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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hastur_nz" data-source="post: 7111224" data-attributes="member: 40592">Against 6th level PC's, you'd expect to have to use what, 30-40 creatures of CR 1/4 to provide a 'reasonable' challenge in a fight?  Even at CR 1/2, you're talking in the order of 20+, if these are the main antagonists, i.e. they are not supporting some 'boss types'?  I have no idea about the adventure you're using, but assuming there are no classic 'evil humanoids' in charge of these beasties to provide some real challenge, I'd recommend you look at ensuring there are a few enemies of CR1+, e.g. 'enhanced' versions of the base creature, e.g. "Father of the Pine", "Mother of the Pine" etc.  These can be tougher (e.g. possible to survive a fireball), and have better druid spells, etc.  As noted above, use the MM as a guide, and tweak / re-skin as much as possible, rather than create from scratch.I've just finished running a conversion of a very old adventure, B5 (1980's basic not AD&D rules, but not much difference).  I didn't make up a single new stat block; where it had a monster that didn't exist in 5e, I simply found something vaguely similar, and used that stat block.  The closest I got to actually 'creating' something, was when the adventure had a "Thoul", for which I just took a Ghoul, and gave it double hd, slightly better attacks, etc.   The main thing I did, was adjust the actual number of creatures in some areas, to better fit the 5e "4-5 players' thing (B4 assumed more like 8+ PC's).  And try to give the antagonists some actual goals etc rather than just be hanging about in their rooms waiting for the PC's!So yeah, my advice is lean on what's in the MM as much as possible, and be mindful of how many foes, and their strength compared to the PC's, you might need to accomplish your re-design goals (AD&D was a very long time ago, and adventures often assumed more than 5 PC's; they also often assumed it was totally fine to allow the players to stumble into certain death if they so chose to... there were no real rules for how to design 'balanced encounters' back in those days, whatever 'balanced encounters' means...)p.s. I'm using the Unearthed Arcana tables for determining appropriate challenge, not the default DMG one which I think is quite lenient (and difficult to do on the fly).  Either way, as per comments above, don't try and convince yourself that a tough monster is only CR 1/4 just so you can convince yourself that using a dozen of them isn't too hard.  If you're new to 5e, you'll all need a few combats to even start to see how things shake down for your group of players and DM, so try not to kill them all on your first night using 5e rules...</blockquote>

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