Increasing CON and/or INT

Oly

Mongoose
A quick question that I can't find the answer for.

Are the effects of CON and/or INT increases applied for the levels you already have?

That's probably worded really badly....

Basically you're level 6 and your CON increases upping the bonus from +2 to +3. For that new level you'll gain one additional Hit Point. Do you however gain another 5 for the previous 5 levels?

Likewise for INT and skill points, do you gain extra skill points for the levels you already have?

If so what happens if CON and/or INT drop in the future? Dropping hit points is relatively easy, dropping skill points would be very complicated....

Thanks in advance.
 
Yeah, that's the way it is; CON is retroactive, INT is not.

Here's an old thread where I was thinking about making INT retroactive as well if you want to check it out: link
 
The way i play, there are no retroactive increase of points, whats the logic in that? You whant more hit points you multiclass into soldier, you want skill points you multiclass into thief...
The way i see it, there is no definition of retroactiveness in the rules, you increasse you con mod you gain more hit points (i´m thinking in adding bonus hit points from Con to the static number you gain afther 10th level, that way the natural increase of con continues to be used for something), the same way with Int, you increase it you gain more skill points, why would you gain that you sould have gainned in the passed?
Retroactiveness simply doesn´t make sense to me.
 
Castel said:
Retroactiveness simply doesn´t make sense to me.
You're right in that its a tad weird.
An issue for me is game-balance, though; you get nice benefits for raising your Str and Dex (bonuses to attack rolls, damage and defence), and if you don't get anything (well, not much anyway) for raising Con or Int, then that means that a character will always be better off starting with high Con/Int scores and raising Str/Dex as he levels up, rather then the other way around (damn, that was a long sentence :) ).

I don't actually use retroactive skill points in my game, though, but retroactive hit points I do allow.
 
Retroactive Hit Points for Increasing Con is a rule.

Retoractive Skill points is not a rule. Probably because you would magically learn skills when it increases. Becoming smarter doesn't help you learn things in the past, just the future.
 
Retroactive Hit Points for Increasing Con is a rule?
Please tell me were is that written in "Conan Rpg", in what page?
I haven´t seem that high int and con are better, actually starting with a high constitution gives you more hit points (since you don´t get retroactive hitpoints from Con increase, in the way i roleplay, but i´m thinking in adding it to bonus hipoints you gain after 10th level) and high inteligence gives you more skills, but then if you increase them after it would you more skills the same way, the diference is what kind of character you want, because i dont know if you guys noticed, but if you dont have high Str, you wont deal much damage, and without high dexterity you won´t dogde arrows, the way I see it, Con is the only one without use after 10level, and i´m gonna change that.
 
Conan RPG Atlantean Edition page 10.

Fourth bullet point under Constitution.

'If a character's Constitution score changes enough to alter his Constitution modifier, the character's hit points also increase or decrease accordingly.'
 
One of the reasons for CON being retroactive is because of CON damage such as poisons. When you take CON damage, you lose the appropriate Hit Points due to your bonus. If you deny a character those points, you're cheating them, and they can die quicker than they should.

INT on the other hand is not affected in the same way.
 
Castel said:
The way i play, there are no retroactive increase of points, whats the logic in that? You whant more hit points you multiclass into soldier, you want skill points you multiclass into thief...

Retroactiveness simply doesn´t make sense to me.
Your HP are not static, they go up and down all the time to represent your current state of health. Likewise your Con represents your current fitness. If your Con changes then your HP change to reflect your changing health and fitness.

Your Skill Points are static. They represent things you learned in the past. If your Int changes you do not forget things you learned in the past nor do you suddenly gain new skills that you never learned before.

Thus a change in your Con affects your HP while a change in your Int does not affect your skill points.

This does have the effect of making increases to Int less valuable than other attributes. However it really is the only sane way to do things as adjusting skill points when players take Int damage would be a nightmare othwerise.

Later.
 
Ohhh i always thought that it were temporary changes in Con that made that increase or decrease of hitpoints and them being temporary... well it seems that you guys were right... them i´m, gonna start GMing right, and when i play i´m sure gonna complain to my GM about those hitpoints that i sould have gained...
 
I would prefer for changes in INT to affect skill points, for the following reasons.
1. If someone loses INT points (permanently), then they aren't as *smart* and shouldn't have the same amount of skill, not simply on a going-forward basis. (I wouldn't worry about this on a temporary basis due to extra bookkeeping and minimal effect.) (Further, don't you lose skill points if you are energy drained and lose levels? If so, then it shouldn't be any more trouble to address losing skill points from permanent INT loss in the infrequent times it would occur.)
2. If someone gains INT points, they are *smarter* and should gain points. While I understand this should apply on a forward basis, they wouldn't for #1 above. Further, see #3.
3. Without making it apply retroactive, you create a perverse incentive mechanism within the game system. Specifically it promotes having a higher than appropriate INT at the start for a character, because the character knows he won't get as much from the INT later, and further, it promotes buying other attributes other than INT because you get forward and retroactive value out of those other attributes.
4. If it is retroactive, it is easier to confirm skill points are correct for a character (i.e., to identify math errors). Also, you can't check the math on high level pregenerated characters because you won't know what levels at which they gained INT and points gained shifted.

Thus, I would prefer INT to affect skill points retroactively, for better or worse.
 
If a character's INT changes, then yes, they do get smarter or dumber. But the amount of skill points they have do not change. If a skill is INT based, it will be affected, but they won't lose or gain skill points.

Imagine if every time a character took INT damage or got some kind of buff spell raising it; are you gonna stop the game till you re-adjust that characters skill points? no.
 
Well i must say i agree with Urdinarian.
I don´t ussually mind about habilities being unbalanced, since the way i play you roll the dice, and the result stays were it "lands", you roll STR, DEX, CON, WIZ, INT, CHA and that way you can´t complain much about, it would be just luck (or lack of it).
 
slaughterj said:
4. If it is retroactive, it is easier to confirm skill points are correct for a character (i.e., to identify math errors). Also, you can't check the math on high level pregenerated characters because you won't know what levels at which they gained INT and points gained shifted.
I agree. Actually, when I design high level NPCs, I usually cheat a little and just assume that skill points are indeed retroactive. It is simply much easier to calculate total skill points based on final Int, rather than going through the levels and taking into account when Int was raised.
A level 16 barbarian with final Int 14? 19x6=114 skill points. Bam! Done. :)

urdinaran said:
Imagine if every time a character took INT damage or got some kind of buff spell raising it; are you gonna stop the game till you re-adjust that characters skill points? no.
Well, if you wanted to, you could always houserule that skill points were retroactively affected by permanent changes to Int, but not temporary ones. Besides, temporary Int gains/losses aren't all that common in Conan, are they (its never happened in my game)?
 
urdinaran said:
Imagine if every time a character took INT damage or got some kind of buff spell raising it; are you gonna stop the game till you re-adjust that characters skill points? no.

I made a lot more points that than, plus I address the temporary change situation (just skip it for sake of ease of recordkeeping) and INT damage (if permanent, adjust skill points: (a) this will be rare or never in most campaigns, and (b) makes sense - someone who gets "brained" with a club in the real world who loses some mental faculty isn't exactly on the top of their game anymore with previously-acquired skills).
 
slaughterj said:
urdinaran said:
Imagine if every time a character took INT damage or got some kind of buff spell raising it; are you gonna stop the game till you re-adjust that characters skill points? no.
I made a lot more points that than, plus I address the temporary change situation (just skip it for sake of ease of recordkeeping) and INT damage (if permanent, adjust skill points: (a) this will be rare or never in most campaigns, and (b) makes sense - someone who gets "brained" with a club in the real world who loses some mental faculty isn't exactly on the top of their game anymore with previously-acquired skills).
That's the way it's worked in our group's D&D game too, so I assumed if someone get's "dumbded down" in a Conan game their skill points will be affected too. If it's a trap we handle it at that point, not too hard to figure out how many points lost=how many skill points lost, as it's only INT and not Racial bonus skill points as I recall (since I'm too lazy to open the RPG). But a gain in INT (due to level increase) doesn't make you more learned or versatile years before, rather you gain insight from this point forward. I always think of the book Flowers for Algernon, where the retard is injected with a syrum that makes his IQ raise higher than any in human history, only to slowly regress. Written in 1st person, you read as his grammar improves, his perceptions, skills, thought processes, even emotions "improve" and conversely as he regresses you read how he cannot do things he could hours before. Sure, it's a sci-fi book nothing to do with Conan, but as others may have heard of it or the movie I'm using it as an example I think (hope) bolsters my and slaughterj's point.
 
Bregales said:
But a gain in INT (due to level increase) doesn't make you more learned or versatile years before, rather you gain insight from this point forward.

Setting aside whether one can "gain" INT, rather than just skills, in real-world settings, since one can for game purposes, then increased skill points added retroactively via the INT gain could easily represent your better understanding of what you experienced before (think of those "aha!" moments you've had in life when you realize the various parts of things you know before added together provided you with a greater synergistic insight to something). Further, as I noted, it would make it easier to deal with pregenerated characters, and avoid the perverse incentive mechanism I mentioned.
 
Thanks to everyone for the replies.

I'll go with CON being retroactive but I'll pass on INT.

Thanks again. It couldn't have been such a stupid question after all :)
 
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