4E Conversions: The Blightspawn of Rawlings Woods, Part 1

The new campaign I am currently running is for 4th Edition, but set in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. It is a well developed, albeit a bit cheesy, campaign setting that is well suited for games where the players want depth but the DM doesn't have time to develop an internally consistent world from scratch. As a 20+ year veteran of the game, I know that I could develop my own campaign setting from scratch, but with my WKHJ*, I barely have time to blog; let alone game like I was 18. The problem is that, while FRCS has a far reaching back story, the new edition of the game makes much of it incompatible and definitely outdated. So, today is the first post of a new series aimed at helping solve this problem: 4E Community Converts. The basic idea is that I'll pick something from 3E that needs to be updated to 4th Edition rules and, hopefully, the few readers of this blog will provide me with some ideas or (even better) full fledged conversions. One last thing before we get started: while I know that a 4E version of FRCS is due out next month (with more coming in following months), this series is for all the folks that do not want to fast forward their version of Faerûn about 100 years (more of that internal consistency thing i mentioned earlier). OK, enough prologue - more content.

My campaign setting is set in The Great Dale, an area featured in the main FRCS book, as well as The Unapproachable East (UE). Within the UE book, there's a detailed template for Blightspawn that fits into the campaign arc dealing with the rise of The Rotting Man and his Army of Blight. I've decided to use the Blightspawn as a template for my 4E FRCS campaign as well, with a few modifications to the way the disease is transmitted. How would you covert this template? Have you used Blightspawn in any of your games, and if so how? Leave a comment with your conversion ideas or how you might adapt The Blightspawn to a 4E campaign setting.

* note: WKHJ is short for wife, kids, house, job