Yet Another E6 Variant

[Coplantor]

This is something I thought up recently, I dont know about you guys, but most of the time, I like to start somewhat weak, gain power with time and being able to look back and say: "Lo, how little awesome I was compared to how much I rock right now".

And there'a certain magic about leveling up. E6 let's you become more poweful while letting you have "crap! The blue guys! Let's get out of here" moments.

A lot of people already use the "Go up to level 6 and start gestalting on a new class". I'm going on from that E6 variant and a few homebrew.

On making a new character

You start the game as normal with the following changes

You have extra two skill points per level and 8 extra skill points at character creation
You have either 1 or 2 extra feats depending on the DMs mood
You start as an NPC class


Yes, with an NPC class, Warrior, Expert or Aristocrat, depending on the ammount of magic on the setting you can even go for adept or the Eberron one. You gain feats at every even level an a stat increase at levels 3 and 6 (consider banning increasing the same stat three times in a row, declaring a stat cap or that after an X number is achieved, you need to allocate two stats increases in order to actually go up one point).

On getting to a new class

When you start a new class you get access to the classes on the next tier (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0). Your first HD is not rolled, you get full hit points but if you go from warrior to figther, you get only 2 hit points since you went from d8 to d10. The same for the other 5 levels, if you roll higher than in your previous class, you get to add the diference to your hp total.

You dont get (skill points + in bonus)x4 when you go back to lvl 1, you get only skill points + int bonus, nor do you get the lvl 1 feat, you got one when you were 6th level and you'll get another one on your new 2nd level! Dont be a feat hog you silly you!

On PrC's

Every two complete gestalts, you can start leveling in a PrC though the DM should be careful of wich PrC are allowed, remember that it must be of similar relative power of the classes you are allowed to take.

On Lvl Adjustment

Who wants to gets stucked as a 1st level character for half the campaign? Not me, no no.

I assume that we are all grown ups here and when I say that all races with LA and templates get it reduced by one we wont get a sudden demographic explotion of tieflings, by the way, you substract 1 from the LA AFTER applying templates, so no 2 points reduction for you mister silly person you.

Wait, you still want to reduce your LA? OK, here I have some solutions for you, you can reduce it by another point by, and hear me well, starting as a commoner! Yay! Also, scratch that part were outsiders are proficient with every weapon and armor.

NOTE:
I love kobolds, you love kobolds we love kobolds.
Kobolds kobolds kobolds kobolds kobolds kobolds kobolds MUSHROOM MUSHROOM!
They are sort of the underdog here, if LA -1 would be an actual thing and not a typo on a dragon magazine these guys totally deserve it. So, for player characters only, and those who REALLY want it, kobolds can start with a low tier PC class (well, one that is at least a bit stronger than the basic NPC classes)

A variant variant of a variant similar to a variant
As we all know, there is also the E8, it also applies here, but E6 people can live in peace with E8 people in the same game. Though E8 people are different since the day they were born, they are destined to something greater. Their skill rank cap is 11, and with the feat that extends the cap to lvl + 5 they can get to 13 ranks, some pretty PrCs have X skill at 13 ranks as a preq, so an E8 character can get levels on things like exemplar, or sublime chord. Remember wen I said that the DM should be very careful when allowing PrC? Guess wich of the two I just nmed should be banned....
Come on...
You can do it...
YES! The sublime chord. If the uber casters are throwing 3rd or 4th level spells there is no freaking way a character should get 9th level ones.
The exemplar guy thoug, he gets dex bonus + Int bonus + misc bonuses to initiaive, needless to say, he will be very very fast, at the end of a campaign this guys should be ascended to demigods or get their own nice cottage by the sea of burning souls from where they command their armies of demons, I dont know, be creative with it.

tl;dr:
I made another variant of E6, you gestalt after reaching 6th level, every 3rd class can be a PrC, every new class column gets access to higher tier classes. You start with an NPC class, you can reduce your LA by 1 if you start as a commoner. There can be E8 people but those are blessed by the powers that be.
Kobolds are awesome.

And let the comments be heard!

[Fostire]

This is awesome!
It reminds me a lot of disgaea's reincarnation system.

[Coplantor]

This is awesome!
It reminds me a lot of disgaea's reincarnation system.

I was actually going to homebrew a reincarnation system for those times you just want to keep playing your old character but you miss being a kind of weakling.

[Morph Bark]

Personally, I'd just do away with the limitations of the NPC class thing and only a PrC level every 3 levels, but have caster level and similar things not go higher than 8.

Also, I don't think E6 characters and E8 characters really should exist together in the same world - at least if they're both PCs. DMs can do wacky stuff no problem as long as it's nothing super cheesy that irks the players and makes the group fall apart.

[Coplantor]

Personally, I'd just do away with the limitations of the NPC class thing and only a PrC level every 3 levels, but have caster level and similar things not go higher than 8.

Also, I don't think E6 characters and E8 characters really should exist together in the same world - at least if they're both PCs. DMs can do wacky stuff no problem as long as it's nothing super cheesy that irks the players and makes the group fall apart.

Oh, maybe I wasn't clear, a party should be only E6 or only E8 not a combination of both. I meant that in the same game world there can be characters of both kinds.

And yeah, I agree with the casters part, that's why I say that PrC like sublime chord should be banned. The strongest of wizards should be casting 4th level spells.

[Thinker]

On making a new character



You start the game as normal with the following changes

You have extra two skill points per level and 8 extra skill points at character creation
You have either 1 or 2 extra feats depending on the DMs mood
You start as an NPC class


Yes, with an NPC class, Warrior, Expert or Aristocrat, depending on the ammount of magic on the setting you can even go for adept or the Eberron one. You gain feats at every even level an a stat increase at levels 3 and 6 (consider banning increasing the same stat three times in a row, declaring a stat cap or that after an X number is achieved, you need to allocate two stats increases in order to actually go up one point).


More skill points is always nice. An alternative could be to simply merge some of the related skills, i.e. Hide + Move Silently = Stealth.
Why not make this a set number if you're making a codified ruleset?
Starting as NPC is fine, but I'd limit it to Expert or Warrior only. Adept is significantly more powerful than either and Aristocrat tends to get a very large boost to starting cash.
I don't know why you're increasing feats by this much in an E6 rule set. You typically get a lot of feats as-is. You may also consider making a special class of feats (like Skill Focus and it's ilk) that players can take at even levels if you really want more variety.
A hard cap on abilities would probably work better than tracking how many times you have raised a single one. A soft cap could work, too where your highest ability may not be X higher (maybe 12?) higher than your lowest one.



On getting to a new class



When you start a new class you get access to the classes on the next tier (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0). Your first HD is not rolled, you get full hit points but if you go from warrior to figther, you get only 2 hit points since you went from d8 to d10. The same for the other 5 levels, if you roll higher than in your previous class, you get to add the diference to your hp total.

You dont get (skill points + in bonus)x4 when you go back to lvl 1, you get only skill points + int bonus, nor do you get the lvl 1 feat, you got one when you were 6th level and you'll get another one on your new 2nd level! Dont be a feat hog you silly you!

The tier system is fine, but unless you are playing a campaign where you level up frequently, it may be a while before you can actually get to interesting choices.
Tracking how much HP you rolled at each level is a nuisance. I recommend only allowing the average for hit dice and if that would increase with the new class, then increase it (still gaining max HP at level 1).
So does this new "gestalt" replace being able to spend XP on feats?



On PrC's



Every two complete gestalts, you can start leveling in a PrC though the DM should be careful of wich PrC are allowed, remember that it must be of similar relative power of the classes you are allowed to take.
This could get complicated to track. Why not just go with the PrC feat chains as described in the regular E6 rules?


On Lvl Adjustment



Who wants to gets stucked as a 1st level character for half the campaign? Not me, no no.

I assume that we are all grown ups here and when I say that all races with LA and templates get it reduced by one we wont get a sudden demographic explotion of tieflings, by the way, you substract 1 from the LA AFTER applying templates, so no 2 points reduction for you mister silly person you.

Wait, you still want to reduce your LA? OK, here I have some solutions for you, you can reduce it by another point by, and hear me well, starting as a commoner! Yay! Also, scratch that part were outsiders are proficient with every weapon and armor.
E6 has built in rules to handle LA. They work well enough. If you really like Kobolds, give them a bonus feat or make them all dragonwraught to make them better.


A variant variant of a variant similar to a variant



As we all know, there is also the E8, it also applies here, but E6 people can live in peace with E8 people in the same game. Though E8 people are different since the day they were born, they are destined to something greater. Their skill rank cap is 11, and with the feat that extends the cap to lvl + 5 they can get to 13 ranks, some pretty PrCs have X skill at 13 ranks as a preq, so an E8 character can get levels on things like exemplar, or sublime chord. Remember wen I said that the DM should be very careful when allowing PrC? Guess wich of the two I just nmed should be banned....
Come on...
You can do it...
YES! The sublime chord. If the uber casters are throwing 3rd or 4th level spells there is no freaking way a character should get 9th level ones.
The exemplar guy thoug, he gets dex bonus + Int bonus + misc bonuses to initiaive, needless to say, he will be very very fast, at the end of a campaign this guys should be ascended to demigods or get their own nice cottage by the sea of burning souls from where they command their armies of demons, I dont know, be creative with it.
Feat chains instead of PrC's work to solve this issue. You can allow Sublime Chords with feat chains that won't break the game. You could also allow E8 as a chain of feats. The first one is only available at level 6 and allows you to advance to level 7 after you have your first Gestalt. The second is available at level 7 after you have your second Gestalt.


You did not explain how you are going to handle spending XP on things like feats.

[Coplantor]

Answering Thinker.

On making a new character

More skill points is always nice. An alternative could be to simply merge some of the related skills, i.e. Hide + Move Silently = Stealth. Why not make this a set number if you're making a codified ruleset? Starting as NPC is fine, but I'd limit it to Expert or Warrior only. Adept is significantly more powerful than either and Aristocrat tends to get a very large boost to starting cash. I don't know why you're increasing feats by this much in an E6 rule set. You typically get a lot of feats as-is. You may also consider making a special class of feats (like Skill Focus and it's ilk) that players can take at even levels if you really want more variety. A hard cap on abilities would probably work better than tracking how many times you have raised a single one. A soft cap could work, too where your highest ability may not be X higher (maybe 12?) higher than your lowest one.

A matter of taste actually, I like the stealth skills as separate skills.
As I said on my OP, adept is allowed only if the DM says so.
Also, the trade Xp for feats would be gone, you get them every time you get to an even level on each of your gestalts. Every 5000xp, instead of gaining a new feat you gain a new level on a different class.
Caps are optional, so I dont really know what to do, maybe you can increase your stats up to 1.5 times it's original value or as you said, your highest one cannot be more than 12 points above your lowest one.

On getting to a new class

[LIST]
The tier system is fine, but unless you are playing a campaign where you level up frequently, it may be a while before you can actually get to interesting choices.
Tracking how much HP you rolled at each level is a nuisance. I recommend only allowing the average for hit dice and if that would increase with the new class, then increase it (still gaining max HP at level 1).
So does this new "gestalt" replace being able to spend XP on feats?

Yes, it might take a while, though it's not necessary to start that low. The real point of this is to incorporate the tier system into the game mechanics, you can start on a different tier if you fel like and trade LA for lower tiers. I said NPC classes because I like to start like crap.

On the tracking hp thing, it's only 6 levels (5 considering that you get full hp at level 1), it shouldn't be that hard. But I must admit that I also considered using averages. (I like rolling dice :smalltongue:)

And yes, gestalting replaces feats.

On PrC's

This could get complicated to track. Why not just go with the PrC feat chains as described in the regular E6 rules?

Cause I'm too lazy to transform other PrCs into feats :smalltongue:

On Level adjustment

E6 has built in rules to handle LA. They work well enough. If you really like Kobolds, give them a bonus feat or make them all dragonwraught to make them better.

I totally forgot about that, yeah, that could do the trick, maybe a combination between worse point buy and going commoner.

A variant variant of a variant similar to a variant

Feat chains instead of PrC's work to solve this issue. You can allow Sublime Chords with feat chains that won't break the game. You could also allow E8 as a chain of feats. The first one is only available at level 6 and allows you to advance to level 7 after you have your first Gestalt. The second is available at level 7 after you have your second Gestalt.

Yes, but I wanted the E8 people to be like the chosen ones from birth. Very very special, you either are or you are not.

[Thinker]

On making a new character



A matter of taste actually, I like the stealth skills as separate skills.
As I said on my OP, adept is allowed only if the DM says so.
Also, the trade Xp for feats would be gone, you get them every time you get to an even level on each of your gestalts. Every 5000xp, instead of gaining a new feat you gain a new level on a different class.
Caps are optional, so I dont really know what to do, maybe you can increase your stats up to 1.5 times it's original value or as you said, your highest one cannot be more than 12 points above your lowest one.

I'm generally in favor of reducing the number of skills and modifying the skill economy in general. Your approach is just as valid and I was merely wondering why you chose it.
I don't think you should rule out adept entirely. You should simply make it available upon reaching the appropriate tier (tier 4) and expert is tier 5, while warrior, commoner, and aristocrat are tier 6. Since you seem to equate 1 LA = 1 tier of value, you could simply use the E6 LA baseline and apply it to starting with higher tiers.
So you are removing gaining feats via XP altogether in favor of a never-ending cycle of gestalt. This is an interesting approach.
For options you should establish a baseline first, then list optional styles separately. Without a baseline you cannot establish what is "normal" in this scenario.



On getting to a new class



Yes, it might take a while, though it's not necessary to start that low. The real point of this is to incorporate the tier system into the game mechanics, you can start on a different tier if you fel like and trade LA for lower tiers. I said NPC classes because I like to start like crap.

On the tracking hp thing, it's only 6 levels (5 considering that you get full hp at level 1), it shouldn't be that hard. But I must admit that I also considered using averages. (I like rolling dice :smalltongue:)

And yes, gestalting replaces feats.
The HP thing is too hard to track. What if you go Expert 6//Monk 2/Ranger 4//Fighter 2/Barbarian 2/Scout 2//Marshall 3/Bard 3? Where do you stand on HP? Even using an averaging system this gets complicated pretty quickly. You would be better off basing HP off of Con, Level, and maybe "Gestalt Level" (the number of extra gestalts you have).



On PrC's



Cause I'm too lazy to transform other PrCs into feats :smalltongue:
Fair enough and I hadn't realized you intended to fully remove gaining feats via XP.


On Level adjustment



I totally forgot about that, yeah, that could do the trick, maybe a combination between worse point buy and going commoner.
To expand on an earlier idea, you could equate tier, LA, and the point scale from the regular E6 rules. That would streamline the whole approach.


A variant variant of a variant similar to a variant



Yes, but I wanted the E8 people to be like the chosen ones from birth. Very very special, you either are or you are not.
That's fine. I thought you intended to have E8 and E6 people in the same game. Again, distill your optional rules from the regular rules. If you put this into a pdf, make the optional rules as sidebars that are easily distinguished from the way things normally are.

[Coplantor]

On making a new character

I'm generally in favor of reducing the number of skills and modifying the skill economy in general. Your approach is just as valid and I was merely wondering why you chose it.
I don't think you should rule out adept entirely. You should simply make it available upon reaching the appropriate tier (tier 4) and expert is tier 5, while warrior, commoner, and aristocrat are tier 6. Since you seem to equate 1 LA = 1 tier of value, you could simply use the E6 LA baseline and apply it to starting with higher tiers.
So you are removing gaining feats via XP altogether in favor of a never-ending cycle of gestalt. This is an interesting approach.
For options you should establish a baseline first, then list optional styles separately. Without a baseline you cannot establish what is "normal" in this scenario.

Well, I'm sort of somewhere in the middle, I like broad skills and then specializations. If you know Alternity, that's a system I like.

Adept is not ruled out, it's reserved for the second or third round of gestalt, hek, maybe even fourth depending on the ammount of magic the DM wants in his campaign.

Indeed, no more feats for every 5000xp after 6th level, you get a level on a new class. Also, you have to take the full 6 levels of your choosen class. Maybe after 6th level xp could be gained faster, but the E6 guy said that 5000xp was a sort of sweet spot so I wont contradict the guy befire I play test this. Why the full 6 levels? To make it easier to follow your class levels and because I'm sort of an old schooler regarding the class system.

Agee on your last point, that's exactly what I'm trying to do, thanks.:smallsmile:


On getting to a new class

The HP thing is too hard to track. What if you go Expert 6//Monk 2/Ranger 4//Fighter 2/Barbarian 2/Scout 2//Marshall 3/Bard 3? Where do you stand on HP? Even using an averaging system this gets complicated pretty quickly. You would be better off basing HP off of Con, Level, and maybe "Gestalt Level" (the number of extra gestalts you have).
As I said before, you take the full 6 levels of your new class, that should make it easier to track hp. Regarding extra hp depending on you number of gestalts, I dont know, any number I can think of seems too much or too little.

On PrC's
I was thinking about removing the 1 PrC per 3 gestalts and just allow any PrC after your second gestalt is over, though the PRESTIGE aspect should be reminded to the players.