Breakdaddy wrote:I dont know about E6 with C&C, but I agree that E6 really sparked my imagination when it was introduced. I loved the whole idea of characters growing in skill without the exponential power markup associated with full on level gains.
jaguar451 wrote:Koralis: "I'm not sure what the goal really is, as in the E6 method, the characters will continue to progress in power, and in many ways, at a pace much quicker than if they continued to rise in levels."
The way I see it is that they develop differently: The rough idea is that skills increase (feats / advantages), but spell levels, caster level, BtH, Hit points, and such items don't increase past level 6. So, folks can do more things, but not as god-like.
Ah, but here is where I think E6 actually perpetuates exponential power up, as opposed to continuing to level. Now I may be wrong, not actually having played it out, but, on average a character requires 35,000XP to progress from 6th to 7th level. and the scale goes up, doubling each level until 10th. So in the amount of XP you gain in just this one level, you gain access to 7 more abilities. What you don't get is HP or BtH adjustments, or spells of higher level than 3, unless you allow feats/skills to be purchased to allow such. Show me any class that gets this large a bump in progressing from 6th to 7th level, or even in a larger jump from to 6th to 10th level. The closest thing you will find is the spell casters, a Wizard/Illusionist will gain access to 7 more spells, one of each level 1-3, and 3 of level 4. This is a pretty big bump, but where the character under E6 uses just 35,000XP to get to those 7 added Feats, the Wiz/Ill requires 457,500 XP to get those added spells, and yes an increase in her effective casting level, plus 4d4HP and +1 BtH. Clerics and Druids gain even more in the way of spell use, since at 10th level they have access to 5th level spells, and need slightly less XP 390,000 for the cleric and 365,000 for the druid. They also each gain 4d8 more hp, pretty big, and +2 BtH. Now compare that to gaining Wiz/Ill gaining 91 new abilities, the cleric and druid gain 78 and 73 abilities respectively. Which character would be more powerful? At the same XP levels, I would say the 6th level character with a crap ton of Feats, unless said Feats have little in the way of boosting character ability, but then the 5 Feats = +1 CR and after 20 Feats gained 10 Feats = +1 CR is meaningless. So with 78 total feats with enough XP to be 10th level, a Wizard under E6 would be "equated to" a 6 + (20/5 = 4) + (91-20=71/10 = 7.1 ) = 17th level character.
That is what I question about the goal of the rule set, see the side bar on page 6 for the following points.
First it states that it provides very fast play at every level. Here I will argue that it does not, that as the characters progress, the game will necessarily slow down. My rational for that is due to the shear number of abilities/feats/skills/powers/whatever-you-want-to-call-them that the characters will have. Selecting an ability or combination thereof will ultimately make the game slower, especially when it comes to combat. Sure in a standard game, spell casters have a load of options with spells, but they generally have an idea of what/when/where they will use a spell at the time they select the spell to memorize. Here with E6, everyone goes back to having a load of options to select from, and making matters worse, some of which some were selected months ago and perhaps forgotten about, so you have to look up what it does.
Second, it is supposed to focus on in-game planning as opposed to leveling. I think the opposite is true, with so many more options, the player must focus much more stringently on how they spend those XP, and gives them more of a chance to min/max than with standard levels. Also, C&C already has eliminated CR as part of the mechanic (something I did away with when I ran 3.xE), so the characters must plan, if they know they are going up against a foe that is overwhelming, or make decisions on the fly about fighting or not. If going up against something that is dramatically more powerful than themselves, they either need to run or recruit sufficient assistance to take on the threat.
Third, it says that it wants to be a low-magic as opposed to low-fantasy style of gaming, this it does accomplish. However, this can easily be accomplished with less drastic changes to the game mechanic. Of course, as you scale down magic, you have to provide a boost to the magic-heavy classes or they become less useful, and less likely to be played. This rule set does nothing of the sort for the wizard or the cleric types, and gives nothing to make them a compelling choice to play. One possible way to modify this for a wizard/ill is to allow them access to light armors and an expanded weapon list, and maybe a d4+1 hp/level or d6hp/level, while slowing the spell casting progression. A cleric/druid should gain additional weapon choices, and perhaps a better BtH chart or allow them to specialize in a weapon, and a slightly slower spell progression. These are possible suggestions, not play tested, but could be an answer to providing a low-magic setting.
The fourth and fifth bullet points do not make much sense to me. Both are true whether you use the E6 style or not. There isn't a need for a meaningless encounter in any system, but sometimes there are some as a side-trek or filler, or simply because the characters did something stupid. Anytime I had players wanting to just go on a monster-hunt for XP, which was, thankfully, very infrequent, I felt that I was not doing my job as a DM and keeping the setting fresh and exciting. Further, a good CK knows that what is listed is typical of the creatures, not necessarily the end-all be all of them. Just ask the group that I had that ran into "just another bunch of kobolds"... yeah except they had a mage, a priest, and three elite warriors in the bunch, one character death, and others on the brink before they finally turned tail and ran away, and they were a group of 6 4th/5th level characters. Dragons have built in mechanic to scale their power. Anyone ever scoff at an Ancient Red Dragon?
Of all five points, the only one that I think the rules as presented detail effectively is the third point. But I ask is the drastic change in the game mechanic done in such a way as to provide desirable play for each class? For some the answer may be yes, for others, no... Personally, I do not think it works well. It is better suited to a d20 SRD style game, or 4E, as those are based on gaining all of the additional skills/powers/feats/abilities already, but even with them, it still starts to fall short, at least in my opinion. Now can it be done with C&C? Sure, but since C&C is streamlined to eliminate such complexity, there will be a lot of work required to get it workable.
As jaguar points out, with E6 you also cap Caster Level, BtH, HD, etc. And you could do the same with the standard rules, and yet still allow full on level progression. Caster level could be equal to the current level - level needed to acquire the spell level being cast. On a spell progression chart that is slowed, this will keep all of the most potent higher-level spells at a much lower caster level. BtH should be able to progress, there isn't anyone out there that has reached perfection in their craft, so perhaps you slow progression over time, HP is a huge issue, especially as I pointed to above, with wizards that suddenly will not be as effective against "higher level" monsters. After 6th level, their usefulness will drop off dramatically.
I can see the desire for a way to have characters advance in smaller increments. Something akin to the way the 40k RPGs do. In those games you earn XP, and have a pool of unused XP that can be used to purchase skills/abilities/stat increases, etc. Once you have used those XP they go into a spent pool. Your character level is determined by your spent XP pool. Once you have reached a set number of XP spent, you are considered to be a higher level, and have access to a larger set of skills/abilities that you may select from. Thus you progress steadily, and as you become higher level you can spend XP on any of the lower-level abilities, or abilities on the newly achieved level. StarSIEGE also accommodates a similar progression scheme, though it does not use levels, but rather just provides a set of skills you can select from. This is another drastic change to the game mechanic, but one that can be accomplished fairly easily. It would allow the CK to award less XP, to keep the progression down, yet still provide a steady stream of improvements to the characters.
