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I have some of the older Stormbringer/Elric! Supplements and the Stormbringer 5 rules. Can anyone provide some tips on converting the older stuff to Stormbringer 5?
For example Stormbringer 5 rates armor with dice for example 1d8+1, where the older versions seem to list armor as a number. Also damage bonuses seem higher. For example, I see some characters with demon weapons that provide 3d6 damage bonus, which seems pretty high.
Attributes in earlier editions could go way above 18. You rolled 3D6 and then got bonuses or penalties depending on where you originated from. I think Melnibone gave you +1D10 to INT & POW for example. Your POW and INT were not limited and you didn't need to roll to increase the stats so sorcerors could rack up pretty impressive levels. Earlier versions did not have spells like Brazier of Power or other ways to pump your MPs up prior to demon summoning so I think the 'standard' demons were a bit tougher. Demon weapons gave 1D6 damage per 10 STR or something like that. Demon armor was based off the CON of the demon. Your skills were also capped at 100% in the old edition so NPCs tended to be a little less skilled than in Elric and SB5.
My best advice is to take a look at your party and make their foes a decent challenge for them. If characters in your games are kitted out with lots of magic make sure the wizard they are facing has a weapon or spell that can do them some harm. His guards should be a bit better than 40% with their weapon skills too:)
Yeah early SB was like SB on steroids. As filbanto points out the stats varied considerably depending on where you were from (you might get +1D6 or more to a stat). Early strombringer also used older skill category modifiers that were sort of a hybrid between RQ2 and RQ3. And I believe it used old style hit points (based on CON plus amodfier for SIZ rather than averaging the two).
The biggest problem, as fibanto mentioned is the magic. Early SB had no spells to speak of other than summoning spells. But the summoned creatures were so powerful as to pretty much dominate an encounter. A summoner got a pool of points to spend, equal to the sum of his attributes, on the demons attributes. Demons were classified into types (combat, defense, travel, knowledge, desire) and attributes could be especially important for certain types of demons. For instance, high STR and CON would be useful for a combat demon.
A real game changer were the rules for demons bound into objects. Especially demon weapons and armor. If one side had them and the other didn't, it was pretty much a forgone conclusion. Demon weapons got a damage bonus of +1D6 per 10 points of demon STR. And, unfortunately, as the demon was bound into the weapon, it didn't need to have high scores in SIZ, INT, POW, DEX or CHA. So most sorcerors would throw together something with a very high STR that did so much damage as to kill anybody who wasn't wearing demon armor in one hit. I saw guys doing in excess of 10D6 damage. Demon armor was also incredibly powerful. It treated the demon CON as AP, and as with weapons, most sorcerers would put the majority of their points into the demon's CON.
In fact, the demon rules were so bad that they had to give Elric demon armor in a latter supplement just to keep him from getting slaughtered by PC sorcerers.
To be frank, you really can't convert SB 1 magic over to SB5+. The other stuff you can convert relativity easily, even the somewhat high stats, but SB1-4 magic, especially for demons, is so powerful that SB1 sorcerers would roll right over SB5 characters, You best option would be to try and recreate a sorcerer under SB5 rules and replace his bound elementals and demons (especially demon armor and weapons) with SB5 analogs, built with the SB5 rules.
Hey,
I've started to convert various old 4th edition adventures to SB for my site. It is a bit of hard work (the Elric! edition has a conversion doc in the back of the book BTW), and things still seem a bit over powered.
I hope to get my various conversions up some time (with this new site layout I've promised to do!)
Marcus