4e Ravenloft Conversion Thread

[Jester of the FoS]

Fear, Horror, and Madness.

These are classic parts of the setting. With the advent of skill challanges, encounters, and terrain aspects as part of an encounter, I think they need to be reasessed. First, relevant stats.

Fear: You defend against fear with your Reflex score. Why? Because fear is a gut reaction. You're either scared, or you're not.

Horror: Fortitude. Horror's always been a slower, creeping thing. Horror is a matter of being tougher than the scene in front of you, even if your inital reaction is poor.

Madness: Will. This should be obvious.

Now, my thought: The three traits should be, instead of indipendent kinds of saving throws, terrain or encounter attributes. A certain attack could have the madness trait, and force a madness roll, while a trap could be increasingly deadly by having a horrific aspect to it.

Thoughts?

I'm currently playing with the rule idea that Fear is, essentially, an in-combat condition. I'm handling it as an Intelligence vs Will attack, using the character's own stats. Fear is your own mind turning against itself.

Horror I'm thinking of as being akin to a hazard.

Right now, this is a rough version of what I'm playing with:
http://www.box.net/shared/9t0ry650ck

[Rotipher of the FoS]

WILL is the better if your Wis or Cha. You cannot decry wisdom for any of these Defenses really especially for Madness. Charisma on the other hand, not so much. Angelina Jolie wouldn't be better at staving off madness than the average person is just because of her appearance and personality.

Setting aside the issue of how charismatic Angelina Jolie is , I'm not sure Charisma should be discounted as a factor in resisting Madness. If it's anything like 3E Charisma, it's as much a measurement of personality strength as personality-appeal, and possessing such strength would certainly help stave off those Madness effects that warp one's personality to a greater or lesser degree.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

Setting aside the issue of how charismatic Angelina Jolie is , I'm not sure Charisma should be discounted as a factor in resisting Madness. If it's anything like 3E Charisma, it's as much a measurement of personality strength as personality-appeal, and possessing such strength would certainly help stave off those Madness effects that warp one's personality to a greater or lesser degree.

True enough, Charisma is also "force of personality", "persuasiveness" and "leadership" in 4e. I still believe that Wisdom is by far the better of the two scores though for madness

[DocBeard]

If we're keeping it simple, why are we getting brand new defenses for fear, horror and madness?

I get it, you like Wisdom. But a possible source of a defense shouldn't completly discount using that defense. Again, keep it simple; I made my point with why I think each attack should use a different defense. What are we using these effects for? How do they make encounters more interesting? Should they be intigrated as terrain, traps or hazards, an attack type?

[Isabella]

Horror and Fear seem more like traps. Madness is so rarely used that it seems like it should be a kind of attack (gaslighting, for instance).

[DocBeard]

Okay, since I apperently suck at mechanic writing(I love the curse-as-disease idea, Jester, by the way.), I'll stick to what I'm adequite at.

Setting Changes

Do we want them? Forgotten Realms is putting the setting a hundred years in the future, we don't know what Erbannon's going to do. Do we want Ravenloft to be a little different? Maybe put things five years ahead, so that some changes can be explained while the gazetters aren't made useless?

Do we want a seperate thread for setting brainstorming? Or to keep things in here?

[Nikolas of the Mists]

There already is an incredible amount of work to do with mechanics, so it would be a lot to update the setting on top of that.

Perhaps we could simply focus on those Domains and areas which have received little attention before now.

I know not everyone likes the Islands of Terror, and the less robust domains for that matter, but now is the perfect time to revisit those places and put the breath of life back into these oft forgotten locations.

I have started a preliminary draft for a submission with ties to perhaps the strangest and most alien of them

Time plods on as needed for the release of things like the Gazeteers, but I find Ravenloft GMs to be the most creative and wickedly ingenious in their campaigns. With all this setting to work with, who needs to be tied down by an overarcing plot

[Pamela]

Setting Changes

Do we want them? Forgotten Realms is putting the setting a hundred years in the future, we don't know what Erbannon's going to do. Do we want Ravenloft to be a little different? Maybe put things five years ahead, so that some changes can be explained while the gazetters aren't made useless?

Do we want a seperate thread for setting brainstorming? Or to keep things in here?

I've been toying with this one myself. 740 BC (Grand Conjunction) = 1358 DR (Time of Troubles) according to John Mangrum's timeline. According to the DMG, souls pass through Shadowfell when they die; it's easy for me (who's familiar with FR) to see that there'd be a shake-up in the universe with the death of gods.

The shake up in the Forgotten Realms begins with the death of Mystra in 1385 DR, which would be 767 BC. I have no idea whether we're operating with the idea that it's now 761 or 762, but either way, it's 5-6 years in the future, as things start winding towards the Time of Unparalleled Darkness.

Mind you, Eberron's not changing (or so I've googled), but then, I don't play Eberron.

[cure]

We have the time of Unparallelled Darkness approaching rather rapidly already. The setting is rushing towards it year by year in real time. And frankly we are struggling to keep up with the existing Gazetteer and related projects. Further, the Frat has already held a contest as to a significant setting change and it is forthcoming in one of their projects, so as a community at least we are far from stuck at a given date and in need of leaping ahead to some other given date. All shall come in the fullness of time . . . .

[Ivana_Boritsi]

I wouldn't want to see Fear, Horror, and Madness as new Defenses. Yuck. Talk about overly complicated. What I'd like to see instead is a new skill called Composure, which determines how well you resist Horror or Maddening things. I agree that Fear should be a combat or magical effect.

I like the skill idea, because you can get Skill Training in a skill, but it can't go continually up like your Defenses. And that makes sense to me. A high level warrior can become better at witnessing horrific events, but her ability to resist horrific scenes shouldn't scale up into the stratosphere. Even the most toughened people can get horrified by small things.

[tec-goblin]

I was planning on adding a Half-Vistani feat taken at character creation called something like Scion of the Blood that would give them access to one Full-blooded power of A through E, perhaps with a minor drawback (like Static Burn-light).

I simply haven't worked out these Full-Blooded abilities yet, so I didn't list the option as a Half-Vistani feat yet.

Nice and reasonable.

We used to have crossbows take forever to load, too-all that happened is no one used them unless they were magic or repeaters. Move is okay, I guess, but I think Standard takes away from the whole, 'Keep it simple, and have something cool to do every round.' paradgim of 4E.

For 7thSea, or any campaign that wants to encourage light armor, I used another approach: Attacks that would be vs AC for other weapons, are vs Ref for pistols. Pistols are simple weapons, BUT the reload is 1 standard. What's the point of that? That you either need a lot of them handy, or you'll fire once or twice with your pistols before entering melee with another weapon.

It's not necessarily much complicated, it adds another level of strategy.
On the other hand, I see that this might work well in domains like Lamordia and Dementlieu (where using light armor is encouraged), but not in others like Falkovnia (adding a layer of complexity for something that is rare, and in addition, doing weird things with the play-balance).
For domains like these, I think Nikolas' suggestion is simpler and more play-balanced.

The +4 bonuses that would be granted by Courage, Jaded, and Open Mind in 4e need to be changed because not only are defense values for "saves" are reduced compared to before, but you receive feats much more often in 4e (every other level).

Well, i always considered these feats as lame. You can take iron will that gives you +2 to all of the 3 categories, plus mind-affecting, plus plus.

I really don't see what's wrong with just relegating reality wrinkles to the land of fluff.

I totally agree.[/quote]

[Nikolas of the Mists]

For 7thSea, or any campaign that wants to encourage light armor, I used another approach: Attacks that would be vs AC for other weapons, are vs Ref for pistols.

Light armor already got a buff under 4e. Well, more the other armors got a slight nerf. Cloth, leather and hide are the only armors which grant AC from your Dex bonus (or your Int bonus now alternatively now which makes wizards slightly less squishy). This means that someone in hide possessing a decent dex bonus actually has the same AC as someone in chainmail. (There are only 2 types of armor now as well, just Light and Heavy)

[Lord Soth]

I found a post by someone else on the WotC boards who wrote up stats for firearms in 4E. Here they are (although I changed one or two small details). So thoughts? Opinions?

WEAPON: Pistol
PROF.: +2
DAMAGE: 1d8
RANGE: 10/20
PRICE: 50 gp
WEIGHT: 3 lb.
GROUP: Firearm
PROPERTIES: Load minor, off-hand

WEAPON: Blunderbuss
PROF.: +1
DAMAGE: 1d8
RANGE: Blast 3
PRICE: 60 gp
WEIGHT: 10 lb.
GROUP: Firearm
PROPERTIES: Load minor

WEAPON: Musket
PROF.: +2
DAMAGE: 1d10
RANGE: 20/40
PRICE: 85 gp
WEIGHT: 8 lb.
GROUP: Firearm
PROPERTIES: Load two minor

WEAPON: Bayonet
PROF.: +2
DAMAGE: 1d6
RANGE: -
PRICE: 2 gp
WEIGHT: 2 lb.
GROUP: Polearm*
PROPERTIES: Reach*
* Only when attached to a musket

Here's the thread.

[Lord Soth]

Incidentally, I've been writing up Laurie Weathermay-Foxgrove. Here's what I got so far.

LAURIE WEATHERMAY-FOXGROVE
Female Human Rogue 5
STR: 10 (+0), CON: 10 (+0), DEX: 16 (+3), INT: 17 (+3), WIS: 14 (+2), CHA: 17 (+3)

HIT POINTS: 42, BLOODIED: 21, HEALING SURGE: 10, SURGES PER DAY: 6
ARMOR CLASS: 17, FORT DEFENSE: 13, REF DEFENSE: 19, WILL DEFENSE: 16
INITIATIVE: +9, SPEED: 6 Squares, SIZE: Medium, VISION: Normal

RACIAL FEATURES: Bonus At-Will Power, Bonus Feat, Bonus Skill, Human Defense Bonuses
CLASS FEATURES: First Strike, Rogue Tactics (Artful Dodger), Rogue Weapon Talent, Sneak Attack

LANGUAGES: Mordentish, Balok, Darkonese, Lamordian, ?
SKILLS: Arcana +5, Bluff +5, Diplomacy +5, Dungeoneering +4, Endurance +2, Heal +4, History +5, Intimidate +5, Nature +4, Religion +5
TRAINED SKILLS: Acrobatics +10, Athletics +7, Insight +9, Perception +9, Stealth +10, Streetwise +10, Thievery +10
FEATS: Improved Initiative, Linguist, Weapon Proficiency (Musket), Weapon Proficiency (Parthian Rapier)
EQUIPMENT: Leather Armor, Musket, Parthian Rapier

AT-WILL POWERS: Deft Strike, Piercing Strike, Sly Flourish
ENCOUNTER POWERS: Positioning Strike, Bait and Switch
DAILY POWERS: Trick Strike, Walking Wounded
UTILITY POWERS: Tumble

Not complete of course. The Parthian Rapier should be +1, for instance. And there're some other things I'm looking at. And yeah, in 3E she was an Expert2/Fighter 3, but I think Rogue's more appropriate given everything else about her. Also, it occurs to me. Should I assume the +2 human racial bonus is already included, or should I add it in? In addition, the stats for the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins is as follows:

Str 10, Con 10, Dex 15, Int 17, Wis 14, Cha 16

If I add +2 for the human bonus to their stats, should that bonus be to the same stat, as they're twins, or can it be applied to different stats?

But anyway, thoughts? Opinions? Thanks.

[Pamela]

@ cure: All may come in the fulness of time, but if you want to start a campaign (or FF an old one) in the next month or two, it helps to bounce around a few ideas now. As for the setting approaching ToUD in 'real time', if WotC does bring back Ravenloft, there's bound to be a fast-forward of some kind to take advantage of the ToUD.

Thanks to Isabella for starting this thread, and to everyone else for their contributions to date. I'm busily trying to update my old game and this helps a lot.