E6 Savage Tide

[clearshades]

I'm about to start a group Doing Epic 6th rules variant in the Savage Tide world. For those of you unfamiliar with E6 it is basically that PCs stop levelling at 6th level. For more details please see this link.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Epic_6

I will not go into my reasons below since that is not the purpose of this post but if anyone is actually curious, just ask and I'll reply with my reasons.

I'm not sure if I will run the full Adventure Path or just the first one or two and then go off on tangents and let the Players explore the world. IF the players do decide to chase the adventure path I would work with them and probably juice down the stats to match their level. This would make more sense in some places (your average thug in Scuttlecove being an 8th level fighter) than others (Demogorgon...).

I've never tried running an E6 campaign and I was wondering if anyone has tried anything similar to this either with this or another Adventure Path and if anyone had any suggestions or advice for me before I begin Savage Tide in general.

Thanks in advance.

[Carl Cramér]

E6 Savage Tide would be very interesting until Farshore. Some of the later challenges would naturally become much harder, but up until Farshore I think it could be possible without major change. Thereafter, however, the later part would become deadly horror - possibly playable as a kin d of call-of-cuthulu, play the demons off against each other game.

[Charlie Bell]

Carl is right. Lightless Depths, City of Broken Idols, and Serpents of Scuttlecove would have to be majorly toned down for E6. Into the Maw and onward would very likely be outright unplayable. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that you can totally stop the campaign after the Crimson Fleet's defeat in Tides of Dread. The bad news is that the second half of the AP is the best... particularly Enemies of My Enemy, especially if your players are into old-school Greyhawk lore.

[Carl Cramér]

Respectfully disagree - after running the AP, I found that is started out great and basically got less and less great. Of course, it was still great at the end, so its a bit of nit-picking. An I must admit we are not Greyhawk veterans. Some of the "legendary evils" were a bit of a anticlimax, like St Kargoth the Destroyer, who went down from 2 critical Heal spells. Of course, it is good for then players to sometimes get a resounding success.

For my group, the defense of Farshore was the climax of the campaign.

[Charlie Bell]

I got around the problem of dogpiling St. Kargoth by having him specifically call out the party's paladin. They faced off solo while the rest of the party was trying to deal with the perpetually resurrecting Nulonga. It turned a throwaway encounter into an epic struggle of paladin vs. antipaladin.

[psionichamster]

First thought: you are a mean GM.

I like it.

Books 1-5 are completely playable, right off the bat. Tides of Dread is one of my favorite adventures to play or run, ever. The lead up to there, if you play on the NPC's and tailor their interactions with your players, pays off richly.

I am not sure you could tone down the higher level stuff, at least, not without losing a lot of the flavor. Even if you did level down the mid-range books, there are certain general utility functions the party is expected to have.

I am certain it would be a lot of fun to run Sasserine for a while. In my game, the party had just gotten half a dozen shipping vessels and set up a major shipping concern. It also answers the age-old question of "Pirates or Demons?"

[clearshades]

Mean? Me?...thank you?

Some info on the group I'm running, we've got 6 players and three are newbs. Of the three experienced people, only one is what you might call a dedicated role-player. That leaves me as the only person who actually knows anything about D&D cosmology. I'm going to get a ton of geek joy from taking them to the Ilse of Dread but for them I think it might as well be the Ilse of Danger or Dinosaur Island or Dangerous Place Where You Will Fight Things.

I got the advice on another set of boards to end it after Lightless depths and basically say that destroying the shadow pearls is the whole point of the adventure and then end things. Since we are playing only once a month that seems like the most viable option. At once a month play, we are talking about some slow progression as it is and we may be hitting Lightless Depths two years from now.

I've been toying with the idea of going to the Planes but more as outsiders and a sort of survival horror feel where they are always hiding on their way to negotiate with various parties.