E6 & Pathfinder, what level to stop at?

[LazarX]

Aelryinth wrote:

I'd go E10 and just make sure you control the 'problem spells'. Remember, Raise Dead requires an intact body. The Vlad Taltos books notes how access to Raise Dead for powerful beings is assumed, and you kill people as warnings. Making them unrevivable is when you get serious.

For Teleportation, simply limit the range, and don't let anyone teleport they haven't gone to personally overland. This means that a wizard teleported to someplace can't teleport home...he has to 'walk' home before he can do the teleport himself.
Limiting the range to 10 miles/level will also take a lot of the 'I can be anywhere' out of it.
For the Planar Ally and summoning stuff, simply remove them. Restrict summoning spells to, you know, summonings. Restrict Planar Ally to things you can summon into a circle, but that otherwise can't leave the area. So you could Call up something that could cast some spells on you or give you some advice, but not that can fight for you. That is what the Summoning spells are actually for.

For Plane Shift, limit it just like teleportation. Only to Border planes (ethereal and astral), and you have to traverse those to get to where you want. You always return where you left, unless you find a portal otherwise, and you can only use it with some laborious preparations, not as an offensive spell or a quick escape.

If a spell breaks the story, then simply adjust the spell. E10 can work just fine...you get some amazing abilities, but they don't break the world, they just become part of it.

Note that d20 Modern stopped at level 5 spells, effectively E10, but they included the Archmage class so you could increase your spells/day and caster level, which is really all you want to do.

==Aelryinth

Maybe he doesn't want the power options of 5th level spells, no matter how watered down. The OP has to decide how mundane he wants his world to be before that question can be answered.

[hogarth]

Ricardo Pennacchia wrote:

What about using Words of Power magic system in a E* campaign?

I think it would work reasonably well in an E6 game. One of the problems with Words of Power is the lack of high level spells, which isn't an issue for E6. Likewise, the relative lack of utility spells shouldn't be a big issue if most challenges are kept at human scale (rather than super-hero scale).

[VanceMadrox]

I think words of power would work excellently in an E* game.

[hogarth]

LazarX wrote:

Maybe he doesn't want the power options of 5th level spells, no matter how watered down.

I'm not sure I see the big advantage of taking level 10 abilities and scaling them back to level 6 power vs. staying with level 6 abilities in the first place. I guess you get "more stuff", which is usually nice.

[Aelryinth]

You don't really think that restricting the range of teleport to 10 miles/level makes it a 3rd level spell, do you? Seriously?

Teleport is a 'game-breaker' because it does 2 things: It avoids laborious overland travel, and it allows you to 'skip' encounters, either by zipping in past them, or pulling out and not being able to be followed.
It collapses the narrative of the story. Instead of 'on the way to the great city of Absalom' it's "I pay for one of the wizards in the guild to bring up an image of a teleport site in Absalom, memorize it, and teleport the whole party there. Time to shop!" or "Everyone close, it's time to go! We'll rest up at an inn 600 miles away and pop back in the morning!"

If you restrict the range, it doesn't become the ultimate transport spell. If you force the wizard to travel to the place, in effect making a continuous map of the world he can pop from place to place on, that 'adds to' the narrative. Wizards will travel large distances by land at least once to reach places they can teleport to later...but they can't just pop halfway around the world on a whim. Indeed, they will 'enjoy' traveling, as it will expand their 'teleport map'.

Raise Dead changes how you play the game. Just take it into account when you're playing. A simple decaptiation of a dead person and removing the head makes Raising Dead impossible. This should be well known and used. Recovering a full body intact thus becomes part of the narrative...it's no longer a no-risk proposition to die, this isn't Resurrection which only needs part of a body. Intelligent foes can and should make sure you're dead and can't come back. Wouldn't you?

As for Call Planar Ally, the story is about the PC's, not how abusable a creature they can bring in. Any narrative where summoned creatures are used fixes the creatures and makes them extensions of the character, with resultant penalties for losing them to the character's power, making them hard to replace, etc.
PF and d20 don't do that. You can cycle through summoned stuff as fast as you like with no consequences. Without restrictions, these things can be incredibly abused, and they pull the narrative away from the character to 'what perfect being can I call on for this situation?'

and I'm not going to go into how controlling multiple creatures slows down the game and hogs the spotlight.

==Aelryinth

[Makarion]

LazarX wrote:

Makarion wrote:

One of the things we all agreed on, right from the start, is that the odd levels mean that sorcerers are wholly nonviable compared to wizards. The same probably goes for oracles versus clerics.

They aren't "non-viable", they simply require different expectations and styles of play. And in a world where magic item creation isn't the easy peasy answer that it is in standard Pathfinder, those odd-level spontaneous casters mean a new utility if you use them right.

On odd levels, wizards actually have as many if not more spell slots, and of higher levels. I really see next to no benefit to sorcerers at that point.

[Aelryinth]

Wizards MIGHT have as many, but at higher levels, even that advantage falls away. The real benefit is getting more, different spells castable.

==Aelryinth

[Ricardo Pennacchia]

As for the number of attacks, i thought about an advanced feat (requirement: BAB +8) that reduces de difference betwen iteractive attacks: the first time you get this feat, it raises your attack bonuses from +8/+3 to +8/+4/+0 (yes, it grants a third attack with +0 adjustement), and additional picks reduces even further (to +8/+5/+2, then to +8/+6/+4); you can even limit the amount of additional repicks allowed (although i think it would be really cool for martial characters to get 3 attacks at full bonus in the end).

Well, that's based on a P8 assumption, but it can be somehow adapted for P6.

Thoughts?

[Rasias_Merianson]

It's interesting how many people actually work on something like that. I'm also working on an E-6 like system, which is kind of far away from pathfinder (i'm trying to get rid of a lot of the raw boni, like +2 on attack roll) And i feel like 8th level is a good level to stop. It gives medium attack progression classes a second attack and gives high progression classes a good lead on to-hit (the secondary isn't linear so sth like +8/+5. Also I think the biggest problem about high level spellcasting is, that it rarely has a risk, which i'm trying to adress too (so some sort of spell failure, that grows non-linear: lower spells will almost always succeed, higher spells, so in my case 3 and 4th have a high chance if you do not take a long time to cast them)

anyway.. /dotted

[Landon Winkler]

I started brainstorming some M6 (because Mythic, rather than Epic) rules for use with the playtest, but haven't revisited them since the Mythic Adventures release.

That said, they're on this wiki if you'd find them any use.

I personally prefer M6 with certain higher level abilities (like missing domain abilities, limited access to higher level spells, and so forth) handed out through use of capstone feats.

Cheers!
Landon