The D&D Monster Conversion Thread

[Pragmatic]

Is there some effort being made to normalize the monsters?

As someone noted, a D&D level 20 party taking on a dragon the size of a 747 is one thing. A GURPS party of 550-pt characters taking on the same dragon is just days away from being dragon manure...

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

[*]Your call whether to give it Reputation -4 (Really lame monster).

Pathfinder had some neat ideas about them - you can read them here.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Is there some effort being made to normalize the monsters?

As someone noted, a D&D level 20 party taking on a dragon the size of a 747 is one thing. A GURPS party of 550-pt characters taking on the same dragon is just days away from being dragon manure...

Great Wyrms are not appropriate opponents for small groups of remotely realistic humans at low tech levels. Such creatures are supposed to be able to fight entire armies. There are plenty of less powerful dragons in D&D that would make good opponents for 550-pt characters.

D&D characters (even 20th leveled ones) are not necessarily more powerful than GURPS characters, so I don't think such normalization attempts would be a good idea.

[Sassy Psionic Space Squid]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Great Wyrms are not appropriate opponents for small groups of remotely realistic humans at low tech levels.

That's a strange thing to say about D&D.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Is there some effort being made to normalize the monsters?

As someone noted, a D&D level 20 party taking on a dragon the size of a 747 is one thing. A GURPS party of 550-pt characters taking on the same dragon is just days away from being dragon manure...

I calculated the Combat Effectiveness Rating for about 200 monsters on the wiki; I'll let someone else get the practice on Jürgen's latest batch. I am not one for game balance all the darn time myself. Let 'em run.

Having said that, I wouldn't count out a party of 550-point characters against a 100 HP dragon. They have at least one action per combatant, easily bypassing the dragon in this regard, and will have loads of special abilities.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by abe ray

in 2nd edition dnd they did eat mice & rats, fyi

Flumphs explicitly do in 3e as well. Shunning hunting isn't Pacifism.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Is there some effort being made to normalize the monsters?

Apparently, as the wyrm dragon is grossly underpowered. Personally, I'm opposed to normalization, not everything should be viable for a given power level of PC, any more than it's reasonable to have a great wyrm dragon in a level 10 D&D game.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Apparently, as the wyrm dragon is grossly underpowered. Personally, I'm opposed to normalization, not everything should be viable for a given power level of PC, any more than it's reasonable to have a great wyrm dragon in a level 10 D&D game.

Still, a great wyrm could be the size of a bus, and not a 747.

Just scale it down some, in other words.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Still, a great wyrm could be the size of a bus, and not a 747.

Just scale it down some, in other words.

Why? I question the value of any formulaic conversion of d20 monsters, but if you're going to do so, might as well make it accurate (not that it's actually the size of a 747; the size rules are vague, but most likely a great wyrm is 50-100' depending on type).

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by abe ray

Just a thought, a dnd kolbold is different from a gurpsian one,correct?

The D&D one inspired the GURPS one (I wrote the one on the wiki), but it isn't a translation by any means. The ones Jürgen and Thalassogen wrote are translations.