I am using the Pathfinder Kingmaker Bestiary (5E) to run the module in 5E. The book does a great job with the monsters, NPC and traps but advice on converting the skills to use with 5E. It leaves me with two questions. How do I adjust DC and do Critical Success/Failure need to be adjusted?
I founds this blog post which gives the suggesion below for adjusting DCs.
For DCs under 20, just take off 2-3 points of DC. For DCs of 20+, half + 7 gets you really close to the curve.
For Critical Success and Failure which I would like to use with Skill Checks since the module often gives advice on how to handle them I've seen two suggestions. One is to use the Pathfinder 2e rule as written. The other is do adjust a Critical Success to be DC +5 and Critical Failure to be DC -5.
Has anyone else played around with this yet? I don't have a good sense of the range of bonus's Pathfinder 2e characters get to checks so its hard for me to compare the two systems.
* Disclaimer: I'll just include this one time. I hope this is a forum friendly to 5E questions given Paizo's publishing of the 5E Bestiary. Pathfinder 2E looks like a great system but I know it would alienate my group. However, Paizo has such great well written content I'm excited to take advantage of their adaptation.
I haven't played around with it, as I'm running it in PF2. I can, however, tell you that based on the date on that blog post, it was written in 2018, which means it might be based on PF1 DCs, as opposed to PF2 DCs. It's probably a good baseline to adapt from, though. Since PF2 DCs are calculated as 10 + X, and 5E DCs are calculated as 8 + X, the suggestion for DC 10 to DC 8 is helpful for establishing a starting point, but the rest of the chart might be a little off.
For adjusting DCs from PF2 to 5E, start by subtracting the level of the party from the DC. That will get you a DC using a more bounded proficiency system, like 5E uses. From there, subtract 10 from the DC to get the base modifier for the DC (since PF2 DCs are 10 + X), then add 8 (since 5E DCs are 8 + X). That will give you the skill check DC in 5E. If you think it looks a little too easy, you can always increase it by one or two points or go the other way and decrease it by one or two points if you think the DC is too hard.
The reason I suggested starting with subtracting the party's level is because in PF2, characters add their levels to skills they're proficient in, and the gulf can widen fairly quickly.
Example PF2 & 5E Skill Comparison:
For example, here's a comparison between the trained Athletics scores of 2 Level 1 Fighters with 16 Strength in each game.
5E Fighter Athletics: Ability Mod (+3) + Proficiency Bonus (+2) = +5
PF2 Fighter Athletics: Ability Mod (3) + Trained Proficiency (+2) + Level (1) = +6
We can see that, all things being equal, the difference at level 1 is pretty minimal. Let's compare level 5, though, assuming both Fighters now have 18 Strength:
5E Fighter Athletics: Str Mod (+4) + Proficiency Bonus (+3) = +7
PF2 Fighter Athletics: Str Mod (+4) + Expert Proficiency (+4) + Level (5) = +13
PF2 adding your level to your skill modifiers makes for a very wide swing after only just a few levels, and that gap never really closes. If our 5E Fighter had Expertise in Athletics, he still would only be at +10 at level 5, and the gulf would continue to widen as these two fighters level up.
As for Critical Success/Failure, I would first check if your players are on board with it. If they are, then I would suggest starting with +5/-5 as the initial test, and then see if critical successes or critical failures are too common. If they are, then you may want to adjust it to the +10/-10 PF2 uses, instead. Be up front with the players that if it looks like either of those cases is happening too frequently, you'll adjust the critical success/failure DCs accordingly.
Kingmaker is a fun AP, and I hope your party enjoys playing it! I hope you enjoy running it as well, and don't find my wall of text too off-putting.
Yeah, when making a big change like introducing PF2's critical success/failure rules to 5E, it's always best to talk to the group first and see if they like the idea.
I'm glad the wall of text was helpful, at least. I debated deleting it out because I wasn't sure if it was helpful or unnecessarily in the weeds.
hello everyone.
I'm going to run the kingmaker campaign for 5e and I think it realy lacks some help and advise in the 5e book to run confortably the campaign if you don't know some rules of pathfinder. So I need some advice.
for exemple what is the Xp rewards for completing a quest or a task that I should give if I play kingmaker on the 5e system? Any suggestions?
Paizo should make some sort of convertion chart in the 5e bestiary for, at least, the Xp rewards and the skill DCs. (I see that they will release Abomination Vaults to 5e so I guess they thought how to properly convert from one to the other).
Here It looks unfinished.
I haven't played around with it, as I'm running it in PF2. I can, however, tell you that based on the date on that blog post, it was written in 2018, which means it might be based on PF1 DCs, as opposed to PF2 DCs. It's probably a good baseline to adapt from, though. Since PF2 DCs are calculated as 10 + X, and 5E DCs are calculated as 8 + X, the suggestion for DC 10 to DC 8 is helpful for establishing a starting point, but the rest of the chart might be a little off.
For adjusting DCs from PF2 to 5E, start by subtracting the level of the party from the DC. That will get you a DC using a more bounded proficiency system, like 5E uses. From there, subtract 10 from the DC to get the base modifier for the DC (since PF2 DCs are 10 + X), then add 8 (since 5E DCs are 8 + X). That will give you the skill check DC in 5E. If you think it looks a little too easy, you can always increase it by one or two points or go the other way and decrease it by one or two points if you think the DC is too hard.
The reason I suggested starting with subtracting the party's level is because in PF2, characters add their levels to skills they're proficient in, and the gulf can widen fairly quickly.
So! I know this is an old post but I was curious if you thought this could work in reverse? For converting DCs from a 5e adventure into appropriate PF2e DCs? As an example, for something that would be encountered at Level 1 they have a strong lock that is DC 20 Strength to break. Adding level, adding 10, and then subtracting 8 got me to DC 20 Athletics. Which given a few first level adventures I've ran, -sounds- right but as you noted the gulf does widen as levels increase.
I haven't played around with it, as I'm running it in PF2. I can, however, tell you that based on the date on that blog post, it was written in 2018, which means it might be based on PF1 DCs, as opposed to PF2 DCs. It's probably a good baseline to adapt from, though. Since PF2 DCs are calculated as 10 + X, and 5E DCs are calculated as 8 + X, the suggestion for DC 10 to DC 8 is helpful for establishing a starting point, but the rest of the chart might be a little off.
For adjusting DCs from PF2 to 5E, start by subtracting the level of the party from the DC. That will get you a DC using a more bounded proficiency system, like 5E uses. From there, subtract 10 from the DC to get the base modifier for the DC (since PF2 DCs are 10 + X), then add 8 (since 5E DCs are 8 + X). That will give you the skill check DC in 5E. If you think it looks a little too easy, you can always increase it by one or two points or go the other way and decrease it by one or two points if you think the DC is too hard.
The reason I suggested starting with subtracting the party's level is because in PF2, characters add their levels to skills they're proficient in, and the gulf can widen fairly quickly.
So! I know this is an old post but I was curious if you thought this could work in reverse? For converting DCs from a 5e adventure into appropriate PF2e DCs? As an example, for something that would be encountered at Level 1 they have a strong lock that is DC 20 Strength to break. Adding level, adding 10, and then subtracting 8 got me to DC 20 Athletics. Which given a few first level adventures I've ran, -sounds- right but as you noted the gulf does widen as levels increase.
Sorry, just checked in to this thread in a while. I think yes, it could potentially work in reverse, but it might be easier to just use the Level-Based DC chart in PF2, and set the DC based on the party's expected level when they reach that check, with some adjustments for easy/hard (the book recommends -2/+2, respectively). The math in PF2, for all that it uses big numbers, is much tighter than in 5E, so using the level-based chart can help keep things from being easier or harder than they should.
