Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9806466" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Most are not based upon Howard's Conan... most are based on Lin Carter and others' versions. Howard's conan was usually in a shirt, wore chain when expecting to fight, and was muscular but not a body-builder/he-man physique.Only until other authors took over the writing. Then he hits the super-duper swormaster, and stops being the guy climbing sheer surfaces.In games, Howard's conan, Once thieves were added, he was better represented as a Thief-8 than a fighting-man-8. And only about STR 16. Definitely Con 18. And Dex 17 or 18. Lin Carter's Conan is definitely a Fighting-man-8. And maybe working on his thief 5 to go on to Bard...Niche Protection says "No" to the last. Realism says "Go skill based"…The skill monkey aspect came in D&D 3E/d20 Rogues. Who are able to be thieves, but are not inherently skilled in thievery.[snip of exemplars]If your choices include melee and magic user, you've left out ranged combatant and non-combatant non-caster.So I see a flat minimum of 3 classes in a class based: combatant (mixed melee/ranged), caster, "other"....And Casters can often be seen in two camps... healer and damager, but there's a third kind – the buff/debuff caster – and the fourth kind – the utility caster.In many class based games without distinct skill mechanics, classes are really just super broad skills. and some ostensibly skill based games are effectively class based.Star Trek Adventures 6 "disciplines" are so broad that they're class-like... but every PC is multi-classed into all 6... in a 0-5 rating system, with PCs being 1st in all 6. (I really think they should have added Merchant and Psi as disciplines...)Battlestations! 5-7 skills (core: Athletics, Pilot, Science, Engineering, Combat; fully expanded adds Diplomacy, Psionics, and Sanity...) are again, effectively classes (except Sanity) - and most have most of them.Classic Traveller is just enough in its first skill list to really be skill based, but even there, some of them are so broad that they get split later in the run (Books 5-9)... but your skills available are limited by career, so careers have a class-like function, but not niche protection. You need 5 skills for all ship operations, and a 6th for "setting reasons" in CT-77 & CT-81: Pilot, Navigator, Gunnery, Engineer, Steward; Medic is setting reasons, but a great idea. Streetwise, Administration, and Computer are useful but not essential.  But every weapon type on the tables is a distinct skill, too... so, a big inconsistency.... MegaTraveller has a much larger skill list, including the subdivisions from Books 5-7 (8 was after MT, and 9 was this year), and a bunch from magazine articles, but reduces the weapon skills massively.</blockquote>

Verification