E6: The Game Inside D&D

[Ry]

That probably is a way to go, and keeping with what seems to have become the theme for E6, it should be a community project. It could start with a sort of outline, basically an outline of what a world governed by E6 rules would be like.

Hey Aegir, I like the ideas you posted, and I am kind of cooking up an outline. Bear with me for a bit; I've suddenly had a lot of e-mails and forum threads to respond to about E6.

Rather than a "Community Project" - which requires rules and hierarchies and can get bogged down by distributed responsibility or clashes over how things should work - what I'd rather do is take the job on and build an E6 setting in public view. That way there's no overhead of community management; I can do it at EN World.

There's a writing method I've tried before with great results, which boils down to "Have interested readers that ask questions and provide feedback." When I get cooking I can churn out (non-stats) material at a rapid rate.

One other thing is that a community project is hard to get the rights to, and in my ideal future an established d20 publisher gets interested in E6, pays me some nominal sum to liaise with them, and produces something with higher production values than a community project (or me alone) could normally produce.

 

[joela]

Xe6?

What do people think of that approach for XE6?

Uh, what's XE6?

 

[Ry]

The idea was XE6 was a sort of "expanded" E6 that had feats that allowed characters to incrementally grow to the equivalent of 8th level cahracters. That's not my thing, but I put it out there to try to help those who wanted E6 to go just a little further.

I think the discussion abandoned it now. Looks like we're generally talking about a "Basic" E6 and talking about different kinds of feats that customize that experience. I can see now that that kind of discussion doesn't lend itself to trying to classify different flavors of E6, so I've stopped doing so.

 

[gavagai]

Intresting.

Can you post some ("epic") PCs and NPCs from your campaign?

 

[green slime]

I was under the impression that the CL was a requirement, but the "average" referred to how items are usually created at their minimum level. Otherwise why does the Eberron Artificer get a caster level bonus for the purpose of meeting requirements in their "item creation" class feature?

This issue is summed up quite well in this link.

I just don't find it unbalancing or unreasonable to allow a 6th level character to add "of flaming" to a weapon. The alternative would remove elemental energy damage from the fighter's repitiore within the E6 context.

 

[Squire James]

The E6 arrangement reminds me of World of Warcraft - an adventurer is considered a "nobody" until he reaches level 6, then he can join a guild and go on dragon raids... then some expansion pack comes along and raises the level cap to 7!

Edit: Not that there's anything wrong with this - WoW is not exactly unpopular!

 

[Ry]

The E6 arrangement reminds me of World of Warcraft - an adventurer is considered a "nobody" until he reaches level 6, then he can join a guild and go on dragon raids... then some expansion pack comes along and raises the level cap to 7!

Edit: Not that there's anything wrong with this - WoW is not exactly unpopular!

Wow. Um... that's not really the intent, but OK. I'm more into "State what your campaign is at the beginning, and stick with it. That might be E6, or E6 with feats to gain 8th, or whatever, but stick with it for the sake of your players."

Now that I think about it, though, there's one benefit, if you think of high-level WoW play: "We know what the PCs will be like, so we can build reams and reams of things for them to do, and play around with how to challenge them now that we know their capabilities."

 

[Ry]

Intresting.

Can you post some ("epic") PCs and NPCs from your campaign?

My notes are mostly gone; a lot of the time I would use that file above (DM's Able Secretary) and a list of some equipment, special abilities, spells, and feats for each NPC. Bear with me, today I've mostly been trying to keep up with the massive number of replies E6 has had at various boards.

 

[Dragonblade275]

Ryan,

I was just over at rpg.net and the OotS forums. This idea has certainly generated A LOT of interest. I just want to say "Congratulations!" on coming up with this idea.

When you get to working on the FAQ, one thing I would like to see is a list of templates (like the bone template for liches) that you you recommend in E6.

 

[Aegir]

I wonder... what about a feat that'd allow the character to count as (level +1) for purposes of meeting feat prerequisites? The really odd thought is that eventually (assuming you're allowed to take it unlimited times and that it stacks), you could take about 15 of these and meet the requirements for epic feats such as Imp. Spell Capacity, which would effectively let an E6 PC cast spells above Lv 3. Suppose the simple fix to that would be to cap it at Lv... what? 12? 15? 20?

Either way, a guy taking *15* otherwise useless feats so he can expand his spellcasting ability (especially considering they'd be largely useless until then) seems like it'd be balanced enough. As I said, you're effectively taking 16 feats (4 full levels, assuming the 4 feats = 1 level equation) so you can have a single Lv 4 slot (plus whatever from high Int/Cha).