D&D 5E Pathfinder AP conversion to 5e

[qstor]

Handing out all the items in a 3.5/PFRPG AP would do it.

Youd have to very carefully monitor the magical treasures.

I agree. 5e characters at least at this point. Don't have the say dozen or so magic items at 15th level that a 3.5e/PFRPG character would.

Mike

 

[Tormyr]

Handing out all the items in a 3.5/PFRPG AP would do it.

Youd have to very carefully monitor the magical treasures.

I have handed out everything so far, and then some.

At level 2 - Owlbear Cub - 3000gp, but it takes two weeks for your agent to take it to Greyhawk, sell it and return with the funds.
At level 2 - Returned to town with a 200 lbs. table made of shiny, red, space metal. They had the idea to take the table to the best smithy in the region to make weapons and armor. I gave Osgood the Smith the ability to use Fabricate to speed up his work. At the end of chapter 2 (5th level) they got most of their stuff. At the end of chapter 3 (7th level), they got the two sets of plate armor. Everything had a +1 to it. It has not affected balance in encounters. Characters still miss sometimes, and enemies still hit. At this point in the AP, +1 items are popping up anyway. Several +1 sets of armor have appeared, as well as several +1 weapons. I will say to the OP, drop the masterwork tag from items as you do your conversion.
At level 2 - Periapt of Wisdom. I have used it as written for the +2 Wisdom bonus it gives. The monk uses it as a bonus to his AC. As the AP progresses, it will increase in power to a +6 near the end of the AP when the characters are level 20. This is probably ridiculously high for 5e, but it is a legendary item and that is all it does if I recall correctly. The monk could end up with an AC of 23 and a save DC of 22.
Several wands of cure light wounds have popped up. These have been replaced with wands of healing word that function identically to wands of magic missile. I have handed out 2 of the 3 that have shown up. There is a wand of Cure Moderate Wounds coming up. I am not sure whether it will become another wand of Healing Word of if there is another ranged 1 target healing spell that I could use. I could also make it a wand of Cure Wounds with a range of touch.

The party is also in danger of needing to do a prison break. If they don't figure out quickly where they are supposed to go next, the plot gets accelerated by them being framed and arrested for murder. They foiled the murder attempt, but decided to harass a street preacher, so they might still be arrested as part of the plot by the bad guy. At this point, they would be stripped of everything and transferred to the bad guy's secret prison. Being without any gear, having to break out, and survive either an escape or progressing forward without anything but their wits and abilities will be a significant challenge and help break them of an annoying (to me) habit of rushing in where devas fear to tread.

Most magic items (wands, eyes of the eagle, handy haversack, etc.) I have used as is or changed to a 5e type mechanic. The players know that some items can change once the DMG comes out.

Encounters have still been fun and challenging even though they follow encounter building guidelines like I laid out above. Characters are still in danger of dying. While the party was level 5, the rogue was knocked unconscious in 1 regular shot by a giant crocodile. It nearly got a chance to pull her under. An assassin struck at the Paladin. It got to roll 1d6 + 7d6 poison + 4d6 sneak attack. I forgot to use the assassinate feature fully and turn the attack into an automatic critical. 24d6 would have knocked him unconscious in 1 shot.

In short, I think things will go fine if you hand out the magic items in the AP, but they need to be 5e versions.

 

[Astrosicebear]

So what are you doing about the magical weapons and armor...in all 8 levels of HotDQ there are only 2 magical weapons, and one is a completely optional encounter suggestion. Minor things like haversack and eyes of eagle are fine... they should be attuned, but the excess wands and healing I would think throw off balance... but if you keep things scaled a bit high, it might balance.

 

[Tormyr]

So what are you doing about the magical weapons and armor...in all 8 levels of HotDQ there are only 2 magical weapons, and one is a completely optional encounter suggestion. Minor things like haversack and eyes of eagle are fine... they should be attuned, but the excess wands and healing I would think throw off balance... but if you keep things scaled a bit high, it might balance.

I am not sure what you mean about the weapons and armor. The party uses the weapons and armor. Extras are stored at home or sold if they can find a buyer. +1s just do not throw things off that much. The magic items that I looked at in HotDQ were properly strong magic items with multiple enchantments.

I am not sure about attunement. One page over on the DMG preview and we would have known for the Eyes of the Eagle. The bag of holding does not require attunement, so I am not sure the haversack should. It does allow you to automatically pull out whatever you want from it without digging for it, but it holds less stuff than the bag of holding.

The thing about the wands and scrolls is that they take actions to use. If you use a wand, you have forgone doing something else. The wand of shatter is cool, but it announces your presence. The wands of healing word do so little healing that they are just used to make sure people don't fail 3 death saving throws. With the player who played the cleric leaving the party 2 weeks ago, they became more important.

 

[Grimstaff]

My group started RotRL last weekend. Conversion was no problem, most monsters are in the MM, many of the remaining can be substituted (most fun was grell standing in for a tendriculous) or simply eyeballed.

What was most remarkable was how fast the adventure played. With d20/PF, a mod typically takes 4 sessions. With 5e we almost finished Burnt Offerings in its entirety in one session. We may have 2 hours left tops. The players were having so much fun with their characters they actually forgot to search for treasure, and had to go back through everything later to grab what they missed lol.

 

[Tormyr]

My group started RotRL last weekend. Conversion was no problem, most monsters are in the MM, many of the remaining can be substituted (most fun was grell standing in for a tendriculous) or simply eyeballed.

What was most remarkable was how fast the adventure played. With d20/PF, a mod typically takes 4 sessions. With 5e we almost finished Burnt Offerings in its entirety in one session. We may have 2 hours left tops. The players were having so much fun with their characters they actually forgot to search for treasure, and had to go back through everything later to grab what they missed lol.

Interesting, how long are your sessions? It took us 6 months of weekly 3.5 hour session to make it through the first 3 chapters of Age of worms. We have spent 3 sessions in chapter 4 so far and they have not made it to the first dungeon yet.

 

[Grimstaff]

Interesting, how long are your sessions? It took us 6 months of weekly 3.5 hour session to make it through the first 3 chapters of Age of worms. We have spent 3 sessions in chapter 4 so far and they have not made it to the first dungeon yet.

Ouch, that's like 8 sessions per mod!

Our sessions are typically 6-8 hours biweekly, give or take goofing off/ eating time

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

I'm beginning my exploration of converting the Kingmaker AP today. I'm hoping it won't be TOO difficult.

I'm running Kingmaker 5E. Finished the first module, got detoured by a dungeon I made for about four sessions, and then will start Rivers Run Red next week. My advice is to not overthink it. It worked well thus far, but I suspect it will get worse as the CRs get higher (and the math diverges).

Based on my little experience with 5E I feel pretty comfortable winging it. Monsters just get substituted for something in the MM or potentially ran with the Pathfinder rules with some quick conversion of the armor class and maybe damage based on the 5E monsters I've used recently and how well those encounters went. Standard attacks are +5 or +6 at this level so ACs will be 15ish.

Artifacts are tricky. I'm almost more comfortable using the artifacts out of Pathfinder as the published ones seem incredibly powerful and could potentially easily unbalance the party. At the same time I'm trying to stay really far away from +4 or +5 weapons. This has implications for the city building system (but luckily my players decided not to get into that).

I'm going to keep running Kingmaker as long as I can relatively easily convert it on the fly. It seems like a lot of DMs take time planning out all the stats of every monster and every skill check. That just seems like a waste of time to me. D&D shouldn't be an exact science. The world isn't a series of progressively more difficult encounters balanced to your skill.

 

[arcmagik]

I am currently running a modified War of the Burning Sky in one group and will be running a Temple of Elemental Evil/Red Hand of Doom Mashup for another... all in the same world leading up to several Pathfinder APs. Converting on the fly by grabbing things out of the MM seems to be going well though as with every pre-written modules knowing the module itself is important and makes it easier.

 

[machineelf]

I would like to convert fifth edition to fourth edition. How hard would that be? ... I kid, I kid.