D&D 4E Conversion: 3.x to 4e

[malraux]

But, I do not think that the transition will be as smooth as 2e to 3e. There was a fairly thick conversion manual...

But its not as if the conversion manual actually worked. It just gave the illusion of correct conversion, but didn't actually keep things correct. Really the best advice is to let everyone use the new rules and figure out what's best.

 

[Baka no Hentai]

What I'm planning is some retconning of my homebrew campaign world to match some of the new elements that I would like to introduce from 4E (for example, tieflings and dragonborn are not in my world at all, but some of the stuff WOTC has released has inspired me to add them in my own particular way) and retconning the "story-thus-far" of the current campaign I'm running. This will be fairly easy to do for me, as my group is only a few adventures into my campaign.

As far as PC's are concerned, I am giving them the option to stick with their current class/race if it is available, or to switch to a new one if they would like to try out one of the new classes (or if they'd simply like to try something different.) Our shared assumption will be that this group of PC's were there all along as far as the campaign story goes. In fact, I even plan to use our "Introduction to 4E" playtests as an excuse to relive memorable battles and challenges in my campaign with the new PC group makeup... so in a way they will get to experience what it would have been like had they played that group since the first adventure.


I can see how DMs in very advanced campaigns might be tempted to just start over though, I would hate to try to convert a bunch of level 10+ PCs and NPCs...


Edit: One clarification I'd like to make, when I say that a player can stick with their current character, I mean that they can have a PC with the same Race, class, level, base stats, and background as their current character... everything else will have to be built from the ground up, and I will be re-assigning equipment where it is necessary.

 

[Harshax]

Early days I know but it seems we know a fair bit pre-launch; has anyone figured out a nice stream lined way to convert to 4.0? Or if a thread already deals with this?

Don't do it.

I've dragged players through converting existing characters through many game systems, and experience tells me is that you rarely get a player who feels that the conversion was fair. Unless all of your players primarily appreciate the thematic elements of their beloved characters, I'd avoid it like the plague.

 

[DamnedChoir]

Hell, if D&D 4E ends up being the way it's looking in all the preview materials so-far, I'd buy if Wizards released AD&D 4E.

A stands for advanced.

 

[Satori5000]

I would just stick with a theme and story for the character. Mechanics-wise its gonna be a whole different ballpark. And unless you feel comfortable starting a mid level game in a new system, then i would do what wizards suggests and wrap up the campaign before 4e comes out.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

What I will be more interested in is the ease of converting adventures to 4e. A friend of mine has offered me access to all his Dungeon magazines to use. That's a lot of material to mine for future adventures. To use them in a 4e game will require changing all the encounters and found magic items to match up with 4e rules. I'm hoping that it won't be too difficult to figure out how to make those changes.

 

[Baka no Hentai]

What I will be more interested in is the ease of converting adventures to 4e. A friend of mine has offered me access to all his Dungeon magazines to use. That's a lot of material to mine for future adventures. To use them in a 4e game will require changing all the encounters and found magic items to match up with 4e rules. I'm hoping that it won't be too difficult to figure out how to make those changes.

I think the most difficult part of this will be the shift from "3.X challenge rating being based on Party vs. Single Monster" to "4E challenge rating being based on Party vs. 4-6 monsters."

You will likely have to rebuild many of the encounters from ground up... this is supposed to be easier to do in 4E though, so you wont have too many problems hopefully. Just decide how challenging you want the encounter to be relative to your 4E party and go from there.

I would assume you would need to change up some XP award values as well.

 

[Delta]

Early days I know but it seems we know a fair bit pre-launch; has anyone figured out a nice stream lined way to convert to 4.0? Or if a thread already deals with this?

WOTC designers have said that won't be possible. While there was a 2E->3E Conversion Booklet, there will be none for 3E->4E.

You can't really just convert a character directly from 3e to 4e. We pretended you could do that from 2e to 3e, but that conversion book was pretty well bogus. The fact is, as I explained it a lot at GenCon, that your character isn't what's on your character sheet: your character is the guy in your head. The character sheet is how the guy in your head interacts with the rules of the game. The rules of the game are different, so you'll be creating a new implementation of that character, but the character needn't change much.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=906388

 

[Ghaerdon Fain]

I would just stick with a theme and story for the character. Mechanics-wise its gonna be a whole different ballpark. And unless you feel comfortable starting a mid level game in a new system, then i would do what wizards suggests and wrap up the campaign before 4e comes out.

Since my teens and their friends are really just starting out (three or four sessions in) I think this is a great solution. They will probably want to keep similar characters and so the conversion "thematically instead of mechanically" is fine.

 

[Halivar]

Strongly disagree with this one. I'd say new level ought to be 1, or at most equal to current level.

Didn't I read one of the developers say that levels 1-20 in 4e correlate to levels 4-14 in 3e? I'd suggest your 3e level, minus four, times two.