Prepping The Demonplague

Winter's coming - time to game!

I want to give The Demonplague a bit of limelight.

But I am torn between converting it to Pathfinder 1, Pathfinder 2, or Old School Essentials.

So, I decided to ask you what conversion you want to see and which play reports you want to read.

 

No matter the system, my first step is taking inventory of the adventure, starting with the outline in chapter one:


I copied the texts from the PDF and tagged every character, location, organization, and event that I found in there.

 

5e CR to Pathfinder Creature Level

In 5e, proficiency bonuses increase on certain levels. In P2, they increase each level.
In 5e, XP per CR "jumps" now and then. In P2, the corresponding creature level is roughly 1.5 times the previous in XP.
In 5e, a worthy challenge is CR = party level. In P2, a moderate threat is creature level = party level + 2.

Below is a rough mapping of CR to creature level based on party level and translated XP:

 

5e CR to Pathfinder Creature Level
In 5e, a worthy challenge is CR = party level. In P2, a moderate threat is creature level = party level + 2.

How do you calculate party level?

Do you have any experience running solos against full parties in PF2? In 5E that was pretty much a non-no unless you wanted an easy battle or you choose a foe with much higher CR than average character level.

 

How do you calculate party level?

What I deduce from this (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=579) it is indeed the average party level.

 

5e CR to Pathfinder Creature Level

In 5e, proficiency bonuses increase on certain levels. In P2, they increase each level.
In 5e, XP per CR "jumps" now and then. In P2, the corresponding creature level is roughly 1.5 times the previous in XP.
In 5e, a worthy challenge is CR = party level. In P2, a moderate threat is creature level = party level + 2.

Below is a rough mapping of CR to creature level based on party level and translated XP:

View attachment 3136

To simplify this for my conversion, I will use 5e CR + 2 = P2 Creature Level (to determine my XP budget).

Do you have any experience running solos against full parties in PF2? In 5E that was pretty much a non-no unless you wanted an easy battle or you choose a foe with much higher CR than average character level.

No, not yet. I will do a few solo fights using the converted random encounters.

 

Wolves - Conversion​

1-10 (1-8) wolves are 50-500 (50-400) XP. That's a CR of 1/4 to 2. In Pathfinder 2, this should be Creature Level -1 to 5 (see CC for details). For a Level 1 group of 4 characters, this is an XP budget of 20 to 160 (1 to 8 wolves) with a Threat Level of Trivial to Extreme.

To center this more toward the middle, I will make the encounter 2d4 wolves, no matter night or day.

 

Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard against 4 wolves: Combat ended in round 2 with all wolves dead. Cleric lost 12 HP, Rogue 3 HP, Wizard 7 HP, Fighter 0 HP. I would term this a Low Threat encounter.

 

How is the conversion going? Or did I miss something somewhere?

 

How is the conversion going? Or did I miss something somewhere?

Slowly, as I have no group for which to prep this currently.

 

I would volunteer, but commitment and schedule would pose quite a problem. Our group is currently a man down, he is recovering from knee surgery, and doesn't want to do online. We could do it in his room at the facility, but we get a little loud at times. And hopefully he is only there one more week before being released and we can resume. So Saturday I had the other 2 over and we got the CTT up and running and set up for coming sessions. It might sound weird, but we game face to face using PC for everything, character sheets, rule books, and VTT for maps and such. So our table is filled with laptops and whatever mess I did not get cleaned up from the week. Oh, and dice, because nobody seems to like any dice rolling programs (honestly, I don't see a difference with the way the rolls average out, but to each their own).

 

I voted for OSE. The main reason being that using OSE at the lower levels, you can really lean into the Tomar's Crossing community. Advancement is slower, and healing is slower. Moreover, just as a suggestion, I think the idea of the heroes investing in hirelings or gaining henchmen initially as the heroes seems like a good idea and consistent with most of the story hooks.