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Converting adventures

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Converting adventures

Unread postby icycalm » 20 Jun 2021 23:53

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42y9m?Old-People#10

In general when converting various things, I've aimed for an "in-spirit" conversion rather than an exact conversion. If the room contains a dart trap and goblins, I wouldn't convert the exact stats of the dart trap and the goblins in the room, I'd just use a pre-written Pathfinder dart trap and appropriate numbers and/or classed goblins that would be the right CR for the APL. The question I'd be asking would be "does this adventure feel the same" in terms of narrative and relative challenge, rather than trying to do a point-for-point (so to speak) conversion that may not actually produce an adventure that gives players a similar challenge.

With item and spell conversion I've always gone for relatively speaking how does the effect translate in Pathfinder terms. Percentiles are used a lot more in random places in AD&D, so if an item improves something by "20%" I might be more likely to translate that into a +4 bonus on a die.

Damn though now I want to try converting an AD&D adventure. Sadly I don't really have any on hand (I never DMed 2nd Ed), though I might go digging into my collection...


This is how I would do it, if I had to do it. Keep the story, characters and maps, and just replace the enemies with equivalent ones from the other system. It keeps the work to a minimum while maintaining a good challenge balance. It may not be as strictly accurate as the conversion of someone who spent hours agonizing over each number’s conversion, but it works just as well and frees my time to play more.
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icycalm
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