Gamma World vs. DnD4

[Anth]

Here's some questions about how well Gamma World is synchronized with the original DnD4-rules.

1. Can I use a Gamma World-monster of the same level instead of a DnD4-monster in a DnD4-encounter?
What changes must I do for the monsters to be balanced?

2. Can I use Gamma World races in a DnD4-campaign?
What changes must I do for the races to be balanced?

3. In Gamma World I use alfa power cards instead of encounter powers and omega tech cards instead of magical items.
Is it possible to use alfa power cards as powers in DnD4, and omega tech cards as magic items?
What changes must I to do for the powers and items to be balanced?

 

[Nullzone]

Gamma World is designed for a certain degree of lethality over longevity. The two don't reliably mesh well.

Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech cards are your encounter and daily powers. They can come up more or less often than usual and are balanced around their brevity.

All in all, I'm not sure I could recommend trying to graft one onto the other, just because the differences in scale and purpose/intent make for a lot of effort to attain balance.

 

[MrMyth]

The two systems are pretty able to interact together, but not so much to be interwoven. That is to say - you can port a D&D character into GW, or vice versa, without noticing much difference. You can drop a GW monster into your D&D game without a problem. But trying to combine the mechanics within a single character - both in terms of race/class vs origin, as well as D&D magic items vs tech/mutations - you'll need to do some solid house-ruling to make it work.

1. Can I use a Gamma World-monster of the same level instead of a DnD4-monster in a DnD4-encounter?
What changes must I do for the monsters to be balanced?

Yeah, they copy over pretty smoothly. PCs might lack resistance to laser damage, not sure if you'd want to treat it as radiant, radiation damage as poison/acid, etc - or just leave it unique and frightening.

2. Can I use Gamma World races in a DnD4-campaign?
What changes must I do for the races to be balanced?

This is trickier. Gamma World doesn't have race and class as D&D understands it - instead, your race is your class. You could probably port over the basic elements for a 4E character without too much trouble, and maybe leave the higher level racial powers as available 'power swaps' from their class, and it might work.

The one big thing to keep in mind - Gamma World characters add level to attacks/defenses/etc, and often add it to damage as well. This generally balance out their lack of feats/magic items/etc. So if you are porting them over, you'll need to find a way around that. Similarly, they don't get healing surges - instead, they heal up after each encounter. Every character gets second wind as a minor action (and it heals their bloodied value), but other healing is hard to come by. You might need to adjust those sorts of things if bringing them into a game with a cleric, for example.

3. In Gamma World I use alfa power cards instead of encounter powers and omega tech cards instead of magical items.
Is it possible to use alfa power cards as powers in DnD4, and omega tech cards as magic items?
What changes must I to do for the powers and items to be balanced?

Both of those cards tend to be equivalent to encounter or daily powers. You might make it so that a PC needs to expend a daily power to use one of them, for example. Or let them swap out daily powers entirely in order to gain access to them.

 

[nogray]

Monsters are pretty compatible; the Gamma World critters seem to follow the post-MM3 math. The main "work" you would possibly do is convert any Gamma World damage types to something appropriate to D&D. Gamma world has laser and radiation as damage types in place of D&D's radiant damage type. Easy switches are electricity to lightning and sonic to thunder. Gamma world also has physical as a damage type with resists and whatnot, and that is something D&D monsters typically don't resist, so that might bear looking into.

Gamma world "races" are more akin to half of a D&D class. They set out the powers, skill training, and whatnot for the character. They wouldn't necessarily be compatible, though you might be able to kludge something together, especially if you treated a single appropriate alpha mutation as an encounter power, with normal recharge rules. Higher levels of Gamma World characters have built-in encounter powers, but they get them at different levels. Also, the particular skills differ.

You might be able to make a balanced race by taking the origin novice power and making it a "racial" encounter power (or available as a power-swap at will, maybe, for experimentation purposes), noting the primary ability as the fixed +2 (then choose appropriate ones for the character to choose between for the other +2) to attribute, the skill they have (or some appropriate substitution) can be a racial skill bonus. Some of their other traits might work as-is. It would be case-by-case. You could also add their utility and expert powers as racial power-swaps, like the shade from Heroes of Shadow or themes. All of this is pretty heavily a kludge, though, and would require testing to see if it is worthwhile or not.

The Alpha powers and Omega tech items, at least as they play in Gamma World, aren't really compatible with the ideas of D&D, though some of the math may end up working out similarly.

Or, shorter form, mostly what Mr. Myth said.