D&D 3E/3.5 Pathfinder Adventures for 3.5?

[kmdietri]

Quick Question,

I'm not that familiar with Pathfinder, but I've heard it's got some good stuff.

How easy would it be to run a group of D&D 3.5 characters through a published pathfinder adventure?

Would it take much modifying of the adventure? I'm assuming not much, but I'm just curious if anyone out there has experience or thoughts about it.

Thanks

 

[Wicht]

It wouldn't take much converting at all. If you look at the creature statblocks on the Pathfinder SRD, you'll see that they are very similar to 3.5 and you should be able to run them as is.

The only thing to be aware of is that Paizo polished up the CR vs. classes in such a way that Pathfinder CRs are a little tougher than their 3.5 counterparts.

 

[Thanael]

If you read PF statblocks with no knowledge of PF all NPC skills will be lower (PF dropped the +3 rule), but they will have more feats in general (every 2 levels), more hp and/or skill points (either one is a bonus if you stick to your favoured class) and some class abilities that you don't understand.

 

[RedXian]

The first 4 published Adventure Paths for Pathfinder were written before the Pathfinder Core Rulebook was released. These are written for 3.5 and don't require any conversion.

The 4 paths are: Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness & Legacy of Fire.

Each path has a Players guide that every play should read before creating a character as there are feats and traits that can be used to integrate them with the settings. There are also chapters at the end of each book are full of information, plus a few setting related monsters, some not used in the campaign but can be added in if you wanted.

I've run RotRL and currently playing in CotCT & SD games. Incidentally RotRL was my first campaign I ever ran. I had got some good experience from running the path.

 

[Kvantum]

If you read PF statblocks with no knowledge of PF all NPC skills will be lower (PF dropped the +3 rule), but they will have more feats in general (every 2 levels), more hp and/or skill points (either one is a bonus if you stick to your favoured class) and some class abilities that you don't understand.

No, the "+3 skills thing" wasn't dropped at all - it's just been changed so that's what a "class skill" means - you get a +3 to checks if it's a class skill, otherwise you just buy ranks in the skill at a 1 - 1 basis.

Feats are gained more often (every odd level rather than every 3rd), many classes' HD was increased (mage-types are a d6, and rogue-types are a d8 now, along with clerics)

In short, Pathfinder CRs are roughly about +1 higher than an equivalent 3.5 CR. Now that is rough, and approximate, and by no means accurate, and if you just run Pathfinder adventures straight with no evaluation or readjustment I'll almost guarantee you'll see problems, but there's a lot of commonalities between the two systems.