Examples of characters we'd like high level PCs to be comparable to

[OldTrees1]

As usual it is relative. Consider if I want a high level mage to be a global scale force that can travel anywhere in the planes. They could travel to Avernus and run a campaign to take it over and maintain control. If I want the mage to have that scale and range, then I would want the other high level characters to have similar scale and range. The means may be different but the power would be comparable.

On the other hand if I want a high level mage to warp reality with Wish ...

Or maybe I ban* some spells for a campaign, in order to lower the high level mage to a kingdom scale that can travel anywhere on the globe in a timely manner. (* Alternatively I could just have the campaign stop leveling after the desired level). Then I would want the other high level characters to have a similar kingdom scale force and ability to travel the globe in a timely manner.


Zariel victorious (rather than defeated and fallen) with the ability to create/find portals would be a partial example of something I sometimes want a 20th level Knight or Paladin to be comparable to. Can the character defeat a plague? A famine? Natural disasters happening across the globe while an Elder Evil awakens (specifically the natural disasters part, not the boss fight afterwards)?


D&D is usually good at handling combat scaling (although sometimes it overlooks mobility qualitative scaling and anti-army scaling). So most of the improvement is about out of combat scaling.