3.5e Players, 4e GM

[Charwoman Gene]

I have what is probably a terrible idea.

Is it feasible to have a GM working out of 4th Edition stats and Players using 3.5 stats?

I know this is a crazy idea to many of you. But I'm pretty sure it can work. I'm pretty loose with stats, and have a good ability to just "make it work" on the fly.

Of course, the big shift is flipping DCs to saving throws and making the ad hoc rulings on how (Save Ends) monster powers work.

Ideally I'd be pitting 14th level PCs against High Heroic, Low Paragon opponents, as they have the right "feel" for what I'm doing.

 

[Oryan77]

My first lesson when learning 3e was to never mix editions. Since I knew 2e, I tried to basically use what I knew or liked from each edition and tried running 3e characters in it. What a mess and a terrible idea.

I think if you mix 3e and 4e, not only will you be doing what Captain Picard is doing in your avatar, but I'm pretty sure your players will turn Borg and assimilate you.

But if you want to give it a try, be sure to ask your players for their opinion first.

 

[Mentat55]

Do you actually want to use monster stats straight out of the 4e MM and MM2? Or just the design philosophy?

I prefer DMing 4e, and so for the 3.5e games that I continue to run, I've started to adopt some of the practices -- minions with few HP but level-appropriate attacks and mediocre damage, bad guys that can act more times per turn, things like that.

If you want to use the actual monsters as-is...damage is probably going to need some boosting, in some cases, or else it will be obvious (not sure if this is an issue for you or your players). Save ends is a good example of something that will need tweaking -- maybe just a random 1d4 round duration. Some Reflex attacks will just need adjusting to Reflex save DCs, others probably need to be modeled as touch attacks. But it is doable -- perhaps try with one or two encounters, before going whole hog. Let us know how it goes!

 

[JoeGKushner]

No.

The math is completely different.

The only thing you'd be actually using that might be useful are ideas and guestimates about how tough something of that level in 4e might be which mightn ot be that useful since that game scales from 1-30 instead of 1-20.

 

[Gort]

I think it'd require so much fudging that you'd essentially be playing "GM Fiat: The roleplaying game".

 

[Dausuul]

Do you actually want to use monster stats straight out of the 4e MM and MM2? Or just the design philosophy?

I prefer DMing 4e, and so for the 3.5e games that I continue to run, I've started to adopt some of the practices -- minions with few HP but level-appropriate attacks and mediocre damage, bad guys that can act more times per turn, things like that.

This. Adopt 4E philosophy and apply it to 3E; don't bother trying to use actual 4E mechanics.

 

[wingsandsword]

You can mix 1e and 2e without too many problems (that was even part of the early marketing for 2e is you could still use 1e supplements and materials), you can mix 3e and 3.5e with some compatibility issues but enough to run a decent game at least in the short term, but 4e and 3.5e would just make too many issues.

The math is fundamentally different, underlying concepts of levels, powers and spells, so much would be so different that from the point-of-view of a 3.5 Player it would look like your DM didn't know what they were doing or were completely making things up as they went with no idea of what was "supposed" to be done.

Think of it like two computers running very different versions of the same program trying to talk to each other.

 

[Telsar]

Since the GM has the right to have his monsters/NPCs have whatever abilities he thinks will make a good challenge, I don't think there's any reason a GM couldn't have the monsters playing by 4e rules in what is otherwise a 3.5 game.

For the conversion, I would change monster attacks against NADs into save DC for the PCs (10 + the attack roll, ie +6 vs Will is a Will save of DC 16). Give monsters "saves" of their NADs -10 against the PC's powers. For monster powers that cause conditions, I'd use the same mechanic as 4e; PCs roll a 10 or greater on a D20 to end conditions at the end of their turns.

You should probably default to 3.5 when you can, say for how Attacks of Opportunity work, and how healing works (no healing surges).

I'm sure things will have to be decided on the fly, but I also think you'll have a lot less work and a lot more fun as a 4e GM than as a 3.5 one. And the players will probably have more fun with 3.5 excessive options. Everyone having more fun certainly sounds like a laudable goal.

 

[Crothian]

Not unless the DM is amazing and can do it seemlessly. Most the times doing something like works veryu badly.

 

[nightwyrm]

The math would be so off, it wouldn't even be funny.

Let's take a lv 14 4e monster. It's attack against a NAD would be around +18. Translated into 3.5, that would be around a 28 or 29 DC. It's NADs would be around 26, so it would be translated to around +15 or +16 to saves.

edit: That's not even counting the fact that the power level in two systems scales in totally different ways. A lv 14 4e monster is not a CR 14 monster. A lv 20 3.5 wizard >> lv 30 4e wizard.