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Message: <blockquote data-quote="A'koss" data-source="post: 1357137" data-attributes="member: 840">From Douglas Baily on rgfd... and my comments in italics. I picked up Mongoose Publishing's _Conan_ OGL game at my FLGS yesterday, and while it's not perfect, I'm interested in some of the game-system tweaks the designers have included. These include (from memory, so incomplete and possibly not quite right): * Races: All races are actually just different human cultures, though they're still distinguished in game terms. Characters from a given race/culture gain "background skills": 2 ranks -- regardless of cross-class status -- in a couple of specified skills. - Sounds alright... * Favoured Class: Characters gain bonus feats for taking multiple levels in their race's favoured class(es), rather than suffering penalties for taking levels outside them. (Bonuses at levels 1/5/10.) - Not a bad way of handling it IMO. * Ability Score Increases: In addition to the standard single-ability increases at levels 4/8/12/16/20, characters gain a one-point bonus to *all* ability scores at levels 6/10/14/18. - At first I thought - whoa... but remember that there aren't a lot of ways to magically improve your ability scores and that all characters gain the same bonus which helps maintain game balance at higher levels. * Hit Dice: All character classes have either d6, d8 or d10 hit dice. Hit dice are capped at 10th level: from there on out, you get +1 hit point for a d6 HD, +2 hit points for a d8 HD or +3 hit points for a d10 HD. - This will also help game balance at higher levels by reducing the disparity of HPs between the classes. * Classes: Barbarian, Borderer [Ranger], Nomad, Noble, Pirate, Scholar, Soldier [Fighter], Thief [Rogue]. * Class Abilities: Too many changes/new ideas to list in full, but a few that come to mind are: making the Barbarian's rage ability (here called "Crimson Mist") dependent on making a Will save against a terrifying foe rather than usable at will; giving archery-using Borderers (Rangers) the Shot On The Run feat instead of Manyshot; and giving Thieves (Rogues) the ability to choose "sneak attack styles" with particular weapons that let them do d8s instead of d6s for sneak attack damage. * Codes of Honor: No alignment, but there are some specific (barbarian, civilised) "Codes of Honor" which dictate what their practitioners will and won't do. There are some minor-but-nice benefits for having a Code. -I use something like this IMC as well... * Reputation: Based on level and Cha, but affected by actions. Reputation penalises Disguise and affects social skills (which ones dependent on the *type* of Reputation: Brave helps Bluff and Intimidate; Honest helps Bluff, Sense Motive and Gather Information; Coward penalises Intimidate but helps Bluff and Gather Information, and so on). -I'd need to see more on this before making any kind of judgement. * Money: Characters start with a "budget" which can't be kept if not spent. (And everyone starts off too poor, like 1e AD&D.) Characters automatically spend 50% of their wealth per week, so they always have a reason to go adventuring. - 50% per week!!! Okay, that's ridiculous. * Fate Points: Like the Hero Point mechanism. You can spend a Fate Point to: [a] get a break in the story (find a loose rock to break your chains with, etc.); repent and lose a point of Corruption (more on this later); make a Massive Blow (do max. damage on an attack that's already hit, but you break your weapon in the process); or be Left For Dead (stabilise at -10, seemingly dead to inspection: if no-one comes along to heal you, you can make a Fort save to reach -9 hp, otherwise you still die.) - And you're gonna need them too... see below. * Feats: Some nice new ones I haven't seen before. Steely Gaze lets you make a combat Intimidate check (to demoralise your foe) as a free action instead of a standard action. Menacing Aura (which requires Steely Gaze and about level 15) lets you make such a check as a free action against *any* foe who comes within 15 feet of you. Also feats for sorcery: Ritual Sacrifice and the like. - Hmmm.... * Dodging and Parry: Dodging and shields add to Defence Value (= AC). Dodge and Parry are used separately: you can use either one against most attacks, but not both. Character classes have "Base Dodge" and "Base Parry" bonuses by level as well as Base Attack (soldiers are better at parrying, for instance, while pirates are better at dodging... and scholars are equally lousy at both).  *You can't parry ranged weapons (though your shield will help you dodge them). If you haven't got at least one empty square adjacent to you, you suffer a -2 dodge penalty. There's no touch AC: you just *have* to use dodge against touch attacks. * Armour: Armour gives (fixed) DR rather than affecting the hit roll. Helms add +1 or +2 DR, but heavier helms give a penalty to Listen/Spot rolls.  *Weapons have Armour Piercing values: if your weapon AP plus your Str bonus (if applicable) equals or exceeds the target's armour DR, the DR only counts at half strength. A hit that gets 20 points of damage past armour reduces that armour's DR by 1d4: this can be repaired if caught before the armour is reduced to DR 0. *sigh*  - Okay, having used at least 3 different varieties of damage-absorbing armor rules in my own games, including something very similar to this, I can unequivocally tell you that this is - too much, too slow & too complicated.  - It's deceptive, because it looks fairly straightforward... taken individually. But throw in multiple opponents with different armor, weapons, varying defensive values against different attacks, varying damage absorption based on the weapon damaging it, damaging armor, easy massive damage (see below) and you've just created a gaming nightmare. * Finesse: There is no Weapon Finesse feat: all finesse weapons are marked on the weapon table. Finesse attacks don't use the Armour Piercing mechanism: instead, any attack with a margin of success equal to or greater than the defender's DR bypasses that DR. Finesse attacks don't damage armour. - And yet another mechanic... * More Combat: The Massive Damage threshold is only 20 hp, and the save is harder (DC 10 + 1/2 damage inflicted). Initiative addes the Reflex save modifier as well as the Dex modifier (so Dex counts *twice*).  - Well I guess the combat mechanics shouldn't be too bothersome seeing as you will be dead before they can really annoy you. *Heavy armour only reduces a 30 ft. speed character to 25 ft. speed. Everything else -- criticals, special manoeuvres, action types, AoOs, etc. -- works pretty much as in D&D v3.5. * Combat Manoeuvres: Mostly based upon specific passages from the Howard stories, these are like feats, but don't require any feat slots to use: if you meet the prerequisites, you can use the manoeuvre. Some of them (Low Charge) are just handy variants on standard combat actions; a couple (Decapitating Slash, Desperate Stab) are one-shot fight-enders if they work, though these have very tough prerequisites. - I like the concept here actually, but I'm not sure on the implementation. Especially considering attacks like Decapitating Slash... do we need more ways to die here? It's not like you can easily come back as you might in core D&D... - That said, combat maneouvers that have prerequisites, but not actual feats is an idea worth exploring... * Sorcery: Power Point-based magic system (the only magic system in the game: priests, shamans and sorcerers all draw upon the same sources). Nine schools of magic (Counterspells, Curses, Divination, Hypnotism, Nature Magic, Necromancy, Oriental Magic, Prestidigitation, Summonings), with only a few (fairly powerful by D&D standards) spells listed for each school. No healing magic to speak of. The only class that gets sorcery "built-in" is the Scholar, and even they have the option to take non-magic bonus feats instead. But there's a Dabbler feat that lets *any* character gain a little sorcerous knowledge and a few spells from one of three schools. * Power Points: Beginning scholars get (4 + Wis bonus) Power Points: this increases slowly with level. Spell costs from 1 to 20+ PP. Casters can gain temporary PP over their normal limit by stealing them from helpless foes, or by ritual sacrifice (the slower and more painful the better), or through other magical rituals with multiple celebrants. Masters can take PP (or give them) to their linked apprentices. Characters without PP suffer Wis damage instead if they're drained (but the drainer still gets PP from the drain). * Sorcerous Rules: The Rule of Success gives a sorcerer a morale bonus to attack rolls based upon the number of foes he has killed in the previous round. It also dictates that any spell which succeeds may be cast again the next round at half cost. The Rule of Impermanence dictates that sorcerous spells and constructions are destroyed when the caster dies (and probably when he goes below 0 hp, too: there's a DC 25 Will save for each). The Rule of Defense allows a desperate sorcerer to make a "defensive blast" as a free action: it burns off all his Power Points and does 1d6 fire damage (within a 10 ft. radius) per PP expended. The Rule of Obsession says that a sorcerer who becomes obsessed with anything besides sorcery (say, love) loses 1-3 PP permanently... unless he incorporates his obsession into himself (say, by sacrificing his loved one), in which case he gains them back and gets an additional 1-3 PP besides. * Consequences of Sorcery: Dealing with evil powers gives sorcerers Corruption points and/or madness. Corruption points affect Cha-based skills (positively when dealing with evil/Corrupt creatures, negatively when dealing with characters with Codes of Honor) and have other side effects: the more Corruption a character has, the more screwed-up he'll be both physically and mentally. If you reach 10+ points of Corruption, you're permanently possessed by a demonic entity. There's also Runaway Magic: certain powerful spells, if cast too often, require a Will save, with consequences of failure running the gamut from minor burnout (temporary PP loss) to "fate worse than death" (sorcerer is pulled into hell and eternally damned, his body is possessed by demonic entities, and an area of 1d6 miles radius around him is devastated by magical forces, doing 20d6 to everyone in it). * War of Souls: Basically a sort of magical/spiritual grapple used to drain Power Points from an opponent. - Not really enough information to make any real judgement call. Sounds okay on the surface. * Magic Items: Almost none. Mostly useful for sorcerers: basically no such thing as straightforward +n weapons or armor. * The game also includes a full gazetteer of Hyboria, stats for animals and monsters, a poisons listing, and notes on Hyborian campaigns. The only obvious thing missing is stats for Conan himself (and other famous characters from the stories): it looks as if those were meant to be included, but were instead pulled out for release in a separate supplement (_Road of Kings_). I don't feel ripped off (it's a 352-page full-colour book!), but this seemed like a weird choice to me. - The gazetteer sounds good but a 352 page book and no stats for Conan. That irks me... a lot.  The physical book itself is very nice: good map on the endpapers, decent-to-fabulous art, reasonably clear layout (though I'm not crazy about the page borders). It's not quite perfect (the header typeface isn't the clearest, there are several minor typos, mostly of the "weforgot to putaspace here" variety, and the character sheet design is less than optimal), but it's still closer to a WotC book in quality than to most of the other products I've seen by Mongoose. I'll be interested to see how the various mechanical changes affect the game. The obvious one is that characters get hit much more often (the Dodge and Parry DVs are much lower than comparable D&D characters' ACs), but damaged less often (since *everyone* has DR). I'd like to see how -- and *if* -- this changes the feel of the game. - Heh... It's possible that some of these changes are Bad Ideas (I'm still not certain about the Hit Die cap, in particular). But I do think this is an excellent example of how to tweak mechanics to add flavour: the game *feels* very much like Howard to me, and I'm looking forward to trying it. - And I went from being very eager to buy it to seriously considering just passing on it... especially given it's rather hefty price tag. doug - A'koss. </blockquote>

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