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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Garnfellow" data-source="post: 3416177" data-attributes="member: 1223">A really good question. A successful conversion has to balance game mechanics and flavor, and sometimes it's easy to lose one or even both elements in the translation.I find that most mechanical elements translate very smoothly from one edition to another. But there are some definite exceptions: poison, for instance, plays very differently in 3e (generally, it does ability damage) than it does in past editions (where it was usually save or die).There's been a lot of debate about these changes between editions, and many old-schoolers, for example, bewail the nerfing of poison and the like, while others claim that the changes make the game play better at the table. One of the first steps of conversion is to decide where in the debate you stand: are you a purist (everything has to be exactly the same!) or are you a classicist (everything should feel the same, but the details can change!) or are you a radical (everything should be re-imagined to make it new, fresh, and cool!). Me, I'm a classicist.When I convert a monster, I first try to look at both Hit Dice and the monster description to determine what the approximate Challenge Rating of the converted monster should be (approximate being something like with +/- 2 CR). This drives many of the subsequent decisions.If an ability from a past edition would be much too powerful converted straight up in 3e, I will probably substitute something an ability with similar flavor but more congruent mechanics. And visa versa. Monster design in past editions was always something of a black art, and many of the Fiend Factory monsters were designed with very few published models or examples to fall back on of good design. So I personally take a somewhat liberal approach in conversion. If something from the original just doesn't work in a 3e context, I've got no qualms about substituting something that works better.So, let's take poison as an example. As mentioned above, almost all poisons in past editions were save or die, with a few being save or be incapacitated.Unless the original description says something like "this small creature's venom is one of the deadliest in the multiverse," I will ignore instant death effects for anything other than high level monsters. (I think pit fiends are the only monsters left in the SRD with death effect poison.)So normally that means I'm looking at some sort of ability damage. I will then look at the original description and the target CR as my guides. Sometime the original will have a note like "this sting is as deadly as a giant scorpion" which gives me an exact conversion, otherwise I will look at 3e monsters of a comparable CR to find a poison of a virulence that seems to line up with the original. Poisons described as deadly or dangerous will do Con damage, while others Str or Dex.So, at the end of the conversion, what I want is an ability that lines up in name and spirit with the original, but uses 3e mechanics and is balanced with the monster's target CR.</blockquote>

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