D&D 4E Any notable 4E adventures worth converting to 5E?

[Olaf the Stout]

3.xE had a number of notable adventures/adventure paths. Some that come to mind include:

Red Hand of Doom
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
Sunless Citadel
Shackled City AP
Age of Worms AP
Savage Tide AP
Rappan Athuk
Crucible of Freya
Of Sound Mind
Castle Whiterock

I didn’t play 4E, so it is a bit of a blind spot for me. So what do you people consider to be the best 4E adventures that would be worth considering converting to 5E?

 

[Jester David]

Madness at Gardmore Abbey is pretty solid, but needs some extra conversion work due to a sub-mechanic (the cards).
One of the later ones was reportedly good but darned if I can remember the name. Readers of somethings??

Most of the others are so-so, with their supporters/fans and detractors, but mostly unimaginative and generic.

 

[CapnZapp]

Far too much emphasis on enhancing the tactical aspects of combat (many nuances of which would simply get lost in other editions), coupled with a pronounced disinterest in providing a memorable story.

That's why ad&d and 3e adventures offer much more fertile ground for conversion.

 

[meomwt]

The Keep on the Shadowfell as written has its problems, but if you include some or all of the suggestions from The Alexandrian's website, it should make it more of a true RP-experience.

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress...eep-on-the-shadowfell-the-complete-collection

 

[meomwt]

Oops.

 

[MrHotter]

I would only use 4E if you are playing at a table and like having battle mats and tactical combat. 4E assumes that every encounter is on a battlemat so some of the encounters will seem claustrophobic if everything has to stay on one side of a poster map.

I'm running the Reavers or Harkenwold for my family because my daughter has always liked the miniatures as part of our game. I also have the Lost Mines of Phandelver, but I was trying to figure out the best way to map for that and decided to go with an adventure that I already have maps for.

Personally I don't feel that a 4E conversion is the best way to get adventures for 5E. My Reavers adventure seems a bit odd when many of the battles reuse the same map and my 5E conversion does not really need to have the same level of tactical battle strategy that 4E had. The battles in 5E are over much faster, so I'm not sure that the set up time with the battle mats is as important anymore.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

IMO Pyramid of Shadows adventure could turn out really good for some roleplay-heavy groups.

The pyramid sucks players into a huge jail while they are hunting bandits. There are several factions on each floor with their own motives and outlooks. One faction has a garden, one faction is the lair of an ice wolf, one faction devolved onto an old haunted library, the bandits setup camp... of course nobody can escape the pyramid.

The adventure provides hooks the players can use to get involved with different groups. There is an overall metaplot involving the one faction that actually has a chance to escape. But I could easily see where players could set up shop and work on theor own escape (the pyramid molds to fit the people's needs).

So it runs like an adventure where there are different towns (factions) and the overall goal which the players can pursue at their own pace. Dowsides are I guess it's a little short, and it's probably too similar to CoS for some people (mists=pyramid, towns=factions, top floor=Strahd's castle, etc). It's like a shorter, 4e version of Curse of Strahd, which should help describe the quality. YMMV

 

[DEFCON 1]

Thunderspire Labyrinth, King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, and Demon Queen's Enclave are all good 4E adventures in my opinion, all three of which you could easily swap out the 4E monster stats for their 5E versions and not have any real issues. The "expected adventure level" of the modules won't be the same of course, due to 4E having expanded up to 30 levels... so while in 4E Trollhaunt was for Level 11-13 characters and Enclave was 14-16, a 5E version of both would probably be closer to 5-7 and 8-10.

If you have the 4E issues of Dungeon Magazine, I'd also recommend The Last Breaths of Ashenport (Issue 156), Storm Tower (Issue 166), Prey for Smily Bob (Issue 205), Fair Barovia (Issue 207), and A Rhyme Gone Wrong (Issue 217).

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

so while in 4E Trollhaunt was for Level 11-13 characters and Enclave was 14-16, a 5E version of both would probably be closer to 5-7 and 8-10.
.

If you pay any kind of attention to the encounter building guidelines in the DMG, this is simply not true. I don't have enough experience with 5e to know if the guidelines are just completely bonkers at all levels of the game, but according to the DMG, a battle against 4 trolls (frequent in Trollhaunt) is a hard for 4 level 13 characters, and deadly for level 10.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you pay any kind of attention to the encounter building guidelines in the DMG, this is simply not true. I don't have enough experience with 5e to know if the guidelines are just completely bonkers at all levels of the game, but according to the DMG, a battle against 4 trolls (frequent in Trollhaunt) is a hard for 4 level 13 characters, and deadly for level 10.

Well, I don't. I've found them to be rather incorrect fairly often, depending entirely on the time of the battle, the mix of classes, and most especially due to the supposed "doubling" of the XP value due to the number of monsters to determine difficulty. That final one I think does more harm to screw up encounter building than anything, especially once you start reaching PC level 5 and up.

So 4 trolls gives us 7,200 XP on their own, but because there's "3 to 6" of them, their XP value doubles to 14,400. So we're supposed to think that these four trolls are Deadly for a party of five 10th level characters. Despite them having only 84 HP each, and hitting if you're lucky on 2 out of the 3 attacks (but oftentimes only once) for an average of 18 HP damage (against someone like a rogue, who might have 70+ in HP). Meanwhile, that 10th level rogue Sneak Attacks for 30+ damage, the Paladin smites for 20-30 damage, the Wizard drops a fireball on two or more of them for 25-35 damage, etc. The fight will probably go three rounds at most, and you'd be hard-pressed to knock any one PC out unless all 4 trolls bum-rushed a single PC. If they instead found themselves each taking on one PC individually... they'll be on the ground before you know it.

Now... should all the trolls within the Warrens all go rushing the party once they heard combat happening, then sure, things could get ugly quickly (but that was true for the 4E version as well.) But provided the PCs are able to go from one fight to the next without drawing other rooms to them with the sounds of battle... I would maintain the entire adventure would work best for level 5 to 7 PCs, and levels 10+ would find it boring unless many more trolls came out for every fight.

But hey... I freely admit this is strictly my experience talking, and yours (and anyone else's) could very well be different. If it is, and the Encounter Building Guidelines work like a charm for you, that's awesome!