D&D 5E 5E Conversion of Red Hand of Doom

[Dax Doomslayer]

Hey Folks,
I was wondering if anyone happened to do a conversion to 5E for the 3.5 module Red Hand of Doom. There seems to be a good deal of 'specials' (Wyrmlords; Special Minions and even some of the rank in file "Doom" creatures and Dragonspawn) in this module and my 'Monster-fu' / Encounter building conversion is somewhat weak. I'm currently entering this into Fantasy Grounds and to have to do the encounters too will add a good chunk of time that would bog this down. I've checked and pretty much there doesn't seem to be anything popping up on Google with the exception of one that only gets to the Blackfens. I'm pretty surprised as this adventure seems to be well liked from the 3.5 days and does look like a lot of fun. Any help / suggestions is appreciated. If not, no biggy. Thanks!!

 

[hastur_nz]

Do you have access to Volo's Guide? If so, I'd think you can find something in MM or VG that's close enough for pretty much everything - building custom monsters are really not worth the trouble, much better to spend a few minutes finding something existing, that's in the right ball-park as far as CR and maybe a key aspect or two that matches (e.g. high AC, a major power or two, etc).

For example, I'm currently running "Last Breaths of Ashenport" - in the 3.5 adventure the Fish-Men of Dagon are pseudonatural modified kuo-toa rogue 1, for which I just used Kou-Toa Monitors; the 4e version had two types of Fish-Men so I also used Sea Spawn; the 3.5 Wrath of Dagon was an Amphibious ripper of legend, I used a Neogi Mastermind which I made Legendary; etc. I have tweaked a couple of monsters, but made nothing from scratch, everything is a simple re-skin from MM or VG.

From my memory of playing RHoD, I think most of the 3.5 "specials" are likely NPC types (hobgoblins and the like), and between VG and MM there are plenty of options that are close enough; don't sweat the little things that get lost in conversion, 3.5 monsters are often overly complex. The main thing is to be aware of the "action economy", i.e. don't expect a single hobgoblin or two, to last long vs 4-5 PC's, whereas similar numbers on each side will make your players work hard. When I was playing it, we had 5 PC's, and I think our DM upped the number of foes appropriately; we had a lot of tough fights where we had a decent number of foes against us.

 

[cooperjer]

I did run Red Hand of Doom in 5e. I moved the story to Northern Faerun and replaced the hobgoblins with orcs. I ran the story on the table top, which was before we started using Roll20. As hastur_nz mentioned, I would also recommend using generic templates from Volo's Guide and the Monster Manual. What I mean by generic templates is to use the "monsters" listing for Guard, Knight, Veteran, Champion, etc. Add the appropriate racial features such as darkvision, flying if applicable, any special attacks/actions for higher ranking NPC (i.e. Captain, Warlord, etc.). For the dragonspawn and Doom creatures, I would recommend replacing them with devils, wyrmlings, or young dragons.

Although Red Hand of Doom is an open story in which the characters can move to several locations after the initial attack at Drellin's Ferry, it still has a fairly linear progression of key achievements that the characters may follow. Because of this, you should be able to schedule what you will want to have setup in Fantasy Grounds based on how fast your PCs are moving, and with a verbal agreement with your players that you only have so much completed. For example, for the first game session you may only need to complete details for Drellin's Ferry and Vraath Keep. For the second game session you'll want to have the spy encounter ready and Rhest. Hammerfist Holds, can be run without any maps or significant combat encounter. Get an idea from your players at the end of the game session where they plan to go next and have that ready. If they change their mind and you don't have the encounter ready, then you get to wing it and the players may not have as good of a time because there wasn't as much prep.

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

Hey Folks,
Thanks for the response and sorry for the tardy reply. I do have access to Volo's along with Nord Game's Ultimate Bestiary. I'd prefer to definitely 're-skin' vs. create 'whole cloth' and have done some of that. While RHoD definitely has a lot of hobgoblins/goblins, there's also some weird monsters (a lot of the MM3 monsters are the ones that are a PITA such as BoneDrinkers; Dragon Spawn etc). That said, though I have Volo's, I really haven't had time to go through it and I'm very happy about the templates at the back. They add a nice little amount of roles that will definitely help. That said, for 'rebuilding' these encounters in 5E how well does the EL in 3.5E compare to the CR in 5E generally have you folks found?

 

[Xeviat]

I started doing this myself too.

CR to EL is pretty good when you’re looking at a single monster.


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[jayoungr]

You may find this thread helpful--a few other players here have been at least thinking of running RHoD in 5E:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?542110-Red-Hand-of-Doom-Rise-of-Tiamat-Scales-of-War

 

[mikebr99]

Hi
This guy has been doing a great job on this conversion: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?525127-Converting-Red-Hand-of-Doom-to-5e


Mike

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

Thanks folks. I did read through that thread jayoungr but thanks for bringing that to my attention. I did see that too mikebr99. It looks like it's been a while since he's updated but it is a start at least!!

 

[cooperjer]

I haven't been happy with the monsters as a direct port from 3.5 to 5 because of the HP and AC changes in 5e. The HP seems too low in 3.5 as compared to 5e and thus the monsters will not last as long. I would recommend using kobold fight club to calculate the encounter difficulty until the PCs reach level 6. After level 6, switch to using the daily XP as a tool to get a better understanding of how many resources they use in an encounter.

Now that I'm home I can check a few things regarding what to use. Volo's has a hobgoblin monk, Hobgoblin iron Shadow. It has a hobgoblin conjuration wizard, Hobgoblin Devastator, which can replace the War Adepts in RHoD. I would use the Veteran stat block for the Hobgoblin Veteran. The Swashbuckler in Volo's might replace the Bladebearer. I would recommend having fun with Miha by making her a custom NPC, or use the Warlock of the Great Old One. You could easily justify Kharn as a Warlord from Volo's. For things like the Blood Ghost Berserkers use the Gladiator from the MM but add the Reckless feature from the Berserker. For things like the Greenspawn Razorfiend you could mix a Young Green Dragon with a Barbed Devil feature of Barbed Hide. For Nurklenak, you might use a Mind Flayer Archanist from the MM or use the Enchanter from Volo's but keep the "Push the Weak Mind" feature from RHoD. For Azarr Kul I used an Ultroloth from the MM and setup the encounter to clearly state that there were two ways to succeed in preventing the summoning.

Hopefully this helps some in looking at mixing and matching features from different monsters to get something that provides the same feel as the monsters in RHoD. Encounter balance is tricky and is a function of several factors (players, character builds, environment, etc). I've found that using daily XP for my PCs works well after they started playing in levels 6 to 7.

 

[Tormyr]

I use encounter level to create a 5e encounter for 4 PCs of that level. If there was an EL 5 encounter, I would make a Medium encounter for four level 5 PCs even if the PCs were a different level. If the PCs were level 3, this would be a Hard or Deadly encounter. There are several downloads that I have posted that might help you. http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?6776887-Tormyr (click the "Downloads" tab)

Age of Worms 5e: Chapter 0 has some tables for quickly adjusting 3.5 DCs, traps, and encounter building. The other chapters show how I scale encounters for parties with more than 4 PCs.

Encounter Builder: This allows you to quickly build an encounter to figure out the difficulty. It also evens out the jumps in encounter xp multiplier when changing numbers of monsters or PCs. I use it to build a medium encounter for the EL as described above. As I had anywhere from 4-8 players during the 3 year campaign, I would also calculate how many more creatures were needed to keep the encounter at Medium for 8 PCs. This allowed me to make a note for each encounter about how to ramp things up for each additional PC above 4.

Monster CR calculator: Does the DMG monster creator calculations for you.