Converting to Fantasy Craft

[Ferretz]

Will there be an easy way of converting existing D&D characters to Fantasy Craft? I guess that many who get Fantasy Craft will have previous experience and even ongoing campaigns in D&D, and will want to convert. Will it include guidelines for this?

Cheers,

E.

[TheTSKoala]

Nothing official, but I would highly doubt there being an "official" conversion as that might not be plausible for the various trademark, IP and other issues.  Now.. unofficial?  Oh, I'm sure someone here will be all over it.  ...unofficially of course.

[spinningdice]

I think any direct conversions would be difficult, my advice would be to re-imagine the characters to the same level, and not bother with a direct conversion.

[Nepenthe]

Nothing official, but I would highly doubt there being an "official" conversion as that might not be plausible for the various trademark, IP and other issues.  Now.. unofficial?  Oh, I'm sure someone here will be all over it.  ...unofficially of course.

I think the OGL takes care of that, at least for the base d20 classes.

[Krensky]

Nothing official, but I would highly doubt there being an "official" conversion as that might not be plausible for the various trademark, IP and other issues.  Now.. unofficial?  Oh, I'm sure someone here will be all over it.  ...unofficially of course.

I think the OGL takes care of that, at least for the base d20 classes.

True, but that's a tiny little portion of the D&D classes. There's also a number feats, spells, and races. More importantly though, is that there's a huge difference in design theory both between the base classes and races and between the systems themselves. Just like converting characters from AD&D2 and D&D3 was mostly an exercise in re-imagining the character to take advantage of the system changes, converting from D&D3, 3.5, or 4 will be more a matter of rethinking what you want your character to be able to do and how he should do it then number crunching and conversion.

Heck, when I converted my SG-1 game from SG-1/SC1.5 to SC2 my players and I decided the best thing to do was just re-imagine the characters. It worked out well, especially for the Pointman who got to drop a lot of abilities he never used in play and make a character that was more effective and fun to play. Namely because he had access to the Faceman Cold Read ability and picked up a number of Chance feats that weren't available. The changes to combat feats and abilities even made the Scout's player happy as he could do more with less and pick up more Terrain feats and the Sniper became appealing to him with it being easier -- to his thinking, we haven't done the numbers -- to drop mooks in one shot.

[TheTSKoala]

I must say, Krensky hit it right on the head.  Also, I would assume it'd be considered "Bad Form" if a company put out a conversion kit to another company's product.  It's almost like saying.. "We're better than them, come play our stuff.  Here's how to turn their stuff into ours."  That probably wouldn't go over too well in the professional realm

[Krensky]

Eh.

I have a pile of books with stats for other systems in it.  Sengoku (1st edition is I recall) comes to mind. It's a Fuzion game but it had stats for GURPS 3, AD&D 2, and Palladium (if I remember correctly) in the back. But then again, that book was mostly a pile of historical and cultural information regarding feudal Japan. pretty accurate and well researched for a non-GURPS gaming book at that. Granted, that was mostly set up for converting their stuff to the other system, but if the rules go one way, it's trivial to make them work in reverse.

[TheTSKoala]

Well, see.. there's a very distinct difference here though.  Sengoku, if I recall right, was an 'add-on' book.  A supplement to the various games, if you will.  FantasyCraft is a direct competitor of WOTC's D&D. 

[Krensky]

Sengoku was a full RPG using Fuzion. Had Character creation rules and everything.

But I think the Crafty guys have better things to do then hold peoples hands to convert characters anyway. On the other hand, the Wyrmstone people might have an interest in it since they're looking to eat Living Greyhawk's abandoned lunch. Especially if they're still going to offer the equal level conversion bonus thing they mentioned to the forsaken LG players.

[Gentry]

Some sort of Living Greyhawk conversion is still in the cards for Wyrmstone.  What we're currently debating is how exactly to work it.  There are 15th level (and higher) LG characters running around out there, after all.  The current breakpoint in discussion is level conversion versus Xp total conversion.  What do you guys think?

[Krensky]

Well, as I'm sure you know, you've got a balancing act... Make it as appealing to the players as possible without unbalancing the world with lots of really high level characters and leaving new players disgruntled as they're overshadowed right from the start.

Level trade in Will give you those play and social issues in spades, but will be most appealing to the players, especially since no matter how much you tell them, a number won't understand or possibly accept that SC2 chars are much much more capable on a level by level comparison.

Straight XP trade in will make the character spread much nicer since SC's tables, seemingly a piecewise function (I don't have the time, patience, or tools on hand to figure out what it would really be if it isn't, go up much faster the D&D's do. So a 20th level character becomes solidly 10th level in SC2. This will sit poorly for a lot of 'competitive' gamers. I won't comment on whether that is a good thing or not.

Using the conversion posted on Living Spycraft doesn't seem much different from a straight level conversion.

My personal vote would be a straight XP conversion or a more conservative (meaning lower XPs at the end) conversion method then LSpy. Take it with a grain of salt though as I probably won't be participating in the organized play setting since I'm not a big convention goer and almost all people the people I play with prefer home games over organized ones.

[Nepenthe]

True, but that's a tiny little portion of the D&D classes. There's also a number feats, spells, and races.

Duh, what was I thinking...  Yeah.

[Krensky]

True, but that's a tiny little portion of the D&D classes. There's also a number feats, spells, and races.

Duh, what was I thinking...  Yeah.

Well, FC - and most likely one of the Spellbound PDFs, will have guidelines for converting SRD and other SRD system spells. I'm also guessing Crucible might have enough examples to show people how to replicate similar effects in its system.

Races other then the ones OotS: Classic Fantasy and FC, which will probably overlap some, will be up to the GC. I have no idea if FC or one  of the OotS PDFs will present the Origin creation rules in a more formal and explained fashion or not.

Feats. Feats are a slight rub. Part fo the issue is that the SC feats are so much better then their SRD (or non-SRD) functional equivalents. Take the classic archer feats of Weapon Focus (Longbow), Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Far Shot, and Rapid Shot. Five feats that taken together give you a small bonus to hit, a small bonus to hit close enemies, ignore the melee penalty, slightly better range, and take a full attack and a -2 penalty to make an extra attack. The functional equivalents for these are:

Weapon Focus (Long Bow): None, take a forte in Hurled. Also makes you better with thrown knives, short bows, and everything else on the Hurled Weapon table.
Point Blank Shot: CQB Basics provides the small bonus to hit, plus a small bonus to damage and a moderate bonus to Threaten checks.
Precise Shot: CQB Basics provides the protection from the melee penalty too.
Far Shot: The range bonus can be found under Marksmanship Mastery. Now this is a second tier feat, so it's more expensive then Far Shot, but it provides twice the range, improves the Aim bonus, and Marksmanship Basics lets you Brace for free while Aiming. Basics also makes bracing less risky by lowering your Reflex save penalty from a major to minor.
Rapid Shot: Follow-Up Shot grants an Final Attack for the cost of a moderate penalty to all you attacks this round. Final Attacks a free actions, however, so you still have your other half action to be used for a Standard Attack or moving or whatever you care to do.

So, the net swing is one feat in SC's favor, and the archer gets a lot more mileage out of those feats. This sort of thing is all over the place. Look at the +2 to two skills feats in the SRD. The Basic Skill feats give that, plus increases threat range, which I will admit isn't a mechanic in the SRD. They also act as gateways to a number of Advanced Skill feats, and since they give Insight bonuses Unfair Advantage makes them even better. They're also more appealing since skills are much more useful in SC, and not just in combat.

[MilitiaJim]

Some sort of Living Greyhawk conversion is still in the cards for Wyrmstone. 

I don't suppose that LSpy characters will get the same offer?

[Desertpuma]

With LSpy being over now, this is a moot point.

I'm in favor of the XP conversion like LSpy or the direct 1-for-1 conversion of XP ...

As Pat once said, "We have 30 levels, we just drop the bottom 10."