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This is my 4e guide to oriental adventures item conversion. Pretty much all of the items needed are already in the game its just figuring out what item is what in terms of an oriental game.

Weapons:
Tanto -> Dagger
Short Sword -> Wakizashi
Bastard Sword -> Dueling Katana
Greatsword -> Katana war sword
Fullblade -> Nodachi
Lotulis -> Lajatang or Korobokuru Lajatang
Spiked Chain -> Kau Sin Ke
Spiked Gauntlet -> Nekode
Dragon Paw -> Sang kauw




Simple Weapons—Ranged
Blowgun -> Blowgun

Martial Weapons—Melee
Small
Wakizashi -> Shortsword *

Large
Nagamaki -> Falcion
Naginata -> Glaive

Exotic Weapons—Melee
Tiny
Nekode -> Spiked Gauntlet
Tail spikes -> Type of Shuriken

Small
Butterfly swordΔ
Jitte
Ninja-to -> Shortsword
Sai
Tonfa
War fan

Medium-size
Katana -> Bastard Sword if fencing sword
               Greatsword if war sword
Kau sin ke Δ -> Spiked CHain
KawanagaΔ -> Alhulak

Bludgeoning
Lajatang, korobokuru Δ -> Lotulis

Large
Chain
Chijiriki

Bludgeoning
Kusari-gama
Bludgeoning
Lajatang Δ
Sang kauw Δ
Sasumata
Shikomi-zue
Sodegarami
Three-section staff Δ

Tiny
Fukimi-Bari* Δ (Mouth Darts)
Small
Chakram Δ

Okay, So i have been toying with the idea of PC run cities now for quite some time and think ill finally put together a coherent guide onto how to do this or at least of what ive been thinking.

When to use this: This is for player towns central to a campaign setting if you want to put your players in charge of their own town. It requires a little book keeping and can eventually expand into empire building.

Why: This really doesnt need an explanation.

Anyways the idea behind a player run town is similar to that of a stronghold, by upgrading the town more options become available to players including tools, equipment, magic item, allies and pretty much every resource you can imagine including a steady income of gold. The players spend the gold they earn from the town or through adventuring in making the town bigger and better. This post will focus on the town itself i will have a future post regarding how to run army on army combat, seiges and eventually how to manage regions as opposed to individual towns. Lets start with a level 1 city.

Basic Structures

Stronghold
Main headquarters for the heroes and should provide sanctuary, a place to sleep and a place for their activities within the town.

Blacksmith
Upgrading this provides basic equipment and tools depending on its level.
Can become either weaponsmith or armorsmith

Leatherworker
Provides Hide and leather armors

Fletcher
For all your wood needs including bows, spears and even fishing poles.

Tailor
Provides Cloth Armor

Apothicary
Provides Poisons and Remedies

Arcanists House
Provides service of Arcanists

Church
Provides access to clerics and paladins.

Spirit Hut
Provides access to druids and shamans.
Can turn into a spirit lodge or druid circle.

Warrior's Hall
Provides basic soldiers.
Upgrades to Barracks.

For some reason lately there has been a huge thing about making the game more difficult. At least this is the case on the  VT because of said optimizers so i decided to compile a list of houserules that might be used to tweak the system to make even vanilla adventures a tad more dangerous. Using a few of these rules can increase the challenge rating of the game without the need for too much tougher monsters or over elaborate death-trap style dungeons and could work in even a regular game assuming players are cool with it. Anyways i am going to post each rule with a few variations under each on how the rules can be adjusted. I am aiming for a few things here, the first being simplicity. I dont want to over complicate the game with elaborate rules so they are something easily memorized. Second they should make the existing game more challenging and last they should actually speed up the game instead of bog it down.

-FUMBLE: Whenever you make an attack roll of natural 1, your
turn immediately ends, and you grant combat advantage
to all attackers until the start of your next turn.
If the roll is part of a close or area attack, resolve
all the other attack rolls before ending your turn. (DMG 189)

-CRITICAL SUCCESS AND FAILURE: On a skill or ability check, a roll of natural 20 is a critical success and a roll of natural 1 is a critical failure.
On a critical success, the check automatically succeeds, and you gain a +5 bonus to checks with that skill until the end of your next turn. In a skill challenge,
add one extra victory to the tally. On a critical failure, the check automatically fails, and you take a –5 penalty to checks with that skill until the end of your next turn. In a skill challenge, add one extra defeat to the tally. (DMG 189)

NOTE: I usually default all my games to the two rules above.

-Massive Damage Threshold: When a creature takes damage equal to or greater than its bloodied value from a single attack it must make a saving throw with a bonus equal to his/her Con modifier. If the saving throw fails it is immediately reduced to 0 hit points.

Variations:
1) The damage threshold doesnt have to be bloodied, you can assign any reasonable amount of damage to constitute a 1 hit KO.  These thresholds can be 25 to 50 damage and get similar results
2) Instead of a saving throw one can call for an endurance check since its 1/2 level + con mod +training to succeed. In that case make it equal to a medium or hard DC for the level of the creature that dealt the blow.

NOTE: This will likely be dangerous to use for characters. Standard creatures usually cannot deal bloodied value damage on a critical hit, however elite monsters and solo monsters will be able to deal this sort of damage to some players, most should be able to on a critical encounter power.  It will speed up combat however due to more creatures dying quicker since PCs can deal that sort of damage to a monster much more frequently. At level 1 with a PC of 28 HP, an attack will need to deal 14 or more damage to based on the original variation.

Death threshold: A creature dies when it reaches -10 or fewer hit points.

Variations: This can be adjusted to a fixed number below 0 that it will take to die. Also using a player's surge value instead of bloodied value is a viable option. So they die at negative surge instead of negative bloodied.

NOTE: This here will be extremely perilous to impose on players. It seems it has become common for at least 1 pc in every major battle to fall unconcious due to damage and be miraculously revived. This will make the thread of 0 hit points much more real and more avoided than oh ill just get healed. However this also means players will die more frequently due to damage than failed saving throws.

TOUGHER MINIONS:  The Minion can be targeted by melee or ranged attacks, although it lacks hit points. If a single melee or ranged attack deals damage to the minion equal to 10 + one-half its level or higher, the minion dies. Otherwise, the minion is unaffected by the attack.

Also giving it a 1d4+ Its current damage value. At level 1 it would be 1d4+5 would also do the trick wouldnt be a bad idea.

NOTE: This last rule may increase encounter durations but it would negate those spells that do stupid low amounts of damage to kill a minion. Like the 2 damage area from Orbmasters incendiary detonations from the zone itself. Any direct hit should be enough to kill the minion but i was using the spirit companion rules for their HP. This requires a certain amount of damage in order for them to be killed so they arent killed using what people now refer to as "minion poppers" howeevr i would no longer consider them minion kills for the purposes of player powers

I just thought id talk about this. It seemed like a pretty big theme on hiding dice rolls and numbers and i couldnt agree more. I cant say how many times skill challenges turn into a guessing game of which skills to use making even the most outrageous stretch to justify a very loosely associated skill to apply. Hearing words such as "I wanna use arcana to scale the wall" just hurts every time. Anyways i have begun using skill challenge as a hidden mechanic, the party is not to know how many successes or failures they have had but rather have to judge a success based on the events described. But this post will be about social skill challenges as they are much easier to do this with. I have been running my social challenges as a roleplaying event having each character associate in character with their social encounter and after describing their current action i may give out a penalty, a higher DC or a bonus to a skill check when called. This promotes more roleplay and less metagaming because a character with a low bluff score might in fact be called to make a bluff check because of an attempted lie. Rather than look for the PC with the highest skill modifier to perform the check even though it was the action of another PC. In this method the PCs simply feel like they are roleplaying and their skills are having an RP effect when in actuality it is a skill challenge and i am carefully recording each success and failure and giving out information regarding their progress

 

Example Social Challenge complexity 2:

Convince the stubborn Lord of Winterhaven to give you aid for your delve into the Starlight's family tomb.

PC: "Greetings my lord, we have come seeking aid to rid the starlight family tomb of the undead that plague the outlying village"

Lord: "You were hired to do a task and were compensated in gold, if i had the resources i would have done it myself instead of asking for help"

PC: "The undead come from the tomb every night to bring fresh victems to their body count, a village has just been burned bolstering their number so our job has now become more difficult raising the stakes"

DM: "Good point, roll me diplomacy with a +2 bonus"

*Rolls a d20+5 and gets a 10. DM makes a subtle mark behind the DM screen* (This shows the characters charismatic ability despite the well made statement he simply lacks the social posture/tone of voice to be convincing)

Lord: "We have no additional resources to spare, believe me if i could spare anything i would"

PC: "Can be insight tell me if he is lying"

DM: "Okay, roll insight"

*PC rolls a d20 with no modifiers and rolls a 15 just high enough opposed to the lords bluff +10*

DM: "The lord has a superb poker face, but you can see he is not lying but is not telling you everything"

In this example i never tell the player if they made a success or fail and were not permitted to discuss the challenge as it would have been out of character discussion. If they discussed their best course of action during the challenge it would have been as blatant as them discussing how they will lie in front of the lord which would have resulted in a "fold" skill challenge condition and failed the challenge all together. The players are allowed to interact with the Lord of Winterhaven as normal asking for rolls where appropriate and this may eventually clue players in to the skill challenge but do not mention if they hit or missed the DC or tell them "okay this is a skill challenge." I have been working on a way to apply this method to physical challenges as well however it is difficult without DM guidance to get players to do anything thus far so sometimes i have had to just tell them its a skill challenge however the word "skill challenge" should never be mentioned if at all possible.

 

Sometimes on a sidenote for some things a skill challenge would be inappropriate but rather let them suffer the consequences of individual failures on certain checks. Like trying to cross an 80 foot chasm without a bridge a skill challenge seems appropriate however making a mistake with rope could lead someone to falling to their death midway. Here they can try and accept the results of death or find a safer route.