A1 has several famous unique monsters including A Giant Sundew, Aspis Drones, Apsis Cow, and several variants of Giant Ants as well as several nefarious NPCs. The only actual conversion we get is a CR4 version of the Sundew, which is going to be pretty underwhelming for the recommended group level (4-7). A CR4 immobile creature is only going to be a challenge for a group of level 1s. The rest of the conversions are uninspired: Aspis Drones = Thrikeens, Aspis Cow = Pudding with major stat conversions, Giant Ants = Giant Centipedes.
All of the NPCs are simply exchanged for extremely simple 5E conversions, the worst of which is the final thief boss (level 5 in the source material) is simply converted to a Bandit Captain (CR2).
Most of the attention goes to converting the traps, but it's fairly by the numbers.
There are no DM notes beyond the opening 4 bullets to help modern DMs with some of the archaic style in A1. (How about some guidelines on how the unlabeled stairs work?)
|