Sir Brennen
Legend
Just a couple of notes on some of the design issues I've come across during conversion.
Since the first couple of adventures I've worked on have been primarily dungeon crawls, there's quite a few traps and solitary creatures. A 4E trap by itself is kinda bland, and likewise for encounters with only one or two creatures. I try to avoid simply advancing creatures/traps a couple of levels or making them elites, as the XP math often doesn't work out with this approach anyway. Instead, I'll try to find logical ways to increase the number of creatures.
Often this involves taking a look at the surrounding encounter areas and deciding how they might be combined. This is an approach I really recommend keeping in mind for conversions. I also recommend increasing the size of some rooms to allow more movement during the fight, and think about what terrain or objects might be in the encounter area that will hinder creatures/PCs, or that they could capitalize upon.
One trap from the 3.5 version of the adventure simply blasted lightning when triggered and was done. I instead made it a burst 2 which made an Opportunity Attack whenever a target entered the zone, and had the trap release a handful of small elemental creatures when initially triggered, with a push ability to try and shove creatures into the trap area.
Another encounter with a solitary choker I scripted so the choker runs to the next room, and activates the sleeping earth elementals there, so the PCs will have to battle both, with a large area of brown mold as a hazard to boot. Chasing the choker requires moving through a hallway with trapped statues (poison gas). The choker can freely avoid the traps by climbing, and the elementals can run into the hall as I gave them immunity to the poison (something creatures of Elemental origin don't have by default in 4E... another thing to remember.)
Originally these were three separate encounters (choker, trapped hallway, elementals.)
For conversions I also really, really recommend the Dragon article on creating traps published a few months ago.
Since the first couple of adventures I've worked on have been primarily dungeon crawls, there's quite a few traps and solitary creatures. A 4E trap by itself is kinda bland, and likewise for encounters with only one or two creatures. I try to avoid simply advancing creatures/traps a couple of levels or making them elites, as the XP math often doesn't work out with this approach anyway. Instead, I'll try to find logical ways to increase the number of creatures.
Often this involves taking a look at the surrounding encounter areas and deciding how they might be combined. This is an approach I really recommend keeping in mind for conversions. I also recommend increasing the size of some rooms to allow more movement during the fight, and think about what terrain or objects might be in the encounter area that will hinder creatures/PCs, or that they could capitalize upon.
One trap from the 3.5 version of the adventure simply blasted lightning when triggered and was done. I instead made it a burst 2 which made an Opportunity Attack whenever a target entered the zone, and had the trap release a handful of small elemental creatures when initially triggered, with a push ability to try and shove creatures into the trap area.
Another encounter with a solitary choker I scripted so the choker runs to the next room, and activates the sleeping earth elementals there, so the PCs will have to battle both, with a large area of brown mold as a hazard to boot. Chasing the choker requires moving through a hallway with trapped statues (poison gas). The choker can freely avoid the traps by climbing, and the elementals can run into the hall as I gave them immunity to the poison (something creatures of Elemental origin don't have by default in 4E... another thing to remember.)
Originally these were three separate encounters (choker, trapped hallway, elementals.)
For conversions I also really, really recommend the Dragon article on creating traps published a few months ago.
