Zendikar is one of the more detailed settings of Magic: The Gathering. It's also a world themed around riotous landscapes, forgotten tombs and intrepid adventure, making it ideal for a roleplaying game. So here's a thread for explorations into converting the world and its inhabitants into Pathfinder.
Things to do:
- The playable races: Humans, Kor, Merfolk, Goblins, Elves, and possibly Vampires.
- Class adjustments if any.
- Consideration for the colours of mana. Given the theme of the world, the colours may not be so necessary to give a mechanic to.
- Find a way to express the wild magic of Zendikar. Adding new spells or altering existing ones as well, perhaps.
- Create the creatures or modify existing bestiary creatures to fit.
- Create more magic items.
For a quick and approximate guideline on target CR for creatures, I think double the converted mana cost (for those who don't play Magic, that's the number of coloured symbols at the top of the card plus the number in a grey circle, if any) might be a decent place to start, adjusted where necessary.
If we apply this method to the Eldrazi, we get the following:
To start with, I suppose we can call the eldrazi spawn CR 1. I might want to increase that to CR 3 so they can be improved familiars of Eldrazi cultists.
CR 4: Nest Invader
CR 8: Kozilek's Predator
CR 10: Broodwarden, Dread Drone and Emrakul's Hatcher
CR 12: Rapacious One
CR 16: Ulamog's Crusher
CR 18: Artisan of Kozilek and Hand of Emrakul
CR 20: Kozilek, Butcher of Truth and Spawnsire of Ulamog
CR 22: Pathrazer of Ulamog and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
CR 24: It That Betrays
CR 30: Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Useful Links
Deadly Perils, Priceless Treasures
The Races of Zendikar
The Secrets of Zendikar
The World of Zendikar
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Introduction
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Akoum
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Bala Ged and Elves
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Guul Draz and Vampires
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Murasa and Sejiri
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Ondu
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Tazeem and Merfolk
A Planeswalker's Guide to Zendikar: Goblins
ZENDIKAR! Possibly my very favorite MTG settings.
Well, I would change up a few things with Elves. If the elves of Zendikar had any frequented classes, the would be: Druid, Fighter, Oracle(?); Ranger, and Rogue. At least, that's what I think after looking at the creature cards.
Also, after reading the full entry on Elves in Zendikar, it speaks of fearlessness, preparedness, and their pragmatism. I think some of the base Elven traits should be swapped for traits that better fit. Elven magic doesn't really work here. Also, for weapon familiarity, I'd say take out the rapier. I've never seen one Elf in Zendikar(or MTG for that matter) use a rapier. Also, I'd vouch for giving them a Wisdom bonus instead of an Intelligence bonus. It's mentioned once or twice in there that the Elves are prized for their Wisdom.
Magic the Gathering has some interesting settings, Zendikar no doubt amongst them.
Thanks for gathering those links.
Great fluff for dimensional travels! Might you do the same for other MTG worlds?
Mana colors could be handled by rebuilding the existing schools of arcane into the 5 types of mana.
Different schools and possibly domains could help, yes.
I'd recommend using the colour pie as the alignment system, too. That gives us spells like Protection from Red without even having to invent anything. It's also probably much deeper than Pathfinder's alignments, which is nice.
I don't think converted mana cost will be a good guideline for CR. I'd recommend building the monsters to represent what the cards try to represent, then setting whatever CR seems to match the result. The things that make magic cards good are just too different what make a dangerous pathfinder monster.
Vampires seem like they really should be a player race, but I suppose the ability to turn people into minions and the thirst for blood could cause big problems. Either way, Pathfinder vampires are very wrong for Zendikar.
Is this still going on?
I have been thinking about it a while. It would be awesomesauce.
Thing is, it's easy to do this wrong. Just use elves, sea elves for merfolk, goblins, aasimar for Kor, humans, and then find a template to apply to a human for vampires. Then take all the Pathfinder spells and divide them into the various colours. Use all the standard classes as is, all the standard equipment. Divide all the Pathfinder monsters into colours. Make protection from evil into protection from red. Bing, done!
More later.
Now, that is not the way I would do it. The entire point of the exercise is to make the setting different from standard Pathfinder. While the MtG system is related to D&D in theory, there are profound differences. Magic is tied to mana, which comes from lands. Monster summoning is easy and reatively dominant. What spells are available to someone is by some measure random. Now, part of this is the demigod status of planewalkers, but even less powerful magic users typically need mana to power spells.
My conclusion is that even in default MtG, magic is a chaotic force. Could a system akin to the crusader class in book of nine swords help? When discussing land, should this be tied to things like overland movement? Is the time scale really the same? I get the feeling it isn't, making some dark rituals for mana doesn't sound like a free action to me. Magic would be more ritualistic and slower, but more powerful. Whatever you choose here, the point is that it is different. I would make a wizard class that would require specialization into a colour. With this class comes the new definition of what spellcasting ability of a certain level means.
For other classes, I would use barbarian, fighter and rogue as is. Rangers would get a little spellcasting as usual, as would paladins. Clerics and druids are replaced by wizards. Sorcerers and bards would go. For the classes found on cards, I would see if there is a prestige class or archetype that would fit, or if a level build could be figured out to approximate.
Races need careful consideration. Use humans, elves and gobbos pretty much as is, yes, but merfolk, vampires and kor need writeups.
Then go through the card spells for what magic is available. A lot of it will not be, such as teleportation, and other stuff we take for granted. Seeing as this will mean very few spells, also add in the card spells from the base set of 2009. Approximate those spells you can, adjust for desired power level based on mana cost, and build the remainder.
Creatures are actually not as hard as you might think. Most creatures in MtG are angels,, rather basic undead, classed creatures of the PC races, constructs, or pretty normal critters such as dogs, bulls, boars, and so on. Make angels as a race, define basics of construct creatures, and make or use templates for the normal critters. Here you will run into Surrakar, and a bunch of elementals. Finally, there is the eldrazi.
Do not forget equipment. Zendikarans wear piecemeal armour, use only things with more than one function, and do not have polished metal.
Any opinions?
Okay, done some with this. The mastercrafting article from Dragon 358 would fit this setting perfectly. The Kor have some really neat weapons, that needs doing, and the vampire two bladed scimitars are easily done.
Currently fighting with the spell lists. I am trying to fit the spells into a 9 level range, so as a starting point I decided to do the following:
Each spell is level 1 + 3 * (coloured mana - 1) + colourless mana in the casting cost.
Global enchantments are 2 levels higher, since they are typically quite powerful.
Beyond this, Rare and Mythic rare spells go higher in level, Commons might go down.
Finally, there is wiggle room to make sure all colours have spells of each level.
So far it is working reasonably well. Back in a while.
