D&D 5E Converting Older Edition Adventures to 5E

Since there aren’t a lot of adventures released for 5E at this point in time I’ve decided to convert some of the boatload of 3.xE adventures I own over to 5E. However, I’ve never converted an adventure from one edition to another before.

For those that have converted adventures before (especially from 3.xE to 5E), how easy is it to do?

Are there any tricky bits to watch out for (i.e. a spell from 3.xE isn’t available until a higher level in 5E, so you need to keep that in mind)?

Do monsters convert across for the most part? Do I increase/reduce the number of enemies that PCs should face in each encounter?

Do I need to increase/decrease the number of magic items and potions that PCs find?

Anything else I need to keep in mind?

Any classic 3.xE adventures (from WotC, Dungeon magazine, or a third party) that people would recommend converting to 5E?

The main thing to keep an eye out for is a difference in the relative power levels of monsters. Characters playing through G1-3 with AD&D 2E were surprised by how tough the giants suddenly were! For that reason, I'd check the balance of each encounter, and change monster numbers if necessary. It's not going to be consistent.

I don't worry about converting spells that much unless really important for the adventure; normally I just pick new spells for monsters based on the current system.

Magic items tend to be less common in 5E. I'd replace existing treasure with rolls on the random treasure tables in the DMG.

(if you're looking for other 5E adventures, here's the list I've been making: http://merricb.com/2014/08/03/the-great-list-of-dungeons-dragons-5e-adventures/)

Cheers!

Yeah , I would check the CR to make sure it fits with the PCs levels. Then I would go through each encounter and total up the XP and the adjusted XP levels. After you know that, add or subtract to match the desired challenge. I'm betting that for the most part you can use almost everything as is.

The only other thing you will have to deal with are NPCs. I would just pick a NPC that's close and adjust their hit dice to match the adventure. Don't get into the trap of making them like PCs.

MerricB said:

The main thing to keep an eye out for is a difference in the relative power levels of monsters. Characters playing through G1-3 with AD&D 2E were surprised by how tough the giants suddenly were! For that reason, I'd check the balance of each encounter, and change monster numbers if necessary. It's not going to be consistent.

I don't worry about converting spells that much unless really important for the adventure; normally I just pick new spells for monsters based on the current system.

Magic items tend to be less common in 5E. I'd replace existing treasure with rolls on the random treasure tables in the DMG.

(if you're looking for other 5E adventures, here's the list I've been making: http://merricb.com/2014/08/03/the-great-list-of-dungeons-dragons-5e-adventures/)

Cheers!

Click to expand...

So are 2E giants tougher that 5E giants, or the other way around? Given that I'm going to convert 3.xE adventures, I figured 3.xE CR's should give me a reasonable guideline as to how challenging an encounter is meant to be.

I wasn't worried about spells in terms of "Monster X had Spell Y that doesn't currently exist, how do I convert that?". It was more like (and this example is likely wrong, but it gets my point across) "Ok, this 2E adventure assumes that PCs of this level won't have access to the Fly spell. Trouble is PCs get access to Fly earlier in 5E compared to 2E, so I might need to change the adventure to account for that."

Thanks for the list of 5E adventures. I've got LMoP, HotDQ and RoT (although I'm not sure if I'll run the latter two) along with both Quests of Doom and the Wizard's Amulet. Those, along with all my 3.xE adventures will be more than enough.

Zaran said:

The only other thing you will have to deal with are NPCs. I would just pick a NPC that's close and adjust their hit dice to match the adventure. Don't get into the trap of making them like PCs.

Click to expand...

What exactly do you mean by this?

Do you mean don't try and re-create the NPC from scratch, like you would if you were creating a PC of that level? Just get their hit points correct and then wing the rest?

Olaf the Stout said:

Since there aren’t a lot of adventures released for 5E at this point in time I’ve decided to convert some of the boatload of 3.xE adventures I own over to 5E. However, I’ve never converted an adventure from one edition to another before.

For those that have converted adventures before (especially from 3.xE to 5E), how easy is it to do?

Are there any tricky bits to watch out for (i.e. a spell from 3.xE isn’t available until a higher level in 5E, so you need to keep that in mind)?

Do monsters convert across for the most part? Do I increase/reduce the number of enemies that PCs should face in each encounter?

Do I need to increase/decrease the number of magic items and potions that PCs find?

Anything else I need to keep in mind?

Any classic 3.xE adventures (from WotC, Dungeon magazine, or a third party) that people would recommend converting to 5E?

Click to expand...

I'm converting two adventures from 3.x - City of the Spider Queen and Red Hand of Doom.

City of the Spider Queen is a higher level (10-18) adventure set in the FR:

• Lots of high level monsters that do not have a match in the 5e monsters manual. 5e monsters manual lacks high CR critters.
• Lots of FR specific stuff that doesn't have any equivalent in 5e.
• Lots of magical traps that are much easier to bypass in 5e due to detect magic as a ritual.
• Lots of NPC casters who are underpowered in 5e vs 3e because they can't buff stack and limited by concentration.
• Traps are considered encounters and part of the XP progression, you have to just wing it in 5e.
• Lots of monsters with class levels, harder to figure out what that means in terms of CR and encounter difficulty in 5e.
• Large encounters with numbers are very different in 5e, even against a higher level party numbers can only be made up with very low CR critters. If 3e asks for 5xCR5 and a couple of CR8's you're going to go way above deadly, the 5e "equivalent" is like 5xCR2 and 1xCR6.
• Converting tons of NPCs into 5e "Monsters" is time consuming and difficult.
• Lack of templates, you have to reverse engineer a lot of things in 5e instead.
• Spells are not so much of a problem, 3e had a lot of permanent illusions and such that don't have an equivalent in 5e. Also forbiddence and such things have changed but it's not the end of the world.
• Level progression in 5e is quite fast between level 11-16, so my party will actually reach 20th level by the end of this, even though the module is designed for level 10-18. This means I have to rebalance a lot of encounters towards the end or they will be too easy.
• Lots of magic items etc per every encounter. Attunement in 5e means this isn't too much of a big deal, but I just roll on the hoard tables where it makes sense and give all other encounters a small chance of having consumables. I don't even bother converting 1:1 magic items 3e to 5e. Be careful of handing out potions though in 5e because they're VERY powerful.

I spend HOURS converting this each week, because there is simply so much content missing from 5e that 3e + FR had, and the way encounters are built now is completely different. Basically, higher level FR specific stuff is a PITA. Part of that is also making maps for it (for roll20), since the maps provided online via WoTCs website are pretty meh.

Red Hand of Doom on the other hand is easier. It's lower level, much more "plug and play" type monsters, not FR specific, and less spell caster/NPC heavy. It's still a bit of work but no where near as much.

DaveDash said:

I'm converting two adventures from 3.x - City of the Spider Queen and Red Hand of Doom.

City of the Spider Queen is a higher level (10-18) adventure set in the FR:

• Lots of high level monsters that do not have a match in the 5e monsters manual. 5e monsters manual lacks high CR critters.
• Lots of FR specific stuff that doesn't have any equivalent in 5e.
• Lots of magical traps that are much easier to bypass in 5e due to detect magic as a ritual.
• Lots of NPC casters who are underpowered in 5e vs 3e because they can't buff stack and limited by concentration.
• Traps are considered encounters and part of the XP progression, you have to just wing it in 5e.
• Lots of monsters with class levels, harder to figure out what that means in terms of CR and encounter difficulty in 5e.
• Large encounters with numbers are very different in 5e, even against a higher level party numbers can only be made up with very low CR critters. If 3e asks for 5xCR5 and a couple of CR8's you're going to go way above deadly, the 5e "equivalent" is like 5xCR2 and 1xCR6.
• Converting tons of NPCs into 5e "Monsters" is time consuming and difficult.
• Lack of templates, you have to reverse engineer a lot of things in 5e instead.
• Spells are not so much of a problem, 3e had a lot of permanent illusions and such that don't have an equivalent in 5e. Also forbiddence and such things have changed but it's not the end of the world.
• Level progression in 5e is quite fast between level 11-16, so my party will actually reach 20th level by the end of this, even though the module is designed for level 10-18. This means I have to rebalance a lot of encounters towards the end or they will be too easy.
• Lots of magic items etc per every encounter. Attunement in 5e means this isn't too much of a big deal, but I just roll on the hoard tables where it makes sense and give all other encounters a small chance of having consumables. I don't even bother converting 1:1 magic items 3e to 5e. Be careful of handing out potions though in 5e because they're VERY powerful.

I spend HOURS converting this each week, because there is simply so much content missing from 5e that 3e + FR had, and the way encounters are built now is completely different. Basically, higher level FR specific stuff is a PITA. Part of that is also making maps for it (for roll20), since the maps provided online via WoTCs website are pretty meh.

Red Hand of Doom on the other hand is easier. It's lower level, much more "plug and play" type monsters, not FR specific, and less spell caster/NPC heavy. It's still a bit of work but no where near as much.

Click to expand...

Cool, I don't see myself running City of the Spider Queen, but the sort of things you are mentioning is exactly what I'm after in terms of stuff to be aware of when converting.

Olaf the Stout said:

What exactly do you mean by this?

Do you mean don't try and re-create the NPC from scratch, like you would if you were creating a PC of that level? Just get their hit points correct and then wing the rest?

Click to expand...

Yeah Third edition especially used regular stats for NPCs. You really don't want to do that for 5e. So find one in the list of NPCs in the back of the MM and adjust them to match any NPCs you need from the module. You don't want to spend a bunch of time on them because they will only last a couple rounds.

Olaf the Stout said:

Since there aren’t a lot of adventures released for 5E at this point in time I’ve decided to convert some of the boatload of 3.xE adventures I own over to 5E. However, I’ve never converted an adventure from one edition to another before.

For those that have converted adventures before (especially from 3.xE to 5E), how easy is it to do?

Are there any tricky bits to watch out for (i.e. a spell from 3.xE isn’t available until a higher level in 5E, so you need to keep that in mind)?

Do monsters convert across for the most part? Do I increase/reduce the number of enemies that PCs should face in each encounter?

Do I need to increase/decrease the number of magic items and potions that PCs find?

Anything else I need to keep in mind?

Any classic 3.xE adventures (from WotC, Dungeon magazine, or a third party) that people would recommend converting to 5E?

Click to expand...

Converting from 3.5 is relatively straightforward, and much of it can be done on the fly once you feel comfortable with it. Here is what I have done.

NPC Spell Casters: Create an equivalent CR spell caster. Use as many of the 3.5 spells as possible. Pad out the rest of the available prepared spells with sensible choices. Spell casters of the same CR have much higher spell slots available in 5e, so there is not really the situation of a 3.5 spell being available later in 5e.

Custom Monster Conversion: If a 5e version of a monster is available in the MM then I use that. Otherwise, I use my Monster CR Calculator spreadsheet to convert a custom monster from 5e. The ability scores generally come across without change. Anything else is brought across if possible, and I change hp, AC, and DPR to get the CR I am looking for. In some cases, when multiple of a monster are called for in an encounter, I will make it a lower CR so that all of the enemies can be included in the encounter.

Encounter Building: While many monsters are the same CR as they were in 3.5, the encounter building is different. In general, multiple monsters of the same CR will yield a more difficult encounter in 5e. I look at the Encounter Level (EL) for the encounter and build a medium encounter for a party of that level. So if my party is 5 PCs at 8th level and they run into an EL 11 encounter, I make an encounter that would be medium for 5 11th level PCs. That translates to a hard or deadly encounter for the 8th level party.

Magic Items: +1-+2 = +1; +-+4 = +2; +5 and up = +3. Drop the masterwork keyword. Drop healing wands (or make a wand of healing word that functions like a wand of magic missile. Many magic items have an equivalent in the DMG. Many cursed items do not. The number of magic items is quite high in 3.5. If all of them are brought over in an adventure, it will be a high magic adventure. I would not recommend adding more magic items. In most cases, I have pulled back on some of the magic items on NPCs because they overlap so much to get a high AC (+1 plate, +1 shield, amulet of natural armor, potion of barkskin, ring of protection all on the same person). Many of these kind of items no longer stack anyway. Attunement will also help keep the number of magic items on PCs lower. Consider dividing the monetary amount of all treasure by 10.

We started Age of Worms last April. We will probably finish chapter 5 of 12 on Wednesday. We are having a great time, and I would highly recommend this AP.

Olaf the Stout said:

Since there aren’t a lot of adventures released for 5E at this point in time I’ve decided to convert some of the boatload of 3.xE adventures I own over to 5E. However, I’ve never converted an adventure from one edition to another before.

For those that have converted adventures before (especially from 3.xE to 5E), how easy is it to do?

Click to expand...

I've mostly converted AD&D to to 5E, but I should be able to help, at least conceptually.

Olaf the Stout said:

Are there any tricky bits to watch out for (i.e. a spell from 3.xE isn’t available until a higher level in 5E, so you need to keep that in mind)?

Click to expand...

Unless something is specifically required (say dispel magic, the ability to undo petrification, etc.) you shouldn't have too hard of a time with this. 3E might be a bit harder, since some of their adventures were very mechanically focused. You might have to accept that a bad guy is able to do something that he no longer has the ability to do if built as a PC of the same level. Scrolls and other consumable magic items are useful if you feel you need to explain.

Olaf the Stout said:

Do monsters convert across for the most part? Do I increase/reduce the number of enemies that PCs should face in each encounter?

Click to expand...

Converting from 5E, I'd probably redesign the combats. Figure out what the EL was to get an idea of how hard the encounter should be, then use the combat design chart in the DMG to make it as close as possible. You'll probably find it to be VERY close to the original, and so you might not bother if the first half dozen only add or reduce 1 monster. I ran the early part of Temple of Elemental Evil (1E) with no changes in monsters, and only 1 encounter involving a swarm of weaker monsters was a problem.

Olaf the Stout said:

Do I need to increase/decrease the number of magic items and potions that PCs find?

Click to expand...

This is up to you. 3E assumed a set level of magic (via. treasure), but the math was built assuming it. 5E doesn't require magic items, so the magic items will actually make the PCs stronger. I would probably reduce the number of magic items in general (because I prefer a lower magic game), and replace items as needed with level appropriate ones from the DMG. In general, reduce the value of each "+" by half, round up, if you want to keep those items.

Olaf the Stout said:

Anything else I need to keep in mind?

Click to expand...

I made companion pages to work with the adventures. Each area had listed monsters (and MM page reference), tricks and traps (including probably checks), and treasure changes (including DMG page references for magic items). This helps keep you from having to look up a lot of things as you go.

Olaf the Stout said:

Any classic 3.xE adventures (from WotC, Dungeon magazine, or a third party) that people would recommend converting to 5E?

Click to expand...

Generally, BECMI is the easiest to convert, with AD&D being only slightly harder, so these are a good starting point (Keep on the Borderlands even has a playtest version if you can find it). The only other recommendation I would give would be to use adventures that you've enjoyed, since that will help you stay interested and focused.