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So I've been doing a lot of work lately with Legacy of Fire for my own campaign. Having a bit of OCD when it comes to NPCs, I've spent many hours neurotically converting every single creature in this AP to PRPG from 3.5. We're done with Howl of the Carrion King (I didn't finish on that one nor did I have the Bestiary at the time so I may have to go back and redo things one day) and now are working on House of the Beast.
As such, I have been upgrading all the creatures. We're only one session in and I'm almost done with all of them. I started out just doing all the statted creatures in the module and set piece, adding class abilities, feats, skills, changing race abilities, actual types here and there, the whole nine yards. I'm pretty confident there are few to no mistakes in them and plan to share them once I am complete.
It wasn't until I had started to do my second pass that I had to laugh a bit, as I noticed a strange little change. So far, most of the creatures I've updating didn't change much. They gained some power sure to match the new PRPG power levels, but nothing humongous. On my second pass I was going to go and re-make creatures that weren't actually listed but were from the 3.5 Monster Manual and didn't get carried over. Huge constrictor snake, belker, etc. I did the belker first and had to give him a small bump in power (upped his natural attack dice by one each) since he felt kind of low for a CR 6 afterwards.
Then I moved onto the snake.
I basically had two methods for this.
1. Take the medium constrictor snake in the Bestiary and upgrade him to Huge and 11 HD using the Advancement rules.
2. Take the huge constrictor snake from the 3.5 monster manual and convert him over as is, adding feats and changing skills as appropriate.
I thought #1 would be the best method and so I went with that. But wow, did the power ever change. The strength bonuses from going from Medium to Huge, Con, etc. meant that this new snake was EXTREMELY more powerful than I thought. I had already run the snake on the fly (I sadly didn't have him converted the first session the group ran into him) when he was just a glance at the 3.5 stats, but I have to wonder what would have happened if I ran him as below.
I converted using the #2 method as well for comparison. I just thought it was interesting how different these two ended up. Using the PRPG conversion method got me a drastically more powerful snake than the 3.5 version, mostly due to a lot of extra strength and con.
So yeah, when converting creatures to PRPG, take care whether you just 'advance' a bestiary monster or 'convert' a 3.5 one. The advancement I did of a Gargantuan Spider for someone else on the boards actually was pretty close to its 3.5 counterpart, but this one was way off. The difference is pretty simple in truth, the #1 snake has +8 Str, -3 Dex, +7 Con, and +3 natural armor. But hey, that's the method in the books! :)
#1: PRPG Advancement Method
Init +2; Senses scent; Perception +18
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DEFENSE
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AC 18, touch 10, flat-footed 16 (+2 Dex, +8 natural, -2 size)
hp 115 (11d8+66)
Fort +12, Ref +9, Will +4
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OFFENSE
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Spd 20 ft., climb 20 ft., swim 20 ft.
Melee bite +19 (1d8+18 plus grab)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks constrict (1d8+18)
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STATISTICS
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Str 34, Dex 14, Con 20, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 2
Base Atk +8; CMB +22 (+26 grapple); CMD 34 (can’t be tripped)
Feats Alertness, Endurance, Improved Natural Armor, Skill Focus (Perception), Toughness, Weapon Focus (Bite)
Skills Acrobatics +17, Climb +20, Perception +18, Sense Motive +3, Stealth +3, Swim +20; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Stealth, +8 Acrobatics
#2: 3.5 Conversion Method
Init +3; Senses scent; Perception +18
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DEFENSE
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AC 16, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (+3 Dex, +5 natural, -2 size)
hp 71 (11d8+22)
Fort +8, Ref +10, Will +4
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OFFENSE
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Spd 20 ft., climb 20 ft., swim 20 ft.
Melee bite +14 (1d8+10 plus grab)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks constrict (1d8+10)
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STATISTICS
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Str 25, Dex 17, Con 13, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 2
Base Atk +8; CMB +17 (+22 grapple); CMD 30 (can’t be tripped)
Feats Alertness, Endurance, Improved Natural Armor, Skill Focus (Perception), Toughness, Weapon Focus (Bite)
Skills Acrobatics +18, Climb +15, Perception +18, Sense Motive +3, Stealth +4, Swim +15; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Stealth, +8 Acrobatics
Shouldn't this topic be moved to here ?