vendredi 5 juillet 2013

Iron Kingdoms Savage Conversion - Skills

In my previous post, I talked about converting Iron Kingdoms RPG to Savage Worlds, my go to system. I started with the Character Statistics, as Iron Kingdimg calls them and convet them to Savage Worlds Traits. Now it's time to handle the skills, since it's the next big step.

Just to recap, for those who didn't red the first post or just forgot, my goal is to be able to easily convert Iron Kingdom RPG content to Savage World and keep the flavor and merge the mechanics of both system in a uniform mix. I starts with the stats, skills and abilities before attacking the races, careers and gear, simply because the later are build on top of the stats, skills and abilities and starting with the foundation will help me convert the rest.

I want to be able to convert every monster in the bestiary and thing like that to have scaled ennemy to throw at my players. I also want to be able to convert a full fledged Iron Kingdoms character to Savage World to ensure that I'm able to keep most of the flavor of that system.

As I said, my Iron Kingdoms campaign is already started with a first crude conversion and now I want to refine it.

So enough small talk let's get started.

In Iron Kingdoms, they are many skills. Most of them are pretty precise skill that differt with the Savage Worlds broad skill approach. I'll try to keep new skills and things like that to a minimum. I like the simple approach of Savage Worlds and I don't intent breaking it. So I'll look more at mapping Iron Kingdoms skills to existing Savage Worlds skills thant creating a perfect replica.

Let's starts with Iron Kingdoms Military Skills.

Iron Kingdoms SkillSavage Worlds Skill
ArcheryShooting
CrossbowShooting
Great WeaponFighting
Hand WeaponFighting
LanceFighting
Light ArtilleryShooting
PistolShooting
RifleShooting
ShieldFighting
Thrown WeaponThowing
Unarmed CombatFighting

As you can see more than one skill from Iron Kingdom RPG are map to the same Savage Worlds RPG. That's because of the broader approach of Savage Worlds. To keep things simple when making the conversion, I'll pick the best skill from Iron Kingdom for the convertion and just forget about the others. But surely, if you want to keep the granularity of Iron Kingdom you could do that with the Skill Spciality setting rule describe in the Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition core rule book.

Now let's look a the Occupational skills  and  Generic Skills  of Iron Kingdoms.


Iron Kingdoms SkillSavage Worlds Skill
Alchemynew skill
Animal HandlingPersuation
BriberyPersuation
ClimbingClimbing
CommandPersuation
CraftRepair
CryptographyKnowledge (Cryptography)
DeceptionPersuation
DetectionNotice
DisguisePersuation
DrivingDriving
Escape Artistn/a
EtiquetteKnowledge (Etiquette)
Fell Callingnew skill
ForgeryPersuation
GamblingGambling
InterrogationPersuation
IntimidationIntimidation
Jumpingn/a
LawKnowledge (Law)
Lock PickingLockpicking
LoreKnowledge
Mechanikal Engeneeringnew skill / Repair *
MedecineHealing
NavigationSurvival
NegotiationPersuation
OratoryPersuation
PickpocketPickpocket
ResearchInvestigation
RidingRiding
Rope Usen/a
SailingBoating
SeductionPersuation
StreetwiseStreetwise
SneakStealth
SurvivalSurvival
SwimmingSwimming
TrackingTracking

As you can see there's a lot of skill from IKRPG that are mapped to the same skills of SW. For an example, Persuation as ten IKRPG skills mapped to it. I've done that because every one of them as the same goal, persuade a person, animal or group to act like the character wants and that's specefically what the SW persuation skill does.

So like for the Military Skills, I'll just pick the best skill matching persuation and use that one for the conversion.

Three of the Iron Kingdoms are not mapped to any skills in Savage Worlds, Escape Artist, Jumping and Rope Use. For Escape Artist and Jumping, there's already specific rules for that in Savage Worlds. For Rope Use I guess that a simple Agility check should suffice.
There are three new skills to create, Alchemy and Fell Calling and the Mechanikal Engeneering.

Alchemy, in IKRPG is the skill that allows a character to create alchemical compound. I really don't see any skill that could fill out that role except Repair, but I found that Alchemy is really different from what repair should covers. And since alchemy is a big part of the flavor of Iron Kingdoms, I'll create a skill for it. that will do excatly the same, allows character to create alchemical compounds.

Fell Calling, it's the ability of some trollkin to use a special kind of magic withing them ... so it's not complicated, Fell Calling is a new skill and will be associated with a new Arcane Background.

Now Mechanikal Engeneering, as Alchemy it deserves it's own skill when we are talkin about crafting mechanikal machine. But, chracters with repair can repair mechanikal creation like any other ones. A character with both skills, pick his best for repairs.

So that's it for the skill mapping, now we have to convert their level to Savage Worlds Trait dices. In IKRPG, the skills goes from 1 to 4 and that values is added to the revelant characteristic. And skill levels are capped based on the tier of play (2 at Heroic, 3 at Veteran and 4 at Epic).

In Savage Worlds skills range from d4 to d12 and at Legendary they goes to d12 + 2 with appropriate edges. So to keep it simple here is a litle table that shows are the mapping is done.


Iron Kingdoms Skill valueSavage Worlds Skill trait dice
Heroic1d6
2d8
Veteran3d12
Epic4d12 + 2

That's it for the skills, next up abilities / edges.

2 commentaires:

  1. Hey, first of all, I like it very much, you're pretty thorough and it's exactly what I'm looking for. Sadly, you stopped posting before adding the abilities and edges. Would you mind sharing the rest of your conversion and some experiences with me? That would be really great.
    Timon

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    1. Hi Timon,

      Glad to know that my work help someone else ! A lot happened in the last year and a half, two of them are that my Savage Iron Campaign begun and ended.

      So I stopped the conversion really early.

      But lucky you, I founded out that I had the next post almost ready to published about the abilities and edges. So I wrapped it up quickly and just posted it.

      I'll try to wrap up an other one on my lunch break with the additional stuff I have produced, like the races, the new edges, the adjusted arcane background, etc.

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