I've let this slide onto the back burner for a while, but now I feel ready to step in and really start laying things out. That said, don't be surpirsed if I have long dry spells in the blogging department.

The Chaos Rift is my first 4e campaign. We decided to start from scratch with a brand new campaign to really work within the 4e way of doing things.

The Players

My group consists of myself and 5 players, somewhat advantageous for me with the new expected character count in 4e. Experience ranges all over the place with this group. My wife Amanda has been playing for about eight years now; her brother Steven has only recently gotten into role-playing in the last year or so; my friend and fellow DM Travis has been playing and running RPGs since the mid 80s; my friend Brian also has around 8 years of experience; my friend Cindy has been playing for the last 2-3 years; our recent addition/replacement in this game is Chanel, who has been playing for about 2 years on and off now.

The World

I decided to make things easy on myself and use as much of the assumed setting as I could. I even named the city they began in Fallcrest (though I didn't use anything else about the city). My rough world-sketch has them on a large island just off the northwestern coast of the main continent (think Britain, though the island is about twice the size). Fallcrest is the capitol of the island and the kingdoms of the mainland are mostly content to leave them alone. However, there is a large goblinoid population within the mountains of the island. Fallcrest is also flanked to the north and south by a pair of towers that were constructed during the height of the Turathi Empire. Over the last thousand years the towers have been mostly sealed and vacant.

Now we come to what what is my favorite part of role-playing: character creation. I gave the players the basic breakdown of the world and let them work together to figure out the major differences between 3.5 and 4e classes and races. It's probably a good idea to mention that for each of the players concept comes before mechanics so their characters are rarely optimized. That will be very aparent with the first character, I think.

The Characters

We used a non-standard ability score generation method for this campaign: all the players rolled 4d6 and I added a single d6 and we dropped the lowest 3 dice. They could then arrange the numbers as they liked, giving everyone an equal platform to work from without the generic sameness of point-buy.

Amanda was the first to decide on her concept, and boy was it out there: eladrin paladin with arcane initiate. Yes, she was well aware that there was little to no synergy between paladin and wizard (and paladin and eladrin, for that matter). But I was intrigued to see just how robust the multi-classing via feats process would be, and with Kord as her patron some things began to make a little sense. She got started by favoring Str, then Int and Wis, then Cha, then Con, and finally Dex. Ooh boy, this was looking bizarre. Obviously she was focused on the Str side of pally. She picked up Thunderwave to have a small degree of Wis synergy and to pull in the Kord flavor. Starting in plate and two-handing a longsword (for Eladrin Soldier later) gave her something she had tried for in the past and missed on: a spellsword (sort of). Things were off to a defenderish start.

Brian was next, and he had been eyballing a warlord long before the books were available, so class choice was rather quick. He did take longer to decide on race, though not much. So a dragonborn warlord was added to the mix. He went the inspiring path and decided to go with a glaive as his primary weapon. Flavoring the character as "The Firey Kirak," it was pretty obvious what his breath weapon was going to be. Eschewing multiclassing, he decided to start in scale armor to compensate for putting Int and Dex at the bottom of the priority list stat-wise.

Steven decided next, and hearing us discuss the breath weapon was all he needed to hear to pick dragonborn. Looking through the classes, he decided to try his hand at a fighter, doubling up the defenders. Pumping Str all the way to 20, he was off to a powerful start. He went with a pick and shield combo, something I was very suprised at. With the breath weapon being the primary draw to dragonborn he decided to get Enlarged Dragon Breath (acid, what fun) and we were over half-way through with no strikers or controllers.

Travis was next, and he filled one of the gaps. The 3.5 warlock had appealed to us both, but we never actually got a chance to play one. This gave him his starting point. He then decided to up the dragonborn count to three, also going with fire breath. He chose the fey pact, which would play an important role in the group dynamic later on. He also chose to multi, picking up Initiate of the Faith and worshiping Tiamat. Oh, goody. Like the three players before him, he chose Unaligned, allaying some of my fears. He then asked if he could dump two points of Str (the lowest combo of dice they had equaled 8, which would have put him at a 10 Str) for his concept, a dragonborn who was ridiculed as a weakling by his clan. I saw no problem in that, and so entered a negative Str mod on a dragonborn.

Cindy is usually the slowest to decide on a character concept, and this campaign was no different. She also has a tendency to avoid PHB races, and I had agreed to allow MM races in the game. And so, after much thought, a minotaur fighter was brought in. Now things looked oddly slanted in both the melee and defender directions, something I hadn't expected this group to try in our first 4e game. She went with a greataxe (increased in size for her) and went with a simple Weapon Focus feat choice.

Now I had to consider what kind of a group my unorthodoxed players had put together. Obviously they were bound to double up a role somewhere, but I hadn't expected them to triple a role, especially not defender. Hrm. The fighters looked to be sufficiently different in both play style and power selection, so I wasn't concerned with too much overlap. They were obviously missing a full time controller, but only one character lacked an AoE effect of some kind. They had plenty of healing to go around and a lot of surges to play with on a daily basis. Overall, the group looked to be a solid melee threat with plenty of tricks. Now to decide how they would come together.

Brian, Amanda and Steven decided that they would already be a small mercenary squad (all had chosen Kord as a patron) that had traveled to the island to avoid competition with more established groups and to escape from a group of slavers that were hunting them for absconding with some "property." Brian in particular had established Kirak as wanting to eventually found an empire of his own, bringing together the Fey races and the dragonborn to bring peace and establish a more consitent rule than humans could ever provide. Akhmed (Steven's DB fighter) was part of Kirak's clan and knew of Kirak's ability to lead despite his lack of experience. Shalimar (Amanda's eladrin paladin) had met Kirak months before and had spoken at length with him regarding his dreams and had decided to join him as the fey front of the group. More recently they had freed Horns (Cindy's minotaur fighter) from gladiatorial slavery, and she had joined with them to be better protected from the slavers who had originally captured her, as well as anyone else who sought to use her only for her strength.

This left Ghorin (Travis' DB warlock) out of the group at the start of the campaign. Now his pact choice really became a good thing, as he could be very important to Kirak's long term goals as a dragonborn with strong ties to the Feywild. However, Ghorin had a deep distrust of other dragonborn, which would make integrating him into the group a challenge.

So that's it for now. I'll begin to cover the story so far over the next few posts.

Duelpersonality

WotC has put up a few article regarding 3.x to 4E conversions, but the advice is fairly general. This subject is somewhat near and dear to my heart at the moment, as the one game I get to be a player in is in a slow process of converting. I'll spell out some of the basics and thought processes to converting our characters.

The Basics: Currently the game is 3.5 and around 15th level (2 characters at 16th, 2 at 15th and one at 14th) and that will be the conversion point for all of the characters. The world is in serious trouble, as an epic-level lich has devised way to create a storm that raises the dead and does not dissipate, only spreads. The party is currently turning to stand their ground after months of running to stay ahead of the storm.

The Characters: I don't recall the specific level breakdowns of every character, so bear with me on that point. My character is a human cleric/stormlord (reflavored to use hammers instead of spears and javelins). My wife's character is a human warmage (no PrCs). There is a halfling scout (again, no PrCs), a centaur fighter/hulking hurler, and a human rogue/cleric/black flame zealot.

The Process: the Stormlord

First off, I am far and away the most experienced player in this group, so I knew from the start just what kind of a powerhouse a cleric could be. Couple that with a continuous storm and the abilities of the stormlord PrC and things were bound to get out of hand. In 4E parlance, I was filling multiple roles: I was the best defender, a very good secondary controller and the primary leader. Obviously this will not translate well into 4E, but I'm okay with that. Allvis was broken. So I have to pare down some of the native awsome and figure out exactly what role I really should be focusing on.

As the only character with any real up front tanking going on, I'm taking the route of the paladin to make up for cleric. Hear me out on this one. I was a plate wearing melee cleric (not something that's particularly hard to do in 4E) who really did try to eat as much of the punishment as I could. The real deciding factor here is Divine Challenge: Allvis was calling out specific foes long before marking. So that takes care of the defendery bits, and to a certain extent the leadery bits as well. The real problem here is that paladins don't have a lot of "weathery" powers, which was obviously a key part of this character. Looking through things, wizards have the most thunder and lightning abilities, and a very nice swapping spot for this build is a 9th level daily (being a Str focused paladin really sucks at 9th level, as all of the powers are Cha based; plus both Ice Storm and Lightning Serpent are available on the wizard list). Also, this opens up the Spellstorm Mage PP, which pulls the right amount of flavor and mechanics to cover. Most of the rest is picked up via Ritual Caster (raise dead, speak with dead, endure elements).

What I lose: I lose all of the flying through storms heedlessly, as well as the automatic weapon boosts that Stormlord provides. Regrettable, but not deal-breaking. I lose a lot of healing, which again sucks but doesn't really kill the concept.

The Process: the Warmage

Ah, the warmage. Many a cunningly laid plan of the DM has been single-handedly obliterated thanks to this walking bit of arcane doom (it really is a funny sight to see her walk through an orcish horde with ring of blades going). The vast amount of raw AoE death she could call on is staggering.

This is possibly the easiest conversion in the whole group: war wizard. The really unique feature of the warmage-the warmage edge class feature-is now a part of the wizard. Being a human will grant her three at-wills to really pick up on what she wants. A feat for leather training (and possibly even hide training and spec) and there you go. There is an outside chance that she'll want to pick up fighter muticlassing, but it isn't necessary for the character. Other feats to look into are Toughness and perhaps Durable. The Battle Mage PP is the best fit for her. In the process, she picks up some of the utility that she was missing as a 3.5 warmage.

What she loses: Not much, actually. Warmages are all about damaging evocations, which fits a 4E wizard very well.

The Process: the Black Flame Zealot

The BFZ is a very interesting case in this exercise: his original concept is not very religious, despite the cleric levels. He's actually a captain in the army of a distant nation who has been sent to scout and report on the visions of the storm that their mages are seeing. He began his career as a scout for the army and quickly worked his way into an officer's position, and is now one of the more trusted officers in the army.

This points away from the rogue/cleric in 4E and towards a rouge/warlord, much closer to the concept of a scout turned captain. Brawny rogue is the best choice here, cascading Dex, Str, Cha in importance. There's actually a lot of nice synergy here, as he can swap for powers that will allow him to move other party members into flanking positions for his own sneak attacks. The biggest problem here is armor: he was in full-plate (shadowed silent moves, to boot) which doesn't work well with a high Dex rogue in 4E. There are a few options here: he can go with plate, counting on my Divine Challenge and a sneaky playstyle to help him avoid some attacks; he can drop down to leather or hide and play up the scout portion of the character more than he has been; or he can put his highest stat in Str and have a suboptimal Dex score, relying on combat advantage and rogue weapon talent to make up for the lower attack bonus and Brutal Scoundrel to pick up the damage.

What he loses: Obviously he loses most of the supernatural schtick that goes with BFZ, most notably the additional fire damage. This can be somewhat recaptured with a pair of flaming kukris (daggers). He also loses a bit of healing, but that was only ever used in emergency situations anyway.

The Process: the Scout

The scout was a fairly late addition to the party, but has carved out a good niche by providing an additional character to move ahead of the group with the BFZ and provide a good amount of damage by moving around and picking of enemies with his bow.

Again, this is a fairly simple conversion: archer ranger going into Battlefield Archer. Hunter's Quarry makes up for the extra damage from skirmish, and Prime Shot still gives him plenty of reason to keep mobile and circle around the enemy. Fleet-footed (and possibly Fast Runner) help to make up the speed difference, probably combined with Boots of Striding. We may try to talk the DM into letting him pick up Running Shot.

What he loses: Being a halfling can help him partially make up for the loss of skirmish's AC bonus. Some of the mobility is gone, but not a lot. He does lose the more rogueish abilities of scout, but he rarely used them anyway and they can be picked back up with Skill Training (Thievery).

The Process: the Centaur

I've saved this one for last because it is the most difficult conversion. We have to pare this one down to the base and work from there. She is a young centaur running from the storm after it engulfed her home. She is slowly becoming more and more cynical as the world gets worse. She had no training when she first met the party and has since picked up a lot of tricks, mostly involving throwing things at the enemy.

Obviously the first major issue is the lack of PC stats for centaurs. This is where some homebrewing has come in: +2 Str, +2 Wis; Medium; Normal Vision; Speed 7 (equal to the elf, but see Equine Balance); +2 Nature; Oversized (see Minotaur and Bugbear); Equine Balance: centaurs do not grant combat advantge or take an attack penalty for running; Double Hoof Stomp (encounter; standard action; melee 1): Target-one creature: Attack-Str +2 vs. AC (increase to +4 at level 11 and +6 at level 21), two attacks: Hit-1d8+Str modifier damage per attack. We'll have to see how that works out in play, but for now the DM and the player are both happy with it. The next issue comes with her PrC: hulking hurler. I doubt we'll ever see a class or PP that comes close to this in 4E. We had a few thoughts on how best to do this: the most radical approach was to reflavor the wizard to get the AoE trick worked in, but eventually we decided that it was a little too far out there; ranger seemed to fit best of the remaining options, but that still left out the ability to throw non-standard weaponry. In the end, we decided that we would take the two-blade ranger and drop the ability to weild larger weapons in the off-hand and grant a "throw anything"-like ability instead. Not perfect, perhaps, but highly functional. As for PP, she decided that picking up fighter multiclassing and going for Pit Fighter would work best, allowing her to really crank up her damage.

What she loses: She loses both the benefits and detriments of being a Large creature, but Oversized really helps to mitigate the benefit loss. She loses a little bit of her speed advantage (although the halfling had the same speed, go figure). She loses the big benefit of hulking hurler: the ability to literally pick up huge objects and use them as weapons (it is funny to see a guy get killed by a flying fruit cart). This is the one area that I think we simply cannot recreate at this point, if ever.

There you have it. This whole process was a lot of fun and allowed us to get to know the system at a higher level (I'm running a pair of level 1 games at the moment). For some it was very simple, and for others it was a nightmare.

Duelpersonality

Well, well. Gaming blogs on a gaming site. Fancy that.

First off, let's do a little background exposition so that all 2 people that actually poke their heads in here and read this will know something about where I'm coming from:

I've been playing RPGs for roughly half my life now (not much of an accomplishment at the robust age of 26), and DMing just about as long. My pursuits mostly fall towards D&D, but I've played in and run a very wide variety of systems (for those interested: d6 Star Wars, d20 Star Wars, Saga Star Wars, Star Trek, White Wolf's old WoD, Palladium, Marvel Superheroes, DC Superheroes, Champions, Torg and probably several others I can't remember at the moment).

I'll be using this blog for whatever pops into my head, as often as that may happen. I'll try to come up with something for later today, but no promises. Until then, thanks for reading.

Duelpersonality