(DnD 5e) Birthright Conversion

Dungeons & Dragons BRCS 5th Edition
1

This looks like the easiest edition in the last 15 years to make a conversion of the Birthright rules. It really gives me a ADnD 2e vibe.

Though maybe it’s better to wait for the PHB to come out. Anyone feels like bouncing some ideas around?

I’d like to keep it as similar to the original rules as possible (I believe the 3rd ed conversion changed too much stuff).

For real starters, I think all we need are Races (or even just use the races as in the Basic document) and Blood Abilities conversions.

who’s up for it?

2

Sounds like a good thing to talk about. As the primary site for Birthright, we will need to have something to show possible new fans, even if it is just ideas, not full rules.

I have only been following Next/5e from a distance. What are the key elements? What are being used instead of NWPs/Skills/Feats? How are classes specialised?

Sorontar

3

Basic rules can be downloaded for free on the Wizards site

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/basicrules

All in all, looks like mix between 2e and 3.5, without Feats for the moments.

I kind of like it.

4

Thank you. Having a peruse. Even the secondary d20 roll for advantage/disadvantage sounds quite new. It will be interesting what characters/npcs/races/spells etc can change in gameplay/capability.

Sorontar

5

From a quick perusal of the download, I don’t see much of a need to do any converting, either the 2E or the 3E versions of Birthright rules would work with only a minor tweak or two here or there.

6

I have stuck a placeholder page on the wiki for any conversion notes and links to related conversations and pages -

5e conversion draft

Sorontar

7

Given I’m currently getting my toes wet in this very topic (I’ve been a long time lurker, but I do have a BR campaign I’m toying with converting), I’ll post some of the stuff I’ve been experimenting with.

On Races:

Humans use the optional array, but with the following modifiers…
[ul]
[li]+1 to one characteristic relevant to cultural subset (Str = Vos, Dex = Brecht, Con = Rjurik, Int = Khanazi, Wis = Anuirean, and for the sake of completeness, Cha = Maesetian).[/li][li]+1 to any other characteristic of choice.[/li][li]Languages: native tongue + one other cultural human language of choice.[/li][li]One bonus skill proficiency picked from a short list as defined by culture (Anuirean - Deception, Insight or Investigation; Brecht - Acrobatics, Persuasion or Slight of Hand; Khanazi - Arcane, History or Mount [land]; Rjurik - Nature, Perception or Survival; Vos - Animal Handling, Athletics, or Intimidate; and again, for the sake of completeness, Maesetian - Medicine, Performance or Religion).[/li][li]One bonus feat of choice.[/li][/ul]

Elves use the Wood Elf subrace, Dwarves use the Mountain Dwarf subrace & Halflings use the Lightfoot subrace (I could see a good argument for tweaking the Halflings to get their shadow powers in, but I haven’t had the time/energy to do it myself. Always struck me as a tad overpowered anyway).

On Blooded Characters vs. Common Heroes
Commoners, instead of the xp boost, get an Inspiration boost (start with 1 each session, which resets with a short rest). Alternately just drop it as a rule option for Blooded characters.

On Classes:
Certain classes are restricted by Race, Culture or Background/Blood.
[ul]
[li]Barbarians restricted to Rjurik, Vos and some humanoids (Elves too maybe?).[/li][li]Dwarves and Halflings may not be Mages, while Humans may not take more than 4 levels unless they are Blooded.[/li][li]Elves may not be Clerics, Druids or Paladins. Dwarves may not be Druids.[/li][li]Monks - no. Well, maybe from freakish order from Aduria or some other far off place. The idea of Azrai Cultist Monks is kinda cool though.[/li][/ul]

At this point I’m sticking with the Domain & Bloodline rules as writ for 2e, editing how powers work in 5e as needed on a case by case basis. I’m really looking forward though to what other folks might come up with though.

8

That actually looks pretty good GrendelTod. I agree that this edition will be MUCH easier to convert.

9

I am only half-way through the document. While rangers, druids and paladins are mentioned in passing, they are never defined. Does anyone know whether they will actually be classes or just archetypes of the standard classes? I ask this because how we handle Guilder and Magician (and those classes) will be influenced by this.

Sorontar

10

These are just the basic rules, the full PHB will be out in August, and will contain all the classes mentioned by you (and also bard, barbarian, warlock, sorcerer).

11

That fits with everything I’ve read too. I think Guilder and Magician would work as specializations for Rogue and Wizard.

12

I don’t know how they’re planning to handle classes/prestige classes etc. (I haven’t looked yet), but having Wizard as the blooded archetype of the Magician might be more interesting.

13

From the sounds of it the subclasses can be VERY different from the parent class. They have confirmed via tweets by Mike Mearles that there will be a Spell sword subclass of the fighter, a Spell using subclass of the thief, and a sub class for each of the wizard schools, for example. So it sounds like making the guilder and magician subclasses should be VERY doable.

14

I did some playtesting of 5E, and yes the vibe is very much to reverse the trend that 3E to 4E had. I’m much happier with it than 4E. They have actually (seemingly) borrowed some elements from Castles & Crusades too (which has been my system of choice for the last 10 years).

Last i heard, the game was going to built in tiers. The basic set is the simplest, but expansions that include feats and more advanced mechanics may be added on as optional rulesets. 5E also goes with bounded accuracy- you don’t gain much in skill as you go up in level- what you gain are more hit points and powers. But you don’t gain a +1 doing ___ very often.

For our Birthright conversion, i think the most important factor is to make sure that everything is justified and consistent with the flavor of Birthright. That is, we don’t want to allow a class just because it’s new- it needs to justifiably fit within Birthright.

-Fizz

15

In the last playtest i did, all three were classes. I was actually not happy with the ranger and druid- they were too similar and the druid’s ability to shapechange was WAAAAAY overpowered (my playtest group at 5th level had him transforming into a t-rex iirc). Hopefully they corrected that.

Paladins had sub-archetypes too (though they weren’t called such at that stage of development). They had subversions based on an “Oath”, such as the cavalier (traditional) and warden (nature-guardian).

At that point of development, i thought there were starting to overcomplicate things, so i’m hoping they’ve simplified it a bit. Either way though, i expect Paladin and Ranger to be full classes with their own subclasses. (But i can’t say with 100% certainty.)

-Fizz

16

Shapeshifting as a class ability (rather than a spell) needs limits, like power levels relating to the extent or size of how much you can change, or a recovery period after every change. Even in AD&DII, it could be over used.

At that point of development, i thought there were starting to overcomplicate things, so i’m hoping they’ve simplified it a bit. Either way though, i expect Paladin and Ranger to be full classes with their own subclasses. (But i can’t say with 100% certainty.)

It will be interesting whether they start bringing out handbooks to allow further expnasions of the classes, like the range of books they had for AD&DII.

Any idea about how bards and psionicists/wilders are dealt with? If they having anything novel about “mindtricks”, we might be able to use it to improve on the Seeming and other Shadow magic.

Sorontar

17

Yeah i agree. It did have some limits but they were very messed up. I wasn’t playing the druid, but everyone in the group agreed it was messed up. I was playing the warden paladin, riding an elk mount, giving me 3 attacks per round- it was pretty potent too.

It will be interesting whether they start bringing out handbooks to allow further expnasions of the classes, like the range of books they had for AD&DII.

Any idea about how bards and psionicists/wilders are dealt with? If they having anything novel about “mindtricks”, we might be able to use it to improve on the Seeming and other Shadow magic.

Sorontar

I didn’t see anything about psionics- i don’t think they ever put those into any of the playtests. The last playtest i did (last September) did include bards as a class. The base bard seemed pretty standard, actually- a mix of 3E and 2nd ed. It then separated into two “colleges”, which included the “college of valor” (militant viking-skald types), “college of wit” (prankster types).

I think it was after this playtest that they started changing the concept to subclasses. So i’d guess “skald” and “prankster” may be subclasses of Bard.

The last pretest i did had a different name for each version of a class. They were called oaths for paladins, domains for clerics, circles for druids, etc etc. From what i have read, going to subclasses makes much more sense and should (hopefully) simplify the flow, because i felt the class structures were getting unneccessarily complicated.

Overall, i think i will like it more than 4E. It remains to be seen if i’ll like it more than C&C or 2nd Ed though. Time will tell…

-Fizz

18

I got hold of the alpha release (one of the most up to date internal playtest docs) and, other than some slight changes, it seems to be matching up pretty well with all the teaser pieces that WotC has been releasing. Overall I think it’s gonna be VERY easy to convert BR to 5e. Building the magician and guilder as subclasses of wizard and rouge would be fairly simple. A few of the sub classes already there seem perfect for BR as well (the green knight paladin oath seems perfect for elves, just ignore the divine part and say it’s arcane).
I can’t wait to get my hands on the PHB next week (if I can snag a premier store copy) so I can see how close it is the the alpha doc. If it’s even close (and I suspect it will be) than I foresee a VERY easy conversion.

19

Well, i can now confirm that in the full PH, the ranger, druid, paladin, are not specialties but are full classes, each with their own sub-specialties.

They’ve gone the route that each magical “source” justifies its own class. So the studious type (wizard) is one class, the innately magical (sorcerer) is another class, and the higher-power pact (warlock) is yet another class. This makes me wonder whether magician might be better served as its own class. Or perhaps Magician is the base class, and the Wizard becomes a sub-class (since it’s the more specialized with higher requirements). But that’s for discussion when we start the conversion. :slight_smile:

Feats do exist, but they are optional and only taken as an alternative to an ability boost. They seem much more restrained than those of 3E.

All characters have a background as well, which further tweaks various skills and other parameters.

At this point, i’d describe the new edition as somewhere between 2nd Ed and 3E. It has… potential… but i don’t pass full judgement yet. Heh.

-Fizz

20

Having received my copy of the PHB this week, I’m cautiously optimistic. The rules look fairly swift and straightforward, with a severe cut-down on the sheer amount of bonuses in the game (almost none, that I could see), so I’m now I’m interested to read the MM and DMG to see what they’ve done there.