The Optimization of E6

[Aktariel]

I'm curious to hear from anyone how well E6 has worked for them, and indeed if anyone has ever played it.

What were your thoughts? What did you like? What worked for you? What didn't? What would you/did you change?


On a related note, let's discuss some 6th level builds. How would you optimize with only 6 levels to play with?

Things I've seen bandied about include Warblade 4/Fighter 2; Wizard-Cleric-Druid 6; Monk 6; and worse yet, Pally 6.

Obviously, some of these are more optimal than others....

What would you suggest? And yes, I realize that casters are apt to be better, but since this is lower levels, classes are slightly more equal to each other, and melee doesn't get boned as bad.

Builds?

[Fwib]

For those who like something simple with melee: nonpsionic Thri-kreen pounce-barbarian?

[Aktariel]

What is the "pounce-barbarian?"




What else?

[RandomCasualty]

I wouldn't figure you'd want to go caster 6. You're actualyl probably better off going caster 5 and something else, mainly because you can get more slots with your feats later, so you might as well spend it on something extra. Unlike in a conventional game, you're no longer working towards higher spell levels once you hit spell level 3, so you can consider multiclassing.

Monk isn't a terrible dip just for the saves.

I wouldn't dip fighter at all. It's rather pointless. You're getting lots of feats anyway. So bothering to get something you can get later at an earlier time is probably a waste. The one thing you are getting in E6 is feats, so there's no need to horde them early.

Barb 1/ Warblade 5 may be good if you want a warrior type.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Here's a simple Sorcerer build:

Spell Focus: Conjuration
Metamagic School Focus: Conjuration
Sculpt Spell

Spells (shamelessly stolen from Keith): Grease, Glitterdust or Web (maybe even both), Stinking Cloud. You'll also want Color Spray, and some utility spells, but you can rely on wands and scrolls for anything that doesn't have a save or depend much on duration (eg knock, obscuring mist, etc).

Basically, you do battlefield control, and three times/day, you can throw down Sculpt for free, which means you can use it on Stinking Cloud, or if you're human, you can have all three feats by level 3, and have Sculpted Glitterdust or Web at level 4.

You might eventually also want SF/MSF for Illusion, since there are some pretty hot AoE illusions in the spell compendium (net of shadows, shadow binding).

But I'm not familiar with the E6 feats. There may be some that are helpful.

[RandomCasualty]

1189020672[/unixtime]]

Spell Focus: Conjuration
Metamagic School Focus: Conjuration
Sculpt Spell

Where is metamagic school focus from? I've never even heard of it.

[CalibronXXX]

Complete Mage. All the weird magic stuff you've never heard of is almost always from Complete Mage.

[Fwib]

1189020254[/unixtime]]What is the "pounce-barbarian?"

Aside from the various other ways to make your barbarian pouncy, Complete Champion gave the option to swap out your extra speed for the ability to pounce. That was the one I was thinking of.

[Aktariel]

Bump?

Someone over at wizards suggested Scout 5/Ranger 1....

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Username17]

Hell, in the topsy turvy world of E6, Rogue 3/ Ranger 3 is a decent life choice. Rogue 4/Paladin 2 is also not-bad.

-Username17

[fbmf]

What is E6?

Game On,
fbmf

[Sma]

Modded D&D where you stop gaining levels after level 6 and get feats instead.

[NineInchNall]

Some dude over on the WotC boards suggested stopping the game's normal advancement at 6th level, continuing advancement only through feats and items. He dubbed it E6.


EDIT: Ninja-ed!

[Koumei]

1189266912[/unixtime]]Bump?

Someone over at wizards suggested Scout 5/Ranger 1....

Anyone else have any ideas?

Scout 1/Rogue 1/Ninja 1/The Other Ninja* 1/Spellthief 1/Ranger 1.

I added Ranger there because "Why not?". Favoured enemy and a point of BAB can be nice. There you go, 3d6 Sneak Attack, 1d6 Sudden Strike (or was it 2 and 2? What does the Spellthief use again?) and whatever the Scout gets. Add the Craven feat (Lords of Darkness) if you can qualify, and you're looking at 5d6 + whatever the Scout does when you throw acid flasks at people. With a BAB of +2, hmm. Ok, definite flaw.

*The Other Ninja is the Ninja from the Rokugan d20 book, superior in every way except skills to the Completely Lame Ninja. Fighter BAB, real Sneak Attack, Int to Initiative, Con*5 to speed...

[Aktariel]

And the answer is....

Fractional BAB! Or, just assume that all medium BAB classes progress at the same rate... which gives you a BAB of... 4?5? total....

Looks like fun.. what else can you do with it aside from stabbing people in the face really hard?


EDIT Frank: Care to explain why Rogue 3/Ranger 3 is good? Or why E6 is "topsy turvy"?

EDIT 2: How about Monk 4/Maho-Bujin 1/Shiba Protector 1?

EDIT 3: How would F&K's Tome material work with E6?

[Koumei]

Aside from stabbing people in the face real hard? Skills. Let's see:

Rogue: 8+
Scout: 4+? 6+? I can't be bothered checking.
Ninja: 6+
The Other Ninja: 4+
Spellthief: probably 6+
Ranger: 4+?

See, it's fairly decent. Now, you're not good at plenty of things, but you're decent at skills, you have Abuse Magic Device, and you can stab people in the face really hard with flasks of acid.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Gnome Beguiler 6
1 - Spell Focus (Illusion)
3 - Metamagic School Focus (3 silent illusions/day if I recall correctly)
6 - metamagic feat (3 silent or ____ illusions/day)

ungodly DCs

[CalibronXXX]

Unsurprisingly it seems like Druid 6 is still more or less your best bet.

[JonSetanta]

Eh.. fuck. I know too little about this, even though I DL the thread about it and it is promising.
Gotta read more.. then I'll comment further..

[Username17]

The sad fact of E6 is that the accumulation of feats slowly pushes Wizards into getting more powerful spell effects and Fighters get... alternate gimicks that are about the same level.

The Sudden Metamagics alone break E6 severely in the long run. You really are better off playing regular 6 where you get to sixth level and then you stop handing out XP for the rest of the campaign.

-Username17

[CalibronXXX]

Did this guy ever explain why he thought it was a better idea to make up a whole new leveling system instead of just stopping the XP flow at low levels?

[Koumei]

I imagine the *theory* of it was for people to have heaps of low-level tricks available, thus plenty of variety.

I've seen a similar thing put in place by someone else, where you go 1-10, then after that you start Gestalting another class in 1-10, then another, then another etc. So you'd end up with a +10 BAB, +7 for all Base Saves, 10d12 HP, (8+Int)*10 skill points, and the unique class features of every class.

They probably didn't consider that it doesn't really solve the problem this way though. Though it would at least fix some of the issues they had.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

You have to play "regular 6" in a Frank and K system in order to have decent tricks under those circumstances. You know, where you can take _one_ feat to be an archer instead of an entire chain. In E6 your 6 feats will define you to be a sword+shield specializing character that can shoot arrows occasionally. In a Frank+K system, you are defined as such a character by level 3 pretty easily.

[RandomCasualty]

1189345125[/unixtime]]Did this guy ever explain why he thought it was a better idea to make up a whole new leveling system instead of just stopping the XP flow at low levels?

Well, becuase people like to advance. Basically he wanted to create some minor superficial advancement system where people think they're getting better, but they're really not improving much.

[Crissa]

Do you suppose their are any combat feats that match the effects of stacked metamagic feats?

An E6-only +2 BAB (requiring level 6 or 6 BAB already) wouldn't really match up, so what would?

What magic-based feats are unbalancing here? (if they're unbalancing here, they're probably always unbalanced, to note...)

-Crissa