"Campaigns end before then" finally ready to not be "true"?

[Thomas5251212]

I think the responses show my point pretty well; whatever people's reasons, a lot of people are resistant to starting at elevated levels, so unless the combination of time and interest actually lasts, its pretty fair to say that games that actually see higher levels are far from routine.

(And that's not even getting into the issue of people who's expectations are that higher level play will be either overpowered or unmanageable, as referenced by a couple of above posters. I suspect these are both less true with PF 2e (though I can only speculate) but old habits from incarnations tend to stick for a while).

[WWHsmackdown]

As someone who's relatively new to the hobby (started playing with 5e) I've never truly played above level 11. If the math of p2e holds in tier 3 and 4 of play as well as it appears to I really think that 3 book APs that start at lvl 10 will serve a very important niche function of allowing campaigns of a manageable length to reach endgame goodness. The Ruby Phoenix Tournament AP announcement was really my favorite part of Paizocon. I've never been more excited for a published adventure and (even if I'll probably end up GMing). That magical lvl 20 is just a milestone that most enthusiasts in the hobby never see, only conceptualize in theorycraft builds.

[Jader7777]

A lot of the time people chase the dream of the 1-20 game and I feel like there's good reasons why most games and the data we collect from them suggest this to be true.

- All games start at level 1 (even though there's nothing in the book stating this must be the case), so large data sets are always biased towards any lower level being more popular.
- Games that start and end at a single level are not that popular or people have never heard of it.
- Some people run e6 games where players never go over 6th level (or something similar)
- Most adventures are written within the scope of a material plane and with localized events (not designed for Plane Shift or True Resurrection screwing everything up).
- Assuming EXP is used in most games, groups tend to last a few months playing once a week (when the stars align) and starting at level 1 they usually will burn out before higher levels.

I usually end up hanging around 6th-12th level for most of my games and it's a great medium to play in. I usually only ever play a 20th level 1 shot at most and even then it's just a whacky combat with gimmick characters.

That said, most of my experience has been with 3.5/PF1e and that system was always problematic with higher level stuff being suffocatingly cumbersome. Maybe PF2e will break this glass ceiling...