A RAVEN IN ANY OTHER GAME

As I mentioned in my post about converting creatures from Though Ultan’s Door to 5E Dungeons & Dragons, it is not my favourite edition of D&D. And its certainly not my favourite game for doing fantasy adventure.

For a bit of fun, I decided to try my hand at converting the Ravens of Perjury to a few other systems. I found the results interesting, and they shed some new light on the differences between the games and the philosophies behind their monster design.

The original stat line, which I won’t share here, is very simple in the classic D&D style. I don’t think the stat line was created with much eye towards mechanical balance, but presumably with the intention that it would be part of an adventure for lower-level characters. It has relatively few HP and doesn’t do a very large amount of damage. Its AC is decent, presumably to reflect that it can evade attacks by flying. It has a fairly basic ranged attack, and one more powerful single-use, single-target, Sleep effect.

One notable consideration about these sort of classic D&D style stats is that the numbers are reasonably straightforward to come up with because HD give a rough guide to how many attacks it takes to kill, and AC is on a fixed scale. As a result, “eye-balling” the strength of a monster is not too hard.

The first conversion I did was to 13^th Age:

Ravens of Perjury

2nd level caster [BEAST]

Initiative: +4

R: Murderous Glare +7 vs MD -- 7 psychic damage

C: Sleep Beam +7 vs PD -- 5 psychic damage, and if the target has less than 15 hit points the target falls unconscious (hard save ends, 16+; it also ends if the target takes damage)

Limited use: 1/battle.

AC 19 PD16               HP 28 MD12

There are a few things that I think are worth noting. Firstly, I love 13^th Age stat blocks—they tell me exactly what I need to know to run a monster in that game; however, they don’t really tell you much about a monster out of combat. That’s not really something I’m looking for in most games, and definitely not something I need in 13^th Age.

13^th Age’s monster design is based on a fairly strict mathematical formula, which the books reduce to a table, for what kind of HP, defences and attacks a monster of a given level should have. I did this conversion as a level 2 creature, because four level 2 creatures should be a medium challenge for four level PCs, and the stat blocks I made for 5E were also premised on the assumption that four Ravens would be a medium challenge for a party of four  PCs.

Of all of these conversions, 13^th Age is definitely the system with clearest and most robust underlying math, so the creation of stats was very straightforward. I reduced the HP a little and boosted the AC to reflect a monster that is not very tough but is hard to hit. That is the same reason I chose to make PD (physical defense) higher than MD (mental defense).

Another thing that I think is interesting as a comparison is the way that 13^th Age’s level system effects all of the stats. In 13^th Age, pretty much all numbers increase with level—including damage dice for PC’s attacks (monsters do static damage that increases with level). Unlike the classic D&D version of this monster, AC is not bounded within a particular range for either the monster itself or the PCs. That means that the mathematical formula behind the stats is, at least in my view, far more important and necessary for gauging how challenging this monster will be.

The final note that I would make is that if I were to use this in a 13^th Age game, I would have to either design a second variation or pair it with a different monster for encounters. Fighting four of the same enemy in 13^th Age is quite boring. The combination of fixed damage, fixed HP and repetitive attacks means that an encounter is much more interesting with a combination of different monsters that target different defences and deal different amounts of damage/inflict different conditions. 13^th Age also uses the concept of “mooks”, simple monsters with a very small amount of HP that effectively take damage as a group. A simple approach might be to make a mook version of the Raven’s whose Sleep Beam causes a different effect or that attacks physically rather than magically.

The next conversion was to Dungeon World:

Ravens of Perjury                                                     Group, Devious, Small Murderous Gaze (1d6 damage, ignores armor)                      5 HP, 0 Armor Close, Near, Far

·         Flit swiftly but erratically. ·         Glare balefully, like cutting knives. ·         Render unconscious with a gaze when threatened.

This was probably the simplest conversion, and—truth be told—if I ran the module in Dungeon World I would probably just convert monsters on the fly. For the purposes of this experiment I have followed the procedure in the rule book. Assigning stats in Dungeon World is extremely straightforward. There is no change in accuracy based on level, and damage, HP and armor only scale very slightly based on how dangerous the monster is. A lot of the power level of a monster resides in the way its moves are described, the fictional positioning and the hardness of moves the GM chooses to make with it.

The Sleep Beam is described only by refence to a monster move, and there is no limit on how often it can be used. How effective it is, and how often is comes into play, will rely a lot GM judgement. Due to the difficulty of a fight being much more in the hands of the GM than in the stats of the monsters in Dungeon World, there isn’t an awful lot to the mechanical design process here. The major task is coming up with right monster moves.; fortunately, Ben’s writeup in the module gives some pretty clear hints about what appropriate moves are.

The final conversion was to Torchbearer:

Ravens of Perjury

Might: 1                                             Nature: 3 Descriptors: Flying, Spying, Rends minds with a glare
Conflict Dispositions	Conflict Weapons
Kill: 7	Kill Weapons Attack: +1D,  bypasses armor, Murderous Glare Defend: +1D, Erratic Flight Maneuver: +1D, +1s, bypasses armor, Sleep Beam
Drive Off: 3	Drive Off Weapons Attack: +1D, bypasses armor, Murderous Glare Defend: +1D, Erratic Flight
Flee: 5	Flee Weapons Attack: +1D, Erratic Flight
Instinct: Turns its violent gaze upon things from an animal curiosity.
Special: Ravens of perjury can see in the dark. Any character knocked out by a raven of perjury in a Kill or Drive Off conflict gains the exhausted condition.

This design was probably the biggest challenge. Firstly, because I haven’t created a monster for Torchbearer before and, secondly, because the rules-object of a monster in Torchbearer is so different from your average D&D style game. The descriptors and instincts are all ripped pretty much from Ben’s description in the module but capturing the Raven’s special abilities and modes of attack was much more of a challenge.

Conflicts, including combat, in Torchbearer use a relatively abstract resolution system that the underlying fiction sometimes hangs on a bit loosely, so representing the key thematic aspects of the Raven mechanically took a bit of thinking about. I decided that since the Sleep Beam is a limited use ability in D&D, in Torchbearer it should be saved for Kill conflicts where the Raven is fighting for its life. I also decided that Ravens should be most difficult to confront in Kill conflicts because that is when they would pull out all the stops. By contrast, I made them be relatively weak in Drive Off conflicts, as I took the view that they probably weren’t interested in a protracted fight if they had the option to leave.

This is probably the stat block I am least satisfied with because Torchbearer is the system I am least familiar with out of these three (I haven’t really got to play Torchbearer—although I have played a bit of Mouse Guard—whereas I have played both 13^th Age and Dungeon World quite often). On the other hand, it also the conversion I am most interested in testing the results of, because I would like to know how well it works.

In the end, I found this whole conversion process quite interesting, and I think there is something to be learned by comparing how different systems treat their monsters mechanically and what that means for those games. Hopefully it was at least somewhat interesting to read about too.