Epic 6 rules
This thread is for nitty-gritty rules and balance issues for E6. Since we can only assume that people have just Core and the SRD, we should balance the system around that. Feel free to bring up issues with other books though.
Monks and Soulknives
EDIT: I realized I made a horrible mistake with the Soulknife TWF in the spreadsheet. It should be much more attractive now
.
If you look at the Martial Damage Excel sheet I made, you'll notice a couple things. First, even with full BAB progressions, the Soulknife and the Monk (with a capstone feat that removes their Flurry penalty) still fall behind on expected melee damage versus the Fighter and Barbarian. Since schticks consist almost entirely of dealing melee damage, they should get full BAB progressions.
TWF Flurry Monks actually come really close to the Fighter's damage output. Rather than punishing the entire class for one build style, I'd just prevent Flurry from being used with TWF. Something should be done to make up for the Monk's lower damage output. My suggestion is to allow them to Flurry when they make a single attack as a standard action or as part of a charge (so they get 2 attacks instead of 1). This would emphasize their mobility, which seems to fit with the flavor of the class. If you have other ideas, go ahead and say them!
By the way, the lower damage output for Soulknives isn't as big a deal because they have really good spike (burst, unsustainable) damage. With some feats, they can easily do 49 damage on one touch attack. It's balanced by the fact that they have to spend a couple of rounds basically doing nothing and drawing AoOs before they can pump out such damage again, but they can still function afterwards.
Two-Handed Fighting vs. Two-Weapon Fighting
By the way, note I didn't take Power Attack into account in the spreadsheet. Doing so would probably benefit Two-Handed Fighting more than Two-Weapon Fighting. IMO, Two-Weapon Fighting should do a bit less damage since it splits the difference on offense/defense with THF and Sword-and-Board if you take the Two-Weapon Defense feat.
LA and Point Buy
In E6, instead of taking up levels, LA imposes a penalty to the point buy. We have:
These penalties are not high enough.
Easy example: take the Pixie, with LA +4. We end up with ability scores of 4 Str, 16 Dex, 8 Con, 14 Int, 12 Wis, 14 Cha. Not bad for a Rogue, Scout (with Rapid Reload), or possibly even Sorceror or Wizard. And then comes the kicker: SR 15+HD, Permanent Greater Invisibility that doesn't break even when you attack, DR 10/cold iron, Fly 60' (Good), some decent spell-like abilities with CL 8, and Dodge and Weapon Focus as bonus feats to boot. This would make an insane Rogue, and clearly a Pixie Rogue even with those stats would be better than a Human Rogue.
LA +3 has the Half-Dragon. We can go with a base of 14/10/10/8/8/8, for an end result of 22/10/12/10/8/10. That happens to be comparable to stats you get with 32 point buy, plus you get a ton of cool abilities to boot. If you get 6 point buy instead of 10, it might be better balanced.
Even LA +2 has problems. Compare a Psion with the Phrenic template and one without. Now, the description says that usually creatures that advance by classes won't have the template, but it provides an LA and it's pretty balanced in normal D&D. So we end up with the Phrenic Psion with 9/12/12/18/10/12 versus a normal Psion with 8/14/14/18/10/10. Not much difference, right? Then throw in the Phrenic Psion's PR 10+HD and Psi-like abilities and it's not much of a contest.
So, I suggest removing the LA +4 option and instead use the following table:
The Bad Psionic Feats, and Extra Slot
There are a couple of really bad psionic feats for E6: Psionic Body and Psionic Talent. Both scale based on the number of feats you have, and in E6 you have lots of feats. Psionic Body gives you 2 HP per Psionic Feat you have. After 20 Psionic Feats (easily reachable), you get an additional 40 HP. For reference, a Fighter with 10 Con gets 37 HP. Psionic Talent gives you 1/2*n*(n+3) power points in total, where n is the number of times you have the feat. So, take it say 15 times, and you get 135 power points on top of what you had before. That's almost enough for 20 overchanneled full-pp powers. Take it 5 more times and you'll get a total of 230 power points. Obviously, this is bad.
I suggest the following change of Psionic Body:
I suggest replacing Psionic Talent with this:
For the casters with only first level spell slots, we have this:
Whoo! That's all I have for now. Anyone else have some thoughts?
This thread is for nitty-gritty rules and balance issues for E6. Since we can only assume that people have just Core and the SRD, we should balance the system around that. Feel free to bring up issues with other books though.
Monks and Soulknives
EDIT: I realized I made a horrible mistake with the Soulknife TWF in the spreadsheet. It should be much more attractive now
.If you look at the Martial Damage Excel sheet I made, you'll notice a couple things. First, even with full BAB progressions, the Soulknife and the Monk (with a capstone feat that removes their Flurry penalty) still fall behind on expected melee damage versus the Fighter and Barbarian. Since schticks consist almost entirely of dealing melee damage, they should get full BAB progressions.
TWF Flurry Monks actually come really close to the Fighter's damage output. Rather than punishing the entire class for one build style, I'd just prevent Flurry from being used with TWF. Something should be done to make up for the Monk's lower damage output. My suggestion is to allow them to Flurry when they make a single attack as a standard action or as part of a charge (so they get 2 attacks instead of 1). This would emphasize their mobility, which seems to fit with the flavor of the class. If you have other ideas, go ahead and say them!
By the way, the lower damage output for Soulknives isn't as big a deal because they have really good spike (burst, unsustainable) damage. With some feats, they can easily do 49 damage on one touch attack. It's balanced by the fact that they have to spend a couple of rounds basically doing nothing and drawing AoOs before they can pump out such damage again, but they can still function afterwards.
Two-Handed Fighting vs. Two-Weapon Fighting
By the way, note I didn't take Power Attack into account in the spreadsheet. Doing so would probably benefit Two-Handed Fighting more than Two-Weapon Fighting. IMO, Two-Weapon Fighting should do a bit less damage since it splits the difference on offense/defense with THF and Sword-and-Board if you take the Two-Weapon Defense feat.
LA and Point Buy
In E6, instead of taking up levels, LA imposes a penalty to the point buy. We have:
Code:
LA Point buy
+0 32
+1 25
+2 18
+3 10
+4 00Easy example: take the Pixie, with LA +4. We end up with ability scores of 4 Str, 16 Dex, 8 Con, 14 Int, 12 Wis, 14 Cha. Not bad for a Rogue, Scout (with Rapid Reload), or possibly even Sorceror or Wizard. And then comes the kicker: SR 15+HD, Permanent Greater Invisibility that doesn't break even when you attack, DR 10/cold iron, Fly 60' (Good), some decent spell-like abilities with CL 8, and Dodge and Weapon Focus as bonus feats to boot. This would make an insane Rogue, and clearly a Pixie Rogue even with those stats would be better than a Human Rogue.
LA +3 has the Half-Dragon. We can go with a base of 14/10/10/8/8/8, for an end result of 22/10/12/10/8/10. That happens to be comparable to stats you get with 32 point buy, plus you get a ton of cool abilities to boot. If you get 6 point buy instead of 10, it might be better balanced.
Even LA +2 has problems. Compare a Psion with the Phrenic template and one without. Now, the description says that usually creatures that advance by classes won't have the template, but it provides an LA and it's pretty balanced in normal D&D. So we end up with the Phrenic Psion with 9/12/12/18/10/12 versus a normal Psion with 8/14/14/18/10/10. Not much difference, right? Then throw in the Phrenic Psion's PR 10+HD and Psi-like abilities and it's not much of a contest.
So, I suggest removing the LA +4 option and instead use the following table:
Code:
LA PB PB*
+0 32 32
+1 25 24
+2 18 16
+3 10 06
*Use the lower PB amount if the total ability score adjustment of the race or template is greater than +4.The Bad Psionic Feats, and Extra Slot
There are a couple of really bad psionic feats for E6: Psionic Body and Psionic Talent. Both scale based on the number of feats you have, and in E6 you have lots of feats. Psionic Body gives you 2 HP per Psionic Feat you have. After 20 Psionic Feats (easily reachable), you get an additional 40 HP. For reference, a Fighter with 10 Con gets 37 HP. Psionic Talent gives you 1/2*n*(n+3) power points in total, where n is the number of times you have the feat. So, take it say 15 times, and you get 135 power points on top of what you had before. That's almost enough for 20 overchanneled full-pp powers. Take it 5 more times and you'll get a total of 230 power points. Obviously, this is bad.
I suggest the following change of Psionic Body:
I suggest replacing Psionic Talent with this:
It's actually much simpler than it looks. For power points, this works out to be 1 additional power point per manifester level. For spell slots, if you look at the chart, you'll notice you gain an additional spell slot of level X for every 8 points in the ability score. So, this can work out in one of two ways. Either you get a 1st level spell slot every other time and you get a 2nd and 3rd level slot every other time, or you get a 1st and 2nd level spell slot every other time and you get a 3rd level spell slot every other time.
For the casters with only first level spell slots, we have this:
Whoo! That's all I have for now. Anyone else have some thoughts?
Last edited:
