Hyboria's Fiercest - Barbarians, Borderers and Nom

[Crothian]

Barbarians. Borderers. Nomads. The Hyborian Age is a world that is violent, heartless and brutal. In this dark world stalk equally violent, heartless and brutal warriors. Many are little more than bandits and murderers and others are more noble and honourable, but all of them are ferocious and enduring, able to deal out death as quickly as the world itself. What does it mean to be fierce? It means the characters stand in the world and look it straight in the eye, telling it that it has nothing on them. Sandstorms? Bah. A nomad horde is a living sandstorm, stripping the civilised of their flesh, leaving them with nothing but death in their wake. Earthquakes? Barbarians brought down Acheron, so too will they destroy the Hyborian cities with as much surety as an earthquake. Wind? Borderers are the cold draught that lays low the weak with silent wings of death. With hot, red, leaping blood are the veins of these fierce warriors rife. The barbarians, borderers and nomads of the Hyborian Age laugh with vibrant life, eager to bring down the walls and gates of civilisation, to watch it all burn as they plunder the wealth of ages, revelling in blood and gore as they wade through waves of humanity who are not fit to bow before them nor strong enough to ride and slay with them.

This 128-page book discusses how the various cultures of Conan's age look at the barbarian, borderer and nomad classes. Advice is given on what skills and feats to emphasise for each culture's iconic brand of those three classes, as well as additional cultural information to complement the information found in Conan: The Road of Kings. In some cases, variant rules are offered to better portray these character classes in some cultures.

The book also reveals the secrets of the fierce classes. Information on pushing abilities and feats of might provide rules for exerting one's body to its utmost limit at a price to health and soul. New information and rules on survival discuss terrains, movement, camouflage, equipment and hunting. Tips on skills and an expansion of the Intimidate skill are also found here. New combat manoeuvres and a whole slew of new borderer combat styles provide for more varied combat and characters.

The book also provides rules to mix and match the eight character classes to create new archetypes of the three classes this book is focused on: the barbarian, the borderer and the nomad. Here you will find savage scouts, sea wolves, river rats, shamans, the pride of the nomads and many other character class combinations. With new feats, skills and sample pre-generated characters, it’s crammed full of essential Conan reading.

 

[Ahzad]

Conan Hyboria's Fiercest Barbarians, Borderers & Nomads

I've never done a review before but I'll give it a shot but I'll admit right up front that I'm a REH fan, and I think the Conan RPG is a great system.

Conan: Hyboria's Fiercest Barbarians, Borderers & Nomads. 128 pgs SC.
Author: Vincent Darlage

It's a black and white book, not done on glossy paper like the earlier Conan books. The art is nice (in b/w) and scattered throughout the book. I would've prefered the glossy paper and color art considering this book is the same size as Scrolls and the same price. The cover is another nice piece from Chris Quilliams depicting a handful of character types.

I'm not going to try and give examples of typos and the like, nothing jumped out at me as glaringly wrong so I'm happy w/ it in that respect, plus I have no reason to correct another's grammar

chapter 1: Cultures & Classes 36 pgs
This chapter runs down the roles of Barbarians, Borderers & Nomads across the land from Aquilonia to Zingara, some areas get a little more description than others because of the prevelance, or lack of those classes in those areas, to give an example of this we'll look at Koth. Under the listing for Koth it gives you a brief description of the country, no more than a short paragraph describing the region in broad strokes and then a couple paragraphs explaining the roles of the Barbarians, Bordererers, & Nomads in that region if any and gives you suggestions to alter the classed to make them better fit that area, examples of skills, and feats that are more common for each class in that area and some suggested multi-class combinations. Scattered throughout are little rules variant sidebars, for example one for the barbarian suggest dropping Track in favor of Power Attack and losing the skills survival, craft, hide and move silently for bluff, sense motive, and tumble to reflect a barbarian raised in pit fighting or gladiator stables.

This was great chapter lots of ideas for players on how to play a character from one of those areas, and gives you some thought on how to customize your character a bit to reflect his upbringing. Wouldn't change a thing in it.

chapter 2: Secrets of the Fierce 21 pgs
This chapter is full of neat concepts like pushing an ability, think of an ability bump based on your force of will (it costs you xps to use) but it's got to be tied to a single task that lasts for a limited # of rounds or the task is complete which ever comes first, and it has to be used in the service of another you can't use it to get yourself out of the hot seat. The example they use is when Conan is on the cross, he uses his force of will to keep going to help the Queen.
Another neat idea is feats of might using which allow you to replicate some of Conan's heroic acts of strength, by taking ability damage to increase your strength score to apply to lifting, pushing, throwing, and breaking items. It also gives you the range increments for heavy objects, and the extra damage they cause.
There are also expanded rules for skills, survival has rules for getting lost, and finding your way again. Some bits of Advanced Tracking which goes into a bit more detail than just following tracks, for example you can determine things like whether a creature is injured or fatigued, it's hourly movement speed, some rules for evading pursuit like laying false trails is given. Special hiding and climbing rules. Foraging for food and water in the wilderness is covered, hunting, fishing, trapping (w/ sample traps). Herbs and Herblore are briefly mentioned along with a nice table of various herbs and what they can do for you. A couple paragraphs about key skills for these classes. Intimidation has been expanded into six different skills, they are all still intimidation but there are six types each keyed to your stats, for example bully is keyed to your Strength, and Admonish is tied to Wisdom, these were very nicely done. Some thought is given to details like spending the night in the wilderness, walking and running, and finally a little on mounts finishes off the chapter.

I thought this was another solid chapter. If I had to change anything here it may be to lose the bits on foraging, and the last couple of things on spending the night, walking and running and mounts. I liked it they were nice and short but it's something that not every DM needs.

chapter 3: Abroad in Hyborea 9 pgs
This chapter was great it dealt w/ surviving in all types of terrain forest, marshes, water, hill, mountains, plains and the best a paragraph about stealth and detection in each terrain type to go w/ the hazards and features of each entry.

As a gm I loved this chapter it doesn't beat you over the head w/ long boring classifications it's short and to the point, and the inclusion of the stealth and detection paragraph was brillant.

chapter 4: Fierce Feats 4 pgs
Introduces 22 new feats. I don't think this chapter needs any explaination.

chapter 5: Joining the Fray 11 pgs
A bunch of new combat manoeuvres we get 4 for Archery, 4 for melee, and 11 for mounted. I'm a big fan of these so i'm always tickled to see more of these than feats. The rest of the chapter give us 28 new borderer combat styles to choose from, again great stuff giving you a lot of flexiblilty when putting together your borderer.

chapter 5: By Mighty Thews 17 pgs
Full of barbarian multiclassing options and variant rules for the options, strengths, weaknesses, recommended skill/feat options, and race suggestions. for example you get Clan Cheif by mixing barbarian/noble and then it includes a table that runs out the progression for you like a base class, or a Shaman (Barbarian/Scholar).

chapter 6: By Honed Senses 15 pgs
As the previous chapter but full of borderer multiclassing options and variant rules for the options, for example you can make an Emissary (Borderer/Noble) who is a borderer w/ a title, or a Skirmisher (Borderer/Soldier).

chapter 7: By beastly union 13 pgs
As the previous chapter but full of nomad multiclassing options and variant rules for the options, for example River Rat (Nomad/Pirate), or Fedayeen (Nomad/Thief) a guerrilla fighter type of class.

These 3 chapters i really liked a lot b/c this is what i want from a class book i don't need any prestige classes (thankfully there are none in here) take the base classes and with variant rules/options and multiclassing and show me what can be done. Prestige classes serve a purpose but they shouldn't be so prevalent in the game they should be reserved for a specific concept you want to highlight, anything else should be handled by the base classes, IMO.

Overall a very solid book and I hope the others follow this format.

I tried to find something I didn't like about this book, and I really couldn't. This is a great class book. If I had to pick at something I would have to say the lack of glossy paper and color artwork.

terry