D&D 4E Converting Adventures to 4e

[UHF]

I'm liking all of what I'm hearing.

I liked one of your posts on your web page OnlineDM Giving the dwarfs an enlargement was exactly like something that might happen in AD&D. But what that strikes me of, is putting the magic back into the game. 4e lacks a sense of wonder since everything is so well spelled out.

I've often thought that consumables have been badly handled in 4e. Potion of Enlargement, you incease one size and gain +5 to all strength checks including hit and damage for 5 minutes. Potion of Plant Control, Blast 5, All targets in area are immobilized, save ends.

In AD&D they were that cool, and they were like get out of jail free cards for the players (if they remembered they had them).

The magic in AD&D happened when the players remembered them and used them in a creative fashion.

Goonalan: I think that open ended problem solving can be one of the real joys in role playing. I'm eyeing the latest Pathfinder Adventure path Soul's For Smuggler's Shiv, and it shows a lot of what the players have to deal with. How do you take out 25 Cannibals? (Obviously, one at a time for as long as you can get away with it. Traps if you can do it, etc.) By contrast most 4e modules don't offer that kind of open ended problem.

ChristianLindke: Checkout Kingmaker from Paizo... the players are hired to explore a region, and the encounters are more spread out and more delve like. But in the end the players can start to control the land and build their own cities.

 

[Spatula]

I converted B4 and I1 to 4e and I think they turned out decently. Although the group didn't finish playing through I1. In both cases I tried to stay as true to the original encounters as possible, and left in the wandering monsters (including rolling for how many monsters appeared). That meant that some fights were pushovers and some were very strong, which is ok. Like standalone traps, easy fights have the opportunity to eat up a few surges. They also don't take up much play time.

For I1, which has a lot of player freedom, I designed each encounter area to have a certain level, with the intention of allowing the players to discover which areas were difficult and which were easier on their own.

I think the big hurdle to overcome is that in 4e, combats are meant to be dramatic set-pieces, while in previous editions (AD&D especially), combats were plentiful, fast, and not necessarily all that interesting. If I were to do it again, I would leave the standard 4e rules for important fights and halve the HP (& XP) of the "trash" fights, allowing players to rapidly cleave through them on their way to encounters that are actually significant to the plot.

 

[SoulsFury]

When I convert, normally I convert just encounters, not full adventures, I take the average defense (AC, Will, etc) of the group. Lets say it is 18. If its 18, I give the monsters a +8 for an average encounter. Harder encounters might get a +10 or even +12. I do just the opposite for the monsters defenses. If the average attack bonus of my group is +14, I will make the average AC of the monsters 23-26, depending on how difficult I want the encounter. As for HP, I generally find a monster with a similar level in the MM and assign a similar amount of HP. Likewise, I do this with damage and special powers. It hasn't been full proof, but my group continues to be happy with my improvements on my abilities to make interesting, fun combat encounters.

 

[Dalamar]

Also, some of the bad guys can do things that 4e monsters don't do at the same level, like the duergar being able to Enlarge as 6th-level monsters - but I said screw it, that's fine. Giant duergar, no problem.

I haven't done any conversion work myself, but this line caught my eye. Actually, the Duergar Shock Trooper (originally in Thunderspire Labyrinth, don't know if they've made appearances elsewhere) expands when it is bloodied, growing to Large size. They're level 6 brutes.

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

I haven't done any conversion work myself, but this line caught my eye. Actually, the Duergar Shock Trooper (originally in Thunderspire Labyrinth, don't know if they've made appearances elsewhere) expands when it is bloodied, growing to Large size. They're level 6 brutes.

They were fun. It was also neat that there were identical minis for the Duergar and the super sized Duergar. Players did not see that one coming.