Re: Digest Number 71

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 11:24:14 -0700 (PDT)

Just some quick comments on the conversion issue.

When using printed material, you pretty much always have to modify it even if you are using the same game system. The author assumes a certain player character competancy level. If your characters don't match that, you need to make modifications to keep the challenge from being either too easy or too hard.

In other words, the NPC's skill should always be scaled to the player's abilities.

Well, that doesn't change.

If a RQ villain had 90% combat skills and was supposed to be able to hold off two characters, but your characters all had combat skills up around 80%, you probably had to boost the villain a bit. If your HQ characters have mostly 1W close combat, then the villain needs at least 4W (allowing for multiple attacker penalty), and probably a bit more to allow for AP differences--say 10W. Boom, done.

The hard part of conversions are the things that don't line up well. The RQ NPC group whose danger was built around the fact that all of their weapons had long duration sorcerous damage boosting on them, for example. Or the scene where the PCs are supposed to succumb to befuddle spells cast by the 20 POW NPC. No conversion rules will cover these things well, however.

I guess I expect the campaign to be tailored to the characters, not for the characters to be thrown into an arbitrarily easy or hard world for better or worse.

--Bryan



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