E6 SRD - community project

Lacan

First Post
The final product we are working on will be fully SRD 3.5 compatible, as well as PF conversion notes, so if people aren't using PF they will still be able to use it.

My plan right now is to provide a RTF for it to you guys, here on enworld, as part of my contribution to the Base E6.
 

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Yora

Legend
Regarding Feats: I would recommend splitting the Feat list into a "Core List" and an "Expended List", even in the first draft. I only speak for myself, but if there's one person who mentions it, there are usually a lot more who are thinking it. And I would want to run an E6 game "Core only", that is, without the additional OGL material and only the very most neccessary new E6 feats. When core and non-core feats are all mixed up, it's very difficult to do that, and I would need to use a different SRD to get my "clean" Feat List.
So maybe a Feats I page for the core feats and a Feats II page for the non-core feats. I would hugely appreciate it, and I guess so would many others.

And there's something regarding metamagic feats: There are several feats that require a slot "3 levels higher". That would only be possible by picking 0 level spells and using 3rd level slots. And 0 level spells are always 1 target, 1 damage die. Something I just can't imagine anyone ever wanting to do, and even less anyone spending one of his prescious feats on such a barely useful ability. In my eyes, they are redundant.
If you really want to be as close to the rules as possible, they are still viable feats, but I would always remove them from my game. Just something to ponder, either way is fine with me.

And I havn't gone through the whole thread, but one problematic subject would be Monsters with Caster Levels. Some creatures have access to spells or spell-like abilities far above 3rd level and some even have access to complete spell lists.
Just that PCs are unable to learn these spells doesn't have to mean these spells are not existing for powerful outsiders. For the CR 16 Planetar alone, we would need the complete Cleric spell list. But for just two or three monsters, I wouldn't want to have all these spells in the E6 SRD. What to do about that? :(
Option A: Keep all the spells in, that could be learned by creatures. Really don't like it.
Option B: Remove all creatures that would have access to such spells. Since it's mostly high level outsiders that will show up rarely anyway, that's a slightly better pick, but still not a nice solution.
Option C-1: Crop all these monsters down to Caster Level 6th. This helps with some, but there are still lots of spell-like abilities.
Option C-2: Make a seperate list for spell-like abilities. But that's quite an amount of work.
Option D: Have a "Player Spell List" that only includes spells accessible by PCs. Have also an "Extenden Spell List" that is identical to the complete standard spell list, minus the ranger and paladin spells (as there are no creatures that use those).

These are just some options, I'm sure there are more. But I think going the very straight way is not a viable choice here. Either the spell description tripple in size with spells that will almost never be used, or we have to change something about the monster-section.
 

Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
That's a good suggestion on the non-SRD feats, and one of those organizational things I've been pondering last week or so. We'll take a whack at separating the core feats and the others into their own subsections, though I think they'll stay in the same file.

On the practically useless feats like +3 metamagics (and a few others), we've kept them in for two reasons. First is that they are strictly RAW, even if they're of limited utility in strict E6. Second is that there are a handful of monsters of CL7th that could use them to slightly better effect. That said, it might be more appropriate to shift them over to Monster Feats, as we've done for most other non-E6 feats.

Regarding monsters, it's an understatement to say the "straight way is not a viable choice"! Monsters have proven to be something of a headache. ;)

I think we've considered most of your concerns in some way or another. When we were trimming the monsters, we first decided to cap at CR12 (not completely arbitrarily, but nearly so). Then we removed everything that referenced spells of 4th+ level (SLAs, Su's, even a few Ex's)). Then we re-added things we felt were appropriate, iconic, mythic, or that we just had a preference for. In retrospect, it looks like this actually came down to weeding out creatures with many SLAs, or SLAs referring to complex spells.

For the most part, we just in-lined (and in few cases simplified) the relevant spell info into the monsters' stat-blocks as another (Sp) ability. In a few cases (where an ability is shared by several monsters) we put the reference spell into a "Monstrous Spells" section in the "Types, Subtypes and Abilities" file, minus its casting class and components info. This seemed like a good idea at first, as it required almost no adjustments to the text at all; however in practice, it's been unsatisfying, i think because we never defined a clear distinction between which SLAs to in-line and which to add as "Monstrous Spells". As we finish up this round of proofreading, we'll decide whether to keep this or not.

Creatures with actual caster levels were chopped down to those with caster levels of 7 or less. (There are 4 of CL7th, iirc: a couple nagas, nymph and lammasu.) For sorc levels, 7th level has little impact as this just gives the creature more spells than PCs. For Clr/Drd levels, we've inserted a sentence in the monster description that limits their 4th level slot to metamagicked spells (or, simply lower level spells, of course), and I changed one of their typical feats to Heighten Spell to illustrate this.

Anyway, that's how we've decided to handle monsters. The proofreading on them will be truly vicious on account of all the in-lining-- but as you pointed out, there's not a lot of other choice with the bestiary, short of simply cutting practically everything interesting. In any event, we'll be moving on to proofreading monsters "officially" probably next week, but feel free to take a look at them.
 

Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
I've rearranged the Feats file a bit. Core feats are at the top, while non-core feats are at the bottom, in a subsection called "Extended feats list", with an 'at DM's discretion!' disclaimer. Might want to take a look to make sure I caught them all.

I think it does feel a bit cleaner that way!
 
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Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
Finishing up the proofread of material under the category Building Characters, files
- Equipment
- Special Materials

Also moving on to category Spells, specifically the intro material in files
- Magic Overview
- Spell List I
- Spell List II

The proofread of the feats is also still open, since some changes were recently made to files
- Feats in category Building Characters
- Monster Feats in category Monsters

Thanks!
 

Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
A fair number of little bugs (mainly references to permanency and other non-E6 level spells) have been caught recently among the spells, so now we're double checking all SPELLS, A to Z.

As always, anyone's welcome to take a look and comment.
 

Lord Xtheth

First Post
...
I'm not quite dead yet!

But seriously, I've been caught up in projects that I'm getting paid for, so have set the publishing E6 aside. I apologise.
You guys here seem to have alot more put together than I had anyway, so I may just back out of this one.

You're all doing a good job! Keep it up for sure.
Sorry again that I've fallen so far behind I won't be able to catch up.
 


Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
Ryan-

Sure thing. Lately the focus has been just proofing all spells. I've stepped back for a couple days for a little breather (and jury duty), but will be back into it tomorrow or Monday. I'll continue putting up links to the relevant page and the specific file as the focus shifts.

Fwiw it's worth, my posts up to now have been mainly just to let people know what I happen to be looking at, but everything is up for perusal. Anyone should feel free to comment on anything (here, in a coment box on the site, or via email e6BaselineSRD -at- gmail).

-James
 
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Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
Getting back to it now, and turning the focus to Monsters.
The page link is: Monsters. Files of interest at the moment are the introductory and explanatory ones, plus a couple easy ones:

- Abilities and Conditions
- Types, Subtypes and Abilities
- Monsters Intro-A
as well as
- Monsters Animals and Monsters Vermin

Of special note is the Monstrous Spells stuff in "Types, Subtypes and Abilities". This is an attempt to allow monsters that share abilities that refer to a common higher-level spell without having to in-line the relveant material from the spell into each monster. This is a nice simplification in that it keeps SLAs in terms of "spells", so the rules don't change, the monster text doesn't change, and errors are reduced. However, our implementation has been pretty inconsistent. A few options are:
*redo it (ie, keep it limited to a handful of SLAs common to several creatures)
*expand it to include all/most spell-references (in lieu of in-lining spell descriptions)
*ditch it (in favor of in-lining).

Also, throughout the site you'll see little green checkmarks on files I've noted as "ready". Well... that's debatable. ;) There's frankly been little feedback on any of them, so most of those could probably still do with another proofread by a fresher pair of eyeballs, even just a "yeah, looks ok" is helpful! You can comment here, in a comment box on the site, or gmail "e6BaselineSRD". Thanks!
 

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