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Would you like to see any of the oWoD rules converted to d20?
- Thread starter Lokishadow
- Start date
painandgreed
First Post
Voadam said:
Which is counter to your experience? That players avoid combat, or that elders can be taken down with a bad role? Or both?
I've found that game play is different although it takes awhile for most normal D&D players to settle in. I can remember introducing my D&D group to the game and after a few sessions it finally dawned on them that money didn't matter, unlike D&D. Plyers can start rich and even large amounts of money stop being main character motivators because the powers that even a starting character has can gain them that money fairly easily and once they have it, there's nothing really to buy with it. You can use it to gain power with mortals, but even then, starting powers are more effective than money. Divorcing the experience system from combat frees the characters of combat if they don't want it. So a character can create a social character if they want and do really well. Still, many characters and STs keep with the combat emphasis simply because that's what they understand or enjoy.
Combat is a little less one sided in WoD than it is in d20. While demonstrating the combat system to a new player, I was able to beat the NPC prince of Chicago into torpor with a base begining character (although built for combat) and one round of surprise. In D&D a 1st level fighter getting a Coup de Grace plus a few more rounds of free attacks on a 15th level fighter is probably not going to be a serious threat. The thing that nerfs that are some of the higher level disciplines, especially if you make some new ones up to do just that.
EditorBFG
Explorer
Most WoD games I've played, there was a lot of fighting. Especially Werewolf, which is kind of built for that. It is true though, that anybody-- no matter how powerful-- can get killed by much weaker characters.
Once, this guy who wasn't part of our regular gaming group wanted to run Werewolf, and we said okay. So me and a couple of the regular guys played with him and his friends, and he let us make Rank 2 werewolves with some extra freebie points. As we sort of expected, the game was just a big combat fest, and at the end he threw some 5th Generation elder super-vampire at us, some over-powered character, and all the players were petrified because the guy running the game just flat out told us how powerful the guy was. Obviously, this was not a good game.
By then I was tired, and I know this was a dumb, lowbrow, power gamer thing to do, but I pointed out what the elder vampire's maximum number of actions could be, what his max dice pools could be, and that we were all high-Rage werewolves and there was simply no way he could last one round against us if everybody blew most of their Rage points and attacked in Crinos (Wolf-man) form, because he would just plain run out of dice to dodge or parry all of our attacks. The last half of the round would basically be werewolves hitting automatically and slowly killing him with their minimum damage (assuming Vlad the Impaled did manage to soak it all). And I won't go into all the math, but it was, essentially, true. After my statement, this guy, the GM (Storyteller in WoD), made a face, and then, on the vampire's initiative he "used a Thaumaturgy spell" and actually teleported away.
So yeah, it's on me for agreeing to play in that awful game, but the anecdote is a long way of saying that, yes, White Wolf has no equivalent relationship to the mechanical power difference between a 1st and a 20th level character. Any time you get in a fight, death is possible.
Once, this guy who wasn't part of our regular gaming group wanted to run Werewolf, and we said okay. So me and a couple of the regular guys played with him and his friends, and he let us make Rank 2 werewolves with some extra freebie points. As we sort of expected, the game was just a big combat fest, and at the end he threw some 5th Generation elder super-vampire at us, some over-powered character, and all the players were petrified because the guy running the game just flat out told us how powerful the guy was. Obviously, this was not a good game.
By then I was tired, and I know this was a dumb, lowbrow, power gamer thing to do, but I pointed out what the elder vampire's maximum number of actions could be, what his max dice pools could be, and that we were all high-Rage werewolves and there was simply no way he could last one round against us if everybody blew most of their Rage points and attacked in Crinos (Wolf-man) form, because he would just plain run out of dice to dodge or parry all of our attacks. The last half of the round would basically be werewolves hitting automatically and slowly killing him with their minimum damage (assuming Vlad the Impaled did manage to soak it all). And I won't go into all the math, but it was, essentially, true. After my statement, this guy, the GM (Storyteller in WoD), made a face, and then, on the vampire's initiative he "used a Thaumaturgy spell" and actually teleported away.
So yeah, it's on me for agreeing to play in that awful game, but the anecdote is a long way of saying that, yes, White Wolf has no equivalent relationship to the mechanical power difference between a 1st and a 20th level character. Any time you get in a fight, death is possible.
painandgreed
First Post
Umbran said:
Depends. If you wanted a vampire, werewolf, or mage game where a 20th level character could wade through an almost endless supply of low level characters, then it would work quite well and play up to the powerful elder/pack leader/adept archetype even more than the oWoD did.
Lokishadow
First Post
Rev. Jesse said:
What is that? I'm ADD (Acronym Disfunctional Disorder).
-Loki
Infernal Teddy
Explorer
Hol stands for "Human Occupied Landfill, a game by Dirt merchants / Black Dog.
What I'd like to see is a Mage-like magic system for d20 / D&D.
What I'd like to see is a Mage-like magic system for d20 / D&D.
Kweezil
Caffeinated Reprobate
Infernal Teddy said:
Seconded, as long as you mean Mage: the Ascension, and not the watered-down Ars Magica-wannabe that Mage: the Awakening uses. The idea of reality being fluid and based on belief already has a solid grounding in D&D (the planes, and especially Planescape), so it would work.
Satori
First Post
I'm all for a d20 conversion. Sure, WoD has its own flavor. Sure, the system was designed for more social iteractions...but I hated how slow the occasional combat DID go, when it happened.
With d20, you can do both social and combat using relatively easier systems. It would also make WoD much easier to teach newer players.
With d20, you can do both social and combat using relatively easier systems. It would also make WoD much easier to teach newer players.
