Essentially for the most part, it could work; epecially as far as humanoids go.
For the monsters etc. it wouldn't really, not without them losing a lot of cool stuff and badassness. Also the kind of magic Nyrissa is calling upon as a mere 6th level caster (and a theurge no less) to attept to bottle the stolen lands would need some explaining. As would a whole village being soul trapped...
I'm actually doing exactly this in my rendition of Kingmaker. Obviously it requires plenty of work for the DM but I believe it will work out very well. Right now my players are all 4th level and when I brought up the concept with them they were very much for it. 'Helping a farmer drive off a tatzlwurm is more fullfilling than fighting an evil god' was the general mindset. E6 would ground the players, keep them closer to the people they are building this kingdom for.
I'm not impressed by high level villians with stat blocks that take up two pages, Kyuss went down like a chump in a single round in Age of Worms, I cheated by doubled his HP
to make him last a bit longer. What a let down!
As I said this type of game requires a lot of extra work from the dm, I'm adding a few encounters from Tales of Old Margreve to add some flavor and give me time to change things around.
The higher level magics like the whole thing the BBEG is planning can be explained by including Incantations in your gameworld, ritualized magic that involves skills, special components and time to pull off.
We'll see how it goes, I'd highly encourage others to give it a try!
I think the point of E6 is that to tackle massive problems like Vordecai, you need to:
1. Research, plan, use divinations
2. Bring more people, retainers, resources etc.
3. Recall that advancement does occur for players after level 6; their level may stay the same but they do get feats thereafter, so their power level does crawl up there.
So, it takes an army and thoroughly abusing the magic item economy (of CL6 or lower items) to beat the BBEG of the third module. That's totally possible for a King making his kingdom.
I think the point of E6 is that to tackle massive problems like Vordecai, you need to:
1. Research, plan, use divinations
2. Bring more people, retainers, resources etc.
3. Recall that advancement does occur for players after level 6; their level may stay the same but they do get feats thereafter, so their power level does crawl up there.
So, it takes an army and thoroughly abusing the magic item economy (of CL6 or lower items) to beat the BBEG of the third module. That's totally possible for a King making his kingdom.
Huge fan of E6 - 3.5 private sanctuary will hopefully have a podcast on this in the next 1-2 months.
I am not familar with the kingmaker stuff beyond the 1st module but it, like any paths, should be doable with a re-write.
Any Big-Ass magics should be just made to 'ritual' magic - something the villain takes to the grave with them.
Kingmaker actually kind of strikes me as the only AP where E6 really isn't appropriate, at least among those I've read. Moreso than just "Oh, you've got to adjust all the NPCs and monsters" which should be patently obvious.
Gonna spoiler this one because it's really down to the plot.
Spoiler:
The key issue here is the final opponent. In most APs, while the PCs are facing the threat of god-like smackdown, ideally the hammer should never land. They stop the ritual, or get the key component, or essentially make sure that nothing really bad ever actually happens.
Without the key Macguffin, the bad guy is just like any other X-level character. They don't really do anything that 'breaks' the setting on their own and arbitrarily dropping or adding 10 levels to them wouldn't actually fundamentally change anything about the encounter.
Nyrissa isn't like that.
While it's fairly subtle, she's messing with the PCs almost from day one. Her power extends over an entire region, and when she strikes, it is with a series of magical happenings that call to mind the Ten Plagues of Egypt - she is almost literally a foe of biblical proportions.
Even further, she actually is fairly close to a minor diety. While she isn't one of the First, the AP makes it pretty clear that in terms of First World politics she isn't a nobody either. And within the area that her power extends over, her influence is that much greater.
While E6 has its' place, it's intentionally meant to keep the power levels of both PC and NPC down to within a specific 'feel' for a campaign. Even moreso than bigger numbers, it's meant to keep specific types of powers out of everyone's hands. And I don't think Nyrissa will have nearly the same impact using entangle and suggestion against PCs as she would using Elemental Swarm and Wish.
Kingmaker actually kind of strikes me as the only AP where E6 really isn't appropriate, at least among those I've read. Moreso than just "Oh, you've got to adjust all the NPCs and monsters" which should be patently obvious.
Gonna spoiler this one because it's really down to the plot.
** spoiler omitted **
If it is as Chris says then he may have a point... that said, my Homebrew E6 game move all demi-human to the Category of 'Fey', and Fey who live most of the time in their old realm/plane what have you aren't limited to E6 progression. Bunch o' level 6 (with exta feats) against a CR12 beastie? (bringing her down from her likely CR 18-20) is still gonna be a fight for the ages. You could also leave her at current CR but if the party can get a certain mcguffin then any instawin spells won't work or what have you - making her terrifying (that high in E6 *IS* Godlike) but not impossible.
Still, and again I stress this, Chris may have a good point.
Kingmaker actually kind of strikes me as the only AP where E6 really isn't appropriate, at least among those I've read. Moreso than just "Oh, you've got to adjust all the NPCs and monsters" which should be patently obvious.
Gonna spoiler this one because it's really down to the plot.
** spoiler omitted **
If it is as Chris says then he may have a point... that said, my Homebrew E6 game move all demi-human to the Category of 'Fey', and Fey who live most of the time in their old realm/plane what have you aren't limited to E6 progression. Bunch o' level 6 (with exta feats) against a CR12 beastie? (bringing her down from her likely CR 18-20) is still gonna be a fight for the ages. You could also leave her at current CR but if the party can get a certain mcguffin then any instawin spells won't work or what have you - making her terrifying (that high in E6 *IS* Godlike) but not impossible.
Still, and again I stress this, Chris may have a good point.
Well, to give you an idea...
Spoilered for plot spoilage:
Vordokai, mentioned above, is an ancient cyclopean lich. While his power level has decayed somewhat from centuries of being sealed off, he's still a being that once conquered vast swaths of land, a powerful warlord and a creature of vast intellect who, in his prime (a state he will reach very quickly if not stopped) would likely conquer territory from the Worldwound to the Inner Sea by the end of the decade.
Nyrissa lets him wake up because it amuses her, as near as I can tell. She's supposed to be insane, which means not all of her plans and ideas make total sense.
There's also already a Macguffin in the adventure meant to seriously weaken her, and several methods built-in for doing so separate from that. Using all of them reduces her effective CR (from what I remember) by 6-8 points already.
In most other APs, Vordokai would likely be the BBEG. In Kingmaker, he's a speed-bump.
I don't want to say E6 wouldn't work. I just don't think it really does the campaign justice. Carrion Crown and Serpent's Skull both seem like better fits, plot-wise.
I think E6 would work spledidly for books 1-5. I was actually going to convert Kingmaker to E6, before my players talked me out of it. (They want to hit level 20...)
Anyway, everything in KM is very low-magic until the final book. It would work until that point.
E6 is, in essence, a variant advancement system. After attaining level 6, whenever a character would gain enough XP to advance to level 7 from there, they instead pick up a new feat (and I've seen some GMs also give a single skill rank, not to exceed the level 6 cap) and continue going on like that. A few special feats allow for very limited advancement beyond that point.
The idea is to focus on a certain part of the game and extend the style of play that the 6-9 range emphasizes while still allowing regular advancement. A few particular powers that this keeps specifically out of PC hands are teleportation, dominate, and death effects. There are also a few other variants, including an E8 (which is actually a bigger change than it seems at first, since it puts a number of fairly powerful effects into play for at least the GM), but that's the basic gist of it.
The rules are available for free in various places around the internet for you to look up. There are a couple of versions, so I'm going to leave finding them as an exercise for the reader.
Thank you, that actually sounds really interesting (though I won't be able to adopt it for the campaign I'm already running) I'll look into it and maybe try it out at a later date.
