A Question on Conversion
 

When you folks do a conversion of an older edition creature, what guidelines do you usually set for yourself? I'll give you an example - yesterday, I was tinkering with the Wolfwere and Greater Wolfwere from the 3.5 Ravenloft setting. Originally, their type was Augmented Animal - Shapechanger. However, Bestiary 3 uses 'Magical Beast - Shapechanger' for the Jackalwere. So I opted to make them Magical Beasts (Shapechangers) in the conversion, because I felt that was more consistent.

Of course, that changed some of their baseline numbers - or at least, I assume that's what dropped their will saves, unless they were poorly calculated before. Is it important to end up at roughly the same numbers, or is it more important to have a consistent interpretation? If the former, I could always give them a free extra feat to boost their Will save, or some kind of inherent bonus, but honestly, I am leaning towards the latter.

A similar 'problem' arose with the skills - with Pathfinder's condensing of Stealth, and Perception, they ended up with more skill points to spend. I spread them amongst their existing skills, and in the case of the Greater Wolfwere, added some ranks in Survival, as I felt it fit. Is that generally what you folks would do, or no?

Lastly, assigning class skills. Is there a good rule of thumb to use when giving a converted monster class skills in addition to those granted by type? I confess, here I totally improvised - as the 3.5 wolfwere has Perform : String Instruments, but also has a special singing ability, I actually gave them two kinds of Performance (Strings, and Singing) as class skills.

My goal was to make sure that their numbers in the various skills were at least as good as their 3.5 incarnation, but not too much higher. I suppose the case could be made that one should just re-engineer the skills from the ground up - after all, they don't really even carry stringed instruments by default - but that could defeat the purpose of conversion altogether.

I use pathfinders official conversion guide as a basis for starting any conversion, then I make DM adjucation choices from there. You can create a new subtype if you need to, and make it fit your specific customization when necessary as well.

The Official conversion document only goes so far, and is geared towards quick conversions, but generally follows the approach I do - mentioned skills becoming class skills, using the highest rank for combined skills - but I'd say that the conversion doc represents a necessary but not always sufficient set of guidelines. :) I'm more interested in the DM adjudication part.

DMs are left to figure out some elements, but Hero Lab gives us a great deal of flexibility. We can modify things where needed to fit the setting. I try to stay as close to original data sets as I can, but pathfinder sometimes makes me have to reconsider things.

Well, I guess I'll just convert them however I like, and hope they meet with the approval of the other folks who end up using them.

People can make copies of the elements in the data, and modify them to fit their campaigns. Some things can also be handled with adjustments on the Personal tab. For example, if you have an NPC with too many skill points, there is an adjustment that reduces the number of skill points. If some other GM comes along and needs a few skill points to customize something, they can just reverse the adjustment and apply the changes on the skill tab. That is one way I handle converting things. I don't always find a use for the excess skill points.

Makes sense, though I probably would lean towards spending all the skill points; taking them away seems to reduce the challenge of the monster, and leaving them unspent makes the software crankily remind you they are there.

Another variant is to leave them unspent and let users decide what to spend them on. With the condensing of skills you are bound to be left with some unspent skill ranks.