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As a fan of high-level play across the editions, I've never agreed fully with the idea that the game breaks down. I think, however, there's some validity to it, but only if you look at it a certain way. What people are recognizing is that, at a certain level, play changes.

I do not agree in the least. The fact that the game changes when you reach a certain level is a given. You are not fighting the same monster, your relationship with the world is different, you have a whole lot of new tricks up your sleeve... That's true. But when people talk about the game breaking they don't mean this. At least, I don't.

High level play breaks in earlier editions because some character classes - the magic users - become pretty much strictly superior to non-caster classes, because power creep allows characters to become significantly stronger than the kind of threats that the game supposes appropriate, because the math of the system is not geared towards higher levels and breaks down, as in, it doesn't work as intended. I won't talk about OD&D and AD&D as I have no experience with them, but this is the problem with 3e and 4e higher levels - well, 3e mainly, 4e has somewhat of a problem but it is manageable.

Acknowledge the fact that higher levels in 3e are screwed up because the game balance goes straight out of the window. A high level melee character can reach peaks of thousands of damages with a full attack, while appropriate challenges normally have at best 200 hps. And that same high level melee character is still terribly useless compared to a full caster, because there are spells and abilities that make those thousands of damages irrelevant. I've seen it happen, a lot, and I refuse to think that's how it was supposed to be.
In 4e some of the stinky cheesy striker builds can kill level-appropriate encounters in a couple turns. Last I checked the high-level striker benchmark was 300 DPR. A 30th level average monster has 8*30+Con =~ 260 hps. That's screwed up.

The high level games breaks apart not because of the options that are available to characters, but because the inherent math and balancing of the system is completely disregarded in favor of "cool" abilities. 

Feb 20, 2012 -- 12:34AM, Armisael wrote:

Feb 20, 2012 -- 12:24AM, TheMormegil wrote:

Last I checked the high-level striker benchmark was 300 DPR. A 30th level average monster has 8*30+Con =~ 260 hps. That's screwed up.

The high level games breaks apart not because of the options that are available to characters, but because the inherent math and balancing of the system is completely disregarded in favor of "cool" abilities. 

You checked the wrong forum, because the benchmark is 65 damage a round. 130 for ultra optimal build.

Thanks, but that doesn't change the main point (which is, when we talk about the game breaking down we talk about the game breaking down. Not merely changing. Breking down.).