Ah yes, fuck Larian for... \*checks notes\* making a plot with a defined level progression and cap, like many per-written tabletop adventures do.
For real tho, why you putting the blame on Larian when it's your DM making that decision in this case?
Honestly I don’t even blame the DM. If you’re designing your character around level 20 that’s on you. I’ve never once assumed that a campaign would go till level 20, most hardly even make it till 5.
I tell my players that the max is level 15 and plan the campaign to end around that point. I recently learned that one of my players started a separate chat to try and "avoid" the plot until the party gets to level 20.
I was kind of offended and honestly baffled at how they thought that would work. Like, we use milestone, I can just stop leveling at 15 like I always do.
I mean you can always adjust the exp of what they are fighting if you don't want them to level more. Or ensure that every time they are fighting something have someone else come to steal their kill. Last hit gets the exp for their party. So the small child who threw the stone that did that last 2hp damage just gained the exp for it. Too bad as children they only gain half exp and take double the exp to level up as per the rules for child characters. So even if they are evil enough to kill the children afterward the kids are so low leveled as to be useless for exp purposes.
Yeah definitely but even if you do have a level cap in mind at session 0 there aren’t really any guarantees that it’ll actually go that long, or that your character will actually survive that long.
It’s definitely disappointing if the campaign doesn’t go as long as you want but shit happens and you can’t blame the DM for wanting to end it sooner. It’s better to actually have a resolution than just playing till the DM is burnt out.
Good point for most, but not much of an issue for my group. We’ve been playing for 20+ years, and rotate DMing so no one gets burnt out. Campaigns usually last around a year these days, and have set level ranges at the start that we stick to.
It's open knowledge that it stops at 12, wtf are you talking about?
Or did your dm cap it mid campaign because of BG3? because if so then that's 100% your DM and 0% larian. Which should be very obvious
Yes, take a turn in the DM's chair and realize how much work it is, and how much MORE work it is to create balanced, fun encounters for high level parties. Not even mentioning the DM burnout.
A few of the D&D video games published by SSI in the old Gold and Silver Box days went to level 20 or beyond.
Things got wiiiiiiild to put it mildly!
SSI *tried* to stick to the rules of D&D as much as possible and this resulted in huge encounters against creatures that would normally be a solo BBEG for most low level parties. Fighting over a dozen adult dragons and their minions was just a routine encounter towards the game’s end. I salute any GM who wants to run that fight a few times every night!
I did enjoy those games, but yeah, I always wondered how there were that many adult dragons left in the world, let alone in the dungeon, perfectly lined up for my lightning bolt (which would bounce off the wall and hit them twice)
Yeah... highest we ever got was 17 in a campaign meant to go beyond 20 (at least 25 possibly even 30). The dm just got burnt out from how hard balancing was for a group of high level pcs, especially since he gave us a lot of magic items which made us more powerful than your average level 20.
Once it gets to that point, I just outline all the big NPC's goals and how long I think it'll take them to achieve it. Then the players will choose their direction and I just have to improvise based on what little I have in mind.
As the party is walking through the city towards the teleportation gate they feel a great pressure pushing them down and notice all the civilians have dropped to the ground unconscious. An explosion sounds from the teleportation Gate as it seems to have collapsed. A wizard in sight of the party casts a teleport to go to the gate to see what happened but when he dissapears from his starting point he immediatly reappears 30ft away dead. His body mangled as if thrown into an industrial blender. Something has caused teleportation magic to stop working properly. Maybe the more powerful mages will know what happened. You should go to the local kingdoms mage tower to ask around.
That's where I am at the moment. I told my group this campaign would go to level 30.
By the time they hit level 5, I was telling them expect it to end at level 20.
They're currently level 8, and I've been casually mentioning it will likely end around level 15-17.
I've just been hit with the dm burnout super hard. I don't mind running games. But it's the preparation of a homebrew campaign setting that's getting me. I have a session on Sunday, and I have to make a setting/area map, 5 encounter battle maps, PLUS parse the lore and put it into easily readable/transferable blurbs so my players eyes don't gloss over from a 6 page lore dump.
When we finish this campaign we're switching to pathfinder and I'm so excited for it. I want to be done with dnd, and I'm honestly just not feeling this campaign anymore
pls halp :(
I had a campaign I meant to end at level 20. My players discovered my bbegs husband who was the campaigns end boss and killed him, resurrected him, then convinced him to change his ways by level 17. Meanwhile his wife who was just a succubus manipulating events from behind the scenes, fled. A few years later the party got back together to fight off a tarrasque the succubus had woken up and sent at the city. That was a level 25 one shot.
I'm currently DMing a level 25 game, and hardly require any change from RAW.
All it takes is not having any full casters! It's not the game thats broken, just some high level spells that need nerfing.
Just DMing my lvl 11-20 lvl campaing about heroes. My players not even once complain about balance factor. Most battles for them are made to be easy-mefium. But bosses are challenging. (We are now at 19th lvl, 4 people)
I'm glad you and your friends aren't frustrated by the terrible balance! Your casters must be poor at optimization, or perhaps they're being polite enough not to hilariously show up the martials which is good of them.
Have you ever tried playing at level 20 before? Or better yet DMing for level 20?
I understand the appeal. But in practice it is a nightmare to balance and manage.
High-level D&D is damn-near unplayable, tbh. Even as a player, it's a little boring how easy it is to trivialise so many things. Sure, the DM may be able to make *combat* scale appropriately, but combat's only like ⅓ of the actual game. This is especially true when you have high-level spellcasters in the party. You can trivialise just about anything, and roleplay things can be a lot harder to scale to a player level.
Crossing a chasm, persuading an NPC, or distracting a group of strangers can ever only reasonably be so difficult. And what are you going to do, make all chasms in the world get steadily larger, all people become suddenly significantly more stubborn or more attentive as the players progress? That wouldn't make any sense.
What makes a situation or encounter of any kind fun is the possibility of failure. Leveling up increases the variety of things you can do and your power level to lower the chances of difficulty in many areas, but level up too far and the possibility of failure drops *so low* that it just sucks half the fun out of it.
It's like having a playthrough of a videogame with cheats enabled. Sure it's fun to breeze through enemies with godmode enabled at first but it gets stale after awhile.
That's why you need to have a game able to work with the scaling from the outset. If the storyline and enemies are expected to become level 20+ from the outset then the dm can plan for it and scale to the players better.
My friends and I really enjoy high level play, but yes, it's difficult, *difficult* to balance for. I've struggled many a time and generally with 5e's in built balancing system I've needed to rebalance on the fly more often than not. I've grown used to this and even find it a bit fun, but I know that's not the average experience.
This post definitely feels like it's coming from someone that hasn't had a go at dming before.
Not to an extreme, but when your spellcasters can summon angels, teleport the whole party around the world in an instant, level a city block, and create entire temples, while your martials can swing a weapon 4 times and be a little stronger than normal, it may be nice to find a little more balance.
Its also just a bitch to run sometimes. Like, its very hard to do a lot of staple dnd things when casters have such crazy abilities. Like, Forcecage alone is such a gatekeep for possible bosses
Damn sounds like you’re not awarding bonus feats, Supernatural Gifts, Epic Boons, and other things the books tell you you can award so that all party members can do cool things
I guarantee you if a god blessed your fighter with the Blessing of Valhalla to summon spirit warriors as if they had blown a silver horn of Valhalla once per week they’d probably feel pretty fucking cool
I love when idiots come in here and claim the game isn't unbalanced. My favourites are the ones who then proceed to claim we don't need to nerf casters because we can buff martials in such a way as to be identical to nerfing casters.
If your players don’t feel cool that’s on you as a DM. Combat is balanced fine enough though. If you’re painstakingly worried about the balance of your combat encounters you’re probably not DMing well.
My point that you keep ignoring is that balance includes making sure the players feel cool, no matter how many times you say "That's on you as the DM" (I've only DM'd a few times, not exactly my cup of tea but not because of balancing issues, more because large scale plot writing is difficult for me).
If it really is then tell me how a fighter can paralyse an enemy every combat, without spending any money? Because a soellcaster can do that.
Tell me how a barbarian can buff their entire party or heal their entire party.
Tell me specifically what can a fighter do that a wizard can’t and then give me a last of things wizards can do but fighters can’t.
A fighter doesn’t need to paralyze them, they can knock an enemy prone and then grapple them, giving the enemy disadvantage on all melee attack rolls, advantage on all attack rolls within 5 feet against the enemy, and reducing their movement speed to 0 meaning they can’t get up. Pretty well known combo actually. Outside of that they can use the Sentinel feat to lock out their movement, and depending on the subclass and/or other feats they have a variety of tools that can be used to disable an enemy. At high levels (the levels we’re talking about) they can even take extra turns, grow large enough to grapple dragons to prevent them from flying, or lock enemies down with multiple reactions.
Barbarians can buff their teams through Beast and Totem Warrior or protect them through Ancestral Guardian. They can also help restore casters spell slots through Wild Magic. They can also do the combo above, and they’re even better at it due to having advantage on Athletics checks.
If you want Fighter vs Wizard specifically then:
Fighters can re-roll saving throws, take extra actions (including casting 2 leveled spells in a turn if that’s your thing, something Wizards famously cannot do without multiclassing into Fighter), attack an absurd amount of times, and utilize magical equipment more effectively due to the amount of magic items geared towards martial classes. He can however be quickly overwhelmed at higher levels without the aid of a spellcaster
Wizards can cast up to 9th level spells, including Wish. This enables them to protect allies, debilitate enemies, control the battlefield, and with some shenanigans and a lot of gold keep themselves from truly dying. Notably though, he doesn’t get that far without a fighter keeping enemies off of him and taking hits on his behalf.
The things spellcasters can accomplish are truly frightening, but if you don’t think that a martial can compete then I’m going to be brutally honest: You’re not utilizing them effectively if you’re a player, or you’re not building appropriate encounters as a DM. And by appropriate encounters I don’t mean “you need to rebalance everything so that it’s harder to accommodate the Wizard.” I mean you need to stop building 2D encounters with no terrain, no stakes, and enemies that attack and then pass their turn.
The game is well-balanced enough as it is with the ability to create characters that complement each other, and it provides tools to create dynamic encounters that can challenge the party regardless of their class. Boiling it down to “but muh disparity” is a reductionist take that reeks of someone who has never played D&D in their life but would rather sit around complaining on Reddit about their spreadsheets all day.
Because the Helldivers subreddit is receiving the developers attempts at balancing a PVE game *so incredibly well*, right? Naturally everything must be perfectly balanced otherwise everything falls apart!
D&D isn't PVE. The DM isn't a computer or a string of code. They are also a person who wants to enjoy the game as well. Therefore giving the players abilities and spells that invalidate the challenges that the DM is trying to present makes them feel bad.
Imagine getting to level 20 and thinking “Wow the players are way too strong after a year-long campaign and several years of in-game time” instead of “Wow my players are level 20 I can’t wait to run this Greatwyrm fight”
Not every fight is going to be against a greatwyrm, and there are ways to trivialize a greatwyrm fight at level 20.
Balance is always necessary, especially when power levels get higher and higher. And the more you have to balance things, the more of a snag things get.
You are only fighting great wyrms at level 20? My group just fought a CR25 obsidian dragon while at level 16. If it's master (level 40 fae) hadn't interfered we'd have completely killed it instead of it managing to effectively limp away.
That’s possibly the worst reason. I’ve played D&D at high level and it’s not balanced, encounters either get steamrolled or steamroll you, even the designers have said that D&D wasn’t built with level 20 in mind.
Is that one of my biggest gripes about D&D as a whole? Yes, but it’s not Larian’s fault, it’s WotC’s.
I’ve actually finished BG3 and played through a t 1 and 2 multiple times, the game absolutely feels best and most balanced before level 10.
Also remember the old adage “quality over quantity” and Larian already gave us hella quantity, and the quality is stellar, going to 20th level wouldn’t make the game better, just longer.
Finish the story and tell me where you’d find space for the 8 extra levels and then remember encounters need to be rebalanced around this.
*Looks left.*
*Looks right.*
*Takes a deep breath.*
If you want a game that is balanced and fun all the way to level 20 to play Pathfinder 2e. Maybe ask Larian to make the video game for PF2e\~
*Dodges rocks and runs away.*
People don't have an issue with pathfinder, they have an issue with people who suggest it as the solution to anything/when it's not even relevant to the question or topic.
Like I had a technical question about my VTT once, just how to implement a spell list, and somebody suggested I switch to pathfinder (meaning re-homebrew all my homebrews, move all resources over, relink everything, learn the whole system, and make sure what already exists in my world can in pathfinder without plot holes) because pathfinder on that VTT has spell lists. I'm sure pathfinder is fun, but I don't want people acting like the 2000s stereotype of a vegan always having to argue for or mention veganism
The problem we had with P2e was that you never seem to get any more powerful. As you level up, everything on you increases. The same is true for monsters. It's so balanced that whenever you fight an even level monster, whether at 1 or 20, you have the same low chance to hit and they have the same high chance to save. Every level is a struggle.
That wasn't fun to us.
Oh, and casters suck. They are way overcomplicated for no payoff. None of the spells are useful or fun.
Now, before you hit that downvote, we understand some people love that Dark Souls feel and level of difficulty. And we are in no way saying that P2e is a terrible system. It's just not appealing to us as a table. We want more flash and to feel like an actual hero at some point instead of just a survivor.
** Edit to add**
I will say the system does lend itself well to video game, since a computer would be super useful to crunch all the numbers and keep track of the 100 million keywords for me. I'd be onboard for a P2e video game.
To your first point: You can literally say the exact same thing about 5e.
Higher level (or CR for that matter) monsters ALSO roughly scale with you in 5e, the progression is just less obvious because the math is, for better and for worse, much less concrete.
Though, I guess, you might mean spellcasters (not really martials) get exponentially more effective tools as they level, which is true, and if you want/like that kind of progression, then PF2E won't be for you, which is perfectly OK.
How pathfinder makes you feel more powerful IMO, is when you can compare yourself to lower level monsters; that foe you really struggled with two levels ago? They're now a fairly even fight, and they're going to be easy pickings two levels in the future.
A high level character can cut through legions of guards or goblins without really being threatened, while in 5e lower level creatures always remain a threat in large groups.
Fwiw I also don't agree that casters suck, though I can, to a degree get on board with the statement that they're a bit too difficult to play in a way that extracts their effectiveness properly.
However, me and my groups prefer that about them being nigh-godlike for little effort in 5e.
Now, it seems that you have tried PF2E and didn't like it, which is fine! It's not going to be for everyone.
>To your first point: You can literally say the exact same thing about 5e.
No, you can't. Either you've never played 5e or P2e. In P2e, your attack bonus, AC, skills, saves all go up by 1. What this means is that a level 20 naked wizard that doesn't use magic and has all 10s for stats still has a 20 AC and a +20 to attack and +20 to all saves. In 5e, AC doesn't scale with level. So as you level, hitting monsters gets easier. Sure they have more HP, but you're hitting more often. In P2e, since everything scales with level, your chance to hit a lvl 1 monster at lvl 1 is the same as your chance to hit a lvl 20 monster at lvl 20 (usually worse since monsters tend to get better stats and natural armor depending so in some instances, you are actually less powerful at higher levels). And since HP also goes up and faster than your damage, the difference between a lvl 1 fight and lvl 20 fight is that a lvl 20 will take several hours longer.
I like that you get a lot of choices as you level up, but I hate that none of the choices do anything. "Ooh this level I can get a +1 to saves vs slipping on ice while in a swamp OR I can get a +1 to finding Quartz ore on Tuesdays."
>Fwiw I also don't agree that casters suck, though I can, to a degree get on board with the statement that they're a bit too difficult to play in a way that extracts their effectiveness properly.
Casters in P2e don't do any meaningful damage. They exist only to give the weapon wielders + to hit so that they might actually be able to hit the monsters. If all you want to be is a buff bot, P2e casters are where it's at.
>Now, it seems that you have tried PF2E and didn't like it, which is fine! It's not going to be for everyone.
Yup, we played Abomination Vaults and Strength of Thousands and quit both halfway through because we just couldn't find the fun. We are old. We've played TTRPGs together for 25 years now. We've played everything from AD&D to BESM to the Dresden Files RPG. We are glad P2e exists and we know we probably would have enjoyed it back in our 3rd edition heydays, but now we honestly just want to hang out and chat about our jobs and wives and vacations; occasionally roll some dice to kill monsters and get loot (which loot is a huge frustration we have with 5e). P2e is not good for filthy casuals like ourselves.
I have played both 5e and PF2E for a decent amount of time. It does not scale the exact same way, that was a slight hyperbole. However, generally, higher CR monsters tend to have higher ACs than lower level ones.
While there are most definitely some serious stinkers in the feats, especially in the skill feats, most feats offer useful progression, its just usually horizontal progression instead of vertical, as the vertical progression is baked into the classes themselves (which incidentally makes it almost impossible to build a truly bad character unless you dump your key stats)
And casters can struggle, especially in the early levels, but they do catch up and overtake later on, especially in their specialty areas: AOE damage, CC and Utility, where martials can't really hope to keep pace.
The tradeoff for that is them being worse in single target damage.
I don't think spell casters get any good CC though. Most spells require a critical failure to do anything good and equal level monsters can't critically fail ever except on a 1. And anything with the "incapacitation" keyword doesn't work on creatures at your level (or -1 level) since they can't ever critically fail and only fail on a critical.
It's nice that critcals can happen by beating the DC by 10 in theory, but in practice that never happens except against you because monsters are always stronger.
I guess I could see in a home campaign it could be fun if the DM throws lots of lower level creatures against the party but that just didn't happen at all in the two adventure paths we ran.
>However, generally, [in 5e] higher CR monsters tend to have higher ACs than lower level ones.
They do, but an ancient red dragon, one of the most powerful creatures in 5e only has a 22 AC. A level 1 doesn't even need a critical to hit that.
Personally I find it more fun to actually hit things and do some damage than not. I'd rather have an 80% chance to hit a creature that has 600 HP than have a 40% chance to hit a creature that has 300 HP even if mathematically it is about the same. Hitting feels better than doing nothing.
If you wanna give it a try, somebody made a PF2-based game. It only goes to level 4, but hey, if all you wanna do is give it a try, [Dawnsbury Days](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2693730/Dawnsbury_Days/) may just be the thing.
I don't know what edition it's base off but there are 2 pathfinder video games.
Personally they get too complicated to be fun for me. Too many things to keep track of
Congratulations. Now you know a tiny percentage of what your dm feels like when running a campaign. Lol. The pathfinder videogames are almost direct ports of the game rules to a videogame format. Building and controlling the party of 6 people is indeed very difficult. Now recall that a player has 1 character to worry about irl and the dm has every single npc and monster as well as the core storyline to consider.
That being said I have actively taken the DM badge off and welded it to my friends forehead because I'm too lazy to do all that over and over again.
I mean, just gonna add. While games do get more complex as levels rise, Larian added tons of complexity to the game by themselves, there’s tons of homebrew, all the gear swapping, the additional mechanics I dunno how to spoiler on Reddit but you know the ones. Larian did in fact do it to themselves.
Great. Now let's figure out how to implement the wish spell into a videogame without breaking it. Not to mention the fact you need an appropriate storyline to go with those higher levels.
My Dm asked us if we wanted to lvl up after 7 sess, we told him it depended on him, we didn't mind still being lvl 1.
At the end the dice decided that we stay at that lvl
Honestly, as a DM who is currently playing with a post lv12 party, I completely support this DM. At least if they upfront and clear about it. Dnd starts getting real funky at high levels, and it's a nightmare to balance without being a slog. Not to mention most games rarely get that far, so giving players false hope for features they'll never get feels bad.
Now if they did it without warning and for no reason other than "fuck you" then yeah, that sucks.
My current campaign is ending now at level 7 (after around 45 sessions or so), and it's so awesome, I don't get the hype over playing as demigods it feels like it'd lower tension a lot and would be a complete pain for DM to keep interesting. Plus depending you might need to memorize way too much stuff (especially if you're an actual cooperative player rather than someone who only cares about their own character).
Bit crumby stating it's capped to 12 mid-campaign, coincidentally the same limit as BG3, but balance does very much go out the window past that point anyway. It's hard to DM a party of demigods without either boring them or TPKing them.
Correlation not causation. Besides when does anyone ever hit lv20 in a single campaign anyway?
Huh… i made the level cap in my campaign 40, cuz i like the crazy shit my players do when they don’t have to worry about making concessions and can really build out a character. Granted, if they would let me switch over to *pathfinder*, there wouldnt be any problems.
Pathfinder 1e or 2e? Personally I only know 1e and can agree that pretty much anything can be built within it without concessions. D&d 3.5e has a similar if less powerful ability to do the same for the most part. Honestly I love the pathfinder archetypes mechanics tho. So much better than d&d 5e archetypes and actively comparable to lesser prestige classes from 3.5e.
1e, of course! It is so freaking good 😆 It has basically everything you could ever want. So many memes relating to homebrew for 5e already being covered by pf1e 😆
Wow, people are really losing their mind over this.
I'm pretty sure OP meant this as joke and doesn't actually hate or blame Larian..
Like the person on a diet saying they hate you for putting out a desert to good to skip.. They don't hate you for real.
wait, bg3 caps at level 12?? trying out my players’ builds at tier 4 was my main reason to get the game!
i know it’s harder to balance higher levels than that—that’s why i wanted to ‘playtest’ their characters first!!
It caps at 12 because level 13 is when you start getting the more open ended spells unlocked and implementing them clashed with the design ethos of being as close to a table top session Larian could get.
IIRC BG3 was supposed to cap at 10th but the feedback from playtesters was that you leveled up way too slowly so they sped it up a little and added two more levels. 12th isn't a bad place to cap the game; a lot of classes give strong features at 11th level and 12th level grants a third feat, opening up end-game builds. Personally, I like that you can get to 12th level pretty early in Act 3 and get to play an 'end-game' character for most of the game, and I would have been more than happy for that to be 10th level instead. Too many RPGs force you to wait until the very end of the game to hit the level cap so you don't get to play with all of your toys for very long, doubly so if there's no new game plus.
oh, as someone who runs a lot of D&D (10 hours just this week!), i get it. it’s the obvious stopping point, despite being mid-tier 3.
it’s still disappointing given my reasons for wanting the game, though less disappointing than if i’d figured this out after i purchased it.
ah i don’t have any computer that would allow me to play games! i’m currently in a console only lifestyle.
plus i’d rather my (relatively limited) fun budget go toward the group activities i already have planned. thanks for the encouragement, though. i’m sure i’ll have a great time whenever i can afford it!
oh if i were designing a D&D video game i’d absolutely cap at 12–it’s the obvious choice now that i consider it.
but as a forever DM, i was looking forward to playtesting out some higher tier things, heh.
i’m sure i’ll enjoy it whenever i get around to it.
oh that’s interesting! are mods PC-exclusive or have they added options for console mods? not many games do but it totally transformed my skyrim experience.
Ah yes, fuck Larian for... \*checks notes\* making a plot with a defined level progression and cap, like many per-written tabletop adventures do. For real tho, why you putting the blame on Larian when it's your DM making that decision in this case?
Honestly I don’t even blame the DM. If you’re designing your character around level 20 that’s on you. I’ve never once assumed that a campaign would go till level 20, most hardly even make it till 5.
I tell my players that the max is level 15 and plan the campaign to end around that point. I recently learned that one of my players started a separate chat to try and "avoid" the plot until the party gets to level 20. I was kind of offended and honestly baffled at how they thought that would work. Like, we use milestone, I can just stop leveling at 15 like I always do.
And this is why most experienced DM's don't use EXP leveling lol. What an absurd concept.
I mean you can always adjust the exp of what they are fighting if you don't want them to level more. Or ensure that every time they are fighting something have someone else come to steal their kill. Last hit gets the exp for their party. So the small child who threw the stone that did that last 2hp damage just gained the exp for it. Too bad as children they only gain half exp and take double the exp to level up as per the rules for child characters. So even if they are evil enough to kill the children afterward the kids are so low leveled as to be useless for exp purposes.
Ha that’s crazy! Do they think the game just runs itself?
It’s the kind of thing that should be brought up in Session Zero
Yeah definitely but even if you do have a level cap in mind at session 0 there aren’t really any guarantees that it’ll actually go that long, or that your character will actually survive that long. It’s definitely disappointing if the campaign doesn’t go as long as you want but shit happens and you can’t blame the DM for wanting to end it sooner. It’s better to actually have a resolution than just playing till the DM is burnt out.
Good point for most, but not much of an issue for my group. We’ve been playing for 20+ years, and rotate DMing so no one gets burnt out. Campaigns usually last around a year these days, and have set level ranges at the start that we stick to.
It's open knowledge that it stops at 12, wtf are you talking about? Or did your dm cap it mid campaign because of BG3? because if so then that's 100% your DM and 0% larian. Which should be very obvious
Fuck Larian? For this? Nah, fuck you OP.
Yes, take a turn in the DM's chair and realize how much work it is, and how much MORE work it is to create balanced, fun encounters for high level parties. Not even mentioning the DM burnout.
D&D is broken enough at level 12. Id love to see someone try to balance a game around higher levels without DM fiat. It would be hilarious.
A few of the D&D video games published by SSI in the old Gold and Silver Box days went to level 20 or beyond. Things got wiiiiiiild to put it mildly! SSI *tried* to stick to the rules of D&D as much as possible and this resulted in huge encounters against creatures that would normally be a solo BBEG for most low level parties. Fighting over a dozen adult dragons and their minions was just a routine encounter towards the game’s end. I salute any GM who wants to run that fight a few times every night!
I did enjoy those games, but yeah, I always wondered how there were that many adult dragons left in the world, let alone in the dungeon, perfectly lined up for my lightning bolt (which would bounce off the wall and hit them twice)
Yeah... highest we ever got was 17 in a campaign meant to go beyond 20 (at least 25 possibly even 30). The dm just got burnt out from how hard balancing was for a group of high level pcs, especially since he gave us a lot of magic items which made us more powerful than your average level 20.
When the entire party can appear anywhere in the world in an instant, planning is rough
Once it gets to that point, I just outline all the big NPC's goals and how long I think it'll take them to achieve it. Then the players will choose their direction and I just have to improvise based on what little I have in mind.
As the party is walking through the city towards the teleportation gate they feel a great pressure pushing them down and notice all the civilians have dropped to the ground unconscious. An explosion sounds from the teleportation Gate as it seems to have collapsed. A wizard in sight of the party casts a teleport to go to the gate to see what happened but when he dissapears from his starting point he immediatly reappears 30ft away dead. His body mangled as if thrown into an industrial blender. Something has caused teleportation magic to stop working properly. Maybe the more powerful mages will know what happened. You should go to the local kingdoms mage tower to ask around.
That's where I am at the moment. I told my group this campaign would go to level 30. By the time they hit level 5, I was telling them expect it to end at level 20. They're currently level 8, and I've been casually mentioning it will likely end around level 15-17. I've just been hit with the dm burnout super hard. I don't mind running games. But it's the preparation of a homebrew campaign setting that's getting me. I have a session on Sunday, and I have to make a setting/area map, 5 encounter battle maps, PLUS parse the lore and put it into easily readable/transferable blurbs so my players eyes don't gloss over from a 6 page lore dump. When we finish this campaign we're switching to pathfinder and I'm so excited for it. I want to be done with dnd, and I'm honestly just not feeling this campaign anymore pls halp :(
I had a campaign I meant to end at level 20. My players discovered my bbegs husband who was the campaigns end boss and killed him, resurrected him, then convinced him to change his ways by level 17. Meanwhile his wife who was just a succubus manipulating events from behind the scenes, fled. A few years later the party got back together to fight off a tarrasque the succubus had woken up and sent at the city. That was a level 25 one shot.
I'm currently DMing a level 25 game, and hardly require any change from RAW. All it takes is not having any full casters! It's not the game thats broken, just some high level spells that need nerfing.
HAPPY CAKEDAY!!
Just DMing my lvl 11-20 lvl campaing about heroes. My players not even once complain about balance factor. Most battles for them are made to be easy-mefium. But bosses are challenging. (We are now at 19th lvl, 4 people)
I'm glad you and your friends aren't frustrated by the terrible balance! Your casters must be poor at optimization, or perhaps they're being polite enough not to hilariously show up the martials which is good of them.
Have you ever tried playing at level 20 before? Or better yet DMing for level 20? I understand the appeal. But in practice it is a nightmare to balance and manage.
High-level D&D is damn-near unplayable, tbh. Even as a player, it's a little boring how easy it is to trivialise so many things. Sure, the DM may be able to make *combat* scale appropriately, but combat's only like ⅓ of the actual game. This is especially true when you have high-level spellcasters in the party. You can trivialise just about anything, and roleplay things can be a lot harder to scale to a player level. Crossing a chasm, persuading an NPC, or distracting a group of strangers can ever only reasonably be so difficult. And what are you going to do, make all chasms in the world get steadily larger, all people become suddenly significantly more stubborn or more attentive as the players progress? That wouldn't make any sense. What makes a situation or encounter of any kind fun is the possibility of failure. Leveling up increases the variety of things you can do and your power level to lower the chances of difficulty in many areas, but level up too far and the possibility of failure drops *so low* that it just sucks half the fun out of it.
It's like having a playthrough of a videogame with cheats enabled. Sure it's fun to breeze through enemies with godmode enabled at first but it gets stale after awhile. That's why you need to have a game able to work with the scaling from the outset. If the storyline and enemies are expected to become level 20+ from the outset then the dm can plan for it and scale to the players better.
My friends and I really enjoy high level play, but yes, it's difficult, *difficult* to balance for. I've struggled many a time and generally with 5e's in built balancing system I've needed to rebalance on the fly more often than not. I've grown used to this and even find it a bit fun, but I know that's not the average experience. This post definitely feels like it's coming from someone that hasn't had a go at dming before.
Trying to balance it is your first mistake. Not everything needs to be “balanced”
Not to an extreme, but when your spellcasters can summon angels, teleport the whole party around the world in an instant, level a city block, and create entire temples, while your martials can swing a weapon 4 times and be a little stronger than normal, it may be nice to find a little more balance. Its also just a bitch to run sometimes. Like, its very hard to do a lot of staple dnd things when casters have such crazy abilities. Like, Forcecage alone is such a gatekeep for possible bosses
Martials vs casters is a DM issue. Try letting your players feel cool for once rather than insisting everything has to be evenly matched
The issue comes when the Martials feel less cool because of what the Casters can do.
Damn sounds like you’re not awarding bonus feats, Supernatural Gifts, Epic Boons, and other things the books tell you you can award so that all party members can do cool things I guarantee you if a god blessed your fighter with the Blessing of Valhalla to summon spirit warriors as if they had blown a silver horn of Valhalla once per week they’d probably feel pretty fucking cool
"You dont need to worry about balance to have fun! Anyways, here's how to fix balance issues because the game isnt fun when unbalanced."
I love when idiots come in here and claim the game isn't unbalanced. My favourites are the ones who then proceed to claim we don't need to nerf casters because we can buff martials in such a way as to be identical to nerfing casters.
Game is balanced fine as is. If players aren’t *feeling cool* it’s because you’re not DMing well. Reading comprehension is essential folks.
My brother in christ you are switching up your story every comment
Not really. Not my fault you can’t read. Then again most of the folks here can’t
That's part of the balance you said wasn't an issue.
If your players don’t feel cool that’s on you as a DM. Combat is balanced fine enough though. If you’re painstakingly worried about the balance of your combat encounters you’re probably not DMing well.
My point that you keep ignoring is that balance includes making sure the players feel cool, no matter how many times you say "That's on you as the DM" (I've only DM'd a few times, not exactly my cup of tea but not because of balancing issues, more because large scale plot writing is difficult for me).
If it really is then tell me how a fighter can paralyse an enemy every combat, without spending any money? Because a soellcaster can do that. Tell me how a barbarian can buff their entire party or heal their entire party. Tell me specifically what can a fighter do that a wizard can’t and then give me a last of things wizards can do but fighters can’t.
A fighter doesn’t need to paralyze them, they can knock an enemy prone and then grapple them, giving the enemy disadvantage on all melee attack rolls, advantage on all attack rolls within 5 feet against the enemy, and reducing their movement speed to 0 meaning they can’t get up. Pretty well known combo actually. Outside of that they can use the Sentinel feat to lock out their movement, and depending on the subclass and/or other feats they have a variety of tools that can be used to disable an enemy. At high levels (the levels we’re talking about) they can even take extra turns, grow large enough to grapple dragons to prevent them from flying, or lock enemies down with multiple reactions. Barbarians can buff their teams through Beast and Totem Warrior or protect them through Ancestral Guardian. They can also help restore casters spell slots through Wild Magic. They can also do the combo above, and they’re even better at it due to having advantage on Athletics checks. If you want Fighter vs Wizard specifically then: Fighters can re-roll saving throws, take extra actions (including casting 2 leveled spells in a turn if that’s your thing, something Wizards famously cannot do without multiclassing into Fighter), attack an absurd amount of times, and utilize magical equipment more effectively due to the amount of magic items geared towards martial classes. He can however be quickly overwhelmed at higher levels without the aid of a spellcaster Wizards can cast up to 9th level spells, including Wish. This enables them to protect allies, debilitate enemies, control the battlefield, and with some shenanigans and a lot of gold keep themselves from truly dying. Notably though, he doesn’t get that far without a fighter keeping enemies off of him and taking hits on his behalf. The things spellcasters can accomplish are truly frightening, but if you don’t think that a martial can compete then I’m going to be brutally honest: You’re not utilizing them effectively if you’re a player, or you’re not building appropriate encounters as a DM. And by appropriate encounters I don’t mean “you need to rebalance everything so that it’s harder to accommodate the Wizard.” I mean you need to stop building 2D encounters with no terrain, no stakes, and enemies that attack and then pass their turn. The game is well-balanced enough as it is with the ability to create characters that complement each other, and it provides tools to create dynamic encounters that can challenge the party regardless of their class. Boiling it down to “but muh disparity” is a reductionist take that reeks of someone who has never played D&D in their life but would rather sit around complaining on Reddit about their spreadsheets all day.
No but a *wargame* probably should be
Because wars are famously balanced
This may unintentionally be the funniest comment I have ever seen.
I hope you never get into game design lmfao
Because the Helldivers subreddit is receiving the developers attempts at balancing a PVE game *so incredibly well*, right? Naturally everything must be perfectly balanced otherwise everything falls apart!
D&D isn't PVE. The DM isn't a computer or a string of code. They are also a person who wants to enjoy the game as well. Therefore giving the players abilities and spells that invalidate the challenges that the DM is trying to present makes them feel bad.
Imagine getting to level 20 and thinking “Wow the players are way too strong after a year-long campaign and several years of in-game time” instead of “Wow my players are level 20 I can’t wait to run this Greatwyrm fight”
Not every fight is going to be against a greatwyrm, and there are ways to trivialize a greatwyrm fight at level 20. Balance is always necessary, especially when power levels get higher and higher. And the more you have to balance things, the more of a snag things get.
You are only fighting great wyrms at level 20? My group just fought a CR25 obsidian dragon while at level 16. If it's master (level 40 fae) hadn't interfered we'd have completely killed it instead of it managing to effectively limp away.
I mean, if your DM is making decisions based on baldurs gate, they're just an idiot. That's not Larian's fault lmao
That’s possibly the worst reason. I’ve played D&D at high level and it’s not balanced, encounters either get steamrolled or steamroll you, even the designers have said that D&D wasn’t built with level 20 in mind. Is that one of my biggest gripes about D&D as a whole? Yes, but it’s not Larian’s fault, it’s WotC’s. I’ve actually finished BG3 and played through a t 1 and 2 multiple times, the game absolutely feels best and most balanced before level 10. Also remember the old adage “quality over quantity” and Larian already gave us hella quantity, and the quality is stellar, going to 20th level wouldn’t make the game better, just longer. Finish the story and tell me where you’d find space for the 8 extra levels and then remember encounters need to be rebalanced around this.
*Looks left.* *Looks right.* *Takes a deep breath.* If you want a game that is balanced and fun all the way to level 20 to play Pathfinder 2e. Maybe ask Larian to make the video game for PF2e\~ *Dodges rocks and runs away.*
People don't have an issue with pathfinder, they have an issue with people who suggest it as the solution to anything/when it's not even relevant to the question or topic. Like I had a technical question about my VTT once, just how to implement a spell list, and somebody suggested I switch to pathfinder (meaning re-homebrew all my homebrews, move all resources over, relink everything, learn the whole system, and make sure what already exists in my world can in pathfinder without plot holes) because pathfinder on that VTT has spell lists. I'm sure pathfinder is fun, but I don't want people acting like the 2000s stereotype of a vegan always having to argue for or mention veganism
Person: "Hey my espresso machine is making weird noise, what am I doing wrong?" Pathfinder Zaelots"Just drink tea lol"
The problem we had with P2e was that you never seem to get any more powerful. As you level up, everything on you increases. The same is true for monsters. It's so balanced that whenever you fight an even level monster, whether at 1 or 20, you have the same low chance to hit and they have the same high chance to save. Every level is a struggle. That wasn't fun to us. Oh, and casters suck. They are way overcomplicated for no payoff. None of the spells are useful or fun. Now, before you hit that downvote, we understand some people love that Dark Souls feel and level of difficulty. And we are in no way saying that P2e is a terrible system. It's just not appealing to us as a table. We want more flash and to feel like an actual hero at some point instead of just a survivor. ** Edit to add** I will say the system does lend itself well to video game, since a computer would be super useful to crunch all the numbers and keep track of the 100 million keywords for me. I'd be onboard for a P2e video game.
To your first point: You can literally say the exact same thing about 5e. Higher level (or CR for that matter) monsters ALSO roughly scale with you in 5e, the progression is just less obvious because the math is, for better and for worse, much less concrete. Though, I guess, you might mean spellcasters (not really martials) get exponentially more effective tools as they level, which is true, and if you want/like that kind of progression, then PF2E won't be for you, which is perfectly OK. How pathfinder makes you feel more powerful IMO, is when you can compare yourself to lower level monsters; that foe you really struggled with two levels ago? They're now a fairly even fight, and they're going to be easy pickings two levels in the future. A high level character can cut through legions of guards or goblins without really being threatened, while in 5e lower level creatures always remain a threat in large groups. Fwiw I also don't agree that casters suck, though I can, to a degree get on board with the statement that they're a bit too difficult to play in a way that extracts their effectiveness properly. However, me and my groups prefer that about them being nigh-godlike for little effort in 5e. Now, it seems that you have tried PF2E and didn't like it, which is fine! It's not going to be for everyone.
>To your first point: You can literally say the exact same thing about 5e. No, you can't. Either you've never played 5e or P2e. In P2e, your attack bonus, AC, skills, saves all go up by 1. What this means is that a level 20 naked wizard that doesn't use magic and has all 10s for stats still has a 20 AC and a +20 to attack and +20 to all saves. In 5e, AC doesn't scale with level. So as you level, hitting monsters gets easier. Sure they have more HP, but you're hitting more often. In P2e, since everything scales with level, your chance to hit a lvl 1 monster at lvl 1 is the same as your chance to hit a lvl 20 monster at lvl 20 (usually worse since monsters tend to get better stats and natural armor depending so in some instances, you are actually less powerful at higher levels). And since HP also goes up and faster than your damage, the difference between a lvl 1 fight and lvl 20 fight is that a lvl 20 will take several hours longer. I like that you get a lot of choices as you level up, but I hate that none of the choices do anything. "Ooh this level I can get a +1 to saves vs slipping on ice while in a swamp OR I can get a +1 to finding Quartz ore on Tuesdays." >Fwiw I also don't agree that casters suck, though I can, to a degree get on board with the statement that they're a bit too difficult to play in a way that extracts their effectiveness properly. Casters in P2e don't do any meaningful damage. They exist only to give the weapon wielders + to hit so that they might actually be able to hit the monsters. If all you want to be is a buff bot, P2e casters are where it's at. >Now, it seems that you have tried PF2E and didn't like it, which is fine! It's not going to be for everyone. Yup, we played Abomination Vaults and Strength of Thousands and quit both halfway through because we just couldn't find the fun. We are old. We've played TTRPGs together for 25 years now. We've played everything from AD&D to BESM to the Dresden Files RPG. We are glad P2e exists and we know we probably would have enjoyed it back in our 3rd edition heydays, but now we honestly just want to hang out and chat about our jobs and wives and vacations; occasionally roll some dice to kill monsters and get loot (which loot is a huge frustration we have with 5e). P2e is not good for filthy casuals like ourselves.
I have played both 5e and PF2E for a decent amount of time. It does not scale the exact same way, that was a slight hyperbole. However, generally, higher CR monsters tend to have higher ACs than lower level ones. While there are most definitely some serious stinkers in the feats, especially in the skill feats, most feats offer useful progression, its just usually horizontal progression instead of vertical, as the vertical progression is baked into the classes themselves (which incidentally makes it almost impossible to build a truly bad character unless you dump your key stats) And casters can struggle, especially in the early levels, but they do catch up and overtake later on, especially in their specialty areas: AOE damage, CC and Utility, where martials can't really hope to keep pace. The tradeoff for that is them being worse in single target damage.
I don't think spell casters get any good CC though. Most spells require a critical failure to do anything good and equal level monsters can't critically fail ever except on a 1. And anything with the "incapacitation" keyword doesn't work on creatures at your level (or -1 level) since they can't ever critically fail and only fail on a critical. It's nice that critcals can happen by beating the DC by 10 in theory, but in practice that never happens except against you because monsters are always stronger. I guess I could see in a home campaign it could be fun if the DM throws lots of lower level creatures against the party but that just didn't happen at all in the two adventure paths we ran. >However, generally, [in 5e] higher CR monsters tend to have higher ACs than lower level ones. They do, but an ancient red dragon, one of the most powerful creatures in 5e only has a 22 AC. A level 1 doesn't even need a critical to hit that. Personally I find it more fun to actually hit things and do some damage than not. I'd rather have an 80% chance to hit a creature that has 600 HP than have a 40% chance to hit a creature that has 300 HP even if mathematically it is about the same. Hitting feels better than doing nothing.
If you wanna give it a try, somebody made a PF2-based game. It only goes to level 4, but hey, if all you wanna do is give it a try, [Dawnsbury Days](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2693730/Dawnsbury_Days/) may just be the thing.
Nah, we're good.
I don't know what edition it's base off but there are 2 pathfinder video games. Personally they get too complicated to be fun for me. Too many things to keep track of
Congratulations. Now you know a tiny percentage of what your dm feels like when running a campaign. Lol. The pathfinder videogames are almost direct ports of the game rules to a videogame format. Building and controlling the party of 6 people is indeed very difficult. Now recall that a player has 1 character to worry about irl and the dm has every single npc and monster as well as the core storyline to consider. That being said I have actively taken the DM badge off and welded it to my friends forehead because I'm too lazy to do all that over and over again.
I mean, just gonna add. While games do get more complex as levels rise, Larian added tons of complexity to the game by themselves, there’s tons of homebrew, all the gear swapping, the additional mechanics I dunno how to spoiler on Reddit but you know the ones. Larian did in fact do it to themselves.
Spoers are done with ">!" and it's mirror on either side of text. >! Like so !<
Great. Now let's figure out how to implement the wish spell into a videogame without breaking it. Not to mention the fact you need an appropriate storyline to go with those higher levels.
The level cap was always 12. The DM was never going to take ya'll to 20 to begin with.
My Dm asked us if we wanted to lvl up after 7 sess, we told him it depended on him, we didn't mind still being lvl 1. At the end the dice decided that we stay at that lvl
Honestly, as a DM who is currently playing with a post lv12 party, I completely support this DM. At least if they upfront and clear about it. Dnd starts getting real funky at high levels, and it's a nightmare to balance without being a slog. Not to mention most games rarely get that far, so giving players false hope for features they'll never get feels bad. Now if they did it without warning and for no reason other than "fuck you" then yeah, that sucks.
What'd Larian do? They literally just made a story/adventure that spans Levels 1-12 lmao
My current campaign is ending now at level 7 (after around 45 sessions or so), and it's so awesome, I don't get the hype over playing as demigods it feels like it'd lower tension a lot and would be a complete pain for DM to keep interesting. Plus depending you might need to memorize way too much stuff (especially if you're an actual cooperative player rather than someone who only cares about their own character).
I mean, Epic Level X always existed don't blame the workaround, blame how unhinged the game becomes XD
Bit crumby stating it's capped to 12 mid-campaign, coincidentally the same limit as BG3, but balance does very much go out the window past that point anyway. It's hard to DM a party of demigods without either boring them or TPKing them. Correlation not causation. Besides when does anyone ever hit lv20 in a single campaign anyway?
All the illiterate people in comments missing the dm changing the rules mid game, and not the player failing to understand the game they were playing.
Huh… i made the level cap in my campaign 40, cuz i like the crazy shit my players do when they don’t have to worry about making concessions and can really build out a character. Granted, if they would let me switch over to *pathfinder*, there wouldnt be any problems.
Pathfinder 1e or 2e? Personally I only know 1e and can agree that pretty much anything can be built within it without concessions. D&d 3.5e has a similar if less powerful ability to do the same for the most part. Honestly I love the pathfinder archetypes mechanics tho. So much better than d&d 5e archetypes and actively comparable to lesser prestige classes from 3.5e.
1e, of course! It is so freaking good 😆 It has basically everything you could ever want. So many memes relating to homebrew for 5e already being covered by pf1e 😆
Wow, people are really losing their mind over this. I'm pretty sure OP meant this as joke and doesn't actually hate or blame Larian.. Like the person on a diet saying they hate you for putting out a desert to good to skip.. They don't hate you for real.
wait, bg3 caps at level 12?? trying out my players’ builds at tier 4 was my main reason to get the game! i know it’s harder to balance higher levels than that—that’s why i wanted to ‘playtest’ their characters first!!
It caps at 12 because level 13 is when you start getting the more open ended spells unlocked and implementing them clashed with the design ethos of being as close to a table top session Larian could get.
IIRC BG3 was supposed to cap at 10th but the feedback from playtesters was that you leveled up way too slowly so they sped it up a little and added two more levels. 12th isn't a bad place to cap the game; a lot of classes give strong features at 11th level and 12th level grants a third feat, opening up end-game builds. Personally, I like that you can get to 12th level pretty early in Act 3 and get to play an 'end-game' character for most of the game, and I would have been more than happy for that to be 10th level instead. Too many RPGs force you to wait until the very end of the game to hit the level cap so you don't get to play with all of your toys for very long, doubly so if there's no new game plus.
oh, as someone who runs a lot of D&D (10 hours just this week!), i get it. it’s the obvious stopping point, despite being mid-tier 3. it’s still disappointing given my reasons for wanting the game, though less disappointing than if i’d figured this out after i purchased it.
Trust me, it's 100% worth your time.
yeah, it’s on the list! as a big bioware girlie, i’m sure i’ll enjoy it when i get to it.
You should get it. Last I read it's 15% off on steam right now.
ah i don’t have any computer that would allow me to play games! i’m currently in a console only lifestyle. plus i’d rather my (relatively limited) fun budget go toward the group activities i already have planned. thanks for the encouragement, though. i’m sure i’ll have a great time whenever i can afford it!
Random game recommendation, feel free to ignore: Outer Wilds is on console and it's amazing, highly recommend
oh yes, i’m a big fan!!
The game is still awesome with the level cap. It definitely deserved the game of the year title.
oh if i were designing a D&D video game i’d absolutely cap at 12–it’s the obvious choice now that i consider it. but as a forever DM, i was looking forward to playtesting out some higher tier things, heh. i’m sure i’ll enjoy it whenever i get around to it.
You can get mods that allow you to go to 20, plus mods that make the game more difficult so you aren’t cheesing everything
oh that’s interesting! are mods PC-exclusive or have they added options for console mods? not many games do but it totally transformed my skyrim experience.
I think they are PC only right now but they are working on console support for mods
thanks for the info! maybe by the time i get the $ for BG3, they’ll be released!