D&D Magic in T20 (game mechanic)

[Mr. Oberon]

I was thinking more like:

You are orbiting the planet, scanning for survey info. Suddenly, in a flash of black light, a tan robed human stands on your bridge.

"So, the hero's of the sky have arrived... You do not seem to be the gods the ledgends made you out to be. No matter. FyreBhall!"

You are engulfed by a blast of heat and fire. (roll damage). Fire explodes over all of the bridge's controls, and the robed maniac is nowhere to be seen. With the bridge now in ruins around you, you begin a downward spiral to the planet's surface. You just hope that the secondary controls in the engine room can still land you safely...

Much chaos and bloodshed ensues...
(This is doubly unnerving if one of your players decided to name his character after a fantasy character...)

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

I donno. it's so easy to play D&D whenever I want and so HARD to get a good Traveller or Big Eyes Small Mouth game going...

Why would I ever want to inflict even a -short- d&D interlude on my traveller party. But that just me.

If you are going to do something like that... maybe this planet's MAGIC is something powered by an ancient device and if Captain kirk and his party can only seduce the beautifull guardianess and then phaser the God Machine (who projects a holograph looking suspiciously like Gene Rodenberry)...

er... never mind.

 

[gardclan]

High level fireball = 10d6 damage (35 pts average)

FGMP15 = 9d20 damage (94.5 pts average).

I'm taking the fusion gun! Bigger damage, bigger recoil, and no attack of opportunity!

 

[Tarn]

Originally posted by Smiling DM:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Tarn:
I was thinking about this recently... Not because I wanted to bring magic into Traveller but because I wanted to use lifeblood/stamina in d&d3e.

1) Count AC as AR of equal level... Full plate has AC 8--that would suck 8d6 off of the typical fireball. This would take care of most of your problem.

I too have been considering this - I was looking at halving the AC bonus to determine AR simply because most melee weapons roll only 1 to 2 dice for damage, and the only way to up the dice is through a critical hit. In T20, dice can get added to damage through burst fire or from scaling between personal, vehicular, and starship weapon scales - these things simply are not available as options in a Fantasy D20 game.

If you halve the AC bonus, then plate mail has an AR=4, which means the average dagger is going to bounce off unless it gets a critical (which makes sense). If you go the AC=AR, then plate has an AR=8, meaning that most 1-handed melee weapons bounce off (since most of themm use a 1d8 or less). Obviously strength mods may just breach the threshold by a point or two, but this will be rare.

As a neat twist, I also planned on using the magical bonuses on a magical weapon as armor piercing (thus that trusty ol' +1 sword will actually reduce the AR of your target by one, and a +4 weapon is truly awesome). This fit some of the more dramatic stories where magical blades seem to cut through armor like soft butter.

2) Secondly limit the damage of spells. I was using con only for hit points for a while (Lifeblood without stamina). I found that limiting the damage of spells to the that of the caster level at which they were introduced also balanced things well.

I have not figured out how magic would work with the AR and lifepoint yet. Most of D&D's ranged damaging spells are based on range touch attacks (thus ignoring armor). Applying AR normally against the damage dice may fit (as spell damage tends to roll multiple dice), but only if spell damage is going to go against Lifeblood (thus unarmored targets of a spell ar TOAST).

This is going to make magic deadly, but then again, using Lifeblood and AR in melee should make the game deadly too. Whether it balances or not is really up to play testing to decide.</font>[/QUOTE]I tried using something similar to AR once. The primary way of penetrating armour became the power attack feat. Adding 5 points of damage to every hit went along way to penetrating the armour, and on critical hits it was lethal even with 8 points of AR from a suit of plate mail.

What I haven't tried in D&D is having the AR remove dice first. I think this may be a partial fix to compensate for much lower hit points.

 

[DrSkull]

If I were bringing D&D magic into a T20 campaign for some reason (shudder, fie and forfend), I would probably make all the magic damage inflicted be straight Stamina damage, no Lifeblood. D&D magic is scaled to Hit Points and Stamina and Hit Points are scaled the same.

 

[wordwildwebb]

D20 Modern (coming soon to a FLGS near you) has a section on Magic in the modern world - it could easily be transposed into T20. It lists certain spells that are just too powerful in a non-magic world, and caps spell lists at 5th level.

I am all for having a villian or villians somehow show up with magic, but would be loathe to allow a player to use it... Still, there are excellent suggestions in D20M.

 

[Gaming Glen]

I had to give this some thought since I was going to take my D&D group from Harn to space via T20. Since they're only 2nd-4th level I wasn't too worried about overpowering spells. I came up with the idea of using mana, some worlds have it, some don't, others used to have it (i.e., Terra). An explanation why gunpowder is usually restricted by certain species (i.e., dwarves) on a "fantasy" world is that gunpowder eats up mana at a furious rate (so blame the ancient Chinese for the lack of mana on Terra

).

But my group was very upset when I offered them the option (they found the secret underground observation station). I'm giving them an out so they can stay on Harn.

I have no problem with elves or dwarves (but no kender!) as humanoid aliens. Just give them different names (hmm, Vulcan, Tellarite, Bantha-fodder

).

I'm using my own universe, but will borrow the idea of the Ancients to explain the "godstones" of Harn and the distribution of certain races. My Ancients are based on a reptilian form, though (no silly Grandfather).

Glen

 

[Galadrion]

*Grin* And here I was considering using critters from the various monster books as local life forms... Just restricting the various supernatural and spell-like abilities unless I could justify 'em through psuedo-scientific rationales. The vermin and animals are especially appropriate, but beasts, oozes, some of the less-magical dragons...

Heh. "Over here, we have a terrasque. Over there, a platoon of TL-13 mercenaries. Place yer bets, place yer bets..."