GURPS monsters/NPCs in D&D, take two

[2097]

A while ago I tried my hand at a conversion formula for using GURPS books in D&D, as is suggested on page B5.

That method worked fine because with our table's style, the most important thing for me as DM is to get some numbers, pretty much any numbers, committed and written down, and usable enough. With that playstyle, the method needs to be deterministic, it can't depend on eyeballing or feel. X number in GURPS need to become Y number in D&D consistently and always.

Since then I've tried to go through both games more thoroughly and create formula that is more representative of the people and creatures. TL;DR: the GURPS peeps are now about twice for most numbers than they were with my old formula.

Improvement suggestions are welcome♥♥ but I'm OK with the weirdness of these particular individuals not quite working as their natively D&D counterparts. For example, these NPCs might roll IQ in a situation where a D&D character might roll Wisdom, and they might have different HP with armor on or off, unlike normal D&D characters. Buuuut like a Gelatinous Cube doesn't work like a normal D&D character either and yet you can still interact with it.

It's just as like how in GURPS, an Ultra-Lite character can be in a contest with someone who is built on 250 points. They both have an appropriate number to roll under. Here, both the GURPS-imported NPC/monster and the D&D character have a number to add to the d20. Even if they're listed a bit differently. It's gonna be fine♥

HP

Add GURPS HP and FP together, and then, for every four points of that, add DR. (So if a creature has DR 2, 11 HP and 11 FP, that would become 11+11+(5×2)=32 HP with armor on, and 22 HP with armor off.)

Ability Modifers

You know how in D&D 3e/4/e5e you can turn a score into a mod by substracting ten and halving? Here, instead, subtract ten and double. So 14 becomes +8, 11 becomes +2 etc. Do not go below -8 or above +12.

HT is Cha and Con (except HP), ST is used for damage (and HP), DX is for speed and to hit (both mêlée and ranged), IQ is Int and Wis.

Damage

Use straight up when it's listed in the stat block, but it's usually not… GURPS damage expressions can be a bit difficult to find. You need to look both in the equipment table and the damage table. If you don't have those available, just do 1d6 + strength modifier as calculated above.

To Hit

Read the weapon skill as if it were an ability and use the ability modifier method above (i.e. subtract ten and double, but no worse than -8 or better than +12).

AC

Which is highest:

• half (ht+dx) [or double basic speed, if it's listed]?
• shield/cloak/parrying weapon skill?

Do the subtract ten and double as normal (maybe you already did that in a previous step) and then add 10 to that. (was "add 12 to that" for a while. That was not good.)

[2097]

Also for chases and such, multiply the basic move with six for 5e and with 18 for b/x.♥

[maximara]

I wrote up a conversion (D&D to GURPS) that works reasonably well but it isn't a formula per say and requires some work to do the conversion.

[bocephus]

I use oodles of D&D stuff in my games because I have tons of reference material, and I do like the immense variation that exists across the D&D universe.

I think more than anything the problem you will encounter converting D&D to GURPS is challenge level. D&D has a pretty standard character to stat progression, GURPS otoh could start lvl 1 with 125pts, 150pts, 250pts, 500pts. This makes stating out a monster really difficult, and is one of the reasons I primarily stick to the 125-150 range for new campaigns. Its much easier to have variety in your challenges without getting really crazy.

That said my conversions usually consist of figuring out actual values for things that would matter to the PC encounter, and not even bothering with the rest.

One of my recent favorites "Umber Hulk". Depending on which version of D&D your converting from you can get a lot of different answers.

I just took the one from http://gurpswiki.wikidot.com/monsters/p/2 and changed it a little till it felt right for the difficulty I wanted in the encounter.

I ended up with 3 levels of monster that equated nicely enough to a juvenile, female/male and an "Alpha". I didnt worry at all about the complete mechanic for all the abilities, in fact I didnt even track the points really. I just worked out what I needed it to be for game mechanics enough that I could tell:
1 Did the PC/monster hit
2 Did the PC/monster do damage
3 How much damage
4 Did an ability trigger
5 What did the ability do
6 Did/can the PC avoid, resist, mitigate the results

What I didn't have was advantage/disadvantages all stated out because they aren't needed or you can just hand wave it, cause its a monster. I didn't worry about spell effects being linked to Fatigue or what combination of mechanics was needed to make a monster than could tunnel through rock as quickly as an Umber hulk is able in D&D. It didn't factor into the encounter. Monster had an in earth and out of earth movement and that's all I needed.

I did have to give thought to DR because harvesting the hide was a possibility so I needed to have an idea what it could become, and therefore what it would offer the monster.

I dont give "per monster/encounter XP" so I dont really care what its point value is other than I assign a pt value that I feel would be needed to survive the encounter (just so I can reference it easily later. A single Juvenile was a "~150pt" encounter creature while an Alpha is a "~400pt" encounter creature. The fist Alpha encounter died to 5x 150pt char rather quickly (I was actually worried that I had not done the conversion well) because of some lucky rolls, the second Alpha encounter nearly killed the party, not so lucky die rolls this time. That works for me, feels like it hits right where I wanted it to the Alpha was a Hard but survivable surprise, with some tactical foreknowledge I would say an Average difficulty for this group.

The monsters were also built for my campaign so they were challenging to my group of 150ish pt PCs, but in a similar 250ish pt group these wouldn't present much challenge at all.

I also did Rust monsters for the same group and that one was loads of fun because most of the players had never seen or heard of them before, ya there were a few weapons sacrificed and some armor that needed repaired.

[2097]

This is converting from GURPS to D&D! So I can use all the wonderful GURPS books from the recent Kickstarter (and also from my teen years when I picked up a ton of them)♥

[maximara]

Originally Posted by 2097

This is converting from GURPS to D&D! So I can use all the wonderful GURPS books from the recent Kickstarter (and also from my teen years when I picked up a ton of them)♥

To quote Ben Yahtzee "Why would we want to do this terrible thing?" ;-)

Seriously, there are major problems with that.

At low levels the Magic-User is the most pathetic thing in the game which is why I wrote GURPS magic systems in D&D before taking the game entirely to GURPS.
Heck an Average (25-50 points) GURPS mage with Magery 0 is better by any metric you care to use then a 1st-3rd level Magic User. - Better skill set, better HP, more spells that they can cast as long as they have fatigue.

Murphy's Rules even had a part where a common house cat could easily kill a 1st level Magic user.

Also as Dragon Magazine showed (can't remember the article's name) where was a major disconnect between XP and level. Some classes just advanced faster then others and sadly it wasn't the ones that needed it.

[ravenfish]

My concern would be that, at least in later editions of DnD, the math is fairly "tight"- there are expectations of resilience and damage output for a monster of a given level, which may result in directly converted monsters playing oddly.


Considering how many monsters have been written up for DnD (GURPS is impoverished by comparison- hence the perennial interest in converting DnD monsters to GURPS), my instinct would be just to look through the Monster Manuals for something more or less equivalent, and run with it. This is likely to both take less work and result in something that plays better at the table. Similarly, instead of directly converting a character, I would just take a description of that character ("powerful mage with a focus in fire spells", "strapping young fighter with axe and shield", etc.), and create a DnD character based on that description.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by 2097

This is converting from GURPS to D&D! So I can use all the wonderful GURPS books from the recent Kickstarter (and also from my teen years when I picked up a ton of them)♥

Ahhh, uhhh ya... I got nothing for ya. I cant imagine a world where this is needed.

I love GURPS but lets be real, theres very little in D&D that hasnt been imagined and already put on paper (within its genre). Outside of the genre I cant think of a reason you would try to use D&D. There's a tiny bit of wiggle room for stuff up to maybe a Victorian time period but as soon as technology overtakes muscle power in the mainstream D&D falls apart. The things that make it such a power house in its small niiche are the same things that keep it in that niche.

Maybe its more fair to say, "I dont see it, Im just not able to visualize your use case". You might make a case for converting GURPS to D&D but I cant imagine what it is. You would have to show me specific examples of something you would need to mechanically convert this way.

[Anders]

There are some cool monsters in DF that could be profitable transferred. Floating Eyes, for instance.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by Anders

There are some cool monsters in DF that could be profitable transferred. Floating Eyes, for instance.

No argument that there ARE things that GURPS has that one might want in D&D. But enough to need to develop a system?

Also whats a "Floating Eye"? not seen that one.