Some D20 help for a new Conan player.

[bc99]

I've played all sorts of roleplaying games and systems... from the very first boxed set D and D, to Cthulhu, to L5R, and all the things in between. I haven't played much of the new d20 games, and after reading the rulebook I have a few questions.

1) Multiclassing is the first problem I have. Say I have a 3rd level barbarian, who wants to now be a pirate (or another class, whatever).

How much xp is needed? The xp from 3rd to 4th... ? If I'm a 10th level Barbarian who is multiclassing to thief... well you get the idea

2) Attacks of opportunity. Although I play war games, the group I run with is a little mini-shy when it comes to RPGs. Sure we use them sometimes, but most of the time we forgo it for RPing.

The rules make it seem like you need miniatures, what with hexes and everything. I guess my question is ... attacks of opportunity happen within your 5 foot radius of control. Is that correct? Also, withdrawing from combat doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity?

Those are the first couple of questions we've come across. My group has just rolled up some characters, and we've played through some test combats to get the mechanics down. We start our first adventure next Wednesday.

Thanks for the help, and I'll keep you informed!

And sorry I posted this in the Conan miniature section!

 

[ricardo440]

1) Multiclassing is the first problem I have. Say I have a 3rd level barbarian, who wants to now be a pirate (or another class, whatever).

How much xp is needed? The xp from 3rd to 4th... ? If I'm a 10th level Barbarian who is multiclassing to thief... well you get the idea

2) Attacks of opportunity. Although I play war games, the group I run with is a little mini-shy when it comes to RPGs. Sure we use them sometimes, but most of the time we forgo it for RPing.

The rules make it seem like you need miniatures, what with hexes and everything. I guess my question is ... attacks of opportunity happen within your 5 foot radius of control. Is that correct? Also, withdrawing from combat doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity?

1) You just add all the levels together to figure out your total class level. So your 3rd level barbarian when he gets encough xp to hit 4th level can become a 3rd barbarian, 1st pirate. Then when he gets enough to hit fifth he could become a 4/1 or a 3/2 or even a 3/1/1

2) You can make do without minatures, but They can simplify things. Attacks of opportunity are made in your THREATENED AREA, which for characters is 5ft generally, but big monsters or people wielding long weapons can threaten larger areas. e.g. a monster with 10' reach threatens a 10' area.

As moving through a threatened area provokes an AoO, just charging something big will give provoke an AoO as you pass through its reach into 5ft to attack it.
N.B you only get 1 AoO each full round unless you have the combat.reflexes feat

 

[Oly]

2) Attacks of opportunity. Although I play war games, the group I run with is a little mini-shy when it comes to RPGs. Sure we use them sometimes, but most of the time we forgo it for RPing.

The rules make it seem like you need miniatures, what with hexes and everything. I guess my question is ... attacks of opportunity happen within your 5 foot radius of control. Is that correct? Also, withdrawing from combat doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity?

Having miniatures, counters or even just some marks on a grid helps with AoOs, they're not neccessary but especially when you're picking up how they work it makes things a bit simpler.

You "threaten" the sqaures within a certain range, usually 5 feet for humans. Withdrawing doesn't trigger an AoO for leaving the threatend square that you begun your turn in, though you'll trigger one if you leave another threatend square.

Taking a five foot step is another method of moving while avoiding an AoO, unless with one of you're following actions you do something that would have provoked one. For example a 5 foot step followed by a melee attack is fine, if you did a ranged attack though you'd attract the AoO that you should have got when you left the threatend square.

AoOs are kinda funny but you pick them up and in the end they're fairly logical.

Hope that helps.....

 

[argo]

1) Multiclassing is the first problem I have. Say I have a 3rd level barbarian, who wants to now be a pirate (or another class, whatever).

How much xp is needed? The xp from 3rd to 4th... ? If I'm a 10th level Barbarian who is multiclassing to thief... well you get the idea

The concept to understand here is the difference between class level and character level. A 4th level barbarian is a 4th level character. A barbarian 3/pirate 1 is also a 4th level character (3+1=4)

Use your character level to determine where you fall on the xp chart and also for other benefits that derive from that chart such as your bonus feat every three levels and bonus ability score every four levels. In the example above both characters get a bonus ability point for reaching 4th level.

2) Attacks of opportunity. Although I play war games, the group I run with is a little mini-shy when it comes to RPGs. Sure we use them sometimes, but most of the time we forgo it for RPing.

It is possible to play without minatures (I've done it before) but I strongly encourage their use as combat in d20 is very wargamy and minis really help in a lot of ways.

The rules make it seem like you need miniatures, what with hexes and everything. I guess my question is ... attacks of opportunity happen within your 5 foot radius of control. Is that correct? Also, withdrawing from combat doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity?

An AoO happens when someone does something to "Provoke" the AoO while in a square that you "Threaten". Which actions provoke an AoO is listed in the combat chapter next to the action. The area you threaten depends on your size and the weapon you wield.

Medium size creatures have a natural reach of 5', they threaten the space 5' around them (or all the adjacent squares if you are using a grid). Most melee weapons only threaten the space that is your natural reach. Some weapons are listed as reach weapons and they threaten an area that is twice your natural reach but do not threaten your natural reach.

So a human with a sword threatens an area 5' around him. A human with a war spear (reach weapon) threatens an area from 5' to 10' but not within 5' (on a grid he threatens all spaces two squares away but not the adjacent squares).

Some monsters have a natural reach that is longer than 5'. For them they still threaten all the spaces within their reach. If they wield an appropriately sized reach weapon then they threaten double the area as normal.

So a Large, Tall creature has a natural reach of 10'. If he is holding a sword he threatens squares at both 5' and 10'. If he is holding a war spear he threatens squares 15' and 20' away but not 5' or 10' away.

Ranged weapons never threaten an area. However note that some melee weapons can be also be thrown (such as a dagger) so you still threaten while holding them.


I recomend that you don't worry too much about AoO's as you are learning the rules. They are arguably the most complicated part of the combat engine and usually the part people learn last. Focus on the basics first and AoO's will come in time.

Hope that helps

 

[Bregales]

Hi, you got several answers which hopefully helped you about regarding character level versus class level. I am editing a post I had made on the thread New to the Conan RPG a while ago, and while I'm no longer running an active Conan campaign, I thought I could add this quote in case you might gain some help by reading these other threads below. Click one of the hyperlinks (the read text) and it'll open a window to that thread for you.

Hi. I've been running a Conan campaign for about a couple years now, and am about to start another campaign. My first bit of advice you're already practising: read the book first!! (LOL): my group convinced me to let them roll characters before I'd received my (1st ed) book, and looking back I personally wouldn't have allowed sorcerers (Scholars) had I read the book first. (I have a couple really impatient players :wink: ).

As for Shadizar, I'm working on starting another Conan group of players more familiar to some extent with the Howard stories (one guy really knows them well), and I decided to use Shadizar as well. Since you just bought the boxed set, you may or may not be aware that the map with the huge right-angled river running through it isn't very Shadizar-like; it's actually a DnD map, so go to this thread and write to Mongoose and they'll send you the 'authentic' Shadizar map. It's really cool in my opinion, and you'll be very happy when you get it (as far as I know Mongoose hasn't released any boxed sets with the correct map unless recently, so you may have gotten a pre-fix boxed set).

For other supplements, I think the greatest release so far has been the h/c The Road of Kings, which is a more detailed gazeteer of the Hyborian World. Scrolls of Skelos is great if you will have a Scholar PC in your group; Pirate Isles if a Pirate (this is a really cool book IMO); Free Companies if you'll run a military campaign or a mercenary band; but for adventurers, yeah I am also thinking Shadizar:City of Wickedness. Everyone seems to love Across Thunder River, but since neither of my groups are the least interested in the west I haven't done much more than a quick perusal of this book, but everyone seems to love it.

Lastly, MightyCthulhu posted a link to Iron_Chef's thread about creating adventures, which is great to look at. Several of us have been posting adventure breakdowns of our groups' adventures in this forum (My Saturday group's thread, for example, is called The Story So Far...) and reading them may help both give more adventure ideas or maybe learn from our mistakes. ~I thought maybe I'd link several threads similar to yours asking general questions about getting started, so:
*Conan campaigns - advice sought
*Some newbie questions
*A couple rules questions
*Conan Campaign?
*First post here, health question...
*Adventure Generation
*Instant Campaign Starter
*The First Session
*New to Conan - Quick Question
*New to the game...
--At present there's 40 pages of threads on the Conan forum; for example while putting this list together (took 10 minutes) I found 7 posts on Great Swords. So odds are if you are trying to figure something out, odds are someone's already asked it. :wink: So you can also use the search button at the top of the screen.

So in closing (I tend to write long posts ) reply if you have any specific questions, and I hope this helps.

I tend to write a lot of posts consisting of links to other posts, directing other users to other web pages where they may find useful answers. Lastly, I'll adding a link to a site that has the rules made up for the Dungeons & Dragons v3.5 Open Game License (also known as d20, which is the basis for the Conan game's rules). The site is considered the general default of answers, although tailored specifically for D&D 3.5, it can help when rules questions come up and you don't see an answer in the Conan core book (Atlantean Edition, which takes it's rules from OGL/d20, and doesn't spell out all rules because of the existing default rules, most of which are at this site: The Hypertext d20 SRD).

Hope this helps, and always respond with any questions, there's a lot of people who frequent these boards who are willing and able to help! 8)

 

[FailedSpotCheck]

Hi. Welcome to Conan RPG!
AoO and Grappling rules were the two things that hung me up when I first got into RPG about five years ago. For some reason those two rule-sets were problematic. (Or perhaps my braincells are not up to par with those of other RPGers. :? ) I'm getting better at remembering rules, and especially those diffs between the standard SRD and the Conan rules.
I think that Conan RPG is what DnD should have been back in the day.
It's pretty kewl, IMHO. Enjoy.

 

[bc99]

Wow great answers. This is truly a helpful forum, thanks a lot.

Wednesday is the go day, and I'll make sure to get back here and post some thoughts.

Thanks again, and glad to be aboard.

 

[DourDeadlyPuritan]

True or false when it comes to sorcerous Scholars?

You can only learn a new spell when you have an open spell splot available because of your class, or you purchase the Sorceror's Boon feat or recieve bonus spells.

So, if you come across a new spell in a dusty old tome, but you don't have enough open slots, you can't learn the spell until you have a free 'slot" open?

 

[urdinaran]

That is correct.

 

[DourDeadlyPuritan]

Okay, thanks.

 

[Oly]

So, if you come across a new spell in a dusty old tome, but you don't have enough open slots, you can't learn the spell until you have a free 'slot" open?

Mechanically yes. Stylistically you'd describe the scholar as just being unable to understand the spell, something that he just can't get his head around and will require much study and exercise of his mind. "Suddenly" when they go up a level or get the feat something clicks and the scholar sees the universe in a new way that allows him to cast the spell.

 

[DourDeadlyPuritan]

Exactly. 8)