Birthright: Is 4th Ed. the best D&D for it?

[Pabloj]

The more I think about it, the more I believe it should stay clear of the core mechanics. It should be simple standalone mechanic that seamlessly overlaps with the core rules. As I mentioned before, you can go wild on what benefits and drawbacks they give you on realm levels.

Perhaps, Blooded should be like a 7th attribute, one you must point-purchase like the others? So you can invest on your regency or on your class attributes.

 

[DerekSTheRed]

I posted on the WotC boards awhile back about how similar the core PoL setting is to Birthright. 4E will be the best edition for Birthright if only they would republish it (crosses fingers).

I plan on using Eberron's dragonmarks as an example of blood powers. It will probably require a feat to get access to them. They will be the equivalent of 4E powers but with a different power source and PCs can choose them instead of their class powers.

Re: races since Birthright was never fully developed, there's plenty space to retcon the new ones. For instance, the southern continent of Aduria could be where Tieflings and Dragonborn have been all this time, but none on the main continent of Andurias knows about them.

The only problem I'm having is fitting in the Elf/Eladrin split. Other campaign settings had both High/Grey/Wood elves but BR only had the Sidhe. Although the fact that elves can't be clerics isn't that big a deal now. Just assume their leaders are warlords instead.

Realm spells would simply be another set of rituals wizards and clerics would have to learn. The forests of Cerillia were always described as magical places where one can imagine portals to the Feywild exist. The Shadow world to Shadowfell is already there. Oh and BR has no gnomes so that fits well. Halflings will get a choice between their luck reroll or the ability to activate a portal to the Shadow world.

I've been planning on running a 4E BR game for my home group when we finish our current one. It won't be for a while though, so there's time for WotC to publish other supplements which I can mine for ideas. I've already started collecting old BR material via Ebay and other places. Should be a great campaign.

Derek

 

[Deverash]

Bloodline Powers being able to be taken in place of combat powers sounds like it'd work great for those that effect combat. For those that don't, base 'em off rituals for level. You could even use the gp cost for mastering rituals for the cost of the "ritual" to awaken the power in your blood.

Or, don't make Bloodline Powers affect combat, and use it as a parallel system altogether.

 

[Andur]

I too am a big fan of Brithright. The way I feel is to best incorporate it into 4e is to simply either have a "blooded" power choices for each entity, placing most of the powers into Utility and then having the choice simply be an either/or; either you can pick a power from that level from your class or you can choose it from your Blooded power source.

Do a simply "rescale" of the blood powers to make it scale with level (thus getting rid of the imbalances of different power levels at any given level) and then you can simply have the powers match up so that Minor = Heroic Tier powers, Major = PAragon Tier powers, and Great = Epic tier powers.

I'd say do 2, 6, and 9 so it would be a two Utilities and then a Daily Attack power for each tier as far as choices. If you really want them to stick out, give them 1-2 more utility slots they can have for a total.

 

[The Little Raven]

And yeah, 4E does look like a good match for Birthright...

...EXCEPT for Blooded characters. How would you stat them out? They are, by nature, unbalanced. They're more powerful than non-blooded characters. Minor Bloodlines are more powerful than Tainted Bloodlines. Major Bloodlines are more powerful than Minor Bloodlines. And Great Bloodlines are more powerful than Major Bloodlines. Nevermind that that power isn't something that's governed by the level system. So how to represent that?

Make it represented in the level system, instead of being some wonky "some dudes are god-like and others are total choads, based on a random die roll" system. Make "Birthright" a 1st-level only feat based on the multiclass feats, which gives you a minor benefit based on your bloodline. Create equivalents of the multiclass power-swap feats and allow you to swap out class powers for bloodline powers. Create a Paragon Path (or several) that further grants you special abilities from your bloodline. Create an Awn-shama-lama-ding-dong epic destiny.

That's how I'd handle it.

 

[77IM]

I would do Bloodlines as power-swap feats. You take a feat, Blooded, and you can swap one Encounter or Daily power for any other one power of your level or lower, including certain monster powers (pending DM approval). The catch, is that if you ever want to "retrain" the power, you can't just pick a new one like with a normal power-swap feat -- you have to kill someone who has that power, or be invested with it, or something.

I'd handle domain-management using Reign (http://www.gregstolze.com/reign/), or something remarkably similar (maybe adapt the ORE rules into a simple d20 check -- shouldn't be that hard).

-- 77IM

 

[DerekSTheRed]

I would do Bloodlines as power-swap feats. You take a feat, Blooded, and you can swap one Encounter or Daily power for any other one power of your level or lower, including certain monster powers (pending DM approval). The catch, is that if you ever want to "retrain" the power, you can't just pick a new one like with a normal power-swap feat -- you have to kill someone who has that power, or be invested with it, or something.

I'd handle domain-management using Reign (http://www.gregstolze.com/reign/), or something remarkably similar (maybe adapt the ORE rules into a simple d20 check -- shouldn't be that hard).

-- 77IM

I think most agree, the simplest solution is take the MultiClass rules and use them for Blood powers. You have to balance the MC and the Blood powers so that it's not a no brainer to become a blooded character, but still useful.

Normally blooded characters should start out with the feat, but it could be possible to acquire it later with the DM's approval. Say after you kill an awnsheghlien or a scion who is the last if his/her line. In that case the DM should give it as a bonus feat as part of treasure counting as one parcel.

The domain rules are pretty self contained and it's possible to port them over with little if any changes. Here's the old discussion for BR on the WotC boards.

Does anyone have any ideas how to handle the Elf/Eladrin split? That one still bugs me. I have a few ideas but none are satisfactory.

One of the things that works well with BR is the 4E epic destiny, Demigod. In BR, only blooded characters should be able to take this destiny and there are already NPCs attempting to fulfill it.

Derek

 

[Pabloj]

Mmhhh, I believe coming with feats and powers that play nicely with the core system, regardless your class/race/paths/etc will be quite hard to accomplish. We already have "broken" and over/under powered combinations with a core system that was thoroughly playtested. And we don´t even have the whole picture yet (splatbooks coming).

As you mentioned, the Domain rules are pretty much stand alone. I think it will be easier to expand and tweak over them than on the core mechanics.

Regarding Elfs/Eladrin: I would assume all elf domains in BR to be of standard elfs. I would leave the Eladrin as strange outsiders who can pass into the normal world. Their cities only briefly appear on low development/high magic domains. You can even create a backstory on hew the Eladrin need to find a way to fix themselves to this world. In a way, you could tweak the BR backstory so that Eladrin have the "outsider" flavour that halflings had.

 

[Saragon]

The more I think about it, the more I believe it should stay clear of the core mechanics. It should be simple standalone mechanic that seamlessly overlaps with the core rules. As I mentioned before, you can go wild on what benefits and drawbacks they give you on realm levels.

Perhaps, Blooded should be like a 7th attribute, one you must point-purchase like the others? So you can invest on your regency or on your class attributes.

This is exactly how it's handled in the 3rd Edition conversion (over at www.birthright.net). I'm in the middle of an ongoing 3.5 Birthright campaign now, and it's working very well.

Interestingly, ritual magic makes a LOT of sense for realm spells -- casting time 1 month, cost of X gold bars and Y regency points, and so on. I don't think our current game will switch over to 4E (ours has seen a number of deviations from the core rules, most notably for mass combat -- we're using a bastardized version of the Warhammer rules now, I think.) I do think, though, that the birthright.net folks could easily do a 4E ruleset, and probably in less time than it took to convert 3E.