MSH TO NTH CONVERSION

"Take all due care, peasant! Do not act in haste, lest you earn the merciless wrath of Doom!"

Much to my surprise, my unofficial, fan made rules for the FEAT System have had an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the community. So much so, that I've been asked to detail how to convert characters from Marvel Super Heroes Basic/ Advanced Sets to MSH: Nth Edition.

My gut response to that request is that, like the comics themselves, the "right" conversion to Nth Edition will depend entirely on who is controlling the story. In the comics, the writers and editors determine how powerful or capable any given character is on what seems like an issue-by-issue basis, depending on the needs of the story. Likewise, a street-level campaign might call for a different build for, say, Captain America than would a globe-spanning Avengers campaign. It all depends on the story your group is telling.

That said, I fully understand wanting some kind of "official" conversion rules. When I started writing the (as yet incomplete) Roster Book, I did come up with a set of guidelines for conversion. So I'll share those here. But first, a few notes of warning:

• 1. THESE ARE GUIDELINES, NOT RULES: Due to the very different nature of the FASERIP System versus the FEAT System, a strict adherence to these guidelines may not result in a sensible conversion. It may be that a hero comes out a little underpowered or overpowered based on your vision of that hero. If so, tweak the stats to your liking. No one is going to fault you for that (well, maybe not no one, but haters gotta hate).

  2. THESE GUIDELINES DON'T TAKE CHARACTER BALANCE INTO ACCOUNT: You might finish building your heroes and discover that the team you want to use in your campaign are wildly unbalanced, with some characters far more powerful than others. Again, adjust those stats to make the AP's / Blocks work out to some team average for your group.

  3. THESE RULES HAVE NEVER BEEN PLAYTESTED: These rules came right out of my head and into the rulebooks. I haven't play tested them, so it may be that some of the rules don't work like I think they should (I'm most concerned about the Construct rules, so any feedback would be great; since Google Sites doesn't allow comments on my posts, please use the G+ for this page to comment on what works and what doesn't). In that case, please, by all means, make adjustments to the game stats to reflect any fixes you make to the rules.

All that said, here's my very loose guidelines for converting from FASERIP to the FEAT System:

THE RANK GRID

The primary issue with conversion is getting the Ranks right. For that purpose, I created the Rank Grid. Why? Well, in the FEAT System, all Attributes are on the same scale; peak human is always Excellent (37) Rank for any Attribute. However, the FASERIP System had each Attribute on a separate scale. So I needed a clear, consistent means of converting specific Attributes. Hence, the grid.

HOW TO USE THE GRID

FOR THE FASERIP ATTRIBUTES: Simply find the Rank of the Attribute on the left-most column, then the Attribute that you are converting to on the top row. The new Rank is at their intersection. Use the Old Attribute To New Attribute Table below for finding the right Column to use in the grid.

*Use the absolute value of the character's Popularity for this Rank. The FEAT System doesn't have a comparable to negative Popularity.

Note that this grid tends to create characters that are in the human range for Fight / Shoot and in no greater than the superhuman range for most everything else. You may fee that some characters belong in the metahuman or higher range. If so, forget the grid, and use your best judgement. I often use the published stats for heroes on the source comic company's website or from past RPGs as guides. Superman, for example, based on the DC Heroes RPG from the 89's and 90's, can lift 800,000 tons. That puts him squarely at Invincible Rank for Might. So despite the fact that many a fan conversion for Superman placed him at Unearthly Rank Strength, I'd use Invincible rather than the grid's Uncanny.

FOR POWERS

I tend to use the Might Column for all powers.

BEYOND THE RANKS: TALENTS AND DISTINCTIONS

FOR TALENTS

This is a little trickier, since FASERIP only allows a +1CS for almost all Talents, with a few rare +2CS Talents. Then there are those talents that grant non CS abilities, like Student, and of course the Ultimate Skill which just grants Unearthly Rank to a character using that Talent.

Basically, I don't have a version of Ultimate Skill in the FEAT System. If your character has Ultimate Skill, that is a good reason to give him or her a Master Level Grade in the Talent when converting. Non-CS-Shifting Talents can be handled by building FEAT System Talents based on Rules Exceptions. Otherwise, ask yourself two questions:

• In the comics, how well does the character tend to perform in this area, and what is the corresponding Grade I should give him based on that?

• Do I have enough Blocks left over from character creation to justify such a high Grade?

That second question comes into play when your conversion efforts follow plank two of my notes of warning, above.

FOR DISTINCTIONS

There is no correlation for Distinctions in FASERIP. This is perhaps the hardest part of character creation, since it requires a detailed understanding of the character outside of his stats. For this, I can't give better advice than what I gave in the rulebooks. Other game systems (which were the inspiration for this one) such as Marvel Heroic by Margret Weis Productions, or FATE Core, give great advice on creating Distinctions (FATE Core calls them Aspects).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

There are some other things to keep in mind when converting. There may be stylistic difference between how TSR presented their characters compared to how the Nth Edition presents them. Any time you run into such minor stylistic differences, use your best judgement as to how to proceed. I myself treat such things on a case-by-case basis.

Have fun!