Skinning My First 4e Party: Converting DnD characters to PDQ#


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I apologize that this has been a while coming, but here are some sample 4e D&D characters converted into PDQ# format and ready for story-rich, rules-light adventuring. If you like airships and especially if you like Eberron, Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (a swashbuckling setting for PDQ#) would work beautifully, pretty much straight out of the box. Just add Fortes for nationalities, Eberron-tech, and dragonmarked affiliations and jump right into a delicious web of intrigue.

As is arguably standard for 4e, most of these characters are prime for dungeon delving, but lack advanced social capability. For social actions, I suppose most of these characters would roll their Race Forte unless something else fit better (Background, Motivation, etc). I think this is a good arrangement, since it would encourage players to narrate interactions with an eye to how their character’s personality and race affect their approach and style.

Other classes or builds would certainly allow more social prowess (Warlocks, Sorcerers, Artful Dodger Rogues, Bards, etc), but for now, I drew inspiration from actual play. Most of these characters are actually close conversions of my players’ first 4e characters back when PHB1 was first released. These characters adventured successfully through a good handful of adventures in the official Scales of War adventure path beginning at Level 1.

The Samples

This first one is a classic 8-bit wizard posted in the comments of my previous post by Eldritch Fire. Thanks! Following the wizard are additional classic D&D character archetypes, mostly sticking to the PHB1 classes and races, unintentionally. If you like this exercise, leave a comment and if people show interest, I may explore other characters from PHB2, PHB3, and beyond.

What other characters would you like to see, or variations on builds? Everything is very subjective depending on whatever you want to emphasize, so I’d love to play with further options, or higher level characters.

Classic War Wizard designed by EldritchFire - http://efpress.net/

Classic Elven Cleric

Drow Archer Ranger

Dragonborn Battle Cleric

Leveled Up

The following characters have 3 extra Fortes, signifying some adventuring experience and “leveling up.” I’m not sure there is an approximate 4e level +3 Fortes would represent, but since none have advanced signature powers, distinct magical items, or Paragon Paths, I’d guess these would be equivalent to  Level 4-6 characters in 4e. I’m curious to level some characters up even further to see how PDQ# handles 4e’s Paragon and Epic tiers.

Haunted Minotaur Barbarian

Halfling Rogue

Warforged Hybrid Fighter/Barbarian

Depending on what you like about the 4e Fighter, the marking and OA ability from Combat Challenge could also be represented instead by Techniques such as “Vs. People avoiding or ignoring me”.

What do you think of these? What else would you like to see about using PDQ# with D&D 4e’s skin?

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About Adam

I'm a husband, father, explorer of the inexhaustible, and synergy cultivator. Starting with D&D, my explorations into role-playing and game design have brought me to savor mining diverse systems, initially Cortex Plus, then PbtA, ORE, Forged in the Dark, and now anything I can get my hands on.