Hello all,

Sorry if this question has already been asked umpteen time before…

Anyway, I have been thinking about introducing 3rd ed to our gaming group (we may not still, there are various competing factors). Anyway, we all have 2nd ed characters we are all very attached to (my personal favourite is a halfling called Dr Aethelbert Scroggins, now getting towards the end of his 6th career, for those that are interested…), and we would be very sad if some old friends got left behind in the switch.

So, here's the question, how well do 2nd ed characters translate over? Dr Scroggins has had a fairly strange career path (student, surgeon, physician, embalmer, cartographer, and now guild master), so I wouldn't be surprised if some careers and abilities were lost along the way, but most other characters in the group are more 'normal' (mercenary, veteran, champion etc, apprentice wizard, journeyman wizard, master wizard etc).

Many thanks for any advice,

All best,

David.

Id just convert them straight up. Convert % directly to 10's/ blue dice: e.g. a 63% = 6 blue characteristic dice

For careers: Make them a max rank 3 (30-35 advances). 2 completed careers and "whatever" incomplete careers because that doesn't matter, it's just listed as "incomplete". For instance: in 2e, a lot of careers had crossover skills that "automatically qualified" you for other careers..after a long life of a character, we joked about just "having every career." Keep a reasonable limit.

jh

~ Personally, I'd just start over, but the choice is yours

I think in a similar way as Emirikol does, and one of the reasons is because the change between the 2nd and the 3rd editions is quite big, if you start already with high rank characters you will be managing a lot of new things and it can be overwhelming. Additionally, the characters will be high rank but without any, insanity, disease, mutation…and this is a pity

If I were you, I would finish the campaign in the second edition, retire the characters that survived and start over a new campaign in the 3rd edition. You can always introduce your old 2e characters in the 3rd edition as important NPCs.

Cheers

Yepesnopes and Emirikol,

O.K., many thanks - I suppose old Dr Scroggins (well, he's about 50, not very old at all for a halfling) had better go back to the Shire (sorry, the Moot) sooner or later, and set up a nice quite village paractice somewhere, perhaps become a mayor somewhere, who knows…

All best,

David.

we just converted 100xp = 1 advance and rebuilt our chars in respect to the choices we made back in 2nd.

Hi,

I'd second Emirikol and Yepesnopes, just start new characters from scratch.

If you are midway through a campaign, finish it in second ed. But if you have a group that have been using the same characters for years it might be nice to freshen things up? A group of rank 6 characters is going to find many of the pre writ scenarios for 3rd ed quite an easy challenge, so if you're planning to use them you'll prob find it more fun to go back to sewer level characters. Course this may be a taste thing too, I always enjoy the low to mid end of character exp more than epic levels.

One of the guys in our group once said to me some years ago "a good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end". That has stuck with me, and now I always run campaigns with an eye on how and when it needs to draw to its natural conclusion, and allow for the birth of a fresh adventure with new characters.

Hope that helps, have fun either way.