What's your favorite level to play in Dungeons & Dragons?
Personally, in terms of long campaigns, I've never gotten higher than level 13 (finishing Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus in an Adventurer's League setting, though run by a personal friend (who introduced me to AL)). I have played one one-shot as a level 18 Artificer (which was as cool as I'd hoped - Armorer with an AC of 25. For some reason I get really excited about being nearly impossible to hit).
As a DM, outside of one-shots (which have included two at level 18) the two major campaigns I've run have had players get to level 9 in the original and then level 12 in my current one (the latter using Milestone leveling, which has been faster, though I think if I were better at encounter design, and perhaps had the Xanathar encounter building system available earlier, I'd have gotten them up faster in the old campaign.)
I think that tier 2 might be the best-polished level range in 5th edition.
Now, naturally, this is super subjective. Some people like the simplicity and high stakes of tier 1 (having no resurrection magic and few enough hit points that people can die from massive damage relatively easily) and I certainly feel a rush of power on a character that's at tier 3 or 4.
But to my mind, Tier 2 is when the game feels the most like what you want D&D to feel like, from both a DM's and a player's perspective. And I think it's telling that many of the published adventures - especially its most popular ones - tend to focus mostly on tier 2. Curse of Strahd only goes up to level 10, and Tomb of Annihilation just barely peaks into tier 3 in its last level.
Let's start, actually, from a DM's perspective. I'll be honest: I find running level 1 and 2 one-shots to be maybe the most stressful as a DM. The players have so few options and so few hit points, that a single crit could permanently kill a player character if the dice happen to roll a certain way. This also severely limits your options in terms of what kind of monsters you can use - you pretty much have to go with super low-CR monsters that are all somewhat indistinguishable - a single melee attack that does like 1d6+1 or +2 damage. If a player character dies in combat at these levels, it's not really because of any failed strategy, and it's not even likely to be because of a string of bad luck - things are precarious.
Going into tier 3, though, you start to run into a different problem: pretty soon, it's really hard to get your players to feel like they're in any real danger. The rate at which they can take down a monster with hundred of hit points becomes blindingly fast. You basically need to build encounters where the monsters have a major tactical advantage in order to pose a serious threat. This gets even crazier at tier 4, but the point stands.
From a player perspective, I'll confess that I'm always happy to feel more powerful. While I don't think a DM should consider their role to be the players' "opponent," (that'd be a big conflict of interest given that they're also the game's referee) the very fights where a DM feels like they perhaps didn't provide a difficult enough challenge are ones that, as a player, I might be really happy with for tactically outmaneuvering the monsters and taking them down precisely and efficiently.
So I'm not going to really get into tiers 3 and 4 being any worse for a player (I freaking love getting three attacks as a fighter, and I loved getting my third spell slot and third eldritch blast when my Warlock hit 11). But on the other side of things, the jump from level 4 to level 5 feels truly transformative. It might be cliche, but getting Fireball as a Wizard or Sorcerer suddenly makes you feel like you're doing the kinds of massive things you're supposed to as that class. And getting a second attack on any martial class/subclass (or a second Eldritch Blast) makes every turn feel significantly more substantial - there's nothing more frustrating than finally getting to your turn and then just missing on your single attack, and while it's also frustrating to miss twice, I think that somehow doesn't feel as bad, because it's a string of bad luck rather than a single instant of BS.
Tier 2 feels like a level in which resources are limited enough to make each expenditure feel like a major choice, but you also have enough health and spell slots that you can afford to go hard in a big fight without feeling necessarily like you're going to be running on empty for the rest of the day.
Naturally, this is all subjective, and I could imagine that some old-school experienced players might love the insane complexity of tier 4. Tier 3 is also fun because it's where people start to go beyond just "powerful adventurers" and into real superhero mode. And to be clear, I have fun with the game at any level.
But there is something special about tier 2.
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