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So, it appears we will not be converting to 2e presently, but I am still getting the adventures and APs. This will be our initial test into how easily or well it is to convert APs and Adventures to 1e.
I plan on creating characters soon and trying to get people together to run a marathon game while I have some time to do so. I'll update this with what we run it with and how it goes.
Well, we have a total of 6 players (well, 5 + 1 GM, which is me).
They created their characters. It looks like we'll be tackling the adventure with a weird assortment...right now it appears we have a
Cleric
Gnome Rogue
Halfling Sorcerer
Monk
Ranger
Almost was a Dwarf Monk, but they changed their mind at the last minute.
We'll start up the play tonight and try to go all weekend!!!
So, well into the adventure at this point. It seems that overall you can almost do a straight shot and use the creatures as written at low level. I can see that this won't work as well at higher levels (probably those over mid level so starting around level 6 or 7 it might start getting harder in conversion).
Mostly, it can be converted on the fly though with a little knowledge of 2e and well versed with P1e rules.
The biggest obstacles right now in the conversion on the fly for me thus far have been money and figuring out creatures XP worth in regards to how the different XP and leveling schemes work.
Almost had a problem which I think would happen to those playing 2e as well (srd has the same spell listed) where, for some reason the Cleric decided to bless the food before they ate at dinner...with a Purify Food and Drink.
The adventure has it so the entire plot hinges on the event at dinner, but luckily the dish comes out afterwards rather than on the table at the start...could have been interesting trying to modify a mystery module if the main mystery didn't happen or unfold as it did.
Other than that, we're about halfway through and will continue play today.
This module can actually take quite a while. There is a lot of mystery and other items so it's actually taking a lot longer than I thought it would.
We did not finish it last weekend, but we are meeting up this weekend in an another monster marathon attempt to finish it.
It is getting harder in the conversion process and I feel that the official P2E is probably harder on impromptu conversion than the playtest was.
Could be a dissuader from trying it in the future. That said, it's still possible (I've been doing it thus far), just a tad harder than previously.
We'll see how it goes this next weekend.
Played all night last night. Finished it.
As you get further along in the adventure conversion gets harder.
It got REALLY hard near the end.
Some notes in regards to conversion...
P2E advances levels rapidly. I had to change midcourse from a middle level of advancement to fast advancement for P1e. To keep up with P2e, at least at the lower levels, it appears the best adaption for it is to use the fast advancement rate for P1e.
Everything goes up +1 each level...which makes it MUCH HARDER for certain things from P1E to occur. Things like certain classes being able to hit melee or otherwise. We constantly needed to roll 16+ to hit on characters with the normal spread of ability scores. Sometimes more than that. Very Tough. Makes it hard to do conversion on the fly with the numbers presented.
It turned out a LOT harder to convert than I originally thought it would be. DC's need to be tweaked, enemies should be tweaked a little (or expect a LOT of TPKs), Experience is harder to convert than I thought originally.
I'm not sure if I want to try anymore P2e to P1e Conversions. Probably is going to be easier to go P1e to P2e...but we aren't going P2e anytime soon...so pondering options.
Anyways, it is finished. Adventure itself was interesting. It took longer than expected and has a lot more investigation and roleplaying than many others.
Interesting. So was it your experience that finding analogous statblocks from PF1 with the same CRs (CR=Level) wasn't viable?
At 1st level it is basically viable up until about CR 2. After that, things got wonky.
The biggest issue is hitting creatures and the amount of hitpoints they have.
For example, we used the Standard array. Going into the final dungeon they were still only 2nd level...at which point I switched the XP up to fast advancement so they got to 3rd level.
At that point, the Cleric had a +4 to hit in melee (only a +3 with ranged). The Sorcerer had a +3 to hit, though they relied more on spells, and the Rogue had a +5 to hit.
Many of the Boss creatures (more than one in the final dungeon) had an AC of 21...and the final boss had an AC of 22. That meant respectively, those characters needed a 17, 18, and 19 just to hit the final boss. The Final Boss also had 68 hitpoints. It WAS a CR 5 creature, so somewhat understandable.
At the same time they are facing an easier creature to hit with a 17 AC, and only 60 HP, but some other rather crazy factors.
Luckily, we used the Unchained Monk and the Ranger was Ranged so we had two that had +6 to hit. If it weren't for those two, combat would have slaughtered the party outright. Ranger had Rapid Shot so that also helped a great deal.
The other difficulty is the high percentage that the enemies hit with...in the final confrontation the easier creature had a +12 to hit, the other +13. There's NOT a ton of treasure available for AC boosting in the adventure, so the highest AC's were around 18.
Of course, that's just the boss of the dungeon. Prior to that they had faced sub bosses both with AC's of 21 and one with an HP of 47 and the other with an HP of 68. One had a +11 to hit, the other a massive +14 to hit. Against an AC of 18 tops (14 to 16 otherwise). This means the enemies REALLY hit hard on the party. Each battle was almost a slog to the death.
Basically, the PC's couldn't hit the enemies while the enemies had an almost laughably easy time hitting the PC's.
I'd probably tweak that if we played it through the next time.
In addition, the DC's for skills sometimes were a little high later on in the adventure, though overall the normally kept up. One that was a little crazy was a Thievery check with a DC of 20...three times in a row. Most of the time, the roll needed hovered around a 10 to be successful, so very doable...but that also means about a 50% fail rate. To succeed on that check one would need a little bit more luck than normal.
Saves against magic also need to be tweaked. The Sorcerer had all sorts of problems when the creatures had saves anywhere from +8 to +11 at 2nd and 3rd levels/CRs. The enemies made almost all the saves.
So, at first the CR's are somewhat viable though tough (even CR 0 and CR 1 have better abilities to hit and more hitpoints overall), but as you get higher it becomes evident, even by CR 4 that PC's from P1E are probably going to be a little outclassed without some tweaking of the stats...at least from my meager experience of it thus far.
Dotting for later.
Since I've no interest in switching to 2E, I really feel a conversion guide would come handy sooner or later