E10/E6? Level cap at 10th or 6th level

[Yora]

D&D has always had a difficult time with high level play. First it was designed for 9 levels but then higher levels added on very soon. With the game originally designed with the mindset that the biggest and most powerful characters from fantasy would be around 10th level, things always ended up somewhat weird at higher levels. And the math of increasing bonuses while keeping 1d20 for rolls becomes noticably more wonkey the higher you get never helped either.
I think the result is that to a lot of people, high level D&D feels like a unique type of fantasy, while the lower levels are more similar to a more generic form of fantasy that isn't too different from a wide range of other styles.

The answer to this issue is very simple: If you don't like high level in D&D, don't use it. Which according to common wisdom, based entirelt on rumor, most groups do. That is, at least as the PCs are concerned.
I think most people are very familiar with the idea from 3rd ed. to only use the material of 1st to 6th level for both PCs and NPCs (and then advancing only through feats instead of levels). Though soon others tried out setting the limit at 8th or 10th limit.
In my own experience, campaigns starting at 1st level quite rarely reach past 5th level, so capping characters at 6th or 10th level wouldn't actually affect the players. The much more fascinating thing to me has always been to have campaigns set in worlds that don't have any 7th or 11th level NPCs running around anywhere. When a big monster threatened civilizations, 5th and 6th level characters had to deal with it because there literally wasn't anyone who would be more suited for it. It's also interesting to consider that players would not be able to go to a wizard's tower or a temple and find someone who could cast a 4th or 6th level spell for them. But maybe a monster with the right spell-like ability/innate spell could do it. I think that's the actual thing that always made the idea really exciting.

Now while I am setting up my next campaign, I went into it with the plan to limit all characters to 10th level. But the past days I've once again started thinking about worlds that only go up to 6th level. A campaign in which 6th level is the peak performance for heroes and every threats beyond that need to be deal with with trickery and superior numbers is still really intriguing.

What do you think are the big differences between capping all characters at 6th level and spells at 3rd or characters at 10th level and spells at 5th? What changes and what do you think would be gained or lost with wither option?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I think E6 still works pretty well (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?576456-Variant-Grim-and-Gritty-5e). For (almost) every class, it gives you your second subclass feature as a capstone, and you can dip a level in something else without losing out on Extra Attack/3rd level spells.

[Foxhound438]

the most obvious thing from a player perspective is that multiclassing is way more costly for a game that's limited to 6th level characters.

But in a more general, practical sense, I think the biggest change would be in spellcasting services available. 4th and 5th level spells include a lot of good divination spells that you would expect to make a big difference, like scrying. But perhaps more important would be Raise Dead. No more dragging someone's corpse back into town with a pile of cash to get them an extra life, since no NPC's would know anything better than a revivify, so unless you happened to have Gentle Repose it's no good. I personally wouldn't mind, I actually like the stakes of death being brought up a bit like that. Both player character an NPC deaths would have some serious weight to them compared to worlds where every temple in a backwoods 25 population town has a guy who knows True Res.

[Keravath]

I’ve played 5E as far as 13th level so far (12Th on another character) and compared to previous editions high level play works a lot better because of bounded accuracy. I know several folks who have played more than one character to level 20.

As a result, there seems to be far less need for capping at level 10 or level 6. However, the game play does change as the characters become more powerful, they have more tools, more spells, more attacks and the ability to deal with more challenging threats. In a game capped at level 6, the characters are virtually defenseless against many iconic high CR creatures, dragons would be one example.

That said, if you design a campaign around weaker opponents, and can live without life saving magic and a lot of the interesting highher level spells then you should be able to make it work .. though what the characters will do after reaching 6th level would also need to be planned for.

[Baptor]

I run e10. It works really well. I think I'd prefer e6 but my players like a bit more magic. I can handle it as a DM so I count it a happy compromise.

[Kane0]

Why not 8? Two ASIs, 4th level spells, level 5/3 multiclassing

[Yora]

though what the characters will do after reaching 6th level would also need to be planned for.

In 3rd ed. the idea was to replace further levels with feats, at the same rate that new levels would be gained. The simple approach would be to give characters an ability score increase, but when you have for example 6th level characters with seven increases, you probably can expect to see multiple 20s on many characters. Not sure if that is ideal. Making it feats only might be a better solution.

[mephnick]

Level 13 is where the game balance and feel starts falling apart (7th level spells) so I prefer E11. Strong enough to take most things in the MM if you're lucky, but not strong enough to be gods. Level 11 is a boost for most classes and feels like a good capstone.

[mephnick]

In a game capped at level 6, the characters are virtually defenseless against many iconic high CR creatures, dragons would be one example.
.

That's kind of the whole point. An ancient dragon should be an extinction level event in a low fantasy world. The players will need to come up with something special.

[Yora]

Not sure about 5th ed., but reportedly some parties in 3rd ed. were able to defeat balors with E6 characters. I don't know how, but when you went deeply into optimization and preparation, it supposedly wasn't even that difficult.
If anything, 5th ed. should be even more suited to that, though perhaps it's lacking some really useful exploits.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Not sure about 5th ed., but reportedly some parties in 3rd ed. were able to defeat balors with E6 characters. I don't know how, but when you went deeply into optimization and preparation, it supposedly wasn't even that difficult.
If anything, 5th ed. should be even more suited to that, though perhaps it's lacking some really useful exploits.
I mean, you could wish-loop your way to infinite power at level 1 in 3.5; what that kind of optimization can do isn't really a useful point of comparison.

One argument in favor of E6, I think, is that a lot of really iconic monsters are cr 5-- elementals, hill giants, trolls, umber hulks, shambling mounds, outyugh... The "common" dangerous monsters are straightforward fights, and for boss fights you can reach about all the way to cr 11. At the same time, staples like goblins and orcs aren't total cannon fodder. It may be the optimal point in terms of how much of the Monster Manual is easily usable.

[Yora]

I've been looking at my own monster tables and encounter charts, as well as spell lists, and I don't think there is much you'd be losing out on with a cap of 6th level instead of 10th as PCs.

But I think the big difference between being 6th level characters in an E6 setting and being 6th level characters in an E10 setting is that you are the best and final hope there is to stopping the giants and illithids that you have to pick off carefully one by one. If you don't make it, the people in the villages, cities, and palaces have no plan B. That's a big deal of what puts the E into Epic.
Even if 10th level characters in an E10 setting are extremely rare, they are still there, able to take over as the last resort. That makes the Challenge 7 to 9 monsters considerably less "epic" in the narrative of the campaign.

[Nhorianscum]

For PC balance 6 vs 10 is pretty huge, 6 is very slanted towards certain classes (Looking at you cleric and Paladin) while 10 is more even (poor fighters and rouges miss their best level though).

For world balance... net neutral really, begining of tier 2 vs and of tier 2 is still tier 2.

[GlenSmash!]

If I was going to go e10 I would bump it to 11. Let the fighters have that 3rd extra attack.

[CheddarChampion]

In regard to OP's question of e6 vs e10 in 5th:
If starting from level 1, a cap of 6 is achieved sooner.
e10 is higher fantasy, and might be more palatable to people who are used to high level play.
e6 allows for lesser threats to me more threatening.
e6, by virtue of a lower HP cap, theoretically has quicker combats.
3rd level spells can majorly impact an encounter (fireball) and have great utility (fly)
5th level spells can do even more (Synaptic Static, Teleportation Circle)
If you put stock in "Linear fighter, quadratic wizard" then class balance might be a thing to look at.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I feel like E10 or E11 doesn't really change the experience in the same way that E6 does. For both E6 and E11, you're butting up against full dragons and powerful demons; you can find powerful NPCs, get raised from the dead, scry, slaughter armies... given that it's a rare campaign that goes past that point anyway, what's the point?

[MoiMagnus]

A quite relevant change of 5e compared to previous edition is that the first levels can be considered as "before graduation".

For example, the wizard gets its arcane tradition at 3rd level instead of 1st level, which means that a level 1 wizard probably did not yet finished its university/formation/self-taughing.

World-building wise, it is kind of cool to not have this weird "I'm from the mage academy, but they only teach 1st level spells".
But that mean that if you want a team of adventurers that have some background in adventuring, starting at level 4 is more reasonnable than at level 1. (Which is also something a lot of groups do).

Level 4 -> Level 6 is quite short in term of progression, but Level 4 -> Level 10 is largely enough. And since the levels ~10 of 5e works far better than previous editions, that's cool.

[Zonugal]

Not sure about 5th ed., but reportedly some parties in 3rd ed. were able to defeat balors with E6 characters. I don't know how, but when you went deeply into optimization and preparation, it supposedly wasn't even that difficult.
If anything, 5th ed. should be even more suited to that, though perhaps it's lacking some really useful exploits.

Ehh... That's more on that 3.5 had so many feats than can stack or combine in powerful ways.

It isn't entirely difficult in 3.5 E6 to have infinite damage reduction.