RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Ryan Stoughton has given us a popular variation on the 3.5 d20 system called “E6”, which caps character advancement at 6th level, allowing PCs to improve after that only by buying feats. For my current campaign, I wanted to keep PCs in the “sweet spot” of levels, but still allow characters to increase in level if they were sufficiently stubborn.
Each PC maintains an experience account. Characters earn experience as normal, from overcoming obstacles and achieving goals. Those earnings go into the account as deposits. Players can purchase a variety of things with experience:
- Skill levels (available after 8 hours’ rest; class skills are still capped at Level +3 ranks, half that for cross-class skills.)
- Feats (available after 8 hours’ rest; prerequisites still apply.)
- Action Points (available immediately; as per Unearthed Arcana.)
- Levels in adventuring classes. (Available after at least one day of practice.)
- Crafting or bonding with items (available as the action allows.)
1st Level
- Skill Rank: 50 + 50/current rank
- Feat: 1000
- Action Point: 100
- Next Level: 1000
2nd Level
- Skill Rank: 90 + 55/current rank
- Feat: 1500
- Action Point: 150
- Next Level: 2520
3rd Level
- Skill Rank: 130 + 60/current rank
- Feat: 2000
- Action Point: 200
- Next Level: 4656
4th Level
- Skill Rank: 170 + 65/current rank
- Feat: 2500
- Action Point: 250
- Next Level: 7639
5th Level
- Skill Rank: 210 + 70/current rank
- Feat: 3000
- Action Point: 300
- Next Level: 11,797
6th Level
- Skill Rank: 250 + 75/current rank
- Feat: 3500
- Action Point: 350
- Next Level: 17,581
Nth Level
- Skill Rank: 10+40*N + (45+ 5*N)/current rank
- Feat: 500 + 500*N
- Action Point: 50 + 50*N
- Next Level: 1000 * N ^ ((N+18)/15)
If we consider a level to be worth about five feats (including new hit points (Toughness), better saving throws (Iron Will), etc.) the break-even point comes at level 6. Before that, it’s cheaper for a PC to buy levels. Past that, it’s cheaper to buy individual feats and skill points.
In D&D 3.5, PCs earn experience based on their character level, with weaker characters gaining more experience than their veteran colleagues. (See the DMG, page 38) In this campaign, experience is distributed on the basis of total earned experience, rather than number of purchased character levels. (That is to say, a PC who has accrued 8000 experience points earns new experience as if she were 4th Level, whether she has elected to buy character levels or not.)
This contrasts with the cost to purchase elements with experience points, which is based on the character’s number of current levels. (That is to say, a PC who has never bought a character level purchases feats for 1000 xp, no matter how many experience points she has accrued.)
I don't see this working so well for a spell casting class. Some feats require a certain amount of skill points as well. One would lose spells just to gain skills.
Question, why is 6th level considered a sweet spot?
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Howdy, Lady Lena. thanks so much for your analysis and opinions.
I don't see this working so well for a spell-casting class. Some feats require a certain amount of skill points as well. One would lose spells just to gain skills.
Well, part of the process is a deliberate attempt to slow level-progression for everybody. (As both a player and DM, I am appalled when a character rises in level, and then rises again, 10-13 encounters later, and hasn't gotten the opportunity to explore all of the class abilities available at the new level; nobody ever masters the PC's abilities. Also, I play with a bunch of old-timers, who remember how PCs could explore two or three entire adventures before rising in level.
So, if you choose only to buy experience levels, the issue is simply, and uniformly, slow development.
(How slow? Well, in 3.5, a 5th Level party fighting a CR5 monster should split 1500 xp. In a 4-person party, that's indeed 375 xp, and 13.33 of those encounters will take a party up a level. Under these house rules, they'll need 31.45 encounters to rise to 6th level, 39.07 CR6 encounters to rise to 7th level, and --if they want to plough on and get to 8th Level right away, that'll take 48.79 of those CR7 encounters.)
I'm afraid I don't understand your concerns. Could you give me an example of a feat that requires skill points?
Question, why is 6th level considered a sweet spot?
Even legendary heroes remain mortal; while a 6th level fighter who has taken toughness several times can take on a good mob, he isn't invulnerable. The sorcerer's 6d6 fireballs are phenomenal, but not so powerful that he can destroy a village and not fear retaliation.Q: Where did E6 come from?
A: E6 was inspired by the article "Gandalf was a Fifth-Level Magic User" by Bill Seligman. The article was published in The Dragon (which became Dragon magazine) in issue #5, March 1977. When I first had the concept of E6, where we used the first six levels for the whole game, my very first step was pitching it to my players. Some thought it was a great idea, and the rest were willing to give it a try, so I gave it a shot. E6 worked really well for our tastes, and we've done lots of playing inside E6 since then.Q: Why 6th level for the cap? Why not 12th, or 20th?
A: My experience in D&D is that at around 6th level the characters are really nicely balanced, both in terms of balance against other classes, and against the CR system. Also, there was an element of setting assumptions; each class is strong enough that they're well defined in their role, but not so strong that lower-level characters don't matter to them any more.
I really dig this system. Im so gonna introduce this to my players.
Questions:
Once XPs are spent are they gone for good, requiring a player to earn more?
Could you still Cap XPs earned per Level?
Eric
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Thanks, Eric.
Once XPs are spent are they gone for good, requiring a player to earn more?
It works like a bank account. You can save up experience points without buying anything, but once you spend them, they're out of the account.
Could you still Cap XPs earned per Level?
I suppose so, but eventually, it becomes disadvantageous to buy new levels; not only is it cheaper to buy feats and skill ranks, but buying a level makes everything else more expensive. The intent is that after 6th Level or so, players will only buy feats, and maybe skill ranks.
Capping experience earned per level is a push to get people to buy levels, so they can start earning experience again. But I'm fine with a PC reaching 6th Level and never buying a new level again.
I'm afraid I don't understand your concerns. Could you give me an example of a feat that requires skill points?
I'm not sure of what feats require skill points, but some feats for spell casters get a little non-useful when you cap the levels like that.
Going just from the players handbook, most of the metamagic feats look terrible. Particularly Maximize Spell and Widen Spell. You could use these on 0 level spells but at that point it's a waste of a premium 3rd level spell slot (maximum of 3 spells for a wizard.)
Could you "buy" spell levels instead of full wizard levels? So you could be caster level 9 but only wizard level 6? A spellcaster heavily relies on caster levels for spell slots, DC checks and the like. I guess damage dice and dc checks would "drive" off of actual wizard levels instead of caster level.
It's a bit wonky from this angle. I don't see it NOT working, but you're cutting out a lot of material.
Also, what kind of pre-requisites are you keeping? I see fighter-types getting pretty powerful just buying feats if you don't need, say the base attack bonus the fighter type feats.
I think I'm saying I need more information. Just curious how it's going to work ;).
"Next Level: 1000 * N ^ ((N+18)/15)"
This strikes me as a very specific formula. :-) How did you come up with it?
The one caveat I'd have is that I doubt that a 5th level wizard with 218,000 xp worth of feats is equal to an 11th level wizard (say). So if you knew beforehand that your game was going to reach that point, you might regret not saving more xp when you had a chance. (O.K., I admit that it's a little unlikely that a level 5 wizard is going to purchase 73 feats, but I think the point still stands...)
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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.. some feats for spell casters get a little non-useful when you cap the levels like that.Going just from the players handbook, most of the metamagic feats look terrible. Particularly Maximize Spell and Widen Spell. You could use these on 0 level spells but at that point it's a waste of a premium 3rd level spell slot (maximum of 3 spells for a wizard.)
Ah, thanks for the example.
The campaign uses the variant rule that Metamagic feats require additional spell slots of the base spell, rather than increasing the spell level. So a silent spell would require two spell slots (one for the base spell, and an additional slot for the "+1" level of the Silent Spell feat). I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't provide all the house rules for the campaign, and didn't even consider that the alternate Metamagic rules would need to be part of this subsystem.
It's a bit wonky from this angle. I don't see it NOT working, but you're cutting out a lot of material.
Also, what kind of pre-requisites are you keeping? I see fighter-types getting pretty powerful just buying feats if you don't need, say the base attack bonus the fighter type feats.
The campaign also uses the "Test Based Pre-Requisites" rules, which suggest that, for feats and -particularly- for Prestige Classes, the character needs to complete a particular entrance challenge. Instead of having the Dodge feat, for example, the entrant might be required to dodge something. Otherwise, pre-requisites aren't waived.
There's going to be a lot of D&D that this campaign cuts out, but it's high-level stuff that I want to cut out. I want to tell stories about people who are still human, and can still be threatened by a band of blood-thirsty ogres, and who are always wary of giants and dragons. Again, I refer you to the E6 documents.
Thanks for your questions and analysis.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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"Next Level: 1000 * N ^ ((N+18)/15)"
This strikes me as a very specific formula. :-) How did you come up with it?
The one caveat I'd have is that I doubt that a 5th level wizard with 218,000 xp worth of feats is equal to an 11th level wizard (say). So if you knew beforehand that your game was going to reach that point, you might regret not saving more xp when you had a chance. (O.K., I admit that it's a little unlikely that a level 5 wizard is going to purchase 73 feats, but I think the point still stands...)
It does look pretty specific, doesn't it? (grin) I just kept tinkering with likely formulas until I found one that does what I wanted it to do, but a simpler formula that works almost as well would be the recursive (previous level requirement +1000) * 1.333.
There's a law of diminishing returns with feats, because it's hard to use them all, all the time. (But 73 feats might include 6 purchases of Toughness, 6 or 7 purchases of feats to help saving throws, several of the E6 feats that allow for higher caster levels for specific spells, a bucket of Metamagic, ...)
Your point, that players should plan for how long they expect their characters to last, is a good one.
Your point, that players should plan for how long they expect their characters to last, is a good one.
So how many experience points do you figure your players will earn over the course of the campaign (based on previous experience)?
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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So how many experience points do you figure your players will earn over the course of the campaign (based on previous experience)?
I don't know. This is a new group, with rotating GMs, so I'll run for about 10 or 12 sessions, and then play in somebody else's campaign for 30 - 40 sessions, and then repeat. So, I don't think we'll end up with a lot of massively powerful PCs. But this group is notorious for running long campaigns. (Eleanor is the undisputed champ, with a D&D game that's been running continually since 1978.) So, after ten years, we'll see.
Suppose, for example, your campaign runs up to 80,000 xp -- that's the equivalent of level 13 in regular 3.5, although it'll take you longer to earn that much XP because you probably won't be fighting CR 13+ enemies. So the end game would be level 8.
In that case I'm not sure there's much of a difference over playing E6 or maybe E8, other than folks buying a few bonus feats a little bit earlier (I doubt that anyone's going to pay 1000 xp for a bonus feat at level 1, but I could be wrong). Now maybe if feats were cheaper, it might be more tempting; to me, a class level in a good class is probably worth at least three or four feats.
It's an interesting idea, though; I know that Kirth Gerson came up with a system where you buy everything with XP (attack bonus, spellcasting, etc.). Did you take a look at his system?
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I'm not sure there's much of a difference over playing E6 or maybe E8, other than folks buying a few bonus feats a little bit earlier (I doubt that anyone's going to pay 1000 xp for a bonus feat at level 1, but I could be wrong). Now maybe if feats were cheaper, it might be more tempting; to me, a class level in a good class is probably worth at least three or four feats.
I think the trade-off is about five feats = 1 class level.
But I'm expecting that, when people get to 3rd or 4th Level PC's, they'll be tempted to buy feat chains.
It's an interesting idea, though; I know that Kirth Gerson came up with a system where you buy everything with XP (attack bonus, spellcasting, etc.). Did you take a look at his system?
No, I didn't see it. I'll have to take a look.
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Thanks, Eric.
Once XPs are spent are they gone for good, requiring a player to earn more?
It works like a bank account. You can save up experience points without buying anything, but once you spend them, they're out of the account.
Could you still Cap XPs earned per Level?
I suppose so, but eventually, it becomes disadvantageous to buy new levels; not only is it cheaper to buy feats and skill ranks, but buying a level makes everything else more expensive. The intent is that after 6th Level or so, players will only buy feats, and maybe skill ranks.
Capping experience earned per level is a push to get people to buy levels, so they can start earning experience again. But I'm fine with a PC reaching 6th Level and never buying a new level again.
it's legend points for D&D...(a la Earthdawn)
I've toyed with the idea, but D&D wasn't built for that type of purchase, when you have to purchase all your skills, spellcasting, etc...at each level certain classes get far more than others...
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I've toyed with the idea, but D&D wasn't built for that type of purchase, when you have to purchase all your skills, spellcasting, etc...at each level certain classes get far more than others...
Well, I'm expecting most people to spend most of their first 30,000 experience points buying class levels (and the occasional action point). If there's a disparity between the goodies someone gets as a 5th Level Ranger versus those of a 5th Level Fighter, then the problem is in the underlying D&D system.
The E6 system is predicated on the view that, at about 6th Level, the classes are pretty well balanced against each other.
It's an interesting idea, though; I know that Kirth Gerson came up with a system where you buy everything with XP (attack bonus, spellcasting, etc.). Did you take a look at his system?No, I didn't see it. I'll have to take a look.
I think there's an early draft of it here.
Thanks, Kirth. That's really elaborate! And it looks like it'd be fun to play.
Thanks, Chris! I like it for two main reasons:
1. Classes always seemed sort of clunky and artificial to me; and2. The scaling costs introduces a built-in diminishing returns mechanism (analagous to the 1e increasing xp for next level but static xp gained) that 3.5 lacked. It's just as easy to go from 1st to 5th rank (38 xp for a 4-rank increase) as it is to go from 18th to 19th (38 xp, for a 1-rank increase).