Today’s guest article by Gnome Stew reader Craig Dedrick might look D&D-specific at first, but Craig winds up asking some questions that are relevant to many RPGs — D&D is the lens here, not the real topic. Thanks, Craig! –Martin
Dungeons & Dragons has always been my first love in gaming. My mother brought home a copy of Basic D&D when I was eight years old. I had no idea how to play, but it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. It would be two more years before I would actually figure out how the game worked. Over the years, I have run many, many campaigns. I have run what I would consider to be successful, satisfying campaigns using Vampire: The Masquerade, Kult, Mechwarrior, Unknown Armies, All Flesh Must Be Eaten (yes, I like horror games), and others. I have also run many D&D (or Pathfinder) campaigns.
Many of them have started out well, but they always seemed to get away from me. At some point, the characters got so powerful that the combat encounters I designed were either very easy, waaaay too hard (ahem, TPK), or very long and boring. What was I doing wrong? Why couldn’t I get this right? How is it that I can run a Kult game for two years, but D&D always blows up in my face?
A few years ago, a friend suggested that I run an E6 game of Pathfinder. E6 stands for Epic 6. It means that characters cannot progress above sixth level (though they can get epic level feats, which are some of the ordinary feats that would otherwise be blocked to them because of level restrictions). The rules for this variant of your standard D&D game can be can be found on EN World, and the principles can be applied to any game that involves levels. Given that my past D&D games have broken somewhere around level 7-9, I decided to give it a try.
At first it was easy. It was just like any other game of D&D at level 1. I soon came to see the hidden restrictions:
1) Big monsters are a big deal. You can’t just throw rumours of a dragon or a giant around. These are epic level monsters, and they would have a big impact on the world! I now have to be more considered in my choice of monsters. I really have to dig into the ecologies and variations of things like kobolds, goblins and gnolls. Luckily, this often results in more interesting encounters, with more thought put into terrain and the construction of the monster group.
2) My choices for treasure are very limited. The item either has to be something that can be created by a wizard of level 6 or lower, or I have to have a good reason for it to be there. This makes me put a lot more thought into the origins of many of my magic items. I need to have a history, which means that there is a story, which results in more interesting items for the characters.
3) My NPCs are all level 6 or less as well. This seems obvious, but the impacts are huge! I can’t just have an evil wizard teleport away to fight another day. I can’t even let him dimension door away! Since levitating away isn’t particularly effective, I have to get more creative with my NPCs. I have to create networks of allies and enemies. I have to think through the strategies of my villainous characters. If I do choose to have a higher level NPC, I need a really good reason for it. All of this forces me away from the crutches that I normally use for my NPC villains, and results in more interesting NPCs.
I have seen many interviews with filmmakers who mention the fact that their limited budget forces them to be more creative with how they tell their story. The fact that the shark in Jaws did not work properly for Steven Spielberg forced him to conceal the shark for longer than he had originally planned, which resulted in a more suspenseful movie. Similarly, my E6 restrictions forced me to run a better game by removing some of my crutches; I could not be lazy about things like encounter design or villains’ resources.
I chose to run E6 because I wanted to limit the power levels of my players, but maybe what I really needed to do was limit my own choices, which forces me to tell a better story. This is something that the horror genre does by default, which is perhaps one of the reasons that I am drawn to it for my RPG games.
I know that issues such as these arise in many, many games, regardless of the genre. Is power creep for the PCs at the heart of the issue? Do you find that limiting yourself as a GM forces you to tell better stories, or design better encounters? What other games do you think that this philosophy would apply to?
As someone whose campaign rarely reach 7th level, I find E6 still very interesting, precisely because how it changes a D&D world when the highest level NPCs are 6th level as well. Nothing much changes in regard of what low-level player characters can do, but the more “global” dynamics change very significantly. You can either chose not to have big dragons and demons at all, or you could also keep them and see what happenes when the best you can possibly send against them are 6th level characters. You can’t just call on some 18th level guys to kill it, the 6th level characters will have to do it. Because there is nobody more capable than them.
E6 tends to tackle dragons and demons as an adventure all to themselves. Taking out a the famed black dragon of the north will require weeks of research, a quest to recover a famed dragon slaying weapon (likely an artifact in this campaign), and maybe uncover a ritual that uses several mages working together to temporarily weaken the dragon enough for the PCs to engage it.
Taking on a titan is pretty much impossible, having 20 mages bind the titan to be a 6th level sorcerer in a hill giant’s body? That is a plot point before an epic battle.
One of the things that I have done is to use a ritual style of magic for dealing with the really big, epic threats. The kind of ritual that you find in a musty tome in a hidden library, that requires rare components, group casting and triggering actions. It makes for quite a fun and dramatic event that I might not have considered otherwise.
I like that it creates a good “protect the ritual” scene. Typically spells are cast very quickly, but the powerful rituals take a lot of people and time. Why did the cultists attack the ritual site? They don’t want the aspect of a demon they follow to be weakened. A defeated demon will not remake the world in a new image.
It sounds like the extra care and deeper thinking about your world really come out well. I’ve enjoyed similar exercises in restraint. A more humorous type of restraint is Martin’s restriction to 10 monsters: a Decamer campaign.
I’ve considered trying this either at E6 or E8. Making the higher level spells long drawn out rituals that take time and resources. D&D has usually broken down for my groups beyond 10th level. An E6 might have a more gritty sword and sorcery feel to it, rather than the High or Epic fantasy in games going into double digit levels. Of course care must be taken in choosing which monsters and magic items to use but I think the article here is spot on. A greater emphasis on plot and characterization might be the added side benefit of restricting the power level.
The other thing I like about E6 is the feat continuation. Every 5000 XP the PCs get a new feat- this allows more versatility to the higher level PCs. A 6th level PC with 5 more feats isn’t massively more powerful, but those feats do allow the character to have more options.
Plus with a long running E6 game you can have the fighter choosing a combat style to meet the opponent. Lots of weak foes- maybe take a long sword and an axe for two weapon combat, heavily armored foes may be met with a great sword or morningstar and power attack, against other enemies may be fought with a guisarme to trip.
I like the feat continuation as well. It allows “epic” characters to continue to customize and advance, while not overpowering them.
I have always wanted to be in a campaign that tries this, as it would be new and, most likely, a ton of fun. It would definitely get the players to up their game as well as they won’t have all the late level abilities from their class that several like to keep in mind when they level up. I never thought about it from the DMs prospective, but I really like it as now there must actually be a reason for a certain villain or mob to be there.
The DMs I have had in the past also had the issue with catering encounters to our new power level. In one campaign I am in, we are in our 5th iteration of it (yep, 5 TPKs). Some of it was bad luck, the rest were mechanics the enemy had that we couldn’t counter.
If my group ever starts another campaign, I will definitely pitch this idea.
never heard of E6 before, sounds like a good concept. great article as well 🙂