Hommlet in 4e: Giant Frogs

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was running The Village of Hommlet in 4e.  I’m running it pretty much straight out of the module, except for locating it in Eberron, and introducing Lareth to the PCs early on in order to avoid what Bryce Lynch calls “Lareth the Beautiful Syndrome” (he was an arrogant noble in the common room in the Inn of the Welcome Wench).

The first session or two I was converting monsters on the fly, but when it looked like it was going to have legs, I started custom building 4e monsters to give them an old school feel.  The ghouls I have already discussed, but I wanted to share a few more monsters and a couple of conversion/play notes.  Starting with the giant frogs.

Ghouls

Well, this has been languishing in my drafts folder for a while.

Peter Dell’Orto at Dungeon fantastic wrote a post a while ago which got me thinking about ghouls.  He pointed out that in AD&D first edition, the ghoul paralysis lasted for 3-12 turns – that is, 30-120 minutes in-game.  Which is a long time after the combat is likely to have ended, even taking into account 1e’s one minute combat rounds. 

This means the terror of encountering ghouls doesn’t stop at the end of the encounter.  If the party is in the middle of a dungeon, they have many nervous wandering monster (hazard die) checks to make with a portion of their party incapacitated and unable to run away.

Converting Monsters from Other Editions

So converting characters is easy, but how to convert monsters? This was a big issue for me because I run my games on Eberron, and a lot of the material was written for 3e. It was particularly difficult because I never played 3e (I skipped from a heavily houseruled mix of 1e and 2e straight to 4e).

I decided to figure it out in terms of how powerful the monsters were in relation to the characters, or the character party.

Converting Third Edition Monsters

From my limited understanding of 3e (and someone can fell free to correct me on any of this if I am wrong), monster strength is measured in CR, with the intention that a monster of CR n is a moderate challenge for a party of four characters of level n. Sort of like an at-level 4e solo monster, but intended to fight four characters instead of five.

Converting Characters Between Editions

I often need to convert monsters between editions.  I still have a preference for 1e modules over almost anything published later by TSR or WotC.  I run my campaigns in Eberron, and a lot of really good material for that setting was published in 3.5e.  And I am beginning to think about playing 5e for casual games (because, while I love 4e, it is a real pig to use without computer assistance, and I can’t expect casual gamers to load the necessary software for a pickup game).

The problem is, monsters in 1e or 3.5e are not necessarily at the same power level in relation to the characters as are monsters in 4e.  For example, a first level party of five PCs fighting 5 bog-standard hobgoblins is going to have a pretty hard time of it in 1e, but a relatively easy time in 4e.

The usual advice is to just take the standard monster and add or subtract them until you have an appropriate challenge.  But there are several problems with this.  First of all, you have to determine what is an appropriate challenge, which is particularly difficult in converting from 1e because CR and EL mechanics did not exist.  Then, once you have done that, it requires an additional calculation to figure out the appropriate number of creatures.  This may or may not work in the space; 1e dungeons often feature small rooms and can’t afford the space the extra creatures take up.  It can also change the feel for the battle, and often the number of creatures is tied to the potential out-of-combat.  And sometimes the difference in power level is so great that the encounter can’t be recreated without a serious rebuild.

A Case for Half-Standard Monsters

In 4e, instead of the concept of bounded accuracy, we have monster group roles:  Minion, Standard, Elite and Solo.  Monsters can be rebuilt to fit different group roles so that they are appropriate challenges for different level of PC.

To give you a feel for relative power level:

• A first level solo monster is worth 500 XPs, or the equivalent of five 1st level standard monsters, and is considered to be an at-level challenge for five 1st level PCs.
• A sixth level elite monster is worth 500 XPs, or the equivalent of two 6th level standard monsters.  Two of them would be an at-level challenge for four 6th level PCs.
• A tenth level standard monster is worth 500 XPs.  Four of them would be an at-level challenge for four 10th level PCs.
• An eighteenth level minion monster is worth 500 XPs.  Four of them are the equivalent of a single 18th level standard monster.  Sixteen of them would be an at-level challenge for four 18th level PCs.

This pattern repeats regardless of the level of the solo monster, so any solo monster of level n is worth the same experience as an elite of level n+5, a standard of level n+9, or a minion of level n+17.

It is relatively easy to alter creatures to change their group role, so one could imagine a campaign where a party encounters a single young white dragon at 3rd level, two of them at 8th level, four or five of them at 12th level, and 16-20 of them at 20th level.  And the same progression can be used for NPCs.

But what would they encounter at 16th level?