Converting original D&D and Mystara monsters

nijineko said:

did you happen to look at the official mystara 3.x site? (not much there, honestly, just curious if you did)

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Which Mystara site are you referring to?

The Vaults of Pandius is an approved website that I often rummage around in, but it's multi-edition site rather than 3.x and there's an awful lot of stuff there rather than "not much".

Cleon said:

Which Mystara site are you referring to?

The Vaults of Pandius is an approved website that I often rummage around in, but it's multi-edition site rather than 3.x and there's an awful lot of stuff there rather than "not much".

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by not much, i meant not much 3.x specific (comparatively speaking). and it's not 'an' approved website, it's "the" official 3.x source for mystara, as in the one and only as per wotc. seems like you're familiar with it, so i won't mention the other official sites that you probably already know about for your other threads.

nijineko said:

by not much, i meant not much 3.x specific (comparatively speaking). and it's not 'an' approved website, it's "the" official 3.x source for mystara, as in the one and only as per wotc. seems like you're familiar with it, so i won't mention the other official sites that you probably already know about for your other threads.

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The way you phrased it made me wonder whether there was some 3E-only Mystaran site I'd never heard of that WotC had approved.

Also, I think there's quite a lot of 3E stuff on Vaults of Pandius, it's just scattered around a lot and mixed in with other-edition and non-edition material. Most of the stuff I look at is the monster conversions, obviously.

The edition-free stuff probably has a much larger page count, admittedly.

Cleon said:

We don't need to specify particular classes in the Org if we don't want to. There are plenty of monsters which just have "2nd-5th level leader" or the like, and I'd prefer that approach with the Goatling.

While Goatmen of Kovaja says they are primarily fighters, it says that about ALL the Goatkin "races". For our 3E conversion we don't have to treat that as meaning Fighter is their favoured class, it might just indicates that most of them are fighters or warriors, just like most combat-capable elves or gnolls are warriors. Besides, that would mean all the Goatkin have the same favoured class, which seems a bit unimaginative and doesn't fit with how different the various Goatkin are from each other.

I think it makes more sense to use one of their "optional" classes as a favoured class. Wizard seems most appropriate, since Goatmen of Kovaja says "If using AD&D rules, they they may be multiclassed Fighter/Magic-User of Fighter/Cleric"). It fits all the spell casting abilities they have.

When we get to other Goatkin I am thinking Druid for the Ovinaur and Bard for the Caprine.

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Leaving classes out of the org line makes it easier, so I'm all for it. These have been enough already!

I'd be happy to use Wizard for the favored class, too.

freyar said:

Leaving classes out of the org line makes it easier, so I'm all for it. These have been enough already!

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Enough what?

Anyhow, we need to plug in some levels and titles. The goatlings appear to use a Slavic language, going by the few names in Goatmen of Kavaja. There are a number of sample NPCs in the pdf, including "Žarbo Bogdra'anić, Župan of the Kosovsko Dominion".

Now a Župan is the leader of a "Župa", which means something like "country" according to Wikipedia, which also says it may be derived from a word for "Shepherd" - which seems appropriate enough for Goatfolk. That seems a bit too high-order for the smaller units we need for the Organisation line.

Looking through the list of Slavic Titles I think Wójt is about the level we need for the "top boss", and Posadnik is a good title for the intermediary leaders.

The problem with that is it leaves us without a title for the lowest level leaders of the "gangs". I'm trying to find an ancient Slavic word that's roughly equivalent in rank to a "sergeant" but not explicitly military - something like a Franklin was in medieval England. I thought about using "sershant", but that's literally a transcription of "sergeant".

Heck, I might as well use "róg", which means "horn" in many Slavic languages. That's usually what you find at the head of a goat.

That'd produce something like this:

Organization #1: Solitary, gang (4-8 plus 1 róg of 2nd-4th level), band (20-50 plus 10% noncombatants plus 1 2nd-4th level róg per 10 adults and 1 posadnik of 5th-8th level), or tribe (30-300 plus 50% noncombatants plus 1 2nd-4th level róg per 10 adults, 1-13 posadniks of 5th-8th level and 1 wójt of 5th to 12th level)

I also wondered about using "dzwon" or "bell" for the minor title, since shepherds sometimes put goatbells on their lead animal (or those that tend to stray) so they can keep track of them.

Alternatively, we could use dzwon instead of posadnik for the intermediary title:

Organization #2: Solitary, gang (4-8 plus 1 dzwon of 2nd-4th level), band (20-50 plus 10% noncombatants plus 1 2nd-4th level dzwon per 10 adults and 1 posadnik of 5th-8th level), or tribe (30-300 plus 50% noncombatants plus 1 2nd-4th level dzwon per 10 adults, 1-13 posadniks of 5th-8th level and 1 wójt of 5th to 12th level)

Organization #3: Solitary, gang (4-8 plus 1 róg of 2nd-4th level), band (20-50 plus 10% noncombatants plus 1 2nd-4th level róg per 10 adults and 1 dzwon of 5th-8th level), or tribe (30-300 plus 50% noncombatants plus 1 2nd-4th level róg per 10 adults, 1-13 dzwony of 5th-8th level and 1 wójt of 5th to 12th level)

Hmm, of the three I'm currently leaning towards #3, followed by #1.

freyar said:

I'd be happy to use Wizard for the favored class, too.

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Seems we're agreed on that at least!

Cleon said:

Now a Župan is the leader of a "Župa", which means something like "country" according to Wikipedia, which also says it may be derived from a word for "Shepherd" - which seems appropriate enough for Goatfolk. That seems a bit too high-order for the smaller units we need for the Organisation line.

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Rereading Heard's pdf, it appears we're fine using Župan for the leader of our tribe/clan unit, since Goatling clans are very smaller. It says they range from "as small as an extended family of twenty or thirty people, or as large as a few hundred people".

I was thrown off because (a) real-life Župa were much larger, being county-sized groups of villages so, presumably, would have populations in the thousands, and (b) the sample NPC Župan is a 25th level character, which seems a tad high level for the boss of an average small community.

How are you getting the special characters? Cut and paste?

Anyway, I think I'd actually like rog, then dzwon, then zupan, going for the all goat theme.

freyar said:

How are you getting the special characters? Cut and paste?

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I achieved them using arcane practices that only Initiates of the Great Goat are privy too.

Or Microsoft Word's Insert Symbol function, which is an even more hazardous occult activity...

freyar said:

Anyway, I think I'd actually like rog, then dzwon, then zupan, going for the all goat theme.

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Done!

Updating the Goatling Working Draft.

I changed the name of the largest unit from "tribe" to "clan", since Heard's document mentions župan are leaders of clans, not tribes.

OK, we have tactics and org as specified above.

Any thoughts about background? Obviously we have to mention that they specialized in summoning and capturing outsiders for discerping. And they have a massive veil over their civilization. Anything else?

freyar said:

OK, we have tactics and org as specified above.

Any thoughts about background? Obviously we have to mention that they specialized in summoning and capturing outsiders for discerping. And they have a massive veil over their civilization. Anything else?

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Well they live in clans led by župans which combine into tribal nations ruled by a Knez, although this leader has little concrete authority over the chaotic goatlings.

We should definitely mention their origins as servants (slaves?) of a Demon Lord, who fled the Abyss, and how while the "originals" are immortal extraplanar outsiders, most existing goatlings are native outsiders with a bit of prime material humanoid in their ancestry.

Most of the other details in Mr Heard's document we can leave for an "In Mystara" subslug or leave out entirely.