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Before I convert this for my home campaign, has anyone else done this already?
Any advice generally on convertign 2e to 1e? Never done it, is it just a monster swap?
Thanks.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Before I convert this for my home campaign, has anyone else done this already?
Any advice generally on convertign 2e to 1e? Never done it, is it just a monster swap?
Thanks.
The most obvious thing to do is swap out monsters, but in my PF1 -> 2e conversions the thing I found that probably needs the most personal attention is treasure. To put it simply, most 2e conversions advise that you just throw out the loot entirely and re-do it from scratch according to the wealth by level guidelines of the game you're playing, rather than try to figure out whether two potions of CLW and a cloak of resistance are a suitable replacement for two minor healing potions and a cloak of feline rest.
That said, in my humble opinion, converting monsters into 1e would be an order of magnitude more difficult than the reverse. It's not impossible, and may even be easy if you have a lot of experience building creatures according to 1e's design guidelines, but it'll probably be time consuming. Unless of course you are prepared to accept a certain amount of "the monsters numbers are what they say they are, I don't care which combination of racial, size, charisma, and sacred modifiers it takes to get there."
That said, I don't want to dissuade you. If you are familiar with the fulcra on which Pathfinder 1e is balanced (as I suspect you must be to be looking to convert into your preferred system) there's a lot of fun to be had here, especially since SoG runs 1-12 and cuts off just as mid-high level spellcasting is ramping up.
Finally, the last element that needs adjusting off the top of my head is DCs, and this is arguably the easiest. Because PF1e has different standards re: how many bonuses a character might stack, you might have to eyeball it depending what your party is investing in and your willingness to let one invested character autosucceed at certain tasks or craft a DC only they could meet--at least assuming your table plays like that. Otherwise, generally DCs start in the same area and then you'll need to reduce the checks as the levels rise, and especially so for any DC meant to be easy enough for the whole party to handle.
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Anyway, that's as much as I can think of to throw in right now. I wish you luck and hope you have fun, this AP looks like a great time and I can't wait to run it myself.
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Sadly, it is painfully obvious that the main design goal of PF2 was to make it as hard as humanly possible to convert it back into a system that's actually fun to play. Yes you can swap out monsters with their PF counterparts, but that's about it. Wealth by level is vastly different, magic items and magic in general works vastly different, spells affect differently, feats are comparable in name only...
The best way to go about it: take the monsters and start from scratch with the rest.
Creative Director
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Another way to think of that (and my preferred way) is that a primary design goal of Pathfinder 2nd Edition was to fix how onerous and complex it was to build monsters in the first place.
I understand and appreciate folks who prefer 1st edition and am delighted to hear folks are still playing that edition and are interested in converting 2nd edition adventures, but yeah... it's a lot of work, especially on the monster side of things. Rather than be bitter and frustrated about it, though, it's more productive to provide help and advice to folks, so let's work hard to keep this thread positive, please?
That said, some words of advice, placed in spoilers to protect unwary players:
2) And don't forget that 1E adventures are filled with stat blocks; any of those you have access to might be handy resources for you to draw from to replace creatures.
3) You can get mileage out of a creature by simply giving it one new ability or trait or quality. For example, in the first adventure, the PCs might encounter several phantom animals. Rather than rebuild 1E versions of phantom boars, ravens, wolves, and geckos, you can just convert the "Vulnerable to Kindness" ability they all share, give them a few occult spells, and then have them be incorporeal but otherwise just use normal boar, raven, wolf, and gecko stats for them.
4) Online tools are huge. I used Herolab pretty much exclusively myself to build up stats for creatures and NPCs in adventures, but there's other options out there.
5) Other folks are doing the same thing, and posting here or on other places like Reddit or the like is a great way to share the work with other GMs who are doing the same thing, so you're already ahead of the game here!
Thanks everyong, very good advice.
1) Don't sweat it too much; remember your players aren't going to be checking your work. If there's a monster in the adventure that has a close approximate stat block in a 1st edition book or source, use that. Even if it's not EXACTLY the monster you need. Reskinning monsters is a big timesaver.
This was going to be my approach. I wasn't planning on making everything perfect down to the individual DCs, reskinning where possible, sense-checking it, and then letting it go.
But lets see what happens when I try :)
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Another way to think of that (and my preferred way) is that a primary design goal of Pathfinder 2nd Edition was to fix how onerous and complex it was to build monsters in the first place.
So just wanted to say, this comment made me start looking at pf2e. I had previously dismissed it as I got the sense it was 4e 2.0, and though I think 4e had some brillant ideas, as a package, I didnt like it (not that I hated it, I just prefered 3e/pf1).
So I started watching some videos, reading the Archive links on classes, DMing etc. and I have come full circle. I ran the beginer box last night for my group and they were ALL happy and KEEN to convert over from 1e to 2e. So now I have the reverse option - converting Reign of Winter (my current AP) to 2e. I also picked up all the core books and couple of others needed for my group (we have a magus and a ghost for example).
I just thought you may like to know that your comment gained you a new 2e customer :)
I'm so glad you were able to find the advice you needed, and I hope you enjoy Pathfinder 2e as much as I do! If you're looking for any guidance in converting RoW, there's a discord server out there that may have some ideas specific to that adventure.
Otherwise, I offer the same advice as above, but in reverse: The game's been out long enough now that many standard monsters have a 2e equivalent already published, but in case you do need to custom tailor a statblock, the Building Creatures rules from the GM Core (available free on the Archives I see you've already found) are incredibly easy to use and the trickiest part becomes whether you want to add cool and thematic abilities. Converting DCs is still easy, you're just less likely to have an immediate instinct for what's too low or too high, but the level-based DC chart is a handy guideline for this. Finally, as mentioned, the prevailing wisdom for loot is to throw out loot and rebuild from scratch according to the wealth guidelines for the game you're playing (this time 2e).
Only other thing I feel I should mention that's not contained in 2e's own guidelines is to be aware that fighting a creature 3-4 levels above the party can be brutal, and single-foe bosses are much more frustrating than a slightly weaker boss with some minions. On that note, some people have found that directly converting 1e to 2e at the same level leaves you with some undertuned encounters, but being as 2e tends to more accurately scale the threat of a monster to your level, this might be to the advantage of a group new to 2e
I hope you have lots of fun!
Thanks Sibelius!
I did jump onto the discord you mentioned, but little progress has been made on the conversion of RoW. If I end up converting books 4, 5 and 6 along with "Witchwars" and "On the Siberian Railway," I would be the main contributor, it seems :}
At the moment, I am going through book 4 and just mainly converting stuff that doesn't already exist in 2e (mostly the NPC stat blocks). I don't expect the first batch to be great, but, as you said, I will learn as I go (even with DCs). I have a lot of experience converting between other editions, so I am looking forward to it.
Treasure is probably going to be the hardest and most time-consuming. But let's see.
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Just in case somebody else looks here for advice on this...
Treasure is probably best redone, with some nod to the purpose of whatever was in the original book. If it's equipment, find an equivalent at a level-appropriate value, art is art.
I just looked through book 1, to see how complicated a conversion to PF1 would be. The majority of humanoid NPCs, fey and animals convert fairly easily (including the cockroach swarm in chapter 2). Even the phantom animals wouldn't be too bad (incorporeal versions of normal animals).
Hazards are harder to directly convert, but reskinning a level-appropriate trap or haunt for numbers looks doable.
As far as I can see, Gurgelgut has no direct equivalent, but reskinning a generic human would probably work out ok.
You could probably reskin an animated object for the Gray Butcher, and there is a swarm template you could probably tack onto animated objects for the cookware.
Mo Douqiu is where the trouble starts...the same named critter in PF1 is CR14! However, looking at the PF2 stats, you could probably just use a humanoid set of stats, and add a CR for the neck extend ability.
Noppera-Bo's don't appear to have an exact equivalent, but a weak doppelganger might do for a close match.
...and Thatchlings are where I gave up. No easy level equivalent, so lots of work to be done. Better to just try and find a group to play it with 2e.