Had any luck converting 3.x material to 4E?

[johnnype]

For those of you who have tried, have you had any luck converting 3.x material to 4E? What has the experience been like? Difficult? Easy?Frustrating?

I'm more concerned with setting material or adventures than crunch like, say, a prestige class or alternate magic system but I'm interested in hearing about it all. For example I'm looking at the beauty that is Ptolus or the various Pathfinder adventures and wondering if I'll ever use them. Would it be as simple as dropping in PC's, NPC's and monsters of equal level? My guess is the answer is NO but I haven't tried it so I can't say.

 

[Agamon]

Converting Expedition to Castle Ravenloft was quite easy. I didn't really enjoy running the adventure, but that's another story. Doing the prep work was easy and enjoyable (perhaps moreso than the game itself...a first, for sure).

 

[Crothian]

So far it has been poretty easy. Prestige classes turn into Paragon paths rather well.

 

[ggroy]

Lower level adventures are relatively straightforward to translate from 3.x to 4E, or for that matter, from 1E or 2E AD&D to 4E too.

I haven't done much as much translation of higher level adventures from 3.x to 4E, other than looking for appropriate paragon paths for the various prestige classes which have showed up.

Sorting out NPCs and badguys who are multiclassed, doesn't always translate directly from 3.x to 4E. I typically end up allocating various at-will, encounter and/or daily powers which sort of reflect the abilities of a multiclassed 3.x NPC or badguy in question. In the end, the players wouldn't notice much of a difference anyways unless there is a significant overpowering or underpowering.

 

[Morrus]

The conversions for WotBS have gone well. A conversion is more of a rewrite than a direct translation, though. You can't just sub out stat blocks and still expect it to work well.

 

[Piratecat]

The conversions for WotBS have gone well. A conversion is more of a rewrite than a direct translation, though. You can't just sub out stat blocks and still expect it to work well.

Right. The number of monsters often needs to change.

 

[ggroy]

Right. The number of monsters often needs to change.

I usually adjust an encounter to the specific player characters in the party.

For example, some more minions might be thrown in if there's a controller character in the party who frequently uses ranged area burst attacks (or blast attacks). If the party has a barbarian or other characters who do a lot of damage per hit, I may replace several monsters with a single more powerful elite or maybe even a solo monster.

Other things may be done, such as the encounter area may be made larger or smaller.

 

[malraux]

Converting Expedition to Castle Ravenloft was quite easy. I didn't really enjoy running the adventure, but that's another story. Doing the prep work was easy and enjoyable (perhaps moreso than the game itself...a first, for sure).

I'll go ahead and agree with this. Thus far, conversion has been a snap. Personally, I also thought that EtCR ran better in 4e than it did in 3e, by a long shot.

The basic advice for any conversion is to not go for literal, but add extra monsters, change room sizes, etc as needed. There's not a programatic way to do it, other than to follow the basic 4e encounter design.

 

[Spatula]

There was an interesting article by Mike Mearls on this subject a while back, but I don't have a link for it. In it, he talks about changes in encounter design between the editions, etc. The biggest takeaway from it IMO was that 4e benefits from having dynamic encounter spaces with interesting terrain, possible monster reinforcements, and so on. Older adventures typically didn't have much of that, so you have to add it in.

But personally I think the conversion is pretty easy to do, with the exception of single monster encounters (fairly common in previous editions). Taking encounters with a large number of monsters and translating them is a snap - turn enough of the monsters into minions so that you arrive at a desired XP total. Or just reduce the number of monsters.

 

[Dannager]

I actively convert 3.5 adventure path modules to 4th Edition. You can find full conversion notes at Tales from the Rusty Dragon.

It hasn't been tough. Once you get the hang of the basic premises (a few extra monsters, larger, dynamic encounter spaces, adding quests and skill challenges, creating your own stat blocks, etc.) it goes pretty smoothly.

Since you mentioned looking at beautiful Pathfinder adventures, you'll probably be happy to hear that my conversion deals exclusively with Paizo's Rise of the Runelords adventure path. You don't even need to convert it yourself. Just buy the printed adventures, download the compiled conversion note PDFs from my website, and you should be good to go.