My opinion..feel free to tear it apart for the sake of discussion

A lot of us work on converting old scenarios as closely as possible, but what I've realized is that it's not a straight-up conversion. I think the reason why my conversions have been coming up too easy for the PC's (in smaller parties no doubt as well!), is because character power is that dramatically different from prior editions to 3e. 3e characters simply are a lot more powerful.

When it comes to skill checks however, they CAN be converted practically straight up. Sometimes simple consideration for skill checks must be made.

Combat, on the other hand, is not a straight up conversion. Characters in previous editions, in a melee combat, only hit 40% of the time (at the high end) and damage was roughly the same. In 3e, characters hit 85%+ of the time. Damage is the much the same as previous editions, but oftentimes higher with characters who are weapon/ballistic trained.

Hence, I think we need a new strategy for conversion for combat encounters other than Ork=Orc. I'm not sure if monsters have scaled or not.

Thoughts?

Actually you are right, but also in 3rd ed NPCs hit a lot more and a lot harder.

If you compare a normal orc from 2nd ed, to a orc from the 3rd ed… well an orc in the 3rd ed has St 5 and To 5 which is far above any starting PC adventuring group, give him some weapons and some nice action cards and he will be a fearful opponent; while an orc in the 2nd ed is just as bad as any newly created PC. I have not tried yet to convert escenarios from previous editions, but for sure the combat encounter will need deep redesing.

If the basic point is that in converting you have to "actually look at what this should be in 3e" not just "use a table of correspondences", absolutely. The table won't work reliably and won't yield enough uses of particular 3isms and effects.

I see it as more a general issue that applies with any conversion from any system that using earlier edition Warhammer material "tempts one to forget".

Even challenge difficulties for a social or tracking roll may be things that for your table, power level of your PC's, you decide to change.

True, monsters don't scale well with previous editions either.

I think some simple ground rules should be defined (as the core rules avoid this like the plague):

When considering a "standard party," I use the DEMO as the standard for Rank 1. That is: Heavy fighter (trollslayer), ranged fighter (raoadwarden), non-fighter (envoy), and specialist (wizard).

The danger level of a combat can be broken down into the same 5 "words" as any other skill check, although it has nothing to do the number of purple dice:

Simple, Easy, Average, Hard, Daunting -- The beastmen attack in the Demo would be Hard.

Now the part that requires more definition: Opponent difficulty value. The Skulls next to a monster seem haphazardly applied, but may apply.

A GM then has considerations:

• Larger or smaller parties
• Variations in parties (if all fighters or all rogues for instance)
• terrain, environment
• the 'resolve' of the monsters (their morale)

Further workup is needed on this topic, but I think it may help a gm get a solid start.

jh

I'm actually quite interested in this topic since I'll be converting and running both The Thousand Thrones (with bits from the Marienburg expansion) and Castle Drakenfels in the near future.

I would point to Gallows tTT notes for an example of how to transfer certain NPCs and creatures to 3rd Edition.

I'm probably going to run Drakenfels relatively straight from the module, since it's a pretty brutal dungeon crawl anyway, and my player's PCs are pusing rank 3 and include an Roadwarden/Outrider with a full brace of pistols, a Woodelf Hunter/Waywatcher with a Bow of Athel Loren, and a Celestial Wizard…all strong characters with badass abilities.

Also, if you don't feel like wading through a stack of Actions for your monsters/NPCs, just give'em a bigger ACE pool and a Talent. This makes things a bit easier to manage on the GMs side of the table, but still gives you some tactical crunch to use. Other than the basic actions (and unless the NPC is a spell caster), I usually just stick to one or two extra actions per character, plus the added bonuses above. I'm still able to reflect the NPC/monster's skill level through awesome dice pools and flowery descriptions of how (s)he is kicking the PCs collective asses, just without all the card flipping and token counting.

1000 Thrones is a good example.

"slight spoiler", so this encounter has mutants and that encounter has beastmen. Good and fine and some of the colourful descriptions there great stuff to use. What that actually amounts to in terms of individual Cult Mutants and henchmen groups of such, or an enhanced one, and among the beastmen how many ungor/gor/wargor (or minotaur as I went with!) and for those regular/henchmen or improved (slap a hero's call template on it) that's all very "what will push your group hard enough" sort of thing. Just using same critters (to extent they exist) will likely be off in terms of too much or too little challenge.

Then in term of WFRP 3isms, the Rumours in Winkelmart section cries out for more intersting boon/bane possibiltiies on those Charm (Gossip) checks etc.

Goblynking, I don't know if you've checked out my 1000 thrones sessions reports. If you want any of my notes, table hand outs (e.g., Rumours in the Winkelmart location card with list of WFRP3 effects) friend/pm me and we can work out sending them along. They're not as pretty as Gallows' work but cover some different aspects.

valvorik said:

Awesome, I'll do that right now!

GoblynKing said:

GoblynKing said:

Good points. I've kind of tired of digging through stacks of cards just to find essentially the same attacks, but with a different name. I think the GMs description and sanity is saved by using more Melee Strike + description, rather than trying to find the perfect card with just more difficulty dice added. There are some great exceptions of course, but I save those for monsters.

I like the A/C/E dice idea (I do that anyways because I don't do hard-count accounting on my numbers there..it just slows the game down to do accounting).

jh