D&D 5E SHORT conversion document up and monsters by type

[Valador]

Omg I can't play VHS on my blu ray player!!! Wtf!!!


I swear, people will never be happy. Instead of getting upset about how long it took, maybe you could have done the work yourselves or play the current game as is with the characters/classes and modules available. Let me guess, you didn't have the time to do it? Yet WotC is supposed to spend their trying to support older stuff rather than devote all their time to new things that support the CURRENT edition.


Geez...

 

[Gnashtooth]

Yes, really. The purpose of exceptional strength was to give fighter-types what was essentially a class feature of "you do more damage with weapons." That is handled by things outside of the ability score itself in 5th edition, and thus is not at all necessary.
Another time where the 5th edition system covers what is lost in another way (proficiency, expertise, and the other skill-check related rogue class features) and thus doesn't actually need to "compensate" for anything.

You mean besides have them be a wizard of the appropriate arcane tradition, or a sorcerer or warlock if those classes fit better? What other "adjust" to you perceive as being needed?

As one of those many 1/2ed people, I have to say that I think you are overestimating how much detail is actually needed in conversion... but then, I also completely disagree that even as much detail as was in this brief document was needed, since I've been happily and easily converting anything/everything I felt like since picking up the DMG.

Gonna have to agree on this. And the stuff we have been converting HAS had issues with to-hit bonuses, so altering the subtrration from 19 instead of 20 and ignoring stuf over a certain value makes sense as a guideline. We have been inverting THAC0, and it's just brutal to fight monsters with that mechanic, because they're getting +7 or +9 tp hit on low-ish level creatures.

 

[darjr]

Seeing that older adventures are suggested to fill the gap in adventure output this document doesn't seem to go quite far enough.

I do appreciate the effort. I was hoping not to have to do it myself. Maybe a community effort to put together something is warranted.

 

[Hussar]

Thing is, trying to convert mechanics to 5e from 3e or 4e is a bit tricky. After all, there's just so much more mechanically to 3e and 4e than there is to 5e. A whole boatload of the +1-+2 feats, bennies and whatever in 3e or 4e just don't exist and aren't needed in 5e. There's no point to synergy if you have bounded accuracy. There's no point to drilling bonuses to ever higher heights because it just breaks 5e.

Once you strip out that sort of thing, plus the more significant bonuses like percentile strength in AD&D, there just isn't a whole lot left.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't quite get the disappointment Was anyone expecting every old monster converted, every 3E feat chain and prestige class redone as a subclass or feat or any ADEU powers version of the classes for people who wanted to play 4e using 5e rules?

Mind you, I think that might be a worthy endeavor, but I wouldn't expect them to give it away for free.

My expectations were low, but I'm not sure even those low expectations were met.

1.) Too much focus on PC conversion, which is the least important kind of conversion. (Adventure/monster conversion is the most important.)
2.) PC conversion is only cursory, e.g. exceptional strength should map to Str 20 not 18, no discussion of dual classing.

The value of an "official" conversion guide has a lot to do with Czege's Principle. Obviously a DM can make things up any time he wants to, but using a module allows the DM to participate in the experience of discovery. Because of this, the "quick conversion" section is actually the most important part of the conversion guide, and for the most part the quick conversion is just a shrug. E.g. it acknowledges that 5E has HP inflation but can't even be bothered to point out that you can get a pretty good conversion to 5E by inflating HP and damage per attack by a factor of about three.

Edit: oh yeah, and zero discussion of movement rates. That's an egregious oversight because it really is simple: multiple 2nd edition movement by 2.5 and round to nearest 5' to get the 5E speed in feet. MV 9 = 25', MV 12 = 30', MV 15 = 35', MV 18 = 45', Fly 36 = 90', etc.

The quick conversion guide is poor enough that I wouldn't want to use it in play, which is disappointing. When I heard that there would be a conversion guide for AD&D, I expected at least a table or two for generating monster ability scores like Strength and Dex from AD&D stat blocks.

At this point, it would be false to claim that 5E has any kind of support for running previous-edition adventures in 5E. The doc is actually less useful than my own unfinished guidelines for converting 3E adventures to GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy, which is saying something. Your takeaway should be, "5E is a separate game. Don't even try to re-use monster stats from previous editions. Or if you do, don't use this doc to do it."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I imagine that there are corner cases along the edge of bounded accuracy where +2/-2 is more potent than bounded accuracy, but yeah if you do it by feel there probably isn't much need for me to run the math at this hour.

It may be worth pointing out that advantage/disadvantage is more valuable (relative to a flat bonus or penalty) on attack rolls than saving throws and skill checks because of the way it interacts with critical hits. If you need a 16 to succeed, a -4 penalty will cut your success rate on saving throws by 80%, but it will cut your damage on an attack by only about 66% because the natural 20 is worth double. (Moreso for sneak attack, less so for static bonuses like Strength mods or Rage/Sharpshooters/GWM.) However, imposing disadvantage on a target of 16 has the same effect on both saving throws and attack rolls: it cuts both by about 75%.

So if your target is 16, whether you'd rather take a -4 penalty or disadvantage depends mostly on whether the roll is an attack roll or a save.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I ike the conversion document but I guess i'll a redux of it on an index card to be able to refer quickly.

For the nostalgics of previous editons I suggest check theses resources and think how unwieldly they were...
Basic D&D to AD&D 2E
AD&D 2E to D&D 3.0 conversion booklet

From that document, I give you this table:

Exceptional Score New Strength Score
18/01–18/50 19
18/51–18/75 20
18/76 –18/90 21
18/91–18/99 22
18/00 23
19–20 24
21–22 25
22–23 26
24–25 27

Would it really have been that hard to make a similar table for 5E? In fact I'll do so right now using the 5E MM Giant entries as a guide:

Exceptional Score New Strength Score
18/01–18/50 18
18/75–18/90 19
18/91 –18/00 20
19 21
20-21 23
22 25
23 27
24 29
25 30

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

My expectations were low, but I'm not sure even those low expectations were met.

1.) Too much focus on PC conversion, which is the least important kind of conversion. (Adventure/monster conversion is the most important.)
2.) PC conversion is only cursory, e.g. exceptional strength should map to Str 20 not 18, no discussion of dual classing."

OK, yeah, I see from a DM's perspective where this thing would fall down. As a player, I would expect a conversion document to be like this. Maybe they just should push out a Monster Manual II sooner rather than later and a book of updated magic items. I think that would probably help fill a lot of gaps better than a conversion document anyway. Although I like the slimness of the system at the moment on the player side, I do think that there is room for a lot more on the DM side as long as adventures don't become dependent on having non-core books.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

OK, yeah, I see from a DM's perspective where this thing would fall down. As a player, I would expect a conversion document to be like this. Maybe they just should push out a Monster Manual II sooner rather than later and a book of updated magic items. I think that would probably help fill a lot of gaps better than a conversion document anyway. Although I like the slimness of the system at the moment on the player side, I do think that there is room for a lot more on the DM side as long as adventures don't become dependent on having non-core books.

I agree on this point--there is really not much point in converting prior-edition characters to 5E in any kind of a detailed way. A different game deserves a different PC who lives in the new system's world.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

Yeah, I made that mistake in the 2e to 3e conversion with a high level party. The fighter did not fare well in that changeover. We kind of hit the high level 3e math issues quicker than many, but we though that we were doing something wrong, it didn't occur to us that the problem was more systemic.