Old Characters(2e)

[birddogtx]

Has anyone had an issue with reworking old 2e DnD characters to 3 or 3.5? My favorite character was a halfling 13 lvl ranger/14 lvl specialty priest of Erik using the old system multiclass rules. Any thoughts on if I should do a straight update and end up with an epic character or basicly cut it in half.

Thanks.

[AndrewTall]

Any multi-class update is difficult - particularly if one is a spell caster. In general I would suggest focusing on which aspect of the character was most fundamental too them and using that as the core class, with the secondary (or tertiary!) class cut down even more heavily.

Where possible a prestige class that blurs the two classes is ideal, as is using a class that may previously have been forbidden (i.e. turning a dwarven fighter/cleric into a paladin). Simply keeping both lots of levels distorts the charactor more imho as they end up vastly more powerful than the original AD&D. Similarly as a lot of the old HP, THAC0 scores for fighter combo's were not substantially impacted by the second class you can usually drop several fighter classes in the conversion and still have the same sort of combat ability as before.

The other issue is characters over L9, particularly for fighters... L15 D20 fighter is 50% tougher than his AD&D counterpart, has more attacks, gets feats, etc. You may also need to boost an AD&D fighters strength substantially to keep the impact of a percentile strength score.

[MatanThunder]

Seems like a lot of sacrafice of a good PC in order to adapt to the new system....You looked into pricing some of the older material.

I have the conversion system sheets into 3.0 but the 3.whatever now never really put out that type of material that I have found. (I am looking for it, so that I can better convert the 3.whatever monsters I like to 3.0 and then 2nd edition....I have to ad hock it now).

Sounds like it was a good PC...to bad WoTC....felt he had to change or die.

Later

[birddogtx]

Thanks for the quick replies.

Do you have a link to that conversion sheet, Matanthunder?

Thanks.

[kgauck]

The conversion faq can be found here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20030221a

Basically you now have an 18th level character, and you can assign the levels between druid and ranger as you think best.

You get to add level based ability improvements

You can dispense with the loner rules that made a Ranger go solo, and he can now aquire animal companions or normal followers and cohorts just like everyone else.

With the leadership feat you could almost have your own druidical circle.

[MatanThunder]

Thanks gentlemen....I didn't know where to go on their site & I hoped that someone in the forum know how to link me up...

Thanks again...

Later