Pirates

[Spectator]

For being a skill based profession (after all sailing is a lot more than just sitting on a boat), I really think that they get the shaft by only being allowed a skill progression bracket of 4pts/ level.

I'm tempted to bust it up to 6, or maybe even 8pts.
IS there something flawed with my logic?
After all, most pirates won't have the benefit of high intelligence like a scholar so they won't be racking up massive bonus points, now will they?

Obviously I can house-rule anythiing, but I just wanted to put it past my peers to see what you guys think?

PS I'm still fooling with 1st Edition.

 

[Clovenhoof]

I answer with a definitive "maybe".

Do you play with a Consolidated Skill List? That's what we do to ameliorate the chronic skill shortage that virtually all classes suffer. So we use Acrobatics, Athletics, Perception and Stealth... I think that's it.
We didn't increase any class's skill bracket.
That said, I do have the impression that our Pirate's overall skills are a bit low, but I'm not even sure if he calculates his points correctly.

Also, keep in mind that the Pirate gets a bonus to all seafaring-relevant skills as class feature.
Anyway, it surely wouldn't break the game if you increased the Pirate's skills to 6+Int. You might also tie this to a rule similar to the Scholar rule saying you have to use a portion of those points to increase certain skills each level.
For a Pirate with 6+Int skills, I'd say he should use at least 2 points per level to pump Balance, Profession(Sailor), Use Rope and whatever else you deem appropriate.

BTW, an acquaintance of mine doesn't play Conan per se, but his group simply doubles the skill points for all classes in all their D20 games, because they simply got frustrated by the piddly skill allowances in the RAW.

 

[seanbickford]

Clovenhoof:

I know this was discussed on another thread, but what are the skills that your group uses? The consolidated skills that we use are:

Acrobatics
Athletics
Academics
Arcana
Bluff
Craft
Heal
Intuition
Legerdemain
Lore
Nature
Perception
Persuasion
Ride
Sailing
Search
Stealth

I just give them 1/2 the amount of skill points that they would normally receive. I tried using the Star Wars Saga trained/untrained rules, but it wasn't popular with the group. I think they wanted more flexibility and didn't want to spend a Feat to become trained.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Well, we only combine a handful of skills, and there's a special mechanism that I will explain in a minute:

Acrobatics: Balance and Tumble
Athletics: Climb, Jump, Swim
Perception: Listen, Spot
Stealth: Hide, Move Silently

Here's the trick: these combinations are only used for spending your levelup skill points. The skill list on your character sheet doesn't change. So if you spend one point in Athletics you increase all of Climb, Jump and Swim according to your class skill list. The normal rule for using Int bonus skill points applies.

Example 1: you have Listen as class skill but not Spot. By spending 1 skill point on Perception, you get 1 rank in Listen and 1/2 rank in Spot.

Example 2: you have neither Balance nor Tumble on your class skill list, and spend 1 bonus point from Int in Acrobatics. You get 1 rank each in Balance and Tumble.

That may _sound_ a bit complicated at first but in play it is completely unproblematic. You just have to pay attention during levelup, but have no further troubles during actual play.
The big advantage here is that racial or circumstantial skill modifiers - like a Cimmerian's +2 to Climb - can be applied just as written in the book. No fiddling and rebalancing required, and no bonus becomes superfluous or overpowered.

 

[Spectator]

Thanks guys,
I contemplated using the combined skill list, but I never was able to get around the fact that a shemite nomad who invests in atletics, could swim like Michael Phelps.
But glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks pirates get gypped.

 

[Clovenhoof]

On the other hand, if you pimp the Pirate you may with the same justification do the same for the Borderer, because he also needs to use a variety of skills.

And if you upgrade the Borderer, your Barbarian and Nomad might start complaining... but if you improve those, your Thieves and Scholars may feel shafted because they don't have a significant skill edge anymore...

So in short, you might just as well give each class +2 extra skill points per level or so.

Mind you, the merged skill list we use is worth up to 5 free skill points per level. That goes quite a long way. For instance, I have a Barb that gets 5 skills per level. I always use the bonus Int point to buy a cross-class skill like Acrobatics or Sense Motive. The base 4 points alternate between Athletics, Perception, Stealth and Survival, plus any other class skills I want to pump a little (like Intimidate). I can't say I'm lacking.

I contemplated using the combined skill list, but I never was able to get around the fact that a shemite nomad who invests in atletics, could swim like Michael Phelps.

See, with the system I described you get around that problem.

 

[Spectator]

Thanks ClovenHoof,
I will have to take a look into it a bit more, but I am intrigued.
I have always liked "Stealth" as opposed to move silent and Hide.
You're right about the other characters griping for more points, aint it always like that?

 

[treeplanter]

Acrobatics: Balance and Tumble
Athletics: Climb, Jump, Swim
Perception: Listen, Spot
Stealth: Hide, Move Silently

Don't wanna mess the party, but Imho the consilidation of first 2 categories is not good.

If you wanna consolidate, Acrobatics should include Balance, tumble and Jump.
Climb and Swim should remain separate skills.

Why? Take an acrobat, let say a gymnast or a circus guy. He will be good at balancing, tumbling and jumping. However unless he specificly learned swiming and climbing he will NOT be better than any John Doe (well maybe a bit because he is fit).

Also, what the link with the cimmerian being expert rock climber with swimming?

In fact I think swimming and climbing must be the the most opposed of all skills

 

[Spectator]

I never liked how they seperate SEARCH from SPOT.
I truly think they should be combined as well.
If you are a good spotter perceiving the hidden door panel should not be hard when searching the King's Harem chamber, right?
IF you want to make it tougher and have the smart folks do it best I suppose you could add the modifier for INT bonus as well.

 

[Clovenhoof]

My reasoning to combine the skills exactly as I did is to keep the related abilities coherent.
Climb, Jump and Swim all go on Strength, Balance and Tumble are Dex, and so forth. On the other hand, Spot goes in Wis and Search on Int, which was my main reason to leave Search out.
To be honest this is a remnant of former attempts to actually play with a shortened skill list, which brought up exactly the problems that people describe here.
However, Search is rather redundant for us, as our GM typically just calls for a Perception roll (i.e. Spot) to discover hidden stuff, so for all practical purposes you could say we did roll Search into Perception.

Also, what the link with the cimmerian being expert rock climber with swimming?

With my system introduced above, a Cimmerian buying Athletics points will get ranks on Climb, Jump and Swim according to his class list, but get his racial +2 bonus only to Climb.

And just in case you haven't noticed: Class Skills are tied to, well, Classes and not Races. Mongoose gave Conan 4 ranks in Swim at 3rd level. Cimmerians can learn to swim as good as anybody.

Swimming is not rocket science. There's no good reason to make it unnecessarily hard for characters to learn to swim. What's the gain if you toss them in the water and they drown?

By the way, there's a feat Athletic that gives you a boost to Climb AND Swim so the system considers them related. As for Jump, that's a skill that gets used very rarely (at least in our games), but one reason to roll it into Athletics is that I consider it to be the fighting-man's Tumble. In short, for balancing reasons.

As I've said before, I am not interested in a hard-sausage reality simulation like The Dark Eye or RuleMonster.

 

[treeplanter]

Well of course climbing and swiming are not rocket science but they both require training. Swiming in calm water is DC 10 wich mean anyone with decent srenght is able to do that. Swiming in hard condition or for long period is another story. For fun, just go to a swimming pool and see for yourself.

I've hard time explaining how a Corinthian from the karpash mountain would equally good in Climbing and Swiming.

Athletic just give a "fitness" bonus to 2 skills it does not make them related. It just say since you're fit you are better at both climbing and swimming, wich is fine with me.

Then following your logic, why make skills, just roll attribute check

 

[Clovenhoof]

Then following your logic, why make skills, just roll attribute check

That has absolutely nothing to do with my logic at all.

 

[Spectator]

Then following your logic, why make skills, just roll attribute check

That has absolutely nothing to do with my logic at all.

That's what they do in Castles and Crusaders, a pretty righteous game, if I may say so myself.

Clovebhoof is right when he said:
As I've said before, I am not interested in a hard-sausage reality simulation like The Dark Eye or RuleMonster.

and then said if you roll the dice as your character is crossing 1 foot stream and drowns, what's the point in that.

CH, I agree focus more on combat and less on skil intracacies.

 

[treeplanter]

Well not your logic, one logic you support if you prefer (skill compression).

Personnaly I don't like skill compression, as skill help me round and define my character. The opposite is having no skill and rolling ability check.

As you said:

"As I've said before, I am not interested in a hard-sausage reality simulation like The Dark Eye or RuleMonster."

Then why not just roll an attribute check? you'll save lot of time

 

[Clovenhoof]

You're committing a logical fallacy here, namely reductio ad absurdum. Just because someone doesn't like having to manage 50 skills (and spread a measly 5 points among them) doesn't permit the conclusion that they prefer not to have skills at all.

But for the record: pure ability checks are way too coarse and random. You'd be stuck with DCs around 5 to 10 if you want to make sure your players don't botch all their rolls.

There are also game-theoretical considerations, e.g. the more skills there are, the higher is the risk of nobody having a particular skill required by a situation. And if the GM makes sure that there are no vital tests on skills nobody bought, then why have the skill on the list at all?

Consolidating skills has many advantages, for instance it frees up some points that players can spend on flavour or more limited skills they normally never could afford.
(Side note: here, again, The Dark Eye goes exactly the wrong route. The system has >100 skills, and the designers say they want the players to invest in fluff skills, and try to achieve that by making the fluff skills cheap and vital skills awefully expensive. Result: players save up all their points to afford the next vital skill increase and don't spend jack on fluff skills.)

Again, note that I didn't scratch a single skill off the list, they're all there; some are just easier to buy than others, or, you get more value for your money.
It's a simple market rule: You need to make vital goods cheaper if you want the consumer to spend on luxury.

So the point is that moderate skill consolidation in fact leads to more rounded out and diverse characters. I agree that this point is nullified if you boil down the skill list too much. The most extreme one I've seen was about 12 skills or so. That eventually leads to everyone looking the same, or having every skill to some degree, so nothing is special anymore.

Another absolutely valid approach is to increase skill points across the board. But I find it harder to strike the right balance here.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Double post, I'd like to go back to the original topic: Pirates.

Remember, everything's better with Pirates!

Now I'd like to discuss the class as such: do you have recommendations how to skill a Pirate? (and by "to skill" I also mean feat choices, fighting style etc.) Corebook material only, please.

Background: we have a Zingaran Pirate in the group, whose player is new to Conan. I had advised him to go for a Dex build and skill for Greater Combat Reflexes, the one where you get an AoO against any opponent who attacks you and misses. Unfortunately the GM vetoed and will not allow this non-core feat in our game.
We also have a Temptress in the group that specializes in Bluff/Feint, so it would be preferrable if the Pirate took a different route.

 

[Hervé]

I must admit I have a problem with Pirates out of a seafaring campaign. The Thurian continent have only two places for them, the Western Ocean and the Vilayet Sea. What if the campaign don't go to these places? Isn't the Bandit a more versatile class for Conan's World ? (Though I think too that Pirates rock!). In our last campaign arc, the players spent months in the Eastern Desert, never seeing a pool of water larger than an oasis. A pirate would have a hard time there, don't you think?

As for skill compression, we didn't try it yet but doesn't it emphasize the skill points difference between classes? I mean it sure help low skill points classes like the Soldier, but some other classes like the Thief have already a huge amount of skill points. In our campaign, the Thief has more than 100 skill points when the soldier get a measly 20. With a shorter skill list, doesn't it create a greater imbalance, with thieves reaching unreasonably high skill levels?

 

[Clovenhoof]

I used to have similar concerns, but I stopped worrying about it. You could say the same about Nomads in the western regions etc. The Bandit option isn't a bad alternative, I think it's just not an official class because there aren't any bandits in the Conan stories (at least none that wouldn't qualify as Nomads or somesuch).

Our player also was reluctant at first to take the Pirate class, but I assured him that the Seamanship bonuses aren't such a big deal, and that the class is fully playable on dry land as well. Of course a Pirate will always want to escape the landlock, and it shouldn't be a problem tailoring the campaign accordingly.
For example, in our current game we have just hit level 7 and won a fine Galley as a prize. So we'll be seafaring for the next few adventures, giving the Pirate opportunity to shine, and then the focus will shift to something different again.

As for skill compression, we didn't try it yet but doesn't it emphasize the skill points difference between classes?

That depends on what skills you merge and how. Note that we did not merge any such skills as Knowledge, Disable Device, Open Lock, Forgery etc. etc., so the classes that typically need these skills still have to buy them separately. Combining the purchase of Climb/Jump/Swim is a boon especially for Barbarians, Borderers and Pirates, because all 3 are class skills for them.

 

[treeplanter]

Yeah, I don't see the concern of not getting often the seafearing bonus. Every class get situational ability, so it is not a big deal. Nomad without horse, borderer not in is favoured terrain, Barbarian encountering no trap, soldier getting no combat are all equivalent situation to Pirate not getting on a ship.

I think the pirate is pretty balanced as now. Decent defense, sneak attack, ferocious attack (non synergic with sneak but still a good power to have).

One thing you could do is extend seamanship as it also play as favoured terrain: Coastal, but on the other end your pirate would end up with an insane defence pretty often

 

[Ichabod]

Now I'd like to discuss the class as such: do you have recommendations how to skill a Pirate? (and by "to skill" I also mean feat choices, fighting style etc.) Corebook material only, please.

Background: we have a Zingaran Pirate in the group, whose player is new to Conan. I had advised him to go for a Dex build and skill for Greater Combat Reflexes, the one where you get an AoO against any opponent who attacks you and misses. Unfortunately the GM vetoed and will not allow this non-core feat in our game.
We also have a Temptress in the group that specializes in Bluff/Feint, so it would be preferrable if the Pirate took a different route.

Best thing to do with pirate is be a wastrel so that you get enough sneak attack damage that you don't need to do the high STR, 2h fighting thing. In a vacuum, for a pure pirate, i.e. 1/n thief/pirate, I'd go with a high STR and do 2h fighting like any fighter, have DEX not suck to take advantage of good dodge DV and initiative, have Combat Expertise and Improved Feint and Fleet Footed at all costs, get Navigation ASAP, not worry a whole lot about Tumble after 5 ranks. More defensive than a typical barbarian build but with okay pop.

Outside of core, take Fencing School to cheat Improved Feint and whatever else.

But, there's no vacuum with parties. What does the party need? Our party needs Navigation, P: Sailor out of the pirate since our original sailor is more of a soldier than anything else. Our pirate was built as a 14th level character with a 22 CHA and the Intimidate feats, which is 1) unlikely to occur in other campaigns and 2) meant he could go straight to enough SA for MDS and not have to play all of the levels where his SA sucked.

Typically, I'd see the comparative advantage of the pirate over the barbarian being that the barbarian will mobility into hordes to Cleave them to death while the pirate will mobility and Fleet Footed through hordes to achieve some specific goal, like nuking a sorcerer. Sorcererkiller is a niche that could be taken in which case make sure Will saves are as high as possible.

Anyway, still don't see a reason to play a pirate over a wastrel. My wastrels have had too many combat options and ginormous skill ranks.