Iron Kingdoms Savage Conversion - Skills
In my previous post, I talked about converting Iron Kingdoms RPG to Savage Worlds, my go to system. I started with the Character Statistics, as Iron Kingdimg calls them and convet them to Savage Worlds Traits. Now it’s time to handle the skills, since it’s the next big step.
Just to recap, for those who didn’t red the first post or just forgot, my goal is to be able to easily convert Iron Kingdom RPG content to Savage World and keep the flavor and merge the mechanics of both system in a uniform mix. I starts with the stats, skills and abilities before attacking the races, careers and gear, simply because the later are build on top of the stats, skills and abilities and starting with the foundation will help me convert the rest.
I want to be able to convert every monster in the bestiary and thing like that to have scaled ennemy to throw at my players. I also want to be able to convert a full fledged Iron Kingdoms character to Savage World to ensure that I’m able to keep most of the flavor of that system.
As I said, my Iron Kingdoms campaign is already started with a first crude conversion and now I want to refine it.
So enough small talk let’s get started.
In Iron Kingdoms, they are many skills. Most of them are pretty precise skill that differt with the Savage Worlds broad skill approach. I’ll try to keep new skills and things like that to a minimum. I like the simple approach of Savage Worlds and I don’t intent breaking it. So I’ll look more at mapping Iron Kingdoms skills to existing Savage Worlds skills thant creating a perfect replica.
Let’s starts with Iron Kingdoms Military Skills.
| Iron Kingdoms Skill | Savage Worlds Skill |
|---|---|
| Archery | Shooting |
| Crossbow | Shooting |
| Great Weapon | Fighting |
| Hand Weapon | Fighting |
| Lance | Fighting |
| Light Artillery | Shooting |
| Pistol | Shooting |
| Rifle | Shooting |
| Shield | Fighting |
| Thrown Weapon | Thowing |
| Unarmed Combat | Fighting |
As you can see more than one skill from Iron Kingdom RPG are map to the same Savage Worlds RPG. That’s because of the broader approach of Savage Worlds. To keep things simple when making the conversion, I’ll pick the best skill from Iron Kingdom for the convertion and just forget about the others. But surely, if you want to keep the granularity of Iron Kingdom you could do that with the Skill Spciality setting rule describe in the Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition core rule book.
Now let’s look a the Occupational skills and Generic Skills of Iron Kingdoms.
| Iron Kingdoms Skill | Savage Worlds Skill |
|---|---|
| Alchemy | new skill |
| Animal Handling | Persuation |
| Bribery | Persuation |
| Climbing | Climbing |
| Command | Persuation |
| Craft | Repair |
| Cryptography | Knowledge (Cryptography) |
| Deception | Persuation |
| Detection | Notice |
| Disguise | Persuation |
| Driving | Driving |
| Escape Artist | n/a |
| Etiquette | Knowledge (Etiquette) |
| Fell Calling | new skill |
| Forgery | Persuation |
| Gambling | Gambling |
| Interrogation | Persuation |
| Intimidation | Intimidation |
| Jumping | n/a |
| Law | Knowledge (Law) |
| Lock Picking | Lockpicking |
| Lore | Knowledge |
| Mechanikal Engeneering | new skill / Repair * |
| Medecine | Healing |
| Navigation | Survival |
| Negotiation | Persuation |
| Oratory | Persuation |
| Pickpocket | Pickpocket |
| Research | Investigation |
| Riding | Riding |
| Rope Use | n/a |
| Sailing | Boating |
| Seduction | Persuation |
| Streetwise | Streetwise |
| Sneak | Stealth |
| Survival | Survival |
| Swimming | Swimming |
| Tracking | Tracking |
As you can see there’s a lot of skill from IKRPG that are mapped to the same skills of SW. For an example, Persuation as ten IKRPG skills mapped to it. I’ve done that because every one of them as the same goal, persuade a person, animal or group to act like the character wants and that’s specefically what the SW persuation skill does.
So like for the Military Skills, I’ll just pick the best skill matching persuation and use that one for the conversion.
Three of the Iron Kingdoms are not mapped to any skills in Savage
Worlds, Escape Artist, Jumping and Rope Use. For Escape Artist and
Jumping, there’s already specific rules for that in Savage Worlds. For
Rope Use I guess that a simple Agility check should suffice.
There are three new skills to create, Alchemy and Fell Calling and the
Mechanikal Engeneering.
Alchemy, in IKRPG is the skill that allows a character to create alchemical compound. I really don’t see any skill that could fill out that role except Repair, but I found that Alchemy is really different from what repair should covers. And since alchemy is a big part of the flavor of Iron Kingdoms, I’ll create a skill for it. that will do excatly the same, allows character to create alchemical compounds.
Fell Calling, it’s the ability of some trollkin to use a special kind of magic withing them … so it’s not complicated, Fell Calling is a new skill and will be associated with a new Arcane Background.
Now Mechanikal Engeneering, as Alchemy it deserves it’s own skill when we are talkin about crafting mechanikal machine. But, chracters with repair can repair mechanikal creation like any other ones. A character with both skills, pick his best for repairs.
So that’s it for the skill mapping, now we have to convert their level to Savage Worlds Trait dices. In IKRPG, the skills goes from 1 to 4 and that values is added to the revelant characteristic. And skill levels are capped based on the tier of play (2 at Heroic, 3 at Veteran and 4 at Epic).
In Savage Worlds skills range from d4 to d12 and at Legendary they goes to d12 + 2 with appropriate edges. So to keep it simple here is a litle table that shows are the mapping is done.
|Iron Kingdoms tier|Iron Kingdoms Skill value|Savage Worlds Skill trait dice| |—|—|—| |Heroic|1|d6| ||2|d8| |Veteran|3|d12| |Epic|4|d12 + 2| That’s it for the skills, next up abilities / edges.