bolen said:
My only real gripe with the conan system is that I never really liked the magic system (I just winged it for villians and never allowed any PC magic)
It's interesting because I'm of the opinion that "traditional" S&S probably isn't the best style for player casters. The magic system in Conan is actually really good at emulating the stories. The thing is, all the casters in the stories would essentially be NPC's in an actual game. They are usually very evil and powerful and the abilities they possess are often fully unknown (which adds to their mysteriousness).
I'm of the opinion that players probably shouldn't be casters in a S&S game. If anything, it certainly opens up the GM's options.
In the Conan campaign I ran, the scholar usually required some in-game rulings just because the spells can be quite powerful (and sometimes a bit clumsy) depending on the situation. A lot of the spells also deal with "behind-the-scenes" magic and aren't really applicable in-game.
I still think the Grim Tales magic system works just fine as-is. The GM can control the magic the PC caster has access to by just assigning spells from the start or controlling the spells the caster gains during a campaign. You could also add a simple taint/corruption system for added flavor (which can also be found in Conan).
My only "complaint" of Conan OGL is that some of the classes are a bit boring. For example, the Nomad and Borderer are very similar (the nomad gets some mounted abilities and borderer gets some more favored terrains). I would have liked the Solider to have more variation as well but it ends up being pretty similar to the standard 3ed fighter. The Scholar is a good caster class but I would have liked more options for a skill-based, non-caster class. The Thief, Barbarian, and Pirate classes are very cool and unique.
For me, the ideal S&S combo from a mechanics standpoint would be the Conan combat and defense rules with the Grim Tales class/talent system (which I started to do with the my own ruleset - see my sig).
