5E to Forbidden Lands Monster Conversions

5E to Forbidden Lands Monster Conversions

A while back I put a poll up on FB - Old School Monster Poll and also asked questions on Reddit about what classic monsters people would like to see written up for Forbidden Lands RPG.  My original intention was to start writing these up weekly, but life got int he way. But bow I have a bit more time and new enthusiasm for this project.

I think D&D has a lot of interesting, weird and dangerous monsters to pit against adventuring parties.  Forbidden Lands has a good crop of monsters but has a finite list of monsters for the GM to fall back on. I am not aiming to recreate all of the Classic Monster Manual entries, but provide a good crop of monsters, creatures and critters to surprise your players.

Here is the art from the original AD&D Monster Manual -

Here are the monsters currently on my list, I will update this as I post up my versions.  If you would like to add to the votes, or suggest other monsters you would like to see then please drop me a comment below.

MONSTER

GOLEM converted to Fbl (37 votes)
RUST MONSTER converted to Fbl (20 votes)
GIANT SPIDER converted to Fbl (20 votes)
MIMIC converted to Fbl (18 votes)
GELATINOUS CUBE converted to Fbl (17 votes)
BULETTE/LANDSHARK (4 votes)
OTYUGH (4 votes)
OWLBEAR (2 votes)
ACTAEON (2 votes)
VAMPIRES (2 votes)
BEHOLDER (1 vote, from Reddit)
MIND FLAYER (1 vote from Reddit)
SHAMBLING MOUND (1 vote from Reddit)

There has been other work on creating and adapting monsters to Forbidden Lands.  This excellent Monster File by SpandexAndy on the forbidden Lands Forums has guidance for creating monsters and has a lot of creatures to just drop into your game.  The file can be found here - Monster File.  If you have your own monsters you would like me to feature drop me a message.

CONVERSION GUIDELINES

A while back I worked up some conversion guidelines for converting 5E Monsters to Forbidden Lands, I will be using this as I work through the conversions.  Here is the file - 5E to Forbidden Lands Conversion Guidelines - I will work this up as a post over the coming weeks.

And here is a quick converter (also created by SpandexAndy), using my conversion guidelines.  I might work this up to cover monster attacks as well but that will take some working out. - To use it you will need to save a local copy - 5E to Fbl Conversion Spreadsheet.

QUICK AND DIRTY MONSTERS

For quick and dirty monsters I created this random monster generator - fl-monster-generator. It uses the monster creation rules in the Legends and Adventurers pamphlet with a few additional attacks to make it more varied.