E6?

[Kryzbyn]

Play a 3.5 Warmage in E6.
No worries.

[Epic Meepo]

Play a half-orc wizard with 20 Str and a falchion.

After all, in E6, you only need 13 Int to cast your highest-level spell.

[Yora]

That's something that people easily forget. When you know the campaign won't be so long that you reach 17th level, a spellcaster does not have to increase the main ability score to 19 by 16th level. Starting with a 14 can be enough, and if the campaign is going to be shorter, even a 13 works just fine.

[Ilja]

Yeah, it's very much possible to be a melee caster, however, there is one big drawback: AC. At low levels AC is king, and a wizard, even one focused on combat, will have a hard time keeping up.

A wand of mage armor can solve some of it, and if you have time to prebuff and/or know what the enemy is like, Defending Bone, Protection From Evil and Shield can do a lot of good, but you are going to be pretty fragile.

[Ilja]

One build that I think might work, though I've never seen it in our games, would be a mystic theurge focused on support and skirmishing. You'd have plenty of spells per day, and have pretty decent spellcasting. Something like:

Race: Aasimar.
Level 1: Cleric
Level 2: Empyreal Sorcerer
Level 3: Empyreal Sorcerer
Level 4: Empyreal Sorcerer
Level 5: Mystic Theurge
Level 6: Mystic Theurge

Take a 14 wisdom so you get bonus 2nd level spells, and you'll have plenty of spells per day, 5th level sorcerer casting and 3rd level cleric casting, allowing for most of the good buffs. Since you only need a 14 wisdom and wisdom is a good stat anyway, you'll have plenty of points to put towards Str/Dex/Con. I suggest dumping Str since you won't be good at armor anyway, and going for either a ranged weapon or weapon finesse and maneuvers. Throwing nets might be useful too.

Play it kind of like a bard but with music replaced by spells. You'll have 6/6/4 sorcerer spells and 4/4/3 cleric spells. Travel is an excellent domain, and feats should go towards non-spellcasting combat whether ranged or melee.

[TriOmegaZero]

Some light armor isn't a bad choice either. The spell failure is pretty negligible and there are ways around it. Especially knowing you'll rarely need you swift actions for other things.

[Helaman]

Saying you need 13 in your casting stat IS technically true. But it affords no bonus 2nd level spells until you stat up at level 4, and no level 3 bonus spells. Given your spells are never gonna be more than what you'll get by level 6(7 or 8) every extra spell helps.

It also impacts the DC of your spells. DC 12 will work fine against CR 1/3 and 1/2 enemies though it will be a 45-50% chance they'll make the save. Sure, all your casting can be buffs but you're losing a lot of the versatility of a caster.

Also a lot of E6 rule sets require certain stat levels for Epic level caster feats too so minimising your casting stat may hurt your long game.

[Helaman]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Some light armor isn't a bad choice either. The spell failure is pretty negligible and there are ways around it. Especially knowing you'll rarely need you swift actions for other things.

Yeah, agree with you 100%. At low levels leather armour is a 1-10 miss. Its survivable. With a leather Lamellar cuirass? Its a 1-20 and even better. At higher levels? If you have the feat to spare? Arcane Armour Training isn't as horrible as it is in standard play and mithril shirts may become available.