Breaking E6

[Tyndmyr]

So, what are the best ways the shatter this "balanced" system with optimization?

Obviously, dragonwrought kobold cheese for lots and lots of epic feats is amusing...epic toughness alone is, well, epic. However, good as this is for a base, without dubious dusk giant cheddar, you won't have access to most epic feats.

Things to keep in mind are the feats to get extra skill points, and to increase skill caps to 5+level. Note that the latter feat never bothered to limit this to class skills. This makes any PrC with requirements of 11 ranks or less accessible. Thanks to level draining, you should be able to get 5 levels of PrC. Slowly, but hey.

Necropolitan is also an obvious win.

Another custom feat, the one that allows you to have another spell prepared of the highest level you can cast is clearly awesome in conjunction with Versatile Spellcaster.

More?

[Morph Bark]

Get to level 6 and then get infected by a vampire or were of sorts. Or both.

In case of the vampire, have someone else kill the vampire for you.

But I suppose that is not perfectly legal maybe and it is situational...

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Well, now, see, it's threads like this that made E6 a necessity in the first place, really. There is such a thing as trying to play within the spirit of the game, even when there are clearly more awesome and cheesy things you could do.

Anyway - I notice your proposals aren't PHB/DMG core. I suspect that someone who is going to the trouble of running an E6 game is also going to be taking a long hard look at any splatbook material you might try to cram into the game.

If we're going to try and break E6, try doing it with only the core three books available.

[Glimbur]

It is worth trying to boost your CL so you can craft better stuff for the party. As a bonus, this should increase everyone's power level instead of just yours. I haven't done the splat book diving, but Reserve Feats seem like a good place to start... if you can convince your DM that they should apply to crafting.

[Morph Bark]

It is worth trying to boost your CL so you can craft better stuff for the party. As a bonus, this should increase everyone's power level instead of just yours.

Major Bloodline and as many casting PrCs that advance casting at level 1 as you can get? Would that work?

[Yorrin]

It is worth trying to boost your CL so you can craft better stuff for the party. As a bonus, this should increase everyone's power level instead of just yours. I haven't done the splat book diving, but Reserve Feats seem like a good place to start... if you can convince your DM that they should apply to crafting.

Obligatory CL booster link (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872350/Raising_Caster_Level)

[Calimehter]

Here's a discussion from a few months back:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141745

In my own (limited) experience, it has been caster level boosts that have been the "most broken" though they didn't really detract from the game experience much.

[Person_Man]

Incarnum is very potent in E6, in that you can continue to add soulmelds and essentia with feats.

There's also the Chosen of Evil feat: As an Immediate Action take a point of Con damage to gain an Insight bonus equal to the number of Vile feats you have (including this one) to any attack, Save, ability check, or Skill check. Since you continue to gain feats in E6 (and Vile feats in general are actually quite good), there's no reason you couldn't gain a +5 or higher bonus to any check every round.

[Darrin]

Summon Mirror Mephit/Simulacrum abuse is available around ECL 3. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, p. 208.

[gorfnab]

E6 - 1 PC party
Trapfinding Wildshaping Mystic Ranger with the feats Wild Cohort and Sword of the Arcane Order.

[Greenish]

Well, now, see, it's threads like this that made E6 a necessity in the first place, really.I thought the point of E6 was to make the game more like sword & sorcery with mere humans (and assorted races) instead of a superhero game with demigods the latter levels tend to resemble. (You fell on the rocks from terminal velocity? No biggie.)

[true_shinken]

I thought the point of E6 was to make the game more like sword & sorcery with mere humans (and assorted races) instead of a superhero game with demigods the latter levels tend to resemble. (You fell on the rocks from terminal velocity? No biggie.)

...and where do you think this thread is gonna end? Superheroes, demigods, whatever.

[Morph Bark]

...and where do you think this thread is gonna end? Superheroes, demigods, whatever.

My bet's on Batman.

[Greenish]

...and where do you think this thread is gonna end? Superheroes, demigods, whatever.Well yeah, but it weren't the optimization threads that made E6 "necessary" but the desire to play a grittier, lower powered game. After all, even level 20 commoner can do things way beyond what people in the real world (or most fantasy) can hope to achieve.

[Skorj]

What about a 3 Bard/3 Gnome Paragon? You get CL 9 for illusion spells on the Bard list - I'm not sure how abusable any of those might be, but CL9 before feats seems like a good starting point for breaking E6.

[JaronK]

I'd go with a Major Bloodline (your choice, really) Venerable Lore Drake Dragonwrought Unseelie Fey Kobold with the Greater Draconic Rite. Cast as a 9th level Sorcerer with an additional +2 caster level. Everyone next to you subtracts your charisma modifier from their saves. You get a racial (and age) +5 to Charisma. The DM's head explodes when he tries to even say what your race is. Also, you can spam Wings of Flurry at enemies at a base caster level of 12 (12d6 damage to all enemies within 30' in E6 is completely insane!). Throw in Arcane Thesis: Wings of Flurry just to be annoying.

And then cast Summon Mirror Mephit to get yourself a bunch of mini versions of you that still cast as level 5 (or 6, depending on interpretation) Sorcerers. You can make a few of these per day and they last until killed (but they can't be healed). They can spam Glitterdust and Grease and whatever else. Heck, they can even cast Summon Mirror Mephit.

There you go, E6 completely destroyed, as one player can now have an exponentially increasing army of crazy pumped up Kobolds.

JaronK

[Skorj]

I'd go with a Major Bloodline (your choice, really) Venerable Lore Drake Dragonwrought Unseelie Fey Kobold with the Greater Draconic Rite.

...

There you go, E6 completely destroyed, as one player can now have an exponentially increasing army of crazy pumped up Kobolds.

JaronK

That's certainly true, and not to take away from its brokenness, but the whole Lore Drake Dragonwrought Kobold approach is such a cliched way to break D&D that the fact that it also breaks E6 seems ... hollow.

I think it would be cool to find something that specifically breaks E6 worse than a normal game. Getting CL up to 12 or so really does strike me as what "breaking E6" is going to look like, though!

[JaronK]

That's certainly true, and not to take away from its brokenness, but the whole Lore Drake Dragonwrought Kobold approach is such a cliched way to break D&D that the fact that it also breaks E6 seems ... hollow.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious, but it works.


I think it would be cool to find something that specifically breaks E6 worse than a normal game. Getting CL up to 12 or so really does strike me as what "breaking E6" is going to look like, though!

That was what I was going for. E6 is specifically balanced by giving you caster level 6 and no higher than 3rd level spells, so 4th level spells at CL 12 is ridiculous.

JaronK

[dspeyer]

Aberration Wild Shape and Assume Supernatural Power should allow some pretty broken shenanigans. Even if the HD cap keeps sarrukhs away. For example, a Red Ethergaunt is 4hd and has a DC 13 enthrall power (there are surely ways to boost this). Now you just need a big dumb monster to enthrall. Like a psuedonatural troll (cr 21, will +5).

[Tyndmyr]

Well, now, see, it's threads like this that made E6 a necessity in the first place, really. There is such a thing as trying to play within the spirit of the game, even when there are clearly more awesome and cheesy things you could do.

Anyway - I notice your proposals aren't PHB/DMG core. I suspect that someone who is going to the trouble of running an E6 game is also going to be taking a long hard look at any splatbook material you might try to cram into the game.

If we're going to try and break E6, try doing it with only the core three books available.

Am actually in an E6 game atm. All players involved, despite still being at level 4, have schemes for how to increase their effective power after level 6 via wise feat selection, etc. All sources are allowed. While I wouldn't classify that as breaking the game, I wouldn't presume that all E6 games are core.

And as we all know, core is not more balanced. Item crafting alone is a huge bias right there. E6 is more balanced in general, yes...but it ain't perfect. It's fun to look at the loopholes.

[Tyndmyr]

That's certainly true, and not to take away from its brokenness, but the whole Lore Drake Dragonwrought Kobold approach is such a cliched way to break D&D that the fact that it also breaks E6 seems ... hollow.

True...but there are other more subtle ways to get 4th level spells. I was more interested in the other bits of the combo.

Keep in mind the power of the E6 only feats. IMO, these are likely to be critical to anything that breaks E6 more than regular D&D. For instance, permanent +2 untyped bonus to any stat. Can only be taken once per stat, but that's a sufficiently good feat that anyone will want it.

Level adjust being handled differently in E6 is also a no doubt exploitable aspect for SAD classes.

There's also

Swift Metamagic
Prerequisites: Metamagic feats (see below), Caster Level 6
Benefit: When you take this feat, select a metamagic feat. As a swift action once per day, you may apply this metamagic feat to a spell you cast with no adjustment to the level of the spell cast.
Special: You must have a number of Swift metamagic feats equal to the level increase of your chosen metamagic, minus one, to take this feat. For example, Empower Spell, which boosts the level of a spell by 2, has a prerequisite of 1 Swift feat. Split Ray, which has an increase of 1, would have no prerequisites. This feat may be taken multiple times.

Yeah. Notice the lack of limitation of taking the same metamagic repeatedly. Notice that there are no prereqs for the metamagic feats selected. The swift action issue is annoying, but it's another avenue to persisted spells. One that isn't build specific.

I now direct your attention to the epic metamagic feats Enhance spell(+4 levels) and Intensify(+7 levels). Presumably you'd start off with things like extend, fell drain, etc, with persist occupying the 8th level slot. It's slow, but allows some really stupid things, especially in conjunction with the existing 1/day no-adjust metamagic feats.

[Tyndmyr]

Also, the interaction between Epic Spell(cast a 4th level spell once per day) and Expanded Caster Stamina(extra spell slots = half your CL, limited to highest spell you can cast already) is an obvious fail.

Purely using E6 feats, it grants 4th level casting en masse, assuming you are bright enough to engage in CL boosting. Even possible in core.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The Spellhoarding template from Dragon issue 313 can be added to a dragon as the result of a mental disorder. It trades your Sorcerer spellcasting for Wizard spellcasting of equal level, as well as giving a bonus to Intelligence and granting Eschew Materials and Scribe Scroll for free. Instead of using a spellbook it writes spells on its scales, and can use them to fuel other abilities, possibly writing the same spell down multiple times to do so. It can sacrifice a scribed spell to substitute the costly material and XP components of a spell it casts. It can sacrifice a scribed spell to cast it as though from a scroll, which is as though the costly material and XP components have already been paid. Note that apart from a spellcraft check even a 1st level wizard can scribe a 9th level spell, so if this character ever found a high level spell written down it could copy it to its scales multiple times and cast it often. It also gets an ability which makes any spell it counterspells automatically transcribe onto its scales, so just countering an opponent's higher level spell or spell-like ability grants it the ability to reuse that spell as above.

A Battle Sorcerer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#sorcererVariantBattleS orcerer) gets d8 HP and 3/4 BAB, along with some extra proficiencies, in exchange for fewer sorcerer spells/day and spells known. The Stalwart Sorcerer variant in Complete Mage grants +2 HP per Sorcerer level, plus some proficiencies and Weapon Focus, in exchange for further stunting your Sorcerer spells known. Use both of these with Spellhoarding, and you would trade your stunted Sorcerer spellcasting ability for unhindered Wizard spellcasting of equal level, and still get 1d8+2+Con HP/level, 3/4 BAB, and all the proficiencies and Weapon Focus.

A Desert Kobold (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/environmentalRacialVariants.htm#desertKobolds) doesn't have a penalty to Constitution. Take Dragonwrought at 1st level and he's a dragon, ages by categories as though he were a true dragon, doesn't take aging penalties to physical stats so he can be venerable for a free +3 to Int, Wis, and Cha, and qualifies for anything a typical true dragon qualifies for. He can use the Loredrake archtype from Dragons of Eberron, to get +2 levels of Sorcerer spellcasting ability for no drawback. He can use the Greater Draconic Rite of Passage (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a) at 6th level for another +1 level of Sorcerer spellcasting ability for little investment. He can also gain the Spellhoarding template.

The result of this is a Spellhoarding Dragonwrought Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold Loredrake, Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 6, who gets 6d8+11+(6 x Con bonus) HP, +4 BAB, and ninth level Wizard spellcasting. He has no risk of ever losing his spellbook, and can cast 5th level spells. He can obtain, scribe, and cast up to 9th level spells as though from a scroll. Even without taking epic feats this is probably the most powerful character possible in E6.


There's also a way for a Dread Necromancer with Versatile Spellcaster to use metamagic shenanigans via Arcane Thesis to cast and later release two Twinned, Sanctum, (Lesser Rod of) Maximized, Split Ray, Ocular, Enervations. As a full round action he fires four rays, each of which deal eight negative levels. Only one such setup can be ready at any given time, and each costs two 3rd level spell slots, or four 2nd level spell slots, or two 2nd and one 3rd level spell slots. He should be able to have one available every encounter. Even after firing the initial four rays, he can simply cast it again the following round minus Ocular Spell to fire two rays for eight negative levels each, from a 3rd (or two 2nd) level spell slot.