Pathfinder RPG: sqrt(13)th Edition

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Pathfinder RPG: sqrt(13)th Edition

burritolingus: Nov 6, 2007; by Ralp

Tolan posted:

Gotcha.

Well, that said, there's not a heck of a lot of conversion you necessarily have to do. When I run the 3.5 Adventure Paths I usually just bump the hit points of the opponents (from typically average for the HD to 80-100% of max) and calculate the CMB/CMD (which is pretty easy to do). You may need to do some quick & dirty skill rank conversion, depending on whether the group is likely to do sneaky stuff, but I've found that just using the highest Hide/Move Silently bonus and translating Spot directly to Perception works well and can be done on the fly.

The conversion is just for you as the GM; why make it harder on yourself than it needs to be? Not like the players are going to care whether that monster was properly converted to being a 5th level PF fighter from a 5th level 3.5 fighter.

I believe the first time we played Pathfinder, the GM did virtually no conversion on the monsters. Of course, this was back in beta, but all we did really was make characters using the Pathfinder book, used their spells and skills and abilities and what not, and ran it basically against 3.5 material. It worked really well.

We might be playing Pathfinder (non-beta) again today or tomorrow. I can ask him what changes, if any, he's had to make to the encounters.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2010 21:05

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 21:23

burritolingus: Nov 6, 2007; by Ralp

Tolan posted:

I only buff HP because I've got 5-6 players, usually, so leaving monsters (particularly "boss" monsters) at average HP means they go do in a round or two.

Not a bad thing, necessarily, but I find we get more enjoyment from having the combat go for 6-7 rounds.

Oh, almost forgot--you'll want to check any spells the opponents might be using to make sure they haven't significantly changed from 3.5. There aren't a huge amount of them that did, but some (particularly polymorph effects) did get a fairly major overhaul.

The GM we're playing with is using the Pathfinder MM this time around. We're pre-level 10, and we're experienced some two round encounters. I believe the GM remedied this by using encounters with slightly better challenge ratings.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2010 13:43

burritolingus: Nov 6, 2007; by Ralp

I think one to two round encounters kind of even out when you're doing a bunch of them in one game day, and mixing them in with slightly longer encounters, especially at lower levels where your hitpoints aren't quite that high (this is less of a problem in Pathfinder) and they have less access to healing spells (also less of an issue in Pathfinder).

# ¿ Feb 28, 2010 20:56

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