I am a huge fan of the Golarion campaign world, and love the stories of most PF adventures. I am also very heavily invested in Paizo and 3PP PFRPG products.
None of my players are particularly into PF rules mastery, and a few have expressed a bit of frustration with the complexity of the PFRPG ruleset. They have asked me to consider switching to D&D 5e.
I bought myself the 5e Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual for Christmas. I have to say that I'm very impressed with the 5e rules! It's like they took the best parts of Old School and contemporary TTRPG styles and put them together very well!
So... Anyone have tips on converting PFRPG adventures to D&D 5e? I had been thinking of running the Giantslayer AP next...
Well, while I haven't experienced 5e I think it should be easy enough. You should be able to find equivalent giants and trolls, with minor changes. You'll have to do some refluffing on a couple of monsters I'm sure.
I think your bigger problem might be in the giving of magic items, but then again maybe not. I've heard 5e is on par with Pathfinder in terms of getting magic gear, but again, I have no experience.
The easiest solution, truthfully, is know your 5e rules well, or where to find them and know the APs story very well. You might have to use the AP as a framework while changing the various encounters.
I probably haven't helped much, but maybe I confirmed your own thoughts.
Oh, gosh. In our 5th Edition game, we almost never see a magical item. We're up to 9th level and, notwithstanding a mess of healing potions, I think each of us has maybe one magical item.
Wow, guess my friend that plays 5e is either in a heavy magic game, or they just really like their magic items.
Admittedly, I'd be very interested in any info pertaining to this, as well. I'm not planning to switch up completely, but I do have a desire to alternate systems occasionally. My group loves Golarion, as well!
Magic items are supposed to be much more rare in 5e. There are no +4 and +5 weapons at all. +3 is very rare / artifact-level.
If you give too many magic items you'll start to stretch the "bounded accuracy" balance premise of 5e.
Bounded accuracy?
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Bounded accuracy?
It is just a fancy way of saying that the system is designed so that things like AC and to hit bonus don't reach ludicrous levels. For instance a level 20 character has a +6 proficiency bonus and a level 1 character has a +2 proficiency bonus. Bonuses don't change much with level, unlike in Pathfinder where the lowest a 20th level character can roll for most things is still higher than what a first level character can roll. An AC of 20 is really good in 5e, not many creatures have higher than that. It means that it is possible for characters of different levels to adventure together. It also makes sandbox style games easier to run.
I just found WotC's Conversion to 5th Edition D&D guide online.
Since 5e is a much more "rules-light" system than Pathfinder, the guide suggests that it's best to convert more by "feel" than by "math."
I'm still debating whether or not I want to go down this path, but this guide suggests that converting a Paizo AP to 5e should be a bit easier than I'd feared.
The other thing about 5e is that is encourages using the ruleset to play with different play styles: you can just as easily run a "low magic" game as a high-fantasy game. The DMG has sections on how to run several styles of fantasy gaming.
The more I read, the more I am impressed by the 5e rules!
Thanks a million, Haladir! That will come in handy!
Thanks Boomerang
You are welcome.
I like the rules lite style of 5e, but prefer the Pathfinder world and APs. I will be watching this thread with interest.
There are a number of 3PP products that are produced in both a PFRPG and 5e version. I'm thinking that maybe buying both versions of the same product and comparing the differences would be a good way to get a feel for conversion between editions.
I'm in exactly the same boat, Haladir. I love Golarion and Pathfinder products, but lately have been running 5e games for some newer players since it seems much more "rules light". I have to say that 5e is a really impressive system.
I came here looking for some ready-made adventure path conversions, but may end up having to do the converting myself. Not sure if you've seen this already, but I found this post on converting Pathfinder and 3.5e material to 5e. It seems pretty thorough and analyzes the official conversion by Wizards of the Coast as well.
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This is a copy/paste from a thread on EN World re 5e/PF conversions:
I've just run Sins of the Saviors in 5e (have been running RotR hitherto in PF). I didn't do a formal conversion. I did a lot of reading ahead to make sure I was familiar but mostly converted on the fly. This was the first 5e we had played so the whole group was feeling their way somewhat. Some notes:
1. For the most part you can substitute in the 5e monster for the PF one as-is.
2. The table on the DMG p 274(?) - Expected monster stuff - is your greatest friend. Where the CR of a 5e creature is significantly off the PF version you can swap in the numbers as required. Same for 'advanced' PF monsters.
3. 274 also a huge help where there is no 5e version of the PF monster. I improvised special abilities in the '5e style'.
4. If there is no 5e spell equivalent then I ignored (though converting many spells is dead easy)
5. Rule of thumb for DCs (posted elsewhere on these boards I think) was PF DC up to 20 x .75 then add the remainder. So a DC 24 check becomes a 20 x .75= 15 + 4 = 19 check in 5e. I can't remember any horrible fails from using that system.
6. You have to trust the maths. If the PCs are brought across at like level and CRs are broadly the same then everything is going to be just fine. Some squeaky moments with saves though - takes a while to get used to the idea that people simply fail more saves but opportunities to shrug off effects are more frequent.
7. NPCs were most tricky, especially 2-page statblock multi-class templated boss monsters. Again, p274 gives you the chassis. Pick the special attacks/powers/defenses that are at the heart of the flavour and use the 5e equivalent when present, eyeball it when not. You won't miss those 2 page statblocks.
Overall impression was that even with conversion-on-the-fly duties and it all being new GM-ing was a LOT easier. I think I would have seriously struggled without a lot of revision and reading prep though. I felt confident in the narrative, setting, challenges etc.. so could concentrate on the mechanics.
PS - I should point you in the direction of this piece of wonderment. I used it less than I expected but it an awesome piece of work: http://marklenser.com/5econverter/
I just finished GMing Crypt of the Everflame as my first-ever 5E game. My players vary widely in their level of past experience (with any RPG) and enthusiasm for rules mastery, and 5E has gone pretty smoothly so far.
Encounters have been pretty easy to convert -- most monsters at this level can just be replaced with their 5E equivalents, or a similar creature, though I lament the lack of a "creatures by CR" or "creatures by type" index! For most encounters, I found I didn't even need the MM open: I could include all relevant details on a handwritten post-it stuck in the module.
The wood golem was a little more challenging, and I ended up running that encounter mostly by feel. Nobody noticed, let alone minded, that I was faking it. :)
Traps and skill checks were pretty easy to convert, just a couple notes in the margins.
Treasure was the hardest to deal with, because the default 5E magic item level is so much lower than Pathfinder. I ended up just eliminating about half the magic items in the adventure, and swapping the remaining few "permanent" items with challenge-appropriate items from the 5E DMG tables.
Honestly the biggest challenge so far has been breaking one player (and myself!) out of tactical wargame mode in combat. We have been using a battlemat + minis for relative positioning, but I'm drawing rooms quick and dirty and intentionally not to scale to try to minimize our square-counting tendencies.
As we get into higher levels, I anticipate it'll take more work to convert adventures, but so far I'm happy that it's been so painless: 5E seems much more suited to my group's appetite for level of crunch (I stopped buying PF rulebooks a while back), but I do enjoy the PF modules and APs.
Encounters have been pretty easy to convert -- most monsters at this level can just be replaced with their 5E equivalents, or a similar creature, though I lament the lack of a "creatures by CR" or "creatures by type" index!
Just for what it's worth, if you ever need one again, the "monsters by CR" list is in an appendix of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Why they didn't include it in the MM I'm not sure (probably concerns about page space).
I am currently running a 5e version of Giantslayer for a 6-man party. It's not a direct conversion but I'm using the published encounters as guidelines for my own encounter building. We just started playing and we expect to finish the first book after our 4th session (next session). That's pretty quick for our group! I'm excited to be playing 5e. I love Pathfinder, but it just became too much for our group over time.
Just for what it's worth, if you ever need one again, the "monsters by CR" list is in an appendix of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Why they didn't include it in the MM I'm not sure (probably concerns about page space).
That *is* an interesting place to put it -- thanks!
I also found the online versions that Wizards has posted, monsters by type and monsters by CR.