What character class is my character?

[csperkins1970]

My character concept is that he grew up near the Pictish border, the son of a free landholder of little-to-no significance. He spent his youth hunting and tracking through the woods surrounding his father's lands and, when he came of age, served as a levy soldier along the Pictish border. In this role he performed garrison duty but, due to his tracking ability and stealth, was also used as a scout. After 4 to 5 years of this service he left the frontier and headed into civilized lands as a sellsword.

I thought of making him a borderer who dabbled in soldier BUT, according to the two other guys I game with, I'd have to be in "active duty" in order to advance in either of these classes.

If that's the case than the Conan rules have NO ways of advancing as a warrior unless you are serving in an organized fighting unit... unless you advance as a Barbarian or Pirate (and both of these have a VERY definite background associated with them that doesn't match my character concept).

If the guys I game with are right, then the Conan game needs a more generic "Huntsman" class for borderers who aren't THE Borderers from the Pictish frontier and a more generic "Fighter" class for every warrior who isn't a soldier, barbarian, bandit, thief, noble or pirate (gladiators, mercenary guards, harem guards, hulking bruisers, street rakes, ruffians, duelists, etc).

Thanks in advance for any advice/clarification you can throw my way.

 

[Ichabod]

Reason why I constantly lament the crappiness of the fighter classes (barbarian, borderer, nomad, soldier) besides barbarian is that many of my concepts aren't very barbarous and it's a clear conflict between theme and mechanics.

Anyway, thematically, borderer or thief would make sense for your first level (mechanically, you'd be insane not to start out as a thief). Afterwards, any of borderer, soldier, or thief would work with your concept IMO. You could be a borderer with good Hide and Move Silently who hooks up with a military unit and learns Knowledge: Warfare and Profession: Soldier, a soldier with good Hide and Move Silently (well, not really, since soldiers get so few skill ranks), good Survival and Knowledge: Nature (hope you have a high Intelligence), etc., or a thief with good Survival and Knowledge: Nature and whatever (using skill ranks off of Intelligence if necessary) who joins a military unit and picks up K: Warfare, P: Soldier, or whatever skills/feats/allegiances that makes him soldierlike. And, those are just the single class ways to go. Add multiclassing if you want more mechanical justification for thematics and to more easily hit the skills you want.

The thing is is that the classes in this game are not narrowly defined sub-sub-subtypes of archetypes. The world is not one in which people's roles are sharply defined to where a "cavalier" and a "paladin" are somehow different things. So, for instance, the thief class doesn't mean you are a thief, could just as easily be a scout within a military force.

Sure, there are some classes that only exist to serve a particular niche, a feature I didn't see a particular need for, but even those classes aren't one specific thing - it's fine to assume that all sailors have pirate levels or whatever. Certainly, your concept fits easily into Conan's existing classes, so I wouldn't be overly worried about it.

Your concept sounds like a character who started out as a borderer and who will pick up some soldier levels. Our campaigns don't require people to justify virtually anything in terms of what classes the characters take, and even if they did, it would be easy. Our non-noble characters have had plenty of opportunities to become nobility. My archer could have easily justified levels in tempter, of all things.

Now, if you want to game the system, ignore borderer and soldier, the former because it's strictly worse than barbarian and the latter because it's even more horrid than borderer. Start out as a thief and take only levels in barbarian, thief, or (if you ever feel like it) scholar.

 

[csperkins1970]

Thanks for the reply.

To be honest, I really don't want to "game the system" with this character, though it bothers me that the barbarian class outstrips other warrior classes.

One warrior class shouldn't outstrip another on a level-for-level basis, as each should have its particular niche in which it excels. If barbarians kick the snot out of civilized men in REH stories it should be because (in game terms) they have more fighting experience than soldiers (and, as such, be of higher level) and because they are fighting with a tactical advantage (they are fighting in the wilderness, where formation combat doesn't help much).

I'm going to try to press my case for advancing as a borderer, even if I have no desire to be a Borderer. Seems to me that if I spend time scouting, hunting and fighting in the wilds, but am not a barbarian, I'd be a borderer. Wish me luck!

 

[Krushnak]

according to the two other guys I game with, I'd have to be in "active duty" in order to advance in either of these classes.

Please go slap your friends with a rulebook, any rulebook will do the thicker the better.

Nothing about the Borderer or Soldier classes says or totally implies that you have to serve in 'active duty' to gain levels in them. Have your friends never heard of a militia? Sure you're unlikely to get to a very high level in this way but it will easily get you up to around lvl 3-5 which sounds about how much you want to start out with.

I very highly recommend to you the Hyboria's F series of books, especially Fiercest but Finest would also help you out. Lots of very cool multiclassing ideas and just very useful information about how a particular kind of fighter from a certain region would go about choosing skills and feats.

Now, if you want to game the system, ignore borderer and soldier, the former because it's strictly worse than barbarian and the latter because it's even more horrid than borderer.

I have never noticed this in my game, sure the barbarian has his niche but so does the soldier. It's all about fighting on the battlefield of your choosing.

 

[VincentDarlage]

The "active duty" clause your friend insists on was also created by him. It doesn't exist in the game. Borderer/Soldier is correct. So is straight borderer.

As mentioned before, check out Hyboria's Fiercest (for Borderer concepts beyond the traditional) and Hyboria's Finest (for Soldier concepts).

 

[csperkins1970]

Excellent! Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Demetrio]

the barbarian has his niche but so does the soldier. It's all about fighting on the battlefield of your choosing.

I don't think this is quite true, unfortunately.

By 10th level the Barbarian has 11 Feats/Abilities derived from his class alone (actually 15 separate class feat/ability increases). Most of these are either useful or very useful. Crimson Mist, Improved Uncanny Dodge and Improved Mobility being probably the best of the bunch. His BAB and Defence are no worse than a soldier's of equivalent level. He has 20 extra skill points to boot.

The poor old 10th level Soldier has 8 Feats/Abilities derived from his class alone (10 separate increases). These include the rather underwhelming Formation Combat and Officer abilities which are useful to him only if he as another soldier with the same Formation style tagging along. Now sure, he can pick and choose what his bonus six Feats will be but that hardly compensates him. The Barbarian is just much more versatile. If the Soldier got a bonus Feat every level then he'd end up on par with the Barbarian and the ability to pick and choose Feats would be compensated for by fewer Skill Points.

If the soldier can always play to his strengths (ie has his weapon of choice, armour of choice - perhaps including a shield - and is part of a group containing at least one other soldier) then he's about on a par with a Barbarian of similar level. But in Conan games often players are unable to pick the battlefield of their choosing. The Barbarian is just more versatile and hence better able to adapt to adverse circumstances.

In fact the Barbarian seems to me superior to most 'fighting' classes. The Nomad is perhaps his equal if fighting on the Nomad's home ground, ditto the Pirate if aboard a ship. But off their home turf (or sea), they're objectively weaker. The Borderer is probably weaker in comparison than even the soldier. The Thief can hold its own with the Barbarian as a class but comes at combat from a very different angle.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Nice mathematical analysis, but I haven't seen it work out that way in actual play. My soldier players do as well as the barbarian and the borderer players.

 

[csperkins1970]

the barbarian has his niche but so does the soldier. It's all about fighting on the battlefield of your choosing.

I don't think this is quite true, unfortunately....

Do you think giving the Soldier a bonus feat at EVERY level and getting rid of Formation Fighting as a class ability would help to level the playing field? For those who really like Formation Fighting, it could easily be turned into a feat that soldiers could choose.

Just wondering?

 

[Demetrio]

Do you think giving the Soldier a bonus feat at EVERY level and getting rid of Formation Fighting as a class ability would help to level the playing field? For those who really like Formation Fighting, it could easily be turned into a feat that soldiers could choose.

I do. I'd have Officer and Formation Fighting as pickable Feat trees.

A soldier would then have 10 bonus feats in total by 10th level. the Barbarian by contrast has an equivalent of 15 plus extra skill points but can't pick and choose the feats.

My concern would be that Soldier might become a bit too attractive for multi-classing.

Nice mathematical analysis, but I haven't seen it work out that way in actual play. My soldier players do as well as the barbarian and the borderer players.

I play a Scholar/Soldier and with the right Feat picks the Soldier is good for certain builds. There's not a huge amount of point (mechanically speaking) in playing a Str 12 Barbarian for instance but a Str 12 Soldier can Finesse as a (reasonably) sensible option - though his Defence will be weaker than it might.

I honestly don't see the Borderer as having much on the Barbarian at all in any meaningful way. Many bonus Feats are similar and of those that are not, the Barbarian's are generally superior. In fairness the F_____ series helped the Borderer quite a lot with the greater variety of available styles and multiclassing helps iron out some class weaknesses. As far as Soldier goes, I think it works best combined with another class. I'm happy with my Scholar/Soldier, he'd be crap, relatively speaking were he a single class Soldier because the Scholar's Knowledge skills help a lot with combat bonuses (fencing style, warfare).

In fact when we allowed Driven to Win as a Feat he became an absolute monster... semi-inadvertent Munchkining (semi inadvertant because I knew it was a good pick but I didn't realise it was ever so slightly game breaking...)

So I agree, you can have fun with any class and no class is 'broken'/unplayable. It just seems a bit of a shame that Soldier and Borderer (and to a lesser extent Nomad and Pirate) are more 'niche' builds whereas a Barbarian fills a niche and provides huge versatility too.

 

[Ichabod]

Nice mathematical analysis, but I haven't seen it work out that way in actual play. My soldier players do as well as the barbarian and the borderer players.

Based on my experiences, I don't consider soldier a playable class. My borderer would have been strictly superior as a barbarian. With the exception of soldier, any of the other Conan classes would be playable in our campaigns, but you'd be screwing yourself to play anything besides barbarian, scholar, or thief.

RPGs aren't CCGs or whatever else where it's often possible, if not always easy, to evaluate what works and what doesn't. Can even have a campaign where the numbers are irrelevant. The only thing we are sure to have in common is the mathematical analysis.

I just don't see how people ignore the math. Demetrio didn't even bring up that a barbarian also gets good Reflex saves.

As I've stated many times, if all the campaign is about is straight up fighting, then, sure, soldier looks viable. If you ever actually do anything else, I would immediately convert any levels in borderer, nomad, or soldier to barbarian. Or, since I want to have soldier be a viable option, change the rules and give the soldier good Reflex saves and 5-6 skill ranks/level.

 

[Demetrio]

Simply giving Soldier 4 skill points per level helps a fair bit (though I still wouldn't play a single classed Soldier). I agree that with the RAW 2 points per level a single class soldier stinks.

A problem is that all Feats are not equal and so some (eg Formation Combat, Favoured Terrain) are very situation specific and thus better for npcs than players whereas others (eg the Uncanny Dodge tree and Mobility tree) are great for any character. So any analysis is a bit hampered by that. What is telling though is that Barbarian, Thief and (to an extent) Pirate get 'good' class feats whereas Soldier and Borderer tend to get either merely okay or naff class specific ones.

 

[Der Rote Baron]

Nice mathematical analysis, but I haven't seen it work out that way in actual play. My soldier players do as well as the barbarian and the borderer players.

Seconded! Just that in my group we don't even have a Barbaraian. And the most dangerous killing-machine in my campaign is the Zingarian pirate-thief. Boy, can he sneak attack his feinted opponents to death!

 

[Demetrio]

Another thing to consider would be removing the requirement for other characters with the same Formation Combat ability to be present for the Soldier ability. They'd then become more like Light-Footed.

Skirmisher would require the character to be unarmoured or in light armour.

Heavy Infantry would need the caracter to be in medium or heavy armour to gain its bonuses.

Light Cavalry - mounted and in no or light armour.

Heavy Cavalry - mounted and in medium or heavy armour.

Fighting Spirit - no special requirement (its on a par with Fearless for its benefits and Fearless doesn't need cronies to be present).

Now if Officer allowed the soldier to give these benefits to up to Int Bonus characters (suitably equipped) within 30' then suddenly the Soldier is looking a lot tastier to me. He's still unfairly chiselled out of Skill Points (I mean clearly that 2/level was just lifted straight from d20/D&D without too much consideration of whether it was justified or not) but at least his class given Feats are more on par with other classes. He'll still get less but Formation and Officer become as good as some of the Barbarian and Pirate Feats and his ability to pick and choose his other bonus Feats probably compensates for the reduced number of such Feats.

 

[KemperBoyd]

Nice mathematical analysis, but I haven't seen it work out that way in actual play. My soldier players do as well as the barbarian and the borderer players.

I've noticed that soldiers play well as defensive fighters. My current campaign has one soldier character (level 6) who is a nemedian who wears lots of armor and fights with a greatsword, doing sunder attacks and absorbing lots of blows from the enemy, while the barbarian dishes out damage together with the borderer/pirate/thief and the thief/soldier.

 

[Demetrio]

A defensive build of some sort is really the only rational choice for fighters because their Initiative tends to be poor relative to other classes. To my mind, Finesse combines with this best but Improved Tripping (probably via a reach weapon would work pretty well too I think), especially if Greater Combat Reflexes is got at level 8 and combined with Combat Expertise (allowing AoO against missed attacks).

Good armour for a high DR helps too, obviously.

As I say, one can build an okay Soldier, especially taking a few levels in another class (like Barbarian...) to increase his versatility. As it stands the Soldier is the 'fighting' class that is in the narrowest in its scope I think.

I'd be intrigued to see the resuts of duels between PCs of the Barbarian class and 'pure' Soldiers. Really if the classes were balanced the soldiers should win these more often than not because the Barbarian has a wider skill set and thus has that (non combat) advantage. My gut feeling is that the Barbarian will win more often because of his higher Initiative...

 

[VincentDarlage]

I'd be intrigued to see the resuts of duels between PCs of the Barbarian class and 'pure' Soldiers.

I think most soldiers are trained to fight other soldiers - and in REH's stories soldiers and borderers tend to be overwhelmed by Conan (a barbarian) more often than not. I like that this is reflected in the game structure.

...gut feeling is that the Barbarian will win more often because of his higher Initiative...

Again, appropriate, given that this game is based on REH's writings.

I completely disagree with the idea that every class has to be "balanced" with all the other classes. To me, the classes have to reflect the characters seen in the writings of REH. In this, the game succeeds admirably as written.

 

[Demetrio]

Well I don't think any class will ever be perfectly balanced against another, for obvious reasons.

But while I agree that the Barbarian slant exists in Howard, it seems to me rather odd that one PC should be favoured over another by the character generation rules if one decides to be a Soldier or Borderer and another a Barbarian. Unless perhaps players are made aware of the bias and go in with open eyes.

Someone said higher up the thread that the only rational (in a mechanical sense) choices were Scholar, Barbarian or Thief and I think there's some truth in that. Soldier isn't useless by any means but it is hampered more than necessary by low Skill Points and class specific feats that are pretty crap (relatively speaking). Having a few levels of Soldier is useful for certain PC builds but I think it's a shame that a Thief/Soldier with Improved or Greater Feint and plenty of Bluff (that he can well afford from his Skill Points) will likely carve up his straight Soldier counterpart because his sneak attack damage and ability to quite easily flat foot the soldier makes him a better fighter. And he'll be better socially and furtively too...

In essence if you want a whack 'em style fighter then Barbarian is better than Soldier and if you want a Finesse fighter then a Thief/Soldier or fencing Scholar/Soldier will do better than a 'straight' Soldier I think.

I actually like playing my Scholar/Soldier but without his couple of Scholar levels he'd be a much poorer fighter or he'd be a simple duellist with no other skills of any decent level - ultra narrow in his scope. The fact is that if I could Munchkin and take 4 levels of Barbarian for his next four levels he'd become quite significantly better than if I take four more Fighter levels (or 2 Fighter or 2 Scholar or whatever).

And we 'cheat' and give Soldiers 4 skill points every level. I quite admire anyone who'd play a single class RAW Soldier.

To me, the classes have to reflect the characters seen in the writings of REH. In this, the game succeeds admirably as written.

I agree one can build the Howard characters fairly well (though some of the levels given make me wince a little but that's just personal preference) and the created Feats certainly capture specific Howardian character traits. But the Scholar and Thief (probably Temptress too it has its own non comat niche) seem to me more viable as 'straight' classes than Soldier or Borderer. Is this a reflection of Howard? I don't think so (though I'd be open to argument on that score of course).

So yes, the classes reflect the writings but would a beefed up Soldier class contradict the writings? If so, how? Even with Formation Combat and Officer beefed up and 4 skill points, a Barbarian will still have a significant edge in most combats.

 

[Krushnak]

In my campaign i have 2 straight soldiers(both lvl 9), a noble/scholar(lvl 8) and i did have a pirate(left at lvl 7) for quite awhile. Neither of the soldiers have ever complained about the class and enjoy it alot.

Theres an interesting new book being released by Paizo soon called 'The Book of Experimental Might" it's written by Monte Cook who is one of the authors of the original d20 system and is basically his house rules to the system. A bunch of the stuff seems particularly suited to a d&d style game but there was one thing in it that has me intrigued and that is any feat that a fighter(soldier) takes as one of his class bonus feats will give him an extra benefit that any one else taking it would get. Sounds pretty cool to me and a great way to add some extra umph to the class.

 

[Demetrio]

Interesting.

There's also The Warrior Strategy Guide which is essentially a 'how to Munchkin' book for D&D combat classes. What's interesting is their analysis of the Feat trees and the relative crapness of Weapon Focus/Weapon Spec. Chain which only becomes 'worth the money' when one has Greater Weap. Spec and Improved Critical (and of course the relevant weapon to hand). So it's a Feat tree that only becomes worthwhile at fairly high level. And hence starting characters are better going for the Cleave chain (which is probably no news to anyone but it was interesting to see the numbers crunched out - oh and the fact that in certain circumstances Whirlwind Attack is way better than Great Cleave, which I hadn't considered likelyt at all).

But the Weapon Spec Chain is the Soldier's 'class specific' chain whereas anyone with sufficient Str can latch onto the Cleave chain. Really the Weapon Spec chain could maybe do with a little bit of beefing too. Maybe Weapon Focus should give +2 to hit and Weapon Spec +3 damage and the Greater's +3/+5 respectively.

That's by the by really, I just though it was interesting in an anoracky sort of way.

Do your Soldier players not feel a little constrained by their lack of Skills? Or are the characters smart enough that they have enough bonus points to offset the worst?