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Per the Guide:
Season 0 (Scenarios #1–#28): Season 0 scenarios were written under the 3.5 rules set of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, before the release of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Scenarios are to be run with minimal changes by GMs, limited to adding CMB/CMD scores to NPCs and monsters and using newly combined skills such as Stealth and Perception instead of Move Silently and Spot. If a creature in the scenario also appears in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2, or Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3 and maintains the same CR between both rules sets, you may use the Pathfinder RPG stats in place of the 3.5 stats. This is the only substitution allowed in these scenarios.
Bolding mine.
Ok, here's the deal. In a certain scenario, there is a critter that is almost identical between 3.5 and PF. However, there is one critical change, in that a power has changed from EX to SU, which means all the difference in the world (due to an anti-magic effect).
My question is, if the CRs have not changed, do I have to update to the Pathfinder version of the critter?
Another related issue... should I be using the 3.5 or PF version of spells for season 0 characters?
Thank you for the help!
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Thanks, Chris. That's pretty much what I thought.
As has been suggested to me by a former V-C, I'll probably be running them as the 3.5 version. Does fit the nature of the original challenge better.
Oh, and another quick questions... what about class abilities (specialist school, arcane bloodline, domains, channel energy)? I assume we should be using the PF version of the classes, including all abilities?
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Looking over some early scenarios as well, I've come across a couple clerics with the death domain with the Death Touch ability, yet I don't think such a thing exists in Pathfinder. Always at a loss for what to do in that case. (And it's never in the statblocks, either in the scenario or the ones put up in the gm shared drive). Just run as is?
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Thanks, Andy.
I am hoping that this will be a good run tomorrow at Tower Games. Been prepping the heck out of this scenario, because it is my first at this tier.
I still can't figure out why I end up running so many season 0s! Especially since every time I go through this conversion process I swear "Never Again!"
Heh.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Because a lot of them are great stories!!!
In Season 0, PCs are routinely saving the city of Absalom, or uncovering lost gods, or avenging entire nations. Later seasons aren't bad, but the scope is brought down to more human scale: driving the Aspis Consortium out of a city, solving a murder, or getting a brave warrior to fight as the Society's champion.
I love Season 0 adventures. They swagger!
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I've had to made some guesses sometimes on things that are more than just the monster stat block. E.g., if the scenario refers to class abilities in 3.5 that are different in Pathfinder, you have to do some adapting on the file.
The various non-combat ghosts are given conditions under which they will be turned using whatever the 3.5 cleric ability against undead was (I honestly do not know how all that works; I haven't read 3.5 in years and years, and never played it very much.) All that undead turning business (whatever it was) has been replaced by channelling of positive energy. When I've played it, I've taken it to mean if the cleric does any channelling of positive energy against those spirit echoes, then Deris sees the PCs attacking them and goes nonlinear on them. (Which nearly led to a TPK the first time around, thanks to a bad set of saves against Color Spray.)
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All worked out well.
They had an "interesting mix" of characters, but ended up without a real "heavy hitter".
The <redacted> gave them a good amount of fear.
This was really a scary fight.
We had:
Wizard 10
Court Bard 10
Ranger 10
Cleric 9
Sorcerer 10
Oracle/Hellknight signifiers 8/2
They were really reliant on their spells and other magic. Combat starts with the hellcats getting surprise. One goes after the cleric, and gets him into a grapple. So, he iS unable to cast invisibility purge. The other goes after the ranger, but misses. First round after surpris, magic is working. The wizard and sorc both blast one of the hellcats, which takes it down to about 1/4 hp. The pretty well everyone is coursing on this one (as they he a good idea where it was, based on the cleric n it's mouth!
He next three rounds are magic free. The two arcane casters ready for magic, while the rest deal with inviso-kitties. The cleric is Ina bad way, and the the ranger gets grabbed. Jibe fore mesic comes on (having learned that the Hellknight made it hard to hit the cleric, and that the sorc hits hard when he can, he dropped the cleric and pounced on the "squishy", who goes down, hard.
Next round, magic comes back and that hellcat is done. From there it is just a matter if time, and they get the much needed next round of magic (after another without).
One player was surprised I used the 3.5 rules, expecting a TPK (but to his defense, he was replaying with GM star credit, and last ran or played it when there were 7 hellcats, and the magic wasn't a 50/50 proposition.
I though, all in all, it went well!
So, thank you all, and thank you MisterSlanky for your help!
I need to run this one again, and also look forward to playing it someday!
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Thanks, Chris. That's pretty much what I thought.
** spoiler omitted **As has been suggested to me by a former V-C, I'll probably be running them as the 3.5 version. Does fit the nature of the original challenge better.
Oh, and another quick questions... what about class abilities (specialist school, arcane bloodline, domains, channel energy)? I assume we should be using the PF version of the classes, including all abilities?
I just played this a couple weeks ago. I think you should run it as the author intended, my GM did. Changing this would simplify this encounter to something unrecognizable.
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Sitri, that is what I did do.
The other thing that made this encounter tough was the fact that the team had been pressing hard to get out of the magic-dead zone... and ended up with most of the characters fatigued or even exhausted.
All in all, everyone had a lot of fun with this scenario. The encounter discussed here was probably the most distinctive.
We did run rather long... the scenario took a little over 6 hours, which was surprising. The first encounter ended up taking 2.5 hours! Some of that was caused by the tactics the players took, but also because they really didn't have any "heavy hitters", being more than a little caster heavy.
Still, we all had fun, which is what is important!
If/when I run this again, I'll have to work in some more RP situations... since it is quite a bit thin on that.