Planescape Conversion

[Eric J.]

What's this?  Eric's sole purpose on this site isn't to ask for help on his Star Wars gaming sessions?  Hah!  Of course it is.  I just happened to have some extra time on my hand and build a system for my friend's favorite setting lest he use 2nd ed.

So anyway-  I've been working on a way to make a system for Planescape for many months now.  I've made about 8, but they've all sucked untill I made this one.  I decided to screw all of the long charts to convert the 3-18 ability scores over. Here's how it turned out.

The attributes are rated on a system of dice from 1d4 to 1d12.  Their starting attributes are determined on a linear scale.  They have a sum total of 50 for the sides on all of their dice.  My scores look like this:

Str:[1]d8
Dex:d10
Con:d6
Int:d12
Wis:d8
Cha:d6

It can also be expressed on this table I made:

d4|2
d6|3
d8|4
d10|5
d12|6

You have 25 points.

But anyway, after this you have 3 levels of skills.

Lvl.1: Misc [the ones clamed to be useless for those who's hate of d02 know no limit]skills that would most likelly fit into the skill section of 3rd ed.

Lvl.2: Thieving skills, secondary combat skills, anything basically unusable without training.

lvl.3: Primary combat abilities and pretty much anything magical.

Skills are just bonuses to your attribute dice.  +1, +2, +3, etc.  To increase a skill you must spend points equal to the bonus you want it to bring * (the skill level + 2).  So if you want to increase a level 3 skill from +2 to +3, you must spend 15 character points [3*(2+3)].  You can only advance skills from a bonus to another bonus in sequencial order (from a +1 to a +2 etc.).

Spellcasting is another interesting aspect.  It uses a kind of mana system. (You think I'd miss an oppertunity to change what may be the most meddled mechanic in RPG history?)  Your character must have the proficiancy (more on those later).  Most mages have mana, which is stored in their staff, rod, wand etc.  When you cast a spell, you must declare what spell you're going to cast.  There are nine levels.  Then you roll your spellcasting skill and decrease it by whatever the spell level requires (still working on this chart).  After this you spend as much mana as you want (that you have).  Each mana increases your spellcasting roll by 1.  You then roll a d20.  If the d20 is under your total spellcasting roll you cast the spell.  How much you fail by can lead to bad results also, like loosing actions for as many as 2 rounds or possible backfire.

Example: My character, Kon, wants to cast a burning hands spell (level 1.).  His Intel score (Intelligence, not the company) is a die of 12, and he has a spellcasting skill of +2.  1d12+2.  The roll is an 8, so it's a 10.  Since level 1 spells don't incure a penalty, we'll leave that out of the equation.  So, he rolled a 10.  Now he wants to spend 8 mana to increase it to an 18, a 90% chance.  He'll then have 8 mana for the spell he plans to cast next round.  He rolls on a d20, a 6.  The spell is casted.  We now proceed with the effect.

There is also the combat system.  It works in terms of rounds.  You attack, then they attack, etc.  However, they also get the benefit of dodging or parrying in response.  Whenever you attack you roll your weapon skill + the weapon attack die.  Dodging is just a static bonus + dodge skill.  Parry is your weapon skill + your weapons defense die. Example:

Kon attacks a thug with his quarterstaff.  This is 1d10(dex)+1d6(quarterstaff)+1(skill).  I get an 12.  The thug dodges for 10.  He's hit.

Damage works like this.  You roll your weapon attack + your strength score.  This is against their con + armor.  Any extra damage is used to wound them, kill them, using a chart I've not made yet.
Example:

Kon rolls his damage, which is 1d8(str)+1d6(weapon).  He gets a 9.  The thug's wearing studded leather (Protection: 4) and rolls a 4 on his con check (d8).  His total is an 8.  I do one damage to him

Then there's the belief system, proficiancies, and special abilities.  Proficiancies allow you to use certain skills.  Abilities allow for spiffy stuff.  The belief system isn't fully worked out yet.

That's the majority of what I have done.  It's pretty well liked, and I'm not seeing nearly as much mechanical failure as I was with the first 11 tries. The biggest problems is that no one can hit eachother or damage eachother.  It ended up being kindof a mismash between WEG D6 and second edition, and I like keeping some things about D&D but I'm thinking of just putting a static penalty on dodging and armor.  Right now splint mail give you a +7 to defense, and without armor on you get a +10 to your dodge.  What if I just put a -3 on all armor and dodge?

So anyway-  Any feedback is helpful.  We've already had a test session, and it went pretty well.  I'll probably start another thread on that later.

-Pyron

[Mike Holmes]

In order to understand your goals, what's wrong with second edition that you are trying to "cure" with this system? Why can't you just use the 3rd edition rules? Is there something there that also needs curing?

The real question is, what are the goals of this new system. It's hard to say if you've got a good system until we know what you're shooting for.

Mike

[xiombarg]

In order to understand your goals, what's wrong with second edition that you are trying to "cure" with this system? Why can't you just use the 3rd edition rules? Is there something there that also needs curing?

This is a very important question. I ran a highly successful D&D3E Planescape game -- in fact, I used Planescape to see if the 3E rules would "break" under extreme Setting pressure. They didn't.

[Eric J.]

Alright.  Dang.  I posted a response a while ago, but I assume that it's been lost.  Oh, well.

The D&D system, to me, seems to be designed for one purpose, killing monsters and hacking dungeons.  Planescape has a different premise, to me, killing monsters and hacking dungeons in between discussing philosophy and existentialism.

D&D is incoherent, unmercifully, even in third edition.  I also find its limitations placed upon it by class and race inapropriate for planescape.  What class to you call of someone who can shift reality itself with their own will?  How do you differenciate types of magic used?   My character is what I call a half-demon ninja mage.  Technically he's a half baatazu and he isn't an assasin and really isn't much of a mage but that's not the point.  If I had to convert my character to second edition, I'd have to make my own class and if I converted it to third, I'd have to multiclass him horribly.

There are also parts of D&D that simply don't work for our group.  My GM doesn't give out experience.  He just doesn't.  His problem is that he doesn't feal its right to give out experience for anything but killing monsters and he's too afraid that his players will screw it up if he sends them at anything even remotelly dangerous.

My goal with this system was to allow a more diverse set of characters as well as put a few of my own touches on one of my favorite settings.  I feal that my system has a supperior combat system as well as supports a more diverse amount of magic.

[Mike Holmes]

Sounds like most of the problems are in the reward system. That is, you don't like what the system rewards you for. I don't see any notes on how that works in the new system. What have you done there?

Mike

[xiombarg]

I'd also submit it is trivial to change what actions recieve XP in D&D3E, and therefore achieving the situation you desire. For example, in a recent edition of Polyhedron magazine, there is a d20 mini-setting called "Omega World" by Jonathon Tweet. In it is an alternative XP system for d20 called "Freeform Experience", which explictly rewards taking risks. If the PCs play it safe and do nothing, they get hardly any XP at all. If they take risks, they get a lot of XP -- in fact, the most XP is rewarded for spectacular failure and spectacular success, in terms of in-game goals -- that is, it doesn't matter if the brilliant plan saves the villiage or destroys it, as long as it was exciting you get the same amount of XP.

A similar method could be used to, say, reward philosophical debate -- particularly the planar philosophical shifts that Planescape thrives on.

[Wormwood]

Eric,

I can point you too a conversion I made some time ago, in particular, it was an attempt to take Planescape and turn it into a live action setting. After several abortive attempts on this comission, I determined that Mind's Eye Theater would be less painful than most for the target audience. The following link provides the current results of that labor.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/m/x/mxs485/PlanescapeMET.html

One major change was that the advancement system is based purely on characters learning secrets, essentially the more characters know that is Dark the more potent they become. On the other hand, planetouched creation and multiclassing is very flexible, so your character concept would be very simple to create.

Let me know if this is a useful resource, I'd be pleased to know that the design is of some use.

   -Mendel S.

[Sage of Shadowdale]

Hello, everyone. (Yeesh, I haven't posted in a LONG time, but, anyway...)

I'm our Planescape GM. PS is my favorite setting of all time, and I've been wanting to get a good game up and running for a while. It seems that we've finally done it.

First, I want to elaborate on my problems with AD&D 2E. The main thing I find is that it really doesn't have much of a system for player rewards besides in killing monsters. While the book does talk about XP for "story goals," I don't feel that it gives any real reward for some of the issues that Planescape addresses, such as philosophical debates (of which we've had a few already.) The second issue is that, as Eric stated, the characters they wanted to play simply couldn't easily be created in 2E.

As an example, I'll take one of my other players, who is playing a character named Veck. The closest equivalent to 2E that we could think of for his character is a bard/fighter. He's a master (well, sort of...) of the short sword, of jump-attacks, and of two-weapon fighting. These abilities quite simply won't work with a low-level character. While he doesn't have to be, for example, really good at two-weapon fighting, in 2E he couldn't do it at all. He also has some basic bard song abilities. Basically, 2E doesn't allow for his diversity of character.

3E's Planescape has been messed up terribly in my mind. While it isn't finished yet, the official released info so far doesn't look pretty. For example, one player race, the Khaasta, gets a +8 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +4 Constitution, and +2 Intelligence. They also get a +6 innate AC, and a +4 "level adjustment." The only real penalty is that they are usually bandits, and are somewhat distrusted. In my opinion, that doesn't make up for the possibility of a Khaasta barbarian having a possible 96 HP (before feats or ability adjustment) at first level, as they get 3D8 + CON Modifer IN ADDITION to class HP, along with additional for the level adjustment. (The actual books will be released next month. No real chance for much change anymore...) Enough said.

What Eric's system does, in my mind, is take a strange combination of 2E and the D6 system, which works surprisingly well. I've always liked the versatility of D6, and Eric's semi-hybrid lets anyone play what they want. It is a bit confusing at times, though.

The link Wormwood posted is very interesting, and we may be able to do something with it, but I don't think that I will be LARPing the Lady of Pain any time soon...

Well, that's my two cents. Please give any advice or comments you can think of.