Crow’s Corner

Converting Campaigns to Pathfinder Second Edition

In my recent review of Raiders of the Serpent Sea here, I mentioned converting the module to Pathfinder Second Edition. Converting a campaign this big to Pathfinder was no small undertaking, especially since it was the first ever Pathfinder session that I’ve run!

This happened during the OGL debacle, during which I acquired the Pathfinder Core Rulebook (this was before Pathfinder released the Remaster Edition), read it front to back, played in a single session run by a friend, and promptly jumped into the deep end of the pool.

This is a collection of my experiences with converting two campaigns, one of which I finished, while the other is still ongoing.

pathfinder books

GM Core and Player Core of the Remastered Second Edition of Pathfinder

Why convert?

I had some more complicated reasons to convert my Raiders game to Pathfinder as mentioned in my review (unbalanced homebrew from the module), but since then, I've come to very successfully convert yet another game (the 5e Dragonlance campaign). I also play in a converted Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign, where we switched system shortly after I did in my Raiders game.

Conversion is not that far fetched, since Pathfinder has its roots in D&D 3.5, so there are certain similarities there already. My personal reason was that I was fed up with some of 5e’s mechanics and the company behind it. I have run over 100 sessions of 5e, as well as a campaign from level 1 to 20, so I felt like I have "played through" 5e at this point. I have seen it all: the good, the bad and the ugly. And it didn’t work for me anymore.

Pathfinder, compared to 5e, is quite a bit more complicated, but also much more satisfying to run and play. There are many more options for players (although you need players who are excited about the mechanical/tactical aspect of combat) and monsters have more variety than they have in 5e. Combat is more nuanced and the 3-action economy gives everyone the chance to make meaningful decision on their turn.

But what has sold me immediately, was the balancing. If you build an encounter in Pathfinder, you can trust the balancing. No more reading the tea-leaves whatever the hell this monster’s CR is and what the difference is between offensive and defensive CR. No more agonizing if I really want to let that monster crit, lest it kill a PC without any chance of survival. In Pathfinder, Stuff. Just. Works. I can trust my stat blocks completely and PCs usually only die if:

  1. I decided that this is an especially dangerous encounter,
  2. the dice were really really not in their favour, or
  3. they did something stupid.

And did I mention that all rules and all player facing content, old and new, is freely available on the internet?

How do I get started?

So what do you actually need to do, if you want to convert a 5e campaign to Pathfinder?

Da Rules

Learn the rules! Duh. If you can't get the book or pdf for whatever reason, there are many great tutorials on youtube and if you are missing a specific rule you can just ask your search engine of choice and Archives of Nethys (the place where you can find all the rules) will usually be the first to pop up. If given the choice, I recommend learning the rules of the Remastered Second Edition, since they also improved the rules in many places.

Player buy-in

Get your players on board that Pathfinder is a mechanically complex game. Run a test session or two. Get them acquainted with tools like Archives of Nethys (website) and Pathbuilder 2e (website or app).

Items and Treasure Economy

Balancing in Pathfinder depends, among other factors, on treasure economy, so you’ll need to get acquainted with item and treasure rules, if you want to convert an adventure. There are guidelines on how much gold a fight should award and how much the party’s loot is supposed to be (approximately) worth for each level.

Personally I found converting items the biggest challenge, since items are more balanced in Pathfinder. More often than not I just substituted the problematic items with something thematically similar that already exists within Pathfinder and only rarely created custom items.

Also, decide if you want to use Automatic Bonus Progression, which is an optional rule. It makes items less important (but still somewhat important!), which in turn means both GM and players have to worry less if there is enough loot among the PCs. If you have players who like loot in abundance and enjoy managing it, don't use this rule.

Difficulty Classes

Get acquainted with how DCs are set in Pathfinder. There are tables for proficiency- and level-based DCs, so once you know how to use them, adjusting DCs should be easy and the least of your worries.

Stat Blocks

Get an overview how many stat blocks can be repurposed from Pathfinder for your game or if you need to make your own. For me the hardest challenge was getting to know existing stat blocks, so I recommend browsing through some monster stats to get aquainted with what exists and which abilities there are.

I ended up making many of the stat blocks myself, although you can usually get some inspiration from existing ones and creating stat blocks is made easy with tools like monster.pf2.tools.

Consider the Sandbox

Since power levels scale faster in Pathfinder, running a completely open sandbox is trickier. In 5e PCs can often punch above their weight with smart tactics, but in Pathfinder an enemy more than 4 levels above the PCs will usually wipe the party.

Choosing which rules (not) to use

Pathfinder has rules for what feels like everything. Some of them are extremely useful, no more “just roll a d20 and we’ll see how that goes” whenever the players get creative. There are a lot of rules. I didn’t use them all. For example, I mostly handwaved Hexploration as well as Exploration in my first game, but made it more important in my other game. Things like Leadership rules I found extremely useful, in cases where players wanted to build a following. I picked and chose whatever rules were something I wanted to highlight in my campaign and handwaved those I didn’t want to spend time with.

Translating existing characters

character sheets

Character sheets of my own converted character: Eirini the Ranger turned Fighter

This is something I did for my first Pathfinder game, and it wasn’t without its many difficulties. Pathfinder has plenty of character options, but you can’t just build anything. We needed a lot of tweaking to get some of the characters right and some of them still felt a little bit different after the conversion. The rogue (who was playing a homebrew subclass from the campaign, that could also heal) became a cleric. The swords bard became a swashbuckler. The barbarian stayed a barbarian.

If you’re going the route of conversion, I recommend letting the players change their characters in any way they want for the first few sessions. This way they can try out different builds until they find something that fits the character they’ve already learnt to love in the previous system. If the story allows, you might even introduce a time skip and explain away any differences with this.

Things to consider when converting:

Give your players some guidance while creating their characters and try to find out together, which parts of their character are most important to them.

Conclusion

Converting Raiders of the Serpent Sea to Pathfinder Second Edition was a leap, but it’s one I’m glad I took. The payoff in balanced encounters, tactical depth and variety has been well worth it. Pathfinder sometimes demands more attention to detail than 5e, but it rewards that effort with a system you can trust, where every roll and rule fits together. But always keep in mind who your players are - a rules-heavy system is not the best fit for every table.

Shameless Self-Promotion

On a different note, I've written a viking themed one-page rpg myself, that was, among other influences, also inspired by Raiders of the Serpent Sea! You can check it out here!