D&D 5E Converting Monsters - which addition is easier to convert from?

[akr71]

[MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION] I am planning on converting modules (or at least chunks of). We're in the midst of a campaign, but I'm beginning to plan the next one and I want to take a crack at a sandbox style campaign. Everything we've done so far has felt very much like its been on rails - however, they were new players and I had not played or DM'd in a couple decades (at least). Time to take the rails away and see how they do! They're interested in the concept too.

So, I've chosen a start location. Now I'm mining my old AD&D modules and gotten my hands on some old Dragon & Dungeon magazines so I can seed the local area and not so local area with potential adventures and hooks. They'll get to choose which ones to go after with the understanding that the things that they pass on are not frozen in time waiting for their return. I've got some time before I have to worry a whole lot about converting, but I will have to get on it. Adventure Lookup had me looking at some 3e & 4e stuff which had me wondering what I was in for if I used some of that.

Gotta also think about red herrings, false leads and things that just look interesting to explore. While I might have set pieces in the background, if I don't let them get into the weeds, all I've done is give them a multiple choice of rails to follow.

 

[Tony Vargas]

...t if the new/casual DM is Dming for mostly new/casual players, there probably won't be enough PC shenanigans to keep the monsters at too big a disadvantage.

You've got a half dozen or so player brains dreaming up shenanigans while they each wait for their turn vs one harried DM brain trying to rule on their actions on each of those turns, and head off said shenanigans.

DM's who prefer to count how many 1st level spell slots the monster has should probably look to an earlier edition.

Not at all. 5e is very much in the spirit of those earlier editions, and is not hard to mod & run very like them.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

At lower levels, any edition can translate well. Once mid-high levels hit the 3.5/PF monsters with stats like: advanced minotaur fighter 3/sorcerer 2/prestige class alfa is enough to make your hair hurt. Stuff like that was what made us switch to 5th ed in the first place.

Besides monsters, be aware of the spells that didn't translate over. I ran an adventure where it was necessary for someone in the party to have read magic, only to discover that it doesn't exist in 5th.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

You've got a half dozen or so player brains dreaming up shenanigans while they each wait for their turn vs one harried DM brain trying to rule on their actions on each of those turns, and head off said shenanigans.

Not at all. 5e is very much in the spirit of those earlier editions, and is not hard to mod & run very like them.

Sorry, I meant to say "DM's who prefer to count how many 1st level spell slots the monster has should probably look to an earlier edition to base their conversions off of." Unless of course, there was a secret group of 4e monsters with 1st level spells that I didn't know about.....

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sorry, I meant to say " ...should probably look to an earlier edition [b}to base their conversions off of[/b]." ..

Sorry. ;| Seems like I've been pushing back against a lot of "_________ shouldn't be playing 5e" lately."

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Sorry. ;| Seems like I've been pushing back against a lot of "_________ shouldn't be playing 5e" lately."

It is all cool. Keep pushing against that idea. One true way has never done the hobby any favors.

 

[ccs]

In my opinion, 3e has the most in common with 5e, and would be the easiest to convert. Previous to 3e Armor Class and Ability scores were handled quite differently, as were saves.

2e & earlier is dirt simple to convert concerning ACs, Saves & ability Scores:

AC.
In 1e & 2e ACs got better as they got lower. Like now, 10 was the base. So if for ex you had AC4? That's 6 points off the base. Guess what? That's the same as AC16 today - 6 points off the base. Counting up/counting down. Same difference.
Now in BECMI/Compendium (& I think in OD&D - the little white phamphlet edition) AC counted down from 9.

Ability Scores & Saves.
You don't need to know anything about them if you're converting forward. Use the 5e rules as is.
Though you will need to assign ability Scores to monsters as very few ever had Str/Dex/Con/Wis/or Cha noted. Intelligence though is the easy one. The MMs of the time had a line that defined a monsters Int. Low, average, high, genius, etc & this was defined in the opening pages.

 

[ccs]

At lower levels, any edition can translate well. Once mid-high levels hit the 3.5/PF monsters with stats like: advanced minotaur fighter 3/sorcerer 2/prestige class alfa is enough to make your hair hurt. Stuff like that was what made us switch to 5th ed in the first place.

Besides monsters, be aware of the spells that didn't translate over. I ran an adventure where it was necessary for someone in the party to have read magic, only to discover that it doesn't exist in 5th.

We ran into that too. But as everyone but 1 guy at the table was a vet of many editions? We just shrugged & now every wizard also comes with the free "Read Magic" spell (1st lv).

 

[Wulffolk]

2e & earlier is dirt simple to convert concerning ACs, Saves & ability Scores:

Nope, not difficult to convert. Yet the need to covert at all makes it less easy than 3e, which I why I suggest 3e. Since 5e has the most in common with 3e from a game mechanic perspective, it is therefore the easiest to convert from.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Nope, not difficult to convert. Yet the need to covert at all makes it less easy than 3e, which I why I suggest 3e. Since 5e has the most in common with 3e from a game mechanic perspective, it is therefore the easiest to convert from.

Not really. The scaling in 3e is very different from that in 1e & 5e, especially things like AC. So if you glance at a monster in 1e and just invert it's AC ( 6 becomes 14, 0 becomes 20, etc), you get a reasonable AC. If you just use a high-level 3e monster's AC 'as is,' because it's in common with 5e from a game mechanic perspective, it's likely un-hitable. Similarly, a 1e monster will have a description of what it can do, including anything special, while a 3e monster will have a bunch of feats and special abilities that are explained elsewhere. Sufficient familiarity with 3e can make the conversion practical, but it was a relatively high-learning-curve version of the game.