You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tormyr" data-source="post: 6801708" data-attributes="member: 6776887">Thanks for the feedback! These kinds of things really help, as I only went through it with my group one way. Other people will hit the encounters from a totally different angle and expose other issues. So I really appreciate the feedback. I attempted to do a minimal conversion where as much as possible came from the big 3 books (PHB, MM, DMG). The conversion is a bit terse at times, lacking in a more full explanation of what is going on or why I chose a certain way to convert things. The simple answer is that I was going for as straightforward and quick of a conversion as possible. I chose not to get too bogged down in details but rather get things converted because in the end, the encounter ends, the party moves on, and the memorable is usually the story rather than the mechanics of an encounter.When I first started this campaign nearly two years ago, no official products had yet been released for 5e. We used the play test documents with their woefully under-powered monsters and made do. By chapters 3, 4, and 5 more and more of the official products had finally been released. By chapter 6, I changed how I was doing the conversion to what you see now. Now I have gone back and started rewriting the conversion of chapters 1-5 to match the style of what I am doing now. All that to say, chapters 1-5 have not been play tested by me in their current state, but they should be close enough.Now on to your specific points. As always, this is just how I did it. I will not feel bad in the slightest if you take stuff in a totally different direction. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />1. Yes, the wolves have disadvantage due to distance, and yes, it is cancelled by their natural advantage. The reason I did not include that is that I generally only include what is mentioned in the adventure that needs to be converted (i.e. the minus to their checks). The DM is probably going to be needing to look at the stat block for the wolf anyway to determine the bonus to any ability check and notice this.2. Thanks! One thing I may need to be more clear on based on some of your thoughts: The monsters are generally meant to still "appear" as described in the adventure. The replacement creatures are meant to be used as reskins.3. The modron was selected because it was the same CR as the Tomb Mote, also had multiple attacks, and had a gas attack to stand in for the Mote's disease attack. For the most part, when I wrote something like, "Tomb Mote, use Modron Pentadrone (MM226)" it means that the Tomb Mote is still a tomb mote but uses the other monster's stat block as a proxy. The gas attack also helps it be a "solo" monster by tying up some of the PCs and attacking with advantage on its next turn (if it survives that long). You will find that the solos in this adventure get chewed up and spit out in 5e (especially if you have a monk with stunning strike). So any special stuff like this really helps.4. The skeletons on their own match the challenge rating for the encounter. Encounter Level does not exist in 5e, but my understanding is that it meant a medium encounter in 3.5 for a party of 4 adventurers of that level. So what I did was use that as a determination of how difficult to make encounters in 5e. This allows some encounters to be easy, medium, hard, and deadly. By this point, the party should be level 2. The encounter level for this encounter is EL 1. By making a medium encounter for a level 1 party, it becomes an easy encounter for a level 2 party (just the way the encounter budget works). Giving the skeletons poison arrows would up their CR and make this an EL 2 encounter. So I did not bother with it. Generally, if I mention something in my conversion (such as a monster), it is a replacement for what is in the text. So the skeleton in the MM replaces the skeleton in the adventure and does not have poison arrows.5. The skeleton is CR 1/4. The zombies are each CR 1/4. Filge is CR 3 (as he is in the adventure). This makes an EL 5 encounter (as it is in the adventure): a medium encounter for a level 5 party. However the party is probably level 2 (by milestone) or maybe level 3 (by xp) by now. This is a deadly encounter for a level 2 party. Making all the zombies the same fits in the 5e ethos of streamlining the combat. There is nothing stopping those zombies from still being troglodytes and bugbear zombies story wise, but the different stat blocks are unnecessary. The DM is the only one who would ever even know they were different. Also, since Filge is CR 3, the CR 1/4 monsters are the only things that fit in the encounter budget.6. Pretty much everything in 5e has more hit points. With Bounded Accuracy, it is the hit points and damage dealt rather than the d20 rolls (specifically their modifiers) that scale the most. In 5e, 15 hp can be one shotted by a single PC. Filge has 88 hp for a few reasons: He is CR 3 and has to have a certain dpr and hp to account for that; he does not have a significant area damage spell; he only gets 1 action per turn;   I wanted him to be alive to spill his guts to the PCs. Otherwise he can be killed too quickly. I had a level 1 War Cleric 1 shot a small water elemental with 28 hp of damage. A couple of those hits will wipe out a monster with even 88 hp in one round, and only melee attacks can be used for knocking out. I do allow my players to switch any monster over to death saving throws if they want to save it for purposes of questioning though.7. I basically just took his spell choices and converted them over with a few exceptions. False life is pretty useless to a monster. It only gives 6 temp hp and takes an action. Just give the monster the additional hp and let it do something interesting. Ray of sickness could work, but it would require replacing one of his 7 prepared spells (5 for level + 2 for Int). Mage armor raises his AC and is part of his CR calculation. Ray of sickness will not add enough damage to overcome that. I am not sure why you mentioned replacing mage armor twice here. I am assuming it was a typo.8. Filge's spells / items are not really that different. In the adventure he had2nd—ghoul touch (DC 14), scare (DC 14), spectral hand1st—chill touch (DC 13) (2), mage armor, ray of enfeeblement0—disrupt undead, touch of fatigue (DC 12) (2), ray of frostGhoul touch and spectral hand no longer exist. Scare was replaced by fear.Chill touch, mage armor, and ray of enfeeblement are still there.Disrupt undead and touch of fatigue no longer exist. Ray of frost is still there.So that leaves us with needing another 4 spells and 1 cantrip. Mage hand was a bit of a throwaway, but I figured maybe he used it in the lab. Gentle repose fit his character. Melf's acid arrow was the only damaging 2nd level spell that fit him. Stinking cloud sort of makes up for the loss of the paralysis of Ghoul Touch, and vampiric touch gives him a damaging 3rd level spell that fits and also gives him a melee spell attack.As for items, the only item that is missing is the amulet of natural armor. However, it does not exist in 5e and would not help him anyway. Mage armor sets AC at 13 + Dex bonus and ignores natural armor.The suggested combat does not really change.Round 1: Run for cover. This does not change.Round 2: Cast mage armor. This does not change, but honestly, when I run any wizard, they cast mage armor twice a day (and again before they go to bed if they can) so they are covered. So Filge would skip this round when I run him.Round 3: Inject false life potion. This does not change, but I would skip the 6 hp and do some damage instead.Round 4: Ghoul touch and Spectral Hand no longer exist. Stinking cloud is its replacement, and it does not affect undead. So it can be cast freely.Following Rounds: In 5e Filge can cast chill touch at will. Fear and ray of enfeeblement are still available, and vampiric touch can also be used if fighters close to melee range.I also threw in the owl and had it use the Help action to give advantage to one of the zombies in the encounter.So now you know some of the thinking that went into the conversion. Thanks for the feedback, and I look forward to your thoughts on chapter 2!</blockquote>

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