E6 - how does it change the feel of the game

[Yora]

It really is a mechanical solution when you know you would reach 12th, 18th, or 25th level but still want to have the limits of mid-level regarding spells, equipment, and monsters.
Otherwise it's usually sufficient just to say "there are no known individuals of 8th level or higher in this world".

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I haven't tried E6 but I'm interested in it. I very much like how the feel it seems to evoke fits a lot better with the fantasy books I like than D&D. If I were to try it, I would probably do some re-writing though. People like leveling, so I'd try to spread the power progression of E6 over 12 levels. I'd also want to try to add some additional options at higher level, just ones that don't add to power. I'd also definitely have the PC & NPC cap the same.

 

[Gilladian]

I've debated the idea of "spreading out" levels so as to give PCs tidbits of advancement in between; maybe allowing a feat at each half-level point, since extra feats becomes the goal anyway.

But I've always let my PCs advance very slowly, in any case, and my players aren't screaming, yet, so maybe I don't need to.

I'm thinking that a CR7 monster (like a hill giant) would be a pretty fair fight for my PCs right now, at 4th and 5th level. The 102 HP wouldn't really bother them, although the 20 AC would make hitting hard. The bigger deal would be the +16 to hit; that kind of damage inflicted every single round would put a dent in them, pretty fast.

Although they did take out a megaraptor in three rounds, a level earlier; the second one would have been real trouble, if it hadn't fled when they took its mate out.

My plan, in running a 20 level dungeon (Dragon's Delve at dungeon-a-day.com) is not to start truly seriously modifying the dungeon until they hit level 8 and Chordille Keep (which involves a LOT of ghosts and undead) and then to keep modifying from there. It'll be interesting to see if I can convert levels 12-20 in anything like a coherent fashion, or if I'll just have to take the maps and rough concepts, and totally rebuild them.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm still kinda in shock, honestly, at the speed of advancement in standard d20. When we played Age of Worms all the way through, we were at, what, 22nd level after a two years of somewhat sporadic play? If we'd had four hour sessions every week, it wouldn't have taken much longer than six months. Maybe even less.

To me, that still seems crazy. I can't imagine players needing advancement that frequently to keep their interest. Heck, you barely have time to figure out all the goodies you got from your last advancement when you're already having to do it all over again.

I don't really consider myself very aligned with the OSR philosophically, in most respects, but in that one, I think they got it perfectly right. Speed of advancement in 1e and B/X seemed much more reasonable to me. It's almost like you need to divide XP awards by a factor of 4 or 5 in 3e to keep a pace that to me seems reasonable.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm still kinda in shock, honestly, at the speed of advancement in standard d20.

I guess that's a property of XP rules I never used, but when I read them, I found the implied pace unbearably slow. 13.3 challenging encounters to gain a level? At my pace, that could take a year! (Both in-game and in RL). Then again, I don't consider one character against four characters of equal level a "challenging encounter".

Personally, my speed of advancement is a function of how much I want to get done, and how much time we have to do it. I'll typically level every 2 or 3 sessions (with 1-2 battles per session) and still not get as far as I'd like.

 

[Desdichado]

Sure, the pace of action in the game is a big factor. In APs and other published adventures, at least, it seems like level advancement comes once every three or possibly four sessions. For a "slow down and roleplay a lot more," type game, rather than constant action or dungeoncrawling or whatever, the pace could work, but if everything is done "as assumed" the pace feels blistering to me.

 

[Yora]

I actually encounter it quite often that any considerations for how XP should be awarded ends up with "well, about one level up every four sessions would be best".
And for the last campaign I ran, we effectively ended up just doing that. I hadn't calculated the XP for the first session and at the end of the second I was still quite sure they wouldn't have made 2nd level yet, and at the end of the third I just threw it out of the window entirely and never did the calculation. We just started the fourth session with everyone getting a level since they had finished the first adventure last time.

 

[Stalker0]

First off, I think that E6 is actually much closer to the feel of fantasy as we know it (as opposed to D&D as we know it) which is, of course, one of it's founding conceits in the first place.

This is a great statement that I think captures the value of E6.

As a note I run an E6 game right now. A lot of theme of that game is that the strong magics still exists as ancient relics from old kingdoms and the like.

It gives the classic "everything was cooler back in the day" feel common in fantasy.

 

[NotZenon]

I'm still kinda in shock, honestly, at the speed of advancement in standard d20. When we played Age of Worms all the way through, we were at, what, 22nd level after a two years of somewhat sporadic play? If we'd had four hour sessions every week, it wouldn't have taken much longer than six months. Maybe even less.

To me, that still seems crazy. I can't imagine players needing advancement that frequently to keep their interest. Heck, you barely have time to figure out all the goodies you got from your last advancement when you're already having to do it all over again.

I don't really consider myself very aligned with the OSR philosophically, in most respects, but in that one, I think they got it perfectly right. Speed of advancement in 1e and B/X seemed much more reasonable to me. It's almost like you need to divide XP awards by a factor of 4 or 5 in 3e to keep a pace that to me seems reasonable.

weird, i've never played or DM'd a game that ever made it past 12th level (and that was in second edition!) Usually to get to that level we have to "power level" cause otherwise it just seems to take FOREVER to level up. (of course its a matter of perspective

thats one of the reasons i like E6, it takes alot less time to become "epic", and i don't feel bad about being chincy with experience. (in regular DnD i try to give experience out for everything, in E6 i only have to give it out for stuff thats challenging, or if a player does something really clever, etc...)

 

[S'mon]

I definitely found 3e advancement felt too quick, when I was running it fortnightly for 5-6 hour sessions. It was the speed of levelling combined with the very steep power ramp for spellcaster classes, rapidly taking the game out of the 1-8 or 3-8 'sweet spot'. The stuff from 10th-17th level was much less fun, and due to level loss on resurrection we spent far more time there than in the 1-9 range.

My next 3e campaign used 1/2 XP, the Lost City of Barakus campaign, and took almost two years 2005-2006 to go 1st-8th, with an 'E9' type NPC power distribution. This felt much better.

I then ran a more intermittent 3e campaign 2008-2010 which used full XP but shorter sessions, with breaks, it also ran 1st-8th with E10 type NPC demographics and that also felt right.

I'm currently running Pathfinder Beginner Box and again it looks like I'll be making it an E10 game, Pathfinder advancement seems a bit slower than in 3e and I'm making every PC start at 1st, which is keeping things in the sweet spot nicely.