E6

Well, I've hit upon another idea for running Dark•Heritage even better. This is the E6 suite of houserules, originally designed for D&D, but applicable I'd think for any d20 game.

Essentially, the idea is that if 95% (or more) of the people in the world only have a level or two of commoner, expert, or some other NPC class, then someone who's about 6th level or so will seem epic. The 6th level fighter can take down a dozen 1st level warriors without going down himself. A 6th level wizard can blast your home into oblivion.

The idea is that since the sweet spot of any d20 game seems to be after you've got a few levels in, but starts to degrade seriously by the time you hit 10th level, this houserule extends the sweet spot indefinately. Essentially no matter how long you play the character, you can still get upgrades without ever moving out of the sweet spot.

Since my prior solution has just been to stop the game and reset with new character by the time you hit 10th level or so, I think this is a wonderful solution. I think I'm going to apply the concept to my d20 Modern and d20 Past ruleset, which means that I'll essentially have to write an all new rules document applying the E6 concept to them.

Oh, well. So much for simplicity.