FormCritic wrote:
"Breakdown":  When the power level of the player-characters rises above the logic level of any sort of realistic campaign.

Breakdown happens when the party is no longer afraid of just about anything in the book, and they must be confronted with increasingly elaborate and over-powered monsters in large numbers to even feel challenged.

How many fire giants can there be in this part of the world?  A campaign based upon a recognizable, believable medieval setting has limits on how many perils can live in...say...Norfolk and Suffolk.

"Orcus?  Oh, yeah.  We killed him.  I've got his wand."

"Ancient huge red dragon?  Yawn."

Naturally, this can be heavily influenced by factors in the DM's control, but it does occur even in campaigns with low character statistics and sharp limitations on magic.

Unearthed Arcana lowered the breakdown level in AD&D to 7th. That is the level where fighters have double weapon specialization and two swings per round.  (It was already bad enough when fighter types with weapon specialization got multiple swings at first level.)  The damage delivered alters the logical assumptions of game balance.  Monsters must get more powerful to make up for this imbalance, forcing thin-skins (magic users, thieves, etc) to face opponents of overwhelming lethality.  

Unearthed Arcana also added spells that made magic-users too powerful...with results that wrecked campaign logic.

You stated it yourself...you used to run characters to about 9th level and then start over.

The modules G1-3 and D1-3 were presented for characters of 7th-9th levels, with Q1 intended as a graduation exercise.  After killing all the giants in the region, up-ending the drow and slaying Lolth, what would be left for the party to accomplish?  Nothing.  Start over.

When WOTC was first presenting 4th Edition, they talked about extending the "sweet spot" in D&D all the way up to 20th level.  I have no idea how they managed to accomplish this.  I suspect they didn't.

"Sweet spot":  The set of player-character levels in which the party experiences the best peril to fun ratio.  In AD&D it was 4th-7th.  

At PaizoCon, all three of the events I played in called for PC's of 6th or 7th level.  There was a reason for that.  Experienced DM's know where the sweet spot is.

JohnGaunt wrote:Dragonsfoot, PurpleWorm, or one of any number of D&D sites would be a better place for this thread ....

Keith the Thief wrote:It seemed like a topic collectors would be interested in.

red_bus wrote:
The Acaeum has always been chary of discussion around playing D&D in depth - as this is mainly a site all about collecting, e.g. what really puts coal in our boilers are discussions around print runs, text changes between editions, rusty staples, the relative rarity of X on ebay, or the worth of Y as an interesting booklet, etc...  But many people here also regularly DM and/or play and after all these are games. I see no reason why we can't have some discussion without overlapping too much with Dragonsfoot... and this is a perennial AD&D topic.

red_bus wrote:The Acaeum has always been chary of discussion around playing D&D in depth - as this is mainly a site all about collecting, e.g. what really puts coal in our boilers are discussions around print runs, text changes between editions, rusty staples, the relative rarity of X on ebay, or the worth of Y as an interesting booklet, etc...  But many people here also regularly DM and/or play and after all these are games. I see no reason why we can't have some discussion without overlapping too much with Dragonsfoot... and this is a perennial AD&D topic.

ashmire13 wrote:
http://knights-n-knaves.com/  is quite good too for advice and chat. Pretty quiet too, which I prefer. DF and other sites can have many threads updating daily, a bit like RPGGeek etc, and I just can't keep up!  :oops:  :lol:

JohnGaunt wrote: If a game breaks at higher levels, then I blame the DM.

ashmire13 wrote:
Agree, but maybe the odd topic doesn't hurt, eh?    

ashmire13 wrote:'How big should my half drow-ogre's todger be'