Planescape Torment in 4th edition

What's the point in a thought exercise where you don't have to think?

There's no point, I suppose. Normally I'm game for this sort of thing; I contributed to a thread on the WotC boards about replacing all the human races in the Greyhawk setting (except for one) with fourth edition nonhuman races. I think that'd result in a dramatically poorer setting, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about it and commenting constructively. In this particular case, however, your exercise hits all the wrong buttons in my head. It seems wrong-headed to, for example, remove the Blood War from a story that uses the Blood War as one of its major themes - echoing the long and pointless existence of the Nameless One himself, the story begins and ends with the Blood War. Fall-From-Grace herself, born a demon, forged by long imprisonment by the devils, she reconciles and transcends that conflict within herself - and perhaps ultimately represents the Nameless One's potential salvation. Fall-From-Grace also has a very specific sense of place in Planescape, as the daughter of Red Shroud of the city of Broken Reach, and it'd be a shame to take that away. And of course any suggestion that demons can't have succubus-like tempters of their own summons the old blood rage within me. And the rest of it seems rather pointlessly obvious. Dak'kon is from the Elemental Chaos because that's where githzerai are from in 4th edition, locations like Mechanus and the Outlands are part of the Astral Sea, the Transcendent One's fortress would be (much less dramatically) in the Shadowfell, etc. I think, when it comes down to it, "thinking" constructively about this particular question would require me to shut down more of my brain than the brainstorming involved would activate. The net result would be the opposite of thinking. I'm sorry; normally I would keep my mouth shut instead of being pointlessly critical of someone else's attempt to start a conversation, but I think I'm actually offended by your topic. I probably shouldn't be; it's just a ten-year-old game, after all. It may be residual 4e bitterness that I thought I'd let go of.

Uhh.. guys, there WAS a Blood War in 4th Edition. Just read the 4E Manual of the Planes! Yes, it's currently on hiatus, but that doesn't mean Demons and Devils don't hate each other as much as ever. As I understand it, what Shadow of Torment is suggesting is using the 4E material as-is, and then modifying the Torment material to match up. I know some (ok. a LOT of you) hate the new cosmology, but if he wants to use it, why not? Assuming Sigil is about the same, why CAN'T he run a Planescape campaign in the 4E cosmos? You could rule that 2e-3e "Asimaars" are now  4e "Devas", Planetars and Solars are Angels (I suggest the Angel of Supremacy for Solars), etc. Tieflings are a bit problematic, since they now have ties only to Devils and not Demons, but... the point is, you can make the old stories work in 4E if you really want to. It's not impossible. Zadara could be, maybe, a Stone giant in 4E instead of the 2e-3e "Titan". Estavan is an Oni Mage, etc... I don't even see these as being that big of a change. As long as the characters act the same, what's the big deal? Why can't some people use the Great Wheel, some use the 4e World Axis, or maybe both? Sigil could be the connection point between the two realities...

Not to beat a dead Gnoll into the ground, but to continue about the biting Gnoll, it's well covered by the 4e rules. In the first Player's Handbook, pg. 215-216 and 219, it covers the topic of unarmed strikes and improvised weapons (it specifically mentions the claw and bites attacks of monstrous characters under unarmed strikes; characters are automatically proficient with such natural weapons. it suggests 1d4 damage for a generic unarmed attack.) In the first Dungeon Master's Guide, pg. 42, it gives damage charts for actions the rules don't specifically cover, and on pg. 185 it covers monster attack damage. In the first Monster Manual on pg. 166 it gives the damage for a 2nd Level Hyena's attack (1d6+3 damage, and remember that Gnolls are basically walking, talking Hyenas, so you could use that for the bite attack if you didn't have anything else to go on...), and in the second Monster Manual on pg. 127 it gives an actual example of a Gnoll that prefers biting attacks to using manufactured weapons (this Gnoll Gorger does 2d6+8 damage and is a 7th level Brute.) So I'd say that the matter of biting, goring, or whatever special attacks a character wants to do with his/her character is in fact well covered in 4th edition!

Yeah. That doesn't work for me, and wouldn't work in the context of the Torment game.

Well, I personally think it'd leave out some important parts of the game in question, for reasons I explained. As far as I know, there wasn't any talk about running an actual game; this seems to have just been a thought-experiment, specifically about the Torment video game rather than Planescape in general.

And no, Zadara could not be a stone giant titan. Besides the fact that it would completely change her appearance, the role of titans in 4th edition - servants of the primordials - is antithetical to Zadara's role as a would-be goddess. She could still pretend to be a goddess and get her ass kicked by a god, but it doesn't mean the same thing if she's really an elementally-aligned being instead of an outsider aligned with the Outer Planes. I don't think so, anyway. Her original background was dependent on the status of titans in 2nd edition AD&D, a neutrally-aligned member of a sort of semi-divine being related to, but less potent than, the gods who dwell mostly in Arborea. As a 4th edition titan, she'd be a member of a race of chaotic evil beings native to the Elemental Chaos, created to help destroy the gods and their servants--a very different character idea, I think. A stony hulk driven to Sigil by the ancient enemies her people were created to oppose seems different than a beautiful giant-sized woman forced into exile because of her own hubris. And why change the character so much just because the rules have changed? It'd be better, I think, to create a new race more like the 2nd edition titans, and have Zadara be one of them.

But that's beside the point, because Zadara wasn't in Planescape: Torment.

And sure, Sigil could be a nexus of multiple realities, and there are definitely 4th edition tropes that can be used in Planescape, but that's pretty different from hacking off large parts of a video game's themes in order to refit them in a diminished context. It's like rewriting Hamlet so that instead of taking place in Denmark, it takes place in a public restroom. You could do it, but why?

Umm, Rip, I didn't mean a Stone Giant TITAN, just a regular Stone Giant. Regular Stone Giants aren't evil in 4th Edition... they're classed as "Unaligned". So NO, Zadara would not have to be Chaotic Evil if she was a Stone Giant... but I was just using that as an example of a quick-fix, non-exact substitution, intended to save the DM the trouble of a literal conversion. Naturally, this sort of easy fix isn't for everyone...

Hm, Hamlet set entirely in a public restroom?  Why?  Because it would be hillarious to see Ohpelia try to flush herself down a toilet.

Every time I think about this, I come to the same conclusion that the problem with 4th Edition (and with DnD at large) is they release the core rulebooks with setting information inside them. I have no idea how many people on these forums have ever tried the Silhouette system used for the Heavygear setting, but it's a perfect example of what I think is ideal: The Silhouette Core Rulebook has the rules. That's it, mechanics, numbers numbers numbers. Then, you can get whatever setting you like (Heavygear for example), or make up your own, or whatever; and all the setting books have a bit of "here are the specific rules for this setting. These skills aren't appropriate to this setting, don't use them. These skills are new or have slightly different uses. Here's some equipment that suits the technology level." So on.

I think that this would be perfect for DnD, if they did it. It seems at first like it would necessitate buying extra books, but if you actually want to play Greyhawk then you ought to have more information than the list of Deities in the PHB. DnD actually did do this... somewhat, I know, with the various (FR, Rokugan, IK, etc) setting books, but there is still a lot of PHB content that could just be erased, like the Deities list for example, since it's anything but universal and, even when those gods (Corellon, for example) are featured in other settings their writeup is redone anyway.

When content is apt to become irrelevant, you have to wonder what it's even doing in the core books to begin with. The 4e Succubus as an excellent example, if she's a CE Demon in some settings and a LE Devil in others, unless every single other thing is going to be the same she doesn't belong in the core Monster Manual.

(Iron Kingdoms and Rokugan are weird examples of 3e settings as they both change class spell lists, and I think spell lists still being in core books.)