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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 1576353" data-attributes="member: 94">So many questions, so little time... (And a crappy connection to boot...)Using Monsters From Other SourcesGo for it. You won't need to do any converting of the monster statblock to use them. Unless, of course, the monsters have class levels like sorcerer, and you are using Grim Tales' spellcasting. But for monsters which simply have spell-like abilities (usable at will or X times per day) just use them as is-- don't worry about spell burn. Facing D&D Challenges with Grim Tales CharactersThere's a fairly short list of stuff you have to worry about, but it's not really that different from the sorts of things a GM has to worry about when nobody wants to play a cleric or magic user. Healing is an issue, and lots of bad guys are an issue (the role of arcane spellcaster is dual: kill lots of little bad guys at once, and kill the big bad guys in one spell).When push comes to shove, you can always expand the role of action points to cover a few things-- as I did with healing after combat, bypassing DR, and so on. There's no reason you couldn't allow a PC to spend an action point to recover lost ability scores faster, for example. There will be a learning curve for your players, to actually get into the habit of USING their action points. Remind them. You want to use an action point to boost your AC against this bad guy's attack. You really want to use an action point to make this skill check, or this Fortitude save against disease. Or against this enemy spellcaster... And so on.Action points are the "magic" of Grim Tales. They let the heroes do things that D&D heroes accomplish through other means. The main difference, of course, is that action points are an expendable, and very limited, resource. The more "high magic" or "high action" you want your game, the more often I recommend refreshing Action Points. Starting each session of play with (5 + 1/2 character level) is an awful lot of action points-- plenty enough for defensive use only, maybe not enough for those who want to throw an AP onto every attack roll as well.Making a Grim Tales / Low Magic Spell ListErrggh. My recommendation would be just the opposite, and a lot less work. Instead of going through all your spells and deciding which ones you want to use, I would very, very slowly decide which spells I want to allow in the game, adding one or two very occasionally. And remember, just because a bad guy knows a spell, doesn't mean that whatever source he had for learning that spell is still around for the PCs to learn from. Your evil villain may very well have teleport, raise dead, or commune-- granted to him by his dark gods and still out of reach of your players.The Importance of GearI don't think it's all that important, but of course that depends on the tech level of your game. The higher the tech level (technology = magic, remember!) the more your players will rely on technology as a crutch.Why don't I think it's that important? Perhaps it's just due to the style of game I like to run with Grim Tales. They are story focused, not acquisition-focused, so the PCs pretty much start with every piece of gear they'll need to complete the adventure and/or enjoy themselves. Spycraft (James Bond) is a good example in this regard: Give them what they need up front, then just focus on the action. You don't see Bond getting out of Q Branch and then heading off to the shopping mall to beef up his equipment list. There's an assumption of trust that the PCs will have what they need (or find it quickly during play).Wulf</blockquote>

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