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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6309892" data-attributes="member: 58197">I started crunching the numbers to see how AD&D and 5E monsters lined up, but stopped for a couple of reasons. First, those numbers are from the public playtest, and one thing we have definitely had confirmed is that they made big changes to monster stats. So any conclusions I drew would be invalid for the final game.Second, and more importantly, even if we did have the current numbers, the result of any such comparison would be highly misleading. Let's say we determine that an owlbear is a "good fight" for a 3rd-level party in both 5E and AD&D*. You know that two owlbears are a "good fight" for a 6th-level party in AD&D, so you would be tempted to conclude that two owlbears are a "good fight" for your 6th-level 5E party. You'd be wrong, however, because the PC power curve has changed between editions. Among other things, 5E characters see a massive power spike at 5th level; fighter damage output literally doubles when you reach 5th, and other classes see similar gains. So you might well find that your 6th-level 5E party turns two owlbears into mincemeat without breaking a sweat.Does this mean you can't import pre-5E adventures into 5E? Not at all! It just means you can't rely on threat estimates from earlier editions**. The great thing about bounded accuracy is that it makes 5E tremendously flexible when it comes to what monsters you can use. The 6th-level party may be able to destroy those two owlbears in short order, but for the brief time the combat lasts, it will be a proper combat with hits and misses. There won't be anybody who hits only on 20 or misses only on 1.The inaccuracy of threat estimates means if you expect the adventure to contain mostly level-appropriate encounters, you will have to do some work to make sure the encounters are on the right level. 5E may or may not maintain the power levels of monsters relative to each other--we won't know for sure till we see the final numbers, but crunching a few numbers from the playtest suggests that this is not a 5E priority. However, if you follow a more old-school approach, where encounter levels vary widely and PCs are well advised to stop and assess the opposition before they charge into battle, 5E conversion ought to work splendidly. You just need to make sure that the crucial encounters (e.g., the final showdown with the BBEG) are at the right power level.[SIZE=-2]*I'm not trying to claim this is actually the case. I have no idea how many owlbears are a good fight for anybody, in any edition.**Of course, for anything before 4E, you couldn't rely on them anyway. 3E's CR system was a noble effort, but never worked well and broke down completely at higher levels. AD&D didn't even try.[/SIZE]</blockquote>

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