Well, after many years, TSR WotC Hasbro has finally updated the
venerable Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game system.
The changes from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition are, in places, pretty dramatic;
but that's not what this article is about. This article details a set of guidelines
for converting D&D 3rd Edition (hereafter referred to as D&D3) characters
to Hero System.
One of the changes that does impact this article, is the changes made to the scale of characteristics in D&D3. Percentile Strength is gone (finally) and the scale has been stretched and shifted slightly to make characteristics more granular (the vast wasteland of virtually useless characteristics between 7 and 14 is gone now). As expected, this shifting of the scale has had it's most noticeable impact on Strength .Strength, being the most quantitative characteristic in most rpgs, tends to be my baseline characteristic for determining conversions between rpgs - this is true in these guidelines as well.
| Hero Stat | D&D3 Equivalent | Notes |
| STR | STR | Consult Value Equivalencies chart (below) for exact value. |
| DEX | DEX | Consult Value Equivalencies chart (below) for exact value. |
| CON | CON | Consult Value Equivalencies chart (below) for exact value. |
| BODY |
7+(Hit Die * Level / 8) |
Hit Points mean a lot of things in D&D, concepts that are handled by multiple stats in Hero. |
| INT | INT | Consult Value Equivalencies chart (below) for exact value. |
| EGO | WIS |
Consult Value Equivalencies chart (below) for exact value. It's not a great matching, but D&D3 really doesn't have an EGO-like characteristic, and WIS is about as close as anything it has (besides, the classes that use WIS the most are the Cleric-like classes, who's spells tend to be EGO based in most Fantasy Hero magic systems. |
| PRE | CHR | Consult Value Equivalencies chart (below) for exact value. |
| COM | Guess | D&D3 has no equialent characteristic. |
| PD | Special | Base + (Hit Die * Level / 16) |
| ED | Special | Base + (Hit Die * Level / 16) |
| SPD | Special | Base, rounded up to nearest whole number |
| REC | Special | Base |
| END | Special | Base |
| STUN | Special | Base + (Hit Die * Level / 8) |
| Run | 6 | Modified based on Size |
|
D&D3 Stat Value |
Hero Stat Equivalent |
|
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
4 |
|
3 |
7 |
|
4 |
9 |
|
5 |
11 |
|
6 an up |
Add 6 to D&D3 Stat |