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Message: <blockquote data-quote="merelycompetent" data-source="post: 4611843" data-attributes="member: 33830">Thank you for the compliment.Point me towards, show, or give me a way of converting the 3.5 characters, NPCs, classes, and cosmology to 4E, such that I don't have to re-write 1/3 to 1/2 my current homebrew campaign. I'd even leap on a DDI subscription that had such a gem in it, provided that it gave *really helpful, less work for the DM* advice.For example: I have NPCs who have received magic items from PCs, who undertook quests to retrieve said items for said NPCs. Such magic items have powers usable 1/day (think Teleport, or Heal - both extremely useful power from 1E - 3.5E). With 4E, the NPC can only use one magic item power with a 1/day power, even if he, she, or it, has 5 such items. According to the 4E rules (as I understand them), my 7th level NPC could only use one such power per day, in spite of having 5 magical devices each with a 1/day power. That is a good way of balancing magical items with the rest of the 4E mechanics. But a player whose character went on a quest to retrieve one of these items for that NPC is rightly going to question why should he have bothered. Then why would the NPC go to the trouble of gathering these (mostly) useless items for himself? Versimilitude, setting, and NPC/campaign motivation killed by a game mechanic. This is a fundamental balance issue for 4E - 1/day magical items can only be used a limited number of times, no matter how many 1/day items the character possesses.Given a conversion method, that preserves enough *semblance* of the expected fundamental sacred cows, that I (as DM) don't have to spend a month typing in mechanics changes (that *require* setting changes) to my campaign, and I would gladly start persuading my 3.5E players to convert wholesale to 4E.I expect that this is impossible: The fundamental sacred cows are likely to be different for every homebrew campaign, and on even the third read-through of the Core Rules, the mechanics look like they specifically exclude fundamentals of previous editions. Yet it is the long-running (3+ years) homebrew campaigns that are the primary building blocks of the solid, reliable gamers who are also repeat customers for WotC. For me, Druids as a class, and Elves being mainly arcane-type spellcasters are some of those fundamental issues. For another DM/player on EnWorld, it is likely something different. I may very well be wrong about this. Ryan Dancey (sp? - sorry, it's 5am where I'm at) certainly changed the gaming world with the OGL and related matters.Then there is the matter of missing "core" classes - such as Druids. For me, any class that can alter the amount of food crops producable in a growing season would have considerable political, magical, and military influence. Where did they go? Online subscription only? My veins are starting to cramp up after the $80+ for the Core Rules books.A splatbook (more money) or a web entry (subscription = more money) and neither were available to me as of December 1, 2008... making it difficult (OK, impossible) for me to start working on a conversion. I'd rather play or DM a game session than spend 4-6 hours working on converting from 3.5E to 4E. Life's too short to spend it converting rules mechanics.And don't get me started on the whole Eladrin/Elves issues. Talk about screwing up campaign world politics: Half to 3/4 of my former Elves would be residents of another plane since they prefer being spellcasters to rangers! That alone irks me considerably, since I'd have to play mix-'n'-match with racial abilities to get back to the various subraces of Elves that have been preserved (more or less) intact from 1E Unearthed Arcana! The game mechanics *must* make the DM's (or GM's, or referee's) work *easier*. If it makes it harder, then something is seriously wrong.My limited, 8-5 working day, free time would be better spent houseruling 3.5E than trying to retcon 4E core mechanics. But I might be wrong. I hope that someone else has the imagination or vision beyond mine to see a way out!I must get some sleep, now. I hope that the above is useful to you and others.</blockquote>

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