Today I’m continuing discussion about guidelines for converting the epic 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign Curse of Strahd to Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game, a game powered by the Cortex Prime system. If you don’t know why, check out Part 1, and if you want to see how I handle the Doom Pool mod, PC species, and adventuring gear, check out Part 2. It’ll help if you have thorough knowledge of Curse of Strahd, but you only need passing familiarity with Tales of Xadia (AKA TOX), so here’s the Rules Primer to help you catch up.

I’ll be focusing this article on two additional elements of conversion: magic and corruption. Magic includes playing spellcasters, spells and scrolls, and a little more discussion of magical abilities. After that, I’ll talk about how I’m using Corrupted stress to model supernatural afflictions like lycanthropy, vampire bites, stuff the PCs might interact with in the Amber Temple, and more. I’ll save the big name artifacts of the campaign — things like the Sunsword — for a future article.

So grab your wolfsbane and the sunburst holy symbol of the Morninglord, because we’re headed into Barovia!

Warning! In Tales of Xadia, Assets are special items, pets, or capabilities tied to a specific character, while Temporary Assets are the short-term ones you create by spending a Plot Point or making a test to create. I use the Cortex Prime Game Handbook terminology where Signature Assets are the ones tied to a character, and Assets are the temporary ones you create on the fly. I apologize in advance for any confusion that creates, but I can’t for the life of me shake that terminology; I’ve played significantly more previous Cortex games (including Prime) than I have Tales of Xadia. So for simplicity’s sake:

  • Signature Asset = Asset in Tales of Xadia
  • Asset = Temporary Asset in Tales of Xadia

Magic

Magic is a big deal in D&D and an easy way to get lost in minutiae is trying to model D&D spells. I’m not interested in that. Tales of Xadia handles magic very simply: If you’ve got the right distinction (such as Dark Mage) and a relevant Signature Asset (such as Dark Magic), that asset will also include a list of a few spells. Each spell is described in a sentence or two: when you cast it, just add the Signature Asset die rating to your dice pool and describe the effect. Easy peasy!

(Cantrips can be modeled by not having a specific spell, just the specific magical Signature Asset. So if you have Evoker or Flame Magic, you can light your pipeweed with your fingertip. Need to look more skeletal and macabre for that masquerade ball? If you have Necromancy or Death Magic, you’re good to go.)

A Note on Dark Magic: In my conversion of Curse of Strahd, Dark Magic does not come with special rules related to Corrupted stress. Dark Magic can model necromancy spells or sometimes evocation (entropy, disintegration, etc.), and it’s fine to leave it at that. Sometimes it comes from a source of ancient evil, such as the Amber Temple, or Strahd’s magic. The context is only as relevant as the fiction requires it to be, but the point is that you can simply ignore the rules on Corrupted stress and Dark Magic found in the Tales of Xadia Game Handbook. I’ll be using Corrupted stress for something entirely else…see below.

Spellcasters

So let’s follow along the process during character creation; bear with me for being a little repetitive, but here’s a D&D-specific twist on Tales of Xadia‘s spellcaster character creation.

To be a spellcaster, you select a thematic type of magic (such as Conjurer, Evoker, Illusionist, Cleric, White Mage, etc.) to be part of your Vocation Distinction — it either replaces the adjective or the role/job portion as normal for Tales of Xadia. Additionally, you need a Signature Asset (“Conjuration Magic” in this instance), under which you’ll list a focus — an item that is required to be on your person in order to cast spells, such as a wand, orb, holy symbol, wooden staff, sprig of mistletoe, or spellbook — and a list of spells you know, either by cobbling together those listed in Tales of Xadia or choosing from your favorite D&D Player’s Handbook. The number of spells you get is based on the die rating of the Signature Asset: for the purposes of my campaign, it will be 2 spells at d6, 3 at d8, 4 at d10, and 5 at d12.

Although not comprehensive, here is a list of some common magical themes:

  • School of Wizardry: Illusionist, Necromancer, Evoker, Conjurer.
  • Clerical Patrons or Domains: The Morninglord (radiant magic) or Mother Night (divination, darkness). Or you could go with domains such as Cleric of the Sun, or Cleric of Lightning.
  • Druidic Magic: Sometimes known as the “Old Ways”; earth, plant, and weather-based sorcery.

So an Illusionist will have their vocation distinction be something like Creative Illusionist, and their asset Illusion Magic, and if it’s a d8, they might have the spells color spray, invisibility, and mirror image. A cleric of the life domain might be Counselor of the Morninglord, their asset Life Magic, and if it’s a d6 they might have the spells bless and cure wounds. Meanwhile, a powerful druid might be a Ranger of the Circle of the Moon, their asset Druidic Magic d10, and have the spells thunderclap, entangle, moonbeam, and stoneskin.

Scrolls & Magic Items

Not too worried about specific spellcasting abilities? Well, any character can be allowed to cast a spell from a scroll; see the Equipment section, in Part 2 of this article series. Scrolls are single-use items; you cast the spell, and then the scroll crumbles to dust.

Spells found in other magic items are subject to whatever rules the item states. Generally, you just handle or activate the item, and then you can cast the spell contained within it. If there are limits on how often you can cast its spells, it’ll say so. Once again, we leverage the fiction rather than trying to come up with rules for every possible item or scenario.

The key thing to remember here is that a character using such items can use whatever relevant traits they have. If they don’t have relevant spellcaster Distinction or a relevant magic-related Signature Assets, then they are in a great position to hinder one of their existing Distinctions, and aren’t getting any additional dice from a Signature Asset. Although there’s no need for it in Curse of Strahd, a great house rule in a more “spellcasting is dangerous” setting would be that any use of a scroll (or other spellcasting magic item) may automatically come with an SFX/Limit where 1s and 2s count as hitches, and/or any hitches automatically inflict or increase Corrupted stress (likely in lieu of adding to the Doom Pool…there’s no need for added punishment when Corrupted stress is already difficult to get rid of; see below).

Spells

The spell lists in Tales of Xadia cover a fair amount of D&D ground, so there ya go. New spells are added only as their needed. I’m not gonna sit around and write up every D&D spell. Additionally, I like the idea of the wording coming with the potential for changing slightly for each caster.  This is a great way to personalize the fiction, visuals, or other aspects of spells for a specific spellcaster.

For all the many, many D&D spells it doesn’t cover, reducing them to a sentence or two should be easy. Don’t worry about levels, or defining range, duration, area of effect, components and all that; that way lies madness! The point is to make them simple, and to leave the specifics to the fiction, or to unlocking SFX for the overarching Signature Asset instead. And remember, spells in this system aren’t sure-fire automatic effects they might sometimes be in D&D, because in Tales of Xadia they are either fictional set dressing (“Can I use my Fire Magic to light my torch?” “Sure, no roll needed.”) or they are being used in a dice roll, which simply means you add the appropriate dice to your dice pool and hope you succeed on the roll. Magic missiles don’t automatically hit. Fireballs don’t automatically blow up an entire 40 foot cube of space. Invisibility doesn’t automatically make you undetectable in every situation.

You also want to leave “bigger” effects for unlocking SFX and similar mechanics, not just inherent aspects of a single chosen spell. So if you have fireball, it’s a ball of fire you throw at people and it burns them when you successfully hit them. That’s wonderful against most targets, but notably it only affects a single target unless you either…

  • …spend a Plot Point to use an extra die as an effect die, or…
  • …use growth to unlock an SFX like this: “Area Effect: Spend a Plot Point to add a d6 for each additional target and keep an extra effect die per additional target.”

That SFX is based on those found in Cortex Prime Game Handbook, but if you want/need to strictly follow Tales of Xadia, there’s a section on Creating SFX under Creating Your Own Character. Because the spell’s area of effect is tied to either existing Plot Point expenditures or the Signature Asset itself, you now can apply those rules to whatever spells exist and/or are tied to the Signature Asset with SFX unlocked. If you unlock the SFX Area Effect, now your magic missile can target multiple people with force damage, just as you can use your fireball to light a bunch of people on fire. Fire will be great against certain monsters, force will be great against others. Oh, and you can multi-class by simply having two magic related Signature Assets, each giving you a separate list of spells.

Spell Levels

Higher level spells often have bigger, crazier effects, right? Well, again, in TOX you’re not guaranteed to get any higher of an effect die with a higher-level spell, so I don’t care about levels. One mage might have magic missile and another might have disintegrate, but the roll is still bounded by their Distinction and Signature Asset, so I don’t care until the effect die is determined. Additionally, the context matters because disintegrating a mob of skeletons with a big enough effect die turns several of them to ash as their Challenge pool depletes, whereas disintegrating Strahd (a Catalyst) requires you to stress them out and then deal enough trauma to actually turn them to ash…good luck with that. Sure, I’ll describe Strahd’s flesh withering a bit and him crying out in pain, but there’s no auto-kill button just because your spell is called disintegrate.

More Example Spells

What about haste and fly? Haste might make you move faster which is mostly fictional. Or you could use it as the justification for spending a Plot Point to enter/exit a scene. Fly might do the same, and certainly gets you over a pit trap. Does this stuff step on the toes of SFX or other mechanics? Probably, but here’s the deal: I’m only going to detail spells as they come up in play, so it’s either during prep for some GMC’s or magical scroll’s spell, or it’s when a player chooses one. In the first case, I think about the context and jot it down in 1-2 sentences. In the second, I discuss what the player wants out of the spell and we collaborate on its description. We’ll always default to the parameters of the D&D version of the spell, but we have a chat about the loosey goosey nature of Cortex, and we both get on board with the final decision. Not that there’ll ever be an argument (we’re adults), but if there were, the rest of the players are the tie-breaker, always. That’s how the social contract of tabletop RPGs works, in my opinion.

Want a more utility-type spell like detect magic? You take the detect magic spell: “Immediately notice the aura of magic on any enchanted items you can see, and study them to learn more about the specifics of the enchantment.” Spells like mage hand and Tenser’s floating disk might get combined for ease-of-use, or end up with the same or similar effect, depending on your wishes. These might look like Tenser’s floating disk: “You create a ghostly disk 5 feet in diameter that can carry a few hundred pounds and levitates 5 feet off the ground.” How long does it last? A scene, or a session if you spend a Plot Point, just like any asset. Need a more specific duration in minutes or hours? Make them roll a test, and have the effect die tell you the time period; if you need hours, d6 = 1 hour, d8 = 2 hours, and so on. But most of the time, you won’t need that level of minutiae if you get out of the D&D mindset of exacting spell descriptions. And how many scenes are you really going to devote to “I put the treasure chest on the floating disk and cart it back to our covered wagon.”

In the rare instances where a spell might get abused if it can be used endlessly, consider a number of uses each time you roll the dice based on the Signature Asset or Effect Die pulled from a test. An example might be speak with dead:

  • Signature Asset: Simply define whatever unit in the spell, and treat d6 as 1, d8 as 2, d10 as 3, and d12 as 4. So speak with dead might read “You can ask questions of a recently deceased corpse about its experiences in life.” When a PC casts it, refer to their Signature Asset and inform them they have that many questions to ask.
  • Effect Die: “You can ask questions of a recently deceased corpse about its experiences in life. Make a test, and if successful you can ask 1 question per die step of the Effect Die: d4 = 1 question, d6 = 2, d8 = 3, d10 = 4, and d12 = 5.”

Either way, that’s how you and your players get to relive the following scene from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves:

Learning New Spells

You can’t copy spells from scrolls. You can do so from spellbooks, making them very valuable…but you do have to use the rules for Growth to actually learn these new spells and add them to your character journal. (I treat spells like Specialties, so the difficulty on a growth roll is 2d8.)

Special Defenses & Weaknesses

GMCs might get traits that make them resistant, immune, or perhaps more vulnerable to specific types of attacks, and this is entirely handled by their SFX and Signature Assets. So if a creature is vulnerable to fire, that’s a Limit (see Cortex Prime Game Handbook) which is just a sort of “negative SFX” that might step up Injured stress from sources of fire. If they are resistant or immune, they might have an SFX allowing the GM to spend Doom to ignore, recover, or change the type of stress from an incoming attack of the associated type. No need for bigger lists of interactions and overarching rule mechanics to try to cover all the bases or corner cases. In this way, you can create all sorts of fun with vampire weaknesses and resistances, as well as enemy spells that might counteract specific spells the party uses.

You’ll see plenty of examples of this once I start revealing Catalysts and other GMCs in future articles in this series.

Corrupted Stress

Corrupted stress is inflicted by supernatural sources of “magical damage,” more appropriately designated as magical afflictions. A Vistana’s evil eye, lycanthropy, the charm of a vampire, or a vampire’s bite are all sources of Corrupted stress.

If a character is stressed out by Corrupted stress — thus gaining Corrupted trauma — they are fully given over to the affliction that stressed them out.

  • Trauma from a curse means it becomes a constant affliction, modifying their dice rolls or whatever its effects are until removed by the Vistana or some magical aid (likely requiring a recovery test).
  • Lycanthropy means that the character will change shapes and become bestial in nature on the night of a full moon.
  • A vampire’s charm means they are enthralled by the vampire that charmed them, treating them as a trusted ally even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
  • A vampire’s bite means they are on the path to dying, then rising a few nights later as a vampire spawn.

These sorts of afflictions — especially curses and charms — might add or replace a Goal or Relationship (see Growth in Tales of Xadia Game Handbook for more on these types of traits). Powerful ones might cause you to rewrite Value statements. These types of effects occur when you first get trauma, and might happen again as Corrupted trauma increases.

If the trauma is cured, that doesn’t necessarily mean the affliction ends, only that the situation won’t get any worse if ignored or defended against for a time. A character that became a werewolf might get their lycanthropy under control, or be able to stave off transformations entirely for the time being. But the only way to truly rid oneself of the underlying affliction is through the fiction of the game: slaying the vampire that charmed or bit you, bathing in holy water, making an offering to the Vistani so they remove a curse, etc. Until then, as soon as trauma returns, the character is fully under the sway of the preexisting condition once again.

To illustrate this, here’s a few examples.

Example 1:

A character suffers a vampire bite and gets Corrupted stress. They are noticeably more pale, and can’t seem to get rid of the visible markings of the vampire bite until they recover the stress by drinking holy water and eating a garlic-heavy meal. If they get trauma, however, they become a vampire spawn, gaining the appropriate Vampire Spawn Weakness Signature Asset. (I’ll show that off in a future article.) They’ll need an exorcism or to slay the vampire that changed them in order to rid themselves of the trauma, but remain pale and hungry for rare steak until the stress is gone, too.

Example 2:

A character is bit by a werewolf and after having taken Injured stress during the fight, the GM spends a Doom Die to give them Corrupted stress. They are haunted by dreams of running naked through the woods on the nights surrounding a full a moon, until the stress is recovered by surrounding themselves with wolfsbane and getting some helpful therapy for a night. If they get trauma, however, they turn into a werewolf on the night of a full moon, becoming an GMC until the next dawn, when they wake with barely any memory of what happened. Bathing in holy water surrounded by wolfsbane or having a remove curse spell cast upon them might recover their trauma, but they remain extra hairy and their mood is affected by lunar cycles until the stress is recovered, as well.

(See how I used the Doom Pool rules at the start of that second example? That’s one of the cool ways it allows you to handle a “rider effect” that in D&D would like “If you take damage from this attack, make a CON save or get infected with lycanthropy.”)

An interesting effect of these rules is that they can better model some of the uncertainty and “weirdness” of supernatural corruption that informs much of the fiction of Curse of Strahd, but isn’t actually well reflected in the mechanics. The most glaring example is Ireena, who has already been bitten twice by Strahd and is described as languishing in her adopted father’s letter, but is presented in the Village of Barovia chapter as a hale and hardy warrior-princess that can join the adventuring party. Under these rules, it makes sense that she has Corrupted stress, but hasn’t been afflicted with Corrupted trauma yet. That also adds a handy potential narrative hook where a PC might choose a goal of helping Ireena remove her Corrupted stress upon meeting her, which might require the help of Father Donavich, the Vistani at Madame Eva’s camp, or a spellcaster in Vallaki.

Let’s look at an extended example: Vistani curses.

Vistani Curses

A Vistana can utter a curse upon a single creature of their ire. The curse is a repayment for an injustice or a slight. The target must test Spirit against the Doom Pool + the Vistana’s relevant trait (commonly Vistani d6) to avoid the curse. (Alternatively, they roll against a Catalyst rather than test against Doom, if that’s the situation.) The curse lasts until ended with a remove curse spell, a greater restoration spell, cleaning by holy water or similar magic.

Below are a few Vistani curses and how they may operate mechanically, if necessary. Most of these are handled simply through fiction, though.

  • The target is unable to perform a certain kind of act involving fine motor control, such as tying knots, writing, playing an instrument, or sewing.
  • The target’s appearance changes in a sinister yet purely cosmetic way. For example, the curse can place a scar on the target’s face, turn the target’s teeth into yellow fangs, or give the target bad breath.
  • A nonmagical, small item in the target’s possession (chosen by the DM) disappears and can’t be found until the curse ends.
  • The targets stress of a certain type chosen by the Vistana is stepped up under specific conditions. (“During a full moon, step up your Angry stress” might be one example.)
  • The target uses a d4 in place of one of their attributes of the Vistana’s choice.
  • The target is struck blind, deaf, or both.
  • The classic “Evil Eye”: until the curse is removed, 1s and 2s count as hitches on all rolls.

Next Time

As of this writing, I haven’t decided if I’ll cover the magical artifacts or reveal some Catalysts alongside my Village of Barovia prep-work next. One or both of those will come before I cover the PCs’ character journals and then do session write-ups.

If you have specific requests, you’ve got a few days (maybe a week?) before I get around to posting again, so tell me in the comments!