Hi

I've got a lovely bunch of 2.0 edition expansions (adventure/ quest/ dungeon/ timescape/ city) and have recently been gifted the upgrade to convert the basic set to 4.0 Rev edition.

AFAICS the chief difference to Characters is that they now have Fate points (and may have a variable number of lives) - is there any online resource that will convert 2.0 edition characters into 4.0 Rev by confirming the fate points/ lives each should have?

Or is there a rationale behind how the Fate point/ life point value is arrived at that I can apply on my own account?

TIA

Phil

Great question that I have no idea about, but you could probably get by a "house rule" on it. How many and which characters are involved? Maybe the posters here could debate this and give good ideas and such?

I think Fate is a sort of balancing stat, that tends to empower weaker characters. For instance, the Priest starts with a Fate value of 5, and he's easily the weakest of the bunch.

The Troll is a Strength "tank" character who starts with a Fate value of 1 ,and he has mostly excellent stats(Strength 6, Life value 6), and a great regeneration ability.

On the spellcasting side of "tanks", you have The Warlock who has the best spell-cycling ability in the game, he starts with 2 Strength, 5 Craft and has a Fate value of 1 as well.

Then again, there are a few characters who have 5 Fate, and have all around great abilities. Like the Dragon Priestess.

And some who are fairly mediocre, and have a starting Fate value of 1. Like the Magus.

Most of the moderately powerful characters(Strength 3, Craft 3) have a Fate value between 2 and 3.

But you need to take into account the usefulness/frequency of use of of their special abilities as well to calculate the appropriate fate value.

hmmm… that's what intrigues me…

I have 60 characters from the 2.0 edition sets I own, so the 14 in the 4.0 upgrade leaves me with 44 to find a fate value for.

Also, the Troll's extra lives interests me - if he gets extra lives do any other characters have a life value other than 4 in 4.0?

Yes the ogre also has 6 lives and the warrior, dwarf, gladiator and vampiress all have 5 lives

Well, lots of characters from 2nd edition have already been converted into 4th edition revised. You might have less than 44 to deal with.

Fate value is not consistently determinated for all characters. Surely in the base set the values were applied to balance the weakness of some characters.

These are the "rules" about Fate that I believe to have found:

1) Good Characters have higher Fate, Evil Characters have lower Fate, Neutral Characters tend to have low Fate too, depending on special abilities

2) Characters that have abilities that give a consistent advantage in combat usually have only 1 Fate

3) Characters that have easy access to Spells (abilities that continuously give Spells) usually have 1-2 Fate

Of course there are many exceptions to these "rules", but you may start from these.

I've found that for quite a few characters the sum of their starting Craft, Strength, Fate and Life values is 12.

So if you have the other stats in front of you, simply calculate the Fate value by substracting 12 from the total.

Of course,it's not consistent and for some characters this total is 13 or 14. There's no empirical basis for this equation, it's just an observation.

You can calculate Fate values approxamately according to your evaluation of the characters' strengths and weaknesses.

To this day, the max starting Fate value across all 46 characters(currently with the base set+ released expansions) is 5, the minimal is 1.

Ok

Thanks to you all I now have a formula that (almost) tracks the base set values….

I've summed their Strength and Craft and taken this from 10 (if Good or Neutral) or 9 (if Evil), and then reduced this by 1 per spell, per life over 4 and by 1 iper point of Strength or Craft above 4, and then assuming a max value of 5 and a min value of 1.

Without adjusting for abilities this gives a match for 6 of the 14 base characters, and a close match for 5 more (out by 1). It undervalues the Dwarf and Priest, and overvalues the Thief (they're out by 2).

But I guess it's close enough for me :-)

As a sense check, these are the characters that I have only an Adjusted Fate value for, feel free to fill in the blank Actual Fate values or comment on the Adjusted ones:

Many retro characters are already released in the expansions for 4th revised edition

They are only 23 characters ( not counting timescape) that we don't have yet.

Cool, but so far the only set I have is the basic upgrade…

You can check out a list of the other official characters here.

Some are not exaclty the same as 2nd edition and may have different names but will give you can idea of what fate values you can attribute if you want.

http://www.talismanwiki.com/Category%3ACharacter_Card

On another note, when I saw that list of yours on the 2nd edition characters alignments, I found it kinda funny how the Cyborg and Saracen are Evil. That's kinda weird, I think, that the middle-eastern man and the guy with prostheses are "evil", yet the Gypsy, whose people have a reputation for being untrustworthy thieves and conmen, is "good"?