Like a twister carving its way through a Midwestern cornfield, Nuke(m)Con has come and gone. My gaming group held its annual (well, almost annual) home-grown convention over the weekend. In a break from previous years, which typically saw a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and board games, this year's Nuke(m)Con had a western theme.

Rather than just complain about how difficult high level combat is in D&D 3.5, my gaming group's decided to do something about it. We've created a playtest group who's willing to put in the extra effort it takes to play a high level game ... and to figure out what, if anything, we can do to make the process work better.

Our first crack at this was the 15th-level one-shot "The Devil-Haunted World".

High-level play within D&D 3rd Edition is hard. Whether you’re playing 3.0 or 3.5, the end result is the same: thousands of feats, hundreds of prestige classes and gods-only-know how many spells give rise to complicated game mechanics that slow play to a crawl.  Iterative attacks, in which high-level martial classes like the fighter or ranger get four or five attacks every round add to the complexity as people calculate to hits and damage … and then have to do it all over again when they remember to factor in some party-buffing spell the cleric cast last round.

But is it unplayable? Or has everyone simply assumed it is?