Garnfellow
Explorer
Random encounters
I’m going to back up a bit and convert over the random underworld encounters for the D series. In the originals, there are three tables, for primary, secondary, and tertiary passages. If you do a straight conversion to 3e, the tables are all over the map as far as EL. The higher end of the spectrum doesn’t get much above EL 14, while the lower end goes all the way down to EL 1, which is basically just a nuisance encounter.
Curiously, the “easiest” table is the tertiary one, and the toughest is the primary passage table. For some reason I had thought that the least traveled ways would be the toughest.
D1 and D2 are interesting modules in that they are intended to be somewhat easier than G3, and many of the major encounters within these first 2 D modules are fairly easy to circumvent. I converted G1 as an 8th level adventure, G2 as a 9th level adventure, and G3 as a 10th level adventure. In following this progression, I had pegged D1 as an 11th level adventure, D2 as a 12th level adventure, and D3 as a 13th level adventure.
Accordingly, I converted over the random encounter tables to provide a reasonably wide range of ELs, but wanted the average of the averages to be around EL 11, and with holding the upper and lower limits to within +/-4 EL of this target. As we get closer to the Vault of the Drow, these random encounters get progressively tougher as more and more demons start popping up.
The original D1 was published when the original MM was the only monster book available, and the encounter tables reflect this limited selection. Lots of old school critters, including plenty of rather weak slimes, molds, and vermin that can’t be advanced very far in 3e. Also, there are several entries with large numbers of weaker monsters; in 3e, encounters with such large numbers tend to take too long to resolve.
When converting over the tables, I had this rough order of priority for guidelines:
I’m going to back up a bit and convert over the random underworld encounters for the D series. In the originals, there are three tables, for primary, secondary, and tertiary passages. If you do a straight conversion to 3e, the tables are all over the map as far as EL. The higher end of the spectrum doesn’t get much above EL 14, while the lower end goes all the way down to EL 1, which is basically just a nuisance encounter.
Curiously, the “easiest” table is the tertiary one, and the toughest is the primary passage table. For some reason I had thought that the least traveled ways would be the toughest.
D1 and D2 are interesting modules in that they are intended to be somewhat easier than G3, and many of the major encounters within these first 2 D modules are fairly easy to circumvent. I converted G1 as an 8th level adventure, G2 as a 9th level adventure, and G3 as a 10th level adventure. In following this progression, I had pegged D1 as an 11th level adventure, D2 as a 12th level adventure, and D3 as a 13th level adventure.
Accordingly, I converted over the random encounter tables to provide a reasonably wide range of ELs, but wanted the average of the averages to be around EL 11, and with holding the upper and lower limits to within +/-4 EL of this target. As we get closer to the Vault of the Drow, these random encounters get progressively tougher as more and more demons start popping up.
The original D1 was published when the original MM was the only monster book available, and the encounter tables reflect this limited selection. Lots of old school critters, including plenty of rather weak slimes, molds, and vermin that can’t be advanced very far in 3e. Also, there are several entries with large numbers of weaker monsters; in 3e, encounters with such large numbers tend to take too long to resolve.
When converting over the tables, I had this rough order of priority for guidelines:
- Keep as close to the spirit of the original tables as possible
- Try to keep encounters within a band of EL 7-15.
- Try to first advance monsters before substituting different monster.
- When substituting monsters, give precedence to oldest sources first: FF monsters over MMII, 1st edition over 2nd edition, and so on.
- Try to limit conversion first to 3e core and Tome of Horrors before looking at other 3e sources
- Try to cap the total number of monsters encountered to 12.