D&D Nerdery – My First Adventure Conversion Part 2

The original adventure begins outside a dungeon door with the players sent to rid the city of raiders by the Griffonford council elders. It occurred to me that I might like to establish this Griffonford as a settlement in the neighborhood of Winterhaven and Fallcrest (because I can, mwuahahah) so that if all went well on this adventure, the PCs could travel down the road to find new adventures in those established cities.

Once the hook is established, the DMG (for the adventure) lists a serach check and a listen check. These can both be replaced with a single perception check. Hurrah for simplicity! If the PCs forget to check, there is the passive perception check. Nice!

The PCs are assaulted by an arrow the moment they walk through the unlocked doors (the arrow would miss if the check at the door was successful, of course). A goblin archer and a goblin warrior close in on the PCs immediately. Now comes the first real test of the conversion process.

Goblins. Flip to 136 of the MM for the 4e goblin equivalents. There is a warrior! Hurray, that was easy. There is a…sharpshooter. He uses the crossbow so goblin archer is a check.

As an aside, the rumors that the ink is smudgy are quite true. Unfortunate.

I notice the Total XP for the encounter is 300 in the original version. I check my goblins and see I only have 225 xp worth of monster goodness. I have a good 75 xp worth of bad guys left.
Can you say minions? I knew you could. If I threw in 3 goblin cutters we would have ourselves a Level 1, 300 xp monster party.

This is a good time to remind everyone that my son played the first few encounters of this adventure. He will expect 2 goblins. Period. No more, no less. He will expect them in the same spot. He will expect the same attacks. The appearance of 3 minions is going to freak him out. P likes to dominate a game. If he is not dominating, I mean absolutely beating the stuffing out of something, he will storm out of the room to find something else to do. Can you say competitive? I knew you could. I have no doubt it will take some convincing to get him to stay at the table when those goblins jump out of the rubble but if I manage…oh the glee when he starts to see the minions just drop at his feet…he will be mine! Mwuahahah...ahhahah. Okay, moving on.

The adventurers have a moment to rest before the next encounter. Encounter 2 begins with our goblin friends the archer and warrior again but with the addition of a brutish orc mauler. There is also a trapped chest in the room. This original version awards 600 xp. A standard, Level 1 encounter for 3 PCs is 300 xp (such as in the previous encounter). This one is supposed to be a greater challenge but double the last seemed a little high. I decided to try a 500 Target XP encounter.

The sharpshooter and warrior combine for 225 xp. That left me with…oh God, math…275 in my “budget.” Gorg, the orc mauler, appeared to be the boss of this little group so my party lacked a brute/soldier mini boss. The nearest bugbear was a level 5 brute. I had the xp to spend but a level 5 seemed a little high. An orc raider could fit the bill except I would be looking at two skirmisher types. After much debate and page flipping, I decided a goblin skullcleaver (level 3 brute) would make a good Gorg. I still had 125 xp to spend. The original encounter contained a trapped chest, so I thought why not throw in a nice trap? Perhaps a false floor near the chests the goblins were about to search? I could put them out of the way so that the PCs had less risk of falling in before polishing off the goblins.

It occurred to me shortly after settling that encounter that a level 3, level 2, level 1, and a level 1 trap might be a bit much for 3 level 1 PCs, so I removed the warrior. This brought the level xp down to 350.

Lest there be any fridge logic, the chests were placed to lure creatures (goblins included) by the monster hanging out in the next room. In the original version, a nice young harpy was sitting in the nice room waiting to sing the PCs to their doom. First I had to deal with the locked doors. Easily done with a standard DC of 15 for moderate at level 1 + 5 because it is a skill check. The DC of 20 would cover busting it down, or picking the door. Now if the mage wants to scorch it or if they want to set it on fire…I suppose that would pretty much work for those as well, it is only wood after all.

The harpy that was supposed to be in the next room presented another challenge. It was not a simple matter of finding harpy in the MM and rolling with it. This would call for more serious modification because the Harpy I wanted (alluring song) was a level 6 controller (ack!). I needed to tone her down a bit. To do this, I was looking at building a whole new monster…kinda.

Footnote: I've since found the section where you can go lower or higher by about 5 levels without having to totally start from scratch. Oh well, it was good practice because the damned gargoyle I run into later will have to be from scratch because he's too high to just retool a bit.

After trying to make my head explore with math, I created a Level 3 Harpy:

Harpy Level 3 Controller
Medium fey humanoid XP 150
Initiative +1 Senses Perception +2
HP 34; Bloodied 17
AC 17; Fortitude 13, Refl ex 11, Will 12
Speed 4, fl y 6 (clumsy)
M Claw (standard; at-will)
+8 vs. AC; 1d10 + 2 damage.
C Alluring Song (standard; sustain minor; at-will) ✦ Charm
Close burst 10; deafened creatures are immune; +7 vs. Will;
the target is pulled 3 squares and immobilized (save ends).
When the harpy sustains the power, any target that has not yet
saved against the effect is pulled 3 squares and immobilized
(save ends).
Alignment Evil Languages Common
Str 13 (+1) Dex 11 (+0) Wis 12 (+1)
Con 14 (+2) Int 10 (+0) Cha 16 (+3)

Please don’t ask me how I came up with the numbers because my head will seriously erupt. It was a combination of the Harpy in the MM + How to Design a Monster in the DMG + Various parts of the PHB.

I wondered if my harpy wasn’t a bit wimpy when thinking back to those constructs that never wanted to die. It was true that the harpy would be the only thing in the room for the 3 PCs to fight but at the same time didn’t I have to temper that with the fact there was some rough terrain (boulders and icy water which causes damage) and her ability to immobilize? Bad rolls and all 3 could be stock in the icy water while she flew around them clawing their eyes out, right? Right? Of course, compared to the original harpy mine looks rather buff. Maybe too buff? No, no more math right now, onward. I decided to come back to that if necessary.