D&D 5E Converting Old Adventures

[Paul Farquhar]

Of course, the adventure requires you to have a magic weapon. There's a few critters that can only be fought effectively with such things. I'm definitely lowering the bonuses though. +3 is basically endgame gear for 5e, after all!

You can have a magic weapon without + bonuses if you feel it's essential, but if you use the 5e versions of monsters, you will find there are very few which cannot be fought without magic weapons.

 

[Firwood]

I'm slated to start DMing again in four weeks and I've run into a very odd thing. How very different 5e and AD&D are!

The adventure is HHQ1, Fighter's Challenge. I've always admired how it sets up a region to be a hub of adventures, and rather liked it's plot overall. It was designed for one character of levels 2-4, but quickly you realize if you don't get all the hirelings you're probably going to get murdered, lol.

The one time I ran it imploded because my players, annoyed that a shopkeeper dared to raise his prices, decided to break into his shop at night to rob him. Yeah.

Anyways, I started converting it, and I ran into a few problems. But the most immediate one was...holy Gygax, what's with all the magic items?

Like, ok, I know published adventures have tons of magic items. It's been the main source of a lot of arguments with other AD&D players who go on about how rare and wonderful magic items are, and all of my PC's are lugging around excess +1 long swords and rings of protection from all the published adventures they've gone on. But this one, yikes.

Even nerfing the items (there's a Duergar chief you fight with a +3 Warhammer!) a bit, this adventure is positively dripping with them! Most NPC's are running around with magic weapons, armor, and protective items. The adventure even has the option to find two Manuals (the +1 Con one and the +1 Fighter level one)!

Cool swag was a huge part of my AD&D experience, and I'm nostalgic for that, but it occurs to me that 5e really isn't the game where finding 5 magic items in every treasure hoard is going to be much fun for long.

So I'm wondering how other people have approached converting old adventures. Do you just cut out most of the magic items? Something else?

You forget a fundamental aspect of AD&D: PGs could die at any time!
Hence the use of many magic items: to make it less difficult for characters to survive.
With D&D from 3.x onwards, characters are almost immortal from level one. This is the fundamental difference between the old and new versions of D&D.
And I personally prefer AD&D (2e) to all the later ones without any doubt. With my group we have tried all editions (except 4E, which I find unplayable), and have more than happily returned to AD&D.

 

[James Gasik]

You forget a fundamental aspect of AD&D: PGs could die at any time!
Hence the use of many magic items: to make it less difficult for characters to survive.
With D&D from 3.x onwards, characters are almost immortal from level one. This is the fundamental difference between the old and new versions of D&D.
And I personally prefer AD&D (2e) to all the later ones without any doubt. With my group we have tried all editions (except 4E, which I find unplayable), and have more than happily returned to AD&D.

Hm, that's a fair point. Back when I played AD&D, once I got tired of the endless cavalcade of new characters and started to consider the possibilities of a party of adventurers surviving long enough to have actual story arcs, I had to really pull out the stops to keep them alive. Death's Door, starting at 2nd level, prevalent healing potions- the 2e books kept telling me about how you and the players can make for these epic tales of high adventure, but the game seemed determined to kill PC's at every turn, lol.

Now, yeah, it's a bit harder for characters to die by default. In the game we're wrapping up later today (at least for now), we started 18 months ago at level 1 and I hit level 9 last session. We've only had two actual character deaths (one from failed death saves, the other got sucked into a sphere of annihilation). Characters going to 0 and needing to be revived happens at least once a session. Even with smart defensive play, it's happened to my Wizard at least twice that I can recall (and I even have the Healer feat to help out our beleaguered Cleric).

Anyways...it is worth considering that magic items are less essential to player survival in 5e. It's really more like Earthdawn in a way- characters can do more on their own, so magic items are allowed to be more interesting and impactful, since it's not necessary for people to have a dozen of them on their sheets.

 

[aco175]

I found that when converting old adventures I needed to cut magic and gold in half, at least. I even cut a lot from the 5e Against the Giants chapter in the Yawning Portal book since the people updating it did not do much. I find that I also need to add plot and usually add clues to find. This might be on top of the normal amount to fit it into my game world.

 

[James Gasik]

I found that when converting old adventures I needed to cut magic and gold in half, at least. I even cut a lot from the 5e Against the Giants chapter in the Yawning Portal book since the people updating it did not do much. I find that I also need to add plot and usually add clues to find. This might be on top of the normal amount to fit it into my game world.

Thankfully Fighter's Challenge gives me a lot to work with as far as plot and clues to begin with. I don't think I'll have to add much there.

As for Yawning Portal...yeah it does have a lot of magic items, but that was actually the least of my problems when I ran adventures out of it, lol. Honestly, the most magic swag I've ever gotten in 5e was when I played Against the Giants and the DM rolled on the random loot tables! My archer got kitted out with a Robe of Eyes and a Broom of Flying and it was stupidly fun (for me, maybe not the DM).

 

[el-remmen]

I’m in the middle of converting UK4 - When a Star Falls (I had decided this before the infinite staircase announcement and it won’t be out on time for my needs anyway) and looking through my copy I can see the many places i crossed out magic items the first two times I ran it (for 1E and 2E) 37 and 27 years ago respectively.

It has required me to create a monk NPC stat block and a Shade template.

 

[LordEntrails]

Drat, link gave me a 404 error.

Sorry about that. You can find their actual conversions here: Dungeon Masters Guild - DMsGuild -

But I was hoping the website would have a conversion guide to look at.

 

[Faolyn]

Of course, the adventure requires you to have a magic weapon. There's a few critters that can only be fought effectively with such things. I'm definitely lowering the bonuses though. +3 is basically endgame gear for 5e, after all!

I'd say keep the weapon magical, but without any attack or damage bonuses. Give it an interesting ability, like from the "what minor property does it have?" table or the artifact minor properties table, both in the DMG.

Mind, in 5e, there are very few monsters that won't take at least some damage from nonmagical weapons, and most of those still take damage from an atypical material, like silver or adamantite. So substitute a few +whatever weapons for those kinds of weapons.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I incorporate those +1 swords etc. directly into their stat block, then give them a mundane sword instead. I'll even give them minor magical abilities if I feel the magic item is just there to "balance" them against the party. They've got boots of flying, well now they've got normal boots and an inborn flying speed.

If I feel like the equipment is something that the players would like then I'll leave it as is. I am the wizard behind the curtain. I create the illusion of agency.

 

[Quickleaf]

There's a few things I want to do to make magic items feel a bit more special- one thing is that many items have a basic function, but attunement brings out more advanced powers. So you have a long sword +1, but attuning to it lets it deal d6 force damage or something.

At the end of the day, I guess it's not that I mind the players having magic items, it's just the idea that one adventure can leave them with a bunch of useless items, lol. It is shocking how well stocked this adventure is though! The weapons I get, the adventure is meant to be played by a Fighter and who knows what weapons they are proficient in or have decided to specialize in- a good variety means there's a greater chance you have something useful to your character when all is said and done.

Yeah, pretty sure that in AD&D the abandoned the "only fighters can use magic swords" but there still were vestiges of that OD&Dish aspect – magic swords were more prevalent on item tabes & fighters expected to have magic weapons to keep up with the magic-users. There was also more differentiation between WHY you'd use a pick vs a sword vs a polearm in AD&D compared to modern D&D. So all of that added together so that in adventures they sprinkled magic items, but especially magic weapons, around like candy. It's just a different paradigm than modern D&D.

EDIT: Oh, also found my +1 weapons document with some add-on traits you can use to make +1/2/3 weapons a bit more unique.