaneous attacks, e.g. three goblins can pool their d20s together on an attack, and if at least 2 of the 3 rolls beat the fighter AC, one attack hits. Similarly, perhaps you might allow the Fighter to pool all the dice of his Extra Attack together to do a 4d20 attack.

Obviously this is not something you could simply substitute into the current system, but I think you can see the general contour of the thing.

How well does 5e replicate action movies? One of the problems with 3e was that martials could not pull off cool stunts (without a panoply of magic items) despite being one man-armies at higher levels.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;967958How well does 5e replicate action movies? One of the problems with 3e was that martials could not pull off cool stunts (without a panoply of magic items) despite being one man-armies at higher levels.

Better than 3e, not as good as 4e (if you didn't mind that 4e combat is so slow it often felt more like scripting an action movie than inhabiting one...)

Quote from: Willie the Duck;967943There's a lot to unpack there. First, the gods were statted out in oD&D as well, but that's really beside the point. Second, I don't know that "we all know" that the sweet spot is level 1-6. There's lots of complaints about levels 1-3 or so. And levels 5+, and probably level 4 as well. Frankly, gamers really like to complain . But my point is, if you ask 4 gamers, you'll get 5 or more mutually incompatible opinions about where the sweet spot of any given edition (much less the game as a whole) is.

WotC conducted the most thorough user feedback campaign in RPG history for D&D Next (5E). One of their conclusions was that the sweet spot for most players was Lvl 4-8. So one of their design goals was to stretch out that power level for as long as possible, by making lvl 1-3 PCs somewhat stronger, and lvl 9+ PC somewhat weaker, than in previous editions.

Quote from: Robyo;967721We all know the "sweet spot" in D&D (or retroclones) is 1-6 or so. But what about high level?

Actually, no, we don't.

I find the sweet spot to be 3-9 and then 12-18. But, that's me.

I'll provide more detail when I have a moment.

The idea I came up with was to cap out class levels around where certain class features / spells were introduced that could "break the game". While I initially looked at it as a thought experiment for simulating a Middle Earth style world in D&D, it also answered some of my complaints in general about high level play in more modern D&D versions. When characters hit that level cap, they multi-class, and begin to gather levels in another class. This also has experience decoupled entirely from defeating monsters.

But personally I don't find the older versions of D&D to have a problem at high levels. Why should a high level fighter eschew becoming a lord? And if you don't want to become a lord, don't. But if you start counting travel times between dungeons, and rest periods, that Age slot on your character sheet might start creeping up, and suddenly having a comfy keep, a spouse, some guards to take care of that kobold when your back goes out.... well, it doesn't look so bad.

The problem with higher level 11+ dnd for me has always been magic is too strong - teleports, raise dead, passwall, big summons etc - it changes the whole game. I generally prefer a grittier, less magical game.

Quote from: Psikerlord;968045The problem with higher level 11+ dnd for me has always been magic is too strong - teleports, raise dead, passwall, big summons etc - it changes the whole game. I generally prefer a grittier, less magical game.

Me too. However, although I'm not a D&D fan in general, I would argue that in that case it is the DM's fault for making those spells available. There is nothing in the rules (at least not in the versions I have) that says every spell and magic item has to be available in your campaign world. You can make D&D grittier and its magic less potent at will. It reminds me of complaints about all the "Tolkien races banding together to fight evil!" There's no reason you can't just decree a Howardesque campaign world where all the PCs will be human. [End of Devil's Advocate role.]

Quote from: Dumarest;968056Me too. However, although I'm not a D&D fan in general, I would argue that in that case it is the DM's fault for making those spells available. There is nothing in the rules (at least not in the versions I have) that says every spell and magic item has to be available in your campaign world. You can make D&D grittier and its magic less potent at will. It reminds me of complaints about all the "Tolkien races banding together to fight evil!" There's no reason you can't just decree a Howardesque campaign world where all the PCs will be human. [End of Devil's Advocate role.]

Yes true enough (and I did something similar with LFG)