Conan RPG - What do I need to know?

[Senevri]

It's a recent d20 one. I'm mostly familiar with 3.5 DnD. It's under consideration, and it seems interesting enough. Has anyone played? What are the big differences vs. 3.5? ( I expect to end up DMing, again. )

[Senevri]

Nobody's played it? This one?
Conan 2e
(From reading it, it seems quite interesting and gives 20 levels of sword and sorcery without rocket tag.)

[weenog]

All I know about Conan RPG is what is best in life (which, incidentally, carries over to D&D, too).


To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women, of course.

[Solo]

Know that should you be unable to find out the riddle of steel, Crom will cast you from his mountain.

[Senevri]

I'm... aware of TRoS, although I haven't familiarized myself with the rules. Currently looking at Conan and A Shadow of Yesterday.

[Senevri]

Okay, some peachy keens:
- I already mentioned the tons of new things to do in combat
- Every character with full BAB starts with TWF, which works without penalties if off-hand is light
- Everyone effectively gets Spring Attack by default - you can use your std. action attack and move as you like before and after.
- Not sure if it's so by default, but fighting defensively is a standard action. (attack roll with penalties, AC increased 'til next turn)
- All weapon damages are very different. A greatsword deals 1d10+1d8 damage, for an example.
- Every character can finesse by default, in which case they don't add their STR against armor DR - instead if they roll enough to beat defense+DR, they ignore armor DR. I'm really liking it's dodge and dr system so far.

[Nachofan99]

Conan was really fun.

It's basically d&d 3.5 without magic.  Overall a blast.  Bonuses for staying in your class, which only makes sense.

For big differences, there aren't many, really.  The CR of encounters is a lot trickier in Conan because encounters tend to be a lot deadlier.

Also, the Fate Point system is neat.

[Senevri]

Ooh yeah. Who cares about a skill point or a hit point, Conan does it right - stick to your favored class and you get a bonus feat at 1, 5, 10 and 15. That's great incentive.

[Nachofan99]

It really is.  It makes your "Barbaric" character actually stay in "Barbarian", and rewards him for it.  A definite house-rule in my games scooped up a la Conan.

[Senevri]

Ditto - although I was wrong about the 15th. Being a setting+rules, all races of men also get an additional set of favored skills - they start the game with two ranks in those skills whether or not they are class skills. They also get some racial +2 bonuses to certain things, so with 2 ranks and a +2, cimmerians effectively start at +4 climb - +5 if you count the STR bonus.

Oh! oh, and skills - cross class still costs 2 points -- BUT bonus points from high INT score can be placed wherever you like and max ranks for ALL skills is level +3.

[druid 13]

I'm running a pbp Conan game that i went and converted to 3.5 ed. It's going pretty good, I just used some variant rules to nerf casters, and allowed pretty much all the books. The only problem I'm having is that one of the players is using a TOB character and the others are using normal balanced characters. I wish that more people had the books for Conan rpg, cuase it sure would have been more fun. 

[Gavinfoxx]

Hmmm. I always thought the Conan of the books was a high level Rogue...

[Senevri]

Barbarian, rogue, fighter.... There's been extensive analysis, and in DnD, he'd be something like Barb 6/Rogue 2/Ftr 2, perhaps. With ToB, replace fighter with Warblade.

He doesn't really do much rogue stuff - climb et al are class skills for barbarians, too. It could be that his 'rogue' career is in fact an urban ranger.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, he's certainly an int based and skill based character, though... not stupid at all.. I mean seriously, did he ever in the *actual books*, actually do something that could be considered a Rage?

[Senevri]

I think so, yes... albeit rarely.

It's not like human is int-penalized race or that a Barbarian doesn't NEED Int. That being said, Conan wasn't a typical example in any case- no 25 point buy here, he probably had quite a few sixteens and probably a positive score in every stat.

[Gavinfoxx]

I think so, yes... albeit rarely.

It's not like human is int-penalized race or that a Barbarian doesn't NEED Int. That being said, Conan wasn't a typical example in any case- no 25 point buy here, he probably had quite a few sixteens and probably a positive score in every stat.

So some mix of (pick a few of these) Rogue, (Nonspellcasting variant) Ranger, Warblade, Fighter, Barbarian maybe?

[Senevri]

Sure, why not.

[Gavinfoxx]

OT: So tell me about your icon..