D&D 5E Converting Old Adventures

[James Gasik]

I'm slated to start DMing again in four weeks and I've run into a very odd thing. How very different 5e and AD&D are!

The adventure is HHQ1, Fighter's Challenge. I've always admired how it sets up a region to be a hub of adventures, and rather liked it's plot overall. It was designed for one character of levels 2-4, but quickly you realize if you don't get all the hirelings you're probably going to get murdered, lol.

The one time I ran it imploded because my players, annoyed that a shopkeeper dared to raise his prices, decided to break into his shop at night to rob him. Yeah.

Anyways, I started converting it, and I ran into a few problems. But the most immediate one was...holy Gygax, what's with all the magic items?

Like, ok, I know published adventures have tons of magic items. It's been the main source of a lot of arguments with other AD&D players who go on about how rare and wonderful magic items are, and all of my PC's are lugging around excess +1 long swords and rings of protection from all the published adventures they've gone on. But this one, yikes.

Even nerfing the items (there's a Duergar chief you fight with a +3 Warhammer!) a bit, this adventure is positively dripping with them! Most NPC's are running around with magic weapons, armor, and protective items. The adventure even has the option to find two Manuals (the +1 Con one and the +1 Fighter level one)!

Cool swag was a huge part of my AD&D experience, and I'm nostalgic for that, but it occurs to me that 5e really isn't the game where finding 5 magic items in every treasure hoard is going to be much fun for long.

So I'm wondering how other people have approached converting old adventures. Do you just cut out most of the magic items? Something else?

 

[el-remmen]

I literally cross them out. I did this even when I ran them in their original editions.

 

[James Gasik]

I literally cross them out. I did this even when I ran them in their original editions.

Lol, it never occurred to me to do so back in the day. I was like "well, it's in a published adventure, this must be how they expect the game to run". I was much younger and somewhat more foolish in those days.

 

[LordEntrails]

A lot of the very old adventures (i.e. pre 3e) about all you can use is the plot and maps. Sure, keep the adversariy race/type similar, but stats and quantities need to be done from scratch. And treasure and magic and traps/hazards totally redone.

Checkout Page not found – Classic Modules Today

 

[Lanefan]

I literally cross them out. I did this even when I ran them in their original editions.

My "sad" emoji is from all my loot-loving characters.

 

[James Gasik]

A lot of the very old adventures (i.e. pre 3e) about all you can use is the plot and maps. Sure, keep the adversariy race/type similar, but stats and quantities need to be done from scratch. And treasure and magic and traps/hazards totally redone.

Checkout Page not found – Classic Modules Today

Drat, link gave me a 404 error.

 

[Quickleaf]

My favorite method is to still include lots of magic items, but to customize them to be of a much reduced scope, reduced power, and/or single-use. This means I home brew a lot of the items.

For example, say an AD&D adventure about disrupting evil wizard's hold over ogre tribe has a treasure horde with a +1 ranseur and a +1 battle axe. Instead, I'd look over the adventure holistically, then in 5e I might make make the ranseur have a command word that causes it to brace for a charge dealing extra damage if used as reaction vs. charging creature.

And maybe the longsword must be "fed" specific gemstones which grant it its magical powers for brief one-minute windows, whereafter it resumes just being a pretty longsword.

If you get hung up on the "but it's still magic weapon, so this is circumventing resistance to non-magical weapon damage??", then just make it a design feature of a Dwarven Ranseur of Valegarde or whatever, rather than a magical property. (Or do what I do and rewrite resistances altogether)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There was a deliberate attempt to cut down on the loot in 5e. And when is comes to magic weapons, in AD&D they went up to +5 or more. In 5e, the bonus for magic weapons and armour is half, round down, cap at +3. This is part of bounded accuracy and is in the original conversion documents. This means that a +1 weapon in an AD&D adventure becomes non-magical, and a +3 weapon becomes +1.

I think amount of gold was reduced to 20%, but I might be misremembering. There must be a copy of the 2014 conversion document around somewhere.

 

[James Gasik]

My favorite method is to still include lots of magic items, but to customize them to be of a much reduced scope, reduced power, and/or single-use. This means I home brew a lot of the items.

For example, say an AD&D adventure about disrupting evil wizard's hold over ogre tribe has a treasure horde with a +1 ranseur and a +1 battle axe. Instead, I'd look over the adventure holistically, then in 5e I might make make the ranseur have a command word that causes it to brace for a charge dealing extra damage if used as reaction vs. charging creature.

And maybe the longsword must be "fed" specific gemstones which grant it its magical powers for brief one-minute windows, whereafter it resumes just being a pretty longsword.

If you get hung up on the "but it's still magic weapon, so this is circumventing resistance to non-magical weapon damage??", then just make it a design feature of a Dwarven Ranseur of Valegarde or whatever, rather than a magical property. (Or do what I do and rewrite resistances altogether)

There's a few things I want to do to make magic items feel a bit more special- one thing is that many items have a basic function, but attunement brings out more advanced powers. So you have a long sword +1, but attuning to it lets it deal d6 force damage or something.

At the end of the day, I guess it's not that I mind the players having magic items, it's just the idea that one adventure can leave them with a bunch of useless items, lol. It is shocking how well stocked this adventure is though! The weapons I get, the adventure is meant to be played by a Fighter and who knows what weapons they are proficient in or have decided to specialize in- a good variety means there's a greater chance you have something useful to your character when all is said and done.

 

[James Gasik]

There was a deliberate attempt to cut down on the loot in 5e. And when is comes to magic weapons, in AD&D they went up to +5 or more. In 5e, the bonus for magic weapons and armour is half, round down, cap at +3. This is part of bounded accuracy and is in the original conversion documents. This means that a +1 weapon in an AD&D adventure becomes non-magical, and a +3 weapon becomes +1.

Of course, the adventure requires you to have a magic weapon. There's a few critters that can only be fought effectively with such things. I'm definitely lowering the bonuses though. +3 is basically endgame gear for 5e, after all!