Pathfinder -> OLD Conversion Report

[Atom Mlatom]

Edit: Whoops! I didn't realize I was making a post at the same time as uploading my character sheet.

So my group finally got around to tackling the conversion of our player characters from Pathfinder to O.L.D. It wasn't seamless, but it seemed to work out to everybody's satisfaction. A couple of players were finished with their conversion in about an hour, and a couple of others took about twice as long. (None of these players had reviewed the play test documents prior to this.)

My first thoughts on the subject were that a crude conversion might involve cutting everyone's attribute score in half... as in Pathfinder, 18 is about super record achieving, versus a similar score effect of 9 in WOIN. But people seemed more interested in trying out the new character generation system offered by WOIN, even though they already had their own characters. (1 player was generating a character from scratch.)

Since there was no direct mechanic making the cut of anyone's player character, results were varied. Very few of the attributes fully matched their Pathfinder predecessors, which were characters rolled with random ability scores. Not really surprising there.

We did find the default character sheet kind of lacking for our needs, though. Outdated references under some of the derived stats added to player confusion, and in several areas there weren't enough slots to complement the player character - i.e., traditions, weapons, abilities. (More experienced characters were given an extra tradition.)

Translating gear was simple enough.

At the end of the night, the new character format left one player feeling like he had lost a lot of abilities (from a PF dwarf samurai with ubered ability scores), but everyone else seemed happy that their characters were more fleshed out.

Excited to get to playing soon. Will report on any issues.

And of course, as a result of the limitations of the original character sheet, I developed my own for my play group and have uploaded for anyone else who is interested in using it. This sheet includes more slots for weapons, armors, abilities, and traditions, but skips out on the magic and alchemy - those will have to be recorded separately.

Atom Mlatom has just uploaded [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1028"]OLD Character Sheet 5-3-14[/URL] to the downloads area.

Sheet designed primarily for OLD, low magic setting. Does not include spell keeping or alchemy notes.

 

[GlassEye]

Nice sheet. Thanks.

I'd like to hear more about your character creation. For example, what characters you had and how you made them over in O.L.D. What traditions did the samurai end up taking? Did you give a pool of xp to purchase things like combat tricks?

 

[Morrus]

A samurai would definitely need a new tradition. I suppose you could sort of approximate it with a knight, but traditions are pretty specific in that regard, so it's not an ideal fit.

The character sheet in the book is actually different to the one in the downloads section, but not drastically so.

 

[Atom Mlatom]

Nice sheet. Thanks.

I'd like to hear more about your character creation. For example, what characters you had and how you made them over in O.L.D. What traditions did the samurai end up taking? Did you give a pool of xp to purchase things like combat tricks?

Thanks/You're welcome.

Honestly, these were only level 2 Pathfinder characters, so I figured allowing them to keep all their equipment and take one extra tradition would be about equivalent. There was a lot of fudging with the traditions taken though, considering the somewhat limited initial offerings (I haven't taken the time to make custom traditions yet.) For example, some of the players picked out the rough equivalent of Assassin since they had been playing a bounty hunter/mercenary-esque kind of team, but I allowed them to waive the Stealth requirement since that was not really their style.

Not surprisingly, the Samurai worked "Noble" and "Knight" in there. I think the main break in his character translation came from basing his Pathfinder dwarf on the "Smallfolk" stats in the doc. I plan on helping him fix his stats with Morrus's dwarf preview, and that might fix the issues. He also chose Man-At-Arms to reflect a military background, Ranger to reflect his Ronin life on the road seeking vengeance against an old rival, and Gladiator??? Not really sure how that one fits on the surface, but with some renaming it might not be that weird. As mentioned above, he also fudged the Assassin tradition to fit in with his recent Bounty Hunter-esque play.

Edit: I should clarify, these "issues" could just be whining, aside from the lowered strength of a smallfolk vs dwarf. He already ended up with one of the best attacks in the game thanks to his knightly High Quality katana.