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<blockquote data-quote="Grakarg" data-source="post: 6730528" data-attributes="member: 41096">Yeah, it can be tricky.&nbsp; I'm working my way through Red Hand of Doom, and sometimes its an easy convert.... sometimes not.I've found that when converting leveled NPC's its sometimes helpful to look at the old version of the character, think about what makes a particular encounter exciting, and to keep in your mind the make up of your particular group of players.For example, I recently had to convert some hobgoblin monks for a particular encounter.&nbsp; The old versions in 3.5 were lvl 4.&nbsp; My group had some significant archery support, so I wanted to make sure that the monks had access to Deflect Arrows to make the encounter more interesting.&nbsp; That meant I had to make the 5e version be at least lvl 6.Because of 5e's bounded accuracy philosophy adding a couple of lvls to an NPC (especially melee focused ones like your assassins) won't significantly break your encounters.&nbsp; In previous editions, the lvl of an NPC was roughly equivalent to its CR.&nbsp; This is no longer the case.&nbsp; Look through some of the creatures in the back of the monster manual for inspiration.&nbsp; Thug, Archmage, etc.It seems to me that NPC's built strictly with lvls fold like a house of cards when facing the PCs unless they are in a huge swarm, have a ton of hit points, or access to healing.Essentially, convert the creature or NPC with the lvl you think they should have to have the abilities you want the party to face, then look at the CR chart to reverse engineer the CR of the encounter.After a while, and with some practice you'll get the hang of it, and find that you can even set up encounters on the fly w/o too much trouble.&nbsp; The players never know how hard the fight is or isn't, they just want to be awesome.Hope that helps in some small way, as I empathize completely.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Grakarg, post: 6730528, member: 41096"] Yeah, it can be tricky. I'm working my way through Red Hand of Doom, and sometimes its an easy convert.... sometimes not. I've found that when converting leveled NPC's its sometimes helpful to look at the old version of the character, think about what makes a particular encounter exciting, and to keep in your mind the make up of your particular group of players. For example, I recently had to convert some hobgoblin monks for a particular encounter. The old versions in 3.5 were lvl 4. My group had some significant archery support, so I wanted to make sure that the monks had access to Deflect Arrows to make the encounter more interesting. That meant I had to make the 5e version be at least lvl 6. Because of 5e's bounded accuracy philosophy adding a couple of lvls to an NPC (especially melee focused ones like your assassins) won't significantly break your encounters. In previous editions, the lvl of an NPC was roughly equivalent to its CR. [U]This is no longer the case[/U]. Look through some of the creatures in the back of the monster manual for inspiration. Thug, Archmage, etc. It seems to me that NPC's built strictly with lvls fold like a house of cards when facing the PCs unless they are in a huge swarm, have a ton of hit points, or access to healing. Essentially, convert the creature or NPC with the lvl you think they should have to have the abilities you want the party to face, then look at the CR chart to reverse engineer the CR of the encounter. After a while, and with some practice you'll get the hang of it, and find that you can even set up encounters on the fly w/o too much trouble. The players never know how hard the fight is or isn't, they just want to be awesome. Hope that helps in some small way, as I empathize completely. [/QUOTE]

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