D&D 5E Assaying rules for 5E E6 (Revised)

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Well, my solution to that would be that in addition to cutting monster HP in half, would be to dial back the drama a bit on the higher CR monsters damage. Dial back the damage dice one die step, knocking the number of damage dice in half, or something similar. One would have to use a sharpie pen and their judgement on a case by case basis.

Part of the reason IMO The HP count and damage on some of the creatures is so high is so that they can remain a threat to PC groups as they continually level up and their HP increases. With an E5/6 mod that is just not needed.

Intuitively, I wouldn't both limit character HP and reduce monster damage dealing. That seems self-defeating (characters have fewer HP, but monsters deal less damage!) My feeling is not at all that monsters deal too much damage - only a reality check that fighter HP will still feel meaningfully different from wizard HP. Also, by my estimation capped at 5th a wizard is fairly likely to be taken down in one round by many of higher CR creatures (at least CR 5, and upwards), while at 6th I think they generally will survive one round.

But ultimately IMHO, that extra 6 HP or so will not make much difference if the PC stands in front of a creature after taking a good shot.

Agreed!

For me part of E5/6 feel is the complete paradigm shift of how many, and of what kind of creatures you can throw at your PC's.

Also agreed, and a strong reason not to weaken monsters! In my experience the great majority of by-the-book creatures are not too challenging for characters.

As for dealing with things like Dragons - well there was a reason long polearms were once a thing in the game back in the day!

IMO rules for creating/setting big traps, the use of long polearms like Pikes, and ballista should be a thing. If not outright necessary for the bigger creatures in the MM.

Also Henchmen/Hirelings; Dragon hunting is a group event.

Agreed.

I don't think so. Looking at how my Barbarian would work and the remaining class features there are no real "trap" abilities. Everything is useful.

Of course you will get people who will do the math and figure the ideal "build" for dealing the most damage in this or that circumstance, but they were doing that already in normal 5e with multiclassing...

Also for me part of it would be taking a sharpie pen to parts of the feats that are OP as well. Like the Alert feat; I'd either re-write it, or it is out! It's a bit ridiculous. So for my E5 I'd have to go through the feats with my sharpie pen as well and take out stuff that crosses into the superhero ability spectrum as well.

As an example, for Clerics interested in joining melee, it is hard to see why anyone would pick the Bonus Proficiencies feature from Life or Nature when they could instead gain the strictly better version from Tempest or War. Getting martial weapons and heavy armor, rather than heavy armor. I don't see why any fighter choosing Combat Superiority from Battlemaster would invest a pick in Student of War or Know Your Enemy when they could instead add Spellcasting or Arcane Charge from Eldritch Knight. Similarly, what prevents a player taking say Totem Spirit and then Retaliation?

For me, the fundamental issue with offering class and subclass features as picks is that they are not equal in value. That isn't a matter of a minor discrepancy: it's between a ribbon and a near-double-feat. One option I tried in my earlier drafts was to price features in ASI-equivalents (the 1, 2, 4 scale where 2 = an ASI) and give characters 2 points at each level which they could save up if desired. I set it aside for two reasons. One is that it is very hard to correctly anticipate and cost all combinations that result in imbalance, even where the parts are individually balanced. Second, it was tangential to my goals as it delivered on customisation, but not at all on vulnerability or mortality.

 

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As for what to gain on level up… I feel like “demi-levels” are too complex, and also wouldn’t feel like an E6 system. Just a powered-down version of regular level advancement. Instead, I would look at what scaling you want to remove. HP? Proficiency bonus? Class features? Damage per round? ASIs? Then just remove whatever you don’t want to scale from level up, and keep the rest.

Well, I believe you turned out to be right. In my defense, it was not so much a matter of complexity, as clarity of concerns. I realised I had taken on a class balancing project hidden within my E6 heroes-not-super-heroes project. Once I dropped the former, I found that it was possible to deliver the latter much as you suggested - by limiting scaling along a few fundamental dimensions. (OP revised to capture that.)