Campaign Brainstorming - E6 consequences

[Telonius]

Misha and the other Bell Book and Candle people, please stay out!




I'm currently starting to write up something that's new to me: a campaign that takes place in a generally e6 world. The twist is that it's going to have a "superhero" theme: the players are going to be recruited to serve as "masked avenger" types. The players would be centered in a single city composed of many different races, living in more-or-less harmony. (Drawing a whole lot of inspiration from Ankh-Morpork at around the time the Night Watch gets cleaned up).

What I need a bit of help with, is figuring out what the social and practical consequences of an e6 world might be. Obviously no magic marts, and a lot less healing; but what sorts of things would be absent, that are commonly-available to most D&D worlds? I'm planning on having a whole bunch of monstrous races in the city (Centaurs running the observatory, Sphinxes writing the crossword puzzle for the local paper, that sort of thing). What's the preferred method of dealing with higher-RHD things like Sphinxes or Frost Giants? Savage progression, or leave them out?

[johnbragg]

Misha and the other Bell Book and Candle people, please stay out!




I'm currently starting to write up something that's new to me: a campaign that takes place in a generally e6 world. The twist is that it's going to have a "superhero" theme: the players are going to be recruited to serve as "masked avenger" types. The players would be centered in a single city composed of many different races, living in more-or-less harmony. (Drawing a whole lot of inspiration from Ankh-Morpork at around the time the Night Watch gets cleaned up).

What I need a bit of help with, is figuring out what the social and practical consequences of an e6 world might be. Obviously no magic marts, and a lot less healing; but what sorts of things would be absent, that are commonly-available to most D&D worlds? I'm planning on having a whole bunch of monstrous races in the city (Centaurs running the observatory, Sphinxes writing the crossword puzzle for the local paper, that sort of thing). What's the preferred method of dealing with higher-RHD things like Sphinxes or Frost Giants? Savage progression, or leave them out?

Dunno if it's preferred, but I go with a campaign premise that societies can do magic collectively, if they pool their will together. And one of the main things a good-sized civilization does is use their power to reinforce humdrum, base reality in their zone of influence. So high-CR things don't pop up in the middle of the capital of FAntasy Kingdom, they're found in wild outlying areas where the influence of collective belief and will is much weaker and chaosium leaks through in much higher doses.

If you want giants and sphinxes and whatnot for cosmopolitan flavor, dump the standard statblocks and reskin something much lower CR. Possibly picking up a 1E monster manual PDF and adapting those statblocks--much lower numbers all around.

[Telonius]

Thanks for the suggestion - I'll see what I can find on the statblocks.

Any other ideas for general or social consequences?

[johnbragg]

THe social consequences of losing spell levels 4-9 are more limited than you think, just because Generic Setting tries really really hard not to think about the social consequences of spell levels 1-9 being there in the first place.

Personally, my E6 runs higher-magic for the common folk than Generic Setting. The equivalent of the great Roman roads across Europe are all powered by longstrider effects, plant growth gets boosted to a kingdom-wide ritual magic, the king's army is under a basically permanent bless effect. (That all goes to hell if the political unity of the kingdom is somehow broken.) Every craftsman who can afford a masterwork workshop for the +2, probably has either a couple of potions of fire resistance and healing.

Because I figure if you're not worrying about the stuff that would rearrange society completely, you can be more liberal with the stuff that would change and flavor society in interesting ways.

But some obvious things--raise dead/resurrection is off the table, as is teleportation. (Note that these things are all back on the table if you rule that they are available as SLAs to creatures who have those SLAs, especially if those creatures are around.)

[Rangô]

Hey there!
I'm not familiar to E6 world, could you describe it?, Anyway reading your doubts I guess the goal, As Prattchet's fan I would redo the races, striping out HD and maybe more powerful abilities such spellcasting, auras... and applying them base classes like those that are in DM guide for NPCs, for example aristocrat for the mountain gigant owner of a gold mine, obviously he keeps his stats bonuses but you could change skills and feats.
It's a hard work but that director's paper Sphinx would be great with erudite PrC.

[johnbragg]

E6 caps level advancement at 6th level. Progression from that point on is by feats, gained every 5000 xp. Depending on what the DM wants to do, some higher level abilities may be available as E6 Epic feats.