e6: Balanced or No?

[GreatWyrmGold]

First: I'm pretty sure this counts as a homebrew system, so I'm putting it here. If a mod thinks it's better elsewhere, one can move it; if someone else thinks so, they can ask a mod to move it. I'm just using my best judgement.

Over on the Bay12 forums (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=128501.0), we're planning a game of D&D. The subject of a variation of 3.5 called e6 came up. The way it was explained is, 6th level and up is considered epic, and past that characters gain feats every 5,000 XP rather than gaining levels. This was supposed to help game balance, as well as making superhuman enemies continue to seem superhuman. I felt that it kept classes from getting some of their cooler and/or more iconic abilities that come in the other 15 levels without really addressing the core balancing issues.

I was curious as to the Playground's feelings on such a system. Does it meet its goals of making the game balanced? Are my fears valid? Has anyone actually played e6 before?

[Yora]

The primary goal of E6 is to be a quick and dirty modification to the existing game to keep the maximum spell level, attack bonuses, hit points, and so on at a relatively moderate level while still allowing for continued character advancement. Improving balance is only a welcome side effect.

It doesn't really fix anything, but instead just makes a huge number of unbalanced elements never appear in the game.

E6 is only considered more balanced because 6th level in general is considered to be less imbalanced than 12th or 18th level.

[Yogibear41]

Never actually played an e6 game but really want to, from what I've read I think it fixes balance to an extent. Clerics and Druids are probably still going to be pretty high up there. But I think it definantly tones down arcane casters.


I'm actually working on a homebrew version of an e6 game that I may DM one day, in the custom rules I made I think I'm going to limit druids to either the shapechange or the swift and deadly hunter acf, I think that helps a little bit. Considering a 6th level druid wildshaping could definantly be a better fighter than an actual fighter limiting him to the shapechange version at least guarantees that if he wants to be good at combat he can't completely dump his physical attribute scores, in addition he can't gain a multitude of natural attacks and is essentially limited to just biting. And althought he does gain unlimited flight more or less he is unable to cast spells while flying which is a big nerf IMO.

Banning DMM more or less fixes clerics in e6 too, at least that would be my opinion.


heres a link to some of the homebrew rules I have come up with feel free to take a look at them a couple of things in there are definantly campaign setting relative though.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291771

[Shpadoinkle]

It's not perfectly balanced, but it IS a lot more balanced than going beyond level 6. Casters get third level spells, which are solid but not super-awesome or gamebreaking, and melee characters get a second attack.