Hi guys,
Something that I don't seem to find easily are conversion rules from 4E. I am running (as a basis, there are lots of modifications and add-ons) a campaign based on Scales of War, the Adventure Path from Dungeon, which I find actually not bad at all. The only rules that I have seen are very simple (but fairly usable), like the ones here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?348697-Attempt-at-Conversion-doc-to-convert-4E-edition-monsters-to-D-amp-D-Next-on-the-fly
Based on this, I have created an excel tool, which does not work too badly, but I would like to get some feedback on the conversions.
Just to be clear, I am not looking for nitpicking about the powers, and details, etc. I am an experienced enough DM to manage small things during fights if need be. But what is fairly important is the overall power scale, and the attibution of a Challenge rating, as this can make encounters go wrong fairly quickly.
Also, one point that sort of annoys me are the stats, the original posts suggests to leave them as theya re, but they globally seem quite big to me.
Here are a few examples, I don't want to put up too many as they originals are copyrighted. The outputs in 5E are straight out of the excel tool.
For those who are interested in the excel tool itself, I can offer to send it by mail, send me a private message if you are interested.
There are a lot of conditions in those statblocks that don't exist anymore. like slowed and immobilized. It's hard to get a good estimate of the Challenge without knowing what 5th equivalents you want to use. Restrained is somewhat like immobilized, but it grants advantage to attacks against the restrained creature. That's a serious bonus that will influence the offensive part of the Challenge calculation. Also in 4th you get a blank save against these conditions every round. In 5th, you will want to add a duration and if a save can stop it prematurely, what save it is and the DC.
Going by the assumption that restrained is used instead of immobilize, and that the Telekinetic Grasp takes hold, the offensive Challenge of the Possessed Citizen would be around 6 (mostly due to it's high to hit with advantage. Defensive Challenge would be around 1, for an average Challenge of 3.
The quickling makes two attacks with a effective +4, giving him a Challenge 2 equivalent offensively. Defensively his hps and AC add up to a Challenge of 1/2. Raising that to 1 would probably be right, seeing it's high movement and ability to use disengage (I guess that's what's meant by "withdraw"). Average Challenge of 1.
I think you need to simplify the stat blocks because 5e uses simpler mechanics than 4e.
For example, in the Quickling "Quick Cuts" feature, you don't need to specify that it can break its move to make the attacks, because in 5e every creature can break its move to attack. Likewise, "Fey Shift" seems to be covered by the Disengage/Dash bonus action. Dex 24 is a bit much for a CR1 monster and "Initiative" is not a skill that exists in 5e, though you could give it advantage on initiative rolls, like a barbarian with Feral Instinct.
There's a list of monster features in the DMG (pp280-1) which tells you how to allow for them when calculating the CR. Try matching the statblock features to those.