D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 Conversion in Actual Play

Melkor · Dec 12, 2009

Hi folks,

I was contacted by the DM that I started playing with in the mid 80's today, and after a couple of years without gaming, he wants to pick up on one of our longest-running games and play.

The last time he ran things, he ran 3.5, but one of the other guys in my group and I showed him Pathfinder. His biggest concern is all of the conversion that might be required.

Things like converting Warduke from the Dragon Magazine article, and converting over material from the Draconomicon and Horders of the Abyss books.

For those of you who have actually converted modules from 3.5 to Pathfinder....including characters, npcs, monsters, feats, and items, how difficult was it to convert?

For those of you who have winged 3.5 conversion on the fly, did you notice any major problems with power and encounter balance?

Thanks.

Sylrae · Dec 12, 2009

I play with some additional changes on top of Pathfinder, such as extra HP at level 1, and a faster Attribute progression, but it doesnt take me that long.

Takes about 5 minutes for a 6 level character, cause youre just looking at the things that changed. With all my extra changes, it takes about 15.

As for on the fly, you'll find encounters get progressively easier. If you use the creatures/npcs as is.

The classes are toned up, and the new Base Races, are actually like LA+1. The Teifling is at base-race power now, for example. Oddly LA+1 only seems to be worth about 0.20 extra in levels. I think the teifling may just be at the low end of LA+1.

As mentioned, base classes got boosted, basically up to where the druid, and some of the more powerful splat classes were.

So on the fly, you'll find:

Monsters have less feats.
Monster Races are actually like a CR Lower due to having less overall.
Pathfinder CRs are more accurately guaged than WoTC ones, which were often undervalued, but not consistently enough to know for every monster.

DM_Jeff · Dec 12, 2009

Melkor said:
Things like converting Warduke from the Dragon Magazine article, and converting over material from the Draconomicon and Horders of the Abyss books.

For those of you who have actually converted modules from 3.5 to Pathfinder....including characters, npcs, monsters, feats, and items, how difficult was it to convert?

Let me give you the fast and dirty version. The version that doesn't involve the players looking over the DM's screen and mathematically dissecting the work:

Every once in a while I use a 3.X creature or NPC in the Pathfinder RPG without the benefit of 5 minutes worth of work. Within seconds you do the following:

* Compute CMB & CMD with the formula provided. 5-10 seconds, max.
* Lessen the CR by one. 1 second, or less.
* Use higher of two combined skills. Monster has Spot of +4 and Search of +6? His Perception is now +6. 1-2 seconds.
* Use as is, that’s it.

It really is that simple!

Kodyax · Dec 12, 2009

Takes me about 2-3 minutes per conversion, I have a notebook with conversions of Stormwrack and Dead Man's Chest monsters now and I'm going to start on Frostburn today. I usually have the core and bestiary out when I do conversions.

Step 1) write down the name of the monster, its size and type, it's listed CR and what page it's on in the book I'm converting it from.

Step 2) compute CMB and CMD as listed in the Core pg. 198

Step 3) using the section of the bestiary redo the skills for the monster as best and fairly as possible as if you were making this a new monster

and that's it, fairly simple and straightforward.

Skytheen · Dec 12, 2009

DM_Jeff said:
* Lessen the CR by one. 1 second, or less.

Did you mean increase the CR by one? Maybe I'm confused.

Maidhc O Casain · Dec 12, 2009

Nope - PF characters got a boost, so 3.5 monsters are easier. Therefore their CR goes down.

TheNovaLord · Dec 12, 2009

no more than 1 hours work to change a 32 page 3.5 paizo mod to a PF

frankthedm · Dec 12, 2009

Mowgli said:
Nope - PF characters got a boost, so 3.5 monsters are easier. Therefore their CR goes down.

It is worth noting some of the lower level beat down monsters had their damage dropped in pathfinder.

James Jacobs · Dec 13, 2009

We did a LOT of rebalancing of monsters so that they'd more closely match the expectations of their CR score, actually. In some cases, this mean nerfing monsters (usually monsters that also had rend attacks). In others, it meant buffing monsters. In one or two cases, it meant reassigning CR scores entirely.

HOWEVER! 3.5 monsters still work mostly the same way in Pathfinder; as others have noted above, you can convert them pretty quickly by just calculating CMB/CMD and ignoring the lower of two similar skill values. Lowering CR by 1 is a pretty good ad-hoc rule, since the characters in Pathfinder are a little bit more powerful at lower levels (but don't confuse more options in building a charcter with more powerful; at higher levels the power discrepancy between Pathfinder PCs and 3.5 PCs begins to narrow, especially when you take into account changes to many higher level spells) and for the most part monsters in 3.5 tended to be a little bit under-CRd anyway.

Of course, don't be afraid to switch a monster's CR score in the middle of the game if it turns out that it's too tough or too easy!