Conan MRQ

[Deleriad]

You are misreading me. What I described is what MRQ actually is. I haven't *added* anything.

You have. Legendary abilities are suppose to be just that: legendary. You have changed them into feats: things that every fighter must have. Conan has an absurd amount of Hero Points: and he needs them to block damage and remove crits. They function, in fact, a lot like those other things that begin with HP...

We are talking about Conan right? Conan the legendary hero? Conan who presumably has many, many legendary abilities and I presume an awful lot of Hero Points - being Conan and all.

Let me get this straight:
Are you talking about a level 1 beginning warrior's abilities or Conan's abilities? I am trying to compare like with like here. So if we're talking Conan we're talking the MRQ equivalent of Conan in his pomp. If we're talking level 1 barbarians then great.

If a level 1 barbarian charges a pirate ship fill of pirates then how long would he expect to live?

Then Conan's being very lucky with his enemies attack rolls.

You did read the example? I assumed that the pirates were all at 50% and therefore roughly half of their attacks hit. I assumed that he was able to parry 1 incoming attack per round. I also assumed that he started with 5 people around him, killed one before he could attack and 2 others as they stepped into replace the fallen. This means that he generally has to face 5-6 attacks he can't parry per round (not per action - go back and look properly), that 2-3 of those would hit and 1/4 of the blows that hit would penetrate for 1-2 damage.

your Conan: maxed stats, a list of carefully prepared legendary abilities and skills 150% plus:

So Conan in his prime is what level in d20? BTW, as I recall the poster who mentioned the corsairs said that "Conan was in armour which is mentioned as helping and, at one point, gets his back to the mast."

I mean I assume it is fair to say that Conan is a legendary swordsman with the strength, speed and resilience of a legendary hero. Being Conan you sort of expect that. I suppose he could be a bit weedy, slightly asthamatic and maybe a weapon master on a good day. Doesn't sound like what I remember but hey, your Conan may vary.

I have never said that no one could possibly run a Conan game in MRQ, I said it was a poor fit and wouldn't work as well as a game that fit the genre. Of which d20 Conan is one. Yes, one. There are others.

And I have said that I believe you are wrong. MRQ seems to have done a good job with many other adaptations including Elric, Hawkmoon and Slaine. From what I understand about d20 Conan, the modifications to MRQ emulate Elric et al are far less significant than the modifications Mongoose made to d20.

Now, I grant you if you pick some sort of young Conan, give him no armour and 75% in his best weapon and tell him - go attack that pirate ship and don't come back until you have killed all the heavily-armed, highly-skilled, fearless pirates then there is only one result. Same result as if you made Conan level 1 and sent him to attack a bunch of level 2 pirates I suspect.

 

[Deleriad]

... you've decided that MRQ is The Bestest for everything, and anyone who disagrees must be a D20 Fanboy, because how else could they fail to see the Obvious Truth?

Would you like to find where I wrote that? Would you like to find where I called you a "fanboy" or, come to that, said anything even slightly less than civil. Would you like to find my post which said "d20 sucks and all who play it suck."

I've said I believe you to be wrong and that's as far as it went. My contention is that MRQ is perfectly capable of emulating the Conan genre and explained why with examples.

It would be nice if you could be as civil.

 

[kintire]

We are talking about Conan right? Conan the legendary hero? Conan who presumably has many, many legendary abilities and I presume an awful lot of Hero Points - being Conan and all.

Let me get this straight:
Are you talking about a level 1 beginning warrior's abilities or Conan's abilities? I am trying to compare like with like here. So if we're talking Conan we're talking the MRQ equivalent of Conan in his pomp. If we're talking level 1 barbarians then great.

We are using Conan as an example. But he's not the only one. Balthus, for example, takes on a horde of Picts, and although he doesn't survive the fight, he takes down twenty or so before he falls. Valeria and others also demonstrate an ability to wade into swarms of foes and cut them down.

I mean I assume it is fair to say that Conan is a legendary swordsman with the strength, speed and resilience of a legendary hero. Being Conan you sort of expect that. I suppose he could be a bit weedy, slightly asthamatic and maybe a weapon master on a good day. Doesn't sound like what I remember but hey, your Conan may vary.

But you have missed the point. Your Conan can, just, pull it off in heavy armour, if his enemies are much MUCH worse than he is. Conan has three times the skill, vastly greater stats, a slew of special abilities and even then he needs armour to pull it off. How will Balthus do? He's solidly competent, but no legendary hero.

But we are talking here about a genre where, fundamentally, skill is more important than numbers. RQ is, quite deliberatly, a system where numbers are more important than skill. PCs will not start off as powerful as Conan. They will not start off as powerful as Valeria. They will probably kick off at about Balthus' level. But in a Howardian world, anyone... anyone... should be able to take on a significant number of oppoents of inferior quality. They should be able to have a career in battle, without inevitable death or maiming within a few months. You cannot do this in MRQ without magic, or without being at the extreme height of skill. Its a genre difference.

From what I understand about d20 Conan, the modifications to MRQ emulate Elric et al are far less significant than the modifications Mongoose made to d20.

I have never read Elric, and I have not got the game. But the changes you would need to make to MRQ would involve ditching some of the basic assumptions and rewriting from scratch. Why bother?

Now, I grant you if you pick some sort of young Conan, give him no armour and 75% in his best weapon and tell him - go attack that pirate ship and don't come back until you have killed all the heavily-armed, highly-skilled, fearless pirates then there is only one result. Same result as if you made Conan level 1 and sent him to attack a bunch of level 2 pirates I suspect.

If you took your 150% Conan and took his armour off you'd get the same result. But in a Hyborian game if you sent a 75% skill Conan in against those 50% skill pirates (which makes him half again as skilled as they are) you would expect him to mow through more than a few of them before he went down. In MRQ he'd be lucky to survive action 1

 

[kintire]

Would you like to find where I wrote that? Would you like to find where I called you a "fanboy" or, come to that, said anything even slightly less than civil.

Delighted, old boy.

You may not want to play anything other than d20, that's up to you,

I've said I believe you to be wrong and that's as far as it went.

You've also said that I know nothing about MRQ. You apologised for that, which I appreciated... and then did it again, which soured the appreciation just a smidge.

It would be nice if you could be as civil.

Well, the thing is my dear fellow, that I have tried that. But it seems that no one pays any attention, and feels no compulsion to be civil back. It would be terribly nice if people would stop psychoanalysing me or making comments about my background experiences and actually grant me the right to have my opinion, different as it may be from theres', without attributing it to mental or experiential defect. If you can find a defect in my actual arguments, by all means point it out. I'll not necessarily accept it of course, but I will appreciate the effort. If it comes to that, I DO appreciate the effort that you have gone to, as you, uniquely in the proRQers in this thread, have actually made some attempt to do that. So, my apologies for lumping you in with all the others.

On that note however, far be it from me to accuse you of any sort of bias of course, I can't help noting that your request for politeness seems a little bit one sided. I didn't notice any complaints about these:

At last !! We managed to start again the kintire nonesense machine !

I just noticed that the thread was called Conan MRQ and that it was-yet again-assaulted by D20 activists. We already had "What if Conan leaves for another system", 36 pages of D20 terrorism

Be careful; playing D20 too much can damage your brain...

A name like flatscan sure knows a lot about brain damage...

As you said, this is a game, and, with a little effort, you should be able to open your mind a bit and get rid of your formatting...

Kintire, for instance, you like to quote parts of sentences out of their contest to make them say what you'd like to. More than often, your best defence is pointing other people shouting 'it's him who started it!..." More than often, you 'll be seeing your own flaws in others, hoping to put the blame on them...

oh, and of course,

To get things back to being useful and constructive rather than what appears to be a panicked attempt to insist that Conan should never under any circumstances be played under any system than what it already is

Which last you may find eerily familiar.

I started the thread courteously, and if that courtesy has frayed a little by the time we get to here, I do apologise... but its not entirely surprising, now is it?

 

[Deleriad]

But we are talking here about a genre where, fundamentally, skill is more important than numbers. RQ is, quite deliberatly, a system where numbers are more important than skill.

Well that's a useful characterisation. As I said elsewhere, I'm not an aficionado of Conan. I know the basics, have read some books, seen movies etc.

The balance between numbers and skill in MRQ is fairly complex. It depends on numbers, absolute skill, relative skill, damage potential and damage protection not to mention situational and environmental modifiers. The key thing is how many undefended attacks it takes to bring down the singleton and how many attacks it takes the singleton to disable one of the mob.

With Mongoose's d20 system, how how many angry peasants with clubs would you expect a lone, level 1 barbarian to kill before they brought him down? Assume that 5 can surround him at any one time and there are infinite number who can step forward to attack over the bodies of dead peasants?

As a rough guestimate in MRQ, starting Barbarian warrior built on points using GM's Handbook and using broadsword. Warrior would be around 75% doing average damage of around 7 per attack (this is from memory). Has 3 CAs. Peasants are 30% with clubs doing d4 damage and with 2 CAs.

Roughly 7 out of 10 of barbarian's attacks would hit a peasant without being meaningfully defended against and most of those would disable whatever location it struck. So say he has a 60% kill/disable rate per attack. Optimal strategy for barbarian is to attack 3 times, reaction attack once and parry/dodge twice. That minimises the number of incoming attacks. (It works out at 7 attacks per round, 4 on CA1 and 3 on CA 2. Two of those 7 can be parried.)

It will take 3 average successful attacks against the same location to disable one location. There are seven locations to pick randomly from. You probably, therefore need 15 successful attacks to be sure of disabling one barbarian location. That works out at 50 attacks in total at 30%. At 7 attacks per round, 5 are undefended and 2 are defended so you end up with the equivalent of 5.5 undefended attacks per round. It will take 9-10 rounds for the peasants to launch 50 attacks and bring down a level 1, unarmoured barbarian. In that time, the barbarian would expect to have killed or disabled 4*9.5*.6 = 22.8 peasants. (I guess the .8 is a peasant with a really bad headache the next day.)

Basically, 1 unarmoured, starting barbarian has a reasonable chance of killing 20 peasants before he goes down using MRQ as written.

Two questions then: one is that a reasonable genre emulation? Two, what would be the equivalent result using Mongoose d20.

---edit below---
Refined numbers. Calculating the 60% kill rate properly as I neglected that above. Without running the numbers again. If his CA1 attack fails to kill then he needs to parry one more time and swaps a reaction attack for a parry. This means that he faces a slightly higher average number of attacks per round and deals fewer attacks per round. Call it equivalent to facing 6 per round and making 3.6 attacks a round back. Thus it takes 8-9 rounds to bring down the barbarian. and he kills/disables 3*8*.6 +(8*.6) = 19. So, he may struggle to get to 20 peasants, probably 18-19 is a reasonable number of dead peasants.

 

[rabindranath72]

Interesting analysis, there.
In d20 parlance, a peasant (using a 1st level commoner) would be CR1/4, i.e. 4 peasants would be the equivalent of a CR1 critter. A single well-equipped character of any adventuring class would be CR1. A character should be able to handle CRs up to 1 more, so perhaps it would be 8 peasants.

 

[AKAmra]

Check out Signs and Portents # 54, Pg. 95-96 for a MRQ optional HP system and "Underlings" rules that could be used for those Hyborian Age PC's vs. mooks moments.

 

[AKAmra]

Another option from S&P #36 Pg. 28. Use Lethal Extreme weapon damage for PC's weapons and normal or even High Fantasy weapon damage for mooks. Or, use Normal weapon damage for PC's and High Fantasy for mooks.

 

[Trodax]

Coming in a bit late to this delightful thread ( ), I have a question. My biggest problem for games from the "BRP-family" for use with Conan has always been how weapon skills are handled. In the Runequest derivatives I've played (this is the swedish Drakar och Demoner game, so not actually the original), every weapon was a different skill. So you might have a hero who was a total badass (200%) with a broadsword, but if he suddenly found himself without his favorite weapon and armed with, for example, an axe, he would be next to useless (he might have a base chance of 30% or some such thing). This is a very different style from Conan I think, where the hero seems to be armed with a new killing tool in every story.

So anyway, my question is: how is this handled in MRQ? Is there anyway to make skill with weapons more general (some sort of base level or something), or do you always have to train up every weapon individually? If so, how broad are the skills? (Are broadsword, scimitar and short sword different skills, or would they all fall under the "sword" skill, for example.)

 

[Deleriad]

So anyway, my question is: how is this handled in MRQ? Is there anyway to make skill with weapons more general (some sort of base level or something), or do you always have to train up every weapon individually? If so, how broad are the skills? (Are broadsword, scimitar and short sword different skills, or would they all fall under the "sword" skill, for example.)

The weapon families in MRQ are broader than older versions of the game so 1H sword skill covers attack and parry with most 1H swords - I think rapier is the only 1H sword that gets its own skill though weapons such as cutlasses etc may also have separate skills.

Being good with a sword doesn't make you good with an axe.

 

[Clovenhoof]

For a Conan conversion, you might want to do away with all this different weapon skill crap and just boil it down to "Melee", "Ranged" and "Unarmed" or something like that.

 

[rabindranath72]

For a Conan conversion, you might want to do away with all this different weapon skill crap and just boil it down to "Melee", "Ranged" and "Unarmed" or something like that.

That works quite well. For my d20 Call of Cthulhu-based Hyborian Ages games I have used only the three feats in the d20CoC books: melee weapons, thrown weapons and primitive ranged.

 

[kintire]

It will take 3 average successful attacks against the same location to disable one location.

I certainly have no grounds for criticising your grasp of the MRQ system. For this, of course, is the vital number that you have isolated right here. As you seem well aware, either armour must be high or damage pitiful.

Conan tales don't tend to trouble much with butchering peasants. While the warriors are not all supermen, they at least tend to be a little better than this. D4 damage? Try d8. At that level it takes one hit on a limb, probably two on a central location. Also, I have deep trouble considering someone at 30% skill to be in any sense a credible foe...

Essentially, you've accepted the point. I have no doubt that you can ram out a system that will allow you to run Conan, but you're trying to ram a square peg into a round hole, and you'll always hit trouble.

 

[rabindranath72]

Essentially, you've accepted the point. I have no doubt that you can ram out a system that will allow you to run Conan, but you're trying to ram a square peg into a round hole, and you'll always hit trouble.

Perhaps we should ask Vincent if MRQ works for Conan or not? IIRC he developed such a thing.
Also, what about the actual experiences of those who have been running Conan games with BRP? Or GURPS? By your reasoning, these people have not been playing Conan at all. :?

 

[Hervé]

Personally, I've actually encountered far more problems in running Conan using D20 that I never had with any other systems I used for this setting.

 

[Deleriad]

It will take 3 average successful attacks against the same location to disable one location.

I certainly have no grounds for criticising your grasp of the MRQ system. For this, of course, is the vital number that you have isolated right here. As you seem well aware, either armour must be high or damage pitiful.

Conan tales don't tend to trouble much with butchering peasants. While the warriors are not all supermen, they at least tend to be a little better than this. D4 damage? Try d8. At that level it takes one hit on a limb, probably two on a central location. Also, I have deep trouble considering someone at 30% skill to be in any sense a credible foe...

I'm just taking the stats. D4 is the damage delivered by an improvised weapon. Average peasant who has never picked up a club in anger is 21% with it so I rounded up to 30%.

MRQ uses skill as active defence and armour as passive defence. d20 (as I understand it) has passive defence only. That really is all we're talking about.

All I am trying to do is to understand what happens when you compare apples with apples.

An earlier poster said that a starting PC barbarian in d20 surrounded by an angry mob of peasants tired of him stealing the cows would cut down 8 of them before he was overwhelmed. Is this true?

The MRQ equivalent starting barbarian PC appears to able to take down about 15-18 equivalent peasants.

Now you want a new metric. I'll define it as how many competent warriors using war swords can a level 1 starting PC barbarian expect to kill before being overwhelmed. I would guess in d20 terms these are level 1 NPC fighters of some sort with ringmail armour.

In MRQ, I'll use a campaign (Blood of Orlanth) to stat level 1 competent warriors. They do 1D8 damage with a war sword, wear ringmail for 4APs and are around 40% skill after their armour penalty (base skill 68%) and have 2 CAs.

They take 2 average blows to disable a location and now so does our hero due to their armour. It takes both sides 7 successful attacks to be sure of disabling one location. On average it takes 4 blows. (66% chance)

Undefended blows opponents have 40% chance of hitting. Defended blows have about 20% chance of causing damage.

Basically 2/3 of our heroes attacks are damaging blows and he can expect 3 normal attacks plus one potential reaction attack per round. Takes him 4 damaging blows to be sure as dammit to have knocked one out of the fight - 6 attacks in total Basically he ought to be able to take out one warrior every other round.
The bad guys are now launching 8 attacks a round of which either 2 or 3 are defended each turn. Call it 5 and 3 for simplicity. 5*.4 implies 2 undefended and 1/2 a defended attack can land damage each turn. Should take 2 rounds for them to overwhelm our hero.

So, an 18 year old, unarmoured starting PC barbarian, wet behind the ears, surrounded by ringmail armoured warsword wielding warriors who are just a few percentile points lower skilled than him can hope to kill one or badly injure 5-6 opponents before he is overwhelmed by them. Both sides are using the same weapons.

That is without any modifications for genre emulation. Does that sound about right for the genre? What does the same scenario give when run using d20? (i.e. face a level 1 barbarian with npcs of about the same standard.)

 

[rabindranath72]

That is without any modifications for genre emulation. Does that sound about right for the genre? What does the same scenario give when run using d20? (i.e. face a level 1 barbarian with npcs of about the same standard.)

Two PC classes of first level are equivalent under the d20 system (CR1). So, a 1st level barbarian should be on the same level of another 1st level PC-classed character. Obviously the CR system must be taken "cum grano salis", but I guess the figures match more or less what you get there.

BTW, kudos to you for having the patience of churning out all those numbers!!!

 

[treeplanter]

Man this look so complicated

This combat against 20 peasant must have lasted 5 hours.

I remember (a long time ago) I was playing Hawkmoon with 2 of my friend and we where figthing a Golem with like 15 or 20 damage reduction but he could never hurt us because we add to much dodge/parry. Eventually with good damage roll that pierced for 1-2 damage we took it down after a 3 hours fight. This kinda traumatised me

 

[Deleriad]

That is without any modifications for genre emulation. Does that sound about right for the genre? What does the same scenario give when run using d20? (i.e. face a level 1 barbarian with npcs of about the same standard.)

Two PC classes of first level are equivalent under the d20 system (CR1). So, a 1st level barbarian should be on the same level of another 1st level PC-classed character. Obviously the CR system must be taken "cum grano salis", but I guess the figures match more or less what you get there.

BTW, kudos to you for having the patience of churning out all those numbers!!!

Well, I've always been fond of testing systems to see how perceptions and numbers match. So this was interesting to me. I only looked at the thread by chance but I had been noticing how in the MRQ game I am running, the PCs can plough through inferior opponents at surprising speed. I personally prefer a game where numbers are more deadly - that's my ethos - so I thought I would run the numbers. Been useful to me as it helps me get my head around the probabilities underlying MRQ - they are massively different to other versions of RQ.

 

[kintire]

MRQ uses skill as active defence and armour as passive defence. d20 (as I understand it) has passive defence only. That really is all we're talking about.

Conan d20 has difficulty to hit and damage absorbing armour. Essentially, its an attack roll and a defence roll, except the defence roll is always 10.

An earlier poster said that a starting PC barbarian in d20 surrounded by an angry mob of peasants tired of him stealing the cows would cut down 8 of them before he was overwhelmed. Is this true?

It would depend to a degree whether he had cleave or not. Without crunching the numbers I would suspect that he would be taking a hit per 5 attacks, which on d4 damage would take about 30 attacks to put him down. He would be killing two enemies per round (with cleave).

So, an 18 year old, unarmoured starting PC barbarian, wet behind the ears, surrounded by ringmail armoured warsword wielding warriors who are just a few percentile points lower skilled than him can hope to kill one or badly injure 5-6 opponents before he is overwhelmed by them. Both sides are using the same weapons.

The problem is that if you boost the PC's skill by 50, you won't materially change the outcome. He will still kill or badly injure 1 or two enemies, because he will still go down at about the same speed. he will probably be a bit more confident of getting two.