Occupations: Converting D&D classes to Runequest

[Utgardloki]

As another attempt at a good way to convert a D&D setting to Runequest, I've come up with the concept of Occupations.

Occupations are based on the D&D classes, except that the Occupation name would be something that a PC would put on his resume. A PC's occupation only applies during character creation, as an aid to creating a character capable of fulfilling a given role.

An Occupation gives a number of "occupation skill points" which can be used for "occupation skills". An occupation may also provide other benefits such as access to arcane or divine magic. An Occupation is a bit more flexible than a Profession, in that instead of assigning so many points to such-and-such skills, a pool of skill points is divided among skills on a list.

Starting at the beginning of the alphabet (which is a habit of mine), the first class I tried porting over was the Barbarian. In the Iron Kingdoms, I decided to rename the occupation "Woodsman", and make it more general for any character who is skilled at survival in the woods. I thought I'd post my conversions here for comments.

Woodsman (Swampie, Desertman, Mountain man)

Woodsmen (and woodswomen) tend to be more comfortable in the wilderness than in civilized society. They are as likely to worship Orboros, Dhunia, or the Devouring Wurm as they are to worship Morrow or Menoth. Occasionally they appear in the city to buy, sell or trade things, observe a wedding or funeral, or take on a special job. Some woodsmen live double lives, spending part of the year in the city and part of the year out in the wilderness.

Occupation Skills: Starting characters may divide 160 skill points among the following skills: Athletics, Boating, Brute Force, Climb, Craft, First Aid, Handle Animal, Berserk Fury*, Healing, Intimidate, Jump, Listen, Language (Molgur), Lore (Animal), Lore (Plant), Lore (Monster), Perception, Resilience, Ride, Run, Stealth, Survival, Swim, Unarmed, Weapon Use (any), Woodland Stride*, Woodsman*

* Indicates a virtue skill based on the Nature allegience.

"Climb", "Swim", "Jump", and "Run" are specializations of the "Athletics" skill. "Berserk Fury" is designed to mimic the D&D Rage special ability. "Woodsman" is a special skill designed to prevent a woodsman from looking or feeling like an idiot for failing a simple die roll. "Woodland Stride" combines the Woodland Stride and Trackless Step special abilities.

As time permits, I'll post the other occupations and the skills and other benefits associated with them. Any feedback will be appreciated.

 

[Halfbat]

A start!

Yes, it would be nice to see someone's approach to them all.

The only comment I'd have is that I'm quite happy with the skill abstractions in RuneQuest (which are in some of the Mongoose d20 implementations also), so I think it is worth leaving them amalgamated rather than developing more basic skills just to match the current d20.

No only that but it means the translation is closer to the SRD and easier to implement rather than having to redo standard character sheets and the like with the additional skills.

Thanks

 

[elgrin]

I am currently converting RQ2 rather than D&D NPC's for MRQ use, but I am interested to see Utgardloki align both Climb and Jump to Athletics.
My take has been to align Climb/Run with Athletics, but Jump with Acrobatics as it seems to feel like a better fit, IMHO.

elgrin

 

[Utgardloki]

I am going to have a problem because of confusion between MRQ skill names, D&D skill names, D&D 3.0 skill names, Iron Kingdom skill names, and skill names that just come out of my own mind. I am going to have to get at least a partial list together.

For ease of conversion, I'd like to use D&D skill names, perhaps with a concordance where the same skill is known by different names (e.g. Concentration vs Persistence, or even Creature Lore, Lore (Monsters), and Knowledge (Monsters)). I've already developed specialization rules that allow for D&D skills like Climb and Swim to be used with MRQ skills like Athletics.

The purpose is to ease the conversion for players, by providing guidance for creating Runequest PCs when the players are familiar with the D&D classes. I also decided that I needed occupations to balance priests, wizards, scoundrels, and others. Essentially, a benefit such as divine spells or arcane training is balanced by having fewer skill points, the way that it is in D&D.

Bards in the Iron Kingdoms are different from bards in most other settings. In IK, they are called "warbards." In converting the setting to Runequest, I assumed that warbards are sorcerers that are trained in the "Music" rune, which also needs to be defined. Most of the D&D bardic abilities would be subsumed as spells within the Music rune. In addition, for each rune I defined a cantrip which can be cast using the rune; the basic "bardic music" ability is defined as the cantrip for the Music rune.

Warbard

The armies of the Iron Kingdoms employ war bards, who are people with the gift of sorcery who achieve legitimacy by having their talents focused into serving their country. After one or more terms of service with the military, some war bards retire to become performers or professors or even adventurers.

Occupation Skills: Starting characters may divide 100 skill points among the following skills: Persuade, Athletics, Persistance, Craft, Knowledge (any), Decipher Script, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Perception, Listen, Perform, Profession, Ride, Search, Sense Motive, Language (any), Spellcraft, Spot, Use Magic Device, Weapon Use (any).
In addition, war bards gain +20% in Rune casting (Music) and +20% in Perform (pipes).

Other Benefits: Warbards are attuned to the Music rune in addition to any other runes that they may be attuned to. Warbards usually have this rune carved into their favorite instrument. Even though the Music rune will not be your favored rune, you start out with the favored starting spell anyway.

 

[Halfbat]

I am currently converting RQ2 rather than D&D NPC's for MRQ use, but I am interested to see Utgardloki align both Climb and Jump to Athletics.
My take has been to align Climb/Run with Athletics, but Jump with Acrobatics as it seems to feel like a better fit, IMHO.

Yep - Jump/Tumble/balance does seem to fit much better with Acrobatics whilst Swim / Climb / Run does seem to fit better with Athletics. However, Climb and Jump with Athletics is straight out of the RQ rulebook.

 

[Utgardloki]

I would say that if it is a matter of jumping high or jumping far (say across a chasm), then Athletics would be used.

If it is a matter of jumping to exactly where you want to go, then Acrobatics would be used.

My specialization rules easily handle both aspects. If you are jumping across a chasm and only care that you get to the other side, then you'd add your Jump plus your Athletics to determine your effective skill %. If you want to jump onto a narrow ledge several feet away and want to be sure you actually hit that ledge, then you'd add Jump plus Acrobatics.

Actually, you might need all three: Jump + Athletics to be able to jump far enough to reach the ledge, and then Jump + Acrobatics to be able to precisely land on the ledge, then maybe Jump + Balance to be able to stay on the ledge for more than a second, if the ledge is very small.

My main motivation in starting this thread was to get feedback on the occupation skill lists.

In the case of the Barbarian/Woodsman, I judged that they'd be good at jumping across gullies and climbing up trees and rocks, but would probably not have training to precisely manuever like a gymnast. (Of course, there are always the free skill points, if somebody wants to do that.) So I put Athletics on their occupations skill list, and a few specific athletic skills they'd be good at, such as Jump, Climb, and Swim. I've house ruled that Brute Force is a different skill than Athletics, because it is based on different attributes. Therefore Brute Force has to be listed separately.

It occurs to me, however, that a player might want to make a "Janna of the Jungle" type, or a Tarzan type who like to leap onto dangerous wild animals. Certainly a kid growing up in the woods would have plenty of opportunity to practice swinging from trees and balancing on branches. So I'll put Acrobatics and Balance on their occupation skill list.

(Technically, a "Desertman" should not have Swim on his occupation skill list, but most players creating a "Desertman" character would probably not put points in "Swim" or "Boating" anyway. Still, maybe it is worth a footnote that "Desertman" characters do not get these as occupation skills.)

I should note that the character creation rules allow for up to 20 points to be put into a skill during the Breadth of Knowledge phase, 30 points during the Occupation Skill phase, and 50 points during the Free Skill Point phase. PCs automatically start out with 90 points in Dodge, so Dodge is not listed as an occupation skill for any occupation.

 

[Utgardloki]

The following is my attempt at making a conversion for a Cleric occupation. I am making the assumption that a "Priest" is a clergy who exists in a city or at least a civilized village, and that there are "Shamans" and "Druids" and "Antidruids" who exist as separate occupations.

I also am making a few changes to the way divine magic work:

1. Characters gain divine spells by sacrificing Hero Points in a religious ritual. To control how many divine spells a character may gain, the Faith skill is used as a limit.

2. Characters who gain divine spells may cast them repeatedly, as long as they have Manna. (I think for the Iron Kingdoms setting, "Manna" would be tracked separately from "Magic Points" with one being used for arcane magic and one being used for divine.) The intent is the divine magic works like arcane magic in many respects.

3. Divine magic is cast using a Faith skill instead of Lore (specific religion).

I'm not sure how to do domains, of if I should do domains in the Iron Kingdoms. Perhaps in that particular setting I could have devotion to an Ascendant/Scion/Aspect available for the sacrifice of hero points to grant an appropriate bonus. However, I'm not sure if domains are needed in Runequest because the RQ game mechanics make it easier to tailor a character to his mission without making changes to his character class.

So, the writeup I have for the Priest occupation is as follows:

Priest

A priest is an agent of a deity, ordained and imbued with divine power. Human priests have the following gods to choose from: Menoth, Morrow, Thamar, Cyriss, and Lord Toruk. (Druids may have Orboros, Dhunia, or the Devouring Wurm as patrons. Antidruids may have Cyriss or Lord Toruk as patrons. Any deity may be a patron for a Shaman.)

Occupation Skills: Starting characters may divide 40 skill points among the following skills: Persistence, Craft, Faith, Turn Undead, Influence, First Aid, Medicine, Knowledge, Lay on Hands, or Weapon Use (Simple).
In addition, priests gain +20% in Knowledge (Specific Religion) and +4% Faith.

Other Benefits: Priests start play with two 1-magnitude divine spells and one 2-magnitude divine spell. Priests in this game can cast divine spells using their Manna; they do not lose spells that are cast, and as long as their Manna holds out can cast any divine spell they have. Priests may not change their spells known each day. Although a priest may choose to lose a known spell in order to gain a new spell, but must still pay the full Hero Point cost for the new spell. A priest may have a number of divine spells whose total magnitude is less than or equal to his Faith score.

 

[Utgardloki]

This "shaman" occupation is a bit different from other definitions of "shaman" that might be floating around. Essentially, I am using this term for priests who operate in the wilderness, but do not necessarily embed themselves as druids do; they usually worship deities other than the nature deities, and serve isolated communities where knowledge of survival is important.

I am most concerned about balancing the Shaman occupation vs the Priest occupation. I start the Priest out with more magic, but the Shaman gets more skills.

This setting will also have "druids", but I've decided to make those arcane casters who master one of the special runes of the gods of nature.

The tentative definition of "shaman" is as follows:

Shaman

A shaman is a priest of a god, operating or skilled in operating in the wilderness. They are outside the normal Priest hierarchy, but often play an essential role in remote villages, especially among scattered Menite communities in northern Khador.

Occupation Skills: Starting characters may divide 120 skill points among the following skills: Athletics, Boating, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Disguise, Faith, First Aid, Handle Animal, Heal, Influence, Language (Molgur), Stealth, Jump, Knowledge, Perception, Persistence, Resilience, Survival, Swim, Throwing, Tracking, Turn Undead, Use Rope, Weapon Use (quarterstaff, dagger, bow, short sword, or axe), Woodland Stride, Woodsman.

Other Benefits: A shaman starts play with two 1st-magnitude divine spells, as long as her Faith is at least 2%. Shamans cast divine spells as priests do.

 

[Utgardloki]

Actually, I've thought of an easier way.

Really, all D&D classes can be considered as combinations of spells, combat abilities, skills, and special abilities. (And also saving throws, whether they get one good save or two good saves.) In Runequest, these would be spells, skills, and legendary abilities.

The idea is instead of working out an occupation for each class, I can just create "packages". PCs could create an occupation using three packages, e.g. skill-skill-skill, spell-skill-skill, spell-spell-spell, etc.

It seems that in Runequest, if most D&D class special abilities are converted to special skills, the only two packages I need are the Spell Package, and the Skills Package. Perhaps one Skills package can be 40 skill points, while one Spell package can be the equivalent of two one-magnitude spells, one two-magnitude spell, or a one-magnitude spell and something else, such as a unique rune or ability.

Applying this to the 11 standard D&D classes I get the following:

Barbarian: Skill-Skill-Skill. At least one skills package should be spent on combat skills, and one on survival skills.

Bard: Spell-Skill-Skill. A bard gets the Music rune and one one-magnitude spell.

Cleric: Spell-Spell-Skill. Clerics get divine magic. Alternatively, a Nature Priest could have Spell-Skill-Skill, with one skill package for nature skills.

Druid: Spell-Skill-Skill. What a "druid" actually is may vary from setting to setting, and perhaps the Spell-Spell-Skill option could be used if druids are interpreted as having special special abilities.

Fighter: Skill-Skill-Skill. Fighters specialize of course in combat skills.

Monk: Skill-Skill-Skill. For Iron Kingdoms, I've considered there are four types of martial artists, each with their own unique skills that can only be learned from their instructors. (To the official two orders I've added two others: the Order of the Circle which is associated with the machinery goddess, and the Pugalists, which are an association of boxers who typically compete for pay.)

Paladin: Skill-Skill-Skill or Spell-Skill-Skill. I've made abilities like Lay on Hands and Turn Undead to be "virtue" skills, which are skills that can only be built up as high as your Virtue rating. Your Virtue rating goes up through role-playing.

Ranger: Skill-Skill-Skill. In the Iron Kingdoms, a Ranger is indistinguishable from a Barbarian, except the that Ranger has a military commission. For this setting, since an official commission includes duties as well as benefits, I don't consider them to have a cost.

Rogue: Skill-Skill-Skill.

Sorcerer: Spell-Spell-Spell.

Wizard: Spell-Spell-Skill. Wizards have to have the Read Magic skill, which is a skill I invented that allows the user to read spells from books and write spells to books. My concept is that spells can be prepared or memorized or read with the book in the hand. A prepared spell takes less time to cast. A memorized spell can be cast without reference to the book (like taking the Spell Mastery feat in D&D). Sorcerers have to memorize all their spells, if they don't know how to read spellbooks.

I don't see a need to require a single Skill package to be devoted to nature, urban, or social skills. Essentially, the players can be referred to the D&D books if they want guidance on what skills they should take.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

The idea is instead of working out an occupation for each class, I can just create "packages". PCs could create an occupation using three packages, e.g. skill-skill-skill, spell-skill-skill, spell-spell-spell, etc.

It seems that in Runequest, if most D&D class special abilities are converted to special skills, the only two packages I need are the Spell Package, and the Skills Package. Perhaps one Skills package can be 40 skill points, while one Spell package can be the equivalent of two one-magnitude spells, one two-magnitude spell, or a one-magnitude spell and something else, such as a unique rune or ability.

This is a much better approach! I could never see the point of playing RQ if you were going to spend all your time inventing rules to turn it in to D&D. You are much better off playing to the strengths of the sytem (no constraining character classes and levels)

I'd be tempted to simplify further back to 1st Ed Core Classes

Fighters, Barbarians, Rangers and Paladins are all basically fighters with just a difference of emphasis - (Paladins are fighters who have chosen to take some Divine magic)

Thieves (Rogues), Bards and possibly Monks are characters who have chosen to emphasise skills other than combat ("Combat" Monks are another flavour of fighter)

Clerics and Druids are Divine Magic Users. (Or, dependent on the Cult, Shaman/Spirit Magic Users). "traditionally" for RQ, this is where a lot of your development time will take place, creating/adapting the different Cults so that different Gods provide different magic and expect their clerics to learn different skills.

Magic Users and Sorcerors are characters who have concentrated on spell casting skills. "Traditional" D&D Magic Users are RQ Sorcerors - Learning spells from Grimoires. 3rd Ed Sorcerors don't have a direct RQ equivalent, but are probably best modelled by MRQ Rune Magic users.

One of the distinguishing features of RQ was always that everyone could do magic (which also meant it downplayed magic items considerably compared to D&D). MRQ doesn't really do this very well at the moment, as Common Magic is still missing, but again, this is where your Cults will/should help to allow characters to "specialise" in a role

 

[Utgardloki]

Really, the only reason for doing all this work is to ease the transition of the setting from a D&D one to a Runequest one. I probably wouldn't do all this if I were creating my own setting or using one from a book, movie, or TV show.

IK was designed using the D&D ruleset, but with a lot of ideas to not make it a traditional D&D setting. This makes it a bit problematic to convert, because I always have to keep asking what is meant to be a part of the setting and what just is there because that's how D&D is.

Can anybody be a sorcerer or do you need the right bloodline or gift? Can a sorcerer become a wizard by just learning to read magic books, or are they incompatible ways of practicing magic? Can a barbarian learn to lay on hands, or is that reserved for paladins? What, exactly, is a druid in this setting and how can this be expressed in the Runequest rules?

I think if I were converting my homebrew D&D setting, I'd just scrap all the classes and just define unique skills for organizations that required them. I'd use magic straight from the Runequest books, except as houseruled to my tastes. I'd scrap the class names and simply list the occupations that make sense, and any requirements for them that make sense.

But for IK I want to preserve the feel that has been developed for that setting, which means defining how different characters fit in the world. (Indidently, it is intended that any IK human could learn magic, although many DMs put multiclass restrictions up.)