Star Wars ----> Fantasy conversion?

[Oni]

Has anyone here tried converting the Star Wars rules to straight up fantasy. That is to say ditch most or all of the trappings of the Star Wars universe and make any rules changes is might be needed for sword and sorcerery. If you've tried it, how did it turn out? If you haven't, what do you think?

 

[Crothian]

I've used the VP/WP and the class defense rules in fantasy.

The class defense bonus is diffucult because of all the ways one can increase AC in the game. So, while the PCs had the class bonus, they found very few items to further increase their AC.

THe VP/WP worked well since there was no one with any magical healing ability. That was one of the reason's I used it. I made lower level adventures a little tougher, and we had to play around with the crit reanges of some weapons. All in all it worked out ok.

 

[Oni]

It would be nice to be able to lessen the parties dependency on having to have a healer. While I like the fact that there is a role for everyone to play, I'm not terrible fond of the idea someone might have to play something that wasn't their first choice just to make party one that has a good chance of surviving most standard dnd situations.

 

[Desdichado]

I've been working on just such a conversion myself. I don't know why it wouldn't work well, though, since much of The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game is already just like Star Wars. Add in VP/WP, do something about lightsabers for the jedi classes, and you're good to go. I'm thinking about replacing the lightsaber with some special ability from Tome & Blood prestige classes and using the Force Adept and the Jedi Consular as my "mage" classes. Rename a bunch of stuff, and they should be able to be used as is. The rest of the classes are already either extremely similar or exactly the same as WoT classes.

 

[Oni]

Replacing some of the light saber stuff you could give them some feats as they level up to take feat/spells kind of like they did force lightning.

 

[Tanager]

I just got the SW rulebook recently and have been thinking along the same lines.

I like the idea of using the force mechanics for magic, much more subtle (in effect) than the standard system and the Force Adept seems well suited for mage type classes. I'm also toying around with using the jedi guardian for paladins.

But that raises the next question, how to differ arcane and divine magic? I have a bit of a problem with the idea of divine magic drawing directly from the caster's energy (wound points), but giving a clerics and such yet another lvl based point total seems like 1)too much book keeping and 2)unbalancing compared to the arcane classes.

Any ideas?

 

[willpax]

Fitting clerics into VP-powered magic

I'm currently toying with a system that adapts D&D style magic to a WP/VP system, and have dealt with clerics in the following way:

I have always leaned toward the "clerics gain power through the collective faith of the worshippers" rationalization. So clerics gain a separate pool of power points from their own prayers and the "contributions" of other PCs and NPCs through worship. I am currently adjusting the numbers, but the main concept would be a cap on total power a character is able to pool based on wisdom and level.

This adjustment gives clerics much more power at their disposal than arcane magicians, so I also adjust the magical capabilities. Essentially, clerics are good at producing minor effects over a wide range/lots of people (making them essentially war mages, able to give an entire platoon a small bonus) or they are able to perform single spectacular effects (such as instant healing of wounds). I am still tinkering with the numbers.

One aspect of balance is that the bad guys have access to the same power pool. Makes those leaders-of-large-bands-of-evil-cultists just a bit meaner. . .

 

[Oni]

One of the things that got me thinking about this, was how nice it would be to pair down magic use to just one or two classes. I like the idea that what you choose to cast and how makes a difference how well you can cast spells on the other end of the spectrum. What I had in mind was that clerics and mages or whatever magic tradition used the same class and system. The difference really just coming down to how you describe it. If you wanted to do something like spell craft, you could make a sort of detect magic like skill where one of the uses would be detecting the nature of the magical energy being gathered by the caster and thus being able to tell what they are casting. Counter spelling could be basically an opposed skill roll of the same (or appropriate attribute). That way the more skilled the caster was at that particular type of magic the better at countering he would be.

 

[Oni]

*KA-BUMP*