D&D 4E Will I Be Able To Continue My Campaign In 4E?

[mattcolville]

Bill Slavicsek said, as I recall, that there'd be no point in trying to "convert" your 3.5 game to 4E. "You'd be better off just starting a new game," I believe he said. Or words to that effect.

This has me kinda worried because my group have basically stopped playing in anticipation of 4E. That's not the only reason, I'm also sick of running 3.5 because it's so damned complex and takes so long to prep an adventure. Which means, I think, we're kinda the target audience of the new edition.

I'm not expecting a conversion in the classic sense, like a function, where I input certain numbers and I get fungible results. But I'd like to be able to say "Ok, Lady Alura is a 7th level human Knight.

In other words, I hope to be able to translate the character, not the stats on the sheet, and end up with something that is recognizably, narratively, the same character.

Do you think this is possible?

 

[Lackhand]

Bill Slavicsek said, as I recall, that there'd be no point in trying to "convert" your 3.5 game to 4E. "You'd be better off just starting a new game," I believe he said. Or words to that effect.

This has me kinda worried because my group have basically stopped playing in anticipation of 4E. That's not the only reason, I'm also sick of running 3.5 because it's so damned complex and takes so long to prep an adventure. Which means, I think, we're kinda the target audience of the new edition.

I'm not expecting a conversion in the classic sense, like a function, where I input certain numbers and I get fungible results. But I'd like to be able to say "Ok, Lady Alura is a 7th level human Knight.

In other words, I hope to be able to translate the character, not the stats on the sheet, and end up with something that is recognizably, narratively, the same character.

Do you think this is possible?

I don't see how anyone with a highly functioning imagination, enough free time to do the prep-work for third edition, and a mild amount of DM bribery (as necessary) could fail to carry over the narrative sense of the same character.

Your gnome bard might suddenly have "halfling wizard/warlord" written on his character sheet, your elf fighter might become an elf rogue ('cause of all the two-weapon-fighting you did), and so on.

Your necromancer or pacifist cleric might discover they have default access to abilities that they didn't before, and has lost access to some of their schticks as it was pushed up in level or not printed in the PHB: When it was pushed up in level, they may cry nerf, but 'twas a righteous nerf. When it wasn't published yet, there will almost certainly be something to give them access to similar abilities in the short term. Give them access to these abilities (this is the aforementioned bribery).

Your fighter may discover he's not just attacking each round, but doing things.

Your druid (now a wizard, or a warlock, or a cleric, at least in the short term: many things that a druid did were basically wizard-y anyway.) may miss his animal companion, or the wizard his famulus. That's actually the one that worries me most: I'll probably allow my wizard to just have a cat of sufficient intelligence as though it were a follower, and frankly losing my druid's menagerie will thrill me.

If your druidic players like their familiars more than mine, just give them the frakking animal, and be aware of the extra screentime you're granting the player.

 

[Lord Fyre]

. . . what about adventures?

While I see the PCs characters being translated, what about adventures? :\

Will all the pre-existing plots go out the window? Will the core assumptions of D&D get changed so much that a GM will have to completely re-think everything?

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Your gnome bard might suddenly have "halfling wizard/warlord" written on his character sheet

If such a conversion were necessary (I think the MMI will have enough info to play a basic gnome), halfling is probably the last thing I'd think of to convert a gnome character over to.

 

[Lackhand]

While I see the PCs characters being translated, what about adventures? :\

Will all the pre-existing plots go out the window? Will the core assumptions of D&D get changed so much that a GM will have to completely re-think everything?

If you had a homebrew...
... continue to use your homebrew.

Elves and eladrin are the same race to you (though with different potential mechanical repercussions), or disallow the play of eladrin. 4 goblins is no longer a challenge for the party, it's true (and instead, say, 15 goblins are) -- so use a different monster, or just more goblins.

That's why they're saying there isn't a conversion guide, because you have to put work into the conversion. A lone goblin is no longer a match for the night watchmen; instead, 4 goblins or 8 goblins are. Is this actually a problem, as long as a lone *hobgoblin* is a match for a night watchman?

 

[Lackhand]

If such a conversion were necessary (I think the MMI will have enough info to play a basic gnome), halfling is probably the last thing I'd think of to convert a gnome character over to.

Maybe, but only because once you'd thought of it, you'd have thought of everything you needed, and so could stop thinking of other ways of mechanically modeling a short (halfling!) tenacious (halfling!) trickster (eh, no race helps with this) illusiony or woodsy (class related; having a boost from the race is nice, but like I say, this is stopgap) that dislikes kobolds and goblinoids (no bonuses from race. But no penalties, either, and I'm sure you could convince the DM to let you swap some abilities around, since this is nice and directly calcuable!).

My point isn't that you'd say you were a halfling: you'd say you were a gnome, and there would be other gnomes to agree. Just that if you wanted a copy, raiding the halfling footlocker is far from a bad idea.

But yeah, the MMI will have enough material to play a gnome, so mine was just an alternate way-to-do-it.

Truce?

 

[WyzardWhately]

While I see the PCs characters being translated, what about adventures? :\

Will all the pre-existing plots go out the window? Will the core assumptions of D&D get changed so much that a GM will have to completely re-think everything?

I suspect that adventures will be easier to translate than PCs, although they too will require rewriting. I mean, a dragon threatening a city is the same plot no matter what edition you're in, his minions and tactics will just be different. Or at least that's my take.

I figure that if you want to bad enough, you'll be able to translate your characters. Some people will get lucky and their concept will work better in the new edition. Some people won't be, and they'll have trouble (or have to wait for expansion books... ) But I've translated characters between entirely different systems before, so it can be done. I am aware this was much more common back in the earlier days of RPGs, but there's no reason your players couldn't rediscover the skill.

 

[Xethreau]

My group and I fully plan to "convert" my campaign to 4e. It will take work and some reconceptualizing, my players and I know, but that is fine with us.

We do, however, plan on running a "test session" or two to get a feel for 4e before we convert. We also do not plan on making a direct 'conversion,' which is supposedly impossible, but to think about our characters, and rebuild them using 4e rules. As a DM, I will need to be open minded to changes.

However, I think that it will be possible to pull it off!

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm not expecting a conversion in the classic sense, like a function, where I input certain numbers and I get fungible results. But I'd like to be able to say "Ok, Lady Alura is a 7th level human Knight.

In other words, I hope to be able to translate the character, not the stats on the sheet, and end up with something that is recognizably, narratively, the same character.

I can't imagine that it would not be possible to convert in that sense, where one takes the basics of the character and simply re-constructs the character along similar lines. In fact, I would say it would be almost impossible to come up with a scenario where that could not happen save where a character was converted across genres; obviously if you're a wizard, then it would be very difficult to bring him into, say, a Spycraft campaign set in the Dirk Pitt universe. I can't think of being unable to do that even from radically different systems, much less from a system where some basic concepts - like classes and levels - will remain somewhat the same.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

My point isn't that you'd say you were a halfling: you'd say you were a gnome, and there would be other gnomes to agree. Just that if you wanted a copy, raiding the halfling footlocker is far from a bad idea.

But yeah, the MMI will have enough material to play a gnome, so mine was just an alternate way-to-do-it.

Truce?

Sure.

I get where your coming from, but given the prospect of converting a gnome character using just PHI options I'd probably start with an Eladrin and ask the DM if I could trade the DEX bonus for a CON Bonus and apply the small size modifiers. YMMV