E6: The Game Inside D&D

Theo R Cwithin · May 10, 2010

You could just lower the entry requirements on the PrCs so a 5th or 6th level character has a shot at meeting the prereqs. Frex, lower spellcasting requirements to 3rd level spells, character level requirements to CL 3rd or 4th, BAB requirements to +4, and so forth.

Some people have even talked about doing away with the prereqs altogether, effectively making the PrCs into base classes (where it makes sense to do so). I imagine you'd have to be careful with that, but, at least for the SRD PrCs, I understand that most of them don't have much in the way of balance issues.

There have also been at least a few attempts to make "feat chains" that grant access to the first 4 or five PrC class features, usually with the requirement that the character level be 6th.

I can't of the the links, though. If I can find my notes, I'll repost what I yoinked from those threads.

Antariuk · May 10, 2010

the_orc_within said:
You could just lower the entry requirements on the PrCs so a 5th or 6th level character has a shot at meeting the prereqs. Frex, lower spellcasting requirements to 3rd level spells, character level requirements to CL 3rd or 4th, BAB requirements to +4, and so forth.

Yeah, that was my idea. I thought of boiling it down to two levels per PrC. For me, the question is what abilities to offer within these two levels, because many PrC's develope their distinctive features later in the level progression.

the_orc_within said:
Some people have even talked about doing away with the prereqs altogether, effectively making the PrCs into base classes (where it makes sense to do so). I imagine you'd have to be careful with that, but, at least for the SRD PrCs, I understand that most of them don't have much in the way of balance issues.

I had similar thoughts, especially for the Shadow Dancer (one to-be-player was quite interested in playing a shadowdancing rogue). I mean, you can easily mix some of the features with the Rogue class and there you go with you custom class.

the_orc_within said:
There have also been at least a few attempts to make "feat chains" that grant access to the first 4 or five PrC class features, usually with the requirement that the character level be 6th.

I read about that, but its especially this feat-only solution some of the players seemed not looking forward to. Maybe its all different once we are actually in the situation for them to proceed in levels, and god knows what will happen within the adventurepath itself

the_orc_within said:
I can't of the the links, though. If I can find my notes, I'll repost what I yoinked from those threads.

That would be great.

slwoyach · May 11, 2010

I'm experimenting with an E6 variant that addresses that problem. Characters can advance beyond 6th level if they choose (following the same experience chart) but class abilities do not stack. So they can never get better than a +6 BAB, +5 save, 6 hit dice, +3d6 sneak attack, etc. Every character can have only one class beyond level 4 and none beyond level 6. Or they can simply take the feat for every 5,000 exp. So if they qualify for a prestige class at level 6 they could advance in that class up to level 4. If they qualify by level 4 they can take up to 6 levels of a prestige class.

pawsplay · May 12, 2010

Antariuk said:
Hello,

I am planning for an upcoming E6 game and some of my players-to-be told me they'd like to take a level or two of prestige classes, even within the few class levels you get within E6. We discussed this a bit, I showed them some feats to gain additional class powers, but in the end I realized they didn't like it that much. The problems seemed not to be the feats per se but the change in the progress mechanic to become somewhat bland (just feats, nothing more).

Now I started to dig through all the former E6 threads here on ENWorld to see if someone already boiled prestige classes down to 1-3 class levels, but far from being finished I decided to just ask you people here first. Something like this already been done?

What about a prestige class to base class conversion?

Storm Raven · May 17, 2010

I've been thinking about using a variant of this idea that involves dividing the amount of experience awarded by the level of the character in question. (Alternatively, one could mulitply the amount of experience needed to advance by the level of the character). This would allow characters to progess fairly rapidly beyond the neophyte stage, but slow them down considerably as they advance into the "meaty" level range of 4th-8th or so. It allows for continuous possible growth (and thus, for example, for the very rare powerful NPC), but slows things down to keep characters in the "sweet spot" a lot longer.

Antariuk · May 26, 2010

So eventually I came up with a solution involving both sides: I boiled the PrCs down to one single level (available at 6th character level) with features to be expanded by feats.

Funny thing is, this made me being interested in PrCs again. By and large I tend to ignore them and make my character concepts with normal classes and feats, but this - boiling them down to a single level with one or two defining abilities - seems cool. But before anyone of my gamers will reach the level to take a PrC there are multiple sessions of gameplay to do and god knows what will happen.

Votan · May 26, 2010

Antariuk said:
So eventually I came up with a solution involving both sides: I boiled the PrCs down to one single level (available at 6th character level) with features to be expanded by feats.

Funny thing is, this made me being interested in PrCs again. By and large I tend to ignore them and make my character concepts with normal classes and feats, but this - boiling them down to a single level with one or two defining abilities - seems cool. But before anyone of my gamers will reach the level to take a PrC there are multiple sessions of gameplay to do and god knows what will happen.

One nice aspect of this approach is that all players will tend to have a single level of a prestige class which will put them back into the "adding flavor and uniqueness" range in a way that an admixture of prestige classes really does not.

Philosopher · May 26, 2010

Here's another suggestion for prestige classes - why not convert some of their class abilities into feats? With the right prerequisites, you can emulate PrCs fairly well.

Antariuk · May 26, 2010

Votan said:
One nice aspect of this approach is that all players will tend to have a single level of a prestige class which will put them back into the "adding flavor and uniqueness" range in a way that an admixture of prestige classes really does not.

I noticed this too when I began writing PrC abilities into feats. Not that uniqueness should be a problem though, I'm offering everyone to use basically every d20 material ever put to to paper or PDF (with my approval), so there are plenty of classes and feats to select from, but the same time I can see why this is too much for some people and why they like to stick with the core materials.

Philosopher said:
Here's another suggestion for prestige classes - why not convert some of their class abilities into feats? With the right prerequisites, you can emulate PrCs fairly well.

Well, to quote myself:

Antariuk said:
Hello,

I am planning for an upcoming E6 game and some of my players-to-be told me they'd like to take a level or two of prestige classes, even within the few class levels you get within E6. We discussed this a bit, I showed them some feats to gain additional class powers, but in the end I realized they didn't like it that much. The problems seemed not to be the feats per se but the change in the progress mechanic to become somewhat bland (just feats, nothing more).

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