E6 Success Stories?

[JimboG]

I've heard about E6 for a long time but never bothered to type it into Google to find out specifically, and now that I recently have I think I may be in love. I've always had a problem with the power of characters after level 10 or so, and always found the first gritty 8 or so levels to be the most fun and interesting. Now, after discovering E6, I'm really interested in giving it a try using Pathfinder rules, but I have a limited amount of time to play and a very limited number of people to play with, so if I'm going to try to convince them to try it out I need to know it works.

With that being said, what experiences have you had with E6 that you enjoyed? What experiences did you hate? I'd like to know everyone's opinions of it, and how much they think it does or doesn't work, and what they like and don't like about it. So, tell me your stories, and feel free to throw at me whatever advice you think I may need to try and get a campaign off on the best foot possible!

[Tvtyrant]

I DMed an E6 campaign from level 1 to completion. We play a pretty high power version of 3.5 (stats are 18, 16, 14, 14, 12, 10) and you could reduce LA via stats and then buy back the stats with LA buy off (so if you had an LA of +1 you would reduce each stat by 2, but then you would regain the normal stats at level 3 when it was less of a big deal, and you could buy off 2 LA by level 6. Higher than 2 and you had to buy back your stats by swapping epic feats.)

The group liked it, and we had a thrilling conclusion to the campaign. This biggest issue for our group was that one of the characters was a Goliath Fighter/Barbarian who ended up being far more powerful than the other characters, who all played Gish types and were not really experienced with control spells.

The second largest issue we had was that my group really prefers scripted plot lines, and when they went out into the wild to explore they quickly got bored of it.

[Crake]

I DMed an e6 game from 1-6 with i think 3-4 feats ontop for about 6 months straight. Then the plot opened up the players to a non-e6 area, and they started leveling beyond that, so kudos to them. It was pretty fun for everyone (at least.. they said it was, and I'd like to think they were telling the truth), but I think part of the reason why it was so effective was because the game was a survival horror game, so e6 was a good way to keep the players low and scareable, while still allowing them to deal with the plot, so ymmv for other kinds of games.

[JimboG]

I'm a pretty traditional type of guy and I don't like overly complicated or unfamiliar classes and races, so the options available are likely to be pretty standard, with the addition of some of the extra base classes and races as well. Nothing crazy though. No Level-Adjusted Centaur Barbarians and stuff like that. Been down that road before, and in my opinion it leads to a lot of headache and awkward situations more often than not.

[HammeredWharf]

It's a good system, but your whole group has to like the idea behind it. I think my group wouldn't be particularly fond of it.