AD&D (1st Edition) Conversion - The Thread

[Duke Bushido]

A couple of thoughts on Blink:

 

If you want to do a full-on conversion to HERO, stick as much as you can to HERO mechanics. 

 

With regard to the stellar write up of "random times for random distances for a random while," consider something like (and I appologize now that this is vague and only for lubricating the brain; I can't give you 6e specifics because I have no interest in 6e.  I am sorry I am not more help) this:

 

Blink.   Teleport.  Endurance reserve. Uncontrolled; no conscious control. Continuous. Activation X-.  For real humor, make it Persistent.  Nothing funnier than watching guys chase around trying to kerb stomp an unconscious opponent who won't stay still.

 

I expect you won't like this because heres the part I don't think you can do in HERO Designer:  tie the distance to the Activation roll.  Say every X pips below the Activation roll equates to a hex (or even a half-hex!) of T-port.

 

This varying distance will use varying amounts of Endurance from the pool.  This varying End expenditure and the Activation roll will result in varying (ie, "rando (are you really saving a lot of time or effort leaving off one letter?)  length of time the spell is in effect." 

 

Why a half-hex? 

 

Well, it more closely follows the original effects, in that you might only move two feet.  Half a hex seems sufficiently close to that, and will still burn at least one point of End for your countdown.  It can also result in some nice narrative potential, if that's your thing: "you feel the wind of his blow flutter your sleeve as his great sword cleaves through your fading after-image and clangs into damp stone floor, his dreams of your blood replaced flickering sparks and a chip in his blade" - - that sort of thing. 

 

At any rate, that's likely how I'd do it. 

 

If course, I'd also have it include an OCV penalty of at least half the DCV bonus.  I mean, even if you know where your going, and even when you're going, it's got to be a nuisance to have to keep re-aiming! 

[Duke Bushido]

Almost forgot:  direction determined by the ol scatter die: clock a hex (for consistency) and roll a D6. Off you go in that direction.  Repeat until spell is canceled (if that's a thing you can do with Blink) or the End reserve is consumed. 

[Rapier]

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

A couple of thoughts on Blink:

 

If you want to do a full-on conversion to HERO, stick as much as you can to HERO mechanics. 

 

With regard to the stellar write up of "random times for random distances for a random while," consider something like (and I appologize now that this is vague and only for lubricating the brain; I can't give you 6e specifics because I have no interest in 6e.  I am sorry I am not more help) this:

 

Right now, I'm just pushing through straight conversion and just editing for units. Once I'm done with the converting all the spells I'll go back through and start proofreading and putting them into actual English. I've also got someone else lending a hand on the verbiage (which is good because I think I might go insane otherwise).

 

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

Blink.   Teleport.  Endurance reserve. Uncontrolled; no conscious control. Continuous. Activation X-.  For real humor, make it Persistent.  Nothing funnier than watching guys chase around trying to kerb stomp an unconscious opponent who won't stay still.

 

I expect you won't like this because heres the part I don't think you can do in HERO Designer:  tie the distance to the Activation roll.  Say every X pips below the Activation roll equates to a hex (or even a half-hex!) of T-port.

 

This varying distance will use varying amounts of Endurance from the pool.  This varying End expenditure and the Activation roll will result in varying (ie, "rando (are you really saving a lot of time or effort leaving off one letter?)  length of time the spell is in effect." 

 

Why a half-hex? 

 

Well, it more closely follows the original effects, in that you might only move two feet.  Half a hex seems sufficiently close to that, and will still burn at least one point of End for your countdown.  It can also result in some nice narrative potential, if that's your thing: "you feel the wind of his blow flutter your sleeve as his great sword cleaves through your fading after-image and clangs into damp stone floor, his dreams of your blood replaced flickering sparks and a chip in his blade" - - that sort of thing. 

 

At any rate, that's likely how I'd do it. 

 

If course, I'd also have it include an OCV penalty of at least half the DCV bonus.  I mean, even if you know where your going, and even when you're going, it's got to be a nuisance to have to keep re-aiming! 

 

"Rando" isn't meant to save letters, I'm just weird and it makes me chuckle. Scatter rules will be used for the Blink so you go in the rando (heh) 1d6 direction and you will travel 1/2d6 hexes (or 1d6m, which is the same thing). I don't need Persistent because it already is with the End Only to Activate and NCC and Uncontrolled and etc etc.

 

Blink
Range: No Range	Casting Time: Full Phase	Components: V, S
DCV: Full	Magic Skill: -2	College: Alteration
Area of Effect:  Self	Mana Cost: 4	Duration: 10 Minutes + 1 Minute/Success
Description: By means of this spell, the magic-user causes his or her material form to Blink in and out of this plane at random times and direction. The caster will constantly Blink in and out of the plane within his hex (within a 1m radius from his current position) during the duration of the Blink spell. While out of combat effects could be inconvenient (there is an 11- chance that the magic-user will Blink when attempting to interact with an object), combat effects are a special case. When the magic-user is attacked (or when making an attack) the Blink spell should be checked to determine if the magic-user will Blink. If the activation trigger (an 11- roll on 3d6) is successful, the magic-user will Blink in a random direction [see 6E2, p40] (ie 1 = forward right, 2 = right, 3 = back right, 4 = back left, 5 = left, 6 = forward left) 1d6m (or ½d6 hexes). It is important to note that the character’s facing will change when blinking; if the magic-user blinks to the left they will be facing to the left side of the new hex. If some object is already occupying the space where the spell caster is indicated as blinking into, his or her form is displaced in a direction away from original position for any distance necessary to appear in empty space, but never in excess of an additional 4m. The process of blinking is distracting and the magic-user will suffer -2 to any skill rolls for skills that take up to a Full Phase; skills that take longer than a full phase suffer a -4 penalty (including Magic Skill rolls when attempting to cast other spells). That is, use of any spell, device, or item might not be accomplished or accomplished in an incorrect manner or in the wrong direction. Your referee will determine success/failure and the results thereof according to the particular action being performed.

 

1)

Blink: Teleportation 6m, Position Shift, Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), Trigger (Activating the Trigger takes no time, Trigger requires a Full Phase to reset; When Attacked or Attacking (11-); +1/4), Costs Endurance Only To Activate (+1/4), Constant (+1/2), Uncontrolled (+1/2), Time Limit (10 Minutes, +1 Minute per Success; +1) (41 Active Points); No Conscious Control (Only Effects cannot be controlled; -1), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Extra Time (Full Phase, Only to Activate, -1/4), Requires A Roll (Magic Skill, -2; -1/4), No Noncombat Movement (-1/4)

Real Cost:13

END Cost: 4

[Chris Goodwin]

I too have been reading, but as I've been away from home and work for the holidays, being on mobile I haven't had a keyboard to type long replies on.  Now that I do... 

 

AD&D inch measurements were even worse.  In AD&D 1e, 1" represented 10 feet indoors, but 10 yards outdoors!  It was assumed that those would be the miniatures scale you'd be using.  I think that in later D&D editions, all of the distance measurements were standardized to 10 foot increments, and are actually given as things like "20 foot radius explosion" for Fireball.  

 

If you're using HERO 6th edition, it's fairly easy to convert 10 feet into 3 meters; it might be a bit more challenging under 2m hexes, but maybe not that much more.  I'm agreed with @Duke Bushido regarding sticking as much as you can to Hero mechanics.  

 

If this helps -- and I'm aware that at this point in your process it may not -- I've got a house rule wherein Differing Modifiers can be used with Delayed Effect to represent different requirements for preparing a spell vs. releasing it.  You would essentially build the base spell as it is cast, and use its Real Cost as the Base Cost for the preparation effect.  Delayed Effect would be part of the required Differing Modifiers, exactly as if it were a Usable On Others Differing Modifiers build.  I haven't quite worked out all of the edge and corner cases, but for Instant (combat) spells you could build the cast spell with 1 Charge; for continuing spells you could use 1 Continuing Charge, or 0 END and a Time Limit.  

[Rapier]

UGH! I just began to notice a pattern while getting to the 4th level spells. 1st level spells tended towards the 1 segment (ie full phase) casting times. Ok, that works. 2nd level spells tended towards 2 segments (ie 2 phases). Yes, I'm kind of slow that I didn't notice this before then but I'm doing conversions to just kind of concentrating on one spell at a time. 3rd level spells take...you guessed it, 3 segments (ie 3 phases) to cast. I just started the 4th level spells and kept seeing 4 segment casting times. I thought, gee thats a long time for a Dig spell. So I looked back over the spreadsheet and HOLY SHIT! All the spells are (well not all, but the vast majority) are 1 segment/level of casting time. Which, in a way, totally makes sense. More powerful magic takes longer to cast. I can totally get behind that. EXCEPT that we all know that there was no real independent measure to how 'powerful' spells in AD&D are. So I've got spells like a Dig (which moves 8m^3 of dirt per phase) taking 4 phases to cast and Lightning Bolt (10d6 Blast) taking 3 phases. So I need to go back through what I've done and take a hairy eyeball look at the casting times of the magic-user spells. I'm going to have to reason from effect and decide how long would be appropriate for each effect. It makes the process go slower, and if I had realised this ahead of time....

 

Just for curiosity sake, it appears that the default for druid spells was level + 2 segments (a 5th level druid spell tended to be 7 segments casting time). Cleric spells tend towards level + 3 segments (4th level cleric spell takes 7 segments to cast). I had imagine that they had reasoned from effect on the spell casting times, especially since a number of spells have different casting times than the default. Because those outliers were sprinkled in there, I never put 2 and 2 together. It was only when I got to the mage spells and the outliers were a real rarity (instead of the common occurrence in the other classes) that I noticed. I think I did a pretty good job reasoning from effect on the cleric/druid spells, but I think I am going to want to go over them again when I'm done and make sure that I'm reasoning from effect and not just plunking down an arbitrary value that makes the casting time prohibitive for a relatively minor effect.

 

Sigh. This is turning out to be quite a bit more complicated than I expected. I figured this would be fairly straight forward and simple. What's catching me up is when they tried to apply some kind of system to their game mechanics. Of course, it also goes back to the question of why is Dig a 4th level spell and Fireball and Lightning Bolt 3rd? It seems kind of arbitrary. Of course, I'll probably figure it out when I am halfway done with 9th level spells. Le sigh.

[Rapier]

22 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I think that in later D&D editions, all of the distance measurements were standardized to 10 foot increments, and are actually given as things like "20 foot radius explosion" for Fireball.  

 

What killed me was that in the recent versions of Pathfinder (since D&D is, technically, no longer around) a square (you cant quite call them hexes when they aren't hex shaped, can you?) is 5' on a side. So I had that in my head and didn't realise/forgot that the old 1st edition stuff used a different system of measurement. I guess I could have benefited from reading through a bunch of this stuff before I started but even having to go back over what I've done and make tweaks here and there, I think just jumping in has been faster (even if it is, at time, a bit more frustrating).

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Rapier said:

Sigh. This is turning out to be quite a bit more complicated than I expected. I figured this would be fairly straight forward and simple. What's catching me up is when they tried to apply some kind of system to their game mechanics. Of course, it also goes back to the question of why is Dig a 4th level spell and Fireball and Lightning Bolt 3rd? It seems kind of arbitrary. Of course, I'll probably figure it out when I am halfway done with 9th level spells. Le sigh.

 

Yeah... one of the usual caveats when converting is to not try too hard to recreate another system's mechanical bits in Hero.  Recall that the base unit of time in AD&D 1e was the one-minute melee round, and the segments of casting time were used almost solely to determine when in the round something happened.  A single d20 attack roll was said to be the result of a minute worth of clashing of blades.  As of D&D 5e, a "round" is 6 seconds, and casting times are listed as either a regular action, a bonus action, or some amount of time.  (Could a spellcaster cast more than one spell per melee round?  I don't remember.)

 

If I were converting it:  any combat spell taking five AD&D segments or less to cast would be a single Phase; any combat spell taking 6-10 would be an extra Phase; any combat spell taking longer than that would take a full Turn.  Converting segments to larger Hero time slices might work better for noncombat spells; one segment would certainly be a Phase, two would be a Turn, anything greater than that would round up to 1 Minute, and so forth.  

 

Edit:  And I've forgotten that most Powers in Hero take a 0-Phase action to activate.  (Generally including Attack Powers; the time taken to attack with them is for the attack, rather than to activate the Power.)  With that in mind, for combat spells I'd probably have anything up to, say, two AD&D segments take no Extra Time; 3-5 segments would be a half-Phase; 6-10 segments would be a full Phase, and anything longer than that an extra Phase.  For noncombat spells, maybe less than a round/minute would be a Hero 12-second Turn, and anything greater than that rounds to its closest Hero equivalent on the time chart.  (A 10-minute AD&D1e Turn would round down to 5 minutes in Hero, though you could still call it 10 minutes.)  

 

Edit edit:  I should probably reread my old PHB myself.

[Rapier]

9 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Edit:  And I've forgotten that most Powers in Hero take a 0-Phase action to activate.  (Generally including Attack Powers; the time taken to attack with them is for the attack, rather than to activate the Power.)  With that in mind, for combat spells I'd probably have anything up to, say, two AD&D segments take no Extra Time; 3-5 segments would be a half-Phase; 6-10 segments would be a full Phase, and anything longer than that an extra Phase.  For noncombat spells, maybe less than a round/minute would be a Hero 12-second Turn, and anything greater than that rounds to its closest Hero equivalent on the time chart.  (A 10-minute AD&D1e Turn would round down to 5 minutes in Hero, though you could still call it 10 minutes.)  

 

Edit edit:  I should probably reread my old PHB myself.

 

My rule of thumb is that any spell that has damage (or minor non-damage) effects that approximate the same damage as a regular weapon, those are Full Phase.

 

After that my intent was that moderate damage (1 to 4 DCs over normal weapon damage or moderate non-damage effects) are 2 phases (or possibly 1 turn). The idea being that if it takes you 2 phases to cast that spell that should roughly equal 2 weapon damaged worth of damage.

 

High damage spells (4+ DCs or high effect spells - web, stinking cloud) have 3 phases, but again I'm trying to balance it so that the damage output of spellcasters is about the same as a regular warrior type. Where as a warrior will be doing constant levels of moderate damage, the casters will have extended period of no damage and then short bursts of high damage. My hope is that the averages come out about equal. Once I'm all done my intent was to go back over and massage the casting times and durations simply because it is hard to get the lay of the land until you have looked at the entire catalog of spells. You look at one spell and think 'oh that's not too bad,' but unless you are comparing it to something else that is kind of meaningless.

 

[Rapier]

Oh this one is juicy. 

 

Quote

By use of an extension I spell the magic-user prolongs the duration of a previously cast first, second, or third level spell by 50%. Thus, a Levitate spell (normal duration of 2 hours + 10 minutes/success) can be made to function for 3 hours + 15 minutes/success. Naturally, the spell has effect only on such spells where duration is meaningful.

 

I've already edited the AD&D duration language into Hero, but here is a spell that does nothing except buy up some Time Limit advantage. So instead of getting silly with Transforms and trying to figure out an AP average for spells so that I can correctly pay off an advantage and repurchase it at a new level or some silliness...I'm just going to grab a custom power for 40 AP and give it no description or anything. Just have it be a point sink to hang some modifiers on. I did this once before. There was one spell that (IIRC was some kind of trap a wizard would set on a spellbook or something) didn't have a predefined effect buy would allow the caster to determine what they wanted from a long list. Ideally I would have created a VPP with all that nonsense. Instead I created a custom power that represented 40 AP worth of spell effects. It's tempting (because Hero is so crunchy) to want to build everything out (eg the old 'how do you build a flashlight' argument), but it's unnecessary. I'm not building torches out of points. I'm just saying here is a 2pt item and it is a torch and it extends light (just like a Change Environment) for 40m. End of story.

[Rapier]

I lazed about a bit today, but I polished off level 4 magic-user spells. That means I only have 92 spells left!

 

Clerics and Druids had about 100 each (102 and 94, respectively iirc). The first 4 levels of magic-user spells had 102. This means I am just about officially 75% done! WOOHOO! Of course, there is all the proof reading and tweaking and play testing and such, but the heavy lifting will be DONE! I had hoped to get it all done before school starts back up on Monday, but I don't see that happening. We are going to take the tree down this weekend and we've got bowling on Saturday. So maybe not this weekend but definitely by this time next Friday, I'll be done. Then I'm gonna have me some drinks.

[Duke Bushido]

Congratulations! 

[Rapier]

My shower thoughts occur throughout the day, but I was thinking that while I had initially intended to give all the characters SPD 2, you guys have convinced me that is normal guy SPD. So I'm thinking maybe 3s or 4s, which will make a big difference with the whole 2 phases or 1 turn quandry. And since I am only doing this for GenCon I don't need to worry about them spending XP and such. However, I can't just ignore that aspect of these conversions. So when I'm done I'm going to type up a little 'the wonders of the conversion' document that kind of explains my methodology and intents (so that someone else can use this mess) so that if someone actually wanted to do a campaign using this stuff that would be possible. My OCD is pinching me that maybe I should do Illusionist spells (so we will see about that). I've already started creating a couple of the characters. Right now I'm got a dwarven warrior (of course), but I'm considering fighter/cleric. I've got a human ranger but he might end up half-elf. I haven't started her yet, but I'm thinking I cant not do a halfling thief (and one of my favourite combos is the magic-user/thief. I don't need to worry about the downsides of multiclassing but I do need to be careful on points. So I'm thinking that even with a 'multiclass' character that one of the classes will be pretty limited. The magic-user thief is not going to have many spells and those spells will kind of be chosen to assist in the thiefery. I was thinking about an elven magic-user but in my head he ended up being some crotchety old human. I've got 6 characters over two game sessions so I think I want to prepare 12 characters. We will definitely need to cover the bases (at least 1 cleric and 1 mage, 1 ranged fighter, 1 thief) but I was thinking of giving the players the option to pick their character from a brief summation/background.

[Rapier]

There are a couple of cloud spells (ie Stinking Cloud, Cloud Kill) that have non-standard areas. They aren't quite radial areas but more like a squashed sphere. Instead of being a 6m Radius, they are 8m radius on the group and only 2m high. I really wish there was a 'flattened radius' option in AoE so that you could have a wide radius at ground level but only have it extend 2m tall instead of the full radius. So I tinkered and found that (at least for 8m) Radius and Any Area, Fixed Shape are the same cost. So that's what I'm doing.

[Duke Bushido]

Did they do away with AOE: Any ? 

[IndianaJoe3]

There's AoE: Any Area.

[Duke Bushido]

JINX! 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Rapier:

 

It's absolutely not my business, but think a out the amount of work you have in thus: what you have done already, and what you intend to do before you're finished. 

 

You have a source book, my friend. 

 

Wrap it up all nice and neat and do something great with it. 

 

Again, just a suggestion.

[Rapier]

45 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Rapier:

 

It's absolutely not my business, but think a out the amount of work you have in thus: what you have done already, and what you intend to do before you're finished. 

 

You have a source book, my friend. 

 

Wrap it up all nice and neat and do something great with it. 

 

Again, just a suggestion.

 

That actually doesnt sound like a bad idea. Provided there isn't any issue with IP. But do you really think anyone else would actually be interested in something like this?

[Duke Bushido]

If you are going to have conversion notes or "how to convert" type sections, there may be.  Sorry, but I haven't researched that. 

 

If, however, there is no "how to do D&D in HERO, there shouldn't be.  If you rename things a bit (fog of stench; reeking vapors- that Sorr of thing) and pitch it as Dungeon HERO or perhaps the Fantasy HERO old school companion-

 

I would think you'd be safe.  If, however, you are going to do it as a sellable, a bit of research into "parody" or "homage works" is likely cheap insurance. 

 

[Rapier]

6 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

If you are going to have conversion notes or "how to convert" type sections, there may be.  Sorry, but I haven't researched that. 

 

If, however, there is no "how to do D&D in HERO, there shouldn't be.  If you rename things a bit (fog of stench; reeking vapors- that Sorr of thing) and pitch it as Dungeon HERO or perhaps the Fantasy HERO old school companion-

 

I would think you'd be safe.  If, however, you are going to do it as a sellable, a bit of research into "parody" or "homage works" is likely cheap insurance. 

 

 

I'll definitely have to think about this some when I get through this slog. You have given me much to ponder.

[Hugh Neilson]

23 hours ago, Rapier said:

There are a couple of cloud spells (ie Stinking Cloud, Cloud Kill) that have non-standard areas. They aren't quite radial areas but more like a squashed sphere. Instead of being a 6m Radius, they are 8m radius on the group and only 2m high. I really wish there was a 'flattened radius' option in AoE so that you could have a wide radius at ground level but only have it extend 2m tall instead of the full radius. So I tinkered and found that (at least for 8m) Radius and Any Area, Fixed Shape are the same cost. So that's what I'm doing.

 

20 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Did they do away with AOE: Any ? 

 

20 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

There's AoE: Any Area.

 

There's also "you can get less than the maximum you pay for".  I would not have an issue with a player defining an AoE Radius having a limited height.

[Ninja-Bear]

I’m going to throw out that Basic Fantasy is a OGL and of Basic DND so there might be a way to set up a document with a conversion of 1st DND into Hero.

[Chris Goodwin]

There's OSRIC, which is a retro-clone of AD&D 1e.  One of the first retro-clones, in fact.  http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/

 

I once did a semi-conversion of D&D 3.5e spells into Car Wars, of all things.  Not so much a full writeup of spells, but a set of notes for how to use the 3.5e SRD spell list to generate a list of spells usable in Car Wars.  That document is here if you're interested and if it helps.  

[Rapier]

I'm still plugging away. Back to school this week, and I started tutoring a new student so I've been a bit busy and work has slowed to a crawl. This weekend doesn't look good for progress either. Mum's bday is this weekend and we've got some work around the house. I'm still trying to squeeze in a couple spells where I can, but it's hard and slow going.

 

I've also been thinking about the Sourcebook and I think I'm going to do it. I'm thinking of doing a few Nostalgia Hero things. Try and tackle some conversions from other favoured games and/or settings.

 

My standard Modifiers for spells are:

Gestures

Incantations

Focus

Extra Time

Concentration (for the spells with > Full Phase Extra Time)

Time Limit (duration)

Costs END Only to Activate (necessary for some Time Limits)

Limited Range (pretty common)

Requires a Roll

 

But I was thinking that on many of these, I should be adding Beam to the list. I haven't built any with Beam yet, but a mage shouldn't be spreading/bouncing these attacks and I don't think it would make sense to use them at less than full power.

 

Also wondering how I will build spells for characters. It seems overly punitive to make them spend the real cost for spells. It will make them ruinously expensive when compared to warriors. I was thinking that maybe a VPP. It would still be pretty pricey, since some of the active costs on these puppies is up into the triple digits. Something that I'm letting roll around in my head while I do my conversions.

[Rapier]

6th level spells are done! Going to bed.