As I'm diving into that, is there anything I should be aware of? Anything to look out for that will be particularly difficult to convert? Any programs or supplements I should look into right away to make things easier?
What level?
Why not just finish it off as 3.5? (Never mind!)
Why not just finish it off as 3.5? (Never mind!)
As much as i am a fan of 4e, i actually agree with this.
What module?
What level?
Necromancer Game's Rappan Athuk. What level we start at depends on whether the new group has characters they want to use already, or if everyone's making new characters.
Why not just finish it off as 3.5? (Never mind!)
A couple of reasons; maybe most important is that in a fit of glee after the 4th Ed books arrived, all of our 3.5 books got donated to friends. Since then we've moved, so will be restarting with a new group, and everybody wants to go with 4th Ed.
Also encounter pacing has changed significantly in that players have a lot of healing surges and can sustain many encounters before a long rest. They may still want a rest however because of the game's many many forms and varieties of "ammunition" (Daily powers, Healing Surges, Action Points, Magic Item Uses and so on)
These I believe are going to be the two most significant issues with you running your 3.5 module.
Other than that it should be fairly straightforward. Obviously some monsters are slightly different or the exact monster may not exist in 4e. A few monsters are radically different or are quite a bit harder or easier than before, though most occupy pretty close to the same niche as ever.
So what I would do is first look over the various encounter locations and note any which may need to be opened up or given some more interesting terrain. You may even want to eliminate or consolidate a few encounters or modify the basic structure of an area somewhat to make it more interesting.
Next of course you'll have to review the monsters and select what corresponds to the old monsters. You may even want to design or modify a 4e monster to fit better with the theme. Luckily 4e monsters are pretty easy to tweak.
NPCs and boss type monsters are likely to be the ones that require the most effort, but again 4e has a pretty simple system for putting these together. Mostly I'd go with existing monsters and just modify them a bit to give them the flavor of the old unique opponents. You can make NPCs and elite/solo monsters from scratch too, but it is trickier than with ordinary monsters.
You may want to pay attention to the monster's roles. Because combat is more tactical the options have more impact. A 4e encounter that includes artillery monsters has a fairly different feel and set of challenges than ones without them for instance. So you may need to have a bit more monster variety.
4e also has a bit different approach to non-combat stuff than 3.x did. You may want to develop some skill challenges for example. Other things you might want to consider might be various minor or major quests you can work into the adventure to give the PCs a variety of story related goals or things related more to their characters than to the main adventure.
I'm sure we can give you some more detailed pointers on specific stuff if you get stuck or aren't sure about something.
Encounter pacing I'll just have to feel out as we go, I think.
I'm still working on figuring out how monster roles should work - two examples;
One of the random encounter groups is a highway patrol - a mounted sheriff, two mounted knights, and a collection of footmen. I'm thinking the Sheriff would be a leader/controller?, the Knights are skirmishers, and the Footmen would be soldiers. This seems to work with the way encounter groups are put together in the DMG, and the group tactics description in the module. I mean, this shouldn't be a combat encounter - good guys meeting good guys and all - but there are a couple of other similar encounters.
The second encounter is a body dump room. Just coffins and corpses, and a practically unlimited number of wights. These should all be minions, right? Could I run this as a mob, or would I be better off running it in smaller waves? Minions don't hit any softer - it's not like dropping the level - they just go down easier, if I'm understanding it right.
The encounter locations are pretty varied - there's some small room ones, and some in larger areas, and a fair amount of interesting terrain features to use.
There's a fair amount of tricks and traps, too. I haven't delved into converting them to skill challenges yet. The story is pretty expansive, too, potentially. There's the main thrust of it, but there are tons of little hooks and herrings mixed in.
There is a fair amount of monster tweaking, potentially. There's a pretty strong emphasis on uniqueness of the monsters. Most of the time I think I can get away with just swapping out powers. The novelty of the system will lend the perception of newness in a lot of cases, I think.
Awesomness, thank you.
Encounter pacing I'll just have to feel out as we go, I think.
I'm still working on figuring out how monster roles should work - two examples;
One of the random encounter groups is a highway patrol - a mounted sheriff, two mounted knights, and a collection of footmen. I'm thinking the Sheriff would be a leader/controller?, the Knights are skirmishers, and the Footmen would be soldiers. This seems to work with the way encounter groups are put together in the DMG, and the group tactics description in the module. I mean, this shouldn't be a combat encounter - good guys meeting good guys and all - but there are a couple of other similar encounters.
The second encounter is a body dump room. Just coffins and corpses, and a practically unlimited number of wights. These should all be minions, right? Could I run this as a mob, or would I be better off running it in smaller waves? Minions don't hit any softer - it's not like dropping the level - they just go down easier, if I'm understanding it right.
The encounter locations are pretty varied - there's some small room ones, and some in larger areas, and a fair amount of interesting terrain features to use.
There's a fair amount of tricks and traps, too. I haven't delved into converting them to skill challenges yet. The story is pretty expansive, too, potentially. There's the main thrust of it, but there are tons of little hooks and herrings mixed in.
There is a fair amount of monster tweaking, potentially. There's a pretty strong emphasis on uniqueness of the monsters. Most of the time I think I can get away with just swapping out powers. The novelty of the system will lend the perception of newness in a lot of cases, I think.
Yeah, minions are good. I think for a "monster generator" scenario minions are best, generally. The PCs can wipe them out pretty easy with AoE spells, but they can't keep that up for too long. Even if they have some at-wills that will do the trick some are bound to slip through.
As for traps, the standard types are pretty well represented in the DMG. I think it shouldn't be too hard to convert those. The more involved kind that need a skill challenge, well those are always a bit of work. No simple way to convert, but once you've done one or two the rest can follow a similar pattern.
Check out Open Grave. They have a whole section on alternate powers for undead with an easy swap for each of the major types. That will get you a few quick and dirty permutations.