D&D Is About To Get A Lot Harder For High-Level Parties

screenrant.com:

Difficulty balance in is a delicate art, but based on some guidelines in the 2024, it's about to change dramatically for high-level parties. High-level play is a side of the game that plenty of long-term players haven't even experienced, as it's not uncommon for campaigns to end or fall apart before the characters reach the full potential that the system allows. In campaigns that do reach that stage, high levels bestow god-like powers on the party, leaning heavily into the heroic fantasy concept that defines the ruleset.

Getting that kind of boost as time goes on can feel rewarding, and some parties enjoy starting to steamroll enemies, with the diminishing threat of death coming as a potential relief after investing in characters for months or years. At times, though, 5e can feel like two completely different games at low and high levels, with DMs often having to re-learn balance even after finding a sweet spot for their players. The 2024 already shifted the dynamic of progression in some regards, and the 2024 is now taking a big leap of its own.

The guiding tool for combat balance in 5e is an XP budget table, which offers a guideline for how much enemy XP should be in play per character of each level in the party. At low levels, the table in the 2024 looks similar to the 2014 implementation. The new table cuts the previous Easy option and changes Medium, Hard, and Deadly to Low, Moderate, and High, but all the numbers under those categories are identical for the first five levels.

Readying a high-level Dungeons & Dragons game has its challenges, but a prepared Dungeon Master can work to make epic play enjoyable and balanced.

After level five, however, things start to veer off the original course. As levels progress, the difference in the new XP thresholds steadily increases. At level 10, the current High threshold is 300 XP above the old Deadly standard, a gap that grows to 1,400 by level 15. When characters reach level 20, dungeon masters are now guided to allot