Convert 5e Bard to PF


Conversions


Is there any real way to do this. 5e seems interesting, but baby steps ya know? My group is small and a big shift from PF to 5e might not go over well. We used to play 3.5 and moved to PF after I discovered it, but that is not such a drastic shift in game styles and abilities.

How would you convert the Bard from 5th Edition to PF?

Why? Well a 9th spell level Bard is something I would love to play. The Sublime Chord is also possible for converting as its a doable Prestige Class, but this is new and I want to try the new shiny bobble before everyone else does.

Scarab Sages

It's really hard to make conversions between the two systems, because they are very different. 5e's slot based casting, for example, has more in common with psionics than with PF's slot based casting.

If you really want to play 5e, I'd say just go for it. It's a simplified, more permissive ruleset, so I don't think your group should have any trouble adapting to it. If anything, I think that the more forgiving combat rules will probably make it harder to shift back to PF later, where there's a greater emphasis on tactical positioning and action economy is more tightly regulated.

That being said-

The 9 level spellcasting seems to be the thing that you're really interested in, so lets look at how to incorporate that into PF. Recall that spellcasting is much more limited in 5e as part of its balance, and you don't have true auto-scaling, but instead spend higher level slots to advance your lower level spells. Because of this versatility, the number of spells you actually know are lessened; you don't need cure light wounds, cure moderate, etc. you just keep pumping cure wounds (as a somewhat inaccurate example that adequately explains the system). Which leads into the fact that some of the spells are easily brought over and some are much more difficult; blade ward in 5e cuts all physical damage in 1/2, which is fine in 5e where bounded accuracy and damage are a thing, but it'd be insane in PF.
You also have two Bardic Colleges, one of which simulates the 5e version of "3/4 BAB", and one of which that is more caster-y and closer to a "1/2 BAB" progression.

So you've really got a lot of work if you want to bring it over to PF, including deciding which Bardic College you want to go with (Valor being your "3/4 BAB" version, the other being your "1/2 BAB"), because that'll influence how you build your chassis.

Rogue Genius Games' Spell Points system might be a good place to start with emulating 5e casting.

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