PF Monster conversion to 5E request

[chillybilly]

What are the odds of someone taking all those Pathfinder beastiary and adventure path mobs and writing a program that converts them into something useable for 5E? Sort of a parser PF --> 5E program.

They wouldn't even have to be strict conversions (Pathfinder CR 1 doesn't have to equal D&D 5E CR 1).

Yeah, it's a huge request but I bet I might not be the only one interested in it. Never hurts to ask.

[Griogre]

Given that Pathfinder core monsters are mostly D&D monsters via the SRD I personally think it would be easier to just remake the adventures using the 5E monsters once the 5E MM comes out and just us the 5E monsters with the module storyline. Doing it that way you won't have to convert the monsters at all, other than unique ones.

[ShadeRaven]

Too bad I can't convert my PF MM module from that format to 5E. They all have tokens, pictures, etc, attached already

Griogre: With that in mind, do you think it'll be possible to create a shareable 5E MM module and populate it with creatures that appeared in 3.5/PF without running into Copyright issues? The legalities of the OGL of 3.5+ vs later editions and how to tightrope that is hazy at best to me.

[Griogre]

ShadeRaven, we probably won't know enough to tell until after the Monster Manual is released. My best *guess* right now is it is unlikely a sharable 5E MM will legally be possible without some sort of licensing agreement between WotC and Smiteworks. I think they are going to follow the Basic D&D framework where they release most of the monsters stat blocks from the Monster Manual as part of the free Basic D&D PDF but retain copyright. That's the bad news.

I do think that arrangement will make it easy to use the 5E parser to create monster manuals for personal use, since most of the initial monsters will be in PDF form. In your case, you will likely be able to use the monsters graphics/tokens you have in your PF MM just by renaming the graphic file names and dropping them in a folder when you parse the monsters.

My suspicion is it will likely be the just about the same amount of work to convert or parse. If that's true then parsing is better because when new monsters come out you can easily just add them to your text and graphic files and re-parse to get an updated monster manual.

[ShadeRaven]

Yeah. Kind of figured as much. At least all the folders with tokens and images are already there for the taking. Cut-n-paste parsing doesn't bother me at all, especially if PAR5E continues down it's excellent path. Though a great deal of that will depend on how consistent their stat blocks will be as to how much individual work will need to be done to fix divergence.

Sadly, I kind of enjoying doing some of that anyway. What's disappointing is that I can't share the fruits of the labor.

[Trenloe]

Slightly related - Necromancer games are doing a bestiary for 5e: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...or-5th-edition

They are very specific not to mention D&D, they say "the 5th Edition of the *world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game" and are releasing this under the OGL (I read that somewhere but can't find it now).

So - release something under the OGL, only use your own stuff or OGL material, don't mention the D&D word and you *might* be OK to distribute, maybe...

[chillybilly]

Since I am terribad at parsing, I would love a bestiary from 5E any-old-rules-but-maybe-a-popular-game-system if someone wanted to share one (once a bestiary had been created/released of course).

[hawkwind]

have a look at this guys attempts at conversion

https://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...onversion-Tool

[hawkwind]

oops wrong link https://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ext-on-the-fly

and https://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ext-on-the-fly
so that's first 3.5 and 4e covered

[chillybilly]

oops wrong link https://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ext-on-the-fly

and https://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ext-on-the-fly
so that's first 3.5 and 4e covered

Wow, great find!