Legacy of the Crystal Shard

[Zacchaeus]

This adventure is now available from the store (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/product.xcp?id=WOTC5ELCS).

If you intend to get it (and there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't) you'll want to check out this pack of maps (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27876-Legacy-of-the-Crystal-Shard-Maps) and handouts for it.

[Jiminimonka]

I bought that a few minutes ago, nice one.

[Vackipleur]

Bought \o/

Thank you very much :)

[FSHSchmo]

I could not give yall my money fast enough! Bought and looking at it now!

[gqwebb]

So when will it hit steam? Some of us must take the long root to give Smiteworks our money?

[Teknykk]

Yes, when will it be on Steam? Usually all the Wizards of the Coasts related content is put up there no later than a day after it appears on the Smiteworks store.

[Zacchaeus]

I can't give you a definitive answer but I do know that a few extra buttons need to be pressed to get it into Steam and not all of those buttons are in Smiteworks hands. I suspect that the best answer is 'Soon'.

[demonsbane]

It's good to see here more Sundering adventures.

[TASagent]

Yeah, I imagine it should be popping up on Steam soon.

Legacy of the Crystal Shard is by far my favorite published adventure ever, so I was really glad I had the opportunity to work on it. I hope you guys enjoy playing it as much as I did.

[gqwebb]

Hum, they must have some very big switches over at steam. Or, Maybe they sold so much during the sale they can not get to the switch because of the huge piles of money.

[Zacchaeus]

It's up on Steam now.

[kylania]

How well does this adventure scale? I've meant to get it for a while, but yet another 1-3 adventure is too low level and my group is tired of starting over. :) 5E seems to scale pretty well, but not sure about converted adventures.

[gqwebb]

Yes, Thanks 12749

[TASagent]

kylania,

I think the adventure scales reasonably well. As usual, higher-level monster substitutions are necessary, but the adventure provides great framework - what I love about the adventure (non-spoilerly) is how it pushes the party to make different (mutually exclusive) decisions. What makes the adventure great can certainly be maintained (and rather easily) with substitutions. The biggest deal with scaling it up is that the players' magic may start to become powerful enough to directly overcome some of the obstacles they weren't meant to (eg distance via teleportation). As long as you're not scaling it up too high, though, this shouldn't be an issue.

[Teknykk]

Converted very well, nice job guys. I'm especially fond of the maps of each of the Ten-Towns and all the details on the region, as I've been itching to make a homebrew campaign situated in Icewind Dale of the current times.

So after murder in Baldur's Gate, is there any chance we'll see any of the three remaining D&D Next adventures? As far as I know there's Dead in Thay left from Dreams of the Red Wizards, then there's would-be prequel to that pair of adventures, Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, and before that there was Vault of the Dracolich. I'm fairly certain Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle was built for a single party, but I'm guessing Vault of the Dracolich could be done, not sure, and I think someone said Dead in Thay won't be, which is disappointing but understandable.

I'd at least like to see Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle updated to 5E, it looked like a brilliant adventure full of a lot of content, and though it'd be nice to see the remaining two, I imagine there could be issues with at least Dead in Thay even though it does mention use for single-grouped home play, and possibly Vault of the Dracolich, though it does seem to allow one party play it fine.

Either way, keep up the good work, they're converting well and adding to my pile of Fantasy Grounds modules.

[TASagent]

Thanks! Yeah, I did the conversion for Scourge of the Sword Coast and Legacy of the Crystal Shard. Murder in Baldur's Gate is on the docket as well. I appreciate the feedback, I really wanted to make sure the excellent campaign guide would be easy to use after the adventure was over. I actually did this a bit in my IRL game after running the adventure and it was amazing.

It was me who said that Dead in Thay probably wouldn't be done. It's not that it couldn't be done, but given how inapplicable it would be to most people's games, I would be hesitant to put in the time for the conversion. But anyone with the PDFs can do a conversion. Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle is possible when I clear out this backlog, if I'm looking for something to do. :-D But it's not a huge priority. Honestly I mostly wanted to do the conversions of Legacy and Murder because they're really unique among published modules.

[gqwebb]

Yes, agree with the thanks for the module. Could you add the dm screen inner panels as art or images? The ten towns are great with all the city info. But would really like it to complete it with the inner panels.

[TASagent]

The DM screen inner panels? The interior panels of the DM screen are tables that all exist in the module, so I think I misunderstand you. Which part of the DM screen was it you wanted included?

[gqwebb]

The DM screen inner panels? The interior panels of the DM screen are tables that all exist in the module, so I think I misunderstand you. Which part of the DM screen was it you wanted included?

Yes, that what i wanted I am just anal that way. :) please.

[TMO]

It was me who said that Dead in Thay probably wouldn't be done. It's not that it couldn't be done, but given how inapplicable it would be to most people's games...

Would you mind elaborating on that comment? Mind you, I'm not familiar with the Dead in Thay adventures, so please explain from that point of view. I did get the Scourge of the Sword Coast and also picked up the Legacy of the Crystal Shard. I've already integrated some of the Scourge encounters in my campaign, even though the timeline is a little later. What I appreciate the most is the additional source material (maps, places, people, history) based in the Forgotten Realms that help me build a richer world for my players. If the main storyline is no longer applicable I'm plenty fine with that.

[Teknykk]

Well I can't speak for anyone else personally, but I'd like to see all the D&D Next adventures be carried over to 5E Fantasy Grounds modules at some point. I know I'd pay for them all, even if I'm in the minority. Of all of them I would especially like to see Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle next in line, as it's quite a good adventure. I would consider converting them all myself, but I have a hard enough time converting the Dungeon Magazine #213 D&D Next Tomb of Horrors to 5E properly, let alone a full blown adventure PDF.

And TMO, the reason for why Dead in Thay, and possibly Vault of the Dracolich, wouldn't be inapplicable is because both were somewhat designed more for convention play, with multiple parties of players instead of just a single group. That said, there is mention of the fact that either of them can be done with a single party, but they may not grasp the full extent of the adventure, or they might undertake multiple characters in different parties and alternate between them.

That said, it's not impossible to run them with a single party, it just may be a completely different experience to what was intended. But to me at least, I wouldn't have an issue with it, and I'd buy it just for the sake of having the module inside my client to be used or referred to as I see fit.

[TMO]

That said, it's not impossible to run them with a single party, it just may be a completely different experience to what was intended. But to me at least, I wouldn't have an issue with it, and I'd buy it just for the sake of having the module inside my client to be used or referred to as I see fit.

And that basically sums up my position as well. Like you, I would certainly pay for the module. Hopefully we are not the minority in this case.

[TASagent]

Hey Teknykk and TMO,

Yeah, I totally get where you're coming from, with regards to conversions of Dead in Thay and Vault of the Dracolich. I guess my concerns about doing a conversion of these are several-fold:

They would need (moral imperative) to be sold with a disclaimer along the lines of "You almost certainly can't use this product as-is". The lesser applicability would make the considerable work to convert these even more a labor-of-love than usual. Additionally, some people will inevitably miss the warnings, buy the module, and be upset about not being able to use it. Perhaps this second point is unnecessarily catering to the Lowest Common Denominator, but it remains a concern of mine nonetheless. They're also dungeon crawls, which means they tend to be more work per page to convert and I tend to enjoy them less (my personal games of Dungeons and Dragons are decidedly dungeon-less).

However, all is not lost for those who wish to have these modules in FG. For one, I definitely have not taken the possibility of doing a conversion of these modules at some time down the road off the table (what a mixed metaphor). Additionally, maybe Doug can say something about the possibility of someone else doing the conversions for modules I have neglected. As a third possibility (also compatible with the previous point), I would be happy to offer advice and assistance with someone trying to do this conversion themselves. It's not hard, per se, it just takes a bit of work. I did my original conversion of Scourge of the Sword Coast entirely and exclusively in Fantasy Grounds.

Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle is certainly next on my list of older adventures to convert, after Murder in Baldur's Gate. The thing is I just work on those when I don't have a main project and free time allows. Something some of you who haven't seen the GoDC module might not be aware of, it has an odd Graph-paper and Post-it aesthetic that won't really be reproducible in a converted module. Literally, some post-its acting like sidebars making a comment or Gaffe about other stuff on the page (like one instance where an image is deliberately displayed upside-down and a post-it makes a comment that it needs to be fixed).

Hopefully that is helpful. I wanted to mention that I have taken note that there is some demand to see all of the Sundering adventures converted.

[TASagent]

gqwebb,

The problem with including the DM Screen as images is they really couldn't be used. The images that make up the DM Screen are all present in higher resolutions in the module already. The DM Screen has an aspect ratio of 5:1, and couldn't really be cropped along the fold seams because in some cases the maps are continuous across it. Using it in FG would be unwieldy, and in order for all the text to legible, the image of each side of the DM screen would need to be ~30MB, making it a nightmare to share.

If it's just a matter of wanting to know what it looks like, I searched around the internet, and found one image showing the front of the DM Screen (https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1888956_md.png). It shows the large map of Ten-Towns in the center panel, and the side panels have the Campaign Guide maps of each of the towns as well, Easthaven and Bryn Shander benig the two prominent ones. No images of the inside, unfortunately, but I can describe it. On the left panel are all the Random Encounter tables, in the Middle, covering about 2/3 of the central panel, is the larger map of Icewind Dale, and covering the rest on the right is the table of travel distances (for some reason called "Battlefield Encounters"), The Trinkets and Treasures tables, Weather Surprises, Tables of NPC names, and random Ten-Towns NPCs.

I made sure all of the content exists in a usable form in the module - all of the maps on the screen were already present in the Campaign Guide, but the tables only appear on the DM Screen, so those were of course added to the module. If images of the DM Screen were included, they would basically just bloat the size, offer redundant information, be particularly unwieldy to use due to their huge width, and a pain to share due to their large filesize, plus the inside being mostly text would make it particularly unusable.

If, despite these issues, people still want images of what the DM screen looks like, we can try to discuss solutions to get you want you want. It's probably best to start with the question "What do you want to get from having an image of the DM Screen?" and seeing if it makes more sense to try to accommodate that need in a way better suited for the platform.

[Teknykk]

No worries TASagent, I appreciate the work you put in the modules either way. Both the Next and 5E ones you do are top notch conversions, and the fact that I see Curse of Strahd's in your hands is a good thing to know. The one thing I would like to get if you get the time to spare to do it, is send me some details or links to uploads regarding how you go about properly converting older editions to 5E, mainly Next to 5E though.

As there isn't a massive amount of information I can find on how to do it properly, and the basic conversion document from Wizards of the Coast doesn't seem to be all that helpful. So if you have anything you use to do it, I'd more than welcome it via a PM or links so I can get a good grasp on converting some things, or at least have an understanding of the process involved. I'm in no hurry though, just when you can spare the moment away from your current projects.

[TMO]

TASagent, that was all very helpful. Thank you for the explanation on these matters.

Now for a question that I'm afraid will expose my ignorance on things I probably should already know. :) What is your connection to WotC and these modules? I gather your conversions are officially approved and recognized by WotC (based on the way these items are listed in the FG store), but it seems like you have autonomy to convert or not to convert these modules...like a contractor. How do you come by the source material - especially images - to get this done?

[TASagent]

Teknykk,

Unfortunately, there aren't really any great guidelines to follow for converting Next to 5E. In many cases, monsters have an updated form in the Monster Manual at the same CR. When that happens (which is most of the time), I just simply substitute. Gnolls in Scourge of the Sword Coast are a good example of this: The D&D Next Gnolls from Scourge had an ability called "Blood Frenzy" that let them make a melee attack with disadvantage as a reaction whenever an enemy within 10 feet is dropped to 0 HP. By the time 5E was released, the Gnoll ability had changed to "Frenzy" and it lets Gnolls move up to half speed and make a bite attack as a bonus action when they down an enemy. This was probably updated to make the ability a bit more predictable - when Gnolls are wielding polearms, "Blood Frenzy" can turn a surprise critical hit into, well, a Blood Frenzy. In any case, doing that update was a no-brainer, just swapping out the ability in the standard monsters and "special" Gnoll NPCs that had it. In most cases, you will have a direct, level-appropriate substitution, or at least really strong examples to follow using similar monsters in the Monster Manual.

Substitution is not always an option, however. As a rule of thumb, between D&D Next and D&D 5E, HP went up and AC went down. Similar CR monsters are a great guideline, as they tend not to vary too wildly.

Skill bonuses were also reduced between Next and 5E (or at least they came to understand the ranges better). In general, to properly adhere to the intended difference of Easy/Medium/Hard skill checks, DCs of 12/15/20/25 become 10/12/15/20. This change really only shows up in Scourge. Though in general, the caveat that these were originally written for earlier playtest version.

Oh yeah, and the adventures originally referred to skills that don't exist anymore, like "Intelligence [Search]".

[TASagent]

TMO, No problem!

Yeah, it's sort of doing work for Smiteworks as a contractor. Doug has a thread in the forum (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?11156-Want-to-produce-official-FG-products-adventures-rulesets) about the process, though I'll leave it to him to talk more about the arrangement. Because I've done work for SW in the past, when there's a new project I'm sometimes asked if I'd like to do the conversion, but Doug takes care of all the business-related complications, thankfully :-).

I did the original conversion of Scourge independently, using the PDF and art I had purchased from Schley's website.

[Teknykk]

Aye, I've been trying to convert the Tomb of Horrors from Dungeon Magazine #213 (the online only version PDF from April 2013) and it's a bit difficult to gauge how to do it, mainly because that dungeon was Sir Gygax's evil pet of awesome (and doom), and was meant to be nasty. Approaching it has proven somewhat difficult due to the uniqueness of it and the few monsters within (and the many traps that lay in wait).

For example, the 5E MM suggests that the big boss is in fact now a CR 23 Demilich with full lair capabilities and the other bells and whistles, which turns him into something likely impossible to kill unless you use one of the few in-dungeon methods to destroy him with his own tools and traps. The rest simply have no apparent conversion within the current system, so they need to be carried over manually.

All in all, I've got the pictures and story entries done, I just need to sort out monsters, traps, loot and things like defining what's an ability check now and what turns into a skill check, and what their DCs should be (keeping in mind that it is meant to be a moderate to hard dungeon, with the intent to ultimately kill the party, but still give them a small chance to win).

[TASagent]

Teknykk,

Ahh yes, the Tomb of Horrors. The main goal I have when converting stuff is to preserve the nature of the encounters. There were some instances where swapping out a monster for the version in the MM would have greatly increased the CR. Search the NPC list for "lesser" to see examples. However, I didn't want to rub in the player's faces that I was throwing a weaker variant at them, so I removed the ", lesser" from the NPCs names after adding them to encounters, which I felt was a more useful solution than either creating a new NPC with the same name as an existing one (making reuse more annoying) or tipping my hand and letting players see they were fighting a weaker variant.

I'll have to take a look at the Tomb of Horrors adventure you're using (pretty sure I have it on my computer at home), but I'm guessing Ascererack wasn't CR 23. I can make suggestions later about how I would scale him down, if you'd like.

[Teknykk]

Yeah he was a terrible CR 14 I believe, which to me doesn't really inspire the original spirit of the adventure. If I recall, the original one was meant to be "him", not some retconned construct post-Return to the Tomb of Horrors, and this is what the D&D Next version was aiming for. But his D&D Next stats seem terribly weak for a Demilich, and something with the traps and DCs just seem off now that there's skills.

I did a basic test of it in its Next form and it was rather easy for them, and I did so with a pair of level 10 characters and a pair of level 14 characters. For a dungeon that should strike terror into the hearts of players and make them want to run the hell out, it didn't really do a good job of it, so I do feel like something is lacking and was hoping a conversion to 5E in full would fix that.

But feel free to take a look at it yourself in your spare time, see what you think and drop me some PMs, because I'm a bit stumped really.

[LordEntrails]

TAS, can you expand on this?


... so I removed the ", lesser" from the NPCs names after adding them to encounters, which I felt was a more useful solution than either creating a new NPC with the same name as an existing one (making reuse more annoying) or tipping my hand and letting players see they were fighting a weaker variant...

I'm really interested in what you are implying, but not sure the exactly what you are doing or the pro's and con's...

[TASagent]

LordEntrails,

Yeah, no problem.

The original Scourge of the Sword Coast module threw Wraiths (the module didn't give a CR, only stats) at the players that were significantly weaker than the Wraiths in the MM (CR 5).

When making the module, I had to decide whether I use the given stats, the MM stats, or some compromise between the two. If the challenge is about the same, then it's an easy decision to just use the MM and throw the module's version away. If the challenge is significantly greater or less than the MM monster, then its really a different beast (heh).

In the Wraith case, I really needed a new beast in FG to fill that role. If I also called the NPC "Wraith", then it becomes a lot harder for players to use again (if they want to), because then they'll have two different monsters in their modules called "Wraith" with very different power and abilities. If you wanted to add a Wraith to an encounter, and both Wraiths were present in your NPC list, you'd need to open both to figure out which one it was that you wanted to use, so it seemed obvious it should have a different name. I went with "Wraith, Lesser", so it would appear with Wraith, but has some descriptive text letting you know what it was.

Then, however, we run into a new problem. If you throw a "Lesser Wraith" into a battle with the players, it's not so worrying for your metagamers, and it doesn't feel as awesome to defeat a monster whose name indicates he is somewhat weaker. "Yay! We beat the 'Lethargic Troll'!". I feel it just kind of detracts from the experience. So when I made the encounters for the module that use the "Wraith, Lesser", after adding them to the encounter, I edited their names to just be "Wraith", and so the fact that you've used "Lesser Wraith"s is entirely opaque to the players.

Does that make sense?

[kylania]

"Lethargic Troll" - brlliant! That's my new boss in this week's game!!

[TASagent]

It was between that and "Sedentary Troll". I considered "Weak-*** Troll" for clarity, but ultimately decided against it because it's just not my style.

[LordEntrails]

Ok, I get it. So in the module NPC list it shows as "Wraith, Lesser" but in the encounter (and therefore the combat tracker when added) you changed the name to "Wraith".So, related question, when you add a creature to an encounter, it makes a copy/instance of that creature or a link to the NPC "source"?

[TASagent]

A Link to the source. The only independent properties there are Name and Token. Once it's added to the combat tracker, that's when it becomes a true copy, I believe.

[damned]

Ok, I get it. So in the module NPC list it shows as "Wraith, Lesser" but in the encounter (and therefore the combat tracker when added) you changed the name to "Wraith".So, related question, when you add a creature to an encounter, it makes a copy/instance of that creature or a link to the NPC "source"?

Yes that is correct. And that copy is unique so that it can be interacted with on the map and in the combat tracker.

[Gozer the Gozerian]

I know this is an old thread, but I just picked up the module, and am planning on using it as the start of my next campaign, which means the characters will be starting off at level 1. So, I have a question about xp and cr of the encounters. I notice right off the bat that the first encounter is CR 5. (!) I'm assuming that the intention is to throw a number of the creatures at the party, and have the townspeople help with others, so it's not so difficult for them. But then, how do you award the appropriate amount of xp for the encounter when adding it to the party sheet? Do I just need to go through the encounters and adjust them based on the level of the party?

As a follow up question, but related - how does the campaign do on leveling? I prefer to use actual xp (as opposed to milestone). Is there enough xp in the encounters to level appropriately?

[LordEntrails]

First question, just assign XP for the creatures that the party defeats, not all the creatures. Second question, I don't know. But I have seen on other forums discussions of exactly what you are asking, but don't remember enough to know what words to Google for you.

[RunningHill]

You should check the NPCs for their stats. Most of them have very low HP for their CR. At least those who don't exist in the Monster Manual. The module was released before the rules there finished.
Exampel: Human Warrior CR 1, 11 HP there in MM a half-ogre is CR 1 with 30 HP. Tribal Warrior is close to Human Warrior in stats but are CR 1/8
This means you get a lot more XP than you should for the challenge.
And you should make the named chars tougher. A boss who goes down in one round is not very fun.

I don't remember how the levelling went but I didn't use milestones at least.

[Gozer the Gozerian]

In this adventure, the Crag Cat is CR 3, but in Storm King's Thunder, the Crag Cat is CR1. Is this a mistake, or are they different creatures?

[RunningHill]

It's not exactly the same cat. In this they don't get the Spell Turnining ability. But thats about it. I should go with SKTs version of the cat.
And it's not a mistake but an exact conversion of the adventure as written. It's just that the adventure was playtest material and they changed things afterwards.

[kylania]

In this adventure, the Crag Cat is CR 3, but in Storm King's Thunder, the Crag Cat is CR1. Is this a mistake, or are they different creatures?

I'd go with the SKT version. The Legacy module was from the D&D Next Playtest rules (5E Alpha basically) so probably has changed over the years.

[Tel Arin]

Do the maps in this adventure have line of sight?

[RunningHill]

Do the maps in this adventure have line of sight?
There are no battle maps in this adventure. Just towns and visual maps over locations.
(Not exactly true, there is one battle map for the encounter at the gates of BS. But it's not useful)

[Zacchaeus]

Do the maps in this adventure have line of sight?

If you mean the maps that I did linked in the first post then no they don't have any LoS on them, sorry.