Capping Spells at 3rd Level

[Evilhalfling]

Yup. BaB gets capped, saves get capped, HD gets capped, everything stops at 6th level. The idea is that the entire world stops leveling at 6th level and you just have a series of feats after that.
...
and gives a very short range of power for _everything_ in the world to operate from. Dragons? Yeah, they're going to look a lot different under E6, since _everything_ in the world is supposed to be following the same guidelines. This means that the GM and the players can shift their focus from what level some adventure/monster/magic item/whatever should be, and allows them to start thinking about what kinds of cool things they can do in the world.

not quite as concieved. One of the keys to e6 is that monsters do not follow the same rules.
The orginal playtest was against a RAW CR 10 dragon.
Monsters can and do continue to get worse, its just that they are a lot rarer. If once a generation CR 10 monster threatens the kingodom, there isn't any epic or high level adventurers to stop it. You have to do it, and you are going to need some preperation, brains, and luck.
NPCs are limited the same as PCs, at least by class levels. I would find an NPC 6th lvl gnoll as believable as one limited to 4th.

Now IMO these higher level threats are not going to have access to 4th level spells either, but if the dragon can fight better than any swordsman, thats just something you have to deal with. You don't stand in front of the thing, you weaken it with posioned harpoons and finish it of with an axe.

 

[CleverNickName]

My reasons for wanting to cap the level advancement so low are purely nostalgic.

My "regular" gaming group is pretty much a straight-up 3.5E campaign...high-level, high-magic, in a homebrew world. The party is ~16th level, and will probably be Epic (~25th level) by the time they conclude the adventure path. It's a good time, and everyone is having fun with their superheroes.

This weekend, though, I will be starting up a "second" gaming group. And this time, insted of the same old 3.5E adventure path, I want to run all of my old "B" and "X" modules instead. To do that, I needed a way to preserve that gritty, low-level flavor of these modules no matter how many times we game together or how many adventures we complete.

I had been wracking my brain, trying to find a way to do this without sucking out all of the fun or creating a game balance nightmare. Since SP pointed me to the E6 rules, I've been hammering out notes like crazy. This is going to be awesome.

As SP pointed out (and as the E6 documents state directly), the "Epic 6" level is arbitrary; you should adjust it to suit your gaming style, campaign setting, or even the specific adventures you want to run. For example, if you were going to spend a month or two playing the Isle of Dread module ("for character levels 3 thru 7"), you could start everyone at 3rd level and cap it at 7th. That way, the module stays fun and balanced no matter how long the party stays on the island, without the hassle of scaling the encounters.

I know one fellow who built a whole shipwreck/survival adventure path, taking place entirely on the Isle of Dread...it was all very reminiscent of the TV series "Lost." Now, imagine how lame would it have been for that whole series of adventures to end with "my cleric is 11th level now, so she casts word of recall and everyone goes home! Go me!"

 

[SSquirrel]

E6 is probably the best houserule I've ever seen.

Ken Hood's Revised Grim N Gritty or DrSpunj's Class Balance Spreadsheet fit that category for me

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

not quite as concieved. One of the keys to e6 is that monsters do not follow the same rules.
The orginal playtest was against a RAW CR 10 dragon.
Monsters can and do continue to get worse, its just that they are a lot rarer. If once a generation CR 10 monster threatens the kingodom, there isn't any epic or high level adventurers to stop it. You have to do it, and you are going to need some preperation, brains, and luck.
NPCs are limited the same as PCs, at least by class levels. I would find an NPC 6th lvl gnoll as believable as one limited to 4th.

Now IMO these higher level threats are not going to have access to 4th level spells either, but if the dragon can fight better than any swordsman, thats just something you have to deal with. You don't stand in front of the thing, you weaken it with posioned harpoons and finish it of with an axe.

I think I'll just agree to disagree with you. I'm the odd man out when it comes to doing an E6/E8 game and why anyway, so it's not like I expect people to agree with me.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I had been wracking my brain, trying to find a way to do this without sucking out all of the fun or creating a game balance nightmare. Since SP pointed me to the E6 rules, I've been hammering out notes like crazy. This is going to be awesome.

Well, I'm glad that it's what you were looking for. Like I said, I'm a big fan of the rules. I've tended to run things this way in the past, but Ryan sat down and really thought about and codified it in a consistent fashion. It'll be interesting to see how such a thing might look under 4E, and I'm sure someone will sit down and start tinkering with such a thing soon enough.

About the only thing I can think of that might wind up being an issue is healing. You'll want to think about what the major source(s) are, and how much access the party is going to have to them.

One of the other guys in the group has run a Roman based game, and wanted to go with the low magic approach to things. Evocation spells were banned outright, and even clerical magic wasn't common.

In order to counterbalance this so that characters could still go out and get into all kinds of scraps, the group basically adopted the Vitality/Wound system. You can read about it here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm

Basically you wind up having 2 sets of hit points. Your regular hit points are "Vitality" and then your "Wound" points are equal to your Con.

Your Vitality (HP) increases every level just like normal, but your Wound points never do.

The way it helped for the game is that Vitality (or HP) recovers at the rate of points=to character level per hour. So a 3rd level character gets back 3 Vitality (or HP) points every hour.

Of course, once you get into Wound points damage, now you're talking some serious hurt here. Criticals go straight to Wound points (at least under the default system) so crits have some real bite to them.

That meant the GM was able to issue smackdown and hammer on the group, without having to worry overly much because of the lack of clerical magic. He had herbal potions that could be brewed and functioned like Cure Light Wounds potions.

That's all we had for healing.

If you're at all familiar with the Palladium games, the Vitality/Wound point system is similar to that. SDC being the "Vitality" and Hit Points being the "Wound" points.

Not everyone is a fan of the VP/WP system, and some folks feel it adds an extra level of things to track. I don't personally see it that way, but then again I've alway run games where 0 HP meant "you're messed up really bad" and it was only when a character went to their Con score in Negative points that they were dead and gone. So the VP/WP seems to me to be pretty much the same mechanic, just with a couple of extra bells.

Let us know how things turn out though. It's always fun to hear about folks going through old modules using the characters/rules of today.

 

[Maldor]

@maldor: and for some damn good reasons!

it's all written in the various E6 topics but just some quick thoughts:
- from 4th spell rank on, only magic can oppose magic (and a bunch of player don't like to sit on there hand while the shiny Wizard (or Cleric or Druid, or Sorcerer -to a lesser extent-) take all the fun, and many DMs neither).
- the higher you get in level, the clunkier the combat phase are.
- past a certain level (around 8) 1st level mooks are a nuisance at best, DMs need to come up with townguards about {party level-2} to prevent player to go nut in the various cities.
- it would make financially more sense for kings/governments to hire some 4-men "commando" group when need be rather than having a regular army.

maybe you're fine with all this but it's quite understandable why some (many) other aren't.

i was not talking about E6 i have never played or read it so make no comments on it.
as for the rest
- not all classes are equal at all level at low level the fighter is much more powerful then a wizard and at higher level a wizard is more powerful then a fighter many complain that casters are to powerful but i find that is backward thinking after all noncaster classes are the minority so why not raise their power to fit with the rest of the classes rather then weaken everything else in the world.
- combat phases get slowed down by opations the more types of actions you can take and by poor planing or poor knowledge of your character abililtys but at high level you do usally have more choices but it really won't make that much diffrentance
- that what a mook is a "nuisance" when i DM if it doesn't give XP then i don't roll there attacks they always miss can never deal damage and die when the PC notice them if they give no XP then it mean they are no challange and should take no resources. And if your PC's are run around killing off town folk maybe you should talk to your players about their character goal as choatic evil adventures maybe a group of palladins should gather and hunt donw these villains maybe they local goverment should but a bounty on their heads. going around killing poeple becuase you can is not good rolyplaying i could kill the guy acroos the street most likely get away with it to but i don't becuase it would just be a wrothless waste of time.
- i don't know about your character but if mine is 8+ level then it takes at least 1000 gp to make me consider a job and if the job is time consuming r diffecult it cost more you can hire a pretty large arny of mooks for 3000gp/day a army that can stand on top of your 15 miles of citywall look in all directions at once in shifts that go 24/7 and still check people at the gate they can be in a hundred diffrent places at once doing a hundred diffrent things. As for a coomando group yes its a good idea to have one of those as well like the navy seal or army rangers or the CIA field agent.

P.S. i will admite the secaond part of my frist post is a bit ranty i am still a little annoy at my old DM for alway stoping at about 10 level it basic destroyed the group everyone got bored with playing the same levelsplayer just starter not show up or leaving to try other groups my new group is ok but he was a good DM accept for that and the new DM is used to old school D&D which is ok but not really my playstyle. tomuch railroading it into the next doungoan.

 

[Maldor]

Scurvy_Platypus
much of what you say is well thought out and very insightful i don't agree or like everthing but much of it seem well reasoned

the first part of my post was just asking if the world was going to be nerfed or if it was just another flame on casters i really hate it when rules are only aplied to PC's and/or classes i would never make a NPC or use a monster that was not useable by the players no DM classes or feat it is just to unfair to me and if i find out about a DM doing it to me i'm gone.