Just a quick question... How would you convert the attributes of something in Earthdawn into Shadowrun? I recently got my hands on an Earthdawn sourcebook that I would be interested in using in a Shadowrun campaign. It doesnt seem as if it would be difficult to convert them - I just dont have any real sense of exactly how powerful these things are supposed to be. Thanks

Either use the step number, or divide by three. Up to you.

Dont know what you mean by "using the step number," and dividing by 3 seems rather weak...

Okay, ED attributes typically range from 1 to 18, sometimes higher. Dividing by 3 can give you an attribute number within the typical SR spectrum.

However, the attributes give you step numbers, which are the actual mechanic, and they typically range from 1-9, which is also within the typical SR spectrum.

Hmm... Well, I must say that I dont really see what the fuss is concerning Horrors that lack the Damage Shift power. They dont seem to be all that powerful in the greater scheme of things.

Horrors vary in power, subtlety, and strengths. Damage shift is nasty, but you can be just as dead when a trio of gharmeks send 150 cadaver men at you.

So in Shadowrun would Horrors have immunity to normal weapons?

Again, depends on the Horror. But genreally speaking, any strictly physical or dual-natured Horror is vulnerable to normal weapons to some extent.

Cannon or not I always thought the immunity to normal weapons rules were pretty lame. If they wanted to make magic things have an equivalent of harden armor or make certain attack types less effective they could have come up with something better. It has always been one of the few things that bug me in shadowrun's rules.

i think it works really well. more powerful spirits are harder to damage, weaker spirits still have an edge that makes them viable opponents for runners. what, specifically, don't you like about it?

and, for the love of mike, it's 'canon'.

The beauty of horrors is that they're such a varied opponent. We in the shadowrun world often get dazzled by the idea of these creatures that once destroyed damn near everything (if in fact Earthdawn and Shadowrun are supposed to take place in the same world--I personally think they weren't originally intended to; it's something that got written in at a time when much of SR was becoming lame). A good thorough reading of Earthdawn shows that "horror" is just a term for anything that lives in astral space. Technically, a lot of the spirits used in SR would fall under that definition. Ignoring that, though, it also means that a lot of horrors are weak. The trick there is that there are a LOT of them. Part of the scourge that ED was recovering from was horrible just because there were hordes of these things going around. If your group wants to play SR as if it were a continuation of ED, you can make things either easy on the 6th world (by only letting minor horrors show up), or extremely difficult (by bringing up the fact that nobody in SR uses a spell matrix--they're ALL screwed) or anything in between. In short, though, some horrors are wimps compared to a lot of SR characters. But as gamemaster, you can also make them much more powerful. Basically, horrors could conceivably have any power found anywhere in SR, and a whole lot more. They're really the most flexible enemy you can come up with, because you can mold them for ANY power level of character. Just be prudent about it. They might make your game kinda weird if you let things get out of control. Then again, weird might be what you're going for, which is also cool...

I haven't picked up SOTA yet, but doesn't the filtering Metatechnique introduce the spell matricies or am I grasping straws at that one?

Don

(5+5/point) lbs

So, to properly convert (by encumberance standards): add one, divide by 2.2 and round to the nearest whole number.

Could you be a little more clear on that equation? By what you just wrote nobody could ever carry more than 10 pounds and your ability to carry weight actually goes down as your strength goes up.

I'm guessing what you meant to type was 5 + 5*points pounds rather than dividing. That means our str 18 Earthdawn metahuman can pick up 95 pounds, which is pretty good if it gives you no penalties at all. Does str 18 apply to humans or are we talking Trolls at that point?

That gives us 43 kilograms, which we'll round up to 45, giving us Str 9 for a shadowrun character.

Thus conversions work as follows (Note that weights have been rounded to nearest 5 lbs/kilos, which is why it seems to skip and jump a bit.)

ED Str: 18
SR Str: 9
Pound: 95
Kilo: 45

ED Str: 17
SR Str: 8
Pound: 90
Kilo: 40

ED Str: 16
SR Str: 8
Pound: 85
Kilo: 40

ED Str: 15
SR Str: 7
Pound: 80
Kilo: 35

ED Str: 15
SR Str: 7
Pound: 75
Kilo: 35

ED Str: 14
SR Str: 6
Pound: 70
Kilo: 30

ED Str: 13
SR Str: 6
Pound: 65
Kilo: 30

ED Str: 12
SR Str: 6
Pound: 60
Kilo: 30

ED Str: 11
SR Str: 5
Pound: 55
Kilo: 25

ED Str: 10
SR Str: 4
Pound: 50
Kilo: 20

ED Str: 9
SR Str: 4
Pound: 45
Kilo: 20

ED Str: 8
SR Str: 4
Pound: 40
Kilo: 20

ED Str: 7
SR Str: 3
Pound: 35
Kilo: 15

ED Str: 6
SR Str: 3
Pound: 30
Kilo: 15

ED Str: 5
SR Str: 2
Pound: 25
Kilo: 10

ED Str: 4
SR Str: 2
Pound: 20
Kilo: 10

ED Str: 3
SR Str: 1
Pound: 15
Kilo: 5

Thus we have it, since metahumans in SR can't go below 1 any ED str of 3 or less is 1. It seems reasonable enough to compare all other stats at the same conversion rate.

That was supposed to read "five plus five per point"
[edit] my mistake, the rate changes after strength 7 (should remember to read closely the first time)

7: 40
8: 50
9: 60
10: 70
11: 80
12: 90
13: 105
14: 125
15: 145
16: 165
17: 200
18: 230
19: 270
20: 315

the chart goes up to 30, with a unencumbered capacity of 1,405 pounds. If you need anything above 20, (SR strength of 29 by encumberance rules) maybe that PC shouldn't be crossed over.

Alright, thanks. This conversion seems a bit more to my liking than division by 3 in terms of where I would like the power levels to be.

[Edit] ...or maybe not. So attributes in ED scale strangely, eh? If I'm understanding the combination of Herald of Verjigorm's and Moonstone Spider's data correctly, here are the actual conversions:

ED | SR
1 : 1
2 : 1
3 : 1
4 : 2
5 : 2
6 : 3
7 : 4
8 : 4
9 : 6
10 : 6
11 : 7
12 : 8
13 : 9

Is this correct? That seems rather strange to me, but, then again, I don't really have any way to judge the reasonableness of that conversion.[/Edit]