E6 idea

[questionmark693]

So I'm running an E6 campaign (3.5) and I was thinking. What if, instead of just getting feats every 5k experience, I could allow my players to take a class feature from another class instead? The idea is to have them skip a feat selection, so it in effect costs two feats to do this.
None of my players really even know what optimization is, so I'm not worried about game breaking combos, except by accident or something, and is have to approve all such choices. What are your thoughts?

[Xervous]

depending on what material the players have access to, this will either be no big deal, or could explode into silliness if the right unusual conditions are met.

so long as you don't allow people to pick up spellcasting or stuff like pounce, it shouldn't be too wacky.

[questionmark693]

Spellcasting is expressly prohibited in this, as that would easily get way to crazy. But they've got access to most of 3.x, if not all of it.

[NinjaInTheRye]

Gestalt e6 is a pretty popular variant, so I can't imagine that this would cause much of a problem as it's just a weaker version of that.

I don't see much reason to prohibit spell casting personally.

[questionmark693]

Not prohibit spellcasting, I take no issue with spellcasters. I just don't want them to say "And for my class feature I get after 10k experience points, I choose spellcasting". They'd need to take a spellcasting class to begin with.

[NinjaInTheRye]

Not prohibit spellcasting, I take no issue with spellcasters. I just don't want them to say "And for my class feature I get after 10k experience points, I choose spellcasting". They'd need to take a spellcasting class to begin with.

I understood that part, I was saying that I don't see much reason to prohibit A Fighter 6 from gaining, say, first level Wizard Spell Casting at the cost of two eFeats.

I feel that, by keeping spell casting off limits you're giving casters the ability to pick and choose from Martial's primary class features but denying Martial classes the same chance with the caster's primary abilities.

But that's your call, I don't think it's going to turn the game on its ear either way.

[questionmark693]

Oh...that's actually super accurate. I'll have to figure out how to word it though, so I don't have them getting ninth level spells through some kind of loophole.

[ArcturusV]

The easy solution, and what I would do, is say something like:

"Instead of a feat, you may gain a class feature of any class you qualify for (Base class or PrCs). You may never gain more than 1 level of a given class's spell casting ability with this ability. For purposes of determining ability's, your class level is considered to be 1. You cannot ever choose "+1 of existing spellcasting" as a feature to take. You must choose a feature from your given class levels +1. You must qualify for any classes you take abilities from.

e.g.: You gain 10k XP, you decide to gain a Cleric's First level spellcasting. At 15k XP, you can gain another class feature, however you could not gain A cleric's Spellcasting once more.

e.g: As a Human Wizard 6, you cannot take the Human Paragon's third level "+2 to any stat" ability."

Or something in that spirit. Probably not going to break the game if your Fighter 2/Ranger 2/Barb 2 has first level Cleric casting and first level Druid Casting at 15k XP. Probably would break the game if you let the guy with Cleric 6 keep taking "+1 to existing spellcasting" ever 5 K.