And if the "initial character idea" wasn't primarily a spellcaster? Oh, right, this is 3e we're talking about. Spellcaster is the correct solution to everything. Some of us don't regard that as a feature.
D&D 5E Coming Around on the "Not D&D" D&D Next Train
And if the "initial character idea" wasn't primarily a spellcaster? Oh, right, this is 3e we're talking about. Spellcaster is the correct solution to everything. Some of us don't regard that as a feature.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
That's not what I said at all. Nor is it what I implied.
As long as we focused on emulating how to make a character do in 3Ed what he did in 2Ed, we didn't have too many issues. One of the more complex converted characters in the campaign was another player's warrior type PC who wound up with several PrClS in order to preserve his panoply of capabilities. (Obviously, he was also one of the last characters converted.)
It was a very complex build, but the PC still operated within the 3Ed version of the campaign much as he had in 2Ed.
It was a very complex build, but the PC still operated within the 3Ed version of the campaign much as he had in 2Ed.
Looks pretty solidly implied to me. Base it on the spellcaster and that mkeans it comes out closer to the original concept, whatever that concept was. So, how do all the abilities that don't come from being a spellcaster figure into this? Should we assume that none of them are important enough to matter as long as the right spells care still cast, or is it just that sacrifices have to be made and it's always better to sacrifice non-spellcaster bits?
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
If you actually wanted to know, you could have simply asked rather than attempt to put words in my mouth based on your own negative bias towards 3e, a bias I don't share.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Meh, the conversion thing is a matter of both expectations and of needs. When I converted my setting over from 2e to 4e I naturally had to eventually translate the stats for various NPCs and retired PCs where they existed before. I didn't find that at all difficult. I also wasn't THAT concerned that some very specific spell or power had to exist in a certain way in 4e. If it was some sort of 'story ability' -something that explains the NPC's role in the setting- then it just got made into a ritual or simply decreed into existence for that character (they are NPCs after all, 4e is big on free-form NPCs).
IF I were to proceed with conversions of PCs, and the only ones I ever did were a few of my own high-level 2e ones just for amusement, then I didn't find it that stunningly difficult. My Ranger that got assaulted by Demogorgon cultists and started a crusade against them (he eventually basically went insane he became so fanatical) is perfect as an Avenger MC into Warlord for instance (to get some STR-based bow stuff and a few leader powers). I might do it as a hybrid if I did it again. That came out great, as the character was a level 12 2e ranger IIRC that was mostly using a single greatsword and sometimes a longbow. Most of what made the character what it was was the personality and story. Obviously you want to be able to use your signature weapons, but that's not really super hard. I really couldn't care less if I had exactly powers that mirrored whatever the heck spells he once had, those were not really a key part of the character and didn't even get used THAT much. I could always pick up an item or maybe a boon to emulate one if it happened to be really significant.
Likewise other high level PCs I remember tinkering with. My wizard was pretty trivial. He's not quite the combat monster he was at level 14 in the old days, perhaps, but rituals and a judicious choice of items and implement gave me a pretty solid "seeker after all the world's hidden knowledge" type adventurer. AD&D Assassins are pretty simple as a Brutal Scoundrel rogue build, maybe with a shield proficiency thrown in if you want.
I know some people will just dismiss it as "that's just your opinion", but I feel like the people that had to do all sorts of intricate 3-way MCing and picking 12 different options from supplements in 2e were more enamored of specific rules minutia than they were into RPing. Its not that I never made a character that was a MU/FM/THIEF or some such thing back in the day, its just that the exact verbatim letter of what that character could do in a specific situation wasn't the point. In 4e I might well leave out the FM in that character as not really adding something distinct that needed to exist in the 4e version (IE as a rogue he can already wield weapons and wear armor appropriate to that sort of PC). I might even just look at it and make the character a Bladesinger and take some training in Thievery etc. or something like that. I have now a sneaky blade-wielding caster. I can always take an MC into rogue, pick up ritual casting, etc as desired to fill in a few niches.
One of the major reasons I DO see 4e as a perfectly legitimate successor to previous editions of D&D is the very way that it consistently enables the same sorts of character concepts and archetypes within the same sort of milieu. I never found that other fantasy games I've tried back in the day did that nearly so well. GURPS Fantasy, Swordbringer/Elric/RQ/BRP in general, RM, etc never quite hit the same note. Characters had very different power curves, magic filled a very different role in the game, or other things. 4e OTOH focuses on mostly the same things that previous editions did. Even if spells are now 'powers', they are still filling very much the same role they did in the old days, and the limitations and benefits of casting are not radically different. Now, TODAY there are modern game offerings, mostly d20 variants, that come much closer, FC, SW, 13A, RRPG, etc. You can do a pretty decent 'D&D' with them, but there are still some differences. 4e is still closer IMHO to previous editions of D&D than even any of these other newer games, often even when they are at least as mechanically close to 3e D&D as 4e is.
Also, I'd have to say that FOR US 2e -> 3e was at least as major a shift as 2e -> 4e has been. We never used all the kits and blah blah blah from 2e really. We just found a lot of that stuff mechanically poor and ill-considered and mostly stuck with core 2e. Now and then we'd use a few carefully chosen options, but our characters were always pretty tame in terms of rules usage. 3e to us was a huge leap that we never really cared for (mostly) with all its focus on tons of character options right in the core. 4e certainly was a leap as well, but not MORE than 3e given how we played.
IF I were to proceed with conversions of PCs, and the only ones I ever did were a few of my own high-level 2e ones just for amusement, then I didn't find it that stunningly difficult. My Ranger that got assaulted by Demogorgon cultists and started a crusade against them (he eventually basically went insane he became so fanatical) is perfect as an Avenger MC into Warlord for instance (to get some STR-based bow stuff and a few leader powers). I might do it as a hybrid if I did it again. That came out great, as the character was a level 12 2e ranger IIRC that was mostly using a single greatsword and sometimes a longbow. Most of what made the character what it was was the personality and story. Obviously you want to be able to use your signature weapons, but that's not really super hard. I really couldn't care less if I had exactly powers that mirrored whatever the heck spells he once had, those were not really a key part of the character and didn't even get used THAT much. I could always pick up an item or maybe a boon to emulate one if it happened to be really significant.
Likewise other high level PCs I remember tinkering with. My wizard was pretty trivial. He's not quite the combat monster he was at level 14 in the old days, perhaps, but rituals and a judicious choice of items and implement gave me a pretty solid "seeker after all the world's hidden knowledge" type adventurer. AD&D Assassins are pretty simple as a Brutal Scoundrel rogue build, maybe with a shield proficiency thrown in if you want.
I know some people will just dismiss it as "that's just your opinion", but I feel like the people that had to do all sorts of intricate 3-way MCing and picking 12 different options from supplements in 2e were more enamored of specific rules minutia than they were into RPing. Its not that I never made a character that was a MU/FM/THIEF or some such thing back in the day, its just that the exact verbatim letter of what that character could do in a specific situation wasn't the point. In 4e I might well leave out the FM in that character as not really adding something distinct that needed to exist in the 4e version (IE as a rogue he can already wield weapons and wear armor appropriate to that sort of PC). I might even just look at it and make the character a Bladesinger and take some training in Thievery etc. or something like that. I have now a sneaky blade-wielding caster. I can always take an MC into rogue, pick up ritual casting, etc as desired to fill in a few niches.
One of the major reasons I DO see 4e as a perfectly legitimate successor to previous editions of D&D is the very way that it consistently enables the same sorts of character concepts and archetypes within the same sort of milieu. I never found that other fantasy games I've tried back in the day did that nearly so well. GURPS Fantasy, Swordbringer/Elric/RQ/BRP in general, RM, etc never quite hit the same note. Characters had very different power curves, magic filled a very different role in the game, or other things. 4e OTOH focuses on mostly the same things that previous editions did. Even if spells are now 'powers', they are still filling very much the same role they did in the old days, and the limitations and benefits of casting are not radically different. Now, TODAY there are modern game offerings, mostly d20 variants, that come much closer, FC, SW, 13A, RRPG, etc. You can do a pretty decent 'D&D' with them, but there are still some differences. 4e is still closer IMHO to previous editions of D&D than even any of these other newer games, often even when they are at least as mechanically close to 3e D&D as 4e is.
Also, I'd have to say that FOR US 2e -> 3e was at least as major a shift as 2e -> 4e has been. We never used all the kits and blah blah blah from 2e really. We just found a lot of that stuff mechanically poor and ill-considered and mostly stuck with core 2e. Now and then we'd use a few carefully chosen options, but our characters were always pretty tame in terms of rules usage. 3e to us was a huge leap that we never really cared for (mostly) with all its focus on tons of character options right in the core. 4e certainly was a leap as well, but not MORE than 3e given how we played.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
He didn't say "Base it on the spellcaster..." Framing it the way you did makes it an absolute with no variance.
What he said was to base it "...more heavily on the caster"; which expresses a level of degrees and not an absolute.
It helps to read ALL of what was posted and ONLY what was posted; it's also a good idea to not alter what was posted to reinforce your own biases. There's no need for this thread to become an edition war, and your response up-thread seemed an attempt to do just that...
Not Cool, Man. Not Cool At All.
I don't think it was that questionable a reading. 'Basing' on something in my mind means the aspects of the character you focus and use as the primary archetype. So "more heavily base on" and "base on" don't exactly mean different things. If you were to more heavily base your 2e -> 3e MU/THIEF conversion on MU you'd start out with whatever levels in MU were needed to deal with that aspect of the PC. If you change that to "base on" vs "mostly base on" the same characters would be done the same way wouldn't they?
I think [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION] has a point about 3e, it was pretty hard to make effective characters with a casting aspect and incorporating significant aspects of other archetypes. In all fairness though 3e did expand greatly on PrCs as time went on to try to address that, though IMHO it was a somewhat clunky strategy that ended up creating some weird problems of its own. For instance it would be quite hard to make a 2e FM/MU or MU/THIEF and emphasize the fighting or thieving aspect and still have a really effective character. The later addition of PrCs that addressed this is pretty analogous to the issues with conversions in 2008 using nothing but the 4e PHB1.
IMHO every system has its quirks, but every system that has had the D&D label on it still preserved the essential concepts. Some of them do some characters better than others, but if we were to argue about which ones are 'D&D' based on that, wouldn't we effectively have to argue that AD&D and everything that came after it are 'not D&D' because they certainly don't allow for exactly the same PCs that OD&D/BX do...
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I disagree. They mean the same thing. Neither is absolute because the whole implication of the term "based on" is that something starts out at a certain point, it builds from another thing. That implies that it also contains things BESIDES that one thing, and at that point we know that it is a MIXTURE of things, though presumably more one thing than the other. Saying that something is "more based on" one thing than another is saying EXACTLY the same thing, just in more words. Its more based on this than on that, is saying its a mixture of the two things, while 'its based on that' simply implies that its mostly THAT and then we must presume it is also somewhat 'this', otherwise it would BE 'that' and not 'based on that'.
IMHO he wasn't any more or less 'snarky' than anyone else normally is in these threads. He disputed the earlier post and effectively demonstrated what he saw as the flaw in it, that's all. I really have no idea why you're picking out this one post from amongst all its fellows as particularly snarky or offensive. I thought the question he was asking was quite germane. He COULD have posted it in a lower key way, but again it wasn't exceptionally inflammatory as it was IMHO. I don't even know what you mean by "ascribed that negative bias towards another poster", there was no 3rd party involved at all.
I think you have understand that people have different habits of reasoning, different tastes, different reading comprehension levels, and simply different styles of discussion and debate. Most of what people find inflammatory was probably never meant that way at all. I seriously doubt in this example that [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION] even noticed the loss of the 'mostly', or if he did he was only paraphrasing and left out a word which IMHO is perfectly reasonable to consider excess. Perhaps that was sloppy, and I might frown on it a bit more if he were say a reporter or an author writing a publication, but even then I don't think it would rise to the level of being notable. I see FAR worse sins committed all the time by professional writers.
I think it behooves us all to be generous in our readings of others and to try to be as reasonable in what we post as we can as well. I think most of the crap IME comes about from some people being extremists about their viewpoints and writing in such a way as to be utterly dismissive of others. Later on of course these same people pretty much always defend themselves with a "well, its only a message board, of course everything is just my opinion." I won't name names, I'm not here to start fights, but THAT would be where I would focus my posting advise. Sadly the people who resort to that sort of thing seem little interested in listening to others, so it rarely helps to state such things. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with your posting advice, just add in "be generous in your interpretation of others" and you're fine
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