Hey everybody, i'm new here and need some answers.

[Goule]

First of all, i want you to know that i'm a lazy person and when i saw the 80 something pages of topics i got discouraged. Maybe my answers are in these, but no way i'm gonna read them all. hehehe.

So, i wouldn't say i'm a huge fan Conan but i'm a fan. But what i can say is that i'm a huge fan of RP for the last 15 years. I decided to buy a lot of books of conan the RPG (money doesn't really matter to me) and to find players. I found 4. I made their characters recently and soon i'll start the game in Arejun. Here's the team:
2 cimmerians barbarians
1 tauran borderer
1 khitan scholar

3 questions/commentary

1. Is it me or characters sheets are a real piece of crap? They don't even get spaces to put XP. No place for spells. What's that? Are we supposed to have some white sheets for extra informations like XP? How come they haven't changed it yet?

2. I thaught that starting it in arejun would be a nice place to give a conan feeling to the game. I have the shadizar box set and expect to have some material in it to go for a while in the region. Am I right?

3. What about my team. Should i put a NPC thief in the group? Will they be sufficiant enough? Do you have experiences with a team like that and that would be good for me to know?

That's about it. I haven't DM for the last 6 years and i wanna make it very good. I might have problem to adjust myself in the first couple sessions but its the same in every new game.

Thanks already.

 

[Ichabod]

My concern looking at your PCs is how oddball they are. That can work fine, but it might end up different from expectations.

So, you are in Shadizar or really anywhere. Who is doing the talking for this group?

You travel through Hyborian nations, what are the others doing while the Tauran enables party interaction with normal people?

Why would the PCs adventure together? For a one shot, this weird group would make sense based on any sort of flimsy excuse, but how are they going to function over the long haul when at least one member will always stand out from the group and very likely three members will?

You probably didn't see it, but I mentioned in a thread not long ago that at first I was all for weird races but eventually realized that it didn't make for a plausible game to stand out so much from other PCs.

To answer your questions:
1. No idea, I make my own character sheets for all RPGs in Wordpad because I like numbers where I think they should go and not where someone else thinks they should go.

2. Location is fine. Better than many for your group as Zamorians are themselves a weird race and there's so many slaves of all races that pass through such that the Cimmerians and Khitain won't stand out too much.

3. You have three fighters and, assumedly, a wizard to put it into generic fantasy terms, that doesn't sound crazy even if this weren't Conan. A thief can help with socializing or with thiefiness in Conan. The scholar can take Burst Barrier to get through locked doors to help with the latter. The Tauran can take Diplomacy with Hyborian Adaptability or the scholar can sink skill ranks into social skills to help with the former. One of the barbarians (both would be overkill and wasteful) could concentrate on Intimidation. Eyes of the Cat is missing without a thief, but then, it's better when everyone has it.

I don't think you have to have any class in Conan, but you have to craft obstacles to the party.

Also, multiclassing is easy, so you can get thief, though if anyone ever takes a thief level, should do it now, at first level. If the fighters ever pick up a scholar level (I now recommend all PCs take at least one scholar level if they want to game the system), they should do that now or take a thief level. In other words, always start a character out with an 8 skill rank class.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Welcome to the boards and to the game. Hope you will have a lot of fun!

To your questions:
1. There is a line for XP on the official character sheet ( http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/conan2echarsheet.pdf ), right at the 2nd line from the top, labelled "Experience".

2. Zamora isn't a bad place to start. Just go for it. ^^

3. I wouldn't put a permanent Equalizer in the group (i.e. Thief NPC), but instead just adapt the adventures accordingly. We don't have a Thief in the group either and are getting along fine.
Your biggest problem, as Ichabod has said, will probably be the social segment. "Thieving skills" aren't as important imho; locks and bars can also be smashed in by brute force or sorcery, and this is not D&D where you crawl through trap-infested dungeons every level.
In other words, simply don't place such deadly traps that would require a Thief to get around. You have two Barbarians which are also natural trapspringers, so that's a good substitute.
However, the party will have difficulties bluffing or negotiating themselves through social interactions. An NPC Thief wouldn't help because it would essentially result in you playing with yourself (letting your NPC Thief fast-talk the NPC guards etc.) while your players watch and build Jenga towers out of dice.
A Khitan scholar will stick out like a sore thumb (not improving NPC reactions) and a Borderer really doesn't have the skill points to spare.

Easiest way around: suggest your Scholar player to be a Hyborian rather than a Khitan. That will avoid a lot of problems, from language compatibility over general exotism issues right to the skills question. Scholars get piles of skill points and are likely to have high INT (note how in Conan you can spend your INT bonus skill points independently from your class skill list!) and Hyborians are also Adaptable, so you can basically cover the social niche completely.
Besides, the Scholar could also multiclass a bit into Thief later on; essentially a single level is enough to gain Trap Disarming (find traps with find DC >20).
Last not least, I consider Hyborians the best race for Scholar, among other things because they are the only race favouring Scholar that does not get penalties to some save or other.

As for Ichabod's numbercrunching suggestions: technically he is right, but your players shouldn't need to worry about that too much. (Except that I think Scholar is a prohibited class for Cimmerians anyway.)

Hope that helps.

 

[Halfbat]

It might help, too, if one of the Barbarians focussed a little inthievery (in classic Conan style) if the other's going to focus on intimidation and thuggery.

Our mix of characters tends to change, depending on who turns up. But they're basically a balanced group and (interestingly) our Stygian noble is really useful for plot hooks. The few times things got really unbalanced, we've found that the guys above said, though, is important: do adapt your adventures for the group.

Welcome, anyway!

 

[DooMJake]

I read that many times in this forum, that the skillpoints from INTmod are "more valuable" so to speak as they can be put into crossclassskills without penalty. But I couldn't find that rule in my book. Is it a houserule or am I just blind?

 

[Clovenhoof]

It is an official core rule.
I don't have the book on me atm, but it should be right at the beginning of the Skills chapter, if I'm not mistaken. There's no separate paragraph or title for this rule so it may easily escape a reader who already knows D&D and doesn't expect anything new.

 

[Sutek]

First off, welcome to the boards and keep asking the questions. This place isn't like other RPG forms where, if you ask a question that has been asked 1000 times already, everyone jumps you case. We all realize that there's an unwieldy amount of threads and info to scrouge through and we're all usually thrilled to help out newcomers.

Conan D20 is my favorite fantasy RPG D20 set, so I'm a major supporter of the product on the forums here and ther are a number of us who know these rules up, down and sideways (Cloven has already spoken and he's one), and I hope you find that 99% of the folks areound her are super helpful and super gamers to boot.

1. Is it me or characters sheets are a real piece of crap? They don't even get spaces to put XP. No place for spells. What's that? Are we supposed to have some white sheets for extra informations like XP? How come they haven't changed it yet?

Clovenhoof beat me to it. I think that's the 4 page sheet with all the spots to record spels, etc. If not, PM me and I can e-mail you a PDF.

2. I thought that starting it in arejun would be a nice place to give a conan feeling to the game. I have the shadizar box set and expect to have some material in it to go for a while in the region. Am I right?

Doesn't matter. I think anywhere in the Hyborian setting is great, but you may have to create an underlying rationalle for why your particular make-up of PCs eneded up there.

3. What about my team. Should i put a NPC thief in the group? Will they be sufficiant enough? Do you have experiences with a team like that and that would be good for me to know?

I think the party make up is fine, but you may want to illustrate to the players just how deadly combat is early on so that the Barbarians realize that trying to trounce every potential baddie can ened up getting you severly roughed up very quiclkly.

Take a close look at all of the feats - players will sneak up on you and find very powerful combos if you're new to D20 - and ther are several really nasty ones that can be game changers (mostly those combining with Power Attack). Don't be affraid to modify stuff like that but try not to omit rules without considering how they fit into the larger framework of the rules.

I also agree with convincing at least one of the Cimerian Barbarians and perhaps the Scholar to get skill points in the thieving skills pretty early. Everyone having Move Silently will be crucial and thieving is really one of the most central elements to a Conan story. However, also remember that it's not about the treasure and stuff that players accumulate. Explain that they spend most of thier pocket cash on good food, booze and women in thier off time and it gives a differnt feel to the campaign than most D&D games you may have played or run.

I'd suggest steering clear of sorcery (a) except for the major villain and (b) unless you really want to go that route, a very dark one potentially, with your Scholar player. Sorcery is slightly complicated, but mostly it's very deadly and dark and can dominate the game focus. Read those mechanics carefully and look through the mid range spells to see where your Scholar player may be in a few quick levels, and decide if that's going ot break your campaign idea wide open or not. Scholars are neat flavor PCs, and can easily be made into awesome thieves or brainy warriors and don't have to be sorcerers at all.

That's about it. I haven't DM for the last 6 years and i wanna make it very good. I might have problem to adjust myself in the first couple sessions but its the same in every new game.

Well, let us know what other systems you GMed, liked or disliked, and don't let the volume of piddly mechanics on D20 intimidate you. The basic rule is that DC 15 is about average, and adding +2 is a basic increase, +4 for harders stuff. You'll get the feel of the mechanics after the first couple of sessions.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Right. I might also add that if you browse these boards, you will find a plethora of house rules for the Conan system, most of them concerning fighting styles, massive damage and also the skill system.
While I'm an addicted tweaker myself, my advice in this regard is: don't cry before it hurts. Go ahead and play with the RAW ("Rules As Written"), and then if you (and your players) get the feeling that something doesn't work properly or is broken, you can still look to fixes.

However, as Sutek says you should pay attention to the kind of feats you are going to have in your game. The Core feats are generally fine, but the Supplements - of which you have plenty if I understood you right - have a wide mix of "useless" to "overkill" feats. In particular there are some possibly game-breaking exploits by using unintended synergy effects of feats from different supplements. It's hard to give good general advice here, but the easiest solutions are
a) do not allow Supplement feats at all, or
b) allow a player to only take feats from Core and _one_ supplement that he chooses.

 

[Jacek]

1. Is it me or characters sheets are a real piece of crap? They don't even get spaces to put XP. No place for spells. What's that? Are we supposed to have some white sheets for extra informations like XP? How come they haven't changed it yet?

Like Ichabod, I prefer my own designs. However, I do use additional blank sheets for any often-changed data (hit points and the like) simply because I choose to cross the old value and add a new one rather than to use an eraser .

2 cimmerians barbarians
1 tauran borderer
1 khitan scholar
2. I thaught that starting it in arejun would be a nice place to give a conan feeling to the game.

It might be so. My guess is that for such an unlikely group any location would be good when it's set on a major trading route.

What about my team. Should i put a NPC thief in the group?

I wouldn't bother. After all you've got two strongmen on the team. That should be enough. If you really want to have an NPC, hire one during an adventure, cause that would give you several more hooks for the game.[/quote]

 

[treeplanter]

Agree, don't bother with the "need-have-this-class-in-the-party".

That is typically DnDesque. Most class are versatile enough to face most challenge. The intel bonus skills point can take any skill. Wich mean the borderer can take Knowledge arcana or Decipher script if he want too. Also multiclassing with one level thief is an option if you want to find trap of DC greater than 20.

enjoy

 

[decker423]

Agree, don't bother with the "need-have-this-class-in-the-party".

That is typically DnDesque. Most class are versatile enough to face most challenge. The intel bonus skills point can take any skill. Wich mean the borderer can take Knowledge arcana or Decipher script if he want too. Also multiclassing with one level thief is an option if you want to find trap of DC greater than 20.

enjoy

Also, the Hyborian race has ALL classes as racial favorite classes so a Hyborian can take levels in whatever classes he/she wants and still benefit from the racial class bonus of getting extra feats at 1st, 5th and 10th level (and so on). Hyborians can also pick their background skills (I recommend heal as one of them) and as mentioned earlier, the intelligence bonus to skill points let PCs put those extra skill points ANYWHERE!
Conan lets you create diverse or multi-faceted characters.