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.

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.

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.

WOOHOO! Thanks!

Polymorph Self: Caster is capable of changing their form to another creature (temporarily). All spells naturally cost some END (mana). There are no free rides for spell casters. So I build a Multiform (up to 400pts) with all the normal stuff (Extra Time, Concentration, Requires Roll etc). Now the spell will only last for 3 hours + 30 minutes/success. So I want to add Time Limit, like all the other spells I go to add Costs END Only to Activate. But it's Multiform so it doesn't have that. Instead if has Costs End Only to Change (I'm thinking 'whatever, same thing, different wording') but now Time Limit says that it is unavailable because the power must either cost 0 END or have Costs END Only to Activate. Isn't that what Costs END to Change is, just a Mutliform specific version of Costs END Only to Activate?

Oh this one is juicy. 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.

This was my initial impression too (sans the actual example in the book, which would have helped ). But then it was late one night and I got to arguing with myself, like I does, and convinced myself temporarily that was not the case. I'm off for the holidays (school starts Monday) so this is ALL I've been doing and sometimes I get so involved I get a little weird.

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.

So, I'm converting AD&D spells into Hero for GenCon next year. It's been fun, but I've made some mistakes along the way that have forced me to go back through what I've already done. I've finished the Cleric and Druid spells and am getting into the Magic-User spells and suddenly I'm coming up against a bunch of spells that have 3 Segments (1 Segment = 6s) casting times. I'm assuming that everyone is going to be SPD 2, so it works out nicely to a 3 Phase casting time (ezpz). There are some spells that are 2 Segment (which I've given Extra Phase) castings. So I'm trying to draw the distinction between 2 Phases vs 1 Turn. At SPD 2 they are kind of the same thing (I think). My understanding is that (again, assuming SPD 2), Extra Time (Extra Phase) means that it would take two phases and the spells would trigger/cast at your DEX on the second phase. But what about if it is an Extra Time (1 Turn)? If you start casting on Segment 12, it would take your two phases and cast at post-12 the next turn. What happens if you start to cast on Segment 6? I would think that would mean that it would cast at the VERY end of segment 6 of the next turn. But then I argued myself into a tizzy, telling me that it specifically says "Post-Segment 12) so that if you start casting on Segment 6 on Turn 1, the spell would cast at post-12 on Turn 2 (effectively taking 3 phases). I've completely argued myself into a circle. I imagine the real quandary is because they are SPD 2 and an Extra Phase is, in effect, an entire Turn. I'm not sure going on your DEX vs post-segment is worth much of a Limitation. So before I dig myself in deeper and create a situation where I want to go back through and revisit all my previous work...can you weigh in before this argument with myself devolves into a fist fight? --r

Yes, I have much too many tabs open.

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).

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.

So, I'm converting AD&D spells into Hero for GenCon next year. It's been fun, but I've made some mistakes along the way that have forced me to go back through what I've already done. I've finished the Cleric and Druid spells and am getting into the Magic-User spells and suddenly I'm coming up against a bunch of spells that have 3 Segments (1 Segment = 6s) casting times. I'm assuming that everyone is going to be SPD 2, so it works out nicely to a 3 Phase casting time (ezpz). There are some spells that are 2 Segment (which I've given Extra Phase) castings. So I'm trying to draw the distinction between 2 Phases vs 1 Turn. At SPD 2 they are kind of the same thing (I think). My understanding is that (again, assuming SPD 2), Extra Time (Extra Phase) means that it would take two phases and the spells would trigger/cast at your DEX on the second phase. But what about if it is an Extra Time (1 Turn)? If you start casting on Segment 12, it would take your two phases and cast at post-12 the next turn. What happens if you start to cast on Segment 6? I would think that would mean that it would cast at the VERY end of segment 6 of the next turn. But then I argued myself into a tizzy, telling me that it specifically says "Post-Segment 12) so that if you start casting on Segment 6 on Turn 1, the spell would cast at post-12 on Turn 2 (effectively taking 3 phases). I've completely argued myself into a circle. I imagine the real quandary is because they are SPD 2 and an Extra Phase is, in effect, an entire Turn. I'm not sure going on your DEX vs post-segment is worth much of a Limitation. So before I dig myself in deeper and create a situation where I want to go back through and revisit all my previous work...can you weigh in before this argument with myself devolves into a fist fight? --r

It definitely is, and if I was considering making this an actual AD&D conversion campaign I would totally convert those spells also (especially since most of them are just copies of other spells from other classes it would be easy). Since I'm building the characters and such I'm skipping Illusionists. Of course, that might change, once I'm done with all the other spells I might miss doing my conversion and go ahead and do them (just for the sake of completeness).

Even back in the day when I was actually playing AD&D, I don't think I actually sat down and read through the entire Player's Handbook cover-to-cover. I may have, but I don't actually recall ever doing so. Reading through all the spells and pondering them as I convert I've realised that they spent a good deal of effort making the spells/spellcasters unique. Cleric spells have long casting times and long effects, mage spells tend towards low casting times, druid spells are very nature focused (duh) and sit a bit in the middle between casting times and ranges. So one thing to put on my list of world building is to consider how the different types of magic operate. Come up with some hard and fast rules like: priest spells have slow casts, long durations, and high END. That will help you when it comes time to design spells. That sense of continuity can really help to make the spells feel cohesive.

Nope I did that. I have gone through everything and updated them all. It wasn't too many but I did make that mistake. I have the updates I can send you or you can just keep on keeping on with what you have. I have been TRYING not to make any changes to the docs you have, just for version control.

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). "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

UGH! I was under the impression that an AD&D inch (") represented 6 feet. So I've been converting everything (range, etc) as being 2m per ". But when I was doing Fireball the calculations weren't adding up. So I got out the Dungeon Master's Guide. Ye Olde DMG tells me that 1) AD&D uses square maps instead of hex maps (which I knew), 2) each square on the map is 1" and represents a square that is 10 feet x 10 feet. So all of my distance conversion are quite a bit off. I've already completed Cleric and Druid spells and I'm halfway through Level 3 Mage spells (out of 9). So now what? 1) Stop converting and go back to the beginning and tweak the distances. 2) Go back and fix the mage spells and use the correct distance conversion from here on out (intending to go back and fix the rest later). 3) Go with the faulty conversion as a permanent solution and change from 1" = 10' to 1" = 6'. 2 and 3 are where I am leaning simply because while I have been enjoying the conversions, I've really been focusing on it a lot and it's starting to get a bit cumbersome and I'm not getting as much done as I would like. I'm worried about losing my momentum and I've found that the conversion are more even when I don't take large breaks. I'm afraid of losing the quality or falling to procrastination. BUT the real question is about scale. I get that AD&D used those 10'x10' inches because when you are swinging a spear or riding on a horse you need that kind of space. That's a carryover from war gaming. A number of spells have 32m or 40m ranges on them. That's 16/20 hexes. That's a pretty large range for most combats, but inferior to bow range (which is really the only type of long range attack available to non-casters). SO...what do you think? Is magic a close range kind of deal? Is a 40m (20 hex) range on a Fireball with an 8m Radius AoE sufficient? By curtailing some of these distances the threat of filling two rooms with Fireball and cooking half the party is going to be pretty minor. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go and redo all the distance conversions. PLEASE let me know what you think, and I'll sleep on this. Maybe I'll take a look through the converted spell descriptions in the morning and see what kind of effort I'm talking about.

We are going to get sick of Blink. Ok, so this text is crap and confusing. Bold for emphasis. Just so we are clear: 1 Segment = 6s, 1 Round = 1 Minute = 10 Segments, 1 Turn = 10 Mins = 10 Rounds = 100 Segments. If I'm reading this correctly, the mage ONLY blinks once per minute (round) and the segment they blink is 2d4 (which is 2-8 and there are 10 segments in a round, so shouldn't it be 1d10?). I'm trying to keep the original flair/flavour/intent. ---Note: below is entirely using Hero time not D&D time--- I'm thinking that since no one acts on Segment 1, instead they Blink every Turn. Roll 2d6 to determine which segment they Blink. They are SPD 2 (maybe an occasional 3) which means chances are this Blink version is going to be useless. They blink on Segment 4, no one acts until 6. They might be out of melee range but that's about it. It's basically just uncontrolled movement and won't necessarily help them vs an arrow. Spells aren't aimed until they trigger/finish casting so it's not like this Blink would let him avoid a Fireball. I'm thinking this version doesn't really do anything worthwhile. So now I think I'm back to what GnomeBody suggested, doing an NCC, Rando Trigger when attacked (or do I make things INTERESTING but saying any melee action...so attacking also? would that trigger before or after the attack and if before why would anyone build a spell that would negate your attack?). If the 9- (? maybe 11-?) trigger roll activates they get a rando teleport in a 1d6 direction for 1/2d6 hexes. I really don't want to go higher than an 11-, but is a 50/50 chance too high or is that just perfect for a spell effect? 1) Blink: Teleportation 6m, Safe Blind Teleport (+1/4), Trigger (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger requires a Full Phase to reset; When Attacked or After Attacking (11-); +1/4), Time Limit (10 Minutes, +1 Minute per Success; +1 1/4) (16 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, -1; -1/4), No Noncombat Movement (-1/4) It costs 2 Mana/END and 5 Real, which is pretty normal for the spells. I'm also tinkering with the thought of having the Blink change facing to the direction traveled. So if you Blinked right you would be facing right.

Bold is mine. One of the real problems with the text of the Player's Handbook (and spells in particular) is that they appear to be written by a few different people because the diction, verbiage, punctuation, etc seems to change drastically from spell to spell. One of my frustrations is the seemingly random switch between units of measure. They frequently use inches (") to refer to map inches. Then they will talk about a Detect being stopped by 1" of metal or 2" of wood. Obviously, they are talking about real inches there, but it makes reading this stuff very difficult and slow to read through and convert. I actually read through the description three times and just now noticed the distance. Two feet is < 1m. A hex is a 1m radius (2m diameter). So this Blink, while doing it's rando teleport thing, only moves them <1m which is still within the hex. I was planning on doing a NCC (Effects Only) 4m Teleport. Even though the text seems to back up my initial idea of doing just +DCV, I'm really kind of digging the thought of the mage blipping about the battlefield uncontrollably. For now, I think I'm going to go full on Rando Teleport. I mean, I can always change it later and it's not like it would take long to build a +4 DCV spell. You guys are really helping. Sometimes there are considerations I hadn't thought about (and some of this is pretty boring conversions). Thanks!!

I hadn't thought of that. I just did Shield (+1 DCV and 7 DEF - font facing only, converted straight from the description). I'm not sure I ever had a character with Blink. I'm also kind of confusing the AD&D spell Blink with the stereotypical SuperHero power Blink where he just bounces around in and out of phase in his hex. I guess my entire question boils down to "is this a good sfx or is this just crappy D&D schlock?" When I started I was like 'this is stupid' but after reading y'allz posts I think I'm going to keep it as is. I mean it could be really fun and it should def be interesting. I imagine that the mage won't let the duration actually run it's distance. It's a good effect in combat (especially as a D&D mage when you have NO armour and NO HP) to having you avoid being hit. I am beginning to wonder if maybe spellcasters weren't as hosed as we thought they were. A Blink spell would be a pretty good defense, not that you could still do much of any damage with that crappy THAC0, but at least you wouldn't need to worry as much about getting pounded on.

I'll head over there in a bit and check it out. One of the problems I've had in my regular SuperHero game is healing. Healing is always a fine edge. Too little and combats are too nasty and everyone spends the entire time unconscious or bleeding to death. Too much and it's all Action Movie where one guy walks through fire from half a dozen M2s without any repercussions. Right now I've got all the Heal spells taking 2 Phases. I'm hoping that might slow down the healing some. Since it's a Con Game I'm hesitant to do wound tracking and all like I should. I think just using Simplified Healing and allowing wounds to be healed multiple times is the way to go. If it was my campaign and I had experienced Hero players I might do Wound Tracking. Having gone through all this conversion and actually read parts of the Player's Handbook for the first time in almost 25 years, I'm almost tempted to run a straight book version AD&D campaign to see how it would be. I suspect it wouldn't be fun.

This is getting more than a bit of influence from my old Fantasy campaign. I've pulled some of the spell effects for D&D spells into that campaign but the hit and miss power of the spells is too burdensome. You've got 2nd level spells that are hella powerful and 7th level spells that are moronically stupid and I doubt anyone in the history of D&D has ever cast them. Some of the spells are pulled directly from pop culture (I'm lookin at you Sticks to Snakes), but if I wanted to continue to use any of this it would be to almost entirely scrap about 1/2 - 2/3 of the spells and fill the gaps with stuff that is actually useful. You could also go with more of a ritualistic build with some of the spells. Instead of having Detect Charm and Detect Invisible and Detect Evil and Detect Magic and Detect Backstabbing Halfling you just build a basic Detect spell and let them use something interesting and appropriate as a focus. Detect Invis? Flour. Detect Evil? Some hairs from a man's goatee. Detect Halfling? Foot hair. etc. One spell and you've replaced 5 or 6 spells with one. Nice and streamlined. Same with Charm, twist up some voodoo doll thingy so it doesn't matter if its a person, monster, weasel, etc. If someone wanted this wouldn't be a bad point to start working to build their own world. If nothing else it might help them design spells and avoid some of this crap I'm going through!

Blink spell text (apologies for making you read this schlock. Man, this is some bad writing. Not only is this confusing and unclear but the diction is dreadful). So the intent is that when you cast this you are going to be rando teleporting about the battlefield for a bit. It discusses a bit about how to determine in which direction you will go and on what initiative etc. I can handle all of that, it's not that much of a problem. However, just from a playability standpoint, is this a little ridiculous? Instead of dealing with all this rando teleporting maybe we just say +4 DCV? What do you think? Keep the rando TPs or just buy DCV levels? I mean, the net effect of the spell is that it is going to be difficult to target/hit the mage. That sounds like DCV and the rest is just SFX. Thoughts?

I considered just moving up and down the Time Chart, but the problem is that with Hero some effects are very low point totals. Ideally, all the <10 AP spells would be first level and <20AP would be second, etc. This way the higher level spells would have a correspondingly higher modifier on the Magic Skill roll. But I'm working with a predefined spell list and how they are grouped into levels. Because of this mish-mosh I've got some pretty large effect spells that are very low cost. But if you want to cast the big spells you need a pretty high Magic Skill (a couple of the spells I've already done are -8 and one is -15). It would be pretty easy to end up with a Light Spell that is going to operate for a month or even a season which entirely makes the Continual Light spell pointless. I totally agree that if I was designing a system from the ground up I would be either moving up and down the time chart or matching like and like (20 minutes + 20 minutes per success). I'm already kind of fudging a lot of the casting times and durations, because they are frequently 1 round + 1 round/level or something. I'm lucky that since I'm running a one off I don't need to worry about characters advancing. I don't care how they increase the power of Magic Missile because I'm running a contiguous adventure that is going to take place over a month or so. They aren't going to have time to train, learn new spells, or spend XP so I can just build the spells for their level and not care about the levelling aspect. My conversion isn't a perfect system conversion, just a snap shot conversion for this range of character levels. I'm assuming all characters are level 10 and building the spells at that level. I have thought a bit about doing a system conversion and was thinking that I would probably go with a spell progression Magic Missile I - 3 missiles, Magic Missile II - five missiles, Magic Missile III - 7 missiles, etc. That way you could increase the power of your spells without actually dealing with the "levels." I've also thought of how someone would qualify for casting Second Level Spells. Since there aren't experience levels. I was thinking that either a Perk, Skill, or Talent that costs 3 or 5 points. If you spend the effort and XP to purchase the "3rd Level Spells" perk you can now pick spells from the 3rd Level list. Access to those spells would be tightly controlled by the Mage's Guild or something along those lines. Or maybe I actually go through and reorganise the spells so that the <10 AP spells are all level 1. I did take a brief gander through APG I and II and didn't necessarily see anything that was Time Charty, but I didn't look very hard. Thanks for your input! I appreciate the thoughts! Keep them coming! I don't want to dissuade you or think I am not hearing you. I TOTALLY am but I'm making compromises to try and keep things as close to AD&D 1st Edition (to avoid the culture shock) while introducing Hero. I'm REALLY hoping (possibly naively) that after this game some of the players are like "WOW MAN! This Hero shit is AWESOME!"