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 The d20 Modern Menace Manual offers hundreds of new monsters, NPCs, and other opponents for use in your d20 Moderncampaigns. Need more monsters for your d20 Modern campaign? Why not convert some from your old Alternity books? That's what designer JD Wiker did for some of the monsters he developed for the d20 Modern Menace Manual, and now he's ready to share how he did it. Download this web enhancement and get JD's conversion system for Alternity monsters, plus full d20 Modern statistics for El Chupacabras, a popular monster from the Xenoforms book for the Dark*Matter Campaign Setting!
Preview
Converting monsters from Alternity to the d20 Modern rules isn't the same as converting monsters from Dungeons & Dragons, with its built-in d20 System compatibility. But the following system, though it requires some creativity, works well for this conversion.
The first thing I needed to change DarkMatter monsters into d20 Moderncreatures was a method of converting ability scores from Alternity to the d20 System. The first part of that job was converting the Alternity abilities themselves (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Will, and Personality) to the corresponding abilities in the d20 System.
Fortunately, that's a pretty easy conversion: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence all have d20 equivalents, and Will and Personality are just different ways of describing Wisdom and Charisma, respectively. So I was off to a good start.
To make things even easier, page 243 of the Alternity Gamemaster Guide provides the following handy "Alternity to AD&D" conversion table, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of the second part of the process (the numerical conversion). The AD&D stats work just fine for d20 Modern.
| Alternity |
AD&D |
| 4 |
3-4 |
| 5 |
5-6 |
| 6 |
7 |
| 7 |
8 |
| 8 |
9-10 |
| 9 |
11-12 |
| 10 |
13-14 |
| 11 |
15 |
| 12 |
16 |
| 13 |
17 |
| 14 |
18 |
| 15 |
19 |
| 16 |
20 |
Now let's see how this works for our sample monster, El Chupacabras. Using the table above and figuring that the AD&D column is accurate for d20 Modern, its ability scores convert as follows.
| Xenoforms |
d20 Modern |
| Strength 7 |
Strength 8 |
| Dexterity 13 |
Dexterity 17 |
| Constitution 11 |
Constitution 15 |
| Intelligence 5 |
Intelligence 6 |
| Will 9 |
Wisdom 12 |
| Personality 9 |
Charisma 12 |
We're off to a good start!
About the Author
JD Wiker worked in Wizards of the Coast's RPG R&D department on the Alternity line, including the Dark*Matter Campaign Setting, before joining the fledgling Star Wars Roleplaying Game design team. Some of JD's Star Wars titles include the core rulebook, The Dark Side Sourcebook, The New Jedi Order Sourcebook, and the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook. JD is currently freelancing while working as president of The Game Mechanics, a d20 design studio.
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