Lankhmar: City of Adventure (Conan Conversion)

[Iron_Chef]

Anyone interested in using the new Conan RPG to run adventures in Friz Lieber's world of Nehwon, post your conversion ideas here. The city of Lankhmar, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and adventure await!

Here are my preliminary ideas:

Black Wizard/White Wizard: Use Scholar with appropriate background. Black Wizards may never have a Code of Honour. White Wizards must always maintain a Code of Honour (barbarian or civilized). White Wizards who gain more than 3 points of Corruption automatically become black wizards. Augment Summoning, Curses, Focused Magical Link, Hypnotism, Necromancy and Summonings are forbidden to White Wizards, as are the following feats: Hexer, No Honour, Opportunistic Sacrifice, Ritual Sacrifice, Spawn of Dagoth Hill, Summoner, Tortured Sacrifice. White Wizards gain the following ability, which is lost if they ever do anything to lose their White Wizard status:

Healing Touch (Ex):The White Wizard's intimate connection to life magic allows him to automatically "take 20" on all Heal checks, regardless of time spent. This ability takes 1 round per use.

RACIAL TEMPLATES/FAVOURED CLASSES
Lankhmar: Hyborian, Zamorian or Zingaran? Pirate, Soldier, Thief.
Eight Great Cities/Kokgnab: Hyborian/All.
Ghouls: Darfar/Barbarian
Cold Wastes: Cimmerian or Nordheimr/Barbarian.
Horborixen/Tisinilit (Eastern Lands):
Ilthmar: Zamorian or Zingaran/Soldier or Thief.
Quarmall: City - Turanian/Noble or Soldier.
Quarmall Barrens/Mingols - Hyrkanian/Nomad.
Klesh: Kue (coastal)/Barbarian.

RELIGION CONVERSION
Beast Cults/Rat God/Shark God/Tyaa: Jhebbal Sag, Hanuman, etc.
Dead Master Thieves: Use "child of the dark" from Conan bestiary, add 5-10 levels of thief.
Death: ?
Glaggerk: Ymir.
Gods of Lankhmar: Use "child of the dark" from Conan bestiary, add 10-20 levels of thief.
Gods of Trouble: ?
Hate: Use Bodiless Slimer (advance to 20 HD, remove Fiery Breath, Increase Int/Wis/Cha to 25, casts all Hypnotism spells as a 20th level scholar).
Issek of the Jug: Mitra.
Mog/Spider God: Zath.
Votishal: Mitra (heretical).

 

[slaughterj]

Good start, I'll post up some stuff once I've finished going through the Conan book itself.

 

[Jason Durall]

Man, I'd like someone to pick up the Nehwon license and run with it with some new products!

 

[Anonymous]

Anyone interested in using the new Conan RPG to run adventures in Friz Lieber's world of Nehwon, post your conversion ideas here. The city of Lankhmar, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and adventure await!

I have been thinking of something like this for quite some time. I'm glad to see you I'm not alone in wishing for a new take on Lankmar. I have run the old 1st edition version in AD&D, GURPS anf FUDGE. It has always been a hit with my groups over the years.

Black Wizard/White Wizard: Use Scholar with appropriate background. Black Wizards may never have a Code of Honour. White Wizards must always maintain a Code of Honour (barbarian or civilized). White Wizards who gain more than 3 points of Corruption automatically become black wizards. Augment Summoning, Curses, Focused Magical Link, Hypnotism, Necromancy and Summonings are forbidden to White Wizards, as are the following feats: Hexer, No Honour, Opportunistic Sacrifice, Ritual Sacrifice, Spawn of Dagoth Hill, Summoner, Tortured Sacrifice. White Wizards gain the following ability, which is lost if they ever do anything to lose their White Wizard status:

In stead of making some things "forbidden" to a White wizard, make them give the White Wizard corruption. Thus you can make "grey wizard" like the Mouser.

Also have you thought about Eastern Fire Wizards of the Snow Witches?

 

[Iron_Chef]

In stead of making some things "forbidden" to a White wizard, make them give the White Wizard corruption. Thus you can make "grey wizard" like the Mouser.

Also have you thought about Eastern Fire Wizards of the Snow Witches?

James Mishler has created Iranistanni fire magic as a sorcery style. I was going to use that. http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1145

For snow magic, I'd convert some D&D spells like ice knife (dagger?), ice storm and sleet storm, maybe reverse the damage type of the fire magic spells to cold if they fit. Wouldn't be too hard.

In any case, I wouldn't allow any spells higher than 5th level to be ported over. Cthulhu d20 has some spells: death by flames, cloak of fire...

 

[Yuan-Ti]

Great idea, guys! Leiber's early stories are awesome!

Sad story... I first read Leiber rather recently, buying the two short story collections published by White Wolf. Curious as to why they only published two when it says in one of them they planned five, I posted the question on their forums. The reply i got was: "Sad to say, but there just wasn't the demand for it."

:evil: FOOLS! YOU WHO HAVE NOT READ LEIBER AND CALL YOURSELF FANTASY FANS ARE FOOLS, COWARDS, AND NERDY-LOSER-HALFMEN! :evil:

After the anger comes the sadness...

 

[MightyCthulhu]

:evil: FOOLS! YOU WHO HAVE NOT READ LEIBER AND CALL YOURSELF FANTASY FANS ARE FOOLS, COWARDS, AND NERDY-LOSER-HALFMEN! :evil:

I read swords in the mist, but never got heavily in Leiber. I tried Sword and Devlitry, but never finished it.

Oddly I read SitM AFTER reading the AD&D Lankhmar book. Which I was interested in because of the LAnkhmar entries in Deities and Demigods (Legends and Lore for you pups.)

Anyway I hope this goes somewhere, I'd love to rekindle my Lankhmar game for a new crew.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Iron Chef, I'm so glad you picked this up and ran with it. I'm still working up Fafhrd, but I'll hopefully have some time this weekend to finish him and the mouser.

For my reference, what do you think would represent their skills through most of their adventures. I'm thinking something along these lines:

Fafhrd: Bbn 3, Sldr 5, Thf 4
Mouser: Thf 8, Sldr 4

One question I'm trying to figure out is how to account for their respective Lore knowledge. Their both dillitantes on questions of magic or language, so what would you think of the following feats:

Lingust Your casual study of languages increases your chances of being able to translate obscure texts.

With this feat, you may make an intelligence check to attempt to decipher a language or text that you are otherwise not trained in. This applies only to written texts, and cannot be used to speak a language that you have not learned. When you come across a text in an unknown language, the GM may allow you to attempt a check to determine whether you can translate the passage. DC is set by the GM on the basis of the obscurity of the text. In any event, translation takes a minimum of 10 minutes per page. You make take 10 or 20 on this check.

Skald Training You have been trained by the Skalds of the Frozen Waste.

Prerequisite: Perform; any 1 knowledge skill

This feat has two functions. First, a character with this feat may perform a Lore check to recall obscure or legendary information. Treat Lore checks as you would a Bardic knowledge check.

Second, you may use this feat to craft legendary tales for performance. These tales can either be inspiring or intimidating. Characters must choose which type of tales they would like to perform when they take the feat. Singing Skalds may perform an inspirational songs 1/day, while chanting Skalds may perform a war chant 1/dale. Inspirational songs are treated as a Bard's "inspire" ability. War chants require all enemies who hear them to make a Will save aginast the Skald's Perform Check or be Shaken for 1 round.

What think ye? I'm open to suggestions as I just came up with these feats off the top of my head.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Iron Chef, I'm so glad you picked this up and ran with it. I'm still working up Fafhrd, but I'll hopefully have some time this weekend to finish him and the mouser.

For my reference, what do you think would represent their skills through most of their adventures. I'm thinking something along these lines:

Fafhrd: Bbn 3, Sldr 5, Thf 4
Mouser: Thf 8, Sldr 4

One question I'm trying to figure out is how to account for their respective Lore knowledge. Their both dillitantes on questions of magic or language, so what would you think of the following feats:

Lingust Your casual study of languages increases your chances of being able to translate obscure texts.

With this feat, you may make an intelligence check to attempt to decipher a language or text that you are otherwise not trained in. This applies only to written texts, and cannot be used to speak a language that you have not learned. When you come across a text in an unknown language, the GM may allow you to attempt a check to determine whether you can translate the passage. DC is set by the GM on the basis of the obscurity of the text. In any event, translation takes a minimum of 10 minutes per page. You make take 10 or 20 on this check.

Skald Training You have been trained by the Skalds of the Frozen Waste.

Prerequisite: Perform; any 1 knowledge skill

This feat has two functions. First, a character with this feat may perform a Lore check to recall obscure or legendary information. Treat Lore checks as you would a Bardic knowledge check.

Second, you may use this feat to craft legendary tales for performance. These tales can either be inspiring or intimidating. Characters must choose which type of tales they would like to perform when they take the feat. Singing Skalds may perform an inspirational songs 1/day, while chanting Skalds may perform a war chant 1/dale. Inspirational songs are treated as a Bard's "inspire" ability. War chants require all enemies who hear them to make a Will save aginast the Skald's Perform Check or be Shaken for 1 round.

What think ye? I'm open to suggestions as I just came up with these feats off the top of my head.

TBH, I haven't read more than 2-3 of the Lankhmar books (back in the 80s), and am relying on the old 1st edition AD&D Lankhmar setting book from 1985 for all my working knowledge for this conversion project. This probably makes me unqualified in several areas (such as working up stats for the characters), and I will happily defer to you or anyone with more setting knowledge on such matters. :wink:

I always loved Lankhmar: the city, but the rest of the world was really far too vague to arouse much interest for me. That, and it was a bit too weird. But the city itself, now that was a setting fit for a king! Why would you ever want to leave? Even though we only played one campaign in it (I was a white wizard in one of my rare good guy roles---I should have been a thief!), its impact on our group is still felt to this day, and is a major source of nostalgia.

Before Conan came out, I was thinking of resurrecting Lankhmar for my next campaign; either that or Thieves' World... I have 20 pages of notes on Thieves' World, mostly cribbed from Crothian over at ENWorld, their resident TW guru. Plus, I own the old Chaosium TW RPG box set, which is really very nice (despite the insanely crappy art and scribbly maps), and which has a lot of similarity to TSR's Lankhmar, only the best part is, not much overlap---meaning you could combine a lot of the TW stuff like encounter tables, NPCs and locations into Lankhmar, and vice versa. But then, Conan came out, and it was always my first love, even though I'd never gotten to play it (not even the GURPS or TSR version). Anyway, I know a lot of people wanted to recreate a d20 Thieves' World or Lankhmar (both very worthy goals), and the Conan rules make the best fit, meaning there's much less hard work to do and just a bunch of small tweaks here and there, AFAIC.

As to your two feat ideas, I like them, especially as they could fit in with Conan's world as well (the Nordheimir are known for their cheerful battle songs and intimidating chants, I just read about a Vanir pirate using them both in CONAN AND THE TREASURE OF PYTHON). However, I think the Skald is slightly underpowered. I would let anyone taking it perform both types (songs and war chants), and allow use of this feat as a free action once per day, allowing the skald to wade into battle while singing/chanting.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Skald Training You have been trained by the Skalds of the Frozen Waste.

Prerequisite: Perform; any 1 knowledge skill

This feat has two functions. First, a character with this feat may perform a Lore check to recall obscure or legendary information. Treat Lore checks as you would a Bardic knowledge check.

Second, you may use this feat to craft legendary tales for performance. These tales can either be inspiring or intimidating. Characters may perform either type of song. You may perform an inspirational songs 1/day, or may perform a war chant 1/day. Inspirational songs are treated as a Bard's "inspire" ability. War chants require all enemies who hear them to make a Will save aginast the Skald's Perform Check or be Shaken for the duration of the Skald's Chant, plus 1 round. Singing a song is a free action and does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Remus, I've tweaked it a bit further (and made it into its own thread here so we can get faster feedback). Check it out:

Nordheimir Skald Training
You have been trained by the Skalds of Nordheim.

Prerequisite: Must be a Nordheimer, Perform 3 ranks, 1 rank in any knowledge skill

This feat has two functions. First, a character with this feat may perform a Lore check to recall obscure or legendary information. Treat Lore checks as you would a Bardic Knowledge check.

Second, you may use this feat to craft legendary tales for performance. These tales can either be inspiring or intimidating. Characters may perform either type of song. You may perform an inspirational songs 1/day, or may perform a war chant 1/day. Inspirational songs are treated as a Bard's "inspire" ability.

Inspire Courage: A skald with three ranks in Perform (Sing) can sing so that all allies within 30 ft. (including the skald) receive a +1 morale bonus to Will saves vs. fear/terror and charm effects, and a +1 morale bonus to hit and damage. This bonus increases to +2 at 10 ranks of Perform (Sing), +3 at 15 ranks, and +4 at 20 ranks.

Inspire Competence: A skald with six or more ranks in Perform (Sing) can cause one ally within 30 ft. (including himself) to gain a +2 morale bonus to one skill check. This bonus stacks with the aid another action. This bonus increases to +3 with 12 ranks in Perform (Sing), and +4 with 18 ranks.

War chants require all enemies who hear them to make a Will save against the Skald's Perform Check or be Shaken for the duration of the Skald's Chant, plus 1 round. Singing a song is a free action and does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

However, each time the skald is hit while singing or chanting, he must make a Concentration check to continue the song or chant (DC 10 + Damage dealt). Failure means the song or chant ends immediately and any lingering effects end at the end of the round the skald failed his save.


You'll need the 3.5e D&D Player's Handbook to check out the bardic lore and expanded inspirational music.