defining high level

[shadzar]

so what exactly is high level? some say flight is high level, probably because of a level required to obtain a spell that grants it...but 0-level creatures are capable of flight so is 0-level high level?

what characteristics define what high level is? when do you actually reach this "high level"?

AD&D1 and older, says above name level (9th) would be high level
AD&D2 and its DM high level campaigns book treats 10th and up as high level...

3rd?

4th would that be paragon?

then what reasons are these levels considered high?

AD&D 1 went through 30 levels capable so 10th level was only 1/3 into it

AD&D2 went to 30th capable as well...again 1/3

3rd?

4th goes to 30th so why i say paragon as it is 10th level equivalent.

and this is JUST for D&D...mainly because those are what i know. so what commonalities do these has at that 10th level to make that high level if in fact that is the case?

is there a specific group of monsters, specific types of spells? is it the survivability of the earlier levels and getting to that 10th level that makes them high level? is it the commonality of the lower levels and high number of them and lower number of those level 10 and up that make it high level?

what?

[PoliteNewb]

I attempted to address this in the other thread...high-level is 2/3 to 3/4 of the way to the expected maximum level (not the stated maximum, the realistically expected maximum...as high as you're likely to play before growing bored and/or starting new characters).

so what exactly is high level? some say flight is high level, probably because of a level required to obtain a spell that grants it...but 0-level creatures are capable of flight so is 0-level high level?

Nobody says flight in and of itself is high-level...they say that NOT having flight automatically defines you as low-level, because you can't do something a 5th level wizard can do. I personally think this is short-sighted, but that's the argument I've seen.

AD&D 1 went through 30 levels capable so 10th level was only 1/3 into it

AD&D2 went to 30th capable as well...again 1/3

Please be honest...no it didn't. Nobody reached 30th level in AD&D, without cheating.

The highest levels I ever saw anybody attain was around 12th, and that was after years of regular play. Realistically, you were probably capping out at around 14th-15th level, max...so 9th-14th is a fair estimate for "high-level".

3rd?

4th goes to 30th so why i say paragon as it is 10th level equivalent.

3rd and 4th, on the other hand, actually expect you to reach those levels, and hand out rewards commensurately high enough to let you attain them. So high level for 3rd is 15th-20th, and high level for 4th is, shit, I don't know (never played, or even looked at closely).

This is the whole heart of the problem with defining high-level, which is people's expectations. People use high-level wizard spells as a benchmark for high-level power...but while those spells existed in AD&D, they were almost never actually used (and were often not as powerful as their 3E counterparts), because people didn't reach high enough level to use them. They were the AD&D equivalent of "epic magic".

So as I said before...high-level is an entirely arbitrary term. If you're playing Conan-esque sword and sorcery, you can set the game up so 9th-15th level is high-level, and even at those levels you still ride horses and carry a sword. Or you can set your game up so that 15th-20th is high-level, and by the time you reach that you teleport around the world and kill sword-wielding pussies with a spoken word.

The one thing that should NOT happen is for those 2 games to in fact be the same game.

[souran]

Holy crap a thread made by Shadzar that is not insulting, or agressive, arguementative in its first post.

so what exactly is high level? some say flight is high level, probably because of a level required to obtain a spell that grants it...but 0-level creatures are capable of flight so is 0-level high level?

what characteristics define what high level is? when do you actually reach this "high level"?

Although this has been somewhat covered in another thread I would say that high level is when

1) The characters fundamental and supporting concepts have come to fruition. They feel that there character is "mostly" complete, or at the very least meets all the elements that they had in mind for their character concept.

2) The players stop relying on NPCs to provide party support. This has been discussed to death as part the "why fighters" but the issue here is more universal. Low level characters need for the priest of pelor in the village to be able to raise their dead friends and remove level drain. They need the old hedge wizard to identify their magic items or at least sell the expensive material component so that the party wizard can do it. They need the kings treasure vault to contain the magic item they really wanted but didn't find in the adventures loot.

There is a secondary aspect to this as well. Its also when the party/players begin to feel like living with the games negative effects is more expiedent than leaving the dungeon.

At low levels when Bobby's brave knight is poisioned by the horrible giant spider the party packs up and goes back to freaking town because if bobby's knight has his strength reduced by 3 points he is more a hindrance than an aid to the group.

Medium levels is when the party can heal the poision but has to give up the rest of the adventuring day to do it. They stop so the cleric can get rid of the poison either through magic or a skill.

High level is when, the penalty is no longer such an issue that it stops the party from advenuring or completing their task. Sure the penality MATTERS but it is not game deciding.

3) The third element that marks when the players have become high level is when the games internal goals stop seeming as important as plot goals. "low-level" characters are willing to adventure just because of the oportunity to take the monsters pile of goodies and get to level 2. When this stops being enough the game has become high level.

The simplest way I can put it is that "high level begins when players are contended with number and availability of their actions/options/powers/feats/spells/gear etc.

I realize that these things are quite subjective.

One player may be high level at about level 6 using some of these definitions.

However, for most players it seems to happen about 1-2 levels into their prestige class (except mystic theurge which never gets there). For 4e it seems to be when players have most of their paragon tier powers (usually level 15 for standard build paragon paths).

For white wolf it always seemed to be about 100 xp into the game. For shadowrun a little less but again the amount of karma was about 1/2 of what you get ot start when people feel "high level"

AD&D1 and older, says above name level (9th) would be high level
AD&D2 and its DM high level campaigns book treats 10th and up as high level...

3rd?

4th would that be paragon?

then what reasons are these levels considered high?

AD&D 1 went through 30 levels capable so 10th level was only 1/3 into it

AD&D2 went to 30th capable as well...again 1/3

3rd?

4th goes to 30th so why i say paragon as it is 10th level equivalent.

and this is JUST for D&D...mainly because those are what i know. so what commonalities do these has at that 10th level to make that high level if in fact that is the case?

For 1E D&D name level is defiantly the starting point of High level.

For 2E its high level handbook and epic level play features were quite wierd. Again, the game was not really TESTED out above 10th level so the designers basically felt that after 10th level things were pretty much a crap shoot anyway.

So Yeah in 2E 10th is high level.

In 3E I would put it at about 12th level. 3E epic level play is an attachment that barely works. The game is designed for 1-20 and the epic levels are not even applied consistantly. Some setting have NO epic characters.

The reason I say 12th level is that quite a few prestige classes require players to be somewhere between 7th-10th level to join. Usually 2 levels of a prestige class grabs most of its best goodies except for a crown jewel for taking 5 or 10 levels.

AS I said above in 4E it really seems to be about halfway through the paragon tier which is nice because thats haflway through a character's advenure career. Most paragon paths have a few abilities that kick in in the lower half of the paragon tier and then they get a daily power at level 20. For most players getting those other static abilties is more meaningful than picking up one more daily attack.

[shadzar]

AD&D 1 went through 30 levels capable so 10th level was only 1/3 into it

AD&D2 went to 30th capable as well...again 1/3

Please be honest...no it didn't. Nobody reached 30th level in AD&D, without cheating.

The highest levels I ever saw anybody attain was around 12th, and that was after years of regular play. Realistically, you were probably capping out at around 14th-15th level, max...so 9th-14th is a fair estimate for "high-level".

for those that were allowed to even reach those levels you mean. racial level limits....

i think people using a wizard for a benchmark is either blinded or extremely short-sighted. again it is trying to cut out half of the players because you ignore the fact that the wizard is part of a team. o those spells he gets should be being used to augment the rest of the party abilities not compete against them.

take the classes and run each of them as entire parties...they work fine...you just dont do things the same way as you would with a mixed party. so how does that measure what a high level is for any one class over the other?

people DID reach high levels as suggested in AD&D...not sure how you cheat to do it...but they got there through play.

[PoliteNewb]

people DID reach high levels as suggested in AD&D...not sure how you cheat to do it...but they got there through play.

Again...I never did, no one I ever gamed with ever did, and even most of Gygax and his buddies' characters never did. At least not starting from 1st. Hell, the "old heroes" of Greyhawk (Gary's characters and his friends) were usually less than 20th, not 30th or any such shit. I think Bigby was like 18th level.

You "cheat" by...

--the DM giving you pushover monsters that are nonetheless worth lots of XP, or letting you kill powerful monsters easily (i.e. "yeah, demogorgon just stands there pulling his pud while you stab him...here's 40,000 xp, yay for you").
--the DM handing you ridiculous amounts of money, thus handing you lots of free XP
--the DM "fudging" treasure rolls so you get maximum amounts of loot, or better items instead of piddly crap like potions of healing and +1 swords.
--the DM giving you ridiculous shit like a full set of gauntlets, girdle, and hammer of thunderbolts and the Invincible Coat of Arndt, so you can go clean out giant lairs single-handed.

If you played a regular, organic campaign, I simply don't see how you could reach 30th level in any reasonable fashion. Assuming average treasure rolls, that's seriously fighting dozens of dragons solo, or hundreds of dragons as part of a team.

[shadzar]

The reason they didnt is beacuse they didnt want to keep playing the same character forever. They reached a point, as you even stated...where they would get bored with that character or group or characters and wanted to change.

You do not HAVE to play through all the levels, and because you dont, doesnt mean others didnt.

also what they were playing was pretty much playtesting for the things to be published...or maybe even the adventures to be written up as novels.

Dragonlance chronicles were a series of games turned into books and them compiled as the classics adventures.

so the levels reached by those players may have been due to other needs as opposed to playing just for playing which most other people have the leisure to do so.

i never wanted to play those levels, but it doesnt mean they didnt exist and werent playable.

i dont really call Monty Hall and Munchkin gaming cheating...just bad playing. i have a few bad DMs that had no idea....one tried turning a computer game into an adventure and starting handing out XP because the live group didnt get enough levels through playing as the game did, and he couldnt figure any way to get them ready for the next thing he had...which would have ben easy to take a side trek through other things and come back later....but again that is just a bad DM not exactly cheating.

[Krakatoa]

Not to be pedantic, but it seems like talking of 'cheating' at DnD is silly. You don't 'win' and 'lose' at DnD the same way you win and lose at chess. Obviously a game with no tension or risk is unsatisfying, but if a DM wants to up his character's XP to get them to 30th level faster, then it's really his call.

[shadzar]

Not to be pedantic, but it seems like talking of 'cheating' at DnD is silly. You don't 'win' and 'lose' at DnD the same way you win and lose at chess. Obviously a game with no tension or risk is unsatisfying, but if a DM wants to up his character's XP to get them to 30th level faster, then it's really his call.

likewise if the characters want to skip a few levels to get to something else, that also is there choice. not everyone wants to start with a first level character, maybe they would like to start at level 5 for some reason, so is it cheating for them to do so? no...they just have a different preference. likewise it doesnt make them a munchkin for not wanting to start at level 1, maybe they are just tired of THAT much building of the character and want one that is a bit more established.

i always found it funny when someone would use the word cheating in D&D as if the DM changing die rolls to prevent a TPK is a bad thing even if some would call it cheating. another good thing about the players not knowing all the math in earlier games i played...they didnt trivialize over if their die roll was good enough or the DM was just preventing them from dying where they shouldnt really be dying maybe due to a series of poor die rolls.

how one GETS to a "high level" isnt as important as figuring out what high level is. they could play to get there, or just start with the characters at that level.

[K]

Mid-level begins when you starting being able to ignore some encounters you don't want to deal with. For example, when you get invis for the party or flight or something. 5th level-ish in my mind. It can start earlier.... I mean, some guys really do say "screw this mountain climbing thing up the cliff where we make checks and try not to die.... I am going to use my Boots of Levitation to float up, then drop the boots down to my buds. Problem solved."

High level begins when the results of encounters don't matter any more. So, let's say when you can cast Raise off a scroll and have enough cash to reasonably afford it and when level-drain is a battle status down and not an adventure status down because it gets healed after the battle with potions or spells. Around 9th level-ish.

[TheFlatline]

I'd say easily for 3rd edition the game starts breaking down and becoming less fun at around 12-14. I've only seen one or two games following Rules As Written that actually hit level 20 legitimately through gameplay. Other than that, no game ever made it past 15. It just stopped being particularly fun.

2nd I'd get to maybe level 10 in a long campaign. Usually we'd run out of steam around 7 or 8th level.

I never saw anyone legitimately get to 20th level through a normal experience progression in 2nd ed, let alone beyond that. I mean, you need like millions of exp, and you're getting those exp in like 200-5000 xp chunks. Just hitting one million requires 200 5,000xp combats. Most combats are going to net you sub-1000 xp amounts, which means you're looking at *hundreds* of combat encounters. Even if you average 2-3 combats a session, you're looking at like a decade of gaming weekly to make it happen. (okay, more like 7 or 8 years of gaming every week without missing a session at around 1000 xp per combat, 2-3 combats per session).

[tussock]

Low: 1-3.
Mid: 4-9. (4e: 1-14)
High: 10-15. (4e: 15-30)
Epic: 16+.

You could level later in 2nd edition by farming XP in the Abyss. Not terribly safe, but gloriously rewarding if you got away with it.

[Starmaker]

Dragonlance chronicles were a series of games turned into books and them compiled as the classics adventures.

Dragonlance started as a setting "where dragons are a big deal" with background by Jeff Grubb (the silly stuff) and Tracy Hickman (the bad stuff), iconics designed by TSR, adventures written with the iconics in mind and then books.

Dragonlance iconics were laughably low level (in the books, Raistlin is utterly awed by fireball, which is a spell you get at character level 4 as a red magic-user) and died a lot: "The party decided to explore a well by lowering Tanis on a rope into it, equipped with the blue crystal staff. Tanis dropped the staff, the dragon awoke, ate Tanis, flew out of the well and ate the whole party."

In an attempt to compensate, they were loaded with artifacts. Each character had at least one, only a handful made it into the books.

No one actually went up in level (got improved abilities) except Tika (picks up some fighting skills, stays dead weight) and Raistlin (switches order from red to black and gains power as a result which just goes to show he's still low level, because at high levels black robes suck ass).

[shadzar]

Dragonlance chronicles were a series of games turned into books and them compiled as the classics adventures.

Dragonlance started as a setting "where dragons are a big deal" with background by Jeff Grubb (the silly stuff) and Tracy Hickman (the bad stuff), iconics designed by TSR, adventures written with the iconics in mind and then books.

Dragonlance iconics were laughably low level (in the books, Raistlin is utterly awed by fireball, which is a spell you get at character level 4 as a red magic-user) and died a lot: "The party decided to explore a well by lowering Tanis on a rope into it, equipped with the blue crystal staff. Tanis dropped the staff, the dragon awoke, ate Tanis, flew out of the well and ate the whole party."

In an attempt to compensate, they were loaded with artifacts. Each character had at least one, only a handful made it into the books.

No one actually went up in level (got improved abilities) except Tika (picks up some fighting skills, stays dead weight) and Raistlin (switches order from red to black and gains power as a result which just goes to show he's still low level, because at high levels black robes suck ass).

what does that have to do with anything? are you trying to disprove dragonlance was created by the same method greyhawk evolved...through play....what are you trying to say?

all i was saying is that the games being played, often became the published material and their own playing was the playtesting...so they might not have actually playtested out the high levels because they had to constantly keep doing other things in order to publish more stuff.

same as WotC with 3rd and 4th...the upper levels are probably just mathematical extensions of the lower levels and never really played through to see if and how well they worked.

[tzor]

what does that have to do with anything? are you trying to disprove dragonlance was created by the same method greyhawk evolved...through play....what are you trying to say?

No way. The initial design for the first modules was simply to create twelve modules each with a different dragon. That's nice but a dozen moodules does not a campaign world make. When the system was solidified as a campaign world it was decided to link them together with novels. They then hired a writer resulting in a love hate triangle that winds through the entire history of the campaign world. Dragonlance has always been novel driven with a view towards revenue any way they can. Novel driven designs tend to be eratic, low level (high level requires a lot of thought in order to keep it from being deus ex machina and killing any sense of plot) and tends towards NPC worship. (The campaign world is designed for the novel main characters not the players ... sorry about that.)

[shadzar]

i am sure i read that it was a series of games played before just becoming novels, but that still has little to do with what level of play the adventures were and such.

[Blicero]

i am sure i read that it was a series of games played before just becoming novels, but that still has little to do with what level of play the adventures were and such.

...What? Dragonlance started out as a campaign, not a campaignsetting. As such, the entire world revolves around the events of that campaign. The campaign was a series of modules. The modules were also lowlevel.

Most other campaignsettings also started out as campaigns (FR with Mirt), but they expanded beyond their initial startingpoint, allowing for people to interpret the setting it their own ways. Dragonlance never succeeded at that. If you ever get past the horrific Mormonmorality that drives the worldstory, you're still left with the fact that the world never feels dynamic enough to support nonofficial stories being told.

[shadzar]

DEFINING HIGH LEVEL....for those that forgot the purpose of the thread.