New to this concept

[Kazudo]

Not sure what rock I've been living under, but I'm new to the concept of E6. Can someone explain it to me and help me understand what's so good about it?



How does it affect balance?
What major changes take place?
Is there a noticeable shift in campaign styles?
Would you recommend it to new players?
What variants of E6 are there?


Note, not an exhaustive list.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Read this (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?206323-E6-The-Game-Inside-D-amp-D), it should answer most of your questions.

[Socratov]

Read this (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?206323-E6-The-Game-Inside-D-amp-D), it should answer most of your questions.
What he said, though to throw my own 2 cp in :



Not sure what rock I've been living under, but I'm new to the concept of E6. Can someone explain it to me and help me understand what's so good about it?



How does it affect balance?
Well, the martial classes aren't as outclassed by asters as much as at higher levels. It closes the gap between caster and mundane by quite a bit. Please notice that spells are still awesome, so expect a bit of a powergap to be still there. Just a tad

What major changes take place?
REmember those long featchains your fighters and barbarians need to take to become relevant? Well, they can get them now, while the casters don't get higher level spells to stay ahead. That is pretty much the biggest change ahppening. After lvl 6 feats are the method of leveling up. This opens up a range of broader tricks for everyone since at the end of the day, you can only specialise so far before you run out of feats.

Is there a noticeable shift in campaign styles?Not that I know of. Though the real high powered campaings tend to fail and the level cap seems to favour a bit more gritty or more mundane environments.

Would you recommend it to new players? Actually, yes. It keeps the complexity of casters a bit down (less resources to track) and allows the player to pick more feats to get a feel for it. That said, it is a bit less fantastic so if you want to hook people on the game you might want to go a bit higher.

What variants of E6 are there? [well, you can play with granting templates after lvl 6 (allowing the characters some innate strength), some groups tend to homebrew PrC's into featchains (in terms of classfeatures) and others might raise the level cap beyond lvl 6 or introduce a gestalt element into the game. Some, however, just want to try bring down balors wihtout resorting to infinite loop tricks. :smallwink: Just like with regular DnD, on it's own it's not a whole lot, but if you put in the time and energy to make it something, it can be just about anything you want it to be. [quote]


Note, not an exhaustive list.

Indeed. I hope I have answered your questions, if you want you can look around in the campaign I'm currently playing: Crawling Pubs, not Dungeons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?341938-Crawling-Pubs-Not-Dungeons-IC-Thread). We are currently at lvl 3, going for E6.

In my opinion E6 gives the low level feel of believable encounters, while still giving the players somethign to look forward to when leveling up and gaining experience.

Edit: I thgink I have found the glitch: quotebreaking while in a list makes for a sad forum.

[torrasque666]

I think somehow the mention of a thread on E6 broke the forum. Its glitching out on me.

[JusticeZero]

The main difference is this:
In a normal campaign, you fight rats until you learn that they are the minions of a legion of Nasties, each one powerful enough to singlehandedly destroy the places where you saved from their armies of rats. These Nasties are gathered en masse, but stayed hidden in the shadows until now because... Well, we aren't sure really, since they vastly overpower the opposition.
After fighting through hordes of nasties, you learn that they were only a weak minion of the real threat, a vast army of Zomgs. The Zomg army has been lying in wait twiddling their thumbs waiting for the Nasties' army of trained rats to ineffectually bat the kingdom around.
After you cleave your way through thousands of Zomgs, you learn that you will have to fight the real threat, the vast army of Ickies that each can destroy a horde of Zomgs that have been biding their time on a demi plane waiting for the Zomgs to wait for the Nasties to raise an army of rats to harass the kingdom.
The Ickies are led by Cthulhu. With Wizard levels.

With E6, the kingdom is attacked by an army of scro. You bushwack a drunk scro here and there, learning their tricks and getting geared up, then take the fight to the scro head to head to fight your way to the scro warboss. Afterward, you still might have to make sure the scro hordes don't get too uppity while you deal with the next threat, because they can still hit hard if they get lined up right.

[Person_Man]

You can also consider looking at 5E. It plays very similarly to E6.

[JusticeZero]

5E didn't look playable yet. The DMG doesn't release till November, and the Basic rules has neither enemies nor XP charts nor treasure.

[Kazudo]

You can also consider looking at 5E. It plays very similarly to E6.

Actually I'm waiting until December to get going on 5E. I don't really like pregen modules, and until the core books hit my desk I don't believe I'll be fully ready to generate and run a game. My players are all still quite inexperienced, so I doubt that houseruling will be smart for the meantime.

Thank you all for your help! Any good stories about E6 that I need to hear to help me pitch the idea to my players?

[JusticeZero]

Well, the main thing is what I said above. It prevents "Bandit in daedric armor syndrome". Also, it's actually amazing how much power you can get from feats - there's a whole lot of "Extra ___" and suchlike feats that people skip because they're feat starved. When you have feats coming out your ears, those things are actually freaking amazing. Your toolkit gets to be huge. Instead of advancing by having - and facing - larger bonuses, your characters are advancing by actually climbing tiers by increasing their versatility.

[Muggins]

I'm currently gearing up for an E6 game. Granted, it's Pathfinder rather than 3.5e, but the two have the same feel.

Epic 6 beheads the issue of Linear Warriors and Quadratic Wizards before the spellcasters can gain too large of a lead. Epic 6 reaches the kind of fantasy found in Tolkien's works, where something as simple as a Ring of Invisibility requires the soul of a powerful tyrant in order to be forged. Epic 6 is where characters are bound to the world as mortals, rather than as the aspiring godlings typical of most DnD and Pathfinder games.

Epic 6 can be used to create stories of overcoming the impossible. To challenge an adult dragon is foolish, even in a party of five or six; the players will need ingenuity and cunning to succeed, if at all. It's a kind of game where politics and morality are inescapable, in which the will of royalty can be as dangerous as the most deadly orcish warband. These things have been mentioned above, and they hold true.

Finally, Epic 6 is simple and familiar. You only have 6 levels 'plus whatever bonus feats I can scrounge' to worry about. You've read about it before in tales from Tolkien (and possibly Game of Thrones/A Song if Ice and Fire, but I haven't watched/read them and can't be sure). Your players may or may not want these things. Still, it's a good introduction.

[JusticeZero]

The other thing is that it's not just players that are e6, it's the world. Ogres and storm giants and dragons aren't lowly cannon fodder in an E6 world like they are in Standard.

[Zanos]

The main difference is this:
In a normal campaign, you fight rats until you learn that they are the minions of a legion of Nasties, each one powerful enough to singlehandedly destroy the places where you saved from their armies of rats. These Nasties are gathered en masse, but stayed hidden in the shadows until now because... Well, we aren't sure really, since they vastly overpower the opposition.
After fighting through hordes of nasties, you learn that they were only a weak minion of the real threat, a vast army of Zomgs. The Zomg army has been lying in wait twiddling their thumbs waiting for the Nasties' army of trained rats to ineffectually bat the kingdom around.
After you cleave your way through thousands of Zomgs, you learn that you will have to fight the real threat, the vast army of Ickies that each can destroy a horde of Zomgs that have been biding their time on a demi plane waiting for the Zomgs to wait for the Nasties to raise an army of rats to harass the kingdom.
The Ickies are led by Cthulhu. With Wizard levels.

With E6, the kingdom is attacked by an army of scro. You bushwack a drunk scro here and there, learning their tricks and getting geared up, then take the fight to the scro head to head to fight your way to the scro warboss. Afterward, you still might have to make sure the scro hordes don't get too uppity while you deal with the next threat, because they can still hit hard if they get lined up right.
In a 1-20 caimpaign the players should be dealing with a variety of different threats that aren't so closely related. Yeah it seems ridiculous that filler enemy #2 is worth a hundred of filler enemy #1 when one is the boss of the other, but it's less ridiculous when your low level adventure is to deal with the Orc clans harassing a hamlet, then you move to a castle that's having issues with a young red dragon, etc. etc. Building an overarching story that's coherent from 1-20 is never graceful, so don't have one. 1-20 works better as a series of loosely related story arcs.

[JusticeZero]

In both cases, i'm having to impose a specific structure on my game setting in order to either deal with of conceal the fact that anything out of place on the tree will instantly vaporize or be vaporized by the party without XP. "Oh no, I have to wrap this story arc up fast before the party completely out-levels the enemy". "I have to keep shuffling the entire party from one country to the next so that nobody will accidentally walk into an ambush from orcs. They don't get XP for those anymore!"