Guess I'd better update this, huh - it's only been 2 months...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanefan  I've started work on converting the rest of the lower-deck monsters; so far the only headache I've hit are the Corruption Corpses - the fleshy bits they throw regrow themselves, according to the module, yet they don't have regeneration - which seems extremely odd. But if I give them regen. they'll be too tough; they're bad enough now, and I expect this to be a very dangerous encounter particularly if they get stuck in there by the arrival of the other occupant of said halls.  I might change things such that what they throw is some sort of slime they exude (which behaves just like the flesh) to get around that inconsistency. |
What I ended up doing was having them just "disarm" themselves and throw 'em; the arms grew back right away but the creatures didn't otherwise regenerate. Party did OK in that encounter.
In fact, the harder the encounters got, the better the party did. They only lost one PC in the cathedral (area 18) and none at all in the final battle!
So, they're done now.
My thoughts on the conversion from
4e to 1e in general:
With exceptions noted below, the basic monsters were really easy to convert: just look in the
MM for the equivalent, and add a few levels if justified. for example, the Hobgoblins at the start of level 2 were mostly 1 HD grunts (replacing minions), but some had levels and two were significant - the Chieftain became an F-5 and the Warcaster...well, he got me thinking, and the best I could do with him was make him an unusually tough MU-4. A few other things, such as the Corruption Corpses, also made me think a bit; but no real trouble in the end.
KotS is clearly written to showcase all the neat new
4e inventions such as shifting and sliding and bad effects that wear off relatively quickly. As such, straight removal of all the forced movement effects (which I did) made a few of the set-piece encounters much less exciting. It also made the final battle less dangerous, as PCs couldn't be shifted or slid into reach of the Thing.
The statue traps in area 16 were a biznitch to convert. I had to severely bend some rules to allow the big one to get any effect at all out of its sweep attack, and the dragon statues breathed gusts of wind to explain their pushback effect. That said, the statue room was one of the few places my players seemed really impressed with the design ideas of the dungeon.
The Clerics in areas 18 and 19 were tough to convert. I just left them as their level (thus Kalarel became an 8th-level Cleric) and gave them spells to suit, but both were disappointing and Kalarel in particular could have done with some more magic toys. I turned his Rod into a really nasty weapon (ongoing damage is not usually a feature of 1e).
The little dark halfling-sized undead from area 18 was also a tough one to figure.
Thoughts on the module itself:
To work by 1e standards it needs more treasure, period. I threw in various bits e.g. Kalarel's Rod, etc., and for a big adventure the end result worked out as about an average haul. This is particularly important in my campaign as I use training rules; training don't come cheap, and most of the PCs bumped during the adventure and thus need training now.
The module is quite good for leaving the DM free to make stuff up but quite bad for not bothering to warn one when it is doing so. An example is the blood-producing altar in area 18. How can the PCs stop the flow? What happens if holy water is poured in, as my PCs did? Is the blood recycled from the drains out of area 19, and if so where's the pump? Etc. Just a couple of extra lines of text here would have been *really* useful!
The final encounter write-up suffers from a severe lack of space, and thus information. Kalarel is referred to as having a "shadowform" ability that is never described. His amulet is referred to as being how he gets from his altar to the runed circle, but what is it and how does it work? (had the party got their hands on it I'd have made it a 1 x / week amulet of Dimension Door, but Kalarel got dragged through the rift when he died; so much for that) And the write-up on the Thing is woefully inadequate...I realized this about the same time I realized my players were seriously considering an all-out missile-based attack on it! How many h.p. worth of damage, for example, does it take to break a tentacle that is hauling someone in? How many h.p. does it have overall? And what are its stats if the rift gets opened and it actually comes through?
And most annoying of all, what are the PCs supposed to do to close the bloody rift?! Or do they kill Kalarel and just leave it there, half-open and ready for the next bad guy to come along and finish. (what I did here is put in a bunch of holes, some around the altar and some around the rift opening, designed to fit the ten dragon statues taken from the Bahamut temple altars - placing the statues in the holes closes the rift. For fun, I also placed a couple of rows of skulls hanging from the pillars by the altar; there were two missing - these of the last two sacrifices needed to fully open the rift. Can you believe it came down to a race between two PCs, one hanging skulls and one placing dragon statues, neither really knowing what they were doing; and
the dragon-placer won by one segment!!!)
Still, a fun exercise.
Lanefan
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