D&D 2E Taking party from 2E Nerath to 5E Faerûn.

[Jakob101st]

Taking party from 2E Nerath to 5E Faerûn.

I've been mulling over taking our current campaign not only to a different realm but also a different game version. Last year a few of my players expressed interest in Forgotten Realms and more recently D&D Next. At the time I hadn't gone over enough of the FR universe to do it justice but feel I could manage it now. We have a 4E and 2E campaign going currently. The 2E campaign will soon lend itself, at least story wise, to traveling to another dimensional plane. I would also like to play test the D&D Next rules if we do.

So my questions are:

What issues do you see with converting their characters from 2E to 5E once they enter the new dimensional plane? (Currently they are all standard races.)

What issues do you see with traveling from the generic Nerath to Faerun in general?

My basic plan is to have them end up becoming crew on an airship whose captain and brother are planning to enter the Forgotten Realms through the Astral Plane. They are currently seeking someone from the Forgotten Realms living in their current dimensional plane so that person can find the silver colored pool of their home plane and guide the ship to it. The captain is a Paladin that has fallen out of favor from his deity and lost his class powers. This is his attempt to regain powers and find a way to unbind himself from a demon he failed to slay. They are also planning to assault a wizard's lair in search of a valuable tome that can be used to gain access to Candlekeep once they enter the FR universe.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What issues do you see with converting their characters from 2E to 5E once they enter the new dimensional plane? (Currently they are all standard races.)

Main issue is that the game isn't settled yet. If you've been playing a long-term campaign up to this point with a stable ruleset... do you really want to switch over to one where character generation is going to change every couple of months? Everyone's settled in to who their characters are and what they can do... then all of a sudden they find their PCs changing and evolving repeatedly as each new packet is released.

If you expect to play this campaign for several more years... you're probably better off just sticking with 2E for the next year and hope that the actual 5E ruleset gets released next summer, then you can do a finalized switch to it then. Otherwise... your characters will continually be in flux over the next year plus.

 

[jrowland]

I did something similar back during the 2E/3E conversion. We were actually playing the Dragonlance campaign, and as it was winding down the players were ancy to move on to the new shiny. Borrowing some ideas from the Legends, the party got a hold of gnomish device that sent them to another dimension. I had them "lose" 5 levels and re-create their characters as best as they could. Then, I added a new mechanic that was essentially a -6 to specific actions (attack, cast a spell, etc.) and on a success it went to -5, then -4, etc. as their characters "adjusted" to the new reality. I also doubled XP until they hit their prior level. We had a blast, and continued the game into epic levels.

 

[Jakob101st]

Wow, Jrowland. I will keep that method in mind when I look into how the class levels translate.