Few Conan RPG Questions

[Neeklus]

CRs
Why no Challenge Ratings mentioned in the books? How is experience handled?

Mass Combat
I'm a bit confused by the rules in the free PDF. Lets say for example I have a unit of level 5 soliders each with DR 7 armor, what is there counter hit points rating?

 

[Ankhe]

With mass combat, fist try reading over the rule pdf a few times to get a proper feel for it, a mock battle out of game will help.

As for counter hit points you need the number of men/counter, counters/unit and the soldiers con mod, plus any feats that affect HP (like toughness, that acts as +1 con mod). Its all there in the pdf how to work it out.

I mostly hand out around 2-4k xp as a base number to the party after a good session, and they are at levels 7-9, depends how quickly you want to deal with higher level characters.

 

[worldeater]

i only give out a few hundred xp's per session. half for rp'ing and clever tactical ideas, half for killing enemies/accomplishing goals (with extra for style kills - so far one pict beaten to death with an oar, and one shield bashed to death)

 

[slaughterj]

Give out XP based on how fast you want your PCs to advance. I don't give out XP at all, I just advance them a level a session (because we only play every 2-3 weeks or so, and will only run it for about 9 months before a member has to leave town). It's no big deal to give out no XP, and simply tell the PCs when they advance as well - the only possible consideration is the few spells that use up minimal XP, and I've house-ruled away that requirement because I dislike it for a variety of reasons.

 

[argo]

It is fairly easy to eyeball CR and just assign XP yourself. Most human(oids) with class levels should have CR within a point or two of their level (depending on equipment and the situation of the engagement) while melee-monsters can have up to double their CR in HD, this depends a great deal on the monster itself and the quality of its HD.

Another answer is to abandon CR and go straight to XP per encounter. Leveling requires current level x 1000 XP so if you hand out level x 100 XP per encounter then it would take 10 encounters to level. If you have 4 encoutners per session thats 2.5 sessions to level which is a good number for a group that meets once per week or every-other week (like mine does). With that basic number in hand you can start to riff off of it. 1/2 XP for an "easy" encounter, double XP for a "boss encounter" and so forth. Throw in some small (a couple hundred points) story awards or roleplay awards to keep things interesting and your players should probably never know.


Hope that helps.