Conversion of Campaign Arcs

I am looking at converting the War of the Burning Sky to 4e, along with some other folks... and wanted a gut check on level guidelines.

Assuming that 3x leveled up every 15 encounters* and 4e levels every 10 encounters, here is my take on a guideline for changing an adventure path campaign to 4e:


Does this look about right?

* Yes, I know its 14, but the math is a bit easier that way

This is what I am doing. Starting my 8th level 3.5 PCs at 11th level halfway through Hall of Harsh Reflections in Age of Worms.

That is consistant with what I had decided for my Savage Tide conversion as well.

That table might be correct if you want Burning Sky to go all the way into the epics. Personally I'm fine with converting 1 for 1 so the campaign ends just before going into epic level. My players' characters were level 5 when we stopped playing 3.5, they will begin as level 5 when we switch to 4.0. I have based my conversion of Shelter From the Storm encounters on that.

I wasn't basing this on how I wanted WoBS to go... just purely from the expected enounters per level. So assuming we don't trim 8 encounters out of each module, the 'normal' 4e progressoin will result in the above level ramp.

Guess I better head back to EnPublishing to put that caveat on the Shelter's thread

When converting modules, you might find that you often want to combine encounters together to make larger encounters with more creatures.

At which point, that theory goes right out the window

keterys said:

When converting modules, you might find that you often want to combine encounters together to make larger encounters with more creatures.

At which point, that theory goes right out the window

Click to expand...

This is definitely true. Remember an 'encounter' in 3.5 terms might be a single CR 1 creature at level 1, which is definitely at odds with 4e design. There are often a lot of separate creatures in older modules that can be combined into single encounters in 4e, which also puts more combat space in play, etc.

Seeing as you're going to have to do converting anyway, there's no need to figure out in advance what level challenges you need in, say, adventure 7 when you're still on part 2. Just run the game, tweaking the number of foes to make sure the game stays fun.

But looking at the sorts of powers that 4e makes available, I don't see anything totally ridiculous that would wreck the structure of the campaign, so go as high level as you want. The final three adventures of the saga actually should do a pretty good job of guaranteeing every PC fulfills his epic destiny, even if the destinies are disparate.

The main reason for figuring out before hand is for a group of conversionist to be able to cooperatively develop the campaign into the new rule system. Svanberg's work is great, but would have to be adapted some more if the encounter based leveling is used.

keterys, I see your point.. and I agree.

So; we have an argument for ramping the levels up as shown in post 1, based on gaining Epic Destiny and the power level expected from the PCs by that point. We also have an argument for a level to level match, increasing the size of the encounters while boosting the raw numbers.

So, for the WoBS conversion project.... which of the three options should we (as a community) take?
(a) encounter based leveling as post 1, increase size of the encounters while maintaining the number
(b) straight level conversion, ending the campaign at the top of the Paragon tier
(c) something in between

My decision to end at top-level Paragon was based on the description of the tiers. Paragon tier doesn't deal so much with alternate planes of existence as Epic tier does. I haven't read the entire campaign but I get the impression that it doesn't leave the material plane much. If I'm wrong I might have to reconsider. I can be convinced to reconsider anyway since I wouldn't mind playing an epic game, and I'm sure my players won't mind either.