[5e conversions] The goal

For characters who aren't active in a campaign, but who still have plans for world domination.
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NukeHavoc
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[5e conversions] The goal

Post by NukeHavoc »

I've been reading through the various character conversion threads -- great stuff, though it is starting to make my head spin a bit. :)

I think it's worthwhile to take a step back and decide what we're trying to do here. Overall, I think what we should be shooting for is "thematically consistent" rather than a one-for-one conversion. Unlike 2e to 3e, which went from a more limited system to a more expansive one, 5e is about scaling down from the heights of 3e and 4e. I think it's inevitable that these characters will be significantly more powerful than organically grown 5e characters, but they shouldn't be lesser gods. :)

My sense is that you should be able to look at a character like Kalib and say "yes, that looks, acts, and feels like Kalib". Is he as powerful as a 3e Kalib would be? No. He'd probably be a lot less powerful actually (but undoubtedly much more powerful than an organic 5e character) but if it feels like Kalib, I'd call that a win. So what does that mean? Well, I think it means focusing on the Big Three Things that define a given character. For Kalib, I think that's 1) the pursuit of vengeance, 2) Justiceseeker and 3) the combination of fighter and cleric aesthetics.

As we've discussed, 5e is all about the bounded math and putting reasonable (but hopefully not excessive) limitations on characters. So you have far fewer stat bump magic items, magical weapons with a lot less bells and whistles, and limitations on just how many cool magic items you can use at one time).

I think you need to keep those limitations in place -- yeah, that means choosing to attune to only 3 magic items -- because to do otherwise is to shatter the 5e ruleset. If we what we want is a faithful conversion, then we should be playing Pathfinder ... but then we'd be back to not being able to play these characters because they're so complex. :)

There's a 5th Edition conversion PDF that provides some guidance on the issues we're discussing:

https://media.wizards.com/2015/download ... ns_1.0.pdf
"Oh, I'm so sorry. Forgive me. I'll try and be a tad more quiet as I desperately struggle to break free -- and save all creation!" -- Doctor Strange
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