#d&d conversion

Alright, hopefully my players have blocked the tag. With that done, this is the first *real* post in my series of records and thoughts as I try to convert a long-form 3.5e D&D campaign to 4th edition. In this post, I want to talk about the campaign itself and provide some background info - a kind of overview before we get into the nitty gritty. Going forward, I'm going to have main posts that go in depth on the conversion process for each individual adventure, with some smaller posts (called "worm food" in the tradition of the campaign) containing thoughts about what the process is reaching me in regards to philosophical differences between editions, game design, etc; or just like individual parts of an adventure that I find especially interesting. There'll be a table of contents post here. Now, let's talk a bit about the campaign I'm trying to convert: The Age of Worms. At the risk of doing an xkcd's comic abt quartz here, I'd say AoW is one of the more famous prewritten campaigns to come out during D&D's 3.5 era, it's one you hear a lot of discussion about on forums and already has a fanmade conversion to 5e (which I'll be using as a reference point throughout my project). The campaign path consists of 12 separate adventures, all published serially in Dungeon magazine between 2005 and 2006. Each adventure was designed for a 4-character party and was intended to elevate the party by a level or two, taking them from level 1 all the way to 20 - this is a serious ass long-term campaign. The plot ramps up pretty decently from standard low-level shenanigans (the stated motivation for the party in the first adventure is literally the classic 'raid tombs get money'), to being heavily focused on stopping the return of a horrific eldritch-horror-undead demigod (Kyuss, who's been lurking in the background of various D&D books since like AD&D) about halfway through. It's apparently notorious for being pretty deadly as well, and I certainly believe it. Adventure 1: The Whispering Cairn

It's kind of odd by the standards of modern prewritten adventure design, but this campaign starts off with a classic dungeon crawl in search of treasure. It opens up into a more interesting quest afterwards, trying to find a ghost child's bones in order to get to the dungeon's real treasure, which will lead them into their first hints of the coming undead worm problem. A lot of the traps here are really nasty, and the dungeon is pretty combat-dense; also I can envision some parties getting pretty annoyed with being sent off on this crazy chase just to finish up a dungeon; but overall I'm a fan of this adventure. 1.5: Diamond Lake

There's a lot of info on this shithole mining town that the PCs start off in, with tons of cool locations and interesting NPCs, to the point where I feel like an AoW campaign would be incomplete without the DM adding at least some plotline with the party getting wrapped up in the local power struggle between mine owners. Fortunately, this won't be a problem for me, as my group will almost certainly try to start unionizing the minors and upending the town's power structure ASAP. The fact that the campaign seems to expect player groups to be basically fine with how shit the town is is definitely a mark of how the "default" game has changed.

2: The Three Faces of Evil

Usually recognized as "the shitty one", this adventure is pretty much entirely a big dungeon crawl. It's super lethal, the connective tissue between it and the first adventure is weak as hell, and frankly I find the whole "three faces" cult and its relation to Kyuss to be a bit bizarre, like in a weird misdirect-villain way. Also the text is full of typoes and some maps are labelled badly. Of all the adventures, this one is the one I suspect I'll be altering the most. 3: Encounter at Blackwall Keep The first of many "go talk to a wizard about this wacky shit" hooks, Blackwall Keep has a fine adventure trapped in it somewhere (that adventure is mostly 1982's 'Danger at Dunwater'). The players fight off lizardfolk raiding a frontier keep and then track them to their lair to rescue a wizard they need to talk to about clues uncovered in Three Faces. The fact that the adventure really wants them to kill the lizardfolk does not read well today, it's definitely reflective of the more morally ambiguous character of the default adventurer back in the day. The "villain" of this one is literally an escaped arena slave lizardfolk, no offense but I doubt my group will be killing him. It does a good job really setting up that this whole worm thing is becoming more of a problem though, and the initial siege fight of fighting the lizardfolk could be fun. Plenty to talk about with this one. 4. The Hall of Harsh Reflections Another "talk to a wizard" hook, this adventure takes the PCs to the Big City (Greyhawk by default, but could be whatever)! This is kinda neat, taking them from po-dunk Diamond Lake to the city is a good representation of escalation. Really, this is the first part of a 2-adventure arc, and has some genuinely neat intrigue elements involving doppelgangers impersonating the PCs to commit crimes, a hidden mind flayer overlord, and ending on the best cliffhanger/forboding note yet. I suspect I'll have to make very few changes to the actual storyline of this one.

5. The Champion's Belt *Fuck* yeah. Cool ass tournament arc where the parties are also trying to stop an evil cultist plot to kill the audience and raise them as undead (very reminiscent of that one bit of the dnd movie). All kinds of neat gladiator shit, opportunities to meet and roleplay with other adventurers, a dungeon crawl through the hidden halls of the under-arena, and an iconic final fight against an Ulgurstasta. The dungeon bit is pretty long, and I think there'll be some interesting challenges in adapting the Ulgurstasta. 5.5. The Free City

Like Diamond Lake, this is a big background section about the Free City (again, Greyhawk by default). This is helpful, but I like it less than Diamond Lake just bc the connection isn't there. The PCs should for sure have an opportunity to have a Big City Caper(tm) here, likely between adventures 5 and 6. 6. A Gathering of Winds Fuck that title, this is Return to the Whispering Cairn baby! This gimmick of going back to where you started to do new shit gets me hype every time. This adventure also gets points from me for having A FUCKING DRAGON FIGHT! HELL YEAH! (for now, these will get much less cool and special later on). As written, the dragon devastates Diamond Lake before the PCs arrive, and I like that - especially if they took time between adventures to work on making the town better (which mine certainly will), it feels devastating and adds a personal stake to the adventure. This one also has a long ass dungeon crawl (making use of both Ds is always nice), and feels like a fitting send-off to the more episodic early parts of the campaign. From here on, it's all kyuss all the time, baby.

7. The Spire of Long Shadows. There's some wack-ass shit in this one. Spire is the big lore-dump adventure, where the PCs learn about Kyuss and his backstory and whatnot - and the dungeon crawl through his ruined city to get it has some very neat survival horror potential. Outside of talking with a wizard (yes! it's the third 'talk to a wizard' hook!) at the start, there is very little non-dungeon crawling combat content here, which is fine but will present a challenge to 4e-ifying it without murdering the pacing. Also, there's a weird inclusion about a Pit Fiend who wants an artifact that the PCs found in the last adventure but who is never mentioned again and has no connection to Kyuss - might be cool, I guess, but just seems strange. Finally, this adventure sets the PCs on the trail of Kyuss's cult all the way to [next location].

8. The Prince of Redhand FORMAL BANQUET, YEAH BITCH! I FUCKING LOVE NOBLE PARTY ARCS!! After a great deal of dungeon-crawling, Prince of Redhand is a pretty welcome diversion into the realm of intrigue and heavy roleplay. The vibes are fucking rancid, which is exactly what you want for this tense intrigue story. Any more will have to wait until the detailed writeup, but this adventure might be my favourite of the lot.

8.5. Alhaster Another area writeup, this one's really great! Less shenanigans for the PCs to get into between adventures (which makes sense as the plot has ramped the fuck up), but does a great job detailing the town and creating an atmosphere of like, I dunno, New England creepy oldness? Also there's a scary evil angel of Hextor here who fully activates my switch reflexes.

9. The Library of Last Resort 🎵It's the Mystery of the Druids, they all have an attitude🎵 Much in the vein of Spire, the PCs talk to an expert and then go off in search of secret knowledge - in this case knowledge of Kyuss's great lieutenant's (the dracolich Dragotha, allegedly the first dracolich) phylactery. They travel to a hidden island with an ancient druidic library, undergo trials to impress the library's fey wardens and access it, and then trip balls to discover the phylactery's location. It ends with a kind of neat idea that because the knowledge is no longer sealed up in the library, it's back in the world again and Dragotha will be able to remember it soon, setting off a bit of a race. Pretty cool - also, the Hand of Vecna is here, which is fucking sweet.

10. Kings of the Rift Oh boy, this is one hell of a dungeon crawl. Now, to be fair, the PCs aren't really expected to do all of it, and it's also fucking sick. They're caught in the middle of a battle between a city of giants (where the phylactery is) and a flight of dragons sent by dragotha to go and get said phylacery. It reminds me a little of the one part of dark souls 2 where you witness the giants invade Drangleic. We get some reoccuring NPCs here, and the fact that you don't have to fight the giants is pretty cool - I'm excited to dig deeper into this one.

11. Into the Wormcrawl Fissure Here it is - the dungeon crawl to end all dungeon crawls (at least as far as AoW is concerned). With his phylactery destroyed, all that remains to the PCs in preventing Kyuss's rise (as far as they know) is destroying Dragotha in his lair. Unfortunately, his lair is an eldritch realm nightmare death-zone infested with his subordinate dragons, undead worms, and a ton of disgusting terrors. It follows the same trend that several dungeons so far have (go around and find several parts of a thing to advance), but does it in a kind of new way - Dragotha is a terrifying boss fight and a great capstone to a really nasty dungeon. It ends, of course, with the knowledge that one of their benefactors betrayed them and Kyuss is going to rise over Alhaster etc etc - it's one hell of a lead up to the finale.

12. Dawn of a New Age. Man, this one would be hell to run in 3.5. As the world falls to madness around the PCs, they desperately try to stop Kyuss's emergence in Alhaster (I guess it makes sense in the story, but I almost would have liked to go back to Diamond Lake). There's some very dangerous encounters here, and two pretty funny details - 1, that it's still formatted like an AoW dungeon in that the party has to do three side objectives before the finale, and 2, they have the opportunity to travel to the actual factual Tomb of fucking Horrors in order to hijack that sphere of annihilation in the first room for use against Kyuss. Is this fucking rad or wack ass fanservice? I don't know. The ending post-Kyuss is cool. I like it a lot.

Artistic

Your society has focused on creating and refining arts and various form of expressions, giving rise to actors, entertainers, fine chefs and diplomats. You have a way with languages and words, often being able to talk your way out of difficult situations.

Abity score increase: your charisma is increased by 1

Heart and Soul of the culture: you are well spoken and traines in various arts: you have an advantage in performance tests where you can use it if you have an audience of more than two people. You also know one additional language.

Street performance: people will almost always appreciate even the most impromptu of your antics: unless in outrightly hostile territory, you can put on a show of singing or acting (or otherwise a performance) to create a distraction and additionally earn a D10 of credits, multiplied by your level.

Gaseous lifeform:

You have evolved in the environment of a gas giant or perhaps within a Nebulae. For all intents and purposes, you are a sentient cloud of gas. For easier interaction with environment of the galactic community at large, most of the gaseous life forms are outfitted with a containment unit that gives you a roughly humanoid shape and allows you to manage objects like a regular solid humanoid would. It also has a voice projector as normally you would communicate with intricate patterns of colour appearing within your form. Your gaseous environment hosts a small ecosystem of bacterial life that allow you to process most foods and drinks and derive energy and nutrients from them. 

Ability score increase: Your dexterity is increased by 2

Dispersed Physiology: There is no obvious centre to you and your appendages are arbitrary, as they are formed within the containment field. You cannot permanently lose a limb or suffer other organ losses. You can still be killed, and if your hp goes below 0, your containment unit is disabled. At that point, while you don’t die outright, you can’t regain your form unless someone repairs it.

Age: You don’t age, but your bacterial ecosystem does. Unless you use specialized therapy, you will have a lifespan of about 100 standard years.

Hullo, Gentle Readers. While I love giving general advice, I’m happy to answer questions on game conversions, rules, and the like. This week, my Question from a Denizen comes from an Anonymous poster who asked for advice on converting feats from 3rd and 3.5 edition D&D into 5th edition. I think this is a really interesting one, because feats have undergone a major transformation from earlier editions to the current one.

In earlier editions, feats were little benefits you got every other levels or so. They were quite interesting, but they became a hassle to keep track of, and some where very deliberately positioned as gateways to others. In 5e, however, feats are an optional rule and are quite powerful. If you allow feats in your game, a player taking one will be flavoring their character in a specific direction. For example, one of the characters in my game has Mobile, and another one has Polearm Master. I think that, even if they were otherwise identical characters, these choices would make them fairly unique.

With this in mind, mechanically, feats are not going to translate directly from 3/3.5 to 5. There has to be a little extra oomph to make the small mechanical benefits of the earlier edition equal to the large mechanical benefits of the current one. A good example to look at is 3/3.5’s Improved Initiative. I always smile at this feat, because it makes me think of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, where the party is wondering “Who takes Improved Initiative?” about their new Fighter, who then goes on to kill all but 1 of the goblins they’re facing and replies “That’s who takes Improved Initiative!” during a victory dance.

In 3/3.5 (and 4 actually), the benefit of Improved Initiative was a +4 bonus to Initiative. While this is a decent benefit, it’s not exactly character defining. Taking it has to be worth losing out on 2 points of Ability score improvement. The solution is 5e’s feat Alert. Not only does this feat provide a +5 bonus to Initiative, but it also means you can’t be surprised while you’re conscious, and if other creatures are unseen by you, they don’t get benefits on their attacks against you. That is a really amazing suite of abilities and well worth taking, I would say, if that fit my concept for a character…one with an almost preternatural sixth sense for danger.

The folks over at Wizards have done a pretty good job converting more of 3/3.5’s basic feats over to 5e, so I’m going to delve for something obscure to be able to show how I would convert a feat over. I’m delving into the book Races of Destiny and pulling out the Heroic Destiny feat. This feat allowed a human, half-elf, or half-orc to roll 1d6 before making an attack roll, ability check, skill check, saving throw, or caster level check and add it to the roll. This sounds like it could just be replaced by the Lucky feat, but I want something that suggests a character being protected by destiny rather than sheer luck, so I’m going to vary it up.

I’m going to begin by giving this new feat (which I will still call Heroic Destiny) something similar to what it was before. I could let it give Advantage on a roll, but that’s too close to Lucky. Instead, I’m going to let the player do what it already did and add 1d6 to a roll before making it. Some of those checks no longer exist or are redundant, so I’ll simply the language a bit when I write it up.

I like the idea that destiny is somehow protecting the person in question, so making them a bit harder to kill seems like a fun idea. I decide to give them a break when rolling death saving throws. I could make it so that they only require 2 successful death saving throws to stabilize, or that it takes 4 failures for them to die. I’d like something a bit more dramatic, however, so I decide that a natural 1 on a death saving throw is still only 1 failure for the character. This is big, but it’s very situational, so I want to give one more nice benefit that will function more often.

I decide that the character automatically accumulates temporary hit points at the end of every short and long rest equal to their level. Is that too powerful? I don’t think so. The Inspiring Leader feat gives the chance for 6 creatures to gain the feat-holder’s level plus Charisma modifier in temporary hit points multiple times a day.

So with all this in mind, the new feat would look like this:

Prerequisite: Requires Human, Half-Elf, or Half-Orc

You have a destiny to fulfill, and fate helps keep you alive until you do. You gain the following benefits:

Once per day, before making an attack roll, ability     check, or saving throw, you may roll 1d6 and add it as a bonus to the     roll.

When making death saving throws, a natural 1 only     causes one failure.

At the end of each short or long rest, you gain     temporary hit points equal to your level.

I hope that this helps our anonymous poster with their feat conversion. If anyone ever wants to see how I would convert a specific feat (or a monster, or magic item, or anything else), feel free to ask. I’m always happy to help out.