Quote Originally Posted by Melcar View Post

That's just my definition... What is most people's definition then?
I'm not sure what a good definition is, and obviously I-know-it-when-I-see-it isn't great, but if the definition is "not easily playable without serious rule changes" or something close to that, which I think is close to what most people mean, then the basic point about high level D&D is pretty accurate. Unfortunately, while a book like the Immortal Handbook should have handled that, it made things worse (although there are a few things in the Ascension book that don't seem that bad).

Core does not mean they automatically know the spells... I would say that all knowledge is spells are based on Knowledge Arcana...
Ok. For a spell in core, what would be the DC to know a 7th level spell?


What does "functionally close to broken" mean?
Something close to what I defined above, not being playable without a lot of rule changes or implicit metagaming.



I did not say that... What I said was, that we have not have had to save the world. Its faerun, things that actually threaten the Planet of Toril or the Crystal Spere are so far beyond us, that basically only the super powerful chosen of whatever deity, the deities themselves or Lord AO will be able to stop - not a few adventures. If we are alble to stop it, its not really threatening the whole world!

Also, I think that if there are planetary threatening dangers coming every generation, but somehow the planet/world continues without any real effects then they are not really dangerous enough...
Or the only reason the world has survived is narrative fiat or the anthropic principle. More substantially PCs in Faerun do at those levels stop near world-ending things; multiple of the 3.5 Elder Evils are explicitly set in Faerun and aren't that high level.

Also I personally think its lame to imagine that our group is the best choice for something that can effectively threaten the entire world... And en Faerun that sort of thing is always taken care of by AO... So yes, no save the world quests thank god! However, much save this land, slay tribe, lich stop wizard imprisoning part of deity's power, stop red wizards etc...
Ao does very little to actually intervene in Faerun, but it is true that there's more very high level things and high level involvement and divine involvement in the setting than in many other D&D settings. I think actually that one reasons many people don't like Faerun/FR is because there's so many high level beings that it isn't clear why PCs who are anything short of epic should be doing anything at all. And even high level PCs feel like they are running on what amounts to safety rails.

Cool... I'll check that out!
You should. It is excellent. A very fun way to play D&D and there are a lot of worlds now built around E6 or systems close to it.