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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6645401" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not really. Building a character in a RPG isn't itself a simulation of the character's imagined developmental process within the fiction.In particular, the build of a RPG character expresses the abilities/resources the character has to call on now. The fact that, at an earlier time in his/her imagined life, the character had different abilities, doesn't matter to the modelling of the character's present abilities.4e captures this via retraining rules. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] suggested a way of using retraining to model Conan as a battle-rager fighter for the whole game, but I would start with ranger for skill purposes.All you have to do is rebuild him. That's not a big deal. Two of the PCs in my game were rebuilt at various points - the ranger into hybrid ranger-cleric at 6th; the wizard/invoker into an invoker/wizard at 15th. The builds themselves are all rules-legal (which is the contrast with the AD&D versions of Conan, the Knights of the Round Table, etc, which were not legal builds, involving impermissible race-and-class combinations).My point is that, whatever version of Conan you want to play, there is a legal 4e PC build that expresses him pretty well.I agree on both these points - in AD&D it is very hard to actually build a legal character who will model Conan at any point in his fictional career; and the AD&D barbarian class doesn't really model Conan at all.When I talk about a RPG modelling a superhero, or a fictional character like Conan, I am not talking about modelling some arbitrary piece of fan-oriented product that is not itself an element of the fictional works.In the context of Marvel heroes, the Official Handbook is not what I think of when I wonder what a character can do; I think of the comics they figure in, and particularly the most important and influential story arcs. For Conan, I don't think about someone's notional calculations as to how much he can lift, how far he can run, etc; I think of the REH stories in which he is the protagonist.A RPG in which Wolverine, or War Machine, or Jean Gray, or whomever does the things that s/he does in the comics is a RPG that has successfully modelled those characters. What other success criteria would there be?This is an area where I think D&D can be quite flexible. Eg in 4e we have gods, primordials, slaad lords, demi-god PCs, etc - the line between god, hero and other mythic figures is pretty relaxed, and is mostly a matter of fiction rather than mechanics.I suspect that I am not the only person who finds D&D's spell mechanics are very particular way of handling magical abilities, that doesn't do a particularly good job of modelling mystical abilities in general. Even 5e recognises this, using a non-spell framework for druidical shapechange, monk's martial arts, etc.</blockquote>

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