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  1. #1

    Converting PF to 5E - your personal experience points

    Curious on your attempts to transfer over Pathfinder (1.0 specifically) content over to 5th edition DnD.

    I really enjoy the PF adventure paths. And, I am aware that 5th ed does not scale numbers as much as PF does as levels increase (whether that is good or bad is a topic for another thread...)

    Have you successfully transferred any content over from PF to DnD 5th? Is so, what pointers would you have? How did you handle the scaling for mid/high level NPCs?

  2. #2
    viviolay's Avatar
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    I am running Rise of the Runelords as a 5e campaign and have been doing so successfully for 2 years with a group of friends. We are currently playing on FG after playing in person due to the world situation.

    I was fortunate to find multiple people who made conversions of some of the materials re: monsters/etc on the paizo forums. But what I learned from the experience and doing my own conversions when something doesn't quite fit is

    1) All the non-crunchy bits (story/narrative/npcs/plot) stay exactly the same.

    2) 90% of the crunchy bits can be substituted using stuff from monster books. (i.e. I look at the equivalent in the 5e monster books or my 3rd party monster supplements or reskin something close. For example, for faceless stalkers - I took a doppleganger in FG and added some extra features/tweaked hp but I could've easily just renamed it and called it a day.)
    Having 3rd party supplements makes this easier (i.e. the kobold press stuff, monster manual expanded, etc) as various levels of the same monster and new unique monsters makes supplementing/reskinning a lot easier. (For example - one of my supplements have a CR 9 doppleganger assassin so if I wanted to make a higher level faceless stalker it would be relatively easy to do).

    3) For the other 10%, Skill checks & Treasure I just spitball on the spot. If you know what counts as a "difficult check" in PF I adjust it to a similar skill/level of difficult for the 5e mechanical world. So a DC 15 Handle Animal I changed to DC 11 Animal Handling in my 5e session I ran yesterday.
    Treasure/gold is more abundant in PF. I think you have to make the call of how abundant it is in your game. I run my 5e game as if it is in golarion in PF1's version where gold and magic is plentiful. So I give almost equivalent amounts of gold and I sell magic items/price them accordingly. But if magic/gold is more scarce in your world - you'll have to adjust accordingly.

    4) My last tip is if you are running in FG - the universal module extension lets me open my RotRL book in my 5e campaign. be prepared for things to error if you open monsters/etc but I use it so the maps/images/story entries are all setup already. I just change/add the encounters/monsters.
    Last edited by viviolay; December 15th, 2020 at 00:21.
    Fantasy Grounds D&D Adventurers League Consultant
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