What D&D 3E books have you found useful for your game?

[Enlightened]

D20 Conan is close enough to D&D that you could use a lot of stuff with very little conversion work.

What D&D books have you found useful in your Hyborian Age games?

 

[The King]

Thulsa on this site is an expert in the matter. He already converted several old AD&D aventures into Conan's.
He also released an excellent 3E book (Ancient Kingdoms of Mesopotamia from Necromancer games) and if you read the recent thread "Thulsa presents: The Spider-God's Bride and Other Tales" at http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=38066 he also released a specific 3E Conan series of adventures.

Apart from this I would advise Testament from Green Ronin Publishing which is a book to play in the Bible time.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Pretty much all of them, to some degree or another.

 

[Style]

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3834&it=1

 

[Enlightened]

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=3834&it=1

Demon whores?

....Hmmm

 

[Malcadon]

Demon whores?

Why not? :wink:
_______________

Like any game, I tend to barrow liberally from other sources, and Conan is no exception. But truthfully, I just like Sword & Sorcery in general, and that is how I like to play my D&D. I can see a lot of D20 books that would be good for a Conan campaign. Of the top of my head, Gary Gygax's Necropolis would have stuff for a Stygian adventure. Naturally, you would want to do onto the splat books, as Thulsa do onto classic modules.

 

[Hervé]

I took some ideas for my desert campaign from the Sandstorm supplement and converted some critters from the MM. Necropolis and Ancient Kingdoms are pretty much in the mood too, although the first needs lots of reworking to fit in the hyborian age. Anyways, these two books aren't "official" WTC D&D supplements...

I tend to borrow a lot from published adventures rather than from rule supplements, taking an encounter from one, a plot from another, a map from a third and so on...

 

[The King]

I took some ideas for my desert campaign from the Sandstorm supplement and converted some critters from the MM. Necropolis and Ancient Kingdoms are pretty much in the mood too, although the first needs lots of reworking to fit in the hyborian age. Anyways, these two books aren't "official" WTC D&D supplements...

I tend to borrow a lot from published adventures rather than from rule supplements, taking an encounter from one, a plot from another, a map from a third and so on...

As you don't use D20 rules, isn't this a lot of work?
BTW what system do you use?

 

[Hervé]

I've been using the D20 system for the last two years, telling myself I should give it a try and that it would be easier, as Mongoose was releasing tons of material with that system. As everybody knows by now, I wasn't really satisfied with the rules and came back to a home version of the Chaosium BRP.

I use The Elric system (Chaosium version) as a base with some modifications, some homemade, some borrowed from other systems. The new edition of the Basic Role Playing was helpful too.

Some of the changes are concerning Hit Points: I use CON+SIZ for characters and main villains, and CON+SIZ/2 for goon type NPCs.

I changed weapon damage which I always found clumsy in BRP (like 1d8+1+1d4), opting for fixed STR bonus (à la OGL) and d6 weapon damage by weapon size (ie light, one handed, heavy... a bit like WHFRP). I use the new BRP rule for criticals by weapon type (Slashing/Crushing, Impaling...)

I use Hit locations but not hit points/Loc, adding extra dmg dices when hit in vital areas like head or chest. It makes combat more visual and allows to wear only some armor pieces, which is cool...

Initiative is DEX based as in most Chaosium games, with modifiers for wearing armor, heavy weapons or being wounded.

I also use the new BRP rule for Fate points, which allows to spend MPs to reroll dices, soak damage and so on.

It's not perfect, of course, but the game is much more fluid and vivid using these rules than it ever was with d20.

 

[The King]

Interesting; Elric was a great system indeed, especially the possibility to attack more than once, substracting 30% for each new strike.
Did you substitute MRQ legendary abilities for the feats to express mastery in some fields?

 

[bradius]

SRD, Frostburn, Stormwrack, Sandstorm, Liber Mortis, Heroes of Horror. I have the City and Dungeon sourcebooks, but haven't found them useful.

Use alot of Legends & Lairs Wildscape and Seafarer's Handbook.

Found the GURPS location books (e.g. Arabian Nights, Egypt..) to be useful.

Chasoium's Call of Cthuhlu.

None of these are vital, but nice to have.

I use some obscure RPG books./PDF's that cover such things as fungi, Stone Age weapons, morale...depending on the scenario I'm running.

 

[Hervé]

The King wrote:

Elric was a great system indeed, especially the possibility to attack more than once, substracting 30% for each new strike.

Actually, in Elric, you can split your weapon skill in multiple attacks if it's above 100% (ie a 120% skill could be split into two 60% attacks). The -30% penalty is the modifier for multiple Dodge/Parry: each defensive action after the first has this cumulative penalty.

As for the legendary abilities from MRQ, I think they are a nice substitute for D20 Feats and I'll probably include them in my campaign sooner or later.

 

[Edhel]

I don't know if my gm, Majestic7, uses any, but I've convinced him to approve some feats from WOTC's Player's Handbook II, Complete Scoundrel, Book of the Nine Swords and Paizo's Dragon Compendium.

If I was a Conan GM, I'd use all the enviroment books like Stormwrack etc like someone mentioned before, and any monster books.

I also want to advertise my brainchild, the Acheronian edition, which takes some of the good design from 4E and mutilates it to fit 3E Conan. It has made our games more enjoyable in high levels.

EDIT: Although it's not a book, we use Paizo's Critical hits deck. It adds luls to any combat.

 

[Hervé]

More Feats? Boy, you're scaring me...