Why do almost all editions of D&D fall apart around 10th level

[kyoryu]

To kyoryu: I feel it is an important distinction, so I guess I do feel better if it is explicit. What are the other "patterns" used in other role-playing games? Reacting to a changing situation, and hence effecting the situation, seems to be the minimum for interaction. I'm not sure how far you can get from that.

(I was mostly presuming people talk in character, so...)

1)
GM: "This is the situation your character is in."
Player: "My character does the thing!"
GM: "This is the new situation your character is in."

2)
Player 1: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 2: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 3: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."

3)
Player 1: "This thing happens!"
Player 2: "Then this thing happens!"
Player 3: "Then this thing happens!"

None of these types are usually "pure" in a given game, and games can switch between these interactions. Most "combat systems" veer heavily towards type two, while "out-of-combat" roleplaying is typically type one. Type three is usually associated with "storygames", though can appear in non-storygames as well.

Apocalypse World is very heavily Type 1, as is old-school D&D. Newer versions of D&D switch between types one and two, mostly, depending on whether or not you're in combat. Fate pretty much floats between the three. Etc, etc.

[Cluedrew]

(I was mostly presuming people talk in character, so...)

Oh, I get it now. Anyways, thanks for the explanation.

[Morty]

I would definately second that it is because it started as a collection of house rules to handle dungeon crawls. There was never any real coherent design behind the original setup. For example, the magic system is entirely seperate from the combat system. The skill system is bolted on seperately again, and hacked together at best. The concepts are not properly defined, giving you such results as power attacks being less likely to get through armour, and elephants being some of the best animals at dodging things. There is also an abundance of absolute effects with specific defenses, and very rarely is there trade offs. For example, there is no "obscure vision" spell line applying scaling penalties, there is simply "blindness". Iron heart surge like effects are much needed to avoid christmas trees of items against every shut down effect. Ideally there should be some cost to the defender that depends on the power of the effect, but the system is not set up to facilitate that. By the time you get past level 10 the system is a mess.

Special mention goes to black tentacles, which creates magically invincible nonmagical tentacles that hit even if a god gives you an AC of 'no' (+100 sacred bonus), then grapple without following the grapple rules... Why!?

Basically the system was built outwards from wizards on a dungeon crawl without much planning, so the parts don't line up. This gets more extreme the further from 'basic' you get: ie, higher level.

That's a pretty good summary, I think.

[druid91]

The lack of danger can really kill the vibe. I was running a game of 5e recently, and in the early days it was amazing fun for everyone (Or so I was told.) But towards the end of it it had gotten rather.... dull.

And I think a big part of that is that we kind of had an end of campaign thing happen. There was a massive battle where the party defended their floating ocean city against god-slaying cyborgs.

A battle in which their cleric literally summoned Tiamat. Using the miracle capstone feature to defend his investments in the city. And Tiamat died like a chump.

Part of this was some rather unbalanced homebrew magitech, and part of this was the fact that they'd been roided out via the deck of many things. But the PC's had more oomph than the literal god of all evil dragons.

And then they went back to dungeon crawls and adventuring. Where's the tension in that? It basically became "Where's the enemy? NUKE IT." If Meteor Swarm didn't work. The Paladin would go over and smash their face in.

[Telok]

I think that might be WotC era hp scaling and the removal of strong abilities to bypass hp in the post 3.5 versions. Since hit dice never cap out you need to keep increasing damage numbers to keep up threats. But if you have a spread from 70 to 270 hp (3e) or even 110 to 230 (5e) the gap is so big that threatening levels of damage are back up to the insta-kill range. Since WotC has depreciated binary death effects they can't have really big levels of damage on the monsters. So you're down to whittling down hp and there's no sense of threat from incremental nickle and dime fights. Even the 3e high level rocket tag often felt more surprising than threatening because that was mostly a question of counters and rolling very high or very low.

Early D&Ds were a bit better with the flat and low hp increase after 9th/10th and a sort of soft cap on AC. But even they had issues after 10th, although they were a bit more honest by calling higher level fighters superheroes (at least in one version).

[Kaiu Keiichi]

This all brings up an important point - systems should be honest. I feel that most often high level mechanics exist more often as means for GMs to control their settings and have NPCs control their game worlds instead of PCs. Why not let PCs be the movers and shakers? I abhor the idea that GMs have final say. Players should be the final authority for all table play, and most often I've seen in my 30+ years of play high level mechanics only being demonstrated as means through which GMs have their personal Elminsters and Gandalfs send players off on quests, and then end campaigns before letting players get to the level where they get things like keeps and temples as outlined in the AD&D 1 players handbook.

Also, system matters. This is why 4E was designed with tiered play. But the fan base, in it's lust for nostalgia, disregarded what was arguably the best and most transparent edition of D&D ever written. 4E was straight with players, and the fan base never forgave WOTC for that.

I think for that bare bones experience that some folks want, many OSR offerings is what should be sought, or hardcore sim engines like Runequest.

[2D8HP]

and most often I've seen in my 30+ years of play high level mechanics only being demonstrated as means through which GMs have their personal Elminsters and Gandalfs send players off on quests, and then end campaigns before letting players get to the level where they get things like keeps and temples as outlined in the AD&D 1 players handbook

Elminster!

While I'll probably never attempt to DM a 5e D&D game again without a lot of subtraction (or by limiting the game to level 5, and mostly only using the free "Basic" rules (and while I'd play it, I wouldn't DM 3.5/Pathfinder unless I was paid well to do it). What I least like about the 5e default setting ("Forgotten Realms") are the Avengers/Control/MI-7/Superfriends like "Factions". I liked "World of Greyhawk's" Thieves Guild's and Orders of Knighthood, and I can't articulate what the difference between them and the Forgotten Realms "Factions" that I hate is, but I feel it strongly.
I didn't like 1985's Unearthed Arcana, and I stopped buying TSR publications after then, so I skipped 2e AD&D (the artwork turned me off), from what I've read in this Forum about 2e AD&D, and post 1977 Basic/Classic, I've decided that I should have a look at them, and I'm finding out that there more like '70's D&D, and less like "Unearthed Arcana", than I thought they would be, and I've liked what I've seen (more than 3.x), until I came across 1993's "The Harpers". A brief skim was enough to show me that I need to be selective in what '90's DnD materials I buy, because it's awful junk.
"The Harpers" details an organization that seems more Spy/Superhero Fantasy than Swords & Sorcery, and it is full of Marty/Mary Sue's including one "Elminster" who has to be one of the worst examples of a DMPC that I've seen (OK Greyhawk's "Murlynd" was godawful, but that was a PC). At the end there is an ad to "Read the Harpers Novels", um no not ever!
Just ugh, please spare me.

I think for that bare bones experience that some folks want, many OSR offerings is what should be sought, or hardcore sim engines like Runequest.

I played 1978 rules Runequest in the mid '80's and I found it to be much more intuitive and easier to learn than 1e AD&D, but not quite as fun as oD&D, I'd love to see a "Heartbreaker" based on it!

[2D8HP]

I thought this would fit this thread:

Time passed and the game continued to grow as well as expand in unexpected directions. Level-creep--PC’s at high Levels that were never considered, let alone allowed for, began to proliferate. In the early years PC’s “retired” at Lvl 9 or 10 and a new PC started; this level-creep was eating up the game. We were getting pleas for help from DM’s and players alike.


The tipping point came one day in a letter I had to open *that day that spurred a supplement almost that very *week. (I must have “had the duty” that day; we took turns opening and reading mail to TSR.) In this powerful thought provoker, a bewildered DM wrote the following, more or less (I will paraphrase a bit):*


“Dear TSR, I don’t know where to go with my campaign next. Last session, my players went to Valhalla. They killed Loki, all the Valar, a dozen Valkyries, Thor and Odin and destroyed the Bifrost Bridge. “*


I read this aloud to Gary and Brian; when we picked ourselves up off the floor or regained our senses, as the case may have been, ( I swear to you that this is true) we knew level-creep had gone too far. That week saw the impetus for one more supplement gather enough steam that I set out to edit the last of the RPG-oriented supplements,*Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes. This was the closest to a rule book that we came; we felt that PC’s should not be powerful enough to knock off gods. So we gave them really high amounts of HP: Odin 300, Thor 275. We charted out character levels undreamed of in the original game.

The source of the quote is here.

[Telok]

I have the Gods, Demigods, and Heroes booklet. It's pretty neat once you get to the Hindu, Shinto, and... Old Danish/Finnish? stuff.

[gkathellar]

Mechanically, it's because it's hard to design a system that (a) scales well and (b) doesn't feel the same at every level. If everything scales in perfectly even fashion, advancement is functionally meaningless, which is sort of problematic and removes a lot of the fun from level-based games. By contrast, if values scale asymmetrically, then you will eventually reach a point where the mechanics do not behave in the same ways that they did at lower levels. In theory, you can make up for this by introducing new quantities and dimensions to gameplay, but in practice this is very difficult to do well and leads to complexity creep.

There's also a secondary narrative consideration: Power Is Weird. When the impossible becomes possible, the narratives and stories that make sense change dramatically. Think, for instance, of all the stories that can't take place in the modern day due to instantaneous communication over great distances. Cell phones change everything, including the stories we tell, the narratives we use, and the conventions of genre we appreciate. The staples of speculative fiction often have the potential to transform the world in similar ways, ways that sometimes undermine the tropes and conceits of the very stories they take place in.

In a novel or a comic book or a video game, the author can ask you to suspend disbelief and just assume that no, the ability to cast message hasn't resulted in a total transformation of communication infrastructure the world over. TTRPGs don't really have that privilege, because players are independent actors who want to use the tools that are available to them. And as they level up, those tools become ever more numerous and more narratively significant, until your campaign doesn't have a functioning concept of distance because teleportation spits in its stupid face. Under these circumstances, it becomes difficult or impossible to justify the tropes and narrative conventions that worked fine at earlier levels.

[Yora]

Some more on the topic of high level spells. Which mentions that early on it wad assumed that 9th level would be indeed the maximum level.

[winemaker81]

A lot of good points have been made in this thread, but I don't think anyone hit on this point:

D&D doesn't fail, the players & DM fail.

My first campaign went to 13th level. My co-DM and I discovered we were having a hard time writing-n-running good adventures -- everything was either a cakewalk or an "edge of oblivion" where any major mistake by the party or a bad run of dice would produce a TPK. The group discussed the issue and we agreed that we'd terminate the campaign and start over.

From what I read, this situation is not unusual.

Fast forward 20+ years. My current party is at 12th level and we're not having any such problems.

Why?

I'm a better DM today than I was BITD. More experienced, better perspective, different POV. I have far less time to play, but put more effort into the preparation. High level play can be FAR more complicated due to magic (I run a high magic campaign) so I have to understand and plan out what the monsters will do, with the understanding that no plan survives the initial contact with the enemy.

My players have to prepare as well. They have to know their characters' abilities spells, and magic items. They also must instinctively know how to work together to defeat situations in which they are (on paper) outclassed. The game requires more thought -- mere hack-n-slash won't win the day, although it will often certainly contribute to success.

I focus on entertaining the players, not the PCs. We run a variety of adventure types -- mass combat, mysteries, town, dungeon crawls, politics, other planes. We have situations where spells, magic items, and character abilities will NOT carry the day -- player thought and decisions are the difference between success and TPK.

If this isn't for you? Terminate the campaign and start a new one. This is supposed to be fun -- each group should do that they need to do to keep it fun.

[Lord Torath]

Some more on the topic of high level spells. Which mentions that early on it wad assumed that 9th level would be indeed the maximum level.

Can you fix this link? All I'm getting is Trollsmyth's most recent blog post, which happens to be "Money, Money, Money!

[Yora]

Yeah, my bad. Happens when you juggle multiple links at the same time. Fixed now.

[Darth Ultron]

D&D doesn't fail, the players & DM fail.

My current party is at 12th level and we're not having any such problems.

I focus on entertaining the players, not the PCs. We run a variety of adventure types -- mass combat, mysteries, town, dungeon crawls, politics, other planes. We have situations where spells, magic items, and character abilities will NOT carry the day -- player thought and decisions are the difference between success and TPK.

Except your saying that D&D does not fail, when you don't use the rules. If your not using spells, magic items, and character abilities then your just role playing. And by not using all the crunchy rules, you do seem to be saying they fall apart right?

Role playing is part of D&D, but it's not the part that falls apart anyway. Sure, your not using all the crunchy rules as you don't want to and it's not your play style....but, stop and ask yourself: if you did use the rules, would they work?

[Morty]

A lot of good points have been made in this thread, but I don't think anyone hit on this point:

D&D doesn't fail, the players & DM fail.

My first campaign went to 13th level. My co-DM and I discovered we were having a hard time writing-n-running good adventures -- everything was either a cakewalk or an "edge of oblivion" where any major mistake by the party or a bad run of dice would produce a TPK. The group discussed the issue and we agreed that we'd terminate the campaign and start over.

From what I read, this situation is not unusual.

Fast forward 20+ years. My current party is at 12th level and we're not having any such problems.

Why?

I'm a better DM today than I was BITD. More experienced, better perspective, different POV. I have far less time to play, but put more effort into the preparation. High level play can be FAR more complicated due to magic (I run a high magic campaign) so I have to understand and plan out what the monsters will do, with the understanding that no plan survives the initial contact with the enemy.

My players have to prepare as well. They have to know their characters' abilities spells, and magic items. They also must instinctively know how to work together to defeat situations in which they are (on paper) outclassed. The game requires more thought -- mere hack-n-slash won't win the day, although it will often certainly contribute to success.

I focus on entertaining the players, not the PCs. We run a variety of adventure types -- mass combat, mysteries, town, dungeon crawls, politics, other planes. We have situations where spells, magic items, and character abilities will NOT carry the day -- player thought and decisions are the difference between success and TPK.

If this isn't for you? Terminate the campaign and start a new one. This is supposed to be fun -- each group should do that they need to do to keep it fun.

In other words, high-level D&D campaign require more effort and a lot of trial and error in order to work. I'm not sure how it refutes the thread's point.

[Beneath]

I agree with the previous posters who talked about how characters of teen+ levels are more myth than mortal, and I want to add that D&D doesn't handle mythic feats very well at all.

First the serialized adventuring format doesn't handle being mythic very well (the DBZ problem); mythic feats lose their charm if they aren't few and far between, as opposed to every week (and, as mentioned, the supply of mythic opponents this takes is damaging to verisimilitude, unless they're just sitting out there waiting for you to kill them instead of threatening you)

Second, D&D is a skirmish wargame at heart, with roleplaying elements. It's meant to handle small but decisive skirmishes between forces of soldiers and magical creatures. You can kiiiinda cludge some of, e.g. the Labors of Herakles into that system; the Hydra and Nemean Lion, in particular, and depending on the edition's grappling rules the Hind, but cleaning stables by rerouting a river into them would have to be it's own thing, or in D&D would probably just be handled by the player giving a plan and the GM saying "sure, that sounds like it would work". But even the fights, though, if you fit them into a framework based on initiative rolls and taking turns making attack rolls, they become more of a static die-rolling contest and less of a dynamic mythic battle.

[Duff]

I don't think I agree with the premise that all D&D editions fall apart around level 10.

What is true, at least for 2e and 3.5, is that there is a paradigm shift at higher levels. Higher level parties need different kinds of adventures than lower level parties.
This only becomes a problem if the DM (or the players) don't realize that shift, or are not interested or able to provide the type of adventure suitable for higher level play.

Sadly this seems to be true way to often for the writers of published adventures. You're seeing the same simple dungeon layouts just with tougher enemies passed as an adventure for high level characters.
Thats not how it should be. The discrete encounter model just won't cut it. A good high level adventure should operate on a grander scope. Politics, information gathering and combat-as-war become increasingly important themes as you get into higher levels.

A good high level campaign can be very rewarding for both the players and the DM, because of the increased complexity.

This. Very, Very This!

[gtwucla]

Because we are human and being a god is beyond our apprehension.

[FreddyNoNose]

The problem with that is that wargaming and politics is not really a natural development from dungeon crawling and monster slaying. The mechanical abilities your character developed at the early levels become largely useless and there's no real need to wait for high level to start with these things.
There is some rough consent in my experience that strongholds were added so that players wouldn't throw away the yellow junk they got from a dungeon once they got their XP for it. When you have all the equipment money can buy, getting more money becomes pointless. Which is a real problem in a game that is primarily about finding treasure.

I think it's a bit like the problem often described by Sanderson as an example of flawed novel writing: When you change the concept in the middle, who is wanting to read it? Those who like the first concept will be disappointed when you replace it with something very different. Those who like the second concept probably won't be interested to start reading in the first place.
If you make a game about dungeon crawling, make it dungeon crawling from start to end. If you want to make a game about commanding armies, make it about commanding armies from the start, don't put it behind an entry barrier.
Now there is some space where the two actually work quite well together. Once the characters got famous and known as sworn enemy of a main villain, then it can be pretty cool to let the players take charge of the army of allies they have gathered to confront the villain's forces. But I think that probably works best as an occasional special event, not as something that replaces the regular style of play. And another problem with wargaming is that there can be only one commander. What are the other 3 to 7 party members to do for the rest of the campaign. When Conan was a king, all his stories were about times where he wasn't active in politics or leading but was by himself on an adventure.

OMG. Why do you play these games?

[barna10]

OMG. Why do you play these games?

Lol. I was thinking the same thing.

I must be either really stupid or 100% out-of-touch because I've never experienced many of the issues expressed in this thread. I've enjoyed D&D at 1st level, and 20th+ level in Basic, AD&D, 2ed, and 3rd/3.5 (never played 4th or 5th). I never experienced issues with high level characters in either trying to balance them or with running fun campaigns with them.

Yes, the game changes over time, but it's a gradual shift and one that's organic dependent on the players, the characters they are playing, and the options available in the world.

Yes, the original game seems to have encouraged characters to grow in influence over time, but did not intend for them to ONLY rule a kingdom or run a school etc.

The Companion Set's (BECMI) mass combat rules takes into account a leader (the PC) fighting a single battle and the army getting bonuses or penalties based on this. This mechanic allowed you to have the PC fight a single combatant from the other "army" and have the result of that combat affect the outcome of the entire battle. you could have a knight fight another knight, a mage take out an elemental, a cleric fight a demon, whatever.

There are infinite ways to evolve the game, or you can always start over. NEVER forget, the game is a SYSTEM. There is not one play to play it, nor can you play it WRONG. It HAS to be generic. The onus is on YOU the players and GMs to make it work for YOU! It is not the designer's job to account for every situation, every play style, every group's "comfort zone", every possible world, etc.

[Knaight]

There are infinite ways to evolve the game, or you can always start over. NEVER forget, the game is a SYSTEM. There is not one play to play it, nor can you play it WRONG. It HAS to be generic. The onus is on YOU the players and GMs to make it work for YOU! It is not the designer's job to account for every situation, every play style, every group's "comfort zone", every possible world, etc.

D&D is not a generic system. It's hyper specialized towards some very specific subgenres of fantasy which follow some very specific characters, and the further you get away from that comparatively small niche the more it struggles.

[barna10]

D&D is not a generic system. It's hyper specialized towards some very specific subgenres of fantasy which follow some very specific characters, and the further you get away from that comparatively small niche the more it struggles.

Sorry, not true. Check out Deities & Demi-gods from Ad&d. There are entries for all different types of cultures. Are you going to say a Native American themed game is going to be the same as a European-themed one? Hardly.

Also, the Ad&d DMG had tons of options for tailoring the game to your liking. There's nothing dictating that you pay the game one particular way.

It is what you make it, just like every other RPG.

[Knaight]

It is what you make it, just like every other RPG.

Yes, and just like any other RPG it can be made into specific things much more effectively than into other things. Take the whole level structure, where characters get progressively more powerful across the board with a particular focus in getting better at fighting and possibly better at magic. If you're trying to run a hero's journey type of game where characters grow into becoming major heroes the system has done a whole bunch of your work for you. There's the classes and their implication on setting, particularly the magic classes - if you want a setting where magic exists as discrete spells drawn from either the divine or specialized knowledge, D&D has you covered. There's the focus of the rules towards doing violence, getting treasure, and navigating hostile terrain; from the various experience systems that have shown up to the capabilities that crop up in all classes to things like what gets rules. There's the way the game was deliberately built to cover a huge variety of monsters and the way it wasn't built to cover a huge variety of things out of focus.

It is in short a game hyperspecialized towards explorer-combatants growing in power as they navigate a world full of a variety of fantastic creatures. There's some flexibility here, largely by cutting elements out, but there's also a lot that it just isn't that good at.

Sorry, not true. Check out Deities & Demi-gods from Ad&d. There are entries for all different types of cultures. Are you going to say a Native American themed game is going to be the same as a European-themed one? Hardly.

No. What I will claim is that both of them are still within a narrow niche, and that even going to the native american themed game involves a level of work consistent with adapting a system made for something else and not a truly generic system. Take the cleric class, which has historically worked by having some sort of system where you are associated with the domains of a particular deity, and which thus assumes a fantasy polytheism that resembles a lot of coexisting monotheistic systems. That doesn't transfer well. Take the way various warrior classes were designed around having various amounts of armor (and for that matter the whole AC system being focused heavily on armor to begin with) and apply it to a culture where armor developed really differently and was never emphasized the same way and you'll run into problems. Then note that even within these two different themes you're still fundamentally following an adventuring party most of the time, or else you run into much bigger problems.

[barna10]

Yes, and just like any other RPG it can be made into specific things much more effectively than into other things. Take the whole level structure, where characters get progressively more powerful across the board with a particular focus in getting better at fighting and possibly better at magic. If you're trying to run a hero's journey type of game where characters grow into becoming major heroes the system has done a whole bunch of your work for you. There's the classes and their implication on setting, particularly the magic classes - if you want a setting where magic exists as discrete spells drawn from either the divine or specialized knowledge, D&D has you covered. There's the focus of the rules towards doing violence, getting treasure, and navigating hostile terrain; from the various experience systems that have shown up to the capabilities that crop up in all classes to things like what gets rules. There's the way the game was deliberately built to cover a huge variety of monsters and the way it wasn't built to cover a huge variety of things out of focus.

Yes...it's an adventure game...but you criticized it early as being "..hyper specialized towards some very specific subgenres of fantasy which follow some very specific characters, and the further you get away from that comparatively small niche the more it struggles." Now you are criticizing it for being an RPG about adventuring. I am confused...is it that the adventures only work in "hyper specialized..subgeneres of fantasy" or that it is a game focused on adventuring that you have a problem with? Also, you don't accurately portray all version of D&D. The older editions ABSOLUTELY encouraged sneaking around and NOT fighting! This is the beauty of the 1 GP = 1 XP rule; you could steal the treasure without having to kill ANYTHING and still succeed.

It is in short a game hyperspecialized towards explorer-combatants growing in power as they navigate a world full of a variety of fantastic creatures. There's some flexibility here, largely by cutting elements out, but there's also a lot that it just isn't that good at.

What elements do you need to cut out? What is it not good at? Yes, there are not rules for everything (until you get into newer versions), but it is a product of simpler times when players and DMs didn't need someone else to tell them how to handle EVERY situation.

No. What I will claim is that both of them are still within a narrow niche, and that even going to the native american themed game involves a level of work consistent with adapting a system made for something else and not a truly generic system. Take the cleric class, which has historically worked by having some sort of system where you are associated with the domains of a particular deity, and which thus assumes a fantasy polytheism that resembles a lot of coexisting monotheistic systems. That doesn't transfer well. Take the way various warrior classes were designed around having various amounts of armor (and for that matter the whole AC system being focused heavily on armor to begin with) and apply it to a culture where armor developed really differently and was never emphasized the same way and you'll run into problems. Then note that even within these two different themes you're still fundamentally following an adventuring party most of the time, or else you run into much bigger problems.

What adaptation needs to happen to play a Native American campaign? So what if they don't wear armor? All this means is the warriors don't become walking tanks! Also, it wasn't until 2nd edition with the Priest subclass that the Cleric class started to get "mythos" abilities. Prior to that Clerics could simply follow an ethos like "good" or "chaos" (yes, saying "..the cleric class, which has historically worked by having some sort of system where you are associated with the domains of a particular deity, and which thus assumes a fantasy polytheism that resembles a lot of coexisting monotheistic systems." IS accurate after 2nd edition, but it that implies the history of the game began with 2nd edition.)

All one needs to do is read some old Dragon articles to see how adaptable the system can be. Gygax used to include sci-fi elements, old west themes, and MANY alternate mythologies into his games. The key to this was the game's simplicity which made it easily adaptable. As the game became more complex, this became harder to do. Further evidence can be seen in the games early modules which included many alternate types of stories like detective stories, stealth missions, diplomatic missions, etc.

[Knaight]

Yes...it's an adventure game...but you criticized it early as being "..hyper specialized towards some very specific subgenres of fantasy which follow some very specific characters, and the further you get away from that comparatively small niche the more it struggles." Now you are criticizing it for being an RPG about adventuring. I am confused...is it that the adventures only work in "hyper specialized..subgeneres of fantasy" or that it is a game focused on adventuring that you have a problem with? Also, you don't accurately portray all version of D&D. The older editions ABSOLUTELY encouraged sneaking around and NOT fighting! This is the beauty of the 1 GP = 1 XP rule; you could steal the treasure without having to kill ANYTHING and still succeed.

Adventurers adventuring is hyperspecialized - and I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with pretending that it's more generic than it is, particularly given that there are genuinely generic games out there, but specialization is fine by me - it should just be understood as specialization. Being about adventurers specifically is specialization. Being about characters who dramatically grow in personal power is specialization. Focusing on combat is specialization. Implementing a particular magic system is specialization. As for those older editions that encouraged sneaking around and not fighting, they still had a fighting man class from the beginning, a bunch of battle magic from the beginning, etc. Picking fights wasn't an end in and of itself, and treasure gathering was emphasized more, but it's the same set of core elements.

[barna10]

Adventurers adventuring is hyperspecialized - and I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with pretending that it's more generic than it is, particularly given that there are genuinely generic games out there, but specialization is fine by me - it should just be understood as specialization. Being about adventurers specifically is specialization. Being about characters who dramatically grow in personal power is specialization. Focusing on combat is specialization. Implementing a particular magic system is specialization. As for those older editions that encouraged sneaking around and not fighting, they still had a fighting man class from the beginning, a bunch of battle magic from the beginning, etc. Picking fights wasn't an end in and of itself, and treasure gathering was emphasized more, but it's the same set of core elements.

OK...

And none of this has anything to do with the OP's question of why "all editions of D&D fall apart around 10th level", which they don't.

It's not the system that falls apart after 10th level, it's the players and DMs that expect 11th level adventures to be like 1st level adventures that are the problem. It's really no different than expecting college to be exactly like elementary school and then complaining when it's not and blaming that difference on poor design.

It all comes down to what you want out of the game. If you enjoy dungeon delving, play low level adventures. If you want to be involved in dimension-hopping or king-making, play a high level game.

Yes, the game was originally designed around a certain arc: young adventurer finds glory, comes home and becomes landed gentry, and then becomes a legend. It was never supposed to be an adventure game from levels 1 -> infinity.

This arc is absolutely shown in the spells available at higher levels. Spells like meteor swarm are intended for use against an army, a throw-back to the games war-gaming origins. The idea was that at 17th level+ the types of activities a magic-user might be involved in would be battles between kingdoms, not running through a 10x10 corridor and fighting orcs.

IMO, it's not the game that breaks down after 10th level, its the imagination of the players and DMs.

[CharonsHelper]

It's not the system that falls apart after 10th level, it's the players and DMs that expect 11th level adventures to be like 1st level adventures that are the problem. It's really no different than expecting college to be exactly like elementary school and then complaining when it's not and blaming that difference on poor design.

I'd say that it's both.

The biggest thing to me is that Caster/Martial disparity isn't bad until 7-9ish, and it cranks it up to 11 at about... level 11-13.

There is no reason to bring a martial along at level 13 as opposed to another caster who can just summon melee tanks at need, or even polymorph into one.

[barna10]

I'd say that it's both.

The biggest thing to me is that Caster/Martial disparity isn't bad until 7-9ish, and it cranks it up to 11 at about... level 11-13.

There is no reason to bring a martial along at level 13 as opposed to another caster who can just summon melee tanks at need, or even polymorph into one.

And this I don't understand. We never used to worry about this 20 years ago. If you wanted to play a fighter, you played a fighter and didn't worry about how powerful he was compared to the rest of the group. In fact, it was originally perceived that fighters were TOO powerful...

[CharonsHelper]

And this I don't understand. We never used to worry about this 20 years ago. If you wanted to play a fighter, you played a fighter and didn't worry about how powerful he was compared to the rest of the group. In fact, it was originally perceived that fighters were TOO powerful...

Good for you and your group. I'm glad that it's a non-issue for you.

But that's anecdotal, and the actual math etc. disagrees. It's not hard to make martials pretty irrelevant by the teens if you use much system mastery.

I'm not going to argue that your group can't have fun at higher levels. But you also can't use your anecdotal evidence to tell me that my math is wrong or that everyone else is wrong and it's a non-issue.