E6 Kingmaker

[Gillian Wiseman]

I'm strongly considering converting Kingmaker to my campaign world - but running it with the e6 rules (found here: http://esix.pbworks.com/)

(E6 is essentially dnd that caps out at 6th level plus feats for advancement beyond 6th.)

Has anyone tried this? What would be the biggest problems? I'm aware that the published campaign is geared to finish at above 12th level, though I don't remember now just how high it tops out. Would it be impossible to adapt?

[Chris Kenney]

VERY unlikely to work. The campaign tops out at 18th level, and James Jacobs has posted stat blocks on the types of encounters we'll be seeing towards the end - most of those I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, and the ones we've seen weren't all cut for difficulty. Furthermore, E6 requires rebalancing of certain abilities near the end of its' curve, and the enemies in place in the middle of the AP might prove difficult to adapt to that.

The exploration rules already negate a lot of the purpose of E6 anyway. Exploring a hex can't be done any faster than you can ride on an unencumbered horse, no matter what movement magics you employ, and with that kind of slowdown many of the 'tricks' involved in circumventing challenges with travel powers become a lot less useful. Furthermore, bypassing challenges in Kingmaker hurts your XP, because all but one encounter in each part of the AP is totally optional anyway.

As for the "low fantasy feel" Kingmaker really isn't compatible with that point of view. The rules assume normal levels of access to magical items and even create an entire side-system to simulate said items passing through the kingdom's economy. There's some posts around on how to tweak the rules for low-magic campaigns, but then you'll face the problem of the PCs being put up against optimized and downright unnatural opponents, including some very high-fantasy stuff (just check the covers out.)

It's going to be an insane amount of work, at the very least.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Impossible? No nothing is impossible in gaming.

Difficult? Ah, well of course. What you are doing will require that you work.

Step One - Identify the expected Average Party Level (APL) of the adventure.
Step Two - Identify the proportional CR of each encounter. (=APL, APL-1, APL +3 etc)
Step Three- Replace monsters with proportionally different monsters. Remember it's perfectly acceptable to tell the players they are facing a monster of one type (a cyclopic lich wizard for example) when really you're using the stats for another (a cyclopic ghoul wizard). Remember only the PCs need to be capped at 6. You can still make a level 10 NPC that would be VERY challenging against the players.

Don't forget to change treasure and rewards as well.
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It would require quite a bit of work (exponentially increasing from book 3 onwards), but if it'll give you the feel you're looking for, I say go for it.

[Shane Walden]

It will still require less work than making a home campaign as well flushed out as Kingmaker is. I have had a similar thought but my players aren't quite ready for the E6 shift yet.

Shane

[Werebat]

Let me know if you do this, and how it works out! I'm considering doing the same thing, plus adapting the campaign to emulate the "Fall From Heaven" addon from Civ4 (the one where the world is in eternal Winter due to an errant god who needs a smackdown).

I've bought the first three books, and my initial thoughts were to use them more or less as-is and then shift in my own direction. OTOH, if I really like the storyline, I might be tempted to just run Kingmaker as-is (which I'm thinking would be tough to do in E6, but not impossible).

I dunno.

Interesting that "travel powers" is one of the first thing another poster thought of in figuring why you'd want to switch to E6. If I were to use standard Pathfinder I might simply ban the travel spells and powers.

But then what else to allow? E6 is nice because as a DM I can't remember the last time I've had to wrangle over a spell, PrC, class ability, etc. that was unbalancing the game. No more goofball problems from the powergamers. It's nice.

- Ron ^*^

[Werebat]

Just an aside -- by my calculations, the version of E6 I run can bring the PCs up to 11th level equivalent. The fifth module is for 12th level PCs, and since my players are generally whipsmart they should be able to manage it at 6+20... But that would leave them unable to run through the final chapter (for 15th level, or 6+40 if power from feats didn't break down around 6+20).

Really not sure how this would work.

- Ron ^*^