How does E6 (or E8 or E10) fare in the longer term?

[Quartz]

Has anyone been playing E6 / E8 / E10 for a decent time? How does it fare in the longer term, when you've got an extra 20 or 50 or 100 feats?

 

[Verdande]

This seems like an unfair question, to be honest, akin to asking people how D&D fares past 30th level.

But it's probably fine. After a certain point, your character would have all sorts of tertiary skills and abilities and stuff, and that's more or less what would happen anyways. But when you play for such absurdly long periods of time, you're only putting off the power curve instead of negating it.

I believe the author said that under E6, that a level 6 character plus 5 or so feats was similar to a level 7 character, and so on. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was similar to that.

 

[Aus_Snow]

We found it works just fine. Perhaps some PCs would have ended up around level. . . 12 or so (?) had they been leveling beyond 7th - I was using a 7-level variant, with a bunch of house rules, just so that's clear. But very similar to e6, in many ways.

Depends on your players. A lot. If they're chronic powergamers / "level-junkies" or whatever terms might apply, you'll run into problems. But if they're anything like the kinds of people I prefer to game with, system is a means to an end, rather than. . . yeah.

 

[Celebrim]

Has anyone been playing E6 / E8 / E10 for a decent time? How does it fare in the longer term, when you've got an extra 20 or 50 or 100 feats?

I don't see a reason why it wouldn't fare well, however, I think that the extreme case of 100 more feats is highly unlikely. Given the temperment and desires evidenced by the E6 rules, I think that an E6 game that went until the PC's had 100 or so feats would take at least 500+ gaming hours (say 100 5 hour plus gaming sessions). In my experience with prior campaigns, by that point you'll want to at least temporarily retire the characters and/or system and try something else before you get that far. That's a tremendous amount of gaming, and my guess is that at some point E6 gamers more than any other group would definately see retiring the characters and starting over as the obvious thing to do after a while. Leveling for its own sake is obviously not something that attracts you to E6.

I don't particularly think there would be alot of balance issues. The biggest issue I can see facing in that situation is that so many feats would apply circumstantial modifiers that it would be onerous to remember what alll you can do and what applies in a particular situation. However, that's just a feature of 'high level' gaming generally, and not a problem unique to E6.

 

[Quartz]

I don't see a reason why it wouldn't fare well, however, I think that the extreme case of 100 more feats is highly unlikely.

Well yes, it was hyperbole. But IIRC the average campaign lasts 18 months. So at 1 feat per week, that would be 78 feats. Thus 100 feats is on the cards for longer campaigns.

I was thinking that one could ameliorate the issue by allowing some Epic Feats at double the cost - primarily the stat boosters, Epic Skill Focus and Epic Spellcasting. These would be of more interest to the spellcasters and help balance them against the normally weaker fighter-types.

 

[HoboGod]

I also imagine that if you've gotten enough XP for that many feats, the monsters are monsters of a large enough CR that you're probably dumping many of those feats into toughness and ability advancement. The problem, however, is that now you're killing monsters which rake up enough experience that you're giving your players multiple feats per game and they're turning into beefy monsters as well.

How does E6/E8/E10 fare at epic levels? It fares just as well as epic levels. If you want to throw a challenge at them, it requires some trial and error to determine the true ECL they can handle.

 

[radmod]

I really like the idea of the E campaigns. It almost feels like the books we read. In those you rarely see the inexperienced PC become the uber-God-like PC. I just wish I could convince someone to do it.
I, obviously, haven't done it nor do I truly know much about it, but I would think it would be great, even in the long run. After all, while you gain feats quicker in E than levels in D&D, leveling in standard D&D makes you far more powerful, doesn't it? Also, some feats that you would like to have in D&D but don't take in favor of more optimized feats, you can now take. Sort of rounds out a character, IMO.

 

[Celebrim]

Well yes, it was hyperbole. But IIRC the average campaign lasts 18 months.

I don't play E6, but I'm highly sympathetic to its aims and play in a style I think most E6 DM's would recognize.

My current campaign is now at 10 5 hour sessions. We play roughly every two weeks, so we are about 5 months into the game real life. The characters are 2nd level (and about 1/2 to third). At the current rate, I expect after 18 months of gaming to be 6th or 7th level. We'd barely be 'epic' in an E6 game. If we were younger, we might play every week. In 18 months playing every week we might make it to 10th or 12th level, or perhaps in E6 something like 6th level plus 12 or 15 feats.

While 100 feats is in theory possible, I think in practice most E6 groups will finish their main story lines, retire their PC's, and make new characters before they get over 30 extra feats.

This would be of more interest to the spellcasters and help balance them against the normally weaker fighter-types.

Huh? I thought much of the point of E6/E8/E10 was to play in the 'heroic' 'sweet spot' of D&D (generally seen as roughly 3rd-8th level) where non-casters and casters were well balanced. I don't play E6 so I'm not familiar with all of its complexities, but are you saying that E6 spellcasters are much stronger than E6 'fighter types'?

 

[Quartz]

I don't play E6 so I'm not familiar with all of its complexities, but are you saying that E6 spellcasters are much stronger than E6 'fighter types'?

Oh yes. Consider the item creation feats, particularly Craft Wand. Now consider a mage with a bandoleer of wands. Normally this wouldn't be a problem because the mage would be a level or two behind the fighter-types because of the XP spent on item creation, but under E6, he's only a feat or three behind, because the levelling is capped at 6.