(DnD 5e) Birthright Conversion

[Delazar]

New Subrace: Cerilian Halfling

See into the Shadow World. Cerilain halflings can cast the Detect Evil spell. Once they use this power, they must take a short rest before they can use it again.

Step into the Shadow World. Cerilian halflings can cast the Dimension Door spell. Once they use this power, they must take a long rest before they can use it again.

Non-magical. You have advantage on saving throws agains spells, but you cannot choose choose following classes / archetypes: Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Rogue (Arcane Trickster), Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard.

[Sorontar]

I still think Druid should just be something very distinct from a Cleric of Nature (Erik).

A bit like the distinction between Sorcerer and Wizard.

Druids get their power directly from Nature, from the World, from the mebhaighl (and would use Sources instead of Temples).

Clerics get their powers from their God, and share their love for a specific portfolio (Nature, in the case of Erik). They actively seek more followers, and use Temples.

Yes, but 2ed Birthright IIRC used the term "Druid" as a title for Clerics of Erik. There was no Druid class unless the DM substituted the Druid class for the Druid cleric (though that substitution was player campaign-specific, not a canon option).

So the simplest way to convert is to treat Druids as the title of clerics/priests of Erik. The inclusion of the Druid class should not be any more than an optional alternative approach. No need to complicate things any more than we need to. Just like Monks are left out of 2ed, so too may Druids be.

Get the basics right before we start working out whether any new additions should also be added.

Sorontar,
who played in a 2ed BR campaign where the only druids were Druid class (ie. we chose to go non-canon), and Erik had not other cleric/priest (ie. we kept one main religious class per faith).
who also never liked the addition of Sorcerer to Birthright.

[Delazar]

I guess it's a matter of preferences... in any case, there's no "conversion" needed, either one chooses to use Druids as priest of Erik, or he doesn't. So better to not get stuck on this.

I would personally give the title Druid to the Clerics of Erik, and rename the druid class into something elvish, and only let elves take it.

Re: Sorcerers - the idea of a spell caster using the magical power of his blood is actually quite fitting for Birthright, don't you think?

Though I'd scrap Wild Magic and Draconic Blood, and their "origin" would be related to their bloodline derivation...

[Fizz]

With regards to cleric/druid, what about not using either? We could create a new class called Priest, and have the subclasses be each of the specialty priests with their own name- Druid for the priest of Erik, maybe Stormlord for the priests of Cuiraecen, etc. This would be most in keeping with how they were handled in 2nd Ed, and remove this entire cleric/druid issue since they'd then all be on equal footing.

-Fizz

[Fizz]

New Subrace: Cerilian Halfling
See into the Shadow World. Cerilain halflings can cast the Detect Evil spell. Once they use this power, they must take a short rest before they can use it again.
Step into the Shadow World. Cerilian halflings can cast the Dimension Door spell. Once they use this power, they must take a long rest before they can use it again.
Non-magical. You have advantage on saving throws agains spells, but you cannot choose choose following classes / archetypes: Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Rogue (Arcane Trickster), Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard.

We'd want to be careful with terminology here. Halflings could Detect Evil etc, but it was an innate power- they weren't casting a spell (ie no memorization or components required).

Some of the restrictions might be overdone- we'd also have to decide what classes are allowed. I don't think Eldritch Knight or Trickster or Warlock are appropriate for anyone in Birthright, not just Halflings. (I suppose you could make a case for the first two if the character were blooded.)

Perhaps we should make a 5E subsection in the forums for such discussions?


-Fizz

[Thelandrin]

The Eldritch Knight would be suitable for specific Fighter/Wizards from canon - Rhuobhe Manslayer, Prince Fhileraene, the Gorgon etc. The Chamberlain could be modelled simply by a few Fighter levels and the rest Wizard-Diviner.

[AndrewTall]

I don't think that's quite the same comparison because level limits and dual-classing don't impact the flavor of the setting. A flock of dwarven wizards though could be a game-changer. And of course, we don't have any official characters of the sort, so we'd need to invent some, and figure out a reason why dwarven wizards are so rare.

All wizards are rare in BR, we'd need 1 wizard per realm, that's all. And I don't see how it impacts the flavour of the setting at all - the Karamhul (and Halflings following the same logic) go from disadvantaged compared to the other races to equal, that's all. You could argue that it brings in the option to have much more Nordic-type Dwerger for some Karamhul realms but I don't see a problem in that.

I'd take the standard 5e dwarf, and modify it to add the BR specifics that changed a standard 2e dwarf into a Birthright Karamhul - bone density and elemental ties; then consider whether the race should be expanded in the same way that sidhe were to make it less generic and more BR-specific, I wouldn't lumber the race with defects that were removed 2 editions ago due to playability concerns.

Also, i am assuming you mean to require dwarves to be blooded, just as humans are, to be a wizard, correct? If so then i'm not vehemently opposed. But if not then i have a bigger bone to pick with you. Heh. As for magicians, a dwarf magician does feel a bit funky to me, but i could deal with it.

Probably, which would be a slight issue for the Karamhul given relatively low levels of blooded characters - but open some interesting "whythat idiot? He's the only wizard we've got" type issues. I would personally have the Karamhul as somewhere between huamns and sidhe in terms of "magical weirdness"

You know, the moment i wrote that i had a feeling you'd be much more of a Tolkien scholar than i am (which i'm not). LOL.

Not really, but I had the misfortune of getting into arguments with some of them back in the day and losing, then checking to source material and finding out some of Tolkein use of artistic licence. I recommend the Norse stuff to anyone who wants to use Karamhul in BR, you'll never see them in the same light again.

Says the guy who confesses to creating a Shadow World equivalent of the karamhul who possibly weren't particularly nice.

I agree, and that's what i meant when i was talking about using Runes. Dwarves could be runecasters from the 2nd Ed Vikings book, but not clerics or wizards. So the runecaster subsumed both roles to the dwarves. I don't know if you're familiar with the Vikings book, but runes are very different both in mechanic and effect than standard wizard / priest spells. So this made Karamhul magic vastly different and unique. And since the caster "carves" the runes, there is a strong elemental component to it- releasing the mebhaighl from the rock, so to speak.

Interesting, we have "traditional" magic from the sidhe and copied by goblins and humans, Karamhul magic could then be a completely different tradition, same effect (under a KISS approach) but very different theme.

Of course, anyone can do what they want in their own campaign. The question is one for our would-be 5E conversion, where do we draw the line of what was a legacy rule and the flavor of the setting? No doubt we will have some good discussions about such matters.

Indeed, I'd suggest focusing on what BR changed to 2e and mimicking such changes to 5e though, rather than assuming that 2e standard relics also had to be re-imported, of course then we get the question of what was standard and what was non-standard.

[Delazar]

I suggest to do first a direct "translation" of the AD&D 2e material, and then add "variants", something like:

Direct conversion: the class "druid" doesn't exist, the Clerics of Erik have the Nature domain, and are called "druids".

Variant: All priests of Erik are actually Druids, as per PHB.

In an eventual layout stage, we would put the variants in a coloured box or something.

[Sorontar]

I suggest to do first a direct "translation" of the AD&D 2e material, and then add "variants", something like:

Direct conversion: the class "druid" doesn't exist, the Clerics of Erik have the Nature domain, and are called "druids".

Variant: All priests of Erik are actually Druids, as per PHB.

In an eventual layout stage, we would put the variants in a coloured box or something.

Yep, that is the sort of approach I was meaning. Ultimately it is up to the DM and players to work out how they want to play it but this will allow consistency between editions.

Sorontar

[Truthforger]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but Domain Turns are in the DMG.