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Balancing E6
- Thread starter Zelc
- Start date
or, you could just go with the idea that not everything needs to be about combat. (and not everyone needs to do the same damage...melee class or not).
granted, it isnt e6, but i joined a game last week and we won against 4 drow monks, 4 regular drow and a priestess. only happened because of good tactics. for example, i'm a monk/fighter who uses a basterd sword. couldnt hit the priestess for beans with the sword (power attack prone...character flaw). he got tired of it, so used stunning fist...which incidently happened to make her drop her sword, and set up the rogue for a sneak attack. and there were several rounds where the only thing keeping me alive was the fact that my ac all counts as touch (many ranged touch attack spells).
ok. that wasnt meant to ne me patting myself on the back. but rather to point out that the non damage stuff DOES in fact count for quite a bit.
which by extension means it is ok for twf to do the most damage.
Cutty Sark
First Post
I was thinking that I might allow PCs to add 1 point to an ability score at 16, 22, 120 and 190 thousand experience, just like they would if they continued leveling as normal. Would this cause any balance problems that I'm not foreseeing? Are there reasons other than balance not to do it?
I'm a little bit late to the E6 party, so if something like this was discussed in an earlier thread that I haven't seen, let me know.
I'm a little bit late to the E6 party, so if something like this was discussed in an earlier thread that I haven't seen, let me know.
Creamsteak
Explorer
I, personally, don't think you'll have any problems with that.
Eh, I think you might as well leave the TWF-THF imbalance as it is, since the difference isn't huge. If you want, I guess you could try reducing the main hand TWF penalty to -1. The bigger worry is the inter-class imbalance.
It's THF that's doing more damage, and I think TWF and THF are equal in utility?gamellron said:
Kalisman77
First Post
Hello, let me just say I love E6.
I had come to the decision to end my last campaign as my players started breaking into the 11th level mark. I became frustrated with what felt like a magical arms race. At any rate I determined that my next game would stay at the lower levels that I enjoyed most. I had begun working on something similar to E6... I was delighted to find that someone had already done the work for me. Thank you all!!
OK. Enough gushing. Onto the reason for posting in this forum.
I notice that humans seem like a sub-optimal choice in E6. The racial advantage of humans (an extra feat and additional skill points) seems less than special in a system where everyone gets lots of extra feats.
In D&D it has always been assumed that humans are the dominant race and the rules have always supported this in some way. In early editions humans could achieve higher levels in a single class than any other class. In 3.0 and 3.5 they were given extra skills and an extra feat. The assumption being that extra versatility gave humans an edge.
I'd like to post some possibilities for ways to deal with the loss of a racial advantage for humans. Note: I am still a week or two away from actually running an E6 game. So feedback from those with actual experience would be appreciated.
1) Run a humans only campaign. No adjustment needed.
2) Allow humans more points for the starting ability point buy. (I think 4 sounds acceptible)
3) Allow humans to gain exp at a slightly accelerated rate. Perhaps 5%. This is closest to
to Core. Based on the following assumptions. There is a feat that gives 5 skill points.
Feats cost 5000 exp thus in E6 a skill point is worth roughly 1000 exp. Every 5 feats in
E6 is considered to be approximately 1 level in Core. In core a human gets 1 additional
skill point each level. If we divide 1000exp (a skill point) by 25000exp (5 feats/1lvl) we
get .04 or 4%
4) Allow humans (and only humans) to use the Gestalt rules or some variant thereof.
Any thoughts?
I had come to the decision to end my last campaign as my players started breaking into the 11th level mark. I became frustrated with what felt like a magical arms race. At any rate I determined that my next game would stay at the lower levels that I enjoyed most. I had begun working on something similar to E6... I was delighted to find that someone had already done the work for me. Thank you all!!
OK. Enough gushing. Onto the reason for posting in this forum.
I notice that humans seem like a sub-optimal choice in E6. The racial advantage of humans (an extra feat and additional skill points) seems less than special in a system where everyone gets lots of extra feats.
In D&D it has always been assumed that humans are the dominant race and the rules have always supported this in some way. In early editions humans could achieve higher levels in a single class than any other class. In 3.0 and 3.5 they were given extra skills and an extra feat. The assumption being that extra versatility gave humans an edge.
I'd like to post some possibilities for ways to deal with the loss of a racial advantage for humans. Note: I am still a week or two away from actually running an E6 game. So feedback from those with actual experience would be appreciated.
1) Run a humans only campaign. No adjustment needed.
2) Allow humans more points for the starting ability point buy. (I think 4 sounds acceptible)
3) Allow humans to gain exp at a slightly accelerated rate. Perhaps 5%. This is closest to
to Core. Based on the following assumptions. There is a feat that gives 5 skill points.
Feats cost 5000 exp thus in E6 a skill point is worth roughly 1000 exp. Every 5 feats in
E6 is considered to be approximately 1 level in Core. In core a human gets 1 additional
skill point each level. If we divide 1000exp (a skill point) by 25000exp (5 feats/1lvl) we
get .04 or 4%
4) Allow humans (and only humans) to use the Gestalt rules or some variant thereof.
Any thoughts?
Scurvy_Platypus
Explorer
Kalisman77 said:
Honestly?
I don't think it's really a problem. If you're a human, you're always going to be a bit ahead of the non-humans, because everyone is still getting feats and skill points at the same rate.
Now, if you just dislike all the non-human races, that's a different story. Plenty of people over the years have been into "human" only games, and it's still a popular enough choice now.
Try just running the game first, and then see if it's a problem for you later. Right now I think you're just complicating things unnecessarily, in an attempt to maintain "balance".
Kalisman77
First Post
Honestly.
I don't hate non-humans at all. In fact some of my best friends might qualify as non-human.
That said I do know my current players and I would like to encourage at least some of them to be human. I've been playing D&D and other RPG's since 1977. It's always been my experience that most players will almost always try to make the decisions that get the most bang for the buck. Maybe not to the extent of the Character Optimizers over on the WOTC forums, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
In 3.5 humans are attractive to some people because that extra feat and those few extra skill points are a big advantage in a character build. They allow entry into certain prestige classes earlier (sometimes 3 to 6 levels earlier), and there are some builds that are not possible at all unless you are human.
In E6 that's just not true. I believe Kunimatyu said something to the same effect over on the campaign thread. At any rate I merely was offering some of the ideas I had considered for my own campain. After all I thought balancing E6 was what this topic was for.
I don't hate non-humans at all. In fact some of my best friends might qualify as non-human.
That said I do know my current players and I would like to encourage at least some of them to be human. I've been playing D&D and other RPG's since 1977. It's always been my experience that most players will almost always try to make the decisions that get the most bang for the buck. Maybe not to the extent of the Character Optimizers over on the WOTC forums, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
In 3.5 humans are attractive to some people because that extra feat and those few extra skill points are a big advantage in a character build. They allow entry into certain prestige classes earlier (sometimes 3 to 6 levels earlier), and there are some builds that are not possible at all unless you are human.
In E6 that's just not true. I believe Kunimatyu said something to the same effect over on the campaign thread. At any rate I merely was offering some of the ideas I had considered for my own campain. After all I thought balancing E6 was what this topic was for.
Gloombunny
First Post
Being one feat ahead is still an advantage for a while, at least. Maybe after a fair amount of XP, when everyone's picked up all the really top-notch feats, it'll become less attractive. Perhaps give humans an attribute boost later on, rather than at creation?
Kalisman77
First Post
Gloombunny said:
That is an option. For my personal game I'll still probably end up giving a small experience bonus to humans.
Another option that would be interesting using E6 mechanics might be to give humans a bonus point of conviction. But as I don't have any field experience with the conviction rules I don't know if this would be "balanced".
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