E6: The Game Inside D&D

Re: Villain Feats

shdwrnr said:
Stumbled upon this yesterday and I'm really impressed. This is exactly the kind of game I like to play and run. I don't know if anyone has done this already, but for your consideration I have a few feats you might enjoy for your "villian" section.

...
I like these a lot. I haven't viewed them in detail, yet (for balance issues, etc...), but it's similar to an idea that I was working on to convert many of the Prestige Class abilities into feats.

Good idea!
 

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Kunimatyu

First Post
As a general rule, Prestige Class abilities from 6-9 (and *sometimes* farther, on a case-by-case basis) can be converted into "prestige" feat chains without significantly impacting balance.
 

Ry

Explorer
Wow shdwrnr... those feats are great. I haven't been able to check them all out yet but the basic idea is solid.
 

shdwrnr

First Post
I thought to myself, a villian needs to be iconic and memorable and different from all the minions in some way. I always liked PRC's because they let you do that. With only 6 levels, that's not enough to really get a lot out of them and I loathe class feature feats. I basically took the abilities that I felt defined the PRC, gave them prereqs coherent with their power level and use (and trying to maintain the original prereqs of the class itself). I tried my best to not just create a "Level 7" feat since that really defeats the whole dang purpose.
I drew inspiration from Eberon's shifter feats in that some feats get more powerful as you aquire more of that kind of feat and in that some feats are balanced by requiring additional feats of the same type.

These only took a few minutes. I could probably translate the remaning DMG PRC's in an hour or two if anyone wants ;-p
 

shdwrnr

First Post
A bug in the system

So I did the Archmage since that makes a pretty iconic antagonist. Unfortunately, I ran into a stumper that I think I've been able to fix.

[sblock=Archmage Prestige Feats]
Archmage Training [Prestige]
You have begun training as an archmage.
Prerequisite: No other prestige feats, Skill Focus (Spellcraft), Skill Focus (Knowledge (arcana), Spell Focus in at least two schools of magic, any two metamagic or item creation feats, Spellcraft 11 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 11 ranks, ability to cast 3rd-level arcane spells, character level 6th.
Benefit: The following skills become class skills for you: Concentration, Craft (alchemy), Knowledge (all skills taken individually), Profession, Search, and Spellcraft.
In addition, you gain a +1 to your caster level for every 2 prestige feats you posses.
Special: You may not gain this feat if you already possess any other prestige feats.

Arcane Fire [Prestige]
You can channel arcane spell energy into bolts of raw magical power.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, Spell Focus (evocation), character level 6th.
Benefit: By expending a spell slot of any level you may channel a bolt of pure destructive energy. This bolt is a ranged touch attack with long range (400 feet + 40 feet/caster level) that deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level plus 1d6 points of damage per level of the spell used to create the effect. For instance, a wizard with a caster level of 6 who channels a 3rd-level spell into arcane fire deals 9d6 points of damage to the target if it hits.
Special: Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 2.

Arcane Reach [Prestige]
You can cast touch spells at range.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, character level 6th.
Benefit: You may use spells with a range of touch on targets up to 30 feet away. You must make a ranged touch attack.
Special: Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 1.

Improved Arcane Reach [Prestige]
You can cast touch spells at greater range.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, Arcane Reach, character level 6th.
Benefit: You may use spells with a range of touch on targets up to 60 feet away. You must make a ranged touch attack.
Special: Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 1.

Mastery of Counterspelling [Prestige]
Spells you counter are reflected upon their caster.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, Spell Focus (abjuration), character level 6th.
Benefit: When you counterspell a spell, it is turned back upon the caster as if it were fully affected by a spell turning spell. If the spell cannot be affected by spell turning, then it is merely counterspelled.
Special: Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 1.

Mastery of Elements [Prestige]
You may alter the elemental components of spells you cast.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, Spell Focus (transmutation), character level 6th.
Benefit: You may alter an arcane spell when cast so that it utilizes a different element from the one it normally uses.
This feat can only alter a spell with the acid, cold, fire, electricity, or sonic descriptor. The spell’s casting time is unaffected. The caster decides whether to alter the spell’s energy type and chooses the new energy type when he begins casting.
Special: Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 2.

Mastery of Shaping [Prestige]
You may alter the dimensions of spells you cast.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, Spell Focus (transmutation), character level 6th.
Benefit: With this feat you can alter area and effect spells that use one of the following shapes: burst, cone, cylinder, emanation, or spread. The alteration consists of creating spaces within the spell’s area of effect that are not subject to the spell. The minimum dimension for these spaces is a 5-foot cube. Furthermore, any shapeable spells have a minimum dimension of 5 feet instead of 10 feet.
Special: Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 1.

Spell-Like Ability [Prestige]
Choose a spell you can cast. You gain that spell as a spell-like ability.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, character level 6th.
Benefit: When gaining this feat, pick any spell you know. You permanently lose one spell slot of that spell’s level but can cast it as a spell like ability twice per day. You do not use any components when casting the spell, although a spell that costs XP to cast still does so and a spell with a costly material component instead costs you 10 times that amount in XP.
Special: This feat can be taken multiple times. Its effects do not stack, each time it applies to a different spell. Learning this feat does not reduce your caster level.

Improved Spell-Like Ability [Prestige]
Choose a spell-like ability you posses. You gain additional uses of that ability.
Prerequisite: Archmage Training, Spell-Like Ability, character level 6th.
Benefit: You can use your chose spell-like ability two additional times per day.
Special: This feat can be taken multiple times. Its effects stack. Learning this feat reduces your caster level by 1.
[/sblock]

The Archmage's standard rules for checks and balances (losing spell slots) doesn't hold up well in E6 because of how finite spell slots are. I used caster levels as the balancing factor here instead since it's easily tracked and manipulated. The problem that I ran into was this: you could theoretically take archmage prestige feats forever since there's not a limit like class progression. One could just just put in a tag under each feat chain on the maximum number you can gain, but I decided to ere on the side of overall consistancy: limit prestige feats to one prestige feat per HD. So now we have a max 6 archmage prestige feats. That grants a +3 to caster level. The character is probably going to have a 4-6 caster level penalty in his feat selection which can then be offset by the Practiced Spellcaster feat (or as you guys call it "Caster Training"). You'll still wind up with a character with significant power, though the initial feat would require a character of at least level 6+4 (so we're talking 6+6 at least before you're seeing this power). Considering the lofty prereqs for the class to begin with, this feels acceptable to me.
Considering adding a few of the Red Wizard of Thay's abilities to the archmage list, though that would be for my own use since it's non-cannon.

Other classes are comming along slower than anticipated due to my unwillingness to just turn class features into feats.
 

Evilhalfling

Adventurer
the blackguard and assasin chains look good.

How do you get the req 11 ranks in spellcraft & kn:arcane with only six levels?
the archmage also looks overly complicated - I would be more likely to handwave villians with greater magical power. I don't think e6 works well for archmage abilities.

Shadowdancer: HiPs has way to many problems to add to the game.
Loremaster: the only good ability is bardic lore with out having to sing. The rest is just minor benifts and the prestige of the title.
Thaumaturge: Celestial compaion as a feat? already exists.
Others:
Horizenwalkers: might be a better feat chain then a class. a feat with prequs for each earthly terrain.
Red wizards- I cant remeber, I dont have a similar organization in my world, so they don't come up.
 

Ry

Explorer
Evilhalfling, you're running an E6 game, right? Care to share your thoughts on how the level breakdown in the population works?
 

Evilhalfling

Adventurer
nope its just a thought experiment for me (sigh) I got little buy-in from my players yet, and Im rotating of of the DM chair when the current game ends.
When I come back we may be discussing a possible 4e switch. perhaps there would be time for a E6 minigame in between?

The demographics of my current game is more or less capped at the DMG's Large city, even if the population is higher. People like rulers, univeristy/guild heads and high priests can reach 9th level with out being active adventurers, after that they get histories and fame for past adventures. Cities also have higher level characters based on reputation. With martial, academic and corrupt being the reputations three primary cities in the area.

PCs are 8th and are starting to become well known, although in the shadow of a teleporting, army stopping, Lich slaying party of NPCs - although the PCs are convinced that they are actually evil and trying to end the world.

They also have heard of 2 other groups that they accurately consider lightweights.
 
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pallen

First Post
Re: Capstone feats

It seems odd to me that the cleric capstone feats have requirements in addition to just "Cleric 6" when no other class-specific capstone feat does.
 

PoeticJustice

First Post
I'm currently running an E6 game.
My players said it sounded like a fun variant, and I was intrigued with the idea.

Despite that, there have been a few snags. Spells of level 4 or higher are sorely missed, and I do pine to make use of the hundreds of prestige classes I've accumulated.

Also, the DM first needs to decide exactly how hard it is for an NPC to get to level 6. In my campaign, it's a little like WoW: getting there is hard, but enough make it, and once you do there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done.

We're currently at level 3. The campaign is going well, and I'm compiling a document with most of the good feats I want accessible to my players.
 

alan

First Post
Looking over the E6 rules and checking out some of the prestige class conversion above, I have a quick question / note. As it currently stands, the only way to increase a skill after reaching level 6 is to take the "Skill Focus" feat, as well as the various "+2 to two skills" feats - correct?

Would it be too much to give out one skill point and one feat every 5,000 XP once above 6th level?
 

Imp

First Post
Complete Adventurer, Open Minded, adds 5 skill points. Suddenly very very useful!

If you want to get past the skill point cap, yeah, you're looking at Skill Focus, etc.
 

alan said:
Would it be too much to give out one skill point and one feat every 5,000 XP once above 6th level?
That's an interesting idea.

Makes me think of giving out a skill point every 1,000 XP and then letting characters buy feats for 5 skill points.
 

shdwrnr

First Post
Evilhalfling said:
How do you get the req 11 ranks in spellcraft & kn:arcane with only six levels?
the archmage also looks overly complicated - I would be more likely to handwave villians with greater magical power. I don't think e6 works well for archmage abilities.
come up.

One of the capstone feats posted by Ry (and bastardized my me for clarification and format consitancy):
Skill Beyond Your Years [General]
Prerequisite: Character level 6th.
Benefit: Pick a class skill. Your max ranks in that skill becomes character level +5.
Normal: Your max ranks in a class skill are character level +3
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack, each time you apply this feat to a different class skill.

The way I made the feats was just so the archmage didn't have to lose their precious spell slots. Those abilities as writen would burn a 6th level wizard dry before you could gain any real power, and without spell slots, what's the point anymore?

pallen said:
It seems odd to me that the cleric capstone feats have requirements in addition to just "Cleric 6" when no other class-specific capstone feat does.

Most of the other capstone feats are class abilities already possessed by those classes at later levle or, like the paladin capstone, from a variant rule. The cleric capstone was probably added simply so the cleric isn't left out and is not an ability a cleric would normally be able to acquire.
I felt that they were backwards myself so I flipped them for my own use. IMO most clerics would get the domain power and forget the spell list, so my players would have to get the spell list first. (That and I think the domain power is much more powerful than 3 new spells).
 
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PoeticJustice

First Post
shdwrnr said:
One of the capstone feats posted by Ry (and bastardized my me for clarification and format consitancy):
Skill Beyond Your Years [General]
Prerequisite: Character level 6th.
Benefit: Pick a class skill. Your max ranks in that skill becomes character level +5.
Normal: Your max ranks in a class skill are character level +3
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack, each time you apply this feat to a different class skill.

BTW, A player in my campaign has brought it to my attention that a lot of feats have prerequisite: X skill 12 ranks. If Skill Beyond Your Years could be bumped up to character level +6, then a lot of new options could be explored.
 

shdwrnr

First Post
PoeticJustice said:
BTW, A player in my campaign has brought it to my attention that a lot of feats have prerequisite: X skill 12 ranks. If Skill Beyond Your Years could be bumped up to character level +6, then a lot of new options could be explored.

Skill Beyond Your Years is Ry's brainchild. Not mine. What feats are you describing btw?
 

Grimstaff

Explorer
Still toying around with the idea of running E6 for my upcoming campaign. I'm happy with my fix for spell levels, but having a little trouble with the exp progression. With 6th lvl representing the pinnacle of success, it seems to arrive a bit too soon for my tastes, in as little as 12-15 sessions. Simply increasing the xp required to gain a level seems like it may lead to some annoyingly long stretches for goal-oriented players.

One thought I had was to increase xp requirements, but give out a bonus feat "in between" levels, as it were, and they should take 6 months or so of sessions to reach "epic" levels. As such, my progression chart would look something like this:
0xp 1st lvl
1000xp bonus feat
2000xp 2nd lvl
4000xp bonus feat
6000xp 3rd lvl
9000xp bonus feat
12000xp 4th lvl
16000xp bonus feat
20000xp 5th lvl
25000xp bonus feat
30000xp 6th lvl
+bonus feat each additional 5k xp

My hope is that this justifies the 6th lvl npcs in a my campaign being older than 18 or so ;-) and that it stretches out these fun low levels without too big of a gap between rewards.

My big concern is: would, say, the 3rd lvl PC with 3 bonus feats be too unbalancing? It seems less powerful than gestalt at first glance, but then I have yet to playtest this.

Any thoughts?
 

PoeticJustice

First Post
shdwrnr said:
Skill Beyond Your Years is Ry's brainchild. Not mine. What feats are you describing btw?

In reference to skill beyond your years, it would allow greater dragonmarks as well as a lot of skill based feats.
 

Turanil

First Post
PoeticJustice said:
I'm currently running an E6 game.
My players said it sounded like a fun variant, and I was intrigued with the idea.

Despite that, there have been a few snags. Spells of level 4 or higher are sorely missed, and I do pine to make use of the hundreds of prestige classes I've accumulated.
I thought the same. Personally, I would do E7. Just one level more won't really disrupt the concept, and allows wizards to get 4th level spells (1 to 3 at best) while sorcerers remain at 3rd level spells. Also, with E7, still only warrior classes eventually get an additional attack (at level 6 and 7).

For prestige classes, I am for doing this: allow a prestige class to be taken upon reaching the 3rd level. Use the alternate roleplaying method outlined in Unearthed Arcana, where character must succeed a peculiar mission/adventure to be inducted into the special training of the class. With this method and E7, you can gain 5 levels of prestige classes, and often the interesting features of prestige classes are found within the first 5, the subsequent levels being only improvements on those...
 

Ry

Explorer
shdwrnr said:
Skill Beyond Your Years is Ry's brainchild. Not mine. What feats are you describing btw?

I think there's a bunch of ones in Eberron (dragomarks). SKill beyond your years is actually Phil Reed (from 101 Feats).
 

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