The horror of Yukon

So I really liked the TOEE adventure from 3rd edition, but I am a fan of 4e. Also, I have fun in converting things (the engineer in me).

So I thought I start a blog on how I converted this 3rd edition adventure into my own little campaign, and some details on how my current players underwent things.

The original started at lvl 4 and ended at level 14. My hope is to have them start at level 3, and end at level 20 (level up to 21 after finishing the whole thing).

I have a basic run of the mill, generic kobold cave obliteration to get them to level 3 (which I won't detail). Basically to get them warmed up, and to get them a tie into TOEE. Treat this how you would normally. What I did was at the end of the cave the players find a letter that mentions the temple and asks how the excavations are going in the moathouse at hommlet (a village a week away or so), but the excavations in these mines aren't uncovering anything and it was lies spread by ...

That was the ORIGINAL plan anyway. That crapped out. Restarted things, but this time started them at 3rd level. In this rendition, they were commissioned by captain elmo to investigate the moathouse.

I will continue from here once the players are done with the moathouse. Also, I will not repeat anything found in the original adventure. So you will still need it to run this. What I will give is how I treated the conversion, how I changed things, which encounters I used, etc...

I will also include which monsters I used, and their level, role, and number so if you don't have access to that monster's info, you can substitute.

Finally, today, I will explain my concept of "henchmen" the hybrid between minions and normal baddies.

Apply this template to any minion.

Instead of 1 hp, the henchman has hp 1/2 normal level monster of that role (with the same constitution). So a lvl 5 henchman soldier with a 13 con would have 31 hp.

All defenses, atks, special abilities, dam, the same as the minion.

Exp is half of a normal creature of that level

The last bit is complicated, but only to a point. Henchmen do take dam from a miss, but never go below 0 on a miss. Henchmen are never considered bloodied. IF the player rolls either a natural 18+ on the attack or max dam on the dam roll (as if he rolled a crit), the henchmen dies instantly, independent of how many hp he had left.

In a sense, this gives the feel of a minion, but gives him a bit more staying power than a minion.

This is the last I will mention of henchmen from now on.

Next time:
the meeting with captain elmo and the road to the moathouse.