4E Conversion Organization Thread

I wouldn't mind taking a stab at the PoL Planescape strategy.  Been on vacation for a few weeks, and hadn't gotten a chance to check my web stuff, and was overjoyed to see people actually picked up on my post.  Clueless, just gotta say thanks for taking the helm on this one, you rock!  My basic idea for combining the two cosmologies has a couple of stumbling points. 

1.) Do we continue with cannon beyond 2e or 3e?  Do we want the factions as they were, or as they stand in 3e/3.5.  Basically being no longer part of Sigil's day-to-day business and administration.  Personally, I like the old 2e ideas, but wouldn't mind a facelift on the factions, or even Factols and named NPCs.  That said, it would be great to include old faces from some of the longer lived races.

2.)  The ideas I have for reinterpreting the Planar Cosmology could be somewhat drastic, given the large difference between 2e(and even 3e) cosmology with 4e.  To include things like the war with the Primordials, emergence of new races, and loss of old distinictions would be a different view from rebuilding the old Planescape setting with a new operating system (4e).

My personal pick is to combine 2e and 4e, and give 3e a miss, or at least, give a nod to it's changes, and then show how they came back in line with the old 2e paradigm.  For example, if reintroducing the Factions to Sigil, how have they changed since their departure from Sigil and their time on other planes.  Here's the rundown on what I'd like to do though:

A long time ago the Planes were all connected, all infinite, and all upheld by the power of belief.  The Primoridal War destroyed that.  The Primordials, imprisoned for eons by the Powers they created to govern their Creation, slipped their bonds and reshaped the multiverse in their own image.  The Powers had long ago shaped consensus and belief to their benefit, making Realms that suited their portfolios and whims.  Over time, the Powers grew weaker, as the planes around them expanded stretching the boundaries or reality.  If the planes are shaped by belief, and the Powers feed upon the belief of their followers, what happens when mortals stop believing in the powers?  The Factions were responsible for this in part, large numbers of mortals flocked to these belief systems, each investing their will in the reshaping of the multiverse.  The Powers hold on reality wanes, the Primordials, and the cults and monsters that they spawned in times out of mind, began chipping away further at the Power's hegemony.  Eventually something gave, perhaps one or more of the Primordials escaped their confinement, and all hell broke loose. 

A war began that subsumed all levels of reality, and reshaped belief.  The Primordials destroyed Powers, the powers Realms disolved, and eventually the concept of a balanced cosmology was shattered.  The Spire fell, the planes fractured.  Eventually the Gods were able to overcome their petty squabbling and power mongering that had occupied them since they first imprisoned their creators, and united.  The Powers gathered their supporters, and worked together to maintain various Realms that had become small islands of stability during the shattering.  Now the Gods began to fight desperately to recapture their progenitors.  Eventually most of the Primoridals were captured or destroyed once more, those that were not were banished beyond the boundries of consentual realiy.  Hope began to re-emerge, and the Powers and various Planars began healing the wounds that had been inflicted on reality.  Certain Realms, Planes, and Powers were destroyed, their belief snuffed out.  Others merged their portfolios and realms to consolidate their power.

This is just a quick blurb on some general ideas that have been floating around in my braincase.  I'll get working on writing up a more comprehensive idea if this sounds good to anyone else.  If not I shut my bonebox and keep watching.

Another thing, is do we use a lot of Erik Mona's ideas and concepts that popped up in 3e such as the Obyriths and the Loumara but haven't even appeared in 4e yet. 

I'm actually in favour of using the Obyriths as I like the idea of such beings even if they're a lot like the terrors of the Far Realm.  If they're being used with the 4e primordials, then the Obyriths can be some of the seeds of evil that came with the creation of the Abyss, while the Loumara can still be the dreams of some pantheon that the Abyss is digesting.

I think what Kobold means is to use some of the meta-plot about the Obyrths, sort of pre-tana'ri demons ( I like to think of them as Cthuloid horrors ) and weave that in.  Ultimately, like my ideas it's more of a non-PSCS cannon idea that incorporates info from a different edition of the game.  It could likely be used for flavor, and be hinted at, but has little impact on the project as such.

I personally just like to link cosmologies.  That said there is a big difference between Planescape and every other D & D setting ever.  Philosophy and role-playing, seasoned with intrigue is the meat of most PS campaigns.  That didn't quite lend it self to the 3e designs philosophy which was more centered on "kewl powerz" than previous editions.  3e's breadth of choices allowed players to run a huge number of creatures, not truly playable in old 2e, which was great, but the products were always about selling you something new.  4e seems to focus a lot on combat in the rules, and relegates anything non-combat oriented to role-playing, skill challenges, and rituals.  4e also wants to bring in the epic feel to campaigns, allowing players to portray larger than life heroes with epic destinies moving between the PoL's to carve civilization out of the darkness.  Overall the theme to 4e is greatness lost and heroes rediscovering or reclaiming those lost glories. 

So a 4e Planescape would have a different feel, than a 2e, or even a 3e Planescape campaign.  If you're just looking for fluff and flavor, I would almost recommend just suggesting the old books, and ignoring rules.  Mechanically, we can do that.  Make up some homebrew 4e rules for old 2e or 3e concepts and go with it.  To make the setting something new, we need to update, at least a bit, not only the flavor, but the make up of the Planes.  For example no longer are the planes infinite, the Astral is, presumably, but without 4e cannon material, the Realms as they've been described are closer to demi-planes or even the Earthmotes from FR.  They have finite dimensions and  have significant changes to their cosmology.  So the question is, do we want the old PSCS setting whole and unchanged, with a nod to 4e, and just new rules write ups for the old stuff.  Or do we adapt the setting to 4e not just behind the scenes (i.e. the rules), but change certain elements to fit 4e.  If we do that, we have to explain why things are different, how they changed, and how that impacted the people that populated the planes before the change.

For example, Forgotten Realms moved the whole timeline forward 100 years.  This killed off certain NPCs just because they were mortal.  It changed political powers, national boundries, and even the rules of magic and the gods in that setting.  To change the whole of the planes, while still leaving alive the Factols (that survived the Faction War) and various NPCs we all know and love as PS fans, would require a different kind of explanation.  4e cosmology as it stands turns the planes into islands, and isolates them more than any previous edition.  Part of this was the abandonment of the old alignment system, which was linked intrinsically with the Great Wheel.  Without that to support some of the border planes, mostly the planes covered in the old Planes of Conflict boxed set, are pointless, or at least less important in the scheme of things.  It invalidates the Blood War, because no longer does evil care what flavor of evil other evil factions are, it comes down to personal choice. 

Philisophically, they blurred the lines between Neutral X and Lawful X.  How different is Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil?  To some players, it was very different, but only really depending on how you looked at it.  A Baatezu and a Yugoloth will both make deals with you, they will both desire to get the better part of the deal, and to find loopholes in that, with which to manipulate it to their own ends.  Both will wish to betray you, Baatezu are only slightly more honor bound to hold to their end of the bargain.  That said, any Baatezu worth his salt could work his way out of a deal that he didn't want to honor.  Conversely any Yugoloth would honor a deal as long as it suited his purposes.  You could argue all day the variables, but it comes down to one thing, you can't trust either of them because at heart they're evil.

Chaotic Good and Neutral Good were similar.  What does it matter if the person sometimes supporst law and sometimes doesn't.  A chaotic good PC must sometimes see the benefits of law.  Robin Hood was a bandit in the stories and worked against the corruption of the Sheriff and the Prince.  At the end though, he supports King Richard the Lionheart, another exemplar of Law.  Is Robin Chaotic or Neutral Good?

Where the big difference comes in is Lawful Netural and Chaotic Neutral, but even those can just as easily be defined as Unaligned and leaning towards law or chaos can be a matter of roleplaying and personal choice.  Any neutral character could help or harm you in 2e and 3e depending on the situation.  His flavor of law or chaos just informed how he might help or hinder the situation.  Planescape gives us a nice out to the question of alignment, while still allowing us to address the differences in paradigms by having the factions.  A Guvner could be Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, or Evil, but not Chaotic Evil.  No matter what his alignment he would feel an unwavering respect for the law.  A Xaositect could not be Lawful Good, but would otherwise be free to pick his moral alignment and no matter what he chose he would disdain all laws.

So how cannon do we want this version to be, and what of 4e will be a part of it other than the rules?  Really I don't see too much point in just re-writing old material in a new voice.  The old material is great, it's what made the fans of this site fall in love with Planescape.  For a 4e reformat, we want old fans and new fans to fall in love with an evolved world that has moved logically from its older setting to the new one.   If not, we're just rebuilding the old planes with a new layer of paint and possibly a different support structure as represented by the 4e rules.

I don't think you're a twit, quite the contrary, but thanks for clarifying.  I guess I got caught up in my question.  Sorry.  That said, I just find it hard to imagine the two cosmologies and co-existing.  Just like the Urban Planescape project.  Full of neat ideas, but you couldn't really work it in to currently running games.  You sort of needed a fresh start.  It's a different animal.

I suppose when it comes down to it, I'd like to work on ideas for the first audience, as I wouldn't want step on any toes.  Sadly I don't have online at home, so I only get to participate in this community via forums and news articles writen by others.  I've never gotten a chance to enjoy the modules or play, or really add anything other than my two cents.  I would like to update various races to 4e, I think that's the most fun.  I like what's been done so far by some of the other posters on the factions.  All in all, I look forward to helping in whatever way I can.

All aspects are up for discussion (as I understand it). There's no single authority passing judgement on what to allow and not to allow.

There does seem to be consensus for reinstating the 9 alignments in the "Original Planescape cosmos with 4E rules" approach, however.

As to action points, what did you have in mind about how they are gained? 

All of the above.  My father is a professional writer, copywriter, and now Episcopal priest.  When I was a kid and would bring him thing I had wrought hoping for praise, I would get my paper back with red marks and clarifications.  Praise came for what was good, but it instilled in me a very picky nature on the matter of writing.  I'd say the only thing I haven't been able to properly correct in myself is run-on sentences, but I'd like to think I'm pretty good at spotting mistakes in grammar and spelling.  Especially spelling.

 Send me anything you want I'd be happy to go over it with a fine toothed comb.  Part of next week I'll be out of town, so I may or may not be able to do much, but the week after I'm on vacation.  If I can work a hotel, or friend/family member with wi-fi, I should be able to accomplish a bit more though.

It looks interesting for a standard campaign and for a planescape campaign, but it don't look to fit perfectly with belief. Anyway, it is a good starting point. We could combine it with a classic belief points system.

The first excerpt of the Manual of the Planes is up and the mechanics "Influence Unstable Plane" doesn't look all that bad, in my opinion. Seems like they can be used more or less as is for Limbo.

EDIT: Oops, didn't notice a new thread was started discussing this very topic.

I know  it's kind of self promotin, but here are some races from 3rd edition, plus Rogue Slaadi.

 http://thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=728

Okay, on prestige classes: For some reason I love generic stuff, so here's what I can do until I get into the specifics.

Gatecrasher - A portal master, attacks are Cha-based swashbuckling attacks or mind assaults, abilities deal with finding portals and disrupting and defending agaisnt non-material creatures.

Proxy -  All done, found here

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16640786#post16640786

Hope it works

Planar Champion - A champion of a particular plane, gains abilities agiasnt all others.

 Union Sentinel - Like the idea, but really needs to be rewritten. Perhaps they are masters of defense and striking when the time is right.

An optional little bit, I was looking through the Planewalker's Handbook, I think, and I  found a little section that listed all the races and classes from back then. Anyway, I was looking through all the races and I saw that fiends was listed and thought that was kind of cool because you could play as fiends in third edition, but it always seemed kind of impossible to me in 3.5 because it always took about 20 levels. Because every race was balanced and could be played at the begining, I tried my hand at creating a monstrous race so you could play demons or devils or archons or whatever floats your boat. Anyway, here it is:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Monstrous_Race_(4e_Race)

Also, here are the paragon paths and epic destinies for those who want to advance more as monsters.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Monstrous_Paragon_(4e_Paragon_Path)

Beautiful. we could expand your concepts with racial feats. 

I'm not sure if anybody remembers this, but here's my analysis of the new listing of the planes (ignore the part about the outlands and gatetowns, I wrote this a while ago before the new excerpt).

 /080719/the-planes-reordered-4e-planescape

Sorry. I explained not it very well.
I would say it about high level mostrous races like beholders. Orc, kobold, minotaur, gnoll, doppleganger are all playables.
Wizards don't support large creatures as player race, first of all for the close burst of the powers and for the reach etc... etc...
I would like have the wemics as playable race or the centaurs but we can have only one of medium size.

You mean like noting which factions often feature specific classes or cutters gifted by a particular source of power?

I guess it could be informative to new players to suggest that characters with divine power isn't common among the Athar, or that the Revolutionary League features a noteworthy share of rogues, for instance.

However, it doesn't seem as necessary because of the different way NPCs are handled in 4E: You don't have to worry about the "power source" of an NPC Athar cutter who's pulling off some fancy moves, and even if you want to slap on a PC class template the class powers are easily reflavored.

I would be cautious about applying mechanics that severely discriminates between power source of PCs, like saying that Arcane characters are hampered when close to the Spire but not Martial characters.

I fully agree on both points.

Talk of the Spire prompted me to write up mechanics for it. Check it out.

Remember that we are working on two approaches to 4E Planescape here.

The Spire is an inherent part in the "Original Planescape cosmos with 4E rules" approach, though it may not be in the "Points of Light cosmos with Planescape twist" approach.

Will there be a call for fluff writing?  I'm good at rattling my bone-box, not so good with the numbers and all that screed, so I'd take nicely to writing fluff.