You are an xmen character, any generation/roster/good or anti hero.

You convert that xmen into a relatable dnd character. Example: a tiefling with a Cape of Montebank = Nightcrawler.

And you and the Xmen team head out on missions with an overall theme. Enemies will be converted villains and plots as well.

In reply to coryanderson1 (msg # 1):

I think I get the idea. Captain America would obviously be a Paladin. Professor X and Jean Gray would be Psionicists. Wolverine is a Ninja with an unusually powerful Ring of Regeneration and ridiculously long Ninja Claws +5, Jubilee could be a low-level wizard with a Ring of Shooting Stars, Quicksilver is just a Potion of Speed addict...

But how would you do Rogue?

What edition of D&D? 3.5? PF? 5e?

If 3.5 most are easy... Rogue is still hard.

Best idea I saw back in 3.5 was an Illithid Savant masquerading as human!

Sounds like a fun game with the right group. Also what level? Just starting out team or fully developed powers?

It might be easier to do this idea in M&M2e, which would be relatively easy to convert monsters for.  There are also certainly hundreds of Marvel characters already started out in the system.

Without some serious, serious tweaking and rule-bending there is no way to do the majority of X-Men characters any justice as regular RAW characters in D&D. I love the idea but there's a difference between playing the characters and playing something inspired by the characters. Inspired by you can proceed rules as written and just make characters following appropriate themes. If the goal is to actually play as the X-Men a LOT of homebrewing is in order to make it work.

Of course it would be easier, but that's not the point at all. If you're going to just re-create the same heroes in Mutants and Masterminds, you may as well just play Marvel Superheroes. Playing similar ideas in Dungeons and Dragons is an unique idea which might actually be fun.

I did some sweet 3.5 builds of the Avengers when that movie first came out that had (in my mind) a high fidelity to shown MCU abilities. Of course they were all 18th level to do them full justice!

X-Men are harder I agree, but not impossible. 3.5 would be the easiest to get closest to the "reality" with rules. 5e would be a very much "inspired by a true story" situation.

I also agree that M&M defeats the exercise.

3.5 has the most wide range of classes and prestige classes to achieve likeness. Obviously some just couldn't get done, but close to it is all we could hope for.

I ran a game like this a cou game le years back I think it was. Not fully thought out.

Elixir was a cleric
Storm was storm lord with ring of fly
We had the juggernaut as half giant, with magic items to boost strength as high as a level 8 character should. And boots of mountain king

We tried this originally as Xmen getting sucked into the Forgotten Realms, aka the D&D cartoon. So we tried to convert the characters into dnd.

This idea would be dnd characters who "are" in the likeness of xmen.

Starting around level 8 so there is still danger without having to break out long drawn out fights of 300+ HP of enemies.

Why would you even try to use a d20 edition to do this? You need B/X or Holmes.

If I understand correctly the difficulty of translation is part of the challenge to make things interesting.  If the goal was to just replicate another supers story any number of games exist for just that purpose.

With that in mind I would strongly advise using 5e.

 I was going to say I don’t think 5e works very well, but then I was thinking about Colossus and he is actually better modeled as a barbarian in 5e with the damages resistances than most other X-Men would be. Storm is perfect as the storm origin, others have problems though. Regeneration is hard to come by for PCs in 5e, though I suppose you could “fluff” barbarian damage resistance as regeneration.  Telepathy for PC would be hard at the levels displayed on comics. I guess Cerebro could be a helm of telepathy!

Cyclops is pretty easy as a warlock.

nightcrawler would be very hard to do in 5e without magic items. Even an Inspired by version would be hard for him and Professor C

Actually, minus his fencing skills Nightcrawler is a 'Way of the Shadow' monk with slippers of spider climbing in 5e D&D. Bonus action teleport at-will in dim light or darkness and the ability to walk on any non-slick surface.

X-Men who can't be done justice?
Wolverine (no RAW way to give a character anything close to his level of regeneration)
Colossus (barbarian does handle his resilience vs damage but can't adequately represent his super strength)
Rogue (super strength plus the ability to copy the powers/abilities of anyone she touches and see their memories? No way to do it all)
Polaris (basically completely immune to anything metal while she's conscious, plus can manipulate anything metal at-will, plus flight)

Colossus is one of the easiest ones. He's just a fighter with a high strength score or a Girdle of Giant Strength, a suit of enchanted plate armor, and a ring that allows him to summon/banish his armor at need. If 2e, also the Pugilist kit.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:54, Tue 31 July 2018.

People always complained that 4th Edition D&D characters were too much like superheroes....

An eladrin fey-pact warlock would teleport a lot, even at first level, with no magic items. A feat or two, and the right choice of powers would extend that capability. So there's your Nightcrawler.

Any number of classes are capable of shooting beams, at-will, even at first level.

The pixie race has flight, but it's fairly limited.

Wolverine could be a longtooth shifter and have per-encounter regeneration right out of the gate. Two-blade ranger or tempest fighter would seem to suit him.

A razorclaw shifter might work for Beast. Perhaps as an artificer?

There's a storm-based sorcerer, so there's Storm. Iceman would probably be a sorcerer too, or maybe a wizard. There are fire-based sorcerers, for what that's worth.

Superspeed isn't generally a D&D thing, in my experience, but I believe there are builds out there that can boost it pretty easily, at least in terms of movement, if not actions per turn.

There are psions, so those types would be covered. Shardminds and kalashtar have at-will telepathy to start.

Changelings cover basic shapeshifting.

Colossus could be a goliath (for per-encounter damage resistance and good athletics) or warforged (for general heightened resilience). Seems to cover Juggernaut too.

There are doubtless many characters that couldn't be well simulated, but it seems like a lot could, and plenty of other 4th Edition characters could lend themselves to mutant-like concepts, if not specific names. All without needing magic items.

Quicklings have super speed as a racial ability. You could make Quicksilver a Quickling.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:59, Tue 31 July 2018.

In reply to engine (msg # 15):

yeah, I never played 4th edition, skipped it entirely, so if you guys go that route I'd bow out due to not having enough time to learn the rules.

3.5/PF or 5e I can do easily, but 4th Edition would take too much reading. Though it does look like a good d20 system for this concept.

I think 3.5/PF hybrid or just 3.5 by itself could also easily achieve it with all the options out there.

@OutlawJT - good points on nightcrawler, that actually fits perfectly. For Colossus, I was picturing boosting Con/Str with ASI. Eventually you'd get there, as the 20th level Barbarian ability gives a +4 to Str/Con and can boost you to a 24, which is super heroic for 5e!

It all just depends on what d20 ruleset the OP wants to use as to what level of fidelity we'd be able to give to the build in that system. Sounds like 4e would be highest level of fidelity, 3.5/PF are close, and 5e would be more "inspired by", so regeneration would be refluffed damage resistances, plus "second wind" fighter ability.

Rogue would still be really hard, even in an "inspired by" way. Maybe Hexblade Warlock/monk or something for flight and "strength" based fighting unarmed like Rogue does. Stealing abilities is nigh impossible without homebrew.

Psionics not being fully defined would also make that harder in 5e. Though with the new Wayfarer Guide to Eberron, there is the default telepathic Kalashtar race for 5e. Then spells for telekinetic effects if needed.

Mystique would be a changeling from Eberron with rogue/monk levels, that is easy regardless of edition! :)

Sabertooth would be a Longtooth shifter for sure, barbarian for regen.

Anyway - I'm game to try for anything done in 2nd Edition/3.5/PF/5e. If you do 4e, happy hunting and good trails.

I'll check back in to this thread to see which way the OP wants to blow the winds in terms of edition though!

If I were to do Colossus in 5e I would just make him a Warforged Barbarian with a hat of disguise that fails when he uses rage.

Rogue seems difficult until you just ignore her power draining feature, call it a self negating bit of flavor text because she refuses to use it and press on.

Telepathy is problematic, true, but most of those characters shouldn't be PCs anyways.

Keeping in mind the plan is to stick with a style, not anything like a specific power level or exact power set most energy throwers are spellcasters with a fancy name, and there is probably a wizard spell that lets you replicate any super power at some level of functionality.

I don't imagine for a moment that anyone would really use 4th Edition for this. There's too much blind hatred of it. The lack of open-license material for it doesn't help with that.


Another nice thing about 4th Edition is how much reflavoring it encourages. A star-pact warlock might be good for Rogue; it doesn't enable the character to "steal abilities" but it can grant frequent generalized bonuses to the character, which could be narrated as boosts stemming from temporary contact.

There are also classes that let allies make attacks, or which force enemies to make attacks on themselves. Those could be reflavored as the character themselves making the attack i.e. utilizing another's ability.

A battlemind can turn enemy's attack directly back on them and allows for some temporary changes of form, which could be flavored as taking on another's traits.

Please remember that this forum can not be used to discuss character creation.  Any further posts on that topic will be removed.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 02:27, Wed 01 Aug 2018.

other than pots for recommendations and ideas for conversions,
is there interest in this game as a 3.5 D&D game?

I'm interested for sure a 3.5 version!

Is the goal to play as the actual characters? Or to create players inspired by them? The answers effect my interest in both the game and the rules being used.

In 3.5, no. That level of complexity would only interfere with a super-hero theme. AD&D or older and I'm in. I think we've pretty well established that the concept would work.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was a bump, at 02:18, Fri 03 Aug 2018.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 15:25, Fri 03 Aug 2018.

Couldn't one just use Dungeon World? With a couple of special moves, you could surely do something like Cyclops' optic blasts or what-have-you...