D&D 3.

5e to 4e Conversion Methodology

Since there are not many Eberron adventures in 4e and no plans that I know of to make any
additional ones by WotC, I have decided I want to convert 3.5e adventures that I could easily
find on Amazon.com or ebay.com to 4e. After analyzing what it will take, I thought I would
document the process in case anyone else is interested.

Ok, so let’s talk conversion. I am assuming that your characters are already converted and am
not going to consider character conversion as part of the scope. Basically, what is in scope are
the conversion of monsters and traps. Conversion of treasure should be relatively
straightforward and will also not be discussed extensively unless others feel it is warranted.

So what do we need to be concerned with? First, experience points. Experience points differ
significantly from 3.5e to 4e. What else? 3.5e generally has fewer monsters per encounter than
4e—so I usually supplement the encounters with some additional minion type monsters.

First, let’s discuss how to convert an arbitrary level adventure in 3.5e to 4e. Second, we will
discuss an actual example. To walk through the example, you need to understand that 3.5e
used the concept of “Challenge Ratings” or CRs to denote difficulty of encounters. 4e uses
“Encounter Levels” or ELs. The first graphic below shows examples of how it was done in 3.5e,
the second in 4e:
What you will notice about 3.5e is that there is a sliding scale for XP rewards based on the level
of the PCs. That is, a 5th level player character (PC) would get 1,000 XP for defeating a monster
with a CR of 4. A PC of level 10 would only get 375. That concept does not exist in 4e, but is
important to keep in mind when doing the conversion.
Next, let’s take a look at the XPs required for each level based on each version. Shown first is
the XP per level in version 3.5e, next is shown the 4e values.
As you can see the values are very different, but we’ll use the law of proportions to do
the conversion. I think the most important thing that you can do when starting a
conversion is to assume the level of the PCs that are going to be playing an encounter.
For example, if you have an adventure that is for 4th to 6th level PCs and has 30
encounters, you are pretty safe to assume that the first ten encounters should get your
characters to 5th level, the next ten to 6th level, and by the end of the adventure you
should be at the 7th level. With this in mind, it should be pretty easy to do the
conversion.
The other good rule of thumb to abide by is that an average encounter should get you
10% closer to your next level. That is, if the adventure has 10 encounters that move you
from 4th to 5th level, each one is about 10% of the total. In some cases, it might be 5%
and some it may be 15%, but it is rarely more than 15%. If you have an encounter that
is worth 20% - 25% of the entire XPs needed for that level, you should seriously think
about redesigning the encounter unless you want to kill everyone.
So let’s take a not too specific example and then we’ll actually do a real conversion.
First let’s say that we have an adventure that is for 5th to 8th level characters and there
are 35 – 45 encounters in the adventure. Let’s assume that the first 10 encounters are
designed for 5th level characters. When we look at 3.5e, we see that it takes 5,000 XP to
move from 5th level to 6th level. Since most parties are 5 characters, you should assume
that the first 10 encounters should have about 25,000 total XPs. That is each of the 5
PCs should be able to gain 5,000 XPs each = 25,000 XP. Using our 10% of the total
experience for a level per encounter, we would calculate that a standard 5 PC group
should gain about 2,500 XP per encounter. We’ll keep this in mind.
Next, let’s look at the 4e rules. We see that it should take 2,000 XP to move from 5th
level to 6th level in 4e. With 5 PCs, that means they have to gain 10,000 XP so that
everyone can level up after 10 encounters. Thus, we need to have 1,000 XP per
encounter.
If we were to do the same calculations for the 6th level PCs that need to get to 7th level
in an additional 10 encounters, we get the following
3.5e: (6,000 XP) * (5 PCs) / (10 encounters) = 3,000 XP for the group for each
encounter
4e: (2,500 XP) * (5 PCs) / (10 encounters) = 1,250 XP for the group for each encounter
One more time. For 12th level going to 13th level:
3.5e: (13,000 XP) * (5 PCs) / (10 encounters) = 6,500 XP for the group for each
encounter
4e: (7,000 XP) * (5 PCs) / (10 encounters) = 3,550 XP for the group for each encounter
You get the hang of it. The important thing to notice is that the ratio at 5th level for 3.5e
to 4e is about 5:2. For 6th level it is 12:5 and for 12th level it is 130:71. That is, the ratio is
different at every level, so hence my previous remark:
assume the level of the PCs that are going to be playing an encounter
Enough about the fundamentals. Let’s do an actual conversion using my method below.
The example is for “The Eyes of the Lich Queen” a 3.5e 5th – 9th level adventure.
The first encounter has 2 monsters of level CR2, and one monster of CR4. Using our
chart, this would equate to: (2 * 500 XP) + (1 * 1,000 XP) = 2,000 XP. As we calculated
before an average difficulty encounter for 3.5e at 5th level is 2,500 XP. Thus this first
encounter is a little on the easy side. Now that we have that parameter, let’s calculate
how many XP we will need in 4e to make an equivalent difficulty encounter. Since the
ratio we calculated for 3.5e to 4e at 5th level was 5:2, the amount of experience we need
to have in 4e is: 2,000 * 2 / 5 = 800 XP (once again, the 10% rule of thumb let us know
that 1,000 XP is an average difficulty for 4e, so 800 XP is a little easy). Ok, now that the
math is over, let’s find some monsters to fill up our 800 XP budget.
Since these are lizardfolk and lizardfolk are in both editions, let’s find the right type of 4e
lizardfolk. I chose 2 Greenscale Darters (200 XP each) and 1 Blackscale Bruiser (250
XP) to start with. That’s 750 XP. I still can make this “easy” encounter a little more
challenging and not totally blow the budget if I add some minions.
Let’s use the following table as a reference:
Because a Greenscale Darter is a 5th level monster, a Greenscale Darter minion would
be worth 50 XP. I could pick one of these to flesh out the encounter and be at 800 XP
exactly. However, who ever has just one minion? I’ll pick 2, and raise the encounter’s
total XP worth to 850 XP. This encounter should be pretty close to the difficulty of the
3.5e encounter assuming the characters are 5th level and there are 5 of them. Pretty
simple, huh?
Let’s do it one more time. Let’s look at encounter A4: “Blackscale Huts”. I had a hard
time with this encounter, because I thought it was way too difficult if one of the monsters
broke out. I have two options: have the other monsters not free the caged one and let
the characters decide whether to leave it in its cage, free it, or kill it; or I could have one
of the monsters open the cage at the beginning of battle. I’ve decided that I wanted to
free the monster and make the battle a little more interesting. So let’s count up all that
3.5e experience. There are 4 CR3s and 1 CR6 in this encounter. Running the numbers
that’s: (4 * 750 XP) + (1 * 2,250 XP) = 5,250 XP. Holy moley!! That’s more than 20% of
the entire experience you need to progress a level all in one encounter. Let’s make it a
little easier and make sure to not go over that 20% mark. If I use the same monsters as
before for the CR3s (Blackscale Bruisers), that will provide me with 1,000 XP. Now I
need to find a monster for the CR6 one. There is no “Grillon” defined in 4e (which is
what is in the cage of the original adventure), so I can either make one or pick a
substitute. I’ve chosen to pick a substitute. Since I want the encounter to be in the 10% -
20% of total XP for the level (and 10% equates to 1,000 XP) I need to find a monster of
0 XP to 1,000 XP since a 0 XP monster would put me at 1,000 XP total and 1,000 would
put me at 2,000 XP total for the encounter. Since I am a nice DM, and this is really early
in the adventure, I’m going to aim closer to 1,000 than 2,000. I ended up picking a
Macetail Behemoth which is a Level 7 Soldier worth 300 XP. I could even add a couple
more minions if I want to add a little more of a challenge.
That’s it!! You can use the same method for any level for any adventure. Have fun.
I’ll write more once I tackle converting traps.
References:
All graphics are from the Core Rulebooks published by Wizards of the Coast.