Changing Heroic encounters to Paragon

[Zephrin the Lost]

Hey all-

I'll be upping an 8th level Dungeon mag scenario from 8th level to 11th level and wondered if I should do anything differently than simply scaling the monsters. Should I add auras or other tropes to make things feel more paragon?

Thanks in advance,

--Z

 

[D'karr]

This is a hard question because the answer would usually be "it depends."

The power level jump from 10th to 11th is significant enough that as a DM I'd have to really look at an upgraded encounter and see if "thematically" it still works at paragon. You can always make it work mathematically but it's the feel that really counts.

 

[S'mon]

I would probably just scale the monsters, but then I never seem to have much trouble challenging PCs. 3 levels isn't a big leap anyway.

Maybe pick out one or two 'special' monsters you think might benefit from extra attention, but leave most as-is.

 

[Quickleaf]

Hey all-

I'll be upping an 8th level Dungeon mag scenario from 8th level to 11th level and wondered if I should do anything differently than simply scaling the monsters. Should I add auras or other tropes to make things feel more paragon?

Thanks in advance,

--Z

What adventure is it and which issue is it from?

It matters because Dungeon magazines produced before MM3 was published use the old monster math.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

It's from 2008 so the old math is assured.

-Z

 

[Quickleaf]

It's from 2008 so the old math is assured.

-Z

Help us help you: whats the name of the adventure?

Quality of adventures in Dungeon are all over the place, and with the older monster design it's a sure bet tweaking the monsters will make your combats more exciting and faster. Without knowing what the original stats are however...

 

[pemerton]

I've updated plenty of monsters and encounters from Heroic to Paragon, including from H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth. In some cases I've just stepped up the numbers, in other cases substituted in higher level monsters (eg the MM2/3(?) norkers for the H2 ones). You definitely need to increase the damage to MM3 levels or the PCs won't even notice your monsters!

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

It's Last Breath of Ashenport. Luckily all the monsters are in the DDI and I think the new math is applied when i level them up. At least, they are more robust when I use the DDI than when I use Power2ool.

So should I just flat out raise everything 3 levels? There are often more than 5 pc's also, so i want to err on the side of 'Oh hell no!'

--Z

 

[bganon]

It's hard to say much without specifics, but I'd mostly level up everything as normal, and then add something special to 1 or 2 monsters, to make them pseudo-elites. I rarely double HP (too grindy), but I'll do some of the other "elite-making" stuff like adding a high-damage encounter power, adding a reaction/interrupt off-turn power, etc. If they're humanoid monsters, swiping a feature from a PC class somewhere can also make them feel like "paragons", like maybe that orc actually gets something like one of the level 9 barbarian rages when bloodied.

 

[zteccc]

The Adventure Tools will not always calculate with the new math if you start with an old monster, rather it will simply add 1 damage per level and add 1 per level to defenses. It will scale hit points appropriately, but your scaled monster will still do low damage, because the Adventure Tools assume that the original damage is correct. To fix this, look at the tables in the pdf for updated rules for the DM's guide, make a new copy of the monster you want to tweak and then adjust the damage, defenses, to-hit, etc. based on this table before you level up the new monster. That should get you where you need to be mathematically.

That said, I suggest you try to find some appropriate higher-level monsters to throw at them (at least for the big guys) just to give the adventure a better feel.