Pop'N'Fresh's page

Here's a version of Tsuto created using the Create an NPC rules in the DMG:

Tsuto Kaijitsu Level 3 Skirmisher
Medium natural humanoid XP 150
Initiative +2 Senses Perception +3; low-light vision
HP 36; Bloodied 18
AC 15; Fortitude 13, Reflex 17, Will 14
Speed 6
First Strike (rogue feature)
Tsuto has combat advantage against any creatures that have not yet acted in that encounter.
Sneak Attack (rogue feature)
Once per round when Tsuto hits a foe that he has combat advantage against, he deals +2d6 damage.
R Deft Strike (standard; at-will)
Tsuto may move 2 squares before the attack; +7 vs. AC; 1d8 + 4 damage.
M Stunning Fist (standard; encounter)
+3 vs. Fortitude; 1d6 + 2 damage and the target is stunned until the end of Tsuto’s next turn.
R Blinding Barrage (standard; daily)
Close blast 3; +7 vs. AC; 2d8+4 damage and the target is blinded until the end of Tsuto’s next turn.
Tumble (move; encounter)
Tsuto may shift up to 3 squares.
Alignment Evil Languages Common, Elven, Goblin
Skills Acrobatics +9, Diplomacy +4, Insight +5, Thievery +9
Str 12 (+2) Dex 16 (+4) Wis 14 (+3)
Con 12 (+2) Int 13 (+2) Cha 13 (+2)
Equipment shortbow

I'm allowing Tsuto to use the rogue powers with a shortbow, even though a PC rogue could not. Stunning fist is loosely based on Dazing Strike (and the Githzerai Cenobite's Stunning Strike). He will work well with Goblin Blackblades given the stun and Tumble.

Giving him a stunning strike is a bit too powerful for a level 3 NPC. I would probably go with Dazing strike instead or you'll have one PC groaning about how he can't do anything on his turn every round. Either that or make it an encounter ability.

Paul Watson wrote:

Kruelaid wrote:

And regarding the cover, how does Seoni get her bewbies to do that pushup bra thing in that slinky dress? Prestidigitation?

Either that or she's been researching the Book of Erotic Fantasy and Nymphology in her spare time. Maybe the dress has a permanent Fascinating Cleavage spell on it (it's OGL. It could be true.)

Well it has been hinted at that Seoni is special.. maybe they're part of the deal. ;)

She sooooo belongs in one of those old Heavy Metal cartoons. Bodacious bewbage. This reminds me of a recent episode of South Park.

Oh, and pre-ordered off Amazon :)

Here's another conversion. I'll stick them in this thread for a while, then gather them up in a single thread on the Runelords board once I have a bunch.

Vargouille (Level 2 Controller)

Got a couple of suggestions for your Varguoille, which looks really good btw.

1. Probably reduce its size to small to match its d20 version, but that doesn't really change its stats at all. It is after all a flying head :P

2. Bump up its Strength score to 13, as suggested in the DMG, as it is a melee attacker and relies on its bite. That being said, probably reduce its bite damage die to a d6, as it has an added effect of removing surges, and its old bite was only a d4 after all. So its bite should probably deal 1d6+1 damage. It seems low I know, but its other attacks can be very powerful with this.

3. Bump up its AC to 16.

4. Add the "Fear" keyword to your shriek power and maybe make it an encounter power similar to the young black dragon's frightful presence since the power only really will work once per encounter right? The d20 version only works every 24 hours, so this seems appropriate. I would probably also remove the save ends part of this power, just like the dragon's.

Good job!

Unfortunately, the ad they posted up yesterday on their WotC website is super annoying and quite poorly done. Whomever did that flash ad needs to be fired :)

Aside from that though, 4e is still sitting well with me.

Modera wrote:

I don't mean to be snippy here, or rude, but I was wondering what "quested for" means exactly. Usually levels are gained through adventures, which can be called quests. Thus you gain levels in classes normally by questing.

What then, differentiates a 'quest' from a normal 'adventure'? Can one self quest? Are they defined by an authority figure giving them to you, or am I missing the point?

I''m honestly interested. This idea seems quizzical to me.

A Quest is a specific goal. Not just any old adventure. I guess what he is saying is that to be able to gain an epic destiny the DM gives the player a specific goal or quest that he/she has to accomplish first.

That's exactly what I meant yes. So the whole group would need to do its regular adventures, but generally an epic quest would only involve the the one character, unless he wanted to bring along his friends too. But the PHB basically says that you should not hand out the epic powers by default just for levelling up after a dungeon. You have to do some serious character soul searching to get them. And my group loves this kind of fluff, as I can come up with some pretty cool quests!

Well, I'm using the 2E MM and 3E MM for my list

(good catch on the hippogriff)
Imp
Insect (this one is kind of sketchy as the 4E doesn't have a separate section for just insects, but things like Swarms and beetles are listed separately)
Invisible Stalker
Kraken
Lammasu
Locathah
Lycanthorpe (4E has werewolf and wererat only)
Merfolk
Mimic
Nymph
Ooze (Gray and Black Pudding)
Pegasus
Rust Monster
Sea Lion (wow, are Lions ever the "humans" of the monster cross breed races)
Shadow
Sphinx (only 1 version in the 4E MM)
Sprite
Triton
Will o'wisp

Imp is there under the Devils entry. Sphinx is also there (as you noted). The rest I could not find any mention of.

Very good conversion! Valeros' armor kinda looks like Hide anyways.

I think its a lot easier to stat up PC's. NPC's are a bit harder I have found but not by much. Monsters are pretty easy, assuming you use the MM as a template for most of them.

So far I've only really looked at encounters, and XP. Haven't looked at treasure yet.

But thankfully most of the encounters can be combined into bigger encounters to offer more of a challenge for the PC's. A good example is the encounters in Gaedren's building.

I'm just happy to be part of the Pathfinder community and D&D in general.

Go Paizo! Looking forward to reading Pathfinder #10!

The only power I have seen that remotely resembles what the OP was asking, aside from the Raise Dead ritual (which can be easily changed or removed by your DM if it doesn't suit your taste) is the Archmage's epic ability, which is gained at 24th level. Basically it says once per day when you die, your spirit detaches from your body and you become a ghost essentially.

You can continue adventuring as a ghost, or after the encounter, if you body is still in tact, return to your body. If your body gets destroyed however, you're in trouble, and need to figure out your own way to become whole again :) As a ghost you get all the typical ghostly defenses, but you can't use your daily spells, magic items, or rituals anymore. And if you die as a ghost, you're really dead.

It should also be mentioned that the epic destinies (ie. level 21 and above) need to be quested for, you don't get them automatically.

MisterSlanky wrote:

As much as they'd clean and clean the non-metal bits of any armor from scavenged equipment off dead bodies tends to be a little unsalvageable.

See, from a simulationist sort of view point I don't buy that. The most expensive part of any armor is the metal and you're telling me a merchant is going to turn down valuable steel and iron because the leather is a little dirty. Maybe he would want to buy the metal cheaper than the market price for armor, but someone is going to want it, even if its just the blacksmith. I mean, when it comes to leather... cows are cheaper than forged steel and the butcher kills a couple of them every day, if you know what I mean.

Unless of course the armor was from a filthy gnoll or goblin, stained with humanoid sweat/feces, etc. and hacked to bits by the adventurers when they killed the creature in the first place :) Then 1/5 the value is a great price!

Always hated the emphasis on gear and looting the dead in D&D, and am glad to see these rules in action!

I present to you my conversions thus far. 1 monster and 1 NPC (classless). For Yargin, because I didn't want him to be a wizard or warlock, I just made him a generic artillery NPC and grabbed a couple powers from the Kobold entries in the MM that matched his 3.5 writeup. Also removed his crossbow (as he never uses it) and gave him a sling to chuck his alchemical items better.

The jigsaw shark is pretty weak on its own, but if you level it up to around 5th level and put 2 in each encounter, you get a level 1 encounter for 4 PC's. Or you can make it a solo if you have 5 PC's, or any combination thereof. This is just the basic stat block for the medium-sized shark really.

---------------------------------------------------------
Jigsaw Shark Level 1 Soldier
Medium natural beast (aquatic) XP 100
---------------------------------------------------------
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +6; blindsight 10
HP 29; Bloodied 14
AC 17; Fortitude 14, Reflex 13, Will 12
Speed swim 10
---------------------------------------------------------
[Melee basic] Bite (standard; at-will)
+8 vs. AC; 1d6+3 damage
---------------------------------------------------------
Frenzied Bite (immediate reaction, when an enemy
enters an adjacent square; at-will)
The jigsaw shark makes a melee basic attack against the
enemy, even if the enemy was shifting.
---------------------------------------------------------
Alignment Unaligned Languages -
Str 16 (+3) Dex 15 (+2) Wis 12 (+1)
Con 13 (+1) Int 1 (-5) Cha 2 (-4)
---------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------
Yargin Balko Level 2 Artillery
Medium natural humanoid, human XP 125
---------------------------------------------------------
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +1
HP 28; Bloodied 14
AC 17; Fortitude 16, Reflex 16, Will 13
Speed 6
---------------------------------------------------------
[Melee basic] Dagger (standard; at-will) * Weapon
+6 vs. AC; 1d4+2 damage
---------------------------------------------------------
[Ranged basic] Sling (standard; at-will) * Weapon
Ranged 10/20; +7 vs. AC; 1d6+4 damage
---------------------------------------------------------
[Ranged] Acid Splash (standard; at-will) * Acid, Arcane,
Implement
Ranged 10; +3 vs. Reflex; 1d10+2 acid damage.
---------------------------------------------------------
[Ranged] Alchemical Vial (standard; at-will)
Yargin can fire special ammunition from his sling. An
alchemical vial attack that hits deals normal damage and
has an additional effect depending on its type:
Thunderstone (Burst 2): The targets within the burst are
deafened (save ends).
Acid: The target takes ongoing 2 acid damage (save ends).
Gluepot: The target is immobilized (save ends).
---------------------------------------------------------
Alignment Evil Languages Common, Elven
Skills Arcana +7, Thievery +9
Str 12 (+2) Dex 16 (+4) Wis 11 (+1)
Con 16 (+4) Int 13 (+2) Cha 10 (+1)
---------------------------------------------------------
Equipment leather armor, dagger, sling with 10 bullets,
wand, 3 vials of acid, 2 gluepots, 1 thunderstone, key to
cabinet is area A7, garnet amulet worth 100 gp

Yargin's Tactics
Yargin prefers to use his wand with acid splash in
combat but each time he misses he erupts into a loud
burst of profanity, shaking the wand in frustration.
Once he fails the third time to use the wand, he gives up
and switches to slinging vials of acid and gluepots. He’s
deathly afraid of melee combat, and fights with his
dagger only if cornered. Once he’s used up his
alchemical items and his wand has failed him three
times (or as soon as he takes any melee damage at all)
Yargin shrieks in panic and attempts to flee to Gaedren’s
side to warn him. That he might inadvertently lead
Gaedren’s enemies right to him doesn’t cross his mind in
his panicked state.

Yeah, I just got the email now that says my order is ready for shipping! Soon I shall have the PDF in my clutches.....soon....my precious.

Yes, the boobage to page ratio is VERY good :)

Also, just as a warning, do NOT play D&D adventures with these rules. I tried this and eventually the game broke down. When the conan RPG recommends certain rules for your campaign, to stay true to the Conan books, they mean it!

Also, be really careful about allowing your PC's to make Scholars. All the Conan stories use spellcasters as villains, or NPC's, and they were not very well suited to "adventuring".

Honestly, 4E looks like it could run Conan very well, and you'd really only need to use the Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Warlord as PC's. Clerics, Warlocks, and Wizards could be reserved for the villains with some flavour changes, and Paladins could be removed entirely with a minimum of fuss.

You could probably make a decent barbarian using the Fighter class, focusing your points into Strength and Constitution, and grabbing some bonuses in Nature and Perception.

Also, check out the human berserker in the MM on page 163. They have an encounter ability called Battle Fury that I am sure you could give to a PC as a power with a minimum amount of work.

That's kinda lame actually. Most of those people, excluding the 2 cute chicks, would get a slap across the face with my DMG if they used those voices at my game.

Mid-June is fast approaching. Can't wait to see this issue!

Any word on an official date yet?

So did i. It was scheduled for shipment on Friday, June 6th, of 2008. What's my point? It is now Saturday, the 7th, and i just received word via email, from Amazon, that my order has a new shipment date... 2-3 weeks. That's the end of the month! I'd love to cancel for i feel they let me down, but i did save 50 bucks. Very inconvenient for me and my fellow players, but whadya do?

Thoth-Amon

I also had the same thing happen to my order, but I'm fine with it as I have the PDF's already, and my DM got his books too.

Didn't plan running a campaign for a while anyways, so its no big deal, I'd rather save the 50 bucks. My DM paid $15 more than me to get his books early too, which I wasn't willing to do.

I have the Atlantean Edition of the game, and its not bad. Aside from quite a few editing mistakes, and some errata, the book is pretty decent and the pages are in colour. Lots of good Conan campaign ideas in it too.

The 2nd edition is horrible though, all the pages are black and white now, and I heard the binding is really cheap. The content is supposed to be better though, and I heard they fixed the Scholar class to be more effective.

If you really want this, get the PDF and just print it out yourself, you'll probably do a better job than Mongoose did.

I made a dwarven ranger that uses throwing hammers, and uses the dual-wield combat style with warhammers.

Very fun! Although I ended up in the rat pit in our 3rd session and couldn't try out many of my cool attacks.

Hahaha, sneaky bugger!

I respectfully disagree with the OP's original sentiments, but I do thank him for stating that this is simply his opinion.

Now for my opinion :)

Its a fairly simple matter to add back the alignments that you miss. I don't see this as being a problem really, its just something they didn't waste a few valuable pages on. I removed alignment from my 3.5 campaign because it is a mechanic that can be too easily abused. I have had endless frustration with sessions DM'ing groups of true neutral or CN/LN characters simply because they didn't want to get slammed by any of those spells that target alignments. Also, eventually everybody in the group ended up with a holy weapon, since 90% of the bad guys were usually evil (using published adventures).

The cosmology is something that I end up changing to suit my own campaigns anyways, so this doesn't phase me at all. I already ported the divine channeling feats over to the Golarion deities and renamed them. Took me 10 mins.

I like powers. I found some of the classes in older editions to be really boring or too mechanical to play, such as fighters. Wizards and other spellcasters became much more exciting to play as they had so many more choices available. 4E has taken that idea and spread it out over all the classes now, and it is a lot of fun to play every class now.

Tieflings and Dragonborn are not my thing, at all, I never liked these kinds of races and I still don't, but I don't really miss the Gnome either. Eladrin and Elves being split up is ok I guess, kind of unnecessary honestly. Many people were fine with the concept of wood elves and high elves I think. Humans are as good as ever, Half-Elves got a big boost that they sorely needed, Halflings are still great, and Dwarves absolutely rock. I made a dwarven ranger yesterday that uses 2 warhammers, and he was absolutely fantastic to play. Had so much fun.

I like the simple skills system they implemented. And a 20th level wizard untrained in Athletics would probably only have a skill check around +13 or so. A 1st level fighter trained in the skill could begin at 1st level with +10 or higher assuming he had a decent Strength. So I think you're exaggerating a little bit too much there.

Feats are divied up into tiers of play, and there aren't very many to begin with. But give it a few months and I'm sure we'll be bombarded with tonnes more from WotC. Powers tend to take more precedence here anyways, as feats usually just make you better at your powers or class abilities. The multiclassing feats are a great idea.

Equipment is sparse yes, but again, this is usually just flavor. You can make all kinds of cool weapons using what's provided. Mechanics wise, you don't really need much more.

All the other chapters I love. Rituals are easily controlled by the DM. If you don't want fighters to have rituals, then don't give them to them if it doesn't make sense. The key to rituals is that unless you are a class that relies on them a lot, like the wizard or cleric, you can control them to only be available to certain organizations or places. And the level limit on them is a great addition too. I hated the way magic items were handled in older versions. The group always ended up with way too many, and their first purchases were always the ones that boosted up your saves, ability scores, or attack and damage rolls. Now you don't even need them if you don't want them.

Friggin awesome picture man.

And we get to the threshold of why a more dumbed down and simpler game does NOT make a good Tabletop RPG for the experienced. 4E couldn't even cover mounted combat properly. What a shame.

Hm, wow, it seems looking at my 3E book, so much has been covered. Wow. More classes and spells are, too, and more types of armor! How interesting and fun! Why would anyone want to switch to a game with LESS and only to find themselves getting stuck when they truly did need the stats to brigandine armor or half plate? (yes, I am also aiming at why

Staying on topic, I'd recommend the OP to just house rule the mounted combat issue, since 4E is already turning out to be the Manhattan Project of house rules, more so than 1E and 2E ever was. (glad 3E saw a minimal amount of that, least in my games)

You don't need house rules to cover this, as the Acrobatics skill covers this exact situation, or you can make up a feat as previously mentioned. And 3.5 mounted combat (and the ride skill) was useless beyond 4th or 5th level unless you got a flying mount or dragon, or something else along those lines.

Definately 15. They list that as the base DC, and recommend you only boost it up if the stunt is overly complex. Since you are basically just trying to do something a little bit faster (ie. standard action to a move action) I'd say 15 is plenty.

If the PC wanted to reduce it to a minor action, I would say at least 20, and maybe even a free action as a 25 or 30?

I would say offer both! A feat to make it minor, and also allow the Acrobatics check DC 15 to pull it off as a move action.

It may appeal to more PC's that way.

Monster Manuals, that's a given.

And if they are ever published, Birthright and Dark Sun campaign guides and player guides.

I am hesitant to get the splat books until I have a good look through them to ensure they won't overshadow the PHB content. If its just new content that adds to the game, that's fine. If they start min/maxing powers or magic items to make them more useful or powerful than PHB content, then I will be banning those in my games.

Logically, your are correct. In game terms though (which seldom mirror logic), you'd only take the higher penalty to attack rolls. So if you had -5 concealment and -2 cover, or vice versa, your enemy would use the -5 penalty instead of -2, but they would not stack.

There isn't one since there is no Ride skill anymore. But this sounds like an excellent place to create a new feat.

I know there are some feats or race/class abilities that change a standard action into a minor action, so I don't see why a "Quick Mount" feat could not be created for this.

**Spoilers here**

I'm working on this in my spare time, which is to say I have not done much yet.

I did the Jigsaw Shark already though but its at work. Other than that, I have only done some loose planning on encounters in Edge of Anarchy, and came to the conclusion to combine Lamm's house encounters into 3 individual encounters, plus 1 more if they fall into the shark's area.

So to summarize, I have:
Combined all the house encounters together into one big multi-room encounter, which includes Bloo (level 1 hyena), level 1 human minions for the Gaedren's Lambs but these will mostly be to take up space and hinder the group, and the human, gnome, and half-orc will all be statted up as well.

Combined all the spiders together into one encounter on the boat.

Gaedren and his crocodile will be one encounter in itself, Gaedren being a solo human rogue with his crocodile using the visejaw crocodile's stats.

Everything else should play as is I would think, although some DC's may need to be adjusted for the new skill system.

I think we must have done the same exercise (using the MM to figure out the DMG section on creating monsters). The two paragraphs about assigning ability scores in the DMG is pretty obtuse. Looking at it again after converting the sinspawn (see below), I think what those paragraphs tell you are the average ability scores for creatures of that level. The MM shows realistic monsters (ogres have low Wis and Cha, so their Will defense is lower than average for their level).

I expect that it will go much quicker with future monsters. The DMG makes getting the numbers (defenses, ability scores, attack and damage bonuses) close enough much easier. Picking or creating powers is definitely the most interesting part.

I have come to the same conclusions as you about the DMG steps to creating a monster. Creating new powers is actually not very hard as most of the different types of powers can be found in the MM already, you just change a couple keywords and labels and you're done.

The problems I was speaking of specifically are related to the table on page 184 of the DMG titled "Monster Statistics by Role"

Specifically the fact that the row "Other defenses" is completely wrong. After some careful comparisons, it looks like this row should be a different base number, and then modified by the monster's ability scores.

Try it out with the "Zombie" excerpt monsters and you'll see what I mean. You can see all the medium brutes have their defenses at 10 + ability mods. The skirmisher is 12 + ability mods. The artillery is 11 + ability mods. The soldier is 13 + ability mods. The Zombie Hulk is a Large brute though and its defenses work out to 15 + ability mods (Fort is 1 below this for some reason). This got me thinking that maybe its size added to its defenses?

I'm just trying to figure out how the WotC guys created these monster mechanically so I can do the same I guess.

Nope! My books will be shipping soon and I couldn't be happier. I have to admit that the books didn't have quite as much as I had hoped, but then again, they are quite big so I can see why now.

I'm not going to subscribe to DDI as I am sure I can probably get most of that content for free from my buddy, who did subscribe, or off the net somewhere. Hopefully that fills in some of the blanks.

I believe that it is well known that the PDF's that got circulated are confirmed to be an earlier draft as well, and have errors in them and missing content, so I just want to remind everyone of that again.

After doing some reading in the MM PDF, I think the rules in the DMG may be incorrect on the defense calculations for the various monster roles. The DMG didn't really mention that the monster ability scores modify their Fort, Ref, and Will scores but it appears they do when looking at other monsters in the MM. So I think the DMG may have some errors here (which was mentioned in many other threads) and we'll need to wait for the actual books to accurately convert those stats over.

I think I have managed to piece together most of the stats, except for the AC, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses calculations.

The DMG for instance says that Brutes have all their defenses set at Level + 12.

But then you look in the MM on page 170 at the Kruthik Young stats.

For a level 2 Brute you'd expect an AC an defenses of 14 across the board, but its AC is 15, Fort is 13, Reflex is 14, and Will is 11.

For AC, ok, we can rule they have +1 natural armor.

But the other defenses don't add up. The DMG says when you create a new monster, the average ability score for the higher score of each "pair" of abilities is 13 plus half the level. So for the Young it would be 14. It then says to calculate its defenses, you take the base of 12 + level (14) and modify it up or down according to the higher stat of each "pair" of abilities, and add or subtract 1 to the score for every 2 points the ability deviates from the average. So a Str of 15 is average, which means its Fort defense should be 14. Its Reflex should be 15 since its Dexterity is 16, and its Will should be 12 since its Wisdom is 10.

Any ideas here?

After reading the DMG and the MM there are very few specific rules for monster creation. Most of it seems fairly adhoc and "use your own judgement" or "change something that's already there".

For example, how are you assigning ability scores to monsters now? 4e uses different abilities for different things now and if you try to reverse engineer at lot of what was in the old 3.5 MM and what's in the new 4e MM, it doesnt' really match up that often. The best example is the Hyena. From what I can gather, I've made the following assumptions:

HD is now monster level.
Size modifiers are gone now.
Ability scores are fairly close as seen here.

Hyena 3.5
Str 14, Dex 15, Con 15, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 6

Hyena 4.0
Str 16, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 5

For powers I guess you'll need to look in the 4e MM and convert them over as needed, but this more of an art than a science.

Everything else about the monster is derived from its level, role, and ability scores it seems.

But then you look at the Gelatinous Cube, and almost none of its ability scores match up anymore. Any ideas?

According to the 4e PHB Antioch is correct. The text specifically says that once everybody has gone, the round ends and the next round begins.

So the rogue can use his sneak attack at the end of round 1, and then again during the next round for the opportunity attack.

A round is no longer defined as the time between the start of your turn to the start of your next turn. This was probably done because of the removal of full-round actions and spell durations.

I'll be running Rise of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne of course!!!

Plus many of my friends have already taken a renewed interest in DM'ing after seeing 4e in action.

Pretty funny :)

But I still like 4e more than 3.5.

I'm on the verge of running this adventure path and I ordered the harrow deck off amazon (still waiting for it to ship).

But from what I saw of the adventures and the deck usage, and knowing my group, they will love this stuff. But to echo what a previous poster said, the deck is really all about flavour, and isn't 100% necessary to play through the campaign. So if you group is purely into it for the hack'n'slash and loot, then you may wanna skip this part of the adventures.

I thought it was ok, but it reminds me a lot of the orcs in Blackrock Spire from World of Warcraft. Stupid waste of time game.

I'll try to refrain from bringing it up again :P

I'm going to have to agree that multiclassing in 3.x was either an exercise in futility or was a total power grab, depending on the player.

I'm not saying 4e is the answer, as I haven't completely read all the rules yet, but I do like having the choice there if I want to multiclass and not risk having my character become less useful overall.

I've played 2 sessions in Keep on the Shadowfell so far, and have my books already, and I really enjoy 4e. At first I didn't see any point but after trying it, and playing a rogue and fighter for a session each, I can see the reasoning for many of the rules changes. I had lots of fun playing both classes as they are both very different in what they can do and how they fight. Roleplaying was never an issue in our group and there were lots of opportunities for it outside of combat. When we did fight, it was fast paced and challenging, with many fights becoming uncertain until the last few rounds. Powers are quite specific in what they do, but you can easily change it up with different kinds of narrative. For example, I used a single rogue at-will ability that distracts a foe before you jab him with your dagger. Once this involved me kicking dirt into the enemy's face and stabbing him, the second time it involved me pulling back a tree branch to snap at him with my dagger following close behind. The group thought I was using 2 different abilities until I pointed to the power on my sheet. So if a 4e game falls flat or gets boring, I don't think its fair to blame the rules entirely. I'd probably look to the players and DM first and see what they're doing wrong.

The PRPG is a nice alternative as well, since I know 3.5 does have some issues that needed to be addressed. We actually cancelled our Savage Tide 3.5 campaign after hitting level 15, as the game began to grind to a halt with the usual high-level play problems.

The game obviously isn't for everyone, but I see the Paizo/WotC split on 4e as a good thing, in that I can get awesome adventures and campaign setting material from Paizo while still using a new rules system I enjoy from WotC.

I'm actually gearing my old Savage Tide campaign group up for Rise of the Runelords, but I'll be running it in 4e. So we'll see how that goes.

Likewise!

I think a Wiki will be important for this, maybe even include it in the Pathfinder wiki under conversions?

It seems different people will have different takes and ideas on each encounter and what to include.

I'm trying to keep the encounter levels and monster tactics the same as in the modules. At the same time, the encounters follow the 4e encounter guidelines in all respects.

That's also why I added the stuff about the torches, dogslicers, and whip. It's interesting to note that the 4e rules seem to pull off the theme of the encounter even better than the 3.5 rules did. The warchanters (hexers) are extremely cool and boost their fellow goblins up quite a bit.

Goblin Pyros
Encounter Level 2 (Assumes 5 PC's)
625 XP
1 Goblin Hexer (Warchanter)
3 Goblin Warriors (with torches)
9 Goblin Cutters (with torches)

Use the stats as in the MM but substitute dogslicers for the short swords (same stats but break when a natural 1 is rolled) and a whip for the hexer's hexer rod (same stats). The cutters also wield torches that they can use to set PC's on fire. A torch would be a one-handed improvised melee weapon that deals 1d4 damage, and does 1 ongoing fire damage (save ends). The rest of the encounter should play out as in the module.

Well, now that I have access to the complete core rules, here goes my first stab at the initial encounters.

Initial Assault
Encounter Level 1 (Assumes 5 PC's)
500 XP
2 Goblin Blackblades (the one who killed the dog, plus one more hidden)
12 Goblin Cutters

Use the stats as in the MM but substitute dogslicers for short swords (same stats but break when a natural 1 is rolled). The rest of the encounter should play out as in the module.

I'd like to help once I get more familiar with the rules in the coming days.

I think the key thing to remember is that class powers are just that, from your class only. Characters also now have many different stat combinations to choose from too, skills, feats, and all the stuff present in 3.5.

The main difference now is you actually get to choose your class abilities instead of being forced to take them at whatever level it was listed.

And the comments about fighters are totally true, now instead of being a sack of hp and feats, you get useful tactics abilities that nobody else can do.

Also, remember that each class ability can generally be used in many different ways depending on the situation, weapon, attack type, etc.

Very cool.

Splat books are the bane of all game systems, but I think it will be ok for the first year or so.

If you think back to 3.5, the real problems didn't start appearing until they released the spell compendium and magic item compendium. Those books, while seemingly useful, pretty much made all the spells in the PHB and magic items in the DMG look like overpriced crap.

Case in point, I have a player who is a favored soul / sorcerer and I would say 75% of his spells are from the splat books like the spell compendium and PHB2. Same goes for the wizard in the group.

Kinda reminds me of the old 2nd edition days, when only Rangers could dual wield, and fighters just got tonnes of attacks.