Porting ADOM to 5e

[Rerem115]

Long story short, I'm starting up a campaign, and strongly considering using Ancardia, the setting for the roguelike ADOM as a base. I feel the setting has a strong main plot that translates well to D&D (find the 5 dungeons of the Elements, kill the bosses defending the Orbs of the Elements, and then use said orbs to open the path to the Big Bad to stop him from taking over the world), and there are enough otherwise unused parts of the setting that can be fleshed out and used for sidequests/worldbuilding/whenever the PCs decide to forget about the plot. I'm fairly sure that nobody else in the group has played the game before, so it would be new and fresh to them.

For those familiar with the game, what other advice would you have? I've already resigned myself to more or less having to re-stat the monsters and re-design all the dungeons. However, there's more than that. Should I just ignore everything that doesn't mesh with 5e? Which, if any, of the mechanics should I keep/modify? Should I even bother with artifacts? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


NOTE: If worst comes to worst, I probably will wind up ditching most of the actual content, and just use the game for the broad setting.

[JellyPooga]

Cool idea! I love ADOM and 5ed should be a pretty easy port.

I'm at work at the mo, so will chime in with some ideas later.

[JellyPooga]

So...
(Warning: some Spoilers)

Races

Drakelings: Use Dragonborn but instead of giving the option of dragon types, restricted to Line of Acid as breath weapon and Resistance to Fire. I wouldn't worry about the ToEF and "level 49", uh, unique features ;)

Orcs: Just use Half-orc stats.

Trolls: Two options; simply don't feature them as a playable race (they are pretty monstrous!) OR use something like the Bugbear stats from Volos. I would err towards the former, myself.

Everything else can be easily translated.

Magic Items & Artifacts

The way I would work it is I'd feature "regular" magic items as your +1/2/3 weapons/armour/rods and so forth. Anything with a name (e.g. Flame tongue) I would make an "artifact", for what that title is worth (mostly only available by quest or divine provenance, I guess). I probably wouldn't give them out as random loot. Many of the "artifacts" from ADOM have direct contemporaries in 5ed (e.g. the Golden Gladius = Scimitar of Speed, or Robe of Resistance could = Robe of the Archmagi).

As for the plot critical items from ADOM, like the Elemental Orbs and the Ring of the High King, or the Artifacts of ChAoS, those I would make up stats on an individual basis, if you want to use them at all.

Corruption and Piety

There's rules in the DMG for factions; a Deity/Religion as a Faction works for me. Prayers for divine aid subtract from your Faction score, sacrifices and actions in aid of your deity add to it. The Gods of Ancardia are apparantly more active in mortal affairs than the typical D&D gods, so allowing direct divine aid by merely praying would just be a setting feature (and would, of course, be dependent on your Piety/Faction score).

Corruption is something that's also discussed in the DMG, but in the context of ADOM I might be tempted to look outside of 5ed for ideas. The One Ring's Shadow point system is worth a look, as is DCC's magical corruption, IMO. The real go-to though, would be WHFRP/Dark Heresy mutations (particularly the latter); really detailed and well ironed system for corruption/mutation that can easily be imported to 5ed (because it's a robust enough system).

[Rerem115]

Thanks for the advice on the Piety/Corruption stuff. Your suggestions for the races and artifacts are more or less in line with what I was thinking, but I hit a brick wall with Piety/Corruption. I hadn't even considered WHFRP; I'll have to take a closer look at that