My thoughts on E6

It's obvious I have a love-hate relationship with the d20 System.  I cut my teeth on it, it's universal and solid.  It's also very crunchy and can make a minor choice in character development turn you into a god among men or the worst adventurer ever seen, as well as downplay role-playing by making everything a dice roll.  I understand, after a time, that a lot of the issues with the system comes down to the individual group/DM, but some are ubiquitous; it's as if some of the issues are built in.  I brought up the Fighter/Wizard issue last post, but the issues are much bigger.  I barely even touched on CoDzilla, and didn't even begin on the whole "Tier System" of classes that exists.

The main problems come from power creep in splat books, as well as being unable to see non-casters and half-casters as anything more than mortal men or muggles that only swing battleaxes or look for traps.  We have entire stories about superhuman strongmen like Gilgamesh, Samson, and Hercules; and d20 melee classes sometimes feel like they come up short.  One article states that Gandalf was a level five Wizard, and he solo'd the freaking Balrog.  Which brought up a solution, a game within a game.

Meet "Epic 6."

Epic 6 puts the level cap at 6 instead of 20 (actually the level cap in d20 is infinite, but the rules for playing past 20 are in different books). This keeps the game at low level play, where things are still balanced.  There are a few variants to E6; M6 is a Pathfinder version that adds on Mythic rules for some advancement, E8 raises the levek cap to 8, and so on.  Even the official Pathfinder Society caps their games at 12th level, where their characters retire.  The low-to-mid levels were where the characters were balanced, each member of the team contributing equally, with Fighters starting to bow out to Wizards but the power-balance remains. Low-to-Mid level also covers most fantasy tales.  Lower levels are like Robert Howard, Mids akin to Tolkein.

But how would E6 and related play, and what sort of settings would be best for them?  I feel more pulpy settings like Dark Sun, Eberron, Lankhmar, etc. are best.  Forgotten Realms and Mystara almost need high level play, and possibly Golarion (I am not that well versed in Pathfinder's main setting). Play would probably be as normal at first, increasing to more deadly and epic once you hit the cap and fight enemies much more powerful.  In other words, truely epic adventures in a shorter span of time.  The common mooks also stay deadly for a longer period of time.

Obviously this is more of a judgement call for certain types of settings and certain kinds of play styles.  But if you like d20 but hate crunch, maybe give this a shot.