Post/Author/DateTime

Post

#1 misterfido_dup Sep 15, 2008 20:57:13

Heya guys. I've had this on my computer for a while, but I thought I would reproduce it here. I went through the Monster Manual (4E) entry by entry, and in some cases monster by monster. I copied down their level in a spreadsheet, and whether they were elite, solo, or normal. For each monster that there was a relevant conversion for, I searched my 3.5 books (of which I had many), indexed through the Monster Index that WotC had for the monsters in 3.5, and find the equivalent. Wrote down it's CR on the same line in the spreadsheet. Using the data I collected, I wrote up the following rules for quickly writing up monster stats. On average, it holds true for the 4E Monster Manual. Converting A Monster Step One: Determine Monster Role The first step in converting a 3rd Edition monster to 4th Edition is not actually looking at it's Challenge Rating, or even it's role on the battlefield. The real question is: How many monsters accompany it? This is a harder question to answer. In 3rd Edition, most monsters were solo encounters. However, you can generally categorize most monsters with the following criteria: If your imagination best portrays them in groups of 4 to 8, they are normal monsters. If you imagine hordes of the monsters flooding a battlefield, and being slain left and right by experienced swordsmen, they're minions. If you imagine them in groups of 1 to 3, or if you imagine them easily alone but with groups of much weaker minions, they are elite. If you imagine them alone, and find it hard to believe that they would fight alongside other monsters--or, if you believe their abilities make fighting alongside other monsters IMPOSSIBLE (frequently used breath weapon, or the like), they are solo. If you imagine them filling multiple of these categories--you can imagine fighting only 1 or 2 orcs and having it be a tough battle, for instance, but you can also imagine a small platoon of orcs, or even a small army, all being interesting, different encounters that should be available to PCs--you actually have more than one monster you're designing, of different roles and possibly different levels Step Two: Determine Level Determining the level is one part math, and one part art. Take their challenge rating, and multiply by: 1.4 for elite, 1.25 for solo, or 1.75 for either normal monsters or minions. Round to the nearest whole number. This number is a fairly decent baseline. Most monster conversions from 3rd edition to 4th edition fall very close to this--but, since your party may be of a higher or lower level, you can adjust this number freely. Or you may look into the monster index in the back of the Monster Manual, and discover that the role and level you had planned to assign this monster is already over-stocked, and you may adjust the level to fit a less-well-filled level and role. Or, you may simply ignore the number that this math has given you, and choose your own number: after all, most monsters have levels of varying levels to span all three tiers, and even provide variety within each tier. This especially applies at lower CR monsters, as there were a plethora of CR 1/2 and CR 1 monsters in 3rd edition that had to be forcefully spread apart to provide an even mix for players to fight against.