Just out of curiosity, what made you pick level 7 instead of 6 or 5?
I will quote the excellent
cripsy hack :
Basically, if you decide to limit your games to a certain tier of play, I highly recommend raising the level cap by just one level, to give most classes a very impressive capstone ability.
But I ultimately decided not to forbid this technically optional rule that’s usually assumed to be allowed anyway. This goes back to the level cap: at 5, there’s just not that much room to break the game,
and any multiclassing is going to come at the cost of those capstone abilities. I like that it becomes a much more difficult choice.
(...)
As a side note, combining a relatively small number of levels with a robust support for multiclassing reminds me of
The Goblin Laws of Gaming, one of my favorite OSR systems that definitely influenced this project.
Level 7 is perfect from a capstone ability point of view : casters get level 4 spells, most martials get strong class features (Evasion + 4d6 sneak attack for the Rogue, Feral instinct for the Barbarian, second Martial archetype feature for the Fighter, etc.). If the player choose to multiclass, it will come with a cost.
Also level 7 is the exact halfway point in the second tiers of play and is the (very theorical) level wich allow the PC to do an
epic battle against the strongest adults Dragons (for a game called D&D i believe it's an important symbolic feature).
Do you mean you are playing 5th edition E7 using feats since it came out? Or that you have played enough 3rd or 4th E7 to feel confident predicting that there are enough feats?
By my count PHB and TCoE between them offer 57 feats. XGE offers 20 more, but they are racial feats so only 2 per race. A given character might have around 20 relevant feats to choose from, about half of which are likely quite bad picks for that character.
So the original E6 anticipated a character gaining up to 20 feats, with 5 feats being roughly equal to a level. Say one 5th feat equals two 3rd? The only choice a player is making is the order they getting the ten feats that matter. And this is committing them to some fairly borderline choices. I don't have your experience, but it appears to me likely that players will experience a haphazard and limited offering. Hence I feel drawn to explore ways to retain access to the many class and subclass features, on top of feats for groups using that option.
I played a lot of D&D 3 E6 (i've even done a complete E6+D&D 3 SRD custom game in my native language back in 2011, it was the actual 3rd crowdfunding for a TTRPG there ^^) and since then i always play something close to E6/E7 when i play a D&D-like game.
My very own french
OSR minimalist game is still E6.
From my POV, E6 is all about actual play not theorical perspectives, a sort of ockham razor mindest.
And what we all know is :
90% of D&D Games Stop By Level 10
By playing E5/E6/E7 games with D&D 5 what you will face 90% of the time is a campaign coming to an end after the E(X) +
3-5 feats.
And let's be honest, everyone will take Lucky so what you'll really see is level X PC + Lucky + 2-4 feats.
And then you will start a new campaign.
Also you can easily break 5e feats into smaller increments : give Lucy one reroll after the other (turning it into 3 smaller feats) or split Tough in two "+X PV" mini-feats.
Another very important point with the E6 philosophy, and i'll quote R. Stoughton on that :
There several philosophies on what feats to allow in an E6 game, but in any long-running E6 game some expansion feats should be made available for players to continue to grow their characters in different ways.
Which feats you allow depends on what you want for your own game. Some GMs want to encourage single-classing, others are happy to tell their players to work within a framework, choosing only those feats that match the style of their campaign. Some want to see more gestalt-style characters and allow feat chains towards specific classes’ abilities. Many GMs make a real-world decision, allowing feats from publishers they trust, or all feats from the books the GM owns. The original E6 campaign allowed feats on an ad-hoc basis; players were encouraged to develop various aspects of their characters rather than linear power, but were allowed to suggest feats if they couldn’t find something that worked in the available rules. Ultimately, the decision on what feats to allow belongs to the GM, and should naturally vary from one E6 campaign to the next.
All of these feats should be considered suggestions – each E6 game is different and it is always up to the individual GM what they want to allow.
If you want to allow you PC to have access to level (X+1) - 11 class feature, build custom feats for them on a case-by-case basis
