Freeport Pathfinder and E6 Low Magic

I just finished the chapter on Freeport Classes, so I'm getting near the end of this monster book that's twice as big as most of my other books. I had thought that it would mostly just reprint two sources: 1) The Pirate's Guide to Freeport and 2) Pathfinder Freeport Companion. I was surprised—mostly pleasantly—to find that this was not the case. The Pirate's Guide stuff is largely intact, but there were many minor updates and changes. This wasn't necessarily good nor bad; why did the Union guy die and his widow is now taking his place, for example? I don't remember reading about him dying in one of the adventures, so I think that that's just meant to both advance minor details to make the setting "feel more alive" from a meta perspective, and I also suspect to eliminate another strong (albeit a liberal) male icon and replace him with a woman. Some of the other changes were more consequential. Why is there a new third crime lord competing with Finn and Mr. Wednesday? (None of whom are anywhere near as good as the four crime lords from Five Fingers still. Sadly.) Why are there now a lot more orcs and goblinoids than there were even in the Pirate's Guide, which is already a lot more than there were in the original Freeport sourcebook? There seems a concerted effort to make liberal themes more front and center, because in spite of the fact that they are orcs and goblins, this is clearly meant to be a morality tale of sorts around immigration, racism, etc.; although they haplessly kind of demonstrate the conservatives' point while doing so, even though they clearly expect you to take an NPC liberal perspective on it. As an aside, because of this, the Freebooter's seat on the council, which has a three year term limit and so needed to have a different NPC in it, now has Captain Scarbelly, a notoriously villainous orc captain from earlier in the game, shown prominently on the anniversary omnibus version of the original Freeport trilogy.

I was pleasantly surprised by these kinds of developments, you may ask? I suppose. It's pleasant to see that they actually took a look at the text and didn't just replicate it. Many of the changes that they made are not ones that I personally would have made, but others are interesting, and I applaud them for making the effort anyway.

The rules were also significantly changed, probably because of more things that had come out in Pathfinder since the original Pathfinder companion. There's a new base class, the Freebooter, that kind of combines the corsair and assassin into one flexible a la carte menu version. The corsair does still appear as an archetype instead of a class, as does the survivalist, and most of the prestige classes. I didn't notice too much different with the monster hunter class, but I didn't really check, and the noble seems to have been substantially restructured. The Freebooter is actually, as written, a great alt.swashbuckler class for use with the PF1e rules, and I'd highly recommend it as such. It has a more traditional feel than the swashbuckler too, which is kind of a fiddly-looking class to play, where you have a pool of points to spend, etc. This one just has a big menu of a la carte options to pick from, giving it a flavor somewhere between fighter and rogue, but with the fighters' BAB and hit die, and lots of ways to actually build it. 

In fact, they didn't do any prestige classes at all, converting all of the ones that they used to have into archetypes. I kind of think that's what Pathfinder should have done in the beginning; replace prestige classes with archetypes. I'd modify my E6 low magic rules to say that this is actually how you should do it; not use prestige classes at all, and just open up the use of archetypes. I'd also say, although not force, that players consider higher level (than 6) class abilities as your first option for feat selection; continue taking those class abilities, in order, as if they were feats for your post 6th level advancement. Sometimes you need to throw in a feat too, but I think a more "bounded accuracy" feel can be maintained by using E6 and continuing to gain class abilities.

Of course, this applies to non-magical classes. It remains the only way to cast higher level spells that you have to treat them as rituals/incantations. But hey, lower power and bounded accuracy isn't the only goal; lower magic was obviously always a goal too, right? Speaking of which, the noble offers an ability to become a minor spellcaster which I could take without skipping a level. It becomes another alternative to spellcasting where you can get some magic without having to use the spellcasting classes. Another plus. 

UPDATE: As another aside, I see the Pathfinder 1e rulebook at Half Price Books selling for $12.99 with $4.99 S&H in Very Good condition. I doubt I'll ever play it, and I wonder if I'll ever even really read it, yet I'm very tempted to buy it because having it as an actual book instead of a pdf seems much more solid. Sigh. I have enjoyed having this big Freeport book, for what it's worth. Even if I don't ever really need that either. I'm really motivated to try and finish the Freeport Trawl entirely since I'm so close to being there. I've only got about 100 pages left in the big 540+ page book, then the new(er) Freeport Bestiary then the big single book AP Return to Freeport, and then I can skim the Shadow of the Demon Lord Freeport Companion and be completely done with the trawl! Once that one's done, it'll presumably be easier for me to focus on some of my other trawls, many of which have many, many titles to read, but others of which are slightly more modest. I think I want to stick to my roots just a bit, though, and focus on Eberron 3e, Forgotten Realms 3e and the Paizo Adventure Paths before getting too involved in, say, the Paizo Companion Trawl, or the Goodman Games module trawl, both of which I'm not even very invested in doing; I just thought what the heck, why not track them too.

I do want to dig more into the Pathfinder 1e rules and Chronicles/Setting line. And, of course, the Adventure Paths and I'd like to read all of the modules eventually. Those are higher priority than Companion, Society Scenarios, or some of the others, but the Adventure Path is really the top priority from Paizo.

Low magic Pathfinder 1e E6 project

One more post on the races options for my E6 project. While my setting doesn't necessarily have the same races as Pathfinder, which is very D&D, part of the reason I'd possibly use Pathfinder is to have more races available. Here's the complete list (minus psionics) of races in the rulebooks, I believe. I'll bold the ones that represent races explicitly in my setting, leave races that I wouldn't mind if someone played alone, and use strikethrough on races that I explicitly won't allow. Any kind of animal people or Oriental fantasy races are explicitly not really in the cards. I don't want them.

Core:

• Dwarf
• Elf
• Gnome
• Half-elf
• Half-orc (called just Orc in Old Night system)
• Halfling
• Human

Featured: (about 50/50 in terms of what I'd allow)

• Aasimar (called seraphim, but moved to appendix. On the fence, but it someone really wanted to play one, I wouldn't probably balk. 
• Catfolk
• Dhampir (another appendix race)
• Drow
• Fetchling (shadow genasi?) (Would use for Grislings/Hyperboreans)
• Goblin
• Hobgoblin
• Ifrit (fire genasi) (called surturs)
• Kobold
• Orc (could use as an alternate for orc. There's no half-orcs in my setting, but I don't care which stats you use.
• Oread (earth genasi) (called dvergs_
• Ratfolk  (they exist but are specifically a monster race only)
• Sylph (air genasi) (hey, I use the same name!)
• Tengu
• Tiefling (called kemlings)
• Undine (water genasi) (called tritons)

Uncommon: (otherwise known as, with one potential exception, not appearing in any of my games for any reason)

• Changeling
• Duergar
• Gillmen
• Grippli
• Kitsune
• Merman
• Nagaji (snakeman)
• Samsaran
• Strix
• Suli
• Svirfneblin
• Vanara (monkey)
• Vishkanya
• Wayang

UPDATE: In a completely unrelated tangent to add on, I've often been fascinated by the tiny home movement, but I think it's gotten out of hand. Let's say, for example, that my wife dies or something, I'm a widower in my mid-50s, and I decide that even though I probably can't afford it, I want to retire. Because I probably can't afford it, although maybe I can with life insurance, I want to buy some land out in the country for $100k or less, in Wyoming or maybe Colorado or Montana or even parts of Utah or Idaho. But Tiny Homes are usually surprisingly expensive. Why wouldn't I buy a regular mobile home instead? For about the same price, I can easily get 2-3x the square footage. I don't need lots of space, but if I'm sleeping in a loft, have no real space for an office and small library because I'm somewhere between 300-500 sq feet, why wouldn't I just get a mobile home for the same price that's 1200+ square feet, comes with three bedrooms (one of which could become an office/library) two bathroom, a spare bedroom for visitors, and a decent kitchen and living room space?

Living in a mobile home naturally comes with a bit of a stigma if you're in a trailer park, but if you have one isolated out in the country, who cares? It's cheap, it's functional, and it gives me everything that I need. Why overspend on a tonier tiny home, or a big full-sized "normal" house when I can do this instead and have all I need? A double wide is easily under $100k, maybe even under $80k. Heck, I've seen 100-+ sq ft single wide's in the $50ks. Although in that case, I probably lose the spare bedroom.

This assumes I'm a widower. My wife is unlikely to go for this plan. For multiple reasons. She really doesn't want to live in Wyoming or any other "cold state" either.

I don't know what brought that on. Watching a bunch of widower and/or bachelor retirees in tiny homes on YouTube over the weekend, I guess. Kind of made me wonder what I would do if I were in their shoes.

Further Low Fantasy musings

In my "D&D as low fantasy" post, I discussed how I would house-rule 3.5, the version that I'm most familiar with, to be something that I could play. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that Pathfinder 1e would be a better baseline to play with than 3.5. It's basically the same game already, but a bit streamlined in some respects, and with more options. A little bit more powerful, but I'm adding steps below that mitigate that. And frankly, I like a flatter curve rather than zero to hero anyway. I absolutely want to limit the soaring heights of hero, but let's also not start literally at zero. 0-level character funnels and stuff like that is fun as a gimmick, but not what I want for a long-term, serious campaign. Let me reiterate and expand just a bit on how to do this. I'd still like to do this, honestly, and will probably make this an official page at some point; how exactly to use these rules to get the low fantasy that I want.

• The number one rule is: don't play with powergamers! Late in 3.5's life cycle and throughout Pathfinder 1e, it certainly had a reputation as a powergamers' paradise, with all kinds of optimization combos and stuff that you could use. If you instead look at all of these options from a roleplayers' perspective, as offering you all kinds of ways to customize your character experience rather than ways to optimize your mechanical character experience, most of the problems with the game go away on their own. That said, maybe something like "The Elephant in the Room" help to mitigate it. 
• Use E6. If it works for 3.5, it works just as well for Pathfinder 1e, since the games differ only in details, not at all in base structure. 
• All races beyond core need to be explicitly approved. I'll try to make a lot of stuff work, but a lot of stuff simply won't, no matter what. Especially the animal people.
• All PCs are by default, banned from taking a full spellcasting (or psionic powers using) class at 1st level. You can multiclass into it at 2nd level without penalty, however. "Half-casters" like ranger or paladin, etc. can still be used as is. And non-casters can, of course, also be used as is right away.
• Incantations were never officially introduced, I don't think, into Pathfinder 1e, but they were certainly present in d20 D&D and Rituals work almost exactly the same way in 5e. Higher level spells that you want to be present in the game can be converted by GMs into Incantations or Rituals, but that, of course, makes them unlikely to be useful in combat, because the casting time is in minutes or even longer rather than in rounds.
• One of the main reasons I was reluctant to use Pathfinder 1e vs 3.5 is because I wanted psionics from 3.5 to be available. For this reason, I include Dreamscarred Press's Ultimate Psionics as a "core" book useable in the Pathfinder version. I know, I know—it's not exactly just a direct port of the 3.5 psionics into Pathfinder. It couldn't be even if it wanted to; the Expanded Psionics Handbook material was added into the SRD, but the Complete Psionic material was not. While I miss the Lurk or the Ardent sometimes, they did a pretty good job of attempting to get the same material, more or less, out of their book. It'll do. Psionic classes, like spell-casting classes, however, are subject to the same "half-caster" rule at first level, i.e., full-casters can't be taken at 1st level. You'll have to use your best interpretation of what is considered a "fullcaster" psionic class, but certainly the Psion and the Wilder qualify, at least. I don't remember the Pathfinder specific rules well enough to comment otherwise; I know for sure that the soulknife and aegis, for instance, probably don't. Anyway, maybe this is a moot point. I don't know a lot of psionic players, and if there are psionic players, they often tend to gravitate to the soulknife for obvious reasons; because it's like a combination of Psylocke from the X-men and a Jedi or Sith. It may actually be the only psionic class that I've seen played, come to think of it, and I know that I've been in campaigns with at least two of them before.
• If needed, and if you play into the E6 feat progression part of the game, higher level class abilities can be converted into feat chains that characters can continue to take after they hit the max level cap of E6. Yeah, this will require a little bit of review and work, but it's not a big deal. And you have to run quite a long campaign for it to even be relevant anyway. Speaking of which, I'll almost certainly ditch XP and do something like 5e's milestone experience. Which will be a fair bit slower as well. There's no rush to get new abilities. Get used to the ones you have for a while before you start immediately adding new ones.
• Because of the class list and archetypes formula of Pathfinder 1e, which built on the same idea in the Complete books (and others) of 3.5 as well as the PHB2 but greatly expanded and in the game almost from the get-go, I don't think prestige classes are nearly as important in Pathfinder 1e as they were in 3.5. I'm almost tempted to just say ignore them completely. However, if as GM you want to allow them, you'll have to look at them carefully; if you think that they're OK, they should be playable at 2nd level. Let the PC take as many of the prerequisites as he can at 1st level, and then just waive the rest of the prerequisites and let him take 5 levels of the prestige class, as if it were a fullcaster class. Feel free to veto any prestige class, or even the entire concept of them. Pathfinder with all classes and archetypes enabled is already even more open of a game in terms of optional character concepts than 3.5 was. Because it was built on the 3.5 chassis after seeing what 3.5 did, and it deliberately enabled some of the better late appearing ideas early on.
• Sanity rules aren't necessarily necessary for low fantasy, but I like them. There's lots of options out there, but if I'm doing Pathfinder 1e anyway, why not use the Fear and Sanity and possibly even Corruption systems from Horror Adventures? I'm not as much a fan of Corruption as a mechanic, but it could be useful in the right game. Fear and Sanity I always like, however.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'd still prefer to use my own rules-lite, kinda sorta old school adjacent system. I like rules-lite kinda sorta old school adjacent systems as long as I'm not playing in the OSR playstyle; I'm very much in the trad camp, and I've always been interested in D&D because I liked fantasy fiction and roleplaying, not because I was interested in any of the gamist elements of D&D, or the dungeon-crawling environment, or anything like that. But, I have a lot of nostalgia for d20 games, and this is something that I could run with and enjoy. And I do enjoy using the 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e mechanics of character building, not for the optimization nonsense, but for the built-in customization for roleplaying that it offers.

D&D as low fantasy

Given what I said yesterday about D&D never really emulating the sword & sorcery low fantasy that OSR fans claim to be such fans of, I thought it'd be good to noodle out how it could be. Ironically, some of the non-D&D OSR games actually do so in terms of mechanics vis-à-vis magic and what-not. But, of course, the OSR playstyle is heavily focused on dungeon-crawling, which is my other main complaint about the disconnect between D&D and sword & sorcery fiction. I saw someone (on ENWorld, of all places) once say that the first ten minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark has more dungeon-crawling than the entire oeuvre of sword & sorcery fiction. That was meant to be hyperbole, but it's also not really incorrect. The best rhetoric might not be true from a literal, dialectical perspective, but it's still "true" if you know what I mean.

Anyway, what I want to talk about, as a tangent from my normal topics (not that my normal topics have been very focused for quite a long time lately anyway) is: how would I actually play D&D if I wanted it to have that kind of low magic low fantasy vibe that I do, actually, want it to have? What modifications would I make? And because 3e is the version of D&D that I know by far the best, played the most, and has the most modifications already floating out there, that's the edition that I'm going to focus on. Although everything I say here would apply equally well to 5e and probably to any edition of D&D. So, if I want that low magic, low fantasy swashbuckling dark adventure feel—and I definitely do—what changes would I make? Let me list them:

• Use E6. This is the single most important overlay or house rule to implement, as it keeps the game from ever getting out of the lower fantasy quadrants to begin with. Read the post in the link, if you need to (maybe I'll copy and paste to have my own post that "archives" it as a page, just in case, here on the blog.) But I don't think that this is sufficient by itself. WotC have reported in the past that their research indicates most "campaigns" only last seven sessions and hardly anyone plays higher than level 6-8 anyway. Higher level D&D may be aspirational gameplay for a lot of players, but it's not reality for most. If most campaigns start at level 1 and fizzle before getting more than a few levels under its belt anyway, then there's no reason to worry about it too much. Some other editions don't have the feat progression posited for 3e, but you can always just have slower leveling and shorter campaigns that never get above 6th level anyway. 
• No PC can start at first level with a spellcasting class. That is, if the class gives you a spellcasting ability at 1st level, then you have a take a level of something else first that does not. Wizards, sorcerers, clerics, etc. have to take a level of fighter, or rogue or something else like that before they can advance into their spellcasting class. Ignore the multiclassing penalty, if you use XP, for purposes of this requirement. In fact, ignore multiclassing penalties and favored class altogether. It's kind of a stupid rule anyway, and with only 6 levels to play with, just let people take levels in whatever class that they want. Note that classes like ranger or paladin that have a spellcasting progression, but one that doesn't start at 1st level aren't affected by this rule, since their spell progression doesn't come in until nearly the level cap anyway.
• Higher level spells can be at DM's discretion, converted to Incantations, which greatly limits their tactical utility, but which does allow for magic-users, especially villains, who can do all kinds of weird things with enough time and will. 5e has done something similar with Rituals, although I'm a little less familiar with them. But if you're unsure how to do this, or uncomfortable house-ruling spells as Incantations, look to the 5e Rituals rules to see if they can be used. (5e is really just a streamlined version of 3e, for the most part. Many systems work very similarly, and those that don't can usually be ported as is without any problem.)
• Higher level class abilities can be converted, if needed, into feat chains that can be accessed via the ongoing feat access of E6.
• While normally, prestige classes wouldn't really work in E6, at the DM's discretion, characters can start at 1st level of a prestige class and take it as if it were a normal class, ignoring the prerequisites. Emphasis on at the DM's discretion, and if a prestige class is too powerful for this to work (honestly, most are not, but you know your group and how they play better than I do, and power-gamers can't be given a free hand to screw up your game) the DM can either disallow it or work with you to modify it. What I would probably do is allow prestige classes to start at 2nd level, and I'd make at least some attempt to encourage PCs to take as many of the prereqs as they could during their first level, but then waive whatever's left, let them take five levels of the prestige class (2-6) at which point the E6 cap would come into play. Any additional class features could be converted to feat chains if needed.
• Full utilization of optional classes from other sources, like the Factotum (kind of smug-sounding name, but cool class) from Dungeonscape, the Complete series classes, etc. should be allowed and explicitly encouraged.
• Full utilization of alternate class features from PHB II and other books should be encouraged. If more are desired, Pathfinder 1e archetypes are exactly the same thing, and since Pathfinder 1e was built off of the SRD, much of the archetypes for Pathfinder can be used as is in D&D 3.5.
• I don't remember the psionics rules very well, honestly, so I'm a little hesitant to comment on their use, but the same concept as with spellcasting classes should be applied to "full time" psionic classes like the psion or wilder. Whether it applies to "part time" psionic classes like the soulknife or the lurk is up to the DM. I'd probably say they're OK as is. But again, my caveat is that I don't remember how psionics works very well because I haven't played or even seen played a psionic character in many, many years.
• Not strictly speaking necessary, since low fantasy is not necessarily equivalent to pseudo-horror dark fantasy, but there are a lot of fear checks, sanity systems, etc. for d20 games, and you could use one, if desired, to further mute the superhero feel of D&D vs. the low fantasy source material that you're trying to engage with. If you do, finding some way to apply it to the use of magic is desirable too, because it makes magic less utilitarian and more dangerous and edgy. I've completely changed the way magic works in my game where this is already baked into how it works. I'm not entirely sure how to do this with a modified D&D game without it drastically challenging the utility of even taking spellcasters at all, but one quick and dirty method would be to make the character roll a d20 every time they cast a spell. On a critical failure, i.e, a natural 1, the spell would fail and whatever sanity system you're using would come into play. I like this rule a lot, but that's because I want to push even further into dark fantasy rather than simply S&S low fantasy, so this isn't strictly speaking necessary for my project. 

A low fantasy party of adventurers. Although DALL-E 3 thinks that they're all Millennials, I think.

I think those things would make the game feel much more low fantasy, but in reality, the rules changes are probably less important than what you do at the table anyway. Do you have bizarre animal-people characters playing weirdo superheroes, or do you have much more grounded characters? What kinds of adventures are your ensemble cast of characters getting up to? Stuff that feels gamist and D&D-like, like dungeon-crawling, or stuff that feels similar to what characters in low fantasy S&S stories are doing? Do you have grounded realistic settings mostly full of normal people, or do magic and monsters appear on your daily commute and are commonplace? High magic and highly monstrous elements can and should certainly appear, but it's a question of context; are they routine because the game is highly fantastic, or are they stand-out set pieces because the game is more grounded and realistic?

Anyway, I did this just because it is of interest to me at the moment, and because I've been revisiting a lot of my 3e collection lately, I'm feeling more charitable towards that system than I otherwise might. It's still not my ideal way to play, but this is a method that I could happily run. As long as I also get to be handwavey about rulings, play theatre of the mind style, and tell players to avoid feats and other choices that maximize their tactical grid options, because I'm not very interested in the tactical grid style of play. If I can get rid of the tactical grid, get rid of the scourge of D&D's higher level scaling problem (which applies to every edition of D&D and many D&D-like games equally) and reduce the higher magic D&Disms in favor of a more muted, grounded approach, then the game works for me, and I'd really enjoy the many options for character customization. 

3e, and it's associated family (I really mostly mean 3.5 and even Pathfinder 1e, but I genericize the entire era into one label) is infamous as a power-gamer's paradise with all kinds of optimization combination to explore, but if you don't play with power-gamers, it can be a role-players paradise as well with all kinds of customization options to explore. But once again, what goes on at your actual table is the real deciding factor, much more important than the rules. I don't think power-gamers have a lot to work with with E6, so they'll probably stay away. Which is exactly what you want to have happen anyway.

UPDATE: Not related to making it more low fantasy, but I'd truncate the skill list somewhat like Pathfinder 1e did. Hide/Move Silently fold together into Stealth. Spot/Listen into Perception. Maybe Balance, Tumble and Jump into Acrobatics. The only problem here is that Rogue's already have so many skill points that when you consolidate skills, it arguably goes too far. Then again... I probably don't really care.