Remapping ability scores house rule: feedback requested

[Daz]

Overall I really love the Conan d20 system and I'm really looking for a chance to play it (I'm currently playing in a great campaign and I don't have time for more than one at a time). I'm a pretty good rules lawyer so without playing it yet (sadly) there's two things that annoy me about the rules:

-In combat, certain abilities are VASTLY more useful than others definately more so than in regular D&D, in which this is already a problem (poor poor charisma). This is especially the case with nobles and soldiers who can use strength for attack, defense AND damage which seems a bit much.
-I don't think that the D&D abilities of intelligence and wisdom really capture the Conan feel very well.

Proposed houserule to rectify them (rough draft):

-Rename intelligence "reason" and wisdom "instinct." Have reason correlate with all of the more civilized processes of the mind and instinct with all the more barbaric processes of the mind. This fits well with the central duality in the Conan stories.
-Remap Will saving throws to Charisma (Charisma badly needs a boost and it fits well with Charisma being force of personality) and Initiative to Instinct (sixth sense and whatnot).
-For your dodge bonus take your Dexterity and Instinct modifiers and average them (rounding up) and apply that bonus to your dodge AC. For your parry bonus take you Strength and Reason modifiers and average them (rounding up) and apply that bonus to your parry AC. This is pretty inelegant and breaks with standard d20 practice, but I think it would work OK in practice.
-I'm tempted to completely eliminate strength's role in defense altogether, but that would weaken Nobles and Soldiers when compared to Barbarians and Pirates and I don't think that would be a good thing.

The upshot of this is that the two most barbaric classes (barbarians and pirates) would tend to need Instinct and the two most civilized classes (nobles and soldiers) would tend to need Reason, while the rest of the classes could go either way. This fits well with the Conan feel (I think) and would make all of the three mental abilities at least marginally useful in a combat heavy adventure.

Now I'd appreciate some feedback from people who've actually played the game and probably know it just a little better than I do

 

[argo]

-In combat, certain abilities are VASTLY more useful than others definately more so than in regular D&D, in which this is already a problem (poor poor charisma). This is especially the case with nobles and soldiers who can use strength for attack, defense AND damage which seems a bit much.

Balancing points in favor of Dex: you can also use Dex for melee attack and defense, you use Dex to make ranged attacks, you can only use Dodge DV to defend against ranged attacks and touch attacks (bad for those guys in heavy armor who have their Dex bonus limited), Dex adds to your Ref save (Str doesn't apply to any saves), Dex applies to a host of really usefull skills (Str has a few skills, but not as many) and lastly Dex adds to your Initative score (if you have not yet experienced how deadly loosing initative can be in Conan then I cannot stress enough how important this last one is).

Balancing points in favor of Con: HP and Fort saves, 'nuf said 8)

Balancing points in favor Int: bonus skill points derived from a high Int can be spent on any skill as a class skill. Once my players groked this rule I can't tell you how highly valued Int became

Balancing points in favor of Wis: Spot, Listen, Sense Motive, Heal, Survival and Will saves: all of these things will save your life at some point. Wisdom still winds up a dump stat frequently because not everybody in the group needs a good Spot score but that player who dumps Wis must still be prepared to blow his Terror checks and be owned by every Sorcerer from here to Stygia.

Balancing points in favor of Cha: to be honest, Cha is only as usefull as the GM makes it. If you let the player with an 8 Charisma fast-talk the gate guard because he (the player) came up with something clever to say then yeah, Cha aint that important. But if you enforce the rules and give your players a variety of encounters then Cha is still usefull.

So I will call the ability scores balanced.

-I don't think that the D&D abilities of intelligence and wisdom really capture the Conan feel very well.

Proposed houserule to rectify them (rough draft):

I think that how well the abilities capture the "feel" of the game has a great deal to do with how you visualize them. A lot of "flavor" problems can be easily rectified with "flavor" solutiouns instead of hard mechanical changes which tend to have unforseen consequences down the road.

And I do think that averaging ability scores is inelegant and breaks with standard d20 convention. If it works for you then fine, but my advice would be to try playing the game out of the box and see if it doesn't satisify before you try changing the mechanics.

Hope that helps.

 

[DaveNC]

You make some very interesting suggestions. Especially trying to make the Charisma store meaningful. It is very hard to GM this stat into a game and not many people do it well (I know I don't!). I am all for modifying the rules to suit you and the group you play with. I look at the rulebooks more as a guideline and modify as I see fit - just my opinion.

Post back and let us know how these changes work out for you.

 

[DaveNC]

That would be Charisma SCORE, not Charisma store. Sorry about that.

 

[Daz]

Thanks for the feedback. In a lot of games character creation comes down to how much power you want vs. how much you want your character's stats to fit your conception of him. I really don't like it when a system makes me choose between the two. Having charisma be a very weak stat and strength be a very, erm, strong stat (for example) often makes me have to do it. I like how the Conan d20 system provides feats that make charisma at least somewhat useful in combat but I think that remapping the ability scores would go father to fix this.

So I will call the ability scores balanced.

That's silly. Just because all of the skills are useful for SOMETHING doesn't mean they're balanced. In D&D it's the consensus that strength is easily the most useful stat for melee characters and then in Conan d20 in which melee-centric characters are significantly more common than in D&D they went that made strength even more powerful. That's wrong.

Balancing points in favor Int: bonus skill points derived from a high Int can be spent on any skill as a class skill.

I did not know that. That's what I get for skimming over all the stuff that looks too SRDy. Thank you.

Balancing points in favor of Cha: to be honest, Cha is only as usefull as the GM makes it.

That's a problem. There are often entire adventures that I've played in which charisma didn't come up once, also when they did come up then we'd just send the party face in to do the talking and everyone else could dump charisma without penalty. I would really like charisma to be at least of some use to everyone.
Also especially with the Conan d20 rule regarding intelligence and cross-class skills, after the first few levels a character with high int and medium charisma will often be BETTER at Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidation than a character with high charisma and medium int since the second character would run out of skill points while the first would be able to keep them maxed. That makes intelligence a pretty obviously superior stat to charisma except at extreme low levels. At, say, 20th level the bonuses that you get for high charisma don't add up to much more than a rounding error. That's a serious problem.

 

[argo]

So I will call the ability scores balanced.

That's silly. Just because all of the skills are useful for SOMETHING doesn't mean they're balanced. In D&D it's the consensus that strength is easily the most useful stat for melee characters and then in Conan d20 in which melee-centric characters are significantly more common than in D&D they went that made strength even more powerful. That's wrong.

I think you've completly missed my point. Balancing the ability scores does not mean that every character should be wracked with indecision over where to assign his abilities. Balancing the ability scores means that you should be able to build a character concept around that ability and have him contribute equally to the group.

IOW: if your concept is "Hulk Smash!" then of course you will max Str and dump Cha. If OTOH your character concept is "What if the Grey Mouser lived in the Hyborian age?" then you will value a balance of Dex, Int and Cha.

The test is, "can I make a fun character whose highest stat is xxx and contribute to the group?"

So I think the stats are balanced.

Balancing points in favor of Cha: to be honest, Cha is only as usefull as the GM makes it.

That's a problem. There are often entire adventures that I've played in which charisma didn't come up once, also when they did come up then we'd just send the party face in to do the talking and everyone else could dump charisma without penalty. I would really like charisma to be at least of some use to everyone.

Well ... you get what you pay for. If your game is a hackfest (nothing wrong with that) then yeah, the ability score that measures your force of personality and persuasiveness isn't that important. No real big suprises here.

And your answer to this is to map Will saves to Cha? I doubt that will help. That same "Hulk Smash!" character dumped his Wis too (same reason, you only need one guy in the party with a Spot score right? one Face and one Scout right? ) and the idea of boosting his pathetic Will save will probably not be enough for him to pass on all the other abilities.

Instead IMC I just make sure that everybody faces a variety of challenges. Every once in a while the sorcorer has to make a climb check to not fall to his death and the barbarian sometimes gets cornered by a guardsman asking questions. Having a minimum level of competence in a broad variety of skills is a plus in my game and I think that reinforces the swords 'n sorcery feel of Conan.

Later.

 

[Ichabod]

Spearchuckers contribute to groups ...

So, yes, you can have a highest stat in anything and contribute. Our party of about 8th level characters has something like four PCs with CHAs of 17 and the major NPCs that have been with the party have also had high CHAs. By far-r-r the most powerful character in the party is one whose lowest stat is Charisma.

But, that has nothing to do with balance. In anything approaching what I'd expect of a typical Conan campaign, Strength is way better than Dexterity or Constitution, Intelligence way better than Wisdom or Charisma.

I'm one of those people who likes to assign attributes after envisioning a character, and I'm stubborn enough to assign suboptimally as part of my concept, but I also get frustrated by how easily a character is hopelessly outclassed by a better built one. As much as the GM can mitigate mechanical imbalances, it's too much of a burden to have them do that constantly without just creating house rules.

Everyone comes up with house rules, but the fewer that are needed, the better. I just don't understand the concept of not trying to balance character features - attributes, races, classes, feats, skills - from the beginning. Rather than the silly notion that balance is boring and leads to sameness, balance promotes diversity.

 

[Daz]

I think you've completly missed my point. Balancing the ability scores does not mean that every character should be wracked with indecision over where to assign his abilities.

Why not? Maybe I'm reacting too much tp characters who are built for combat and nothing else. I would like it if there was at least a minor drawback in melee combat for being a drooling idiot.

Balancing the ability scores means that you should be able to build a character concept around that ability and have him contribute equally to the group.

Yeah but then you get the traditional party set up where there's one high-cha member and everyone else dumps cha HARD. I don't want everyone to need Cha but I would like there to be at least some impact for a party that relies too much on their party face.

IOW: if your concept is "Hulk Smash!" then of course you will max Str and dump Cha. If OTOH your character concept is "What if the Grey Mouser lived in the Hyborian age?" then you will value a balance of Dex, Int and Cha.

Right, but then "hulk smash" tends to be a more powerful character overall (depending on the DM of course). I like it when I can choose whatever character concept I like without worrying too much if that character will be powerful.

That same "Hulk Smash!" character dumped his Wis too (same reason, you only need one guy in the party with a Spot score right?

Until the sorcerer comes. Then it's poor poor hulk...
There are few things worse than failing a Will saving throw.

By far-r-r the most powerful character in the party is one whose lowest stat is Charisma.

In anything approaching what I'd expect of a typical Conan campaign, Strength is way better than Dexterity or Constitution, Intelligence way better than Wisdom or Charisma.

So you're saying that dumping Cha making your character more powerful has nothing to do with balance? I don't follow you.

stubborn enough to assign suboptimally as part of my concept

Me too, but it's frustrating when there's such a huge gap between "what would make this character fit my concept" and "what would make this character possible."

 

[Trodax]

I think you've completly missed my point. Balancing the ability scores does not mean that every character should be wracked with indecision over where to assign his abilities.

Why not? Maybe I'm reacting too much tp characters who are built for combat and nothing else. I would like it if there was at least a minor drawback in melee combat for being a drooling idiot.

A system that really tries to make all the abilities important in combat is 7th Sea. You have five abilities and they're all used for some aspect of combat (Finesse - attacking, Brawn - damage, Resolve - how many wounds you can take, Wits - initiative, Panache - number of actions per round, or something along those lines).
Haven't actually played the game myself, but as I heard it it was sort of a problem that you really needed everything to be a warrior. Sure, you could play a big brute who wasn't all that smart, but that lack of brains would really make him combat-inefficient. So in this system there was certainly a drawback of being a drooling idiot, but perhaps they took it too far.

All in all, I pretty much agree with argo that the abilities are (fairly) balanced in Conan, and that there is no need for all abilities to be needed for all character concepts (that would give you the 7th Sea situation). Sure, Str can be quite powerful and Cha is probably the least used in my game as well, but its all about the situations you throw your players into, I think. A Soldier with maxed out Str who is thrown naked and unarmed into pictland would really be craving for a higher Dex and Wis (for the skills and the Dodge defense when the arrows start raining down).

BTW, I do like your renaming of Intelligence and Wisdom to Reason and Instinct; they have a nice Hyborian flair to them.

 

[Sutek]

Intelligence and Wisdom are already Knowledge and Instinct the way they operate in the game.

Just thought I'd mention that.

I also think that, in ConanD20, the fact that all classes get a +1 bump to all stats every 6 levels and a placeable +1 stat bump every 4 levels allows stats to have as much influence as the player wants, to a certain extent.

The easiest way to teach you players to not try to "work the system" and dump one stat over the others is to separate them. But, honestly, I dont' see how they can "dump" if they are using the standard char-gen systems. If you use a point-buy system, yeah...players can sacrifice to min-max. Dont' let them.