Night Below??

Leopold · May 21, 2002

Macbrea said:
When 3ed first came out I decided to run the "Night below" campaign box set and just convert as I went. Here is what I can safely say about the box set.

Book 1:
This book is easy to convert and most players have fun in this section of the adventure. The first fight looks rough but they are so poorly armed they die like dogs. The party just basicly had the druid cast entangle and it was pretty much over from there. The later action was fun for the party.

Book 2:
The first half of this book is a blast for the party. They petty much liked everything about about it. The troll fight was very hard but they knew they were going to be fighting them before hand. As the svirfneblins tell the party they will be fighting trolls in a week.
The second half of this book becomes a sleeper. Run under 3ed rules by the time you get to the Koa-tu in the city you can almost walk through them. Derro are there just to annoy the party and work as cannon fodder for the illithid. The illithid are deadly under the new edition.

Book 3:
Ok, some of these fights are alittle lopsided either in favor of the party or seriously against the party. The problem I discovered is that most people under 3ed don't fully understand when they are lossing and need to run. Either they walk through a fight or have to flee back with what little health they have. The third book honesty is such a change from the first two that is could be used in just about any world.

I choose to convert the 18th level derro enchanter at the end to a 18th level derro sorceror as it fit far better with the concept of what I had for derro at the time. With time to prepare his throne room he had 12 symbols of death etched into the ceiling. This was after the party failed to asault the city once before.

do you have any of your work you can post here to share with what you converted?

Leopold · May 27, 2002

well the pc's made it through the first 20 pages in book one on the first nite, a liil nudging here and there and now they are moving onward. I expect them to want to do some side quests here and ther and thats where ruins of greyhawk come in. so far the pc's haven't died when i through out the EL6 at them. of course i had guards there as well to help guard the caravan that was hauling the chest so the pc's weren't able to defeat the whole EL 6 by themselves. So far they are coming along nicely. I will upload book 1 when complete and then move to book 2.

Leopold · Jun 3, 2002

they are now on the problems of the new mire so far the party has handled all the situations nicely, didn't really need the 2 other NPC's (druid and ranger) but couldn't hurt to have them!

the deal with the werebear went smoothly no hiccups there. The fight on the water and in the tower will test the mettle of the pc's!

Leopold · Jul 6, 2002

here is my version of night below book one. The guy who did the conversion for the boards posted a slightly 'weaker' version that what i did. He used allot of warrior and i used fighters for some. In the end his use in the mines was dead on accurate for me.

Differences in the 2:

1. The green dragon in the book says OLD, so she is age category of old instead of young adult

2. I didn't include the fomorians

3. I used fighter for a few of the people in the croken spire instead of warriors.

4. NPC's have different feats and skills than the other one.

Let me know what you think as I copied and pasted the last half of his work into mine as it looked similar if not superior to what i had. I will still tinker with that and book 2 that's comign up.

edit phoie i can't upload the file here...contact me offline bd_92@yahoo.com and ask for it. I will send it to you.

Hammerhead · Jul 7, 2002

You think the first encouter is too hard? The first encounter is a joke, both in second and third editions.

Here's how it transpired in 2nd Edition:

Druid: I cast Entangle on those guys in the woods.

Wizard: I cast Sleep on those punks charging us. Bye bye.

Here's how I imagine it to happen in 3rd Edition:

Maybe a few PCs go unconscious from arrows, but the barbarian/fighter doesn't and starts cleaving through the poorly equiped warriors, wizards and sorcerers start spamming sleeps and color sprays, the cleric heals the downed party members, maybe the rogue helps with the sneak attacks.

Personally, I do not like the conversion. It's like the guy put no thought into his conversions what so ever. I mean, Ranchefus uses chainmail, when he has a 16 Dex. Ever hear of a breastplate?

Hammerhead · Jul 7, 2002

Also, I would hardly convert the Savant Aboleths as Aboleth Cleric 14/Wizard 14. That jacks the CR way up there, providing insane amounts of experience, or none at all because their too high, and it's not that efficient. Multiclassing works differently in 3rd Edition, and if EVERY multiclassed bad guy, like a fighter 7/rogue 8, become extremely high level, well, it will unbalance things, to say the least. I instead reccomend that savant aboleths drop the extra class, or that they have only a few levels of cleric with lots of levels of wizard.

radferth · Jul 8, 2002

long time gone

I am currently running Night Below in the worlds slowest D&D campaign (my brother and I live far away and play 2-3 times per year at holidays and such). His group went right to the orcs at the end of book 1 (he was already 5th or 6th level). His party did the trolls, quogoths, and hook horrors under second edition, then left for a bit. Coming back as a group of 7th to 10th level characters in 3rd ed, they rapidly beat the Behir into submission, then fought the dragon. I used a deep dragon (I have no third edition stats for one, so I used green dragon stats with better AC and spells, special abilities based on the deep dragon from second edition (including acid immunity and 30 point heat and cold resistance).
My suggestion to those doing conversions is to set the encounter level based on the party, rather than trying to stay exactly to the levels mentioned in 2nd ed versions. I have finslayer under third edition as a +3 amphibian bane longsword, with detect invisibility, strength, and free action (water only) as special abilities. Not exactly by the book, but I always tinker a bit.

Danny

radferth · Jul 8, 2002

long time gone

I am currently running Night Below in the worlds slowest D&D campaign (my brother and I live far away and play 2-3 times per year at holidays and such). His group went right to the orcs at the end of book 1 (he was already 5th or 6th level). His party did the trolls, quogoths, and hook horrors under second edition, then left for a bit. Coming back as a group of 7th to 10th level characters in 3rd ed, they rapidly beat the Behir into submission, then fought the dragon. I used a deep dragon (I have no third edition stats for one, so I used green dragon stats with better AC and spells, special abilities based on the deep dragon from second edition (including acid immunity and 30 point heat and cold resistance).
My suggestion to those doing conversions is to set the encounter level based on the party, rather than trying to stay exactly to the levels mentioned in 2nd ed versions. I have finslayer under third edition as a +3 amphibian bane longsword, with detect invisibility, strength, and free action (water only) as special abilities. Not exactly by the book, but I always tinker a bit.

Danny

ruleslawyer · Jul 25, 2002

Guys: It's clear with converting any module that encounters will need to be severely adjusted in order to be balanced. Moreover, such balance is relatively easy to achieve; just keep the EL within 4-5 of the EPL, and you'll be fine.

As for the aboleth: the savants were absurd to begin with! Converting them with their class levels intact is neither faithful to the conversion guidelines nor likely to result in reasonable encounters. I'd probably give them levels in the aboleth savant PrC (detailed at http://www.enworld.org/cc/fiend_factory/pr_classes/aboleth_savant.htm) instead.

Mystic Lemur · Jan 6, 2013

THIS is a link to a 3.0 conversion from the old conversion library.

Wow. Holy Necropost. Please disregard. Or better yet, fix the "similar mod" suggestions to not show posts from ten years ago.