-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
D&D 5E Which edition easiest to adapt to 5e?
- Thread starter fletch137
- Start date
From 2nd Ed., I'm a big fan of 'Under Illefarn,' 'Night Below,' and 'Return to the Keep on the Borderlands.'
From 3rd, I'm thinking 'Crucible of Freya' or 'Hollow's Last Hope.'
All favorite dungeon delves from past editions.
Ive been converting City of the Spider Queen (3e) to 5e. Currently my group is around 13th level, coming to the end of the first part.
This super dungeon had a reputation of being extremely deadly, but in 5e it is not so. A lot of things have been toned down in 5e, CR's of a lot of monsters are much lower, and a lot of templated monsters are missing (small, medium, large, huge versions of things, for example). Things that were near TPK's in 3rd edition have at times even been cake walks for my group in 5e.
There's also a huge number of combat NPCs to convert, using the rules in the DMG is much more time consuming and fiddly than creating NPCs in 3rd edition. You can't build them using PC rules either, because they end up having a considerably lower CR. 1 level in 5e != 1 level in 3e in terms of CR.
The module is also very spell caster heavy, spell casters could stand up on their own in 3rd edition, but due to concentration mechanics this is not true in 5e. In fact most "solo" encounters need to be changed completely, since it's hard to build a challenging solo encounter in 5e.
This module also relies on a lot of magical traps, which are basically rendered useless since any 5e arcane ritual caster can walk around everywhere with Detect Magic on them basically at all times.
In short it's not that easy or simple to convert. There are a lot of complications and it requires quite a bit of experience to get things right (ie, the same feel and difficulty as the original module).
This super dungeon had a reputation of being extremely deadly, but in 5e it is not so. A lot of things have been toned down in 5e, CR's of a lot of monsters are much lower, and a lot of templated monsters are missing (small, medium, large, huge versions of things, for example). Things that were near TPK's in 3rd edition have at times even been cake walks for my group in 5e.
There's also a huge number of combat NPCs to convert, using the rules in the DMG is much more time consuming and fiddly than creating NPCs in 3rd edition. You can't build them using PC rules either, because they end up having a considerably lower CR. 1 level in 5e != 1 level in 3e in terms of CR.
The module is also very spell caster heavy, spell casters could stand up on their own in 3rd edition, but due to concentration mechanics this is not true in 5e. In fact most "solo" encounters need to be changed completely, since it's hard to build a challenging solo encounter in 5e.
This module also relies on a lot of magical traps, which are basically rendered useless since any 5e arcane ritual caster can walk around everywhere with Detect Magic on them basically at all times.
In short it's not that easy or simple to convert. There are a lot of complications and it requires quite a bit of experience to get things right (ie, the same feel and difficulty as the original module).
Henry
Autoexreginated
Actually, in basic D&D when that was written, that was more like 140 pounds of gold and 200 pounds of silver...
Similar Threads
