Pathfinder APs in 5E

[Reynard]

I am going to go out on a limb and guess not a few people who like Pathfinder APs on this board prefer the 5E ruleset for play at the table.

If you fit into that category, I am curious which Pathfinder APs you have run (or played in) using 5E. Also, how did it go? Did you convert on the fly or do a bunch of prep work? Where did it break down or get difficult, if at all? Would you do it again? And if you have run multiples, which ones worked best?

Thanks!

 

[Mistwell]

I ran Savage Tide until the island in 5e. It worked very well. I mostly converted on the fly. I'd do it again.

 

[MNblockhead]

The only PathFinder material I've played in 5e was We Be Goblins. I've never played Pathfinder and am not familiar with its APs. The only reason I played We Be Goblins is that it was provided free to Realmworks customers. I really enjoyed it and found it pretty easy to convert to 5e on the fly.

 

[Alistair Morrison]

I've just finished running Kingmaker. It went well enough. Was able to convert on the fly quite easily, with one exceptions - big bosses along the way. Higher levels things did need a bit more time to convert too.

 

[S'mon]

I ran a two-year PF to 5e campaign using Rise of the Runelords plus Shattered Star - http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.com/ - and am thinking of doing Skull & Shackles, as you'll see from the newest entry on that blog.

5e certainly runs better than PF at level 6+, my previous effort running Curse of the Crimson Throne in PF (also on that blog) I found the ruleset was horrible at level 9+, with some abominably broken stuff like the entire Summoner class.

I did a fair amount of PF to 5e stat block conversion in advance, but this did not work as well as simply subbing in a different 5e monster stat block or NPC stat block. Conversely PF magic items work fine in 5e, both are basically just 1e-2e-3e D&D magic items.

Generally I would say the Runelords stuff worked well, the first two Shattered Star issues worked well, but SS #3 and #4 were fairly weak, #4 especially. PF APs have far too many linear strings of static monsters with BBEG in the final room. And it's all 'attacks immediately' 'fights to the death'. I noticed looking at Skull & Shackles they even include "commits suicide if captured" to ensure no interesting roleplay opportunities. So Paizo APs need a lot of work to make interesting. In particular they tend to start strong with #1 & #2 but then just dial it in for the rest. Runelords is an exception.

 

[Zardnaar]

The earlier APs are easier. Basically Shattered Star and earlier. The later ones are a bit more niche or make heavy use of Pathfinder splatbook mechanics.

 

[Inchoroi]

I am going to go out on a limb and guess not a few people who like Pathfinder APs on this board prefer the 5E ruleset for play at the table.

If you fit into that category, I am curious which Pathfinder APs you have run (or played in) using 5E. Also, how did it go? Did you convert on the fly or do a bunch of prep work? Where did it break down or get difficult, if at all? Would you do it again? And if you have run multiples, which ones worked best?

Thanks!

I ran the last two and a half parts of Rise of the Runelords in 5e, which was fun and much less of a headache than PF or 4e. I'm an overpreparing DM, though, so I converted literally everything. I've been tempted to run it again, since I have a new group now, and then run Shattered Star and the new Return of the Runelords to round out the trilogy (I don't know if I will, because Return of the Runelords has time travel in it, supposedly).

 

[Inchoroi]

I ran a two-year PF to 5e campaign using Rise of the Runelords plus Shattered Star - http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.com/ - and am thinking of doing Skull & Shackles, as you'll see from the newest entry on that blog.

5e certainly runs better than PF at level 6+, my previous effort running Curse of the Crimson Throne in PF (also on that blog) I found the ruleset was horrible at level 9+, with some abominably broken stuff like the entire Summoner class.

I did a fair amount of PF to 5e stat block conversion in advance, but this did not work as well as simply subbing in a different 5e monster stat block or NPC stat block. Conversely PF magic items work fine in 5e, both are basically just 1e-2e-3e D&D magic items.

Generally I would say the Runelords stuff worked well, the first two Shattered Star issues worked well, but SS #3 and #4 were fairly weak, #4 especially. PF APs have far too many linear strings of static monsters with BBEG in the final room. And it's all 'attacks immediately' 'fights to the death'. I noticed looking at Skull & Shackles they even include "commits suicide if captured" to ensure no interesting roleplay opportunities. So Paizo APs need a lot of work to make interesting. In particular they tend to start strong with #1 & #2 but then just dial it in for the rest. Runelords is an exception.

Hey! I'm going to be converting Skull & Shackles, too (unless I find a better Pirate AP in the meantime, which I think is unlikely)!

 

[S'mon]

I have only looked at the first two of S&S so far. 1 I like, 2 is a bit disappointing with its 'fake sandbox - not only are the supposed sandbox encounters not keyed, they don't even get a random encounter table. The GM needs to do a lot of work, which seems a feature of all APs - I can turn their encounter list into a table, add weather, use the Shackles book to create an actual sandbox. Allow npcs like Locke in #2 to behave more like their backstory and less like throwaway one shot monsters. Talking of which I need to decide if Locke is the hideous shark danger monster implied by her description or the cutie pie shown in the art!

Edit Phone turned shark toothed to shark danger, hmm

 

[robus]

Generally I would say the Runelords stuff worked well, the first two Shattered Star issues worked well, but SS #3 and #4 were fairly weak, #4 especially. PF APs have far too many linear strings of static monsters with BBEG in the final room. And it's all 'attacks immediately' 'fights to the death'. I noticed looking at Skull & Shackles they even include "commits suicide if captured" to ensure no interesting roleplay opportunities. So Paizo APs need a lot of work to make interesting. In particular they tend to start strong with #1 & #2 but then just dial it in for the rest. Runelords is an exception.

Well that’s disappointing, though I guess a DM is under no obligation to run it by the book, but then you’d be on the hook to add all the motivation/backstory (basically NPC complexity) that’s missing. Not that WotC is great at this either...