E6: The Game Inside D&D

[Ry]

As an aside, I find a lot of the excellent freebies you see online at various publishers' websites fit in the E6 "sweet spot" - it's easy to run a long campaign, I believe, off of only those resources.

 

[Azurecobalt]

Hi Azurecobalt, glad E6 has you thinking for your own campaign!

I think a lot of those feats look very powerful - I can't imagine most of them are a tough decision versus other feats - but that's OK. If you want to have a campaign that emphasizes say, 6 key organizations (Arcane Archers, Blackguards, Loremasters, Shadowdancers) these feats would be a great way to do that. There may be some balance issues and you should probably go over them, but you're likely to be ready to DM the game you want in a very short order.

I agree that those feats are certainly more powerful than "normal" feats, much in the same way that prestige class levels are more powerful than normal class levels. The idea is to simulate the idea of prestige classes in E6, when the very nature of the system prevents them. As always, YMMV, but for those who like prestige feats, it seems like a good alternative. Balance issues I'd have to leave up to the number crunchers, but I'll find out through playtesting.

As an aside, I was thinking a good way to balance humans versus non-human races in terms of balance (humans "only" get a bonus feat, which may not be as valuable when everyone eventually gets a large number of feats) would be to give humans one skill point per feat they earn following sixth level...

 

[Kunimatyu]

Time for the next installment of my E6 Campaign Setting Design Diary:

Character Classes in the World of Mord

To me, part of the fun of E6 is using lots of the splatbook core classes, as the sheer number of feats and the lower-level sweet spot make a lot of them more viable choices. Because of this, I'm not restricting core classes at all - if a player wants to play a Spellthief, they can go nuts!

To emphasize the dark, pulp feel of the setting, I'm focusing on two non-core classes, the warlock and hexblade. Warlocks fit the setting very well, and with the addition of a feat that lets them take additional Lesser Invocations (provided they always have more Least ones), they can gain the flexibility they need to compete with E6 casters.

The Hexblade is a bit trickier, but thankfully, PHB2 and Dragon Magazine have expanded Hexblade options considerably. PHB2 offers an incorporeal companion that gives adjacent foes -2 to their saves, and Dragon offers a range of exciting new curse options. With the addition of a capstone feat that grants Hexblades the Greater Curse ability (normally acquired at 7th), and a substitution level that lets them pick up a Lesser Invocation instead of their first-level spells, the Hexblade is ready for the prime time.

Flavor-wise, I'm going to keep some of the Sorceror system flavor with the Hexblade companion, and make them warriors powered by the spirit of a demon -- the ghostly "companion" becomes the manifestation of it.The more I think about it, the more I want to give each class with the ability to call a familiar the ability to choose a "dark companion".

For those wondering what I'm babbling about here, in the original setting, magic-users gain their powers by calling upon "demons", which are the spirits of dead things: a lost language, a powerful leader, a fallen civilization, etc. Having most magic (with the exception of Atlantean "psience") linked to these demons would do a lot to restore the flavor of the setting. The trick is just finding alternate familiar-equivalent abilities that lend themselves to this sort of thing...

 

[Imp]

For those wondering what I'm babbling about here, in the original setting, magic-users gain their powers by calling upon "demons", which are the spirits of dead things: a lost language, a powerful leader, a fallen civilization, etc. Having most magic (with the exception of Atlantean "psience") linked to these demons would do a lot to restore the flavor of the setting. The trick is just finding alternate familiar-equivalent abilities that lend themselves to this sort of thing...

Binders seem an obvious fit, though I am unsure of their power level in E6. Weakish? I am not sure how to make piles of epic feats work for an E6 binder. OTOH, a) they can pull 4th-level vestiges with Improved Binding, and a couple of those are pretty mean, and b) the Bind Vestige/ Improved Bind Vestige/ Practiced Binder feats seem very hard to resist for an epic E6 character: three feats for a crapload of flexibility. Of course you'd have to not dump Charisma. Hmmm...

 

[Kunimatyu]

Binders seem an obvious fit, though I am unsure of their power level in E6. Weakish? I am not sure how to make piles of epic feats work for an E6 binder. OTOH, a) they can pull 4th-level vestiges with Improved Binding, and a couple of those are pretty mean, and b) the Bind Vestige/ Improved Bind Vestige/ Practiced Binder feats seem very hard to resist for an epic E6 character: three feats for a crapload of flexibility. Of course you'd have to not dump Charisma. Hmmm...

I actually love the Binder idea, I just don't have the time to develop vestiges for all the things I'd need. Also, binders tend to be on the weakish side, so powering them up a bit would be a requirement.

 

[joela]

Adapting high-level adventures to E6

Has anyone given thought or, even better, played a published high-level module in E6? I'm looking to adapt Red Hand of Doom by WoTC and Shades of Gray by Necromancer games for my campaign which is set in Eberron. While both can accommodate lower level PCs (the former starts at 5th level while the latter starts at 1st), both have encounters later in the book designed for 6th+ level PCs (11th and 12th, respectively).

My current ideas to adapt for E6 include 1) eliminate all unnecessary combat and 2) rescale all encounters, especially NPCs and monsters, to E6. For step 2, all major NPC encounters like elite soldiers, etc. are 3rd level while Big Bads are rewritten at 6th level + feats.

Thoughts?

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

I have Red Hand of Doom. Though, I won't get the opportunity to run it for several months.

Since, it's designed to take characters up to 12th level, I think it could be converted for use in E6. The major hurdles would be converting anything 6th level or higher to 6th plus feats. But, I believe it could be done.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

So, I've talked to my group and it looks like I'll be running an E8 game (with additional modifications) using Everstone (BESMd20 based) starting in a couple of weeks.

The question I've got is regarding NPC conversion.

Maybe I've managed to miss it somewhere, but is there a "consistent" or "recommended" method to handle NPC conversions?

The game is going to be taking place in Ptolus, and I'm looking for an easy handle on dealing with the NPCs. My thought was to simply take a look at how much XP the NPC had and subtract out the difference between level 8 and the NPC's level. Whatever is left over would buy feats as normal.

So for example, a 14th level character (91k) gets bumped back to 8th (28k) which leaves 63k worth of extra XP. Divided by 5k, and you wind up with 12.6. So 12 or 13 extra feats depending on which way you feel like swinging.

I could care less about the skills issue of doing a conversion, since I'm doing something different there. Just interested in a decent and/or quick-n-dirty way of dealing with rescaling the overall power of NPCs in a consistent fashion to match with the new setting assumptions.

 

[cr0m]

ry (and anyone else), are there any AP posts anywhere about E6? I'd like to see how things change and what kinds of games people are running with it.

Nice work, btw! Really got me excited about running D&D again!

 

[Ry]

Hi cr0m; AP notes were sprinkled through earlier threads but I don't know of any actual play accounts properly written up. My own game is at 3rd level right now, so we're playing more with the Raising the Stakes mechanics than anything else (also, the game's on hiatus due to unreasonable work hours plus bronchitis on the part of yours truly).

Platypus: Your approach is 100% A-OK. I usually eyeball it along the same lines. If you do any stat writeups, mind sending them my way?