Epic 6 [Fantasy Craft]

[Mister Andersen]

That said, there are some builds that are just death machines (the elf martial artist in the Long Road game is at third level delivering a minimum 11 damage with unarmed attacks at an 18-20 threat range)

[Krensky]

Yeah, but DPR is sort of the Martial Artist's schtick and that character is rather focused in it's build to exploit a very high Wisdom.

As a GM, I'd have to take that into account when designing encounters to make sure that sometimes there's stuff for him to shine against by overcoming DR and generally punching heads off and that sometimes there's stuff that straight lethal damage won't help with and there's plenty of stuff like sneaking or social encounters he's not as prepared for.

No big deal.

[Crafty_Alex]

For those of you who don't know what Epic 6 is...
http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Epic_6

I'm planning on running a slightly more down to earth sort of game, where the players are exceptional but never reach the whole "I just took twenty arrows to the chest and lost 1/10 of my health" heights of very high levels. After discovering the Epic 6 variant system for D&D 3.5 I decided I really like the look of it but I still much prefer Fantasy Craft to D&D. How do you think using Epic 6 for FantasyCraft would work? How would I have to change it to make it fit?

Hey there, welcome to the boards!

I'm going to go against the grain and say that Fantasy Craft is a really good fit for an Epic 6 campaign. While its true the game is constructed in such a way as to address some of the issues we see in bog-standard D&D (such as scaling levels on NPCs, and greater scaling attributes on the PCs), vitality does spiral up quickly and can push some games n the slog-fight cul-de-sac the author of Epic 6 is trying to address. For example, a tough Soldier can easily be rocking around 80 vitality even by 5th level - if you're not ready to address that, or the sort of GM who'd rather have goons with knives and no special feats or tricks still be a threat in small groups, something like Epic 6 might be the way for you.

It's a little-known fact that during the final stages of FC design, we decided that 6th level is the game's "sweet spot" - where the combination of feats, abilities, skills and tricks really put the heroes in good stead to take on the world. Ending upward progression there, while still allowing them feats to expanding their repertoire without increasing their numbers, would work pretty dang well. A 6th level character also tends to fill his sheet, so that's a good indicator

The fact that Fantasy Craft's feats are more akin to the kind of things that you'd see as class features in 3.5 makes me think that the players wouldn't feel like their characters weren't progressing even if their Saves and BaB weren't going up.

Exactly my thoughts, plus the added bonus that our feats have very few prerequisites at all - meaning by 6th level most characters should have access to nearly every feat in the game should they be inclined. Since we do have scaling monsters, gradually increasing the threat of monsters as the PCs build feats is not a problem at all.

At any rate, I think there's nothing "wrong" with playing an Epic 6 campaign using FC - in fact, I think the system's very accommodating to that style of play. I'd warn you that weapon mastery will make things dangerous for the heroes pretty quickly, and high level monsters and spellcasters will remain scary - but if you're playing Epic 6, it sounds like that's what you want anyway.

Good luck! I look forward to hearing about your campaign.

[TardyClock]

Well I suddenly feel all tingly and vindicated

In all seriousness I probably think I shall run both, the Epic 6 thing was for a Dark/Demon's Souls campaign but I'm also running a regular Fantasy Craft campaign which will progress as normal. I shall report back how both of these campaigns go.

Oh and thank you everyone for letting me know what you think and telling me about the system. It's nice to get a broad spectrum of opinions.

[Desertpuma]

One of the great thing about these forums is we'll give you a broad spectrum of friendly opinions to choose from. Unlike some other places, I imagine.

[Morgenstern]

The only thing that jumps out at me is I would add a similar XP-buy mechanic for class abilites. Unlike D&D there is more in the last column of the Soldier's class table than "gain another feat" and players might (hopefully) be interested in gaining those instead of more feats. However with the cut off at Career Level 6 (the first of the 6/9/12/15/18 abilites or ability choices) it sugests a pretty simple pricing mechanism~

1,000 xp X the lowest career level you could gain the ability at.

That sets most of the choose 1 from list abilites at a flat 6,000 (you could have gained any of them at level 6). The staged ones like +1 attribute, +2 attribute, +3 attribute go up smoothly... assuming you got the +1 normally at level 6, then next would cost 9,000, then one after that 12,000, etc.

With the guide being career level you could even access the expert classes without ramping up the basic stats/damage buffer.

[TardyClock]

The only thing that jumps out at me is I would add a similar XP-buy mechanic for class abilites. Unlike D&D there is more in the last column of the Soldier's class table than "gain another feat" and players might (hopefully) be interested in gaining those instead of more feats. However with the cut off at Career Level 6 (the first of the 6/9/12/15/18 abilites or ability choices) it sugests a pretty simple pricing mechanism~

1,000 xp X the lowest career level you could gain the ability at.

That sets most of the choose 1 from list abilites at a flat 6,000 (you could have gained any of them at level 6). The staged ones like +1 attribute, +2 attribute, +3 attribute go up smoothly... assuming you got the +1 normally at level 6, then next would cost 9,000, then one after that 12,000, etc.

With the guide being career level you could even access the expert classes without ramping up the basic stats/damage buffer.

That's a really good idea, going to have to totally steal that.