Nemedian Adventurers?

[J-Star]

I don't believe this... it was there in the book all the time. Not much, but definitely the kind of thing I was looking for, at least to get started...

P. 270 (the Gazeteer chapter) right at the top under the heading of Nemedia's military forces...

Adventurers: The Nemedian Adventurers (soldier 3) form a special class of either former knights fallen on hard times, or men-at-arms who have not yet attained knighthood. They are well armed and armored, usually in grey mail hauberks and morion helmets (treat as steel caps). They wield greatswords, whether on foot or on horseback. All are highly experienced in the ways of war, often more so than most of the actual knights. 18,000 Nemedian Adventurers could be mustered if need be.

So there we have it. I'm going to assume that in game terms the character has weapon focus (and specialization and maybe improved critical, if high enough level) with the greatsword. Choices of formation combat would probably be heavy infantry first followed by heavy cavalry.

Any thoughts on other skills and feats? Since Nemedians are Hyborian, which two choices of background skills would be most appropriate?

Does anyone know what a morion helmet looks like? I'm curious.

But my most pressing question of all is... how the heck do you wield a greatsword on horseback? The war sword seems like a much more appropriate weapon for this charater.

I swear, the Hyborians (Zingarans too) should've been allowed to wield war swords, not greatswords, as if they were martial weapons, like the Nordheimir are. If I were an actual GM, I would probably make that a houserule.

 

[Ian Sturrock]

Does anyone know what a morion helmet looks like? I'm curious.

But my most pressing question of all is... how the heck do you wield a greatsword on horseback?

A morion is your standard Spanish Conquistador style of helm.

I was a bit curious about the greatswords on horseback too... but Howard describes the Nemedian Adventurer met by Conan as having a greatsword and a horse. I guess you can go for the high fantasy approach, and assume it's possible to use a greatsword from horseback (the d20 rules don't prohibit it, after all...) or the low fantasy approach, and assume they have another weapon of some kind for mounted use.

 

[Yokiboy]

WithConan's free multi-classing, more core classes would be better than PrCs, IMO.

I definitely second this! I think a there's still room for a handful of other core classes, not sure quite which yet, a generic Adventurer/Explorer/Treasure Hunter type of character could easily fit in. I am also behind Iron_Chef on seeing how a Trader/Merchant could be turned into a fun core class (it has always been one of the classes in Sweden's most popular fantasy rpg).

With the multitude of feats and multi-classing you can create just about any character you can imagine, but it is always fun with some more templates to get your ideas going.

TTFN,

Yokiboy

 

[J-Star]

A morion is your standard Spanish Conquistador style of helm.

I was a bit curious about the greatswords on horseback too... but Howard describes the Nemedian Adventurer met by Conan as having a greatsword and a horse. I guess you can go for the high fantasy approach, and assume it's possible to use a greatsword from horseback (the d20 rules don't prohibit it, after all...) or the low fantasy approach, and assume they have another weapon of some kind for mounted use.

Thanks Ian

My approach would be to fall back on that all-important rule in the Conan RPG... "If you don't like it, change it!" If I were running a campaign, one of my house rules would be that Nordheimir, Hyborians, and Zingarans can all wield war swords as a martial weapon. It already counts as a martial weapon when weilded in two hands on foot or in one hand while mounted, so - as others have stated - it's almost a waste of a feat to acquire the exotic weapon proficency: war sword. This sword is also the ideal weapon for a warrior who fights both on foot and on horseback, so if I ran a campaign, Nemedian Adventurers would carry war swords. The result would be that the war sword would be much more common and the great sword would be a truly exotic (in the D20 sense) weapon... which makes sense to me.

 

[sanseveria]

I'm also in the no PrC for the Conan RPG... However, I kind of like the idea of special scholarly classes, as long as they ain't overpowered. You could easily have PrC for each background, as a level 10 scholar with the independant background should look quite different from a level 10 scholar with the Lay Priest background IMO.

SS

 

[badmudderfugger]

We were just talking about this today in my FLGS. I would be really disappointed to see prestige classes filling up future Conan products (except Scrolls of Skelos, but even then I think that different feats/styles could probably handle the difference).

I love the Conan multiclassing system (it really supports characters making snap decisions about the direction their characters are going to go, based on their situations). In my Nordheimer campaign I'm going to be taking the characters all over the place, and it'll be cool to see how they choose to change their characters, based on where they are and what they're doing (Rurik finds himself on the run from slavers in Shem and takes up with a band of Nomad raiders or learning the more disciplined style of the Soldier after being conscripted in a more civilized land).

PrC have their place in D&D, I agree, but you can do everything that they do through feats and races in Conan.