ZEITGEIST Bonds of Forced Faith adventure - how to "Level Up" the characters?

[Khitan]

Hi everybody!
I´m thinking of running the Zeitgeist: Gears of Revolution adventure using LU5e. The problem is that my players are not convinced about trying out LU5e, they are kind of tired of 5e in general and are no sure that the changes in LU offer enough "novelty" to make it worth it.
I know they do, so I thought of just playing a one-shot, with pregenerated characters, to see if they like the changes or not.

To that end I checked out the Bonds of Forced Faith adventure (since it´s supposed to be a good "prequel" one-shot for the Z:GoR adventure path) and I loved it.

Now: I know that the npcs and monsters don´t need to be "leveled up" to work with LU5e, and in theory neither do the characters, but since the entire purpose of the one-shot is to try out LU5e classes and new stuff, I feel I need to convert them.
Thing is: not all the characters follow standard 5e rules in the adventure. While some, like the Green Knight (clearly a Half-Elf Herald), the Major (Deva from the new Adventures in Zeitgeist Rogue) and to some extent the Mage Lee (just a mage with a lot of STR and the taboo on using it^^), are easily converted, others, like the King, the Tiefling and the Godhand are, in my opinion, way less easy.
Take the Godhand for example: it feels like a mix of cleric an monk with some abilities that don´t come from any class. Or the King whit most abilities based off his background and not any paricular class.

So I´m here to ask for advice, from people who read or ran the adventures: how would you "Level Up" the pregen characters? Especially the King, the Tiefling and the Godhand?

Thanks

 

[Faolyn]

I haven't read that adventure path, but... how much do you need to Level it Up? You could just give each of those martial classes a few maneuvers and the appropriate about of exertion. If the Godhand is monk/adept-ish, then instead of maneuvers, give it a few adept abilities. NPCs in 5e don't need to be built with classes and levels, and I can't imagine that it's any different for LU.

 

[Khitan]

Sorry, I wasn't super clear in the message: they're pregenerated PCs, not NPCs. Since the purpose of the one shot is to try LU classes and the differences with O5e, I think they should be Leveled Up, so the players can see if they like the system.
I could just "partly" Leveling them Up, as you suggest, keeping the characters mostly as they are and just add something (like the maneuvers or modifying some features, like the smite from the paladin, with their LU version)...

 

[tetrasodium]

Hi everybody!
I´m thinking of running the Zeitgeist: Gears of Revolution adventure using LU5e. The problem is that my players are not convinced about trying out LU5e, they are kind of tired of 5e in general and are no sure that the changes in LU offer enough "novelty" to make it worth it.
I know they do, so I thought of just playing a one-shot, with pregenerated characters, to see if they like the changes or not.

To that end I checked out the Bonds of Forced Faith adventure (since it´s supposed to be a good "prequel" one-shot for the Z:GoR adventure path) and I loved it.

Now: I know that the npcs and monsters don´t need to be "leveled up" to work with LU5e, and in theory neither do the characters, but since the entire purpose of the one-shot is to try out LU5e classes and new stuff, I feel I need to convert them.
Thing is: not all the characters follow standard 5e rules in the adventure. While some, like the Green Knight (clearly a Half-Elf Herald), the Major (Deva from the new Adventures in Zeitgeist Rogue) and to some extent the Mage Lee (just a mage with a lot of STR and the taboo on using it^^), are easily converted, others, like the King, the Tiefling and the Godhand are, in my opinion, way less easy.
Take the Godhand for example: it feels like a mix of cleric an monk with some abilities that don´t come from any class. Or the King whit most abilities based off his background and not any paricular class.

So I´m here to ask for advice, from people who read or ran the adventures: how would you "Level Up" the pregen characters? Especially the King, the Tiefling and the Godhand?

Thanks

I'm not familiar with the adventure but would use all levelup characters & monsters. o5e has a lot of design elements that allow one player to just nullify all sorts of obstacles

 

[Faolyn]

Oh! In that case, what classes are they? Or were they not given classes?

Going by the description here, the King could be a Marshal (or if he doesn't have a major purpose in the story, he could be an NPC the others are trying to escort), and the tiefling gunsmith could either be a Sharpshooter Fighter with the appropriate Blinding Zephyr maneuvers, or an Adept with the Way of the Gun archetype from the Zeitgeist book. I looked up the Godhands and in the Zeitgeist book, it appears that it's a divine gift of sorts. The book is, at first glance, exceedingly unclear as to how one gets this gift. So I'd suggest making him as a Cleric of one type or another (probably the new Aspirant archetype) with this gift.

 

[RangerWickett]

The BoFF characters were built to exist only in this adventure, to have powers that fit well with the plot and that provided interesting ways to confront the challenges. They weren't meant to fit into a power scale like a character class with levels. I think it turned out a pretty fun, balanced one-shot, but I'm not sure it showcases Level Up that well. The Journey rules, as an example of one thing I like a lot from LU, don't apply since it all takes place over the course of one night.

The low-hanging fruit of revisions would be to give all the foes maneuver DCs in their stat blocks, and to give each PC a few skill specializations and two or three exploration knacks (I don't know if the A5E book has a formal name for it, but that's what they were called in the design stage -- those things that are supposed to help the Exploration Pillar).

King Lorcan was built to have a flexible combat suite (and, full disclosure, I always prefer to make 'build your own' style rulesets instead of 'list of neat powers' rulesets -- so I was overruled in how A5E maneuvers ought to work). If your goal is to showcase A5E, he definitely needs some maneuvers, and probably so do Amielle, Melissa, and maybe one of Stanfield's incarnations. (Though Stanfield is already a supremely complicated character already.)

A5E doesn't add a ton to spellcasting classes' complexity.