I have a number of friends who like RPGs. Specifically, they like 4th edition D&D. Getting them to play anything else is like pulling teeth. So, as a way of easing them out of their comfort zone, I hit upon the idea of using Shadowrun rules in a D&D setting.

Issues I've thought of:

• Initiative: Obviously there's no cyberware in a swords-and-sorcery milieu, but I still need a way for mundane characters to gain additional initiative passes. Possibly a three-tiered Quality, 15BP or 30 karma per tier, each tier granting one additional pass? Might need to increase the cost of Improved Reflexes for adepts, and modify the Increase Reflexes spell for magicians. I don't want every single character to be a magician or adept.
• No Matrix: Again, obviously. I'm fine with letting the whole hacking system fall by the wayside, since I really can't see any medieval analogue.
• Melee combat: Must be viable. MUST. Instead of a "Close Combat" skill group, might have a "Blades" group (Daggers, Short Swords, Long Swords, Heavy Blades) and a "Blunt" group (Maces, Hammers, Flails, Clubs - suggestions for a better name welcome). Let the Unarmed Combat skill stand alone. Possibly increase the damage of melee weapons; STR+x rather than (STR/2)+x?
• Ranged combat: Thinking of making ranged weapons the anti-armor option: less damage than melee but significantly better AP.

What else do I need to consider?

This is something I have tried doing in the past, but never got past the conceptual stage.

The problem is, while you can cut magic out of the setting without much issue for a sci-fi game, the reverse is not true (with the sole exception of making everyone awakened).


If you plan on doing this, you basically need to rip out everything except the basic core mechanics & rewrite the game. It's actually probably easier to just create a new system. Also keep in mind that D&D was designed as a heroic game; d20 systems are actually very good for heroic games (this is why the system I am developing uses a modified d20 base). The Shadowrun system does not work for this.

I've never played it but you could also look at Earthdawn for rules. Or leave all the cyber future stuff in but make it advanced magic. Cyber becomes magically imbued materials that allow mundane users to bypass their natural limits but the resonance/energy/astral imprint/etc of it conflicts with an individuals natural magic and rots their brain/soul/etc. The matrix is just the universal consciousness of Psyons. Hackers become those who lack natural physonic ability but use external magic to force their way in where Technos = Psyons. Even allot of the fluff can carry over to since the corps are Feudal Kingdoms in allot of ways.

They don't like RPGs. They like tactical, miniatures board games. This is a far greater hurdle than any rule adjustment.
Shadowrun doesn't have the innate mechanical disconnect of 4th ed and is far more open ended in it's playable actions than 4th ed. If these cats can actually role play, get into the setting and ignore their character stats for a scene or two, then any rule changes will be irrelevant. They'll figure it out sooner or later and will enjoy being immersed in the world you create in the meantime as a nice dichotomy to their usual fair.
But if they just keep looking down at their sheet, wondering when they get to use their "Additional Notes" power, then I might recommend Warhammer 40k.

If you can figure out how to do this, please let us know. The d20 cancer plague must be stopped.
Except OSR. That's okay.

Radically different. Not sure where my copy is or what edition, but put it this way: Earthdawn rules =/= Ye Olde Shadowrun. The fluff is nice though.
I was always a fan of the t'skrang.

This wouldn't make Melee any more viable than it is in SR. To be good at a couple of weapons now becomes even more expensive than in SR, and Ranged Combat in a Fantasy setting is basically one or two skills (Archery, throwing).
Increasing the damage to STR+X will make melee even more an all or nothing thing. Higher damage does not make the attack less avoidable in a system where melee attacks are much easier to avoid than ranged ones.
Unless you invent all sorts of new armor values, you would not need much AP.

Make Orks green.

D&D has a setting?

Several actually.
Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance/Krynn just spring to my mind. I know there are others.

If you really want to sink home the switch from ranged to melee combat, why not just reverse the rules? Make it easier to defend against ranged attacks. As for cyberwear, I recall there being warforged in D&D. Plenty of constructs and the like, you could easily say that the implants (Made by tinker gnomes?) make you more and more like a construct, to the point that you eventually lose your sanity and become a mindless automaton. (Inforced by the current essence rules)


Side note: Make sure to enforce the "Friends in melee" penalty.

It's a bonus actually unless your enemy has brought his friends.

You'd need some basic new skills (ride, some kind of smith skill, just one off top of my head tho they shouldnt be to hard to create with tweaking) also 4th ed DnD (which IMO is awful) everyone has "powers" (which they can use daily,weekly,every turn?) you going to try to include this into your system? Alsooo like someone aboved mentioned 4th is basically a tatical board game, so if your players like that kind of thing Id suggest working out maps and scales (1sq=5ft)

Also if your players anything like my DnD group rules for burning down everything need to be made.

I was refering to it as a penalty. How many times have you seen a lone kobold?

You're also forgetting magic items. A fighter wearing magic boots of speed is almost like having skimmer discs.
Or boots that let him fly. Or a cape that turns him invisible, allows him to teleport, gives him 360 degree vision.
Or a circlet that lets him send out psychic blasts at his foes, gives him telepathy, lets him know everything (all knowledge skills).

I'd suggest 1 square/hex=1m. Less conversion that way.

Depending on which version of D&D he's coming from, he may still needs to convert things like "Move speed: 30 feet" which won't match up well.

A lot of that can be covered by non-implant gear. Boots of speed would be rollerblades. That cape that turns you invisible? Chameleon suit (or ruthy poloymer). A circlet that lets you send out psychic blasts? Posession spirit of man, with a task to cast whatever your equivilant of psychic blast is, when the wearer says the command word. For boots of flying... Why not just mod the functionality of the Lockheed Sparrow?

I'd say use SR movement, ranges and other lengths

There's no inherent issue with expanding all the melee skills to be individual weapon skills, since you're going to be ditching all of the gun skills. I'd recommend (with some specializations):

Light Blades (Daggers, Short Swords)
Heavy Blades (Longswords, two-handers)
Blunt (Clubs, Maces, Flails)
Polearms (Staves, Halberds)
Axes (One-handed, Two-handed)
Throwing Weapons (Daggers, Throwing axes, Shuriken)
Bows (Shortbows, Longbows, Composite Short/Longbows)
Crossbows (Light crossbows, Heavy crossbows, Hand crossbows)
Artillery (Catapults, Trebuchet)
Unarmed
Exotic Ranged/Melee (Whips, Ballistae, whatever specific oddities you have in the setting)

This compares to Shadowrun's Archery, Automatics, Blades, Clubs, Exotic Ranged/Melee, Heavy Weapons, Longarms, Pistols, Throwing Weapons, Unarmed, and Gunnery. This would mean that, like in SR, you'd have to expend a huge number of skill points to be a master of all weapons.

Then what you need to do is figure out what skills to keep or toss. That should be pretty easy. Most skills have a direct translation, once you ditch the tech skills.

Magic is the tricky part, though. For the most part, magic needs to function as written, but I'd recommend doing some extra work to separate the spells out into Wizard/Cleric/Druid lists (have Wizard, Cleric, and Druid as Positive Qualities) and add in some extra D&D type spells (most things are already in SR, like Magic Missile can be accomplished through one of the Bolt spells). Separate out Wizard/Cleric/Druid summoning and banishing from each other, so that each gets some summoning and/or banishing action. Phys Ads are basically monks anyway.

That needs work.

Then all you have to do is turn Cyberware into Magic Items and have people bind them with Essence like normal and you're golden. I'd also let non-magic people use Weapon foci, and add in Armor foci using the same basic rules -- they cost Karma to bind, but no Essence cost. That would let you get your +1 sword or shield or whatnot.

Oh, and weapon and armor lists. These should be creative, and I'd add in bonuses and penalties for using various individual weapons to keep them all from being stale STR/2 + 1 or 2 or 3 clones of each other.

Start a group out at "low level" with no magic items and relatively few build points. Maybe give them 300 build points, cap starting attribute points at 200, and then come up with some hideous to gold translation so that people can only afford starting equipment. Like 20 gold per build point, with a max of 50 BP spent on gold. That'd cap you out at 1000 GP. More than enough cash to buy some starting gear.

My point is: D&D has magic items that mundanes can use.

Not to mention that it has magic items that spellcasters can use without penalty. Converting magic-items into a 'cyberware-like' solution might get interesting. You might want to simply detach the essence/magic link if you're trying for a D&D-like setting. Leave it as a simple limitation on how many magical items you can have bonded to you at a given time.


On a different topic, this whole enterprise might be a lot of work for little-to-no benefit. If your gaming group is hardcore D&D-ers, they'll want to argue endlessly about any issues in your new set of rules. If the end-results of an action or a particular type of character aren't EXACTLY what they were expecting in the D&D world, they'll assume you're trying to screw them.

Ugh it is so much easier to use the SR setting with D&D rules. Push comes to shove Gamma world covers pretty much all your bases. If you really want to get frisky you can do a full convert. The SR4A rules are pretty much crap.

Could go either way. On one hand, letting people have the old "one magic item per slot" rule could work nicely. On the other hand, letting a mage make use of a Wired Reflexes 3 equivalent item with no penalty might just be ridiculous.

Mages can probably get by using the right kinds of foci. A nonmage might need a Cloak of Invisibility, but a mage could just put an Invisibility spell into a sustaining focus. Point being that a mage with access to foci and no-penalty magic items might just be a wee bit too powerful.



If your players actually assume that you're in it to try and screw them, you need better players.

I'm assuming that the OP would be converting the usual D&D magical items into shadowrun rules, and not converting shadowrun cyberware into magical items.

I think you can get the "Haste" spell enchanted on armor, but even that only grants one extra attack when doing a full-round attack. Aside from that, there's plenty of simple stat-boosting items, which should translate pretty nicely.

A slot-based system would work even better, although that loses the cyberpunk vibe of essence-loss. Now that I think about it, D&D setting shouldn't really have cyberpunk elements to it anyway.



Very true. If the OP's players are focused on the rules, he's going to have to deal with plenty of "I think it should work THIS way..." if he's going to try thing.



One big question: Are you going to stick with SR's spell-list? Or are you going to try and convert-over the mammoth list of D&D spells? Frankly, the spell-list is one of the funner bits of D&D. Wizards get REALLY powerful at high levels simply because they get access to EXTREMELY powerful spells. Dimensional Door, Wish, Black Tentacles, etc. To say nothing of Magic Missile. You can't have D&D without MM!

My idea was only to use Essence as some sort of arbitrary cap on the power of magic items you can be using at any one time, and to limit mages from being ridiculous (by reducing their available Magic if they use magic items). Unless you write in a bunch of extra restrictions on mages, there's nothing stopping them from becoming combat gods with super magic items to boost their physical abilities, powerful foci, high combat skills, and crazy magic armor. Otherwise there's no reason not to be a mage, even if you only buy a very low Magic attribute to start.



The trick with Shadowrun is that spells become more effective the stronger your Magic is, as opposed to spell strength being based on what level spell they are. So in Shadowrun you basically have "direct damage mana spell" and "direct damage physical spell" and "indirect damage mana spell" and so on and so forth ("indirect damage elemental fire area spell"), and these get to be really powerful as you get higher Magic (and thus can cast with higher Force).

For example, Manabolt = Magic Missile. Since you can multicast it if you have high enough Magic to make it effective, you could consider that the extra missiles based on your level.

A mage with Magic 9 (3 Initiation grades) could drop a Force 9 fireball and pretty well roast anyone in a 9 meter radius. I think that might qualify as the equivalent of a Meteor Storm or whatnot.

Certainly though, there are spells that don't have analogues. Mostly noncombat ones. I guess you'd just have to make them up at that point. Also teleportation spells, since those are pretty common in D&D, but forbidden in SR.

Using any of the bunch of established game systems instead of heavily homebrewing, with the quality of results not guaranteed? Say, you could use any of the previous DnD editions, Pathfinder, whatever, even RIFTS or GURPS.
That said, I for one wouldn't call 4e-only players "RPG lovers", but please let's all not go that way.

You unforgivably forgot the best ones: Planescape, Ravenloft, Spelljammer.

Uh, Digital Grimoire has an example of those in Shadowrun, too, if I recall.

Spelljammer is the only setting with purple British hippos in space

Oh yeah, if the only intent is to get your players to play a better D&D game, use Pathfinder.

This one. This one right here.

Does Digital Grimoir have magic wands of "here have some hit points"? I think not.

It does have Unique Enchantments. There you can do pretty much whatever you want, or the GM permits.

It has "here have this focus despite being mundane", which is not too far off.

Using Foci, whether as Awakened or as Mundane, however has the drawback of being hindered by Wards and other Barriers. Maybe you should either tone them down or make their creatuion more difficult.

Wards and Barriers, or Foci?

Wards and Barriers, to get more of a D&D feel.

I'd say the simple solution would be to ditch astral barriers entirely (as well as astral perception/projection). Ducking into common D&D cosmology for a second, the Astral Plane isn't something that people normally interact with except in the case of very powerful planar travel spells. The D&D Astral Plane is some sort of Whole Other Place Entirely.

Astral space in Shadowrun is more akin to the Ethereal Plane in D&D. I'd recommend that when you start porting spells over, you try to follow the D&D Ethereal concepts more than the Shadowrun Astral concepts.

Then you wouldn't have to worry about crossing wards with your magic shirt on.

Would make it by damage type (more book keeping, but better results) Chain is good vs cutting but crap vs piercing.

The weapon-smithing rules over all would need to be fixed, not intended for pc consumption. I like some of the ideas in the powers system, gives the fighter an option besides, roll d20 roll xdx do x damage wake me up when combat is over.

I would institute some along he lines of martial arts for every weapon, and multiple exclusive styles for a few. ( English v French vs. Spanish fencing)

You realize that statement only works for minimum damage, right?

Three armor types: Piercing, Slashing, and Bludgeoning.

Bludgeoning would also be used to resist indirect/elemental spell damage, since protection from bludgeoning is mostly about impact distribution and padding.

I'm not gonna read the whole thread, but I saw 'you'd have to make everyone Awakened'. ... So do that. Everyone's an Adept. Mages are MysAds. Magic items, extra IPs, etc. are now solved (so you can work on the other 99% that still needs solving!).

I would make Adept a 25 point or better edge. Its cheap in 2070 but it RULES in 1270

Also I would add in weapon breakage. Steel wasn't always the standard.

I wouldn't change that. It is one of the things that always irked me with D&D. I don't get why it should be inefficient for a PC to craft stuff even if he invested everything to be able to do so.
Arsenal already has maneuvers. I don't very much like abilities that are limited to x/encounter or y/day.

I like the idea of removing full mages and making them mystic adepts. It removes the "problems" of astral scouting.

Dungeon and Tavern. *runs*

Try looking up Artificer. They got "crafting exp" that let them craft stuff without spending exp, got special crafting feats to cut the gold cost (my friend got it down to 25%; charged the party half), can create 1 charge magic wands of (any?) spell for immediate use, could craft little golems that could...help craft.

When the party was level 4 he crafted a CR 11 clay golem (via golem manual: crafting the manual was cheaper than making the golem). Because of the 1% cumulative chance that it would go crazy in combat, the standing orders were, "if it goes crazy, run, and hope something else can kill it." It never did, but we got that % up to 14% one time (doing the math it's about a 33% chance that rolling the d% that many times that the golem doesn't go crazy).

All the extra money he took from the party he turned into scrolls. A couple of really expensive 9th level spells saved our ass on several occasions.

That is both disturbing and admirable.

I always had a soft spot for those hacker/engineer/artificer/wizard classes that consider it a virtue to squeeze the rules of the universe for a little something extra.

In D&D with Challenge Ratings for encounters and set wealth for each level, crafting your own stuff may sound a bit overpowering, but if you use other rules anyway I don't see why you have to limit crafting further than it is already by the SR rules. Remember, the character still has to acquire the appropriate skills, tools(or rights to use someone else's) and materials. This should limit crafting enough, unless you want to make a whole adventure from it.

The dungeon we were running also had two artifacts he picked up:
The Black Robe of the Archmagi
and The Necronomicon

It wasn't really the Necronomicon, but we called it that. It contained every spell that was [Evil] in it, and you could cast them as if you knew the spell. You had to make a Fort save, success meant you lost permanent maximum HP equal to the level of the spell (failure, you lost twice that much). My friend ended up burning half his HP in that manner, every spell was worth it.

Don't forget the space penguins that fly into battle in plate mail on the backs of flying pigs

O.o

o.O

O.O

This reminds me of my parents trying to describe the '60s.