I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
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I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
1) For the last few sessions everyone is almostlevel 3.
2) Yes, they are only level 2 now.3) Nothing yet.
As for high level campaigns:
1) I was the DM of this campaign, so I havent played it but had characters end up between levels 21-26.
2) Started at level 1. ToEE campaign wooooooohooooooooo!
3) The characters were done everything, story wrapped up and it was good times!
At the end the characters were:
Devereaux the 57th(out of game joke) Druid 20/Ninja2/Wizard3
Thavian Ezmirr Half-fiend Suloise Wizard 25
Lazarus Draconus Half Red Dragon Orc Fighter 25
Dalabrac Dardragon Rogue 21
Now the only characters from those who experienced the ToEE were Thavian and Lazarus. They werent there for the whole module, but were there from the second level of the ToEE onwards.
I only had a group of 8 people enter, and it ended up at 4 at the end of the campaign. Probably due to the 22 PC deaths by the time they were level 1 until they reached the second level of the ToEE.
Oh and I just read it was in the PRPG section, so for Pathfinder we all started at level one and the highest I have DM'd is level 7. The highest I have played from level 1 would be my current character Grimsh Abroshtar, Saviour of Falcons Hollow. He is Transmuter5/Bard1/Pathfinder Chronicler1.
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I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
I ran a pbem FR game until the PCs hit about 18th/19th level level. It started out about 6 years ago from level 3, using 3.0, then 3.5, and then we moved to Pathfinder Beta rules last summer. The game was a lot of fun, but things began to change in the early teens or so.
The campaign ended mostly because I couldn't keep up with high-level combats in the same spirit that we did at earlier levels. It was a frustrating experience to attempt to keep up with the vast amount of options available to PCs at that level and still manage effective, efficient encounters with them. The effort involved in just one round of combat was overwhelming and I mostly burned out. I had no problem with challenging opponents and plot twists - it was the combat management that really killed me. I've tried a bunch of different tools, but nothing really seems to work better for me than plain old text files and round-by-round status management. However, that just doesn't work for me at high levels.
I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
1) Level 15. I hope to break that with the current campaign though, as we're at 16th now.
2) Current one started 14th, one before that which reached 16 started around 9th IIRC.
3) Current campaign still going strong. Previous campaign to reach 16th ended because we got through the story arc and saved Chult from an undead apocalypse. We considered continuing but then decided to start over at low level and give Eberron a try instead of remaining in the Realms, which we'd stomped through for many a game.
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1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
I've played through one Dragonlance campaign at around levels 12-14 for several modules (near the end of the original campaign series, although we never quite finished it). I've also played in a very long ongoing game which topped out at around 24th-28th level.
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
Yes, both did.
3) What ended the campaign?
The Dragonlance game ended when the DM went off to college, which ended a roughly 1 year long game we had played once a week pretty religiously. I'd say if that hadn't happened, we would have kept going and finished the whole series, probably topping out at around lvl 15 using 1st Edition rules (+ Unearthed Arcana).
The other game was the original D&D game that got most of us playing (I joined later, when the original characters were around lvl 7 or so). We kept playing that on and off for almost 20 years, although play got down to 1-2x a year once many of the players moved away; we'd basically get together at the holidays for marathon sessions to catch up on things. That game moved from 1st Edition (with some Rolemaster add-ons like crit tables) to 2nd edition, to 3.0/3.5 + Epic Handbook. With each ruleset change, we had to tweak expectations and reassess party roles; it wasn't until 3rd edition that my cleric finally didn't suck completely -- and it wasn't until 3rd edition that the elf wizard/fighter/psionic got somewhat reined in and wasn't over-powered.
That game ended mostly because we couldn't play it often enough, and the DM and players just couldn't maintain a good connection to what we wanted to do. I'd say being epic characters didn't make us less interested in the game, or the game less fun or challenging -- in fact, hand-waving most of the tedium out of the way let us concentrate on some very interesting things (like the time we decided the entire pantheon in our world was a bunch of twits and wondered if we shouldn't just assist Demogorgon in over-throwing them, because we figured we could take him, and then we'd replace the gods with god-golems pre-programmed to answer prayers and reassure people, but to not be such jerks).
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I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
1. 15th level. We had concluded Black Sails over Freeport.
2. We started at 1st level with the original Freeport Trilogy at the onset of 3rd edition (2000) and played for about six years (usually once a month). Other modules we played were Bard Keep (Dungeon magazine), Tomb of Abysthor (Necromancer), and lots of original material.
3. After six years the players wanted to try new characters. So we started the Shackled City adventure path and are currently playing Zenith's Trajectory.
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1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
1) I've had one campaign go to level 18. In my current STAP campaign, the party is level 18 (I expect they might hit 21 by the time Demogorgon is defeated).
2) Both campaigns started at level 1.
3) In both instances, the campaign ended/will end at the end of the story arc.
-Skeld
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
Currently we're playing the STAP and have extended into the early Epic levels 21-22, but we started at 10th level for this one converting old 2nd ed characters over to 3.5.
Since 3e came out we've had approximately 4 campaigns reach above 15th level. Most stopped at between 16 to 18th levels, usually due to characters wanting to go in different directions after defeating a major nemesis.
Since we are talking about 3.x (in D&D BECMI, we played some Immortals for about 1 year, but soon adventures started to become strange and out of control):
1)28th-level
2)At 1st-level on Oerth (Greyhawk), then after some plane-hopping on Sigil, it ended on Faerun (it was a 3.0 campaign near the transition to 3.5)
3)Adventures started to become: 'Big, unseen monster creeps out of unseen place and starts to wreck havoc on the world; 2-3 session of preparation to fight him, then 1-2 session of EFFECTIVE FIGHT'; the final nail was when characters started to 'Oh, well, let's just ask for help to a Great Wyrm Gold Dragon; if he cannot do the work, maybe we have to stand up and take the challenge...', I could not stand it anymore and killed the campaign.
Highest: 26'ish Sorc (if I remember correctly)
Ended: General feeling of wanting to start over.
Start at low level: for them, yes, but I entered the game around level 11 or so.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
20
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
No, we started at 15th to specifically run a high level game. But one PC was from an earlier campaign that ran from 4 to 11 or 12, I think.
3) What ended the campaign?
Fun revelations about who the PCs really were and why they were involved in this plot - and then a couple really freakin' big battles that ended the storyline. It was probably the happiest I've been with my DMing and one of the few campaigns we've played out to the planned end.
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1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
25th level is the highest I've played at. For long running games, I'm currently playing in one that is now at 20th level and running one that has just got to 21st (and we have converted the characters to the pathfinder beta rules as a playtest).
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
Yes.
3) What ended the campaign?
They haven't ended. But previous groups in the same campaign setting have been put into retirement as the campaign arc was coming to an end and we wanted to try out some new characters. Some characters have been played for years now (5-10 or even more).
I have several instances.
Cerulean Destiny
1)Went up to 30th
2)Started at 1st - though I have to say that we skipped levels 21-23 and jumped right into epic after the final battle in the pre-epic part of the campaign (we were 20th in that fight)
3)The final fight, against an evil god. We won.
City of the Spider Queen + Aftermath (which I GMed)
1) Went up to early epics, something like 23, though there also was a jump in it I think.
2)It started at level 8 or so, with a couple of "free" levels before we went through City of the Spider Queen
3)After the adventure, I sent them through dragon-infested parts of the Underdark, with a big bad psionic gem dragon as BBEG (which is Big Bad Enemy Guy here, since he wasn't necessarily evil - but they were).
There were also some shorter attempts at really high level play, which involved epic levels and gestalt rules and similar insane stuff.
Beyond that, There were a number of campaigns that started early (some at 1st-3rd, some at 6th-8rd) and went to high levels (14-20)
I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
1.) Level 20, in six campaigns. We got some of them to level 21, but that really was the end for the storyline. I, as a master, really didn´t and still don´t want to deal with the headache of the D&D 3.x epic rules. Also, see point three.
2.) All started from the very first level and lasted about 1 1/2 years. :)
3.) Basically, the storyline was over.
The first campaign was still 2nd Edition and ended with the adventure "Return to the Tomb of Horrors".
The second campaign ended when we defeated some sort of cosmic magic-destroying horror.
The third campaign ended when we had an apocalyptic battle between an army of demons and the forces of good.
The fourth campaign ( which was the first one mastered by me ) ended when the group defeated Orbakh below Westgate.
The fifth campaign ended when the group defeated Demogorgon, who lurked in the ruins of Tilbrand.
The sixth campaign ( run by another guy ) ended when we defeated some sort of lich / demi-lich derivate. It was a good bit more psychedelic than the other campaigns. ^^
The seventh campaign is about to end in five months, when the group will liberate Altumbel from a devil-army which has taken over that part of Aglarond. After that one, I´ll master a Star Wars Saga campaign in the Legacy era, before getting back to D&D ( or better said, the Pathfinder RPG ). I need a break from fantasy after about 10 years of constantly playing it with the same people. :p
So, yeah, high-level play happens. :) I guess the part where it becomes totally unbalanced never was a such big problem, because while we got some power-players, we never got into the number-crunching which makes the game so horrible for some people...
I never had a problem upping the hit points or attack bonuses of monsters, if it was necessary for an enjoyable game. Also, my players seldomly used the save-or-die and save-or-suck stuff, but preferred damage spells.
I've been playing for 20 years, and I've never leveled higher than 13th. Nobody I know wants to run a game beyond that level.
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I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
I ran a pbem FR game until the PCs hit about 18th/19th level level. It started out about 6 years ago from level 3, using 3.0, then 3.5, and then we moved to Pathfinder Beta rules last summer. The game was a lot of fun, but things began to change in the early teens or so.
The campaign ended mostly because I couldn't keep up with high-level combats in the same spirit that we did at earlier levels. It was a frustrating experience to attempt to keep up with the vast amount of options available to PCs at that level and still manage effective, efficient encounters with them. The effort involved in just one round of combat was overwhelming and I mostly burned out. I had no problem with challenging opponents and plot twists - it was the combat management that really killed me. I've tried a bunch of different tools, but nothing really seems to work better for me than plain old text files and round-by-round status management. However, that just doesn't work for me at high levels.
And I've seen your management...it's awesome Sleepy, that high level play-test was very well organized...if someone could turn what you do, into a flash program or java program, that would be incredible, make it clickable, and done!
1) 16. The characters leveled to 17 at the end, but we never got to play them.
2) Yes, and I gave out 50% xp, too (this was 3.0/3.5). The campaign went on for years.
3) High-level combats were getting unwieldy to the point where one big fight could take up an entire session. Also the characters outgrew the campaign world (which was designed for 1e and didn't really account for characters of that level).
I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
For Pathfinder I haven't played with groups higher than level 9, but I have DM'ed a Campaign from level 1-30, we had to stop because of the crazy math and generally broken epic rules.
Currently I run Cotct with the pathfinder rules and the players have just reached level 4, so far it's running smoothly.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
18 seems to be the edge of the envelope. I have run four full campaigns and an abortive one and played in three, maybe four other campaigns since adopting 3.x rules. None of them have gone beyond 18th level. One became moribund at around 11th for the majority of characters. It should come as no surprise that this was the first one I ran under the new edition. The current campaign ends around 16th or 17th but I have a brief epilogue planned.
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
Three of the ones I ran started at first. This includes the current, ongoing one. One started at 5th, and that was the one that got closest to continuing on to 20. Of the ones I've played a PC in, most started at first, but one I joined at high level. That one lasted until about 16th, but I had already left by the time it ended.
3) What ended the campaign?
It was different in every case, and I can really only speak of the ones I ran.
The first ended because of a Deck of Many Things and a decision to go back to the drawing board and learn the rules better.
The second one ended with the logical conclusion: The Dracolich was defeated, the evil Villainess laid low and the Druid became a Black Dragon. We still tell fond stories of that one. There were issues with power balance towards the end, but a dishonest player caused most of those.
My third 3.x campaign was actually lengthened from a 5th-12th level adventure to continue on 'til 18th level. That one was nuked from orbit by a merciless power gamer and the "Complete" Books.
The current (Pathfinder) campaign will most likely end with the end of Curse of the Crimson Throne, an adventure wisely limited in its level range. As I said, I have an epilogue planned based on a tantalizing paragraph buried somewhere in the AP, but I will let the players decide if they want to delve into the deeper mysteries of Korvosa when that time comes.
I just want to get a quick response about how much time people have spent playing or DM'ing at high levels, how they got there, and why they stopped.
1) What is the highest level that you have played at for a few sessions?
2) Did the campaign start at low levels?
3) What ended the campaign?
For me, it is about 16th level as a player, and only about 7th level as a DM. The high level campaigns started at 1st level, and ended due to power differences between characters.
1)16th, two campaigns now (3.5 and PFRPG).
2)one started at level 1 (3.5), one started at 10 (PFRPG).3)TPK(3.5E) and DM quit (PFRPG).
Personaly, I would have quit soon after in both occasions as the challenge level was either too easy or omg-too hard.
p.s. in Classic (non-A)D&D we hit 36th and did our immortal quests.