D&D 4E Converting old adventures to 4E?

[Rechan]

After sleeping on it and coming back - I'm getting the feeling that I over-thinking it, that I need to zoom out a bit and stop trying to re-build things at a granular level. GO for a more overall, simpler substitution approach.

When I have been making my adventures, what I've been doing is just reskinning monsters left and right.

For instance, there are no low level demons. However, looking into the book, I can use kuthriks, rat swarm, magma claw and magma hurler, ettercap fangguards, spitting drakes, guard drakes or iron defenders.

Twisting and digging around a little more, I can find some interesting things. The Shifter's shifting power (when bloodied) makes a great bloodied effect for a possessed mortal.

Three DMs in my group are converting their adventures to 4E.
We're converting the Savage Tides adventure path, and the first two Pathfinder adventure paths.

I'd like to see your conversion for CoCT and Savage tide.

My one annoyance with 4e in ST is that you can't do Orlangu's 'teleport abduction' stuff.

 

[Telperion]

I have been converting / creating Scarred Lands adventures into 4e of late, and it's working out quite wonderfully. The only thing that keeps buggering me is how unintuitive it is to take a prestige class and create a natural humanoid out of it. O', and I also have all these book filled with spells that are now useless, but that doesn't bother me that much.

I created a couple of artefacts the other day and instantly liked the way these things are handled in 4e. Of course, I'm having trouble "moving on" after the wielder level ups 2 to 3 times, but I'm working on it.

Rituals are down right wicked, and I'm putting some creative thought into creating some stuff of my own. Not as hard as it might look.

All in all, I'm quite happy, aside from a few grumbles that I can live with.

 

[grickherder]

Combine mutiple old encounters into one.

i.e. the monsters in the next room hear the noise and show up on round 3 but one of them went to get help from another room and they will show up on round 6, just as the party has blown all their encounter powers and is looking forward to a short rest...

A lot of published modules fail to take into account this sort of thing.

Great advice.

I'd say look at what rooms in old school modules can be combined into a single encounter. That'd be step one.

The next step is to trust the encounter design system in the DMG. Figure out roughly the type of monster you want. Level it up or down as needed and spend your XP budget. Accept that you might not get a 1:1 conversion for each monster.

Traps can be redesigned/replaced the same way.

 

[Kesh]

Blah

 

[Kesh]

Great advice.

I'd say look at what rooms in old school modules can be combined into a single encounter. That'd be step one.

The next step is to trust the encounter design system in the DMG. Figure out roughly the type of monster you want. Level it up or down as needed and spend your XP budget. Accept that you might not get a 1:1 conversion for each monster.

Traps can be redesigned/replaced the same way.

Agreed. You're never going to get a real 1:1 conversion, but you can still create a fun adventure in the same theme. Take the general concept, find monsters that will make an interesting challenge and "re-brand" them to fit (ie. an old critter that doesn't exist in 4e can be substituted with a 4e one while just describing it in a similar manner to players).

I'm planning to do this for a few old Ravenloft adventures (Night of the Walking Dead and Dark of the Moon).

 

[scigeek]

Most of what you need is provided in the form of the encounter design system (and the good web app they released, though there are still some bugs and incorrect entries), the chapter on templates and monster creation / customization and the treasure parcels.

You might have to adapt some other details that require mechanics that don't exist but are important to the plot, like an aura that drains spells or something like that, but given the guidelines and common sense, it should work out fine.

One thing I didn't quite understand was how to create, for example, a human cleric monster (not npc). It would be an elite, but I can't find a good base monster to apply the template to.

Once more, the key here is to read the encounter, get the idea of how it relates to the plot and then create something similar that conveys the same thing in 4E rules. If the encounter is no more than a dungeon filler, you could even create something new and perhaps more interesting. I, for instance, added some traps to a dungeon, so my players get used to traps becomming more common than they were in 3.5

 

[Wraith Form]

a human cleric monster (not npc). It would be an elite, but I can't find a good base monster to apply the template to.

This ^ doesn't make sense to me. I know humans are in the MM.... wouldn't you think "Human" would be a good base monster?

 

[DEP]

I am currently converting the STAP over to 4e, I ran the party through a modified KotS and they are currently making their way to Sasserine right now. I converted TiNH so far, and I am thinking of starting the Bullywug Gambit, although I may leave it closer to the end of TiNH to see what level I should aim for it to be for.

It wasnt too much trouble to convert, a little time consuming due to my work, social life, and trying to relax after long days at work.

The flavor seems like it will still be there as the party is enjoying it and I have hooked them well with modified NPC's and other plot hooks.

The only thing that is going to throw a kink in my plans is that there is no Prof. Sailor...I still dont know what I am going to do for that. If anyone has any suggestions that would be fantastic

 

[grickherder]

Another thing to remember is to use the quest reward system. It's just so explicit it rocks. Players who might not otherwise care about a certain hook find themselves somehow interested if it'll net them 1000 experience.

 

[essenbee]

Just started to convert the old Expert module Blade of Vengeance. I'm taking a playtesting route to the conversion, designing an encounter, and then running it through with my son playing Erystelle (the lone Eladrin PC) to see how successful my initial conversion was. Then I tweak things until they are balance and interesting combats as well. Seems to be a good approach, but its hardly viable as a general method of doing this kind of thing. It should teach me a lot about how to scale conversions properly however.