D&D 4E Undermountain to 4e

[squigly1965]

i got the Undermountain quest and want to try to convert it to 4E rules and encounters. this i'm sure will be no easy feat. Especially since i'm not very experienced in DM'ng. only been done it maybe a dozen times and it was mainly for like my kid and nephew and friends. no real gamers mostly noobs. it would be for this same set of people.
wondering where i should start. it's that i bought it before i knew 4e was coming out so soon and there really arent too many adventures for 4e yet.

any and all help on how to convert encounters and NPC's would be great. i thought i seen an article around about converting players from 3/3.5 to 4e.

i'll look around for it

and thanks for any help you may offer in advance


if this is in the wrong place please let me know

 

[MaineCoon]

I've been converting some Dungeon Crawl Classics, specifically starting with Saga of the Dragon Cult series, to 4e.

I converted over an entire level's (dungeon level and PC level) worth of encounters in an evening, on my first run through, including redoing treasure. I think I can do it much faster now that I've got the hang of it, as I spent a while messing around with trying to convert a monster.

The approach I have found works best - don't convert the monsters, but remake the encounter. This will take all of 5 minutes usually.

I read through the adventure, and at each location/encounter, I will examine it, determine how difficult it is (easy, standard, hard), adjust for my taste, and do a standard 4E encounter build process: calc the XP, then buy the monsters from the MM.

If there are unusual or custom monsters, you can remake them (takes about 10 minutes) or see if someone has provided something here. Usually, I just swap monsters out entirely (Deathjump Spider instead of a Darkmantle, Scorpions in place of Giant Millipedes, for example). Sometimes I just use the attributes of the MM monster and call it the other thing (Use Kobold Slingers, and call it a kobold with a crossbow, no stat changes at all).

For the NPCs or named monsters, don't do an outright conversion. For an Ogre in the module (meant for a party level 1-3), I took the lowest level Ogre (level 8), dropped him 4 levels using the guide in the DMG, then made him an Elite using a Savage Berserker template. Most of my time was spent transcribing his info to my notepad for my convenience, but I could have just left a page # and listed only the few changed pieces of data (the 4 defenses, HP, attack bonuses, and new abilities if any).

For treasure, I keep a list of numbers 1 through 10, representing the parcels. Whenever treasure would be found, I replace find something appropriate in the parcels (possibly combining them, sometimes splitting them up) and write the new treasure in, note it as parcel #, and cross it off my list of parcels to use. Sometimes I may actually drop in a specific magic item, other times I may just note like "Magic Item level 4" and will pick something good at the time.

Hope this helps!

 

[squigly1965]

i thought i was subscribed to this thread but i guess i wasnt lol
anyway i am now so any other ideas would be great

thanks Maainecoon i appreciate the advice
it was kinda the way i was thinking.
will definitely use it thanks again