How to Convert from AD&D 2nd ed. to D&D 3-3.5

[moogle17]

I am starting this post to learn and I shall elaberate on the campaign over time.  It is a great world created by J.D. my brother in law.  I myself have been a 2nd edition player all my life, and I love the system.  He however is starting in 3.5 rules.  Lots of books and lots of people all new to the game, but somehow we have failed to learn the exp system.  The books are just not helping to tell the truth.  Okay, this is where you guys come in.  The World of Vanderot is home to a group of adventurers who have very little in common.  One thing they do have in common is they all live in the town of Mckinsie.  A Rouge named Kubrick hired the group to aid him in a call from the Governor of Vaunyrd for reasons unknown to them at this time.  After having stole horses from a Clan of Rouges branded with snakes, they fled the city of Mckinsie in route to Vaunyard, stopping to camp at the River Fogline.  In the early dark of the morning, the party was suprised by a territorial Worg.  The fighter in the party was criticly wounded, but was saved by the cleric in seconds of dying, having just enough stregth left to deal the killing blow to the Worg.  The party was victorious but we dont know how to distribute exp to the five adventurers in the party.  All are lvl 1 and the worg has a CR of 2 and HD4d10+8.   

[Tommi Brander]

In the Dungeon Master's Guide (which version do you have?), there is a table where you can cross-reference character level and CR to gain the experience gained (600 in this case, IIRC). Divide it evenly among all player characters. 600/5 = 120, so everyone gains 120 exp.


Minor nitpick: Rogue, not rouge.
If you ever happen to wander by the official D&D boards, you will hear it.

[Larry L.]

Hi,

You should grab the Conversion Booklet if you don't have it. It's for 3.0, but handy if you're coming from 2e.

As for your question, try this encounter calculator and see if it makes sense to you. I also come up with 120xp each.

By the way, this is probably not the best site to just drop in and ask D&D rules questions.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This is a perfectly reasonable actual play post. The context for the game has been provided, we learned a bit about what happened during play, there is a clear and decent rules question, and I see no reason why no one is helping, and why I'm getting private messages about Forge-appropriateness.

Some one of you CR/XP heads - help this guy out and tell him how many XPs! Are you incapable of dealing with straightforward requests? What does he have to do, fellate you? Or you'll only answer this very same question for me, and no one else?

Moogle, tell us more about the game.

1. How many players are there? What's the basic age range, and are there both guys and gals?

2. What character classes are involved? Any contradictions (evil rogue + paladin, e.g.), or is everyone pretty conceptually compatible?

3. How much damage was done to player-characters during the fight? Anything really dangerous?

4. And finally, since this is something that frustrates me a little as a D&D GM, how often do saving throws show up during play? A lot? A little?

Best, Ron

[James_Nostack]

As Tommi pointed out, it's 120 XP each.

Here's how the XP system works, in general.  Every critter in the game has a Challenge Rating (CR).  How much XP you get for killing something depends on comparing your level to its CR.  So: a low-level character killing an Ogre (CR 3) gets a much bigger reward than a high-level character killing the Ogre.  All of this is on page 38 of the 3.5 Dungeon Master Guide.

Challenge Rating also determines how much treasure a creature's likely to carry.

When a bunch of critters get together, their CR's combine in a weird way to get an Encounter Level (EL) which suggests how deadly it will be to a party.  Say the guys in your party are around 4th level.  That means you can take on an EL 4 encounter (say, a Gargoyle, which is CR 4) with moderate difficulty, but would have serious trouble against something at EL 7 (say, three Pixies, each at CR 4).  Something at EL 2 (say, 6 goblins) wouldn't be that tough.

If this seems unnecessarily complicated, it probably is.  It's probably an artifact of how level advancement works on a steadily incrementing basis.

[Aaron]

As James said.  El's are also used to deteremine the value of the treasure that should be received in an encounter.
Check this out

http://www.d20srd.org/encounterCalculator.htm

Follow the instructions and it works it all out for you!!
Enjoy.

[moogle17]

I appreciate all the help guys, and thanks Ron.  The encounter guide saves the day. 

Moogle, tell us more about the game.

1. How many players are there? What's the basic age range, and are there both guys and gals?

2. What character classes are involved? Any contradictions (evil rogue + paladin, e.g.), or is everyone pretty conceptually compatible?

3. How much damage was done to player-characters during the fight? Anything really dangerous?

4. And finally, since this is something that frustrates me a little as a D&D GM, how often do saving throws show up during play? A lot? A little?

Best, Ron

At any given play period there have been five to seven players, eight people acually play, one DM fresh and green.  There is one girl who plays and one guy who kinda acts like a girl but he's actually pretty good at RPing.  Age range is 18-25 save for Jamies little bro whos 15 and is in love with the game.

A few minor contradictions.  One is Our fallen paladin right off the start I said no way, no how.  Lawful Good or lose the loose the class.  He participated in the theft of the horses... if I'm DM, your diety has some punishment waiting for you via mad freakin priests.  The second is our 15 year old ranger.  He's not technically breaking any rules, but he's gonna miss out on a lot because he's playing a heavy fighter type ranger and nullifies many of the ranger abilities (second edition abilities are the ones we have to go by from the Complete Ranger's Handbook)  He's kinda got a lot on his plate playing such a versatile character anyway. 

Other classes are your heavy priest type, one half elf Sorceress, one half elf F/Cl/MU and two Rogues.  The main fighter that took the damage in the fight was badly damaged and had only 1 HP remaining before the priest got the cure light wounds off, but no one else was badly hurt.   

Savings throws have been implemented in several diffrent circumstances, mainly for chance of success.  No status effect savings throws have been used except for a 1d4 turns of sleep for the two rogues who fell asleep while camping by the River Fogline.  They were incative for two turns of battle from the role.

Me and J.D. will read up on the EL system tonight, so he can implement it first possible chance.  Their gonna love this guys,  Thanks a million.  I'll keep you posted.
D.

[Roger]

One is Our fallen paladin right off the start I said no way, no how.  Lawful Good or lose the loose the class.  He participated in the theft of the horses... if I'm DM, your diety has some punishment waiting for you via mad freakin priests.

I'm interested in his response to this.  Was it a resigned sigh, and "Oh, well, alright... I'll be Good."?  Or was it closer to an excited grin, and "Yeah!  Killer priests tracking me down!  That'd be totally awesome!"?  Or something else entirely?



Cheers,
Roger