Conan Dodge & Parry rules in Grim Tales?

[GlassJaw]

Are you trying to create the Barbarian, Borderer, Scholar, and so on in Grim Tales, or are you trying to do Grim Tales with Dodge and Parry bonuses?

Definitely the latter. I want to keep the generic classes from GT. I was just using the Conan classes as a guide.

To break it down a bit further, Conan has three levels of Dodge/Parry: +0-7, +0-10, and +0-15. Grim Tales has three levels of Defense: +0-7, +1-9, and +3-13. The difficulty is that each GT class now needs two sets of mods instead of just one.

   [B]Class[/B]          [B]Defense[/B]
Strong Hero:       +1-9
Fast Hero:         +3-13
Tough Hero:        +1-9
Smart Hero:        +0-7
Dedicated Hero:    +1-9
Charismatic Hero:  +0-7

One idea I had when assigning the D/P bonuses was to make their "average" equal to the original GT Defense bonus.

For example, the Strong Hero has a medium Defense progression in GT. It makes sense to grant the SH the best Parry bonus (+0-15). Then to average that out, give the SH the lowest Dodge bonus (+0-7). However, the Soldier class in Conan has a Dodge progression of +0-10. The converse of this can be applied to the Fast Hero and the Tough Hero gets the medium progressions of each.

The Smart Hero (like the Scholar class) gets the worst progressions of each (+0-7). I figured the Dedicated would be right down the middle as well - it gets medium progressions for both. The Charismatic Hero has the same Defense bonus as the Smart Hero but the Noble in Conan has a medium Parry progression. Balance aside, this makes some sense but I do agree that it does give the Smart Hero the shaft.

The other question I had was whether or not to keep the Conan D/P bonuses as-is. On average, they are higher than the GT Defense mods (they are lower at the low-levels and higher at the high-levels). This does make sense since armor will not be granting a bonus to AC and instead will grant DR. Overall I don't think the Conan D/P progressions will be a problem as-is. The PC's might have to be a bit more careful at the lower levels but they will have some DR on their side.

So, by the normal Conan rules, Parry is a great way to play a barbarian -- someone who is hard to hit by melee people, but doesn't like the idea of having twenty arrows pointed at him.

Which is interesting because the barbarian class in Conan has a high Dodge progression and a poor Parry progression. Based on the Conan stories, I might have given the barbarian medium progressions in both. Conan switches his fighting style a LOT.

My world wasn't rocked by Conan primarily because I'm not feeling like archetype classes and hit points these days.

I feel the same way at this stage in my gaming career. While I do think Conan has cool classes and a very good hp system, I want something else. I plan to use the Star Wars VP/WP system, which I think will work really well alongside the D/P rules. It's funny because on the Mongoose boards, some of the Conan developers were very anti-VP/WP for Conan. Regardless I still maintain that it will work and work well.

Don't forget that Conan has a Pocket Edition now for $19.95, if you're interested in the rules more than the flavor-stuff.

Yeah but you'll miss out on the bare-chested vixens on every page.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Bare-chested vixens, DP bonuses... What is this, F.A.T.A.L.?

 

[Khorod]

1) Conan's not a straight-up barbarian.
2) When you wear heavy armor, the Max Dex hinders Dodge.

Also, you cannot Parry Touch Attacks. As the horde of 25 grapple-crazy sewer zombies taught us last night.