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I think 1-20 for normal leveling, after that epic levels are a beast of their own.

I find a lot of the meet and greet happens in the 1-10 levels. Meeting kings, traveling places, visiting towns. These are the Necromancer threatening a town style of campaigns. Once the players get past this part they normally reach level 10 or so.
Then comes the second part of overarching plots and arch-villans, this is the 10-20. These are things that use all of, or a large number of, the people and places that the players met in the first 10 levels. Here you get Dragons threatening kingdoms level of campaigns.

Past level 20 you get really crazy adventures. I mean Arch-Devil Lord threatening world level of campaigns. These are fun, but not all people want to play them. That is why I stop at 20.

The game should have an unlimited number of levels. Hitpoints should become single point gains after level 10 and there should only be minimal level based increases in power.

The level of the character shouldn't equate to ever increasing character strength, rather a smooth transition from inexperienced to stronger and better equipped to deal with problems.

I believe that gaining levels should be a result of dedication and honest work, the end to a means not the goal.


When I started playing D&D each class had a seperate chart for experience. We had characters with eight or nine levels and others with four or five playing together. I often played three class characters which meant that I was often several levels behind the other players but it didn't matter because that 4/4/5 level character had as much power as the ninth level fighter. That same elf would never reach the same level as the humans did because the rules wouldn't allow it. 

The fighter stopped rolling for hit points at level nine and would only get three a level from then on but he didn't really need any more since the monsters in the game didn't do hundreds of points in damage. They only had a finite number of hit dice and seldom had over150 hit points of their own.

Things stabilized at tenth level but you could gain levels for ever. Only wizards and clerics really got much of anything past elenth level and that was usually a new spell level and another spell slot or two.

I had no problems writing dungeons or over powered characters because I had control of everything the players got in the game. Wizards didn't choose their spells they had to find them as treasure or research them. Clerics had to follow their deities tenents to the letter or risk not getting their spells every day.

When I started running 3e games things stopped working as smoothly as they had before. The lure of ever increasing powers meant that players were more focused on their next level than playing the game. Monty haul was a derisive term used to describe overly generous treasures in the game, but suddenly the rules told me that I had to throw thousands of pieces of gold and ever increasing piles of magic at each player every time they gained a level.

I had to counter every advancement the players made with harder enemies while at the same time having to play through longer and longer fights that yielded little in the way of campaign advancement, treasure, or experience.

I think that the idea that a player should become increasingly more powerful each time they gain a level is the wrong approach. Instead levels should feel like small triumphs in themselves. Nothing special but a little increase in durability a slight decrease in the difficulty of hitting a certain armor class, a slight increase in a thief's chances to succeed a roll to hide or move silently or in the damage he can deal with a sneak attack, or the ability to cast that cool spell your wizard found on that scroll three levels before.

As I see it a character should have everything it is ever going to get the moment he makes up his character. The only thing he should gain at level up is a modest increase in the power he already has. I know this view is going to be unpopular, but for me, it would make my job as a DM that much easier. It would also help bring the fun back into my games for me and the people I play with.