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I think Kingmaker is the only which has gotten an official conversion, but there is fan made conversion material out there. Check this discord out.
https://discord.gg/ed8tyWng
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Every single edition conversion Paizo has done (including RotR and CotCT) has taken a lot of sweat, blood and tears on their end. Not easy to do. Re-releasing an previous adventure that people might already own or have played risks bad sales. Not an easy sale.
Plus I think that new adventures are more valuable, creatively speaking, than re-relasing old ones.
You might want to check out Pathfinder Infinite...recently saw a conversion for Mummy's Mask get posted.
The actual work of converting the content is generally pretty easy, with the hardest part being converting gold values. It can also be harder for VTTs since it is less likely you'll get premade maps complete with placed enemy tokens.
However, the work of editing and formatting it all into a professional grade product you can proudly accept payment for is harder.
Consider how different monster stat blocks look between editions. A high level unique dragon in first edition might take up nearly twice as much space (with a smaller font) than it's second edition equivalent. Now you've got to figure out what to do with your page breaks and table of content being messed up.
Then you need to make sure you catch every detail. Did a monster wind up changing CRs between editions? Did this spell get renamed or does it even still exist?
There's also a creative vision angle. Paizo is made up of people who want to make cool new stories, not just rehash what they already wrote. And there are choices made in earlier APs Paizo probably wouldn't make today, having generally moved to be more PC and less edgelord.
Combine that with a community that's largely doing this work for them, and I can get why Paizo doesn't devote much of their limited staff time to the endeavor.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to purchase a converted Ironfang Invasion premium Foundry model. It is hard to justify running converted APs virtually when the level of support is so much higher for new APs. But consider how few APs even get collected Anniversary editions, much less conversions.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to purchase a converted Ironfang Invasion premium Foundry model. It is hard to justify running converted APs virtually when the level of support is so much higher for new APs. But consider how few APs even get collected Anniversary editions, much less conversions.
I have been converting Ironfang Invasion to PF2. I have not been posting my conversions to the A Series of Dice-Based Events discord server because my players shifted the narrative and we only sometimes follow the plot as written. And one change is that my players ran several side quests and gained more XP and more levels than the module expected. Thus, I now rewrite all the encounters to a higher level.
PF2's high-level encounters are more manageable than in PF1, so PF2 adventure paths can go to higher levels. There is a thread about it, Why Don't Adventure Paths spend much time at 20th level? And James Jacob's comment #4 and later comments talk about the economics of adventure paths. Paizo's 3-part PF2 adventure paths have been selling well, so converting a 6-part PF1 adventure path to PF2 is not as profitable.
Ironfang Invasion is also my first experience with running an adventure path on a Virtual Tabletop. We use the free version of Roll20, so I copy the maps out of the Ironfang Invasion PDFs and upload them. Except I need a lot more maps. Where a minor encounter in the Fangwood Forest could be played on a tabletop playmat with many trees scribbled on the playmat, on Roll20 I copy a forest map off of Google Maps and upload that. Currently, my party is traveling to geomantic nexuses on the Elemental Plane of Earth in Vault of the Onyx Citadel and the module did not provide maps of the nexuses themselves. So I copied some rocky hills in Scotland, a volcano in Hawaii, and a crater on Mars for three maps.
Creative Director
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Thanks!
Anyone knows why there aren't anymore?
It sounds like an easy sale, and easy to do?
Could someone ask a Paizo staffer (perhaps Mr. Jacobs)?
Converting an Adventure Path into a hardcover compilation is either a standardly difficult task (if it's a recent one that doesn't require significant edition revision, doesn't need any narrative surgery, and isn't being expanded with new content—see "Abomination Vaults" and "Fist of the Ruby Phoenix" for examples), or an incredibly difficult task (if it's one that's being updated from a previous edition, needs narrative surgery, and adds new content—see "Rise of the Runelords," "Curse of the Crimson Throne," and "Kingmaker").
We haven't done any more 1st edition to 2nd edition Adventure Path conversions because we simply lack the resources to do so at this time. (We kinda lacked those resources for "Kingmaker" too; as evidenced by it being 2 years late)
And yeah, the actual work of converting from 1st to 2nd if you're doing it for your homebrew game is pretty easy... but converting it professionally and incorperating years of player feedback and innevitably adding in new content to make it more attractive to customers? That's approaching rulebook-level work... but for a team of one, rather than a team of several.
Considering how difficult it is to convert a single player character from PF1 to PF2, I could only imagine how hard it would be to convert all of the NPCs, enemies and encounters, items, loot rewards, ... The plot and maybe the art would be the only thing that could be easily imported.
And that is just for the actual data - then we get to the formatting of the printed pages.
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Creative Director
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Considering how difficult it is to convert a single player character from PF1 to PF2, I could only imagine how hard it would be to convert all of the NPCs, enemies and encounters, items, loot rewards, ... The plot and maybe the art would be the only thing that could be easily imported.
And that is just for the actual data - then we get to the formatting of the printed pages.
It's MUCH easier to convert an NPC than a Player Character, because in 2nd edition, NPCs do whatever you want. You can even just make up abilities for them to cover the themes needed.
The trickier part is the underlying stuff... like how experience point progression being different means that adventures level up at a different pace, or how a lot of magic items and spells changed rules (no more in-combat teleportation tactics, for example).
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Experience actually translates pretty well in my own, ahem, experience. It's a bit of a pain to do non-encounter rewards but you can usually flip through the book and find awards for the same amount easy enough, and use those as your template for PF2 awards. Ex: if the book says to give 3200 XP for convincing the city council, and that's also the reward for a CR 7 creature, you can treat the city council's XP award as the same amount you'd treat a level 7 monster encounter. If you do this you seem to level up about the same place you would have in PF1.
Magic items are also fairly easy because PF2 added item levels, so you can usually find something similar but level appropriate. Though PF1 usually throws MORE items at players, especially for consumables.
The hardest part is currency because it doesn't have a one to one translation. When you compare relative purchasing power you pretty much need a different formula for every level of play. So it may be easier to just make up currency and treasure placements from scratch.
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Not an AP, but it almost should be for how long it is.
Crown of the Kobold king is a 1-6 level dungeon that was just converted to 2E.
They sent it to me as the first entry when I joined the Pathfinder Adventure subscription and it looks to be really good. I'm more impressed with it than I was with Kingmaker.
It's completely flipped my plans for what I had planned to run once I start my own game.
Experience actually translates pretty well in my own, ahem, experience. It's a bit of a pain to do non-encounter rewards but you can usually flip through the book and find awards for the same amount easy enough, and use those as your template for PF2 awards. Ex: if the book says to give 3200 XP for convincing the city council, and that's also the reward for a CR 7 creature, you can treat the city council's XP award as the same amount you'd treat a level 7 monster encounter. If you do this you seem to level up about the same place you would have in PF1.
It really depends on the way the adventure is structured. I am currently running a conversion of Second Darkness (a D&D 3.5 AP) to P2. Many encounter convert very easily. A CR5 fight is a Level 5 Moderate encounter.
The biggest issue I have is when the encounter is written as a large number of low level enemies. In one of the books, the PCs are to infiltrate a building and clear out all the rooms, but of the 9 encounters, if run as written, you would have 3 lows, 2 trivial, and 4 with no experience at all. This required a complete overhaul of the entire building. This has happened a couple times.
Also if there are any more than one or two traps in an area, that will blow a hole in your exp real quick. A level 10 trap in P1 was same exp as a level 10 monster, in P2 it's worth same as a level 6 monster (assuming the PCs are level 10).
The hardest part is currency because it doesn't have a one to one translation. When you compare relative purchasing power you pretty much need a different formula for every level of play. So it may be easier to just make up currency and treasure placements from scratch.
I agree with this. Cutting wealth by 1/10th isn't going to cut it. I mostly use the Treasure by Encounter table from GMG.
Experience actually translates pretty well in my own, ahem, experience. It's a bit of a pain to do non-encounter rewards but you can usually flip through the book and find awards for the same amount easy enough, and use those as your template for PF2 awards. Ex: if the book says to give 3200 XP for convincing the city council, and that's also the reward for a CR 7 creature, you can treat the city council's XP award as the same amount you'd treat a level 7 monster encounter. If you do this you seem to level up about the same place you would have in PF1.It really depends on the way the adventure is structured. I am currently running a conversion of Second Darkness (a D&D 3.5 AP) to P2. Many encounter convert very easily. A CR5 fight is a Level 5 Moderate encounter.
The biggest issue I have is when the encounter is written as a large number of low level enemies. In one of the books, the PCs are to infiltrate a building and clear out all the rooms, but of the 9 encounters, if run as written, you would have 3 lows, 2 trivial, and 4 with no experience at all. This required a complete overhaul of the entire building. This has happened a couple times.
I ran into this by choice. In converting Ironfang Invasion, I used the 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldier as the basic soldier in the Ironfang Legion. That was slightly overpowered at 1st-level--the 1st module Trail of the Hunted had used CR 1/2 Ironfang Recruits--but reasonable at 2nd through 4th level. I also added a 2nd-level Hobgoblin Heavy Trooper that was just the Hobgoblin Soldier raised to 2nd level and given heavy armor to fill the role of the Heavy Trooper in the module. At 2nd level, the party had to watch out for Ironfang patrols that consisted of two Hobgoblin Soliders and a Heavy Trooper, and the size grew as they leveled up.
However, when they reached 6th level, Hobgoblin Soldiers no longer made sense. The balancing of the encounter budget becomes less reliable the further in level the creatures are from the party. The Ironfang patrols had switched to 3rd-level Ironfang Forest Prowler and 5th-level Ironfang Patrol Leader, but I did not want the basic Hobgoblin Soldier to disappear fro the game. Therefore, I created a 5th-level large creature called Hobgoblin Troop that represented four Hobgoblin Soldiers working together. Its token was a picture of four Hobgoblin Soldiers grouped together. Thus, I kept those 1st-level soldiers in the story, but for combat they fought like one fourth as many 5th-level creatures so that the encounter budget was accurate.
However, the rooms of low and trivial encounters reminds me of a difference between PF1 and PF2 dungeon design. PF1 sometimes designs attrition into its dungeons. Sometimes in PF1 the boss at the end of the dungeon is not so tough, because truly challenging leads to unpredictable fights. Instead, the party will be exhausted and short on resources by the time they reach the boss, having fought a gauntlet of protective minions in other rooms to reach the boss. PF2 has a lot of recharging of resources during ten-minute breaks, so attrition designed for PF1 does not work effectively under PF2 rules.
I just made some of the low-threat encounters into moderate-threat encounters to make them more interesting, especially if the party had a chance for a ten-minute break afterwards. The trivial-threat encounters I often left trivial because they were more for flavor.
Also if there are any more than one or two traps in an area, that will blow a hole in your exp real quick. A level 10 trap in P1 was same exp as a level 10 monster, in P2 it's worth same as a level 6 monster (assuming the PCs are level 10).
Hm, I had missed this rule. Ah, I see on page 521 on the Core Rulebook under Hazard Experience that a same-level simple hazard earns only 8 xp while a same-level complex hazard earns 40 xp, the same as a same-level creature. And the difference between the two types is, "A simple hazard uses its reaction only once, after which its threat is over unless the hazard is reset," and "Complex hazards function similarly to monsters during encounters, as they roll initiative and have actions of their own, though these are usually automated in a routine." I suppose that that makes sense for the simplest of hazards, the kind where a PC stepped on a pressure plate, got shot by a high-damage arrow, the hazard is out of ammunition and therefore disarmed, and then everyone earned 8 xp for enduring the hazard. An enemy or a complex hazard would have kept shooting more arrows.
I had been converting the PF1 hazards over to PF2 rules by giving them proper DCs and damage to threaten the party. Those converted hazards ended up as complex hazards; for example, each time anyone stepped on the pressure plate an arrow would shoot. The party would have to figure out the dimensions of the pressure plate so that the other party members could jump over it, or the rogue with expert Thievery would disable the pressure plate. I did once place a Planar Rift simple hazard to replace the module's hazard, but I interpreted it as opening a dimensional hole that would block their progress down the hallway, so I had accidentally made it more complex.
The most recent trap I converted was the CR 15 Malevolent Earth Trap in Prisoners of the Blight. It became a complex hazard 16, but the party lacked the proper spells to nullify the acidic dirt they would sink into while grappling strands hanging from the ceiling prevented jumping over. Instead, they dragged over the dead body of a gargantuan Primal Bandersnatch, from an earlier level+3 encounter (only moderate threat due to an oversized party), and threw it atop the trap to cover the acidic soil. I liked their practical creativity, so they earned the full 40 xp.
Converting a module from PF1 to PF2 requires some fairly easy changes in each encounter, but a lot of changes takes a lot of time.
I created a 5th-level large creature called Hobgoblin Troop that represented four Hobgoblin Soldiers working together. Its token was a picture of four Hobgoblin Soldiers grouped together. Thus, I kept those 1st-level soldiers in the story, but for combat they fought like one fourth as many 5th-level creatures so that the encounter budget was accurate.
I really like this idea. Most of my conversion (at least of the first three books in the AP) occurred before the release of troop rules.
It never occurred to me to create a non-gargantuan troop.
Yeah, my conversion was before Troop rules were published too. I was pleased with how well my own homebrew aligned with the final version.
