D&D 1E 1e/2e Spells converted to 4e Powers

[Nebulous]

Hi All. I've been thinking about converting some old, old magic from the Wizard's Spell compendium for our 5th level wizard, so i thought i'd pick some brains around here for suggestions. The three in particular i'm looking at are:

1) Presper's Moonbow
2) Otto's Tin Soldiers
3) Pilfer Dweomer

Here's what they used to do in a nutshell:

1) Presper's Moonbow; castable only at night under a full moon. It conjures forth 1d4 motes of light that circle the caster. They can be discharged singly or in groups at one or multiple targets, striking as the caster +3. They will follow around corners up to their range and are not foiled by invisibility or illusion. Multiple castings of this spell can create a small orbit of motes around the conjurer (but see below).

A hit discharges electrical damage; 4d6 for 1 mote; 3d6 for 2; 2d6 for 3; 2d4 for 4 motes.

If a round passes in which a mote is not discharged, ALL motes wink out.

The motes can be physically attacked or hit by electrical damage, in which case they inflict their damage to everyone (including the caster) within 10 feet. Obviously, a caster with many motes could be significantly injured or killed.


2) Otto's Tin Soldiers: Requires the material component of two small tin soldiers worth 100gp. At 7th/9th/12th/14th level they transform into soldiers of increasing strength. They vanish when slain or the duration runs out.

3) Pilfer Dweomer: The wizard touches another wizard and robs him of a memorized spell, at which point he can cast it. Restrictions: the spell does not tell the caster what level the wizard is, what level spell he can cast, or what spells he memorized. The caster must NAME the spell, or can try to pilfer a random one. It fails automatically if he names the wrong spell or tries to steal a spell higher than he could cast. Only one spell can be pilfered at a time, and trying to pilfer more than one purges them all.


So, any suggestions or comments? I thought that Tin Soldiers might work better as a ritual, creating some guards that last for a substantial amount of time, maybe while you take an extended rest. Presper's Moonbow doesn't seem too hard to balance, but is only usable under very specific conditions.

As for Pilfer Dweomer, i think this would be a challenge to adapt to 4e, so i'm open to what anyone thinks might be a starting point.

 

[afetbinttuzani]

Interesting. These sound workable. I would try to make them more concise, though.

I have been thinking of how to convert a number of 2E Wizard and Cleric spells to 4E, but I haven't begun the process.

 

[fissionessence]

Here's my 4E version of presper's moonbow. There are notable changes, such as the pre-4E style restrictions, but it's still clearly recognizable as a derivative.

~

 

[afetbinttuzani]

Here's my 4E version of presper's moonbow. There are notable changes, such as the pre-4E style restrictions, but it's still clearly recognizable as a derivative.
~

Cool. What did you use to generate the image?

 

[fissionessence]

Adobe Photoshop :-\

Not exactly an accessible tool for everyone.

~

 

[afetbinttuzani]

Adobe Photoshop :-

Not exactly an accessible tool for everyone.
~

Thanks. I was hoping you'd say you had a template of some sort that you could just add the text into. Oh well. What font did you use? It looks just like the one used in the 4E books.

 

[fissionessence]

Thanks. I was hoping you'd say you had a template of some sort that you could just add the text into. Oh well. What font did you use? It looks just like the one used in the 4E books.

It is indeed the same font, but it's not cheap/free. I have it for use creating pdfs for Silent7Seven Games.

As to the original post:

I agree that the tin soldiers could be a good ritual, or perhaps magic item. It could also just be a power using the summoning keyword.

Pilfer dweomer is especially hard because it's difficult to distinguish a monster's powers spell vs prayer vs evocation vs exploit, etc. It would be pretty cool in the reverse, though, where the monster is the one stealing the ability from the wizard/sorcerer/warlock/artificer/swordmage.

~

 

[Nebulous]

Thanks fissionessence, you made a good 4e equivalent. For my own game i think i might take what you did and blend back in some of the old restrictions and advantages, just for flavor. That flavor is something i'm missing from 4e magic in general.

Pilfer Dweomer might only work if we look at monster level and PC level, and then leave it up to DM abjudication if the spell being pilfered is actually an arcane power or not. For example, stealing the shocking pulse from a warcaster would count, but not the death gaze from a bodak. But then you have to consider, can you steal at-wills, encounters or dailies (well, monsters don't dailies).

I was thinking that instead of pilfering a spell, you might just suppress a monster's at will magic for a few rounds, or until save ends. Until then, you can cast that power as your own, but that results in a automatic save.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, there was a whole thread for a while here on building a spell thief. I'm sure it is still pretty easy to find. The upshot of it was that most of us were not too sanguine about the prospects of making workable and balanced "steal a power" type effects. It might work OK in certain very restricted situations, but in general it is going to be almost certainly both overpowered and very hard to adjudicate. I'm not really trying to discourage you because it is a nice concept, in theory. Just very hard to implement in 4e.

The Tin Soldiers would definitely make a fine ritual. It could be implemented as a higher level daily as well. It kind of depends on what exactly you envision it being used for. I think it would be best limited to paragon tier. With the really tactical nature of 4e combat having "minions" can be a pretty large advantage, even if they are weak. There is also always the issue of pulling too much of the action to one player.

I think having colorful spells is like anything in a campaign, color is always good. The issue with it is pretty general of course. If a spell's color is mainly derived from convolved restrictions on when, where, or how it can be cast, then it is so situational that nobody will ever want to dedicate a 'slot' in their character to it. Technically in 4e even rituals are a limited resource for characters, but I think there is really little harm to game balance if a character can have a library back home someplace that is chock full of "When the moon is in the 4th quarter" type rituals. As encounter type spells I am not sure they will generally fly (for PCs anyway).