Different Races.. keep the Flavor or the +2?

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Heya!

I'd just like to say I picked up Grim Tales.

And I'm now switching from the Conan rules, which I enjoyed quite a lot.

Grim tales all the way, baby!




Only thing is, I'd like to keep the idea of racial bonuses. For instance, Zingarans get a +1d6 sneak attack, a lot of races get extra skills and so on.

I was wondering if using racial modifiers was still possible, and keep the feeling of it? Or do I just keep all of the flavor, and tell them to, say, take a level of Smart Hero for a sneak attack or something?

Could do either way. It's just that some of those Conan races probably deserve +1 level adjustment..

 

[Turanil]

Using chapter 13 p.166, you could determine the CR of each race. See p.181 the standard PC races done that way. Of course, it would require some long and tedious work. Not something I would bother to do...

 

[GlassJaw]

And I'm now switching from the Conan rules, which I enjoyed quite a lot.

Not to derail this thread too much but how did you like the Conan book? I'm very interested in checking it out, if for no other reason than to compare it to GT. Do you think both can be used in the same campaign? Is one book a lot better than the other? Can you borrow ideas from both and mash them all together?

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

How did I like the conan rules? They rock, but when things heat up with armor, you begin to get long, slow battles. Measuring your strength + weapon penetration halves enemies armour, 20 points of damage lowers the armours AC bonus by 1..

It was a cool, vaguely realistic armor system. But slow, in the games I played. Fast as anything without armor, but slow as a wet week with it. Admittedly I like Armor as DR, but Conan I think adds a bit much to the equation. The races are excellent and cool.

As per my question, I was wondering if I could indeed mix the two - but it would be slow and tedios, and I don't think I'll bother. Just use the Armor converts damage to nonlethal and I'm a happy chappy.

I used to think realism in combat was good, being a bit of a historical fencer myself. Trust me, speed in combat is much better. To speed things up, we just said that the armor served as damage reduction, and penetration + Str lowered the DR by that amount.

But I think Grim Tales (And it's magic system) would be good for it.

I was wondering, though. Could I put in my D20 Cthulu magic? And how would that work?

But I'm keeping Armor being DR.

 

[GlassJaw]

They rock, but when things heat up with armor, you begin to get long, slow battles. Measuring your strength + weapon penetration halves enemies armour, 20 points of damage lowers the armours AC bonus by 1.

Sounds like it accounts for armor degredation. Interesting concept but yeah, I can definitely see how that would slow things down. I want a very fast and heroic system that still accounts for low-magic. GT seems to do just that. I'm also forgoing VP/WP which I was thinking about.

Just use the Armor converts damage to nonlethal and I'm a happy chappy.

Likewise. The armor DR to nonlethal is one of the better variants I've seen.

I was wondering, though. Could I put in my D20 Cthulu magic? And how would that work?

I think it would work awesome and I actually plan on doing just that. You can take a lot of the spells from the Cthulhu book as-is. GT is flexible enough to allow you to introduce any type of magic that you want into your game. IIRC (I don't have the books in front of me), they treat spell drain a little different but I remember it not being too difficult to tweak it.

From a role-playing perspective, I think the Cthulhu spells work great with GT and low-magic in general because they are very unique and somewhat evil. You know you are dabbling with dangerous forces when you try to cast those spells.

 

[Fenris]

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I was wondering, though. Could I put in my D20 Cthulu magic? And how would that work?

Wulf has mentioned before that, fewer bigger spells works well to emulate the Cthulhu system.
I would probably up the spell drain (three skulls) and maybe, just maybe, require a horror check in addtion to a spellcaster check

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wulf has mentioned before that, fewer bigger spells works well to emulate the Cthulhu system.
I would probably up the spell drain (three skulls) and maybe, just maybe, require a horror check in addtion to a spellcaster check

That's my feeling, too. I don't recall off the top of my head, but CoCd20 spells don't have a spell level-- so for ease of use, I'd just use exactly the same ability score damage they are listed with. Where Sanity is involved, I'd use a Horror check, YES!, somewhere along the lines of DC10+Sanity rolled.

Sump'n like that-- I could get out my books and give more concrete (ie, not out of my ass) advice, but I trust folks can figure this one out without a lot of effort at all.

Wulf

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

One of my players spotted a "CoC Magic In D&D" conversion in the d20 CoC book. Has all of the spells listed as Arcane/Divine and the spell level.

Make your job easier that way ...

Though we're currently using them as-is ... it's quite nice, with the drain and such. We convert San to Subdual damage, but we're in a superheroic game, so it works for us.

--fje