Using 4e materials in Pathfinder?

[Windy]

This is something I've asked elsewhere, but I thought the Playground might have a few interesting ideas... A few years ago I was pleasantly surprised when a few of my coworkers approached me and asked me to run a D&D group. Since none of them had played before, but they did like board games, discussion led us to invest in some 4e books. Two years of adventure later, the now-seasoned players kept pushing against the underdeveloped roleplaying side of the system, and I still hadn't got my finger on a lot of the finer rules. When we had some player turnover, we decided to switch to Pathfinder, a system that both I and two of the new players knew better. The game is going swimmingly, and the system is an excellent fit for the players. However, I now find myself with some excellent source material for 4e that I'm not sure how to utilize in Pathfinder. One of the reasons I want to keep using these materials is that we're still playing the same campaign and I would hate to break any continuity for the group.

The holy grail for me here is figuring out a "rule of thumb" or quick-and-dirty conversion so I can improvise on the fly with the 4e stat blocks. I realize that 4e's significant mechanical divergence from 3.5 could make this very difficult. I know I could just go through and rewrite all the stat blocks, replacing them with post-it notes in the books, but that's a waste of prep time if I don't explicitly plan to use those parts of the material. And even then, we've got the first rule of DMing: No plan survives contact with the PCs.

I'm mainly concerned about translating magic items, traps, etc, which are unique and integral to the modules. My party has already successfully moved their characters over, so classes are a non-issue. Monster stats would definitely be something I'd plan out or completely replace with a level-appropriate one from the bestiary. NPCs could be a mix--if there's no chance of fighting an NPC, but social interactions are likely, does anyone know a way to consistently convert skill levels between the two systems?

[HunterOfJello]

If you want to translate magic items, then read the entire magic items section in the DMG and memorize all of the magic item creation rules. Then go read the entire Magic Item Compendium to get a handle on prices that are actually appropriate for items of given power strengths. (MiC is just balanced much better than the DMG.)

As far as traps go, read up on all of the traps in the DMG and try your best to make a trap match one of the predefined and already existing traps in the game. Custom trap making is a very broken part of the game and should be done with extreme care. Avoid attempting any quick and dirty methods and avoid giving PCs items that are far too strong for their level. If you give them a Rod of Force so that they can create Walls of Force 5 times per day at level 9, then you're going to have a bad time.

For NPCs, I'd go buy the NPC Codex and leave all the 4e npcs behind. It probably has all you'd need.

Finally, for all the monsters I would probably stop and just use the 3.5 versions of the same exact monster instead of the 4e ones. I'm not intimately familiar with 4e monster manuals, but if we're comparing editions then the majority of the monsters are just pulled from one edition to the next. If a monster is too different and not streamlined enough for you, then you know why PF and 3.5 are such different games compared to 4e.

[Gemini476]

A quick and extremely dirty way to translate monsters from 4e to 3.X:

Subtract ten (?) from each Defense to get the Save bonus
Add ten to each ability that requires a save to get the static save DC
Realise that 4e levels =//= 3.P Hit Dice
Realise that saves in 4e are not the same thing as saves in 3.x
Realise that the underlying math of the system is completely different
Try not to cry
Cry a lot

[Ravens_cry]

A quick and extremely dirty way to translate monsters from 4e to 3.X:

Subtract ten (?) from each Defense to get the Save bonus
Add ten to each ability that requires a save to get the static save DC
Realise that 4e levels =//= 3.P Hit Dice
Realise that saves in 4e are not the same thing as saves in 3.x
Realise that the underlying math of the system is completely different
Try not to cry
Cry a lot

Pretty much. They may both use d20's, but they are very different systems.
You are better off looking at the effects and reverse engineering that rather than going for an actual conversion.