I am a bit uncomfortable changing things until I have more experience with the new rules but I am kinda stuck because we need a campaign setting to play in and I really miss GH.
Anyway I have spent the last couple days digging through all my old greyhawk stuff and giving serious thought to changing stuff to 4e. The hardest part I am having is that there are a lot of races in GH that don't fit in the 4e rules yet. From what I have read around here gnomes, barbarians, druids and bards will be in the PHB2 which will help a lot if its true.
I am having trouble with some other things though. The three former halfling subraces being converted into one, that I can live with. The stout/hairfoot/tallfellows can all fit under the 4e halfling race. Keep the names and the background just have them under the same rules mechanicly.
Dwarves were once hill or mountain now they can just be dwarves without much of a problem. Later monster manuals may include other varities.
The real problem I am having is with those wild and crazy elves. The WoG had a lot of subraces of elves scattered around. After going back and reading through the first Wog boxed set, GH Adventures, FTA, Marklands, The adventure Begins & Players Guide, Living Greyhawk and some other stuff... well it hit me how many varities of elf there are out there in elf land.
Lets see...
Grey elves
High elves
Drow
Wood/sylvan elves (these two names have been used interchangeably through the editions).
Valley elves (in valley of the mage)
Wild elves/grugach (again two names used interchangeably through the various editions).
and Aquatic elves scattered around in various places.
High elves easily fit under the 4th ed. Elf race.
Grey elves have almost always been "wizardy", had a bonus to int, and after going through the Testing/moon arch/sehaine/calling away stuff from the Living Greyhawk Gazetter/ Player Guide I can easily see gray elves being Eladrin. Pretty much any where gray elves live in WoG is pretty much "fey" like anyway. (see the timeless tree in the land of the tree in marklands), Oak vein in city of GH boxed set which had them listed as sylvan elves but somewhere else (can't remember where) listed those elves in oakvein as grey elves). The whole lendore Isles take over was done mostly by sylvan elves but there are gray elves there and probably are the ones that ordered it.
Then there is a group of elves in sunudi who may be trying to overthrow the elven king there (see people of the testing in living greyhawk gazetteer). Many of those involved seem to be gray elves as there's a large population there...
Anyway if you can tie the whole testing thing to gray elves (its not exclusive there's other types of elves involved with it to it just seems the gray elves are leading the charge) then the gray elves seem to really fit with eladrin easily.
The other elven sub races though are giving me fits because they don't fit under either the Eladrin or Elf from 4th ed. I could just make them all "elves" but think that's just bending to expediency. Has anyone tinkered with them at all to make them fit? I been working on them but I am afraid I am going to make a mistake because I am still so new to the 4ed. rules.
Thoughts?
Suggestions?
I don't want to toss these sub races aside as they are a part of the setting and give a unique perspective. I don't think every race needs 10,000 sub races but these serve a purpose.
any and all input appreciated.
If a player wants to play one you can always look at the racial feats from Forgotten Realms Players Guide in the DDI Compendium or on the Character Generator for inspiration on how to reflect the 'fluffy' background. I'm playing a shadar-kai and the only custom racial feat I was given was Umbral Hand (shadowy version of mage hand) based on the fact that my pc was converted from a 3e shadowcaster. However, since shadar-kai have racial powers similar to eladrin, quite a lot of eladrin feats (e.g. the teleporting ones) could be made available should I choose to go that route.
Most of the pre-existing monsters can be converted to an approximation if they haven't been done yet, or just replace them with something similar. I've just done the Champions Belt from 3e Age of Worms. If anything, my conversions were a little bit weak but the players enjoyed themselves and it was an ideal sceario to playtest their 4e conversions of their 3e characters. The most fun was the first round, where I split the 'free-for-all' into three separate bouts with short rests in between. The celenian elf archers did amazingly well as our group had no controller. Madtooth the Hungry was a bit too low damage for my tastes but otherwise it was pretty good.
Old school Greyhawk (pre LG) fits in better with the 4e points of light theme. 3e LG was forced to give each region parity so you have wizard schools, monk monasteries, bard schools etc all over the place. In my view the nations as a whole are more interesting if a pc has to travel to Greyhawk or Ekbir to learn those high level rituals or all-knowing sage instead of popping to the corner shop. I've also dialed back the population levels to be closer to the 2e figures.
The only thing I am undecided on is whether high elves should be more civilised elves or less snooty eladrin. Players Handbook suggests that high elves are eladrin but Greyhawk sylvan elves are so xenophobic it would mean that few pcs would ever have contact with elves. On the flip side, grey elves are so rare the opposite option would mean that pcs would rarely have contact with eladrin! On balance, I think I will leave High elves as eladrin and maybe consider distinguishing them using FR type feat options.
Hope that helps!
The Transition to 4th, basically sped the Time line to after the Wars had settled, and I used the Wars to introduce new races. Tieflings aiding the Barbarians and Iuz, Dragonborn recruited from the jungles to the south, Warforged being created by members of the Circle of Eight to help defend. I also used it to explain why gnomes weren't around as much (being a MM instead of a PHB for now). That didn't stop one player from being a gnome (gnomes and Warforged were the only MM races allowed at the onset of the campaign).
I will agree with Pauln6, the Forgotten Realms PG does help to show how to do minor adjustments based on regions, that could easily be applied (I suggest taking a look at it in the bookstore :D ). If you have DDI, the Character Builder has them as well. They also include other background material that could help make some minor changes.
Since you are starting 4th, I wouldn't worry too much about Subraces to start with. Get to know the system a bit, and maybe agree to restart the campaign in 3-6 months, so you all have an idea how it works a bit better. The PHB2 and Arcane Power will both be out then. So quite a few options will be out soon. And I will say, I would have redo my first character because once I figured out how to play it (mechanically), I realized I wouldn't be able to do some of the options I thought I would want, so before you get into a long campaign, "playtesting" it for a little bit is a suggestion.
The way I see them described, I make High and Gray Elves Eladrin, and I would also do that for Valley Elves. Wild/Wood elves are just Elves. Aquatic Elves are Elves that can breathe under water. You only need them really if you are doing an aquatic campaign.
Gnomes are available from the Monster Manual as a PC race if you need them. So are several other options. Half-Orcs are not, but several versions have appeared on the net. I have a half-orc in my campaign and we are using a version I like.
Barbarian is out in Playtest, so a subscriber to Dragon could play one. Bard was Previewed as well. Druid had a small 2 level preview.
The Forgotten Realms Players and Campaign guides have some good information on converting, if you read between the lines. There are elf feats that you could make mandatory to differentiate between Wild and Wood elves for example. Just reading about the races in the world shows a lot of how you would do something similar for Greyhawk.
My biggest beef is that right now a Half-elf Ranger/Cleric of Ehlonna is hard to make useful in any way. I had to make a severely non-optimized character to do it. But hey - it will still be fun to play.
Good luck. My group played GH from 2nd to 4th edition, and we are having as much fun as ever. The mechanics are almost irrelevant to the story.
ROB
Yeah I haven't looked at 4e FR yet as money has been a bit tight. I am a little worried about using them as an example of elves though.
Back in 1st and 2nd ed FR Gold elves were high elves as listed in the PHB's and moon elves were gray elves (got the bonus for int and everything a gray elf got). The sun elves were retreating to evermeet (or whatever it was called) and the moon elves were staying behind and moving in next to humans since they got along well with humans.
When 3rd ed FRCS came out suddenly the gold elves were described as gray elves and the moon elves were the high elf equivilant to the PHB.. Somehow and in some way the two sub races got confused... Since FR was the core setting I think the elves got confused even more...
In WoG the high elves lived in human cities, shared lands with them and got along fine with humans (examples Highfolk, Lendore isles pre takeover and principality of Ulek) Gray elves kind of staid back and remained aloof
(Celene, the tree in vesve forest and sunndi).
I am just trying to fix the two in my mind because I know someone is going to want to play either an eladrin or an elf so I need to decide who to make what since the two just dont fit under the same 4ed race.
As for the wild and wood elves I am thinking they are going to be more in the nature of adversarial. Both are somewhat xenophobic (the wood elves in Highfolk/vesve forest blame humans for Iuz's existence because Iuz had a human mother). I can see PC's running afoul of either of them and then it will be time for some diplomacy or roll for intiative...
Anyways I think I am getting a handle on it (thanks to every ones help
).When I get everything done I will get typed in my computer then post it around here some place. Then ya'll can all see what not to do when converting to a new edition
.As there doesn't seem to be any, I'm going to take a (BIG) gamble and recommend one (I just hope I don't get banned or something for this) :
Expeditious Retreat Press' Advanced Players Guide. (published under the GSL) (I AM IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM AFFILIATED WITH, EMPLOYED BY, OR HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO DO WITH THIS COMPANY)
It includes player-character stats for "Orc Blooded" characters, (or as we knew them, Half-Orcs), as well as "Earth Gnomes" and "Shire Halflings", perfect for any 4E game set before the Greyhawk Wars and the Wasting Disease that deTolkienized the Halflings.
It also includes alternate takes on many PHB-2 classes, like the Martial Artist (a Monk that uses the Divine power source, not the Ki power source), the Nature Priest (Druids that are more Obad-Hai type druids than the shape-shift heavy version we glimpsed in the preview), the Savage Warrior (For those who want a sword-and-board Barbarian), and the Troubadour (for those who want their Bards NOW!)
It also includes crafting/item creation rules for those who complained 4E lacked them.
Back in 1st and 2nd ed FR Gold elves were high elves as listed in the PHB's and moon elves were gray elves (got the bonus for int and everything a gray elf got). The sun elves were retreating to evermeet (or whatever it was called) and the moon elves were staying behind and moving in next to humans since they got along well with humans.
When 3rd ed FRCS came out suddenly the gold elves were described as gray elves and the moon elves were the high elf equivilant to the PHB.. Somehow and in some way the two sub races got confused... Since FR was the core setting I think the elves got confused even more...
I think you're confused. Moon elves in the Realms are essentially the same as Greyhawk's high elves (though they look different), and sun elves in the Realms are essentially the same as Greyhawk's gray elves (again, they look different). Grey elves are the aloof, intellectual, disciplined aristocratic elves, like FR's sun elves; high elves are friendlier and closer to humanity, as FR's moon elves are. This has been true since 1st edition.
Gold elves are the ones with the intelligence bonus (+2 to int and -2 to con, according to the 3e FR Campaign Setting), as grey elves have in Greyhawk.
Your confusion probably comes from the fact that moon elves were sometimes called grey elves because of their silvery coloration, and sun elves were sometimes called "high elves" because of their elitist attitudes.