Palladium's Nightbane to d20 - Recommendations?

[DamionW]

Hey everyone. I have a problem in that I own several books for the game Nightbane by Palladium. I like pretty much everything about it except the actual Palladium rules, which who anyone who's played Rifts knows are pretty piecemeal and pain in the ass. I'm looking for a way to convert it to d20 or another more consistent rule set, but the problem is that character race/classes are not all designed to be balanced against each other in the original game. Some are supernatural creatures which are terrors in battle and much stronger than humans, while other characters are human psychics, wizards, and government agents that are easily injured, but have a variety of special abilities and the advantage of not being feared by society. So I'm trying to find a good system to use to get away from Palladium but still have a variety of character power levels available in a single party. Reading through the forums, Mutants and Masterminds has been mentioned as good d20 variant to use as a generic ruleset. Has anyone else converted games like Nightbane to that ruleset or have any other advice? Thanks.

 

[Crothian]

With all the table the Nightspawn (I perfer this name) have its easy to use a book like Beast Buiilder and start assembling the characters like one would monsters. Now some of the more modern options and horror based ones will be a little hard and take some DM work, but when I did it for 3.0 back in 02 it was only a few hours of work to determine the bonuses given for every thing on the table in the main book.

 

[DamionW]

With all the table the Nightspawn (I perfer this name) have its easy to use a book like Beast Buiilder and start assembling the characters like one would monsters. Now some of the more modern options and horror based ones will be a little hard and take some DM work, but when I did it for 3.0 back in 02 it was only a few hours of work to determine the bonuses given for every thing on the table in the main book.

Thanks Crothian. I prefer the old name, too, but wasn't sure people would recognize it. Who puts out Beast Builder? I haven't seen that anywhere...

 

[Crothian]

Expeditious Retreat Press

it can be gotten in PDF or print. It is not perfect for this. Some DMs might actually find it easier to do it themselfes. The book is really about creating ones own monsters, and with Nightspawn that is kind of what is going on.

 

[DamionW]

Ok. It still doesn't address the disparity in character abilities problem as I see it. In Nightspawn you can have parties where the Nightspawn PCs are massive shapeshifting tanks next to wizards that are 1-ply tissue but have a variety of neat spells. I guess the best way is to make Nightspawn say a 10 ECL character race and make a SS progression, now that I think of it, but it would be hard with such a variety of shapes/abilities.

 

[Crothian]

Well, you have to decide if you want balance between characters or not. Palladium games don't have that so going to a d20 system that does will cause problems. In that case what I'd do is take the tables apart and bring them together with powers of the same balance. So this way each character get a random minor power, medium power, and great power for isntace. the powers might be from the mineral table, the horrible looking things, the mechancial...whatever. But it makes things even.

 

[clockworkjoe]

Whatever you do, never publish what you write up anywhere. Palladium goes after anyone who creates conversions for its rules, especially d20 variants. Don't even make a website. They'll have it shut down.

 

[DamionW]

Whatever you do, never publish what you write up anywhere. Palladium goes after anyone who creates conversions for its rules, especially d20 variants. Don't even make a website. They'll have it shut down.

Thanks for the warning.