My 5e Temple of Elemental Evil Adaptation

Six years ago, when Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition was new and fresh, and I still had time on my hands, I decided to put my gaming group of the time through the entire Temple of Elemental Evil experience. I was also, at the time, a regular at several mainstream D&D fora as Goon-for-Hire, and had a reputation for coming up with creative ways of resolving problems that other DMs were having. I wanted to share insights on the conversion of older D&D material to modern D&D.

I took a few weeks and carefully went through the module room by room, looking at each encounter, and painstakingly rebalancing them to use the modern CR system. I believed at the time that just using the module as is would never work given the significantly different hit point and action economies of D&D 5e.

Moreover, I made detailed notes about the hows and whys of the conversion choices that I made. This conversion was made as a road map for the conversion of AD&D / OD&D material to D&D 5e. It certainly has been popular, with on average over one thousand file accesses per month last year and several translations to other languages.

You can download it here.

(File location updated Sep. 25, 2021)


My players loved it, but they also stormed it.

• The upper floor of the Moathouse was handled with sledgehammer tactics.
• Below, in the Moathouse Dungeon, the Ogre nearly had them, but for a few lucky shots. Once he was defeated, however, they cleared the bugbears, gnolls and ghouls in a couple of days of hit-and-run.
• They demolished Lareth and his warriors, despite being outnumbered, with a few tactically placed spells.
• They used shock and awe tactics to cow the minions of the Earth and Air temples into surrender. 
• After defeating the bandits' masters they turned the Orb of Golden Death over to the Archclerisy of Veluna to seal in a holy sanctum. 
• Their assaults on the temple ground the Water and Fire cults into dust. 
• They broke the giants of the lower temple by treating with Scorpp to get him to leave, and then slaying the others who stayed behind. 
• They lost the life of one PC to a disintegrate spell to the back - a mistake on the Temple's part, as it drove them to strike at the temple one leader at a time.
• They then quested for help to seal the Temple again and establish a holy order to guard it from rising again.

The Problem with the Conversion

The thing is, that it was a lot of labour based on some false assumptions and philosophical misapprehensions.

Challenge Ratings and the idea of a "balanced encounter" suck much of the danger out of a D&D game.  A DM who is stringent about conforming to CR creates a campaign where players can be sure that they can survive almost anything you throw at them, barring an unlucky break. Players who make 3rd or 4th level can pretty much fearlessly charge into a fight and be assured that they will come out on top.

The Temple of Elemental Evil is supposed to be dark and dangerous. Players in the AD&D version of the adventure often faced overwhelming odds. If it weren't for the fact that the dungeon is fractious an monsters who roam into the wrong part of the dungeon will be murdered by rivals, the creatures in it would easiy ambush and destroy the PCs.

Fighting the Temple of Elemental Evil was meant to be an exercise in subversion, guerilla warfare, stealth, and strategy. Pitting factions against each other and striking at the winners when they are weak was the AD&D Modus Operandi for defeating the Temple.

Once the encounters are "balanced" to 5e (even to mostly "Hard" encounters) players are capable of smashing humanoid hordes, going toe-to-toe with Hill Giants, and flat-out hammering on enemies with such terrifying force that surrender becomes the only sensible move. And if the players are smart and tactically-minded they can easily clear a dungeon floor in a day or two.

By the middle of the campaign, my players had become confident in their ability to crush their foes, and were boldly dashing into action. And they were rushing the game a bit, too. They had become impatient with dungeon crawling, because they were crushing it. They wanted big scenes where they cleared lots of enemies at once, and were itching for the showdown with Hedrack... because that was where the danger, and therefore the real fun, was going to be. The mooks at point B were just not interesting or scary enough to worry about on their way to point D.

It was fun and exciting, to be sure... but my PCs didn't feel challenged. The only time death took a PC was when Falrinth the evil wizard hit them from behind with the deadliest spell available in the entire dungeon.

This was not the same experience that The Temple of Elemental Evil was meant to create. And, I think, it was a less rewarding one.

If I had to do it over, I would likely keep my notes on Hommlet and Nulb, and the stats that I worked out for critical NPCs and unique creatures (like the living pool and giant crayfish), and then just use the game as written with modern Monster Manual 5 stats... nothing toned down.

Would it be a meat grinder? Probably.  But it would be a lot more engrossing and challenging.  I would probably run it in a different system that encouraged faster, dicier play, too, but that is another discussion.