The D&D Monster Conversion Thread

[Jürgen Hubert]

I recently got permission to put Collective Restraint's GURPS conversions of D&D Monsters on the GURPS Repository (I am currently up to "Dragon, Black Wyrm"), and it occurs to me that there must be lots of people who have converted D&D monsters to GURPS over the years. Time to gather them all in one place! If you have converted a D&D monster to GURPS, please share it here so that I (or someone else) can put it into the Repository. If you know of any netbooks or other online documents, please share the links to it - we do need permissions by the individual authors of these documents, of course, but before we can get permission we need to know that they exist.

To clarify, what I am looking for here are "Dungeon Fantasy"-style stat blocks, not racial writeups - there is a section for that, too, but it's not the main focus of this thread.

If you want to take your own stab at converting D&D monsters, a good source of them is the d20 SRD for the D&D 3.5 rules (some major iconic D&D monsters such as beholders and mind flayers are missing, but it's a good start), as well as the Pathfinder SRD - which is based on D&D 3.5 and has a lot of other "classic" D&D monsters from other sources.

The following conversion guidelines have served me fairly well:

GURPS ST = D&D Str
GURPS DX = 10 + (D&D Dex modifier)
GURPS HT = 10 + (D&D Con modifier)
GURPS IQ = 10 + (D&D Int modifier)
GURPS DR = (D&D natural armor modifier)/2

Of course, conversion is an art as much as it is a science - so if you have any insights of your own on converting D&D monsters, please share them!

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

the d20 SRD for the D&D 3.5 rules (some major iconic D&D monsters such as beholders and mind flayers are missing...)

Isn't that due to WotC particularly insisting on retaining rights to "Product Identity" aspects of D&D in the OGL, including the iconic monsters? Likely Jones and Rodriguez won't actually come calling, but you probably need to at least sanitize the names.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Isn't that due to WotC particularly insisting on retaining rights to "Product Identity" aspects of D&D in the OGL, including the iconic monsters? Likely Jones and Rodriguez won't actually come calling, but you probably need to at least sanitize the names.

Indeed. However, this only matters for material published under the OGL, which a GURPS conversion doesn't - instead, the conversion falls under "fan work", and every entry in the GURPS Repository submitted with the correct form (on the page I linked to) has a copy of the WotC fan site policy.

(The SJG fan site policy is, of course, displayed on the side bar of the wiki...)

[robertsconley]

I recommend looking at the list of monsters included in Swords & Wizardry Core edition as a starting to figure out which creatures to convert first. And covert any missing creatures from that list first using the d20 stats as a guideline.

http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/cleanwpfilecore4.rtf

That will cover just about all the core D&D monsters. From there the remaining d20 monsters can be converted.

[trechriron]

First, this is awesome.

Some of the monsters (like the beholder) seem to have a full description copied from somewhere. That may be a "summary" but it doesn't look like it. How do you feel about users editing contributions?

Some of the monsters are missing DF stats (like combat rating).

I would HIGHLY recommend you increase the font size on all legal disclaimers. It's more honest (IMHO).

Also, I suggest putting a SJ Games GURPS banner with link to SJGames on the sidebar. It would look snazzy and be a nice "shout out" (also drawing some attention to the disclaimer). I was going to edit for you, but I did not have permission. My username is trechriron if you would like some help with admin/structure/main content.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by trechriron

First, this is awesome.

Some of the monsters (like the beholder) seem to have a full description copied from somewhere. That may be a "summary" but it doesn't look like it. How do you feel about users editing contributions?

I have no problems with it. If an edit seems inappropriate, we can always change it back later via the History.

Some of the monsters are missing DF stats (like combat rating).

Calculating Combat Rating is a major effort which not all contributors might be willing to face. But that's why this is a wiki - anyone can contribute!

I would HIGHLY recommend you increase the font size on all legal disclaimers. It's more honest (IMHO).

I disagree. The legal disclaimers are important, no doubt - they should be there, and visible.

Still, they represent "nonfunctional" aspects of the pages which won't be of immediate use to most users, and thus I think it's okay if they are in a smaller font. The WotC disclaimer, for instance, needs to be included in every D&D conversion-related page.

Also, I suggest putting a SJ Games GURPS banner with link to SJGames on the sidebar. It would look snazzy and be a nice "shout out" (also drawing some attention to the disclaimer). I was going to edit for you, but I did not have permission. My username is trechriron if you would like some help with admin/structure/main content.

You need to join the wiki before I can give you admin rights.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

I recommend looking at the list of monsters included in Swords & Wizardry Core edition as a starting to figure out which creatures to convert first. And covert any missing creatures from that list first using the d20 stats as a guideline.

http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/cleanwpfilecore4.rtf

That will cover just about all the core D&D monsters. From there the remaining d20 monsters can be converted.

To be honest, that document is not particularly useful for conversion purposes, since its stat blocks - unlike those of the d20/Pathfinder SRDs - do not list attributes or other details which would make a conversion easier.

As for what creatures should be tackled first, that is of course up to everyone's own preferences - there have been so many iterations of D&D and d20, and so many published monsters, that nobody is going to be out of conversion work any time soon. ;)

My own preference would be to finish the 3.5 Monster Manual first, since most of its creatures are available online in the SRD (which makes conversion work easier). In fact, I've created a subpage for that book which lists all the monsters that appeared in it, as well as links to any actual converted entries in the wiki. In time, I hope we will be able to add similar pages for other D&D "monster manuals"...

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

GURPS ST = D&D Str

This is probably pretty good in many cases, but leaving it at that for large creatures might not be a good idea. D&D 3.5 (and most likely 3.0 as well) gives more carrying capacity for larger creatures of the same strength (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm). It would probably be appropriate to add some lifting strength to such creatures (whose carrying capacity will otherwise not only differ greatly from the D&D monsters, but also often be unresonably low). I don't know if this has been done for some of the monsters, but at least the "Dragon, Black Wyrm" and "Frost Giant" don't have lifting strength.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Andreas

This is probably pretty good in many cases, but leaving it at that for large creatures might not be a good idea. D&D 3.5 (and most likely 3.0 as well) gives more carrying capacity for larger creatures of the same strength

It also has an exponential lifting scale. A great wyrm red dragon (Colossal, Str 45, Quadruped) has a Heavy encumbrance of 307,200 lb, corresponding to a Lifting ST of 554 (Str 10 has Heavy of 100, so lifting ST = sqrt( Heavy encumbrance ). However, actually scaling the stats in d20 may produce unplayable results in GURPS.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It also has an exponential lifting scale. A great wyrm red dragon (Colossal, Str 45, Quadruped) has a Heavy encumbrance of 307,200 lb, corresponding to a Lifting ST of 554 (Str 10 has Heavy of 100, so lifting ST = sqrt( Heavy encumbrance ). However, actually scaling the stats in d20 may produce unplayable results in GURPS.

Well, a red great wyrm is supposed to be a pretty unplayable opponent for ordinary mortals. However you are right in that the exponential scale used in D&D is problematic for very high strength creatures. The disparity between damage and carrying capacity eventually grows very large (though I don't think that is a large problem, except for the strongest monsters such as great wyrms).

It is probably fine to just ignore the difference in scale and set GURPS ST = D&D Str for the vast majority of creatures as long as you add Lifting Str if they are large. However without such adjustements for size you can get rather bad results for a lot of creatures.