E6: The Game Inside D&D

[ashockney]

Ryan

Congrats on a great idea, and capturing the imagination of ENWorlders.

I'm sure I saw this string of posts a yeara go, but I would NOT have jumped on it b/c my players have historically really enjoyed that high fantasy - fast powered play. But, since the release of 4e, there's been talk about doing something a little more grim and gritty. A stretch from their MMO ways...

Guess what I suggested?

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Speaking of magic items in an E6 game, I was actually thinking of writing up a bunch of magic items specific for E6 using the Artificer's Handbook rules. AH rules have a different magic item mechanic, and it relies on the number of spell slots. So, using AH, you can't actually create a 3rd level wand at 5th level. You have to be at least 7th level, unless you try creating one with a lot fewer charges. Would there be interest in such a thing?

Yup.

A secondary question - is all the E6/E8 rules collated into a single PDF document somewhere?

Sort of. There's the E6 document that's posted at the beginning of the thread.

But there was an awful lot of other discussion stuff that's gone on since then. "Capstone" feats, ideas for prestige classes, some stuff about increasing casters abilities... Ryan was involved with some of it, and a lot of it was just folks going, "I think this would be cool" or "This _has_ to be added to E6, because..."

This is also the 3rd thread (maybe 4th?) that was done regarding E6 as I recall, so there's probably some little bits and pieces in the previous ones that slipped through the cracks.

Myself? I'd say to just go with the pdf at the beginning of the thread. I don't know how many people have actually run an E6/E8 game, but I know that when I ran my game, I didn't need anything other than the pdf. There's probably some good ideas through the different E6 threads, but I've got doubts as to how many of them have actually been tested in the form of actual play.

I'll admit though, I tend to prefer simpler approaches to things, and a lot of what I've seen proposed seemed to be complicating E6/E8 unnecessarily. So I didn't tend to pay it too much attention.

 

[Angellis_ater]

Regarding PDFs: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d-d.html#post3750525 <- *points at first post* - only for E6 though.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Oh, that. Yeah. Sorry, I thought y' might have meant *all* the rules that people have come up with, or the most often referred to bits and bobs, like the incantations and so forth.

There's some good stuff here, for instance (under 'E6 work'.) And, well, in this thread too. But I haven't seen a single PDF with all that kind of stuff in it, anywhere.

Oops, I thought that wiki had incantations. . . um, someplace did. Does. I'll try and track it down again. Otherwise, I'll see if I can upload the documents I have here.

 

[Werebat]

Oh, that. Yeah. Sorry, I thought y' might have meant *all* the rules that people have come up with, or the most often referred to bits and bobs, like the incantations and so forth.

There's some good stuff here, for instance (under 'E6 work'.) And, well, in this thread too. But I haven't seen a single PDF with all that kind of stuff in it, anywhere.

Oops, I thought that wiki had incantations. . . um, someplace did. Does. I'll try and track it down again. Otherwise, I'll see if I can upload the documents I have here.

I think what most people are saying is that you're best off sticking with the .pdf "core" and expanding on it as you feel a need (if you feel a need at all). I use incantations but have only actually written one of them up (involving planar travel, needed for an upcoming jaunt into one of the planes), the others being just invoked as explanations of higher-level magic effects that pop up in game (for example an anti-gravity based trap the PCs ran into the other night).

(Though I'd love to see a list of incantations somewhere)

- Ron ^*^

 

[TheWinslow]

I may be naive, but I really don't see the need to houserule away somebody's build. If a player wants to be the glass cannon, then let him.

A sixth level wizard will have, on average, 30 HP and a spot check of +5, and a ranged attack roll of +7, and perhaps AC 20, with middling to bad saving throws.

In other words, he's frail. Give him an opportunity to and he'll blast you to cinders, but what self-respecting rogue would do that? Not to mention the difficulty of casting spells in a grapple.

Finally, consider that of the classes, Wizards and Sorcerers lose the most in an E6 campaign. Losing all but the lower third of their spells is a pretty big price to pay, so letting them slowly, over the course of months, beef up their metamagic, is a good compromise.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

has there been any work on E6 for 4e?

I heard someone at WotC boarrd say it would be E10 now, is that true?

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

has there been any work on E6 for 4e?

I heard someone at WotC boarrd say it would be E10 now, is that true?

Well, Ryan had this to say...

GSL being what it is (revocable) I can't see myself doing a 4e version of E6.

I might do an OGL version that's a "complete game" - but I'm even more likely to do another rpg whole-cloth. If I do a traditional RPG, I'll put it in the public domain.

Seeing as the dead would be raised by level 8 and there's limited teleport... but the kind of "1 level of a prestige class" benefits would be at level 12. The math is just plain different. Guessing where to start would be a shot in the dark, and I'd have to play a lot of 4e to be able to say how it really works. That's not tremendously likely because I'm playing non-traditional systems these days.

So any "work" is going to be coming from someone else.

Part of what you've got to ask yourself though, is what exactly it is you're trying to get from some sort of E6 for 4th Ed. Ryan had some pretty specific things he wanted to focus on when he made E6 and it resonated with other people. I'm not sure that all the people that are into 4E right now are going to be that into capping the game like E6 does.

Start a thread on it though, and see what shakes out. It could be there's a whole passel of 4E folks out there that are on the same wavelength.

 

[Werebat]

I may be naive, but I really don't see the need to houserule away somebody's build. If a player wants to be the glass cannon, then let him.

A sixth level wizard will have, on average, 30 HP and a spot check of +5, and a ranged attack roll of +7, and perhaps AC 20, with middling to bad saving throws.

In other words, he's frail. Give him an opportunity to and he'll blast you to cinders, but what self-respecting rogue would do that? Not to mention the difficulty of casting spells in a grapple.

Finally, consider that of the classes, Wizards and Sorcerers lose the most in an E6 campaign. Losing all but the lower third of their spells is a pretty big price to pay, so letting them slowly, over the course of months, beef up their metamagic, is a good compromise.

You may be right, and I've realized that my original "break the bank" build had an important flaw -- you can only benefit from precision damage once per spell. This knocks damage down to about 300 points on average, which is still obscene but you have to bear in mind that all of those attacks still need to hit.

It still seems like a dragonslayer but I was looking at dragons with that number of hit points and most of them could know one or two counterspells like scintillating scales and/or ray deflection that would shut this build down before it began.

Most fighters in E6 will rapidly get to the point where they do about 120 damage per round if they nova and everything hits. That's not counting criticals and if they're smart said fighters will be able to boost their crit potential. I dunno. I'm curious about how the game will play at higher power levels when characters can dish out WAY more damage than they can take. My suspicion is that avoiding being hit will become paramount for PCs and monsters alike.

- Ron ^*^

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Most fighters in E6 will rapidly get to the point where they do about 120 damage per round if they nova and everything hits. That's not counting criticals and if they're smart said fighters will be able to boost their crit potential. I dunno. I'm curious about how the game will play at higher power levels when characters can dish out WAY more damage than they can take. My suspicion is that avoiding being hit will become paramount for PCs and monsters alike.

Are you talking about E6 "in general" or the particular version you're running?

I ran an E8 game, and I didn't have anyone doing some crazy 120 damage per round.

I guess there's people out there that like to hyper-optimize things as far as they possibly can, but... I guess I'm just not getting your point.

If the game you play/run focuses on hyper-optimizing and all that, E6/E8 isn't really going to make much of a difference in preventing it or anything like that. It boils down to "you don't level after level 6". It's not some sort of rules fixing.

I read your posts, and you seem to be talking like everybody is going to be experiencing massive balance problems or something. Earlier up thread you mentioned a fighter "with a standard build"... Maybe I missed something here the last 8 years, but I've never seen anyone in real life make that character. I'm not saying that other people _don't_, it's just you seem to be assuming a style of play that I don't see, and I don't think Ryan saw at his table either. So it's not like E6 is going to adress those issues in any way really, since it was never intended to.

It's like we're talking about 2 completely different games here. What is it that I'm missing?