E6 - how does it change the feel of the game

[S'mon]

That was one of the very early questions that came up about E6. Does it mean that everything is cropped down to 6th level, or is everything scaled down so that 6th level is now as rare as 20th level used to be.
I guess in the end most people go with something inbetween, but it's still an interesting question.

My approach is to scale down everything by 1/2.

I agree, usually it's somewhere in-between. A related question is whether GMs are planning E6 campaigns as 1-6 with 6th level capstone endgame, or are PCs' adventuring careers spent at 6th level. Maybe they even start play at 6th - good for a swords & sorcery feel.

For my Yggsburgh E10 setting, I generally divide official listed (C&C) NPC levels of 3 or higher by 2, but may then add on a level or two here and there to fit my conception of the NPC.

If I'd stuck with E5 for my Pathfinder Beginner Box version of Yggsburgh, I would then have had to crop the 6th-9th level NPCs to 5th level stats. I decided eventually not to do that, instead expanding the BB to 10th level.

 

[Desdichado]

I agree, usually it's somewhere in-between. A related question is whether GMs are planning E6 campaigns as 1-6 with 6th level capstone endgame, or are PCs' adventuring careers spent at 6th level. Maybe they even start play at 6th - good for a swords & sorcery feel.

I tend to run more like the former.

 

[mmadsen]

It often doesn't seem to matter much whether a well-known knight is F4 or F6, but it certainly matters whether the BBEG villain is M-U 6 or M-U 8, whether the Black Priest is C3 or C5. If he's C5 then (for instance) he can Animate Dead and raise hordes of skeletons & zombies at his command.

High-level Fighters can strain credibility -- not because of their power-level, but because of how hit points, etc. scale -- but high-level spellcasters change the game world.

So, another option is to limit only spellcasting levels.

 

[Desdichado]

High-level Fighters can strain credibility -- not because of their power-level, but because of how hit points, etc. scale -- but high-level spellcasters change the game world.

So, another option is to limit only spellcasting levels.

I agree that limiting magic classes is usually more important to me for a variety of reasons than necessarily limiting "might" classes (my years in the 90s playing Heroes of Might and Magic II and III might be influencing the way I think on this, maybe.)

Another way to do that is to take a page from d20 Modern. In the Urban Arcana campaign model, which is the most like D&D, there is a mage class and an acolyte class, which corresponds really closely with the wizard and cleric classes in D&D. However, instead of 20 level "full" classes, they are 10-level advanced classes, which work like prestige classes with relatively low entry requirements (typically after taking three levels of another class, you can qualify.) Since spellcasting only is available through these advanced classes (and Incantations) this not only keeps magic completely out of the hands of very low-level parties and reduces the magic level of the setting overall, it also puts a natural cap on spellcasting ability.

I've actually thought (although I haven't actually done this in a campaign I've run yet, although I may be starting one online this week, and if so, it'll use this rule) that doing something similar would work for times when you don't want to go quite as far as E6ing the game. I've also thought that something similar, combined with E6 might be my ideal low-magic, low-level swashbuckling adventure fantasy iteration of the d20 rules.

 

[Gilladian]

I do try to keep most folks well below 6th level; it is fun to watch the PCs find out that the high cleric of the temple they're depending on for spells is lower level than they are!

 

[mmadsen]

However, instead of 20 level "full" classes, they are 10-level advanced classes, which work like prestige classes with relatively low entry requirements (typically after taking three levels of another class, you can qualify.)

Exactly.

We can limit spellcasters a number of ways:

• Cap levels across the board, the E6 way.
• Turn the spellcasting classes into prestige classes, the d20 Modern way.
• "Re-skin" the semi-spellcasting classes, like the Bard, as Wizards, Priests, etc.
• Eliminate spellcasting per se, but allow crafting of scrolls, potions, etc. (Oriental Adventures "re-skinned" scrolls as talismans.)
• Etc.

 

[Desdichado]

• Eliminate spellcasting per se, but allow crafting of scrolls, potions, etc. (Oriental Adventures "re-skinned" scrolls as talismans.)

d20 Modern does that as well. d20 Modern originally came with three campaign models; one of which was Urban Arcana, with the 10-level advanced classes to basically replicate a truncated wizard, psion and cleric. Shadow Chasers, which was more Buffy or Supernatural like had a "spellcasting" advanced class that basically just used Use Magic Device along with scrolls, wands, and whatnot.

Curiously, while reading over the Pathfinder version of the Rogue, for an all-rogues game that I'm going to run, I noticed that they've added some additional Rogue talents above and beyond the 3.5 version of the game that would allow Rogues to be spellcasters in this manner--including having 0-level and 1st-level spells as a class ability, and a familiar. This really appealed to me as a substitute for spellcasting classes altogether in a low-magic game that could feel much more sword & sorcery-like; in fact, I was immediately struck by the resemblance to the source material for the rogue, particularly the Gray Mouser.

And then, of course d20 Modern had Agents of PSI and Gene-Tech (the latter of which was cut from the book itself, but later released in Polyhedron) that didn't have any magic at all; Agents of PSI, obviously have psionics, and Gene-tech not having any supernatural at all.

d20 games like D&D or d20 Modern are certainly very playable without access to magic, or with reduced access to magic, and doing so can focus them more on being swashbuckling, or horror, or intrigue, or, I dunno, bringing out conventions and tropes of all kinds of other genres. As well, frankly, as more closely resembling much fantasy fiction, where something like the wizards of D&D are usually fairly rare.

I find that for my tastes, even E6 alone isn't enough limitations on magic--from a setting aesthetic perspective, mostly. Some of the third level spells, like speak with dead means that 6th level characters, assuming that one is a cleric, can't ever do a fantasy murder mystery without shortcutting the entire thing, for instance.

I freely admit that my desire to limit and reduce magic is a quirk of my own, however, and is possibly quite esoteric in relationship to other gamers who are more comfortable with the implicit D&D assumptions. And I'm not sure that I have a "favorite" solution to that particular problem.

But certainly the simplest one is to make the game E6 and arbitrarily say that characters can't take any spellcasting class levels until they've already taken a couple two or three levels of something else.

 

[mmadsen]

I was immediately struck by the resemblance to the source material for the rogue, particularly the Gray Mouser.

The Dying Earth stories, too.

I find that for my tastes, even E6 alone isn't enough limitations on magic--from a setting aesthetic perspective, mostly. Some of the third level spells, like speak with dead means that 6th level characters, assuming that one is a cleric, can't ever do a fantasy murder mystery without shortcutting the entire thing, for instance.

If every spell cast requires a "scroll" to be crafted first, that removes much of the casual nature of spellcasting. One use of speak with dead costs 375 gold pieces...

 

[Desdichado]

That's a good point; Cugel is another great example of what looks like a Rogue who dabbles a bit in magic.

 

[Gilladian]

Right now in my campaign the players have been using "Speak with Dead" on some cultist assassins they slew; they're trying to find out about the cult, it's intentions towards the town the PCs are living in, and what numbers of clerics, guards and other monsters they may face when they are finally able to invade the temple...

They found that 3 questions, which the dead victim gets a Will save to resist, are NOT that many! I believe they managed to get 5 out of 6 answers from their victims; 3 were useful, 1 was somewhat useful, and the final one was not just useless but actively misleading because they didn't know how to word it to ensure they got the answer they needed.

So even Speak with Dead, in an E6 world, can be limited in effect. And with murder mysteries, the victim will frequently NOT know who killed him/her; poison, backstabbing, masked attackers, hired killers, or even a situation where the killer misleads the victim just in CASE the spell is used.