What should I know about E6?

[NerdHut]

I've recently determined that for the next campaign I run, I will use E6 because it lends well to low-magic settings. My players are on board with it, and I understand the basics. But I figured I'd just ask for general advice on what to expect. The system seems pretty easy to grasp, but I was wondering if anyone (DM or Player) had knowledge of quirks that the wish they'd known about before they started.

[Krazzman]

First off it is awesome if everyone is on board.

Until level 6 everything will be normal save for the missing of high "level" magic items.
After that your players will not get that much stronger. They will however get more resilient due to having more feats that they can blow on save boosting.
Be wary of psionics however... or specifically the psionics body feat. This makes psions quite tanky.

Hope this helps.

[Kosj]

One thing I found when I ran E6 is that its really beneficial if the players are willing to do a bit of reading before hand and go digging for feats they want. If your players don't have the time or resources to look up feats you might want to set aside some session time to help them go over feats and the like. This is especially true for some classes (casters spring to mind) who don't have a lot of great feat options out of the gate, especially in the core book which is going to be what most people will limit themselves to.

That said, I don't know what your players' resources are like. Still, something to bear in mind.

[Techwarrior]

I've got two things I wished someone had mentioned to me earlier when we were running E6.

First thing. I know it mentions it in the variant rules I read for E6, but you really need to think about this. Your characters are still advancing in power. Most of it is in areas not of their main focus, but the point is they are becoming more powerful. Eventually, CR 6 won't challenge the party in any way. A fighter with 20 epic feats should realistically be able to just steamroll a CR 8 bruiser by themself.

Second thing. Make sure that there is another option for characters. We had several characters that just couldn't find feats that progressed their theme. Rather than make them take feats they didn't want, we offered the ability to gestalt a level at a time for 10k xp. You still couldn't advance past a character level of 6, but it allowed for very unique and flavorful characters that weren't just balls of stats. One such character was a Blue Soulknife that had gone completely mental. Post six, he made mental contact with a fraction of his sane self and started taking Psion gestalt levels. He developed into a bit of a split personality, and it really added depth to his character beyond 'crazy midget that stabs things.'

[CharonsHelper]

Also of note - it changes how effective many feats/abilities are.

The feats which help you boost just one particular spell become quite effective rather than quickly falling by the wayside as that spell becomes relatively low level. Or the feat which adds to a sorcerer's spells known.

It also makes mundane gold spending more viable. If you've already essentially maxxed out the sorts of magic gear on the market, even when willing to pay a hefty mark-up, you need new things to spend on. Buying a castle and starting your own NPC army is both viable and not stupid. The castle walls are actually a pretty solid defense against most potential attacks, and no single CR 12 is going to shred all of them in two rounds.

It also makes class bonus feats fall by the wayside once you hit 6. Everyone is getting a ton of feats, so getting 2-3 more than everyone else isn't all that great.


A fighter with 20 epic feats should realistically be able to just steamroll a CR 8 bruiser by themself.


Since when does E6 give epic feats? It just gives more feats.

[Kosj]

Second thing. Make sure that there is another option for characters. We had several characters that just couldn't find feats that progressed their theme. Rather than make them take feats they didn't want, we offered the ability to gestalt a level at a time for 10k xp. You still couldn't advance past a character level of 6, but it allowed for very unique and flavorful characters that weren't just balls of stats. One such character was a Blue Soulknife that had gone completely mental. Post six, he made mental contact with a fraction of his sane self and started taking Psion gestalt levels. He developed into a bit of a split personality, and it really added depth to his character beyond 'crazy midget that stabs things.'

This is another very good point. For the E6 game I ran, several of the characters ended up with custom written feats that were designed for their characters. Offhand I seem to remember the ranger had a variant on deflect arrows allowing her to shoot other people's arrows out of the air and the cleric ended up with a whole feat chain tied into the metaplot. Personally I'd encourage people to write custom (and probably unique to that PC) feats for their characters, but I do tend to run quite a lot of home-brew in my games.

[johnbragg]

Since when does E6 give epic feats? It just gives more feats.

"Epic feats" in E6 discussions usually means either feats not normally available at 6th level (Improved Critical) or homebrewed feats for E6 campaigns (Improved BAB, which may or may not be a prerequisite for Improved Critical, depending on your DM)

[Hecuba]

I've recently determined that for the next campaign I run, I will use E6 because it lends well to low-magic settings.

Depending on what you mean by "low-magic," E6 may not (of itself) be sufficient.

If you simply mean "less powerful magic" it will work. Heck, level 9 gets 5th level - which is generally sufficient to handle mythological deities in the Greek and Roman Tradition, if you stretch it. E6 does a very good job of making characters compelling at a more reasonable power level - including magical characters.

If you mean "rare and generally unavailable magic" you will have more issues. It will be immensely helpful, certainly, there are still plenty of things that presume some level of magic availability. For example, incorporeality is rare at low levels, but its still around. Same for things that need restoration to recover from.

[Zaq]

You'll need to decide if you're doing "hard E6" or "soft E6," and in either case, that's a spectrum rather than a binary. Basically, in "hard E6," stuff that requires 4th level spells and above (or, in super-hard E6, even stuff that requires CL 7 or above; yes, you can boost CL above your level, but that doesn't mean that such items are going to be commonly available for purchase) just flat out isn't available. Again, it's a spectrum, so you might lean more towards "such things don't exist at all" or more towards "if PCs can personally craft CL 7+ items, they can do that, but you won't find any that other people made," but the game is definitely different when you chop out all of the magic items that expect that someone above level 6 is making them. (A side note on that is that all of the stat-boosters printed in the DMG require CL 8, aside from the Gauntlets of Ogre Power. The E6 game I played in was sufficiently "hard E6" to ban anything with a printed CL above 6, which meant that STR was the only stat that could be boosted with commonly available magic items. This wasn't actually a problem, and it turned out to be kind of neat, but it's worth mentioning.) This also does mean that bringing back the dead is basically impossible; if that's a good thing to you, then rock and roll (but do set the expectations with the group that this is the case), and if you don't like that, then you need to implement some kind of way of getting around that (either access to Raise Dead as a costly and difficult ritual, or some kind of second-chance mechanic that lets people stay at –9 once per day or once per adventure or something when they would otherwise bite it, or simply throttling back the lethality a little bit).

You might consider working with the players to allow post-6 feats to grant partial access to abilities that normally are gained above ECL 6, so if a class gets an iconic ability at level 7 or 8, you might allow an epic feat to grant that ability (or maybe a weakened version of that ability). Or you might not, depending on what classes people take. (But definitely allow Binders to bind two vestiges at once, and definitely allow Shadowcasters to treat their low-level mysteries as SLAs.)

Prestige classes become interesting. Some of them are just within reach at ECL 6; a rare few are even available earlier, but in general, it's very difficult to find a PrC that you can get more than one level of in E6. You might encourage this (relax prereqs, shuffle abilities around to allow folks who make the investment to get more than a tiny taste of the PrC, allow post-6 feats to open up PrC options, etc.), or you might discourage this by restricting access to PrCs. Depends on how much time you expect to spend at and above you hit the level 6 cap.

By standard rules, you get an ability score increase at level 4, but if you stop leveling up at 6, that's the only one you ever get. You can use a point-buy total that encourages folks to have one odd-numbered score at chargen (thereby giving that lonely little point a purpose), you can implement a different mechanic for increasing ability scores (within reason), you can make the increase +2 rather than +1 so that it's guaranteed to affect everyone and not just people with odd-numbered scores, you can grant an additional +1 at level 6, or you can just accept that there's going to be a weird little bonus at level 4 that isn't going to do much.

Bear in mind that many classes are relatively inflexible once you stop gaining true levels, so unless you implement a mechanic to help with this, many PCs won't be able to dynamically come up with new abilities once you hit the cap. At a minimum, you should let most classes with a spells-known mechanic (no matter what those spells are called, whether we're talking about Sorcerers or Psions or Truenamers or Warblades) periodically swap out spells so that low-level decisions don't have to stain characters forever.

DR actually matters in E6. Even DR/magic shouldn't necessarily be overcome by everything you see, and more esoteric forms of DR actually noticeably contribute to survivability.

If you take even a single level in a class without full BAB, you cannot ever get a second iterative. (You might get other methods of extra swings, like TWF, Whirling Frenzy, FoB, and Haste, but you won't get a natural iterative.) You might view this as a good thing, treating it as a reward for people who stick with firmly martial classes for the whole six levels, or you might relax it a little bit, granting the privilege to characters who still rely on hitting things but who took levels in Rogue or Monk or other non-full-BAB classes (perhaps at the cost of an epic feat).

If you aren't following the DMG's progression (and in E6, by definition, you're not), the DMG's WBL table stops being appropriate. The GM has to take an active role in making sure that the party gets an appropriate amount of loot. The "item treadmill" is more or less going to not apply (characters likely won't need to keep getting bigger and bigger bonuses on weapons/armor, for example, especially if you're cutting off access to items that require a high CL), which is both good and bad.

Metamagic is basically impossible to use without DMM or other mitigation shenanigans. Sudden Metamagic feats, on the other hand, are actually reasonably useful.

[CharonsHelper]

Also - are you going 3.5 or Pathfinder with your E6? Somewhat different connotations. Many 3.5 concepts have trouble working in E6 due to being tied to prestige classes.

[Techwarrior]

Since when does E6 give epic feats? It just gives more feats.

Might have just been the version I read, but epic feats were what the post 6 feats were called. I didn't mean [Epic] as in post 20, although a lot of those are easily tweaked to being appropriate for an E6 game.

[gorfnab]

Here are two E6 Handbooks that might help you a bit.
E6 Handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=r3s01gk3ie39hcdviajag7elb5&topic=6605)
E6 PrC System (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=r3s01gk3ie39hcdviajag7elb5&topic=6704)

Note: Beware of Wildshaping Mystic Rangers with the feat Sword of the Arcane Order.

[Cerefel]

Mystic Rangers in general are probably a bit too strong in E6. Full BAB, full spellcasting, and even good skills make for a pretty powerful character, all things considered.

[NerdHut]

Everyone, thank you for your input so far. Just to clear things up, here are some details of what I'll personally be doing.

I'll be encouraging the players to go with core classes, but not restricting them to those.

I think I want to restrict Prestige Classes outright, but that's not written in stone yet.

Most sourcebooks for 3.5 are allowed, so there's plenty of existing feats to choose from, plus a handful of homebrewed ones. I'm thinking of also throwing in certain class features as feats, similar to the Generic Classes from Unearthed Arcana. As a group, we have access to just about every book via hard-copy, internet, or pdf.

When I say low-magic, I mean that anything that requires a caster of at least 7th level becomes something only accessable through the DM. Resurrection is theoretically possible, but a temple full of clerics would need to appeal to their god even to hope for such a thing. Magic weapons and armor exist, but are less common. Magic is all around, but it's limitted.

I'm proooobably going to ban psionics. None of us have really played a psion before, and it'd be easy to make a crapton of mistakes, like we did with wildshape for druids (We didn't read the "fine print" and made it WAY too powerful).




I am curious about the "option to gestalt." I'm familiar with standard gestalt, but I'm not sure how it would work as an optional feature.

[Techwarrior]

We did it as effectively leveling up a side of a gestalt separately post 6. Say we're on working with a different character we had, a warlock that took levels in rogue.

When the character spends 10k XP to get their first level of rogue, we take a look at what features they'd have gained at first level in addition to what they already have. In this case, a list is relatively easy.

Warlock's have poor Reflex saves. The first level rogue grants +2 reflex at first. Character gains +2 base reflex.
Warlocks have ( 2 + Int ) * 4 skill points at level one. Rogues have 8+. The character gains 36 skill points to spend as a first level rogue//warlock. At your discretion, they might be allowed to move a few skill points into new class skills.
The character adds the proficiencies of a rogue to their list.
The character adds the class features of a first level rogue: Sneak Attack 1d6 and Trapfinding.

[DEMON]

I am curious about the "option to gestalt." I'm familiar with standard gestalt, but I'm not sure how it would work as an optional feature.

Essentially, at the cost of 10k XP, you add a single level of a new class, with it's non-overlapping class features and so on, until you max it out at 6th level for 60K XP total.

You'll only improve a save if it's a good save for the new class and was a bad save for the original one.
You'll only improve your BAB if your new class has a BAB increase at a given level and your old class didn't.
You'll improve your skill points by the difference between your new class skill points and your old class skill points and add skills to class skills as per the new class
You'll improve your HP (HD) by the difference between your new class HD and your old class HD.

Example:
You're Rogue 6 and are now leveling Ranger at the cost of 10K XP per level.

Level 1:
Saves: +2 FOR (Rog 1 has weak For save, Rgr has good For save (+2 at 1st level); other saves are the same)
BAB: +1 (Rog 1 has BAB +0, Rgr 1 has BAB +1)
Skill points: no change, Rog has 8+INT SP per level, while Rgr only has 6+INT SP per level
Skills: You will add any Ranger's class skills that are cross-class skills for Rog to your class skills
HD: You will raise your HD from d6 to d8
HP: +2

Level 2:
Saves: +1 FOR
BAB: no change
Skill points/skills: no change
HD: d6 -> d8
HP: Roll a d8, compare to your original (d6) 2nd level roll and raise by the difference (do not reduce if your new roll is lower than the original one)

[Hecuba]

Essentially, at the cost of 10k XP, you add a single level of a new class, with it's non-overlapping class features and so on, until you max it out at 6th level for 60K XP total.[...]
Level 2:
[...]HD: d6 -> d8
HP: Roll a d8, compare to your original (d6) 2nd level roll and raise by the difference (do not reduce if your new roll is lower than the original one)

I've played a couple E6 campaigns like this. It's a good option, though if you want to slow it down, consider alternating the gestalt with the advanced/"epic"/capstone feats. That lets you "level up" 18 times before you would get into trisalt - pretty close to the 1-20 range, which can help by letting you learn to adjust for e6 power levels separately from advancement pacing.

Regarding HP in particular, I find simply adding 1 HP per HD size (the average result) less tedious than keeping track of prior HP rolls. d4 to d6 = +1, d6 to d12 =+3, so on. You still have to keep track of what class you took at what level, but that's fairly easy for e6.