E6: The Game Inside D&D

[Ry]

There's another thing: If you want to pull things from different sources, but you have worries about how the balance works around, say, 12th level... well, you can stop worrying

There's a lot of considerations about how these different options do or don't work together (for example, what if you up you multiclass, take feats to catch up your casting, then take 7th level with your caster class? I think we all know what we'd suggest, but it starts to get clunky), and the more I look at them the more I think the best way to do E6 would be to take Basic E6 and then make the rest of the decisions based on your group.

That nicely comes back to why I came back to E6 after spending ages devving my own RPG: Sometimes it just has to be close enough, and it's time to stop devving, stop building, stop putting off the session because you're not ready, and get playing.

 

[Dragonblade275]

Thanks Dragonblade - the thing about doing these other things with Feats instead of messing with other parts of the system is that feats, if they don't work out in a particular case, are less controversial to tweak than, say, the XP table. If you find out that the XP table, or stats, or whatever else you've changed doesn't work for some players, it's a big deal to change it because it then affects everyone - and sometimes has effects that cascade through the system.

I have found that if a feat is too good, it's not that big a deal to say "Hey Ned, I think the feat I made for you is too good, but I don't want to take it away from you. I think it should have a prerequisite, like Skill Focus (Knowledge - nature) instead of being straight-up available. I'd like to leave you with it but say that your next feat needs to be that knowledge thing, rather than take it away now. We could do that, or if you want you could swap it out for something else. What do you think?"

I can agree with that.

I forgot that changing the XP table affects other things throughout the game. So, about the only thing to do to slow advancement other than going epic after 6th is to cut the XP awards a bit... especially after 6th level.

 

[Dragonblade275]

LVL	XP Stndrd  XE6    Feats
1	0	
2	1,000	
3	3,000	
4	6,000	
5	10,000	
6	15,000	
		20,000    1
		25,000    2
		30,000    3
7	21,000	35,000    4
		40,000    5
		45,000    6
		50,000    7
8	28,000	55,000    8
		60,000    9
		65,000    10
		70,000    11
9	36,000	75,000    12
		80,000    13
		85,000    14
		90,000    15
10	45,000	95,000    16
		100,000   17
		105,000   18
		110,000   19
11	55,000	115,000   20
		120,000   21
		125,000   22
		130,000   23
12	66,000	135,000   24
		140,000   25
		145,000   26
		150,000   27
13	78,000	155,000   28
		160,000   29
		165,000   30
		170,000   31
14	91,000	175,000   32
		180,000   33
		185,000   34
		190,000   35
15	105,000	195,000   36
		200,000   37
		205,000   38
		210,000   39
16	120,000	215,000   40
		220,000   41
		225,000   42
		230,000   43
17	136,000	235,000   44
		240,000   45
		245,000   46
		250,000   47
18	153,000	255,000   48
		260,000   49
		265,000   50
		270,000   51
19	171,000	275,000   52
		280,000   53
		285,000   54
		290,000   55
20	190,000	295,000   56

So, by the time a character gains the equivalent of 20th level in XE6 terms (at four feats to the level), he will have earned 295,000 XP compared to the standard 190,000 XP. But instead of being 20th level with extra feats (by the standard rules), the character would be 6th level with 56 additional feats.

It would take ALL 56 of these feats to build the equivalent of a 20th level character as defined in the core rules (and maybe 7-12 more depending upon how the bonus feats and ability boosts from XP & Level Dependent Benefits table in the PHB were handled).

Ry, how do you handle increasing ability scores after 6th level?

 

[Ry]

For ability scores, see the first post in the FAQ. There's a 2-feat feat chain that you can take once per ability score to get +2.

 

[Dragonblade275]

Thanks.

What was your rational behind requiring two feats to improve the ability score by 2 points as opposed to one feat to improve the score by only one point?

Also, why not let the feat stack if taken multiple times?

 

[Koewn]

Just that players will be earning XP as 6th-level characters throughout their "epic" careers (at least in BE6/CE6, XE6 is making my head hurt thinking about it). So if they take on a CR 10 monster they get much more for it than a Level 15 character would in D&D, but probably do that less often.

OK. That won't effect their actual XP totals, it just takes longer to get there. My table was showing how many feats a character with (x) amount of XP would have, and comparing that with the standard DND level they'd be at.

Looks like the table was already redone, anyway.

 

[PoeticJustice]

I don't know if I'll ever play this method of D&D, but it seems like the low level cap is the strength of the venture; if one attempts to remove or lessen it then they may as well be playing regular D&D.
Actually, it feels like a half-assed compromise between the two. You should either be cool with level 7+ characters or not. Once the guiding principle is compromised, it will be very hard to convince a group that it ever had merit.

 

[Aegir]

Even if I never use this as written (for stopping at Lv 6), its pretty much sold me as a replacement for the horrid system that is epic rules. However, right now I'm entertaining a complete scrapping of the level system (which this all but does anyway) in favor of some sort of skill-based system.

I'm not sure how doable it is while keeping it basically d20, but thats my goal.

 

[Ry]

I don't know if I'll ever play this method of D&D, but it seems like the low level cap is the strength of the venture; if one attempts to remove or lessen it then they may as well be playing regular D&D.
Actually, it feels like a half-assed compromise between the two. You should either be cool with level 7+ characters or not. Once the guiding principle is compromised, it will be very hard to convince a group that it ever had merit.

I agree with that, PoeticJustice. The feats I was trying to put up above was attempting a fix for those who still wanted a little more progression.

But that said, I'm going to be sticking to 6th plus feats for my game, and that's really what E6 is. There's a lot of feats out there (some third party, some WotC splat) for multiclass characters, and for sorcerers to gain spells, and so on and so on. I believe that the best approach is to use the cap as a cap, and deal with other issues as you go.

But some disagree. Since there was immediately a lot of discussion of how to stretch it a bit further I thought I'd try to throw out suggestions just like I would for any house rules thread I was following.

The downside of that is that I kind of hate the feats I wrote once I came back at them a few hours later. There's a can of worms that it opens that I had just gotten closed when I went back to feats.

As for 2 feats for 1 stat point rather than 1 feat for 1 stat point: You can go either way. This depends on whether you think ability scores or ability modifiers are more important. To me, it's all about the modifiers, and a +1 modifier is worth 2 feats IMO.

 

[Dragonblade275]

I talked this over with my longest running player. I wasn't able to convince him of the merits of this idea. Of course, he's currently working on a 4th level character with plans to multiclass into about 3 classes. And, at 4 feats to gain the equivalent of a level (after 6th), he thought it would be very hard to accomplish what he wanted to do.

Since we're playing through The Shackled City with a lot of extra random encounters and side-ventures, it still looks like my best option is going to be cutting back on XP awards to keep the characters' levels in line with where they need to be story-wise at each stage in the adventure path.

Ry? I think I remember you discussing your group going through The Shackled City. Did you use E6 when you went through it? Did you go all the way through? In short, will E6 work to go through a published adventure path that is written for characters that would normally advance to 20th level? In practice, is 6th plus X number of feats ever able to take on the challenges that would be faced by a twentieth level character?