Can someone explain Magic to me from 2d20 Conan by Modiphius Entertainment like I am 5 years old?

[Grendel_Khan]

I forgot to add, I think being a sorcerer is more of an aspirational, progression-based character direction in Conan than most other choices. A starting Conan character whose focus is sneaking or fighting can be fantastic at those. A starting sorcerer is, imo, a creepy weasel who needs a bunch of XP to become reliably good at sorcery. But if the GM is playing the game as presented, wielding even a little sorcery should be terrifying to most people you come across.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Yeah, it's super, super unclear. Conan 2d20 is many things -- most of them pretty cool -- but it is not a well-organized book, the rules are not very clear in general, and the magic rules in particular are contradictory all over the place. It's really pretty bad. The game desperately needs a revised edition.

First, go the Modipheus forums and look at the FAQs there. You'll want both the Conan Rules FAQ and the Sorcery Cheat Sheet. David Thomas is the author of the system, so this is getting two documents from the game's designer.

There's also this older Sorcery FAQ, which is sometimes useful as another opinion. David wrote this one as well, but it's a bit older.

This section from the Cheat Sheet describes learning sorcery:

To learn only Petty Enchantments, a character may skip the Sorcery skill and Talents altogether and only needs Alchemy skill and Talents. Each type of Petty Enchantment is a seperate [selection of the] Master of Formulae Talent.

To learn actual Sorcery, the character must follow these steps:

1. Begin by learning the Patron Talent. This gives the character 1 free Master of Formulae Talent, plus unlocks the ability to learn more Master of Formulae Talents. It also allows the character to learn the Sorcerer Talent. This Patron also comes with a Demand, which is the equivalent of 5[CD] in Gold, Vigor, or Resolve paid at each Upkeep. (Harms caused may be dealt with as per the Upkeep healing rules)
2. Learn the Sorcerer Talent. This reduces the character's Resolve permanently by 2[CD]. The character then learns 1 Spell (which may also permanently lower the character’s Resolve further).
3. Learn a Pact Talent.
   • Each Pact Talent can be with a new Patron, or with one you already have. A character may only ever learn 2 total Spells from any one Patron/Pact.
   • The character gains a new Spell (or Master of Formulae Talent), which may result in permanent Resolve loss from the specific Spell, and the character must take another Demand.
   • The character can now continue to retake the Pact Talent numerous times to learn more Spells. They may instead move on to step 4 to avoid new Demands.
4. The character may now learn the Barter Your Soul Talent. The character gains 1 new Spell, but also permanently reduces Resolve by X+2[CD], where X is the total number of Spells the character will now know. This Talent may be taken multiple times, paying the Resolve cost each time.

If a sorcerer character ever loses a Patron, it’s bad for them. See “Losing a Patron” on p.169 of the Sorcery Chapter.

If you want a PC to be a spellcaster, you probably need to use the "Weed of Sorcery" rules (p44 of the Adventures in the Age Undreamed of book, aka, the core book the GM has). It basically lets the player force caster options during chargen, but that's basically required to actually get a playable sorcerer. That said, sorcerers are very potent. Dismember can easily kill most NPCs, and then the resulting grisly explosion of gore will make the rest give up. It's basically a fireball.

My sorcerer never knew more than 2 spells: Dismember and Enslave (yeah, he was not a nice guy). I also had one Petty Enchantment as well (Blinding Powder I think) but remember that you can attempt any petty enchantment with a difficulty D0 with Alchemy. I also took Mesmer from Book of Skelos, as that gives you something to do that doesn't require resolve. This all cost my character 4 permanent Resolve. 2 for pact and 1 for each of the spells. I started out with 12 Personality and 12 Willpower. GM didn't allow Ancient Bloodline. I still had 7 Resolve to play with.

You want a lot of Resolve, so you should invest in Discipline and Discipline Talents. I then aimed to get the Jaded talent in Discipline. Also, don't forget that the Recover action (p116) allows you to spend your turn recovering spent Resolve. This means in combat when you want to cast a spell you Focus minor then Cast on the first turn, then the next turn you Recover to get your Resolve back. Then you can cast again. However, in my experience, you usually only needed one spell and you could then just use Displays the rest of combat. Sorcerous Might is really good.

The real dificulty is determining the exact trappings of your power, and then letting the GM determine if you can use the spell or not. In my case, Dismember was releasing a jinn that had been trapped inside me to destroy things. Enslave was sending the jinn to take control of another's body. The spells here are very open ended by design.

 

[MGibster]

First, go the Modipheus forums and look at the FAQs there. You'll want both the Conan Rules FAQ and the Sorcery Cheat Sheet. David Thomas is the author of the system, so this is getting two documents from the game's designer.

Thanks for the links, but those were tough to save for some reason. But save them I did.

I've pitched a campaign to my players and I kept things very simple: In a nutshell, each of the PCs has sword revenge on the immortal sorceress Zenobia. Zenobia did something so heinous to the PC, their family, or their ancestors, that they have left their regular life to find her a put an end to her anyway they can. I explained to them my main influence for this campaign are the original RE Howard stories as well as the 1970/80s Marvel comic series The Savage Sword of Conan.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Thanks for the links, but those were tough to save for some reason. But save them I did.

Yeah, I had the same problems. I had them all saved as PDFs. I just also saved the links directly in another document so I could find them again, and some of them have even been updated!

The information should be on their website -- there are FAQs now but I'm not sure how comprehensive they are since they didn't exist in 2019 -- not buried in Google Docs documents tied to personal moderator or developer accounts. I understand they're a small company, but it's frustrating how difficult some parts of the game are to understand.

Conan 2d20 is a fantastic and fun system that fits Conan's themes and setting extrmely well and I 100% recommend playing it, but, honest to God, the rulebook nearly ruins it during play. Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is just is not a good reference book during play. It's laser focused on chargen, which makes some sense given the chargen method. But, too often there are noodley bits of mechanics buried in other bits that you'll remember reading and just can't find. I strongly recommend a PDF of the book at the table just to have Ctrl+F searching. The index will point you to two pages for everything, but it never points you to the third page where there's a special rule. There's really important stuff that's easy to miss, like the XP discount when buying talents (Skill Focus Discount p301), which we literally missed for the first month we played.

If you do end up running spellcaster PCs or a lot of spellcaster NPCs, I strongly recommend the Book of Skellos. There's a bit more material there to do with the Sorcery skill and it's needed, IMO. As a skill it's a bit one-note in the core book.

Also, there's a really good character generator maintained online: Robert E Howard's CONAN

I've pitched a campaign to my players and I kept things very simple: In a nutshell, each of the PCs has sword revenge on the immortal sorceress Zenobia. Zenobia did something so heinous to the PC, their family, or their ancestors, that they have left their regular life to find her a put an end to her anyway they can. I explained to them my main influence for this campaign are the original RE Howard stories as well as the 1970/80s Marvel comic series The Savage Sword of Conan.

Yeah, that sounds perfect. Lean into pulpy sword & sorcery, and lean into the philosophical themes as much as you can (or as much as you can stomach).

 

[Thomas Shey]

By the by, the PDFs of all the Conan 2D20 output are currently part of the Bundle of Holding. Even though I doubt I'll ever run the game, I'm thinking its liable to be worthwhile enough just as a read and to see how they do various things to drop the $30 for the Essentials bundle at least.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

You want a lot of Resolve, so you should invest in Discipline and Discipline Talents. I then aimed to get the Jaded talent in Discipline. Also, don't forget that the Recover action (p116) allows you to spend your turn recovering spent Resolve. This means in combat when you want to cast a spell you Focus minor then Cast on the first turn, then the next turn you Recover to get your Resolve back. Then you can cast again. However, in my experience, you usually only needed one spell and you could then just use Displays the rest of combat. Sorcerous Might is really good.

Great advice. I totally forgot that sorcerers demonstrate how cool (and pretty unique) display attacks can be in 2d20.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

By the by, the PDFs of all the Conan 2D20 output are currently part of the Bundle of Holding. Even though I doubt I'll ever run the game, I'm thinking its liable to be worthwhile enough just as a read and to see how they do various things to drop the $30 for the Essentials bundle at least.

I definitely recommend them. Modiphius really put a lot of thought into that adaptation, and even some of the GM guidance, like how Mythos stuff is different in Howard's fiction than in Lovecraft's, and how to handle it accordingly, is interesting. The Book of Skelos also has some fun additional magic content that's very dialed into the setting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How useful/interesting are the subsidiary things they've got in a separate "Careers" bundle here: Conan Careers Bundle ?

I'm a little less certain that's worth the investment.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Great advice. I totally forgot that sorcerers demonstrate how cool (and pretty unique) display attacks can be in 2d20.

They really do. The get nasty fast, as well.

You start out with Dismember, a spell. It costs 1 resolve, is difficulty D1, and has medium range. It deals 4[CD] with Pierce 3. If it kills the target (this was actually the hard part, so I always targeted the weakest opponent) then they "explode" into an area resolve attack (affects all targets at close range to the victim) with 4[CD] with Viscious 2 (+2 damage). Except if you have a high Personality (which is what Sorcery uses) you get bonus dice on mental attacks. My 12 Personality sorcerer got +3[CD] to mental attacks. And with Persuade the first talent also grants +1[CD]. So now it's 8[CD] + 2 damage.

Even if that doesn't kill the target, you've now visibly cast a spell. So you can Sorcerous Might. Range medium, area affect, mental attack, intense (+1 damage if you deal at least 1), and deals 5[CD]. +3[CD] from Personality, +1[CD] from talents. So Sorcerous Might is an area effect attack that does 9[CD] + 1 damage to resolve.

And that's just spending 1 resolve in 2 turns without any momentum. The worst part is that the area effects might hit your party (depending on how the GM rules).

Now, you have to cast a spell again to be able to Sorcerous Might again, but, again, you only need 1 point of resolve. And you can spend a turn in recover to get your resolve back. Or you can switch to Steely Glare with Persuade and do 2[CD] + 4[CD] to a single target... and stun them.

2d20 Conan is one of the first games where I could play a spellcaster and feel like people would get out of my way or they would pay the price. Where I could beat them down with just my force of will.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

How useful/interesting are the subsidiary things they've got in a separate "Careers" bundle here: Conan Careers Bundle ?

I'm a little less certain that's worth the investment.

I wouldn't recommend going for the Careers bundle unless you're positive you're going to run the game, or something in that setting. Though the Conan Exiles book might be worth it just to see for yourself what an absolute train wreck it is. It's an attempt to adapt the Conan MMORPG to 2d20, and it's nuts. Harvesting x number of units of wood plus x number of iron in order to craft an axe. And all the art is pulled from the videogame. Such a bizarre publishing decision.