Spellcaster type: Sorcery

In a dark sword-and-sorcery variant of ACKS, this could be fun. Especially if you eliminate Clerics and have a single Sorcerer spell list; Sorcerers can learn healing spells just as well as fireballs (in other words, eliminate the Arcane/Divine division).

Also allow Experimentation on the Research throw to cast spells; success would mean a more powerful spell is cast; failure means bad consequences for the Sorcerer. Or maybe ALL spellcasting would REQUIRE experimentation of sorts?

But this needs some SERIOUS playtesting.

Good luck. Noble Knight (.com) has some of the 2E books; the main rulebook is currently sold out (but was available as of October, maybe it shows up from time to time). They have the Pocket Edition (no art, no bestiary, first edition)

There’s not a huge list of changes between 1E and 2E: http://hyboria.xoth.net/rules/changes_in_conan_second_edition.htm

Some Googling shows me Mongoose had a fire sale when they lost the rights; and they couldn’t continue selling, which would explain the lack of PDF. Oughta be a law that OGL content gets released in the wild in those cases.

Though guess in theory anybody could re-release the OGL content.

I’ll also chime in to suggest you avoid the 1st edition, unless it’s the Atlantean edition; lots of problems in the original printing.

As a whole, I’d say Conan D20 was among the very best D20 variants ever released.

That is true; I forgot about that. It was fixes and the 3.5E update. The Pocket Edition was of the the Atlantean edition.

This could be going along the lines of “crypts and things” then? With their white/grey/black unified spell list?

Another element of that system I’d like to see acksified is the con/HP system. It seems like it would go well with the mortal wounds table.

Back in the old days, I played a version of dnd with opposing attack defense rolls that I miss, though it wasn’t as involved as the d20 Conan system, I think.

I’ve not read Crypts and Things but will check it out.

For S&S ACKS, we’ve discussed the following:

  • When reduced to 3/4 HP, you are “Bruised”
  • When reduced to 1/2 HP, you are “Bloodied”
  • When reduced to 1/4 HP, you are “Brutalized”
    Each hour you recuperate your level in HP, but if Bruised cannot recover to more than 3/4; if Bloodied, to more than 1/2; and if Brutalized more than 1/4.

Bruised condition heals after a night’s sleep.
Bloodied condition heals after a week.
Brutalized condition heals after a month.

OK I ordered both Conan 2nd Ed and Scrolls of Skelos from eBay.

Awesome. I’m looking forward to hearing what you think of it.

Scrolls or Secrets? Secrets is the 2E version.

The relevant part of C&T is interpreting HP as fatigue/luck points. A stiff drink will restore a bit, but healing does not.

Once your HP are gone, you take con damage, real wounds, and must save to stay up. HP return with a good nights sleep, but con damage heals as wounds, with healing magic, proficiencies and such helping con damage only. Integrating that with the wounds table is either trivial or filled with hidden danger… Not sure :slight_smile:

Another thing Conan-d20 did was reduce the d20 massive damage threshold to 20 points from 50 points - the Fort save becomes 10 + (1/2 damage dealt) (so, 11 to 20).

It takes a “fatigue/skill” view of HP, in the ability to take a beating and stay up, and the ability to turn killing blows into minor scrapes (which goes along with the Dodge/Parry rules well). Lowering the Massive Damage cap that much helps keep the “one blow from death” feeling alive.

This is getting to be a complexly threaded thread. I’m glad there’s more than a few S&S devotees around the ACKSverse.

Secrets - 2E!

It’s definitely getting to be a more complex thread, isn’t it!

In any event, I love sword & sorcery. My own campaigns are (I think) quite sword-and-sorcery flavored, and we tried to give the ACKS rulebook a sword-and-sorcery vibe with our use of more Persian/Middle Eastern flavored art. Essentially we went as far towards S&S as we felt we could go without alienating the traditional fantasy enthusiast who likes elves and dwarves.

I can see it in your play reports, and what amount of your campaign setting I’ve been able to see through these boards.

One one hand, the blog post on why Caesar had 70 HP shows how ACKS provides a “gamist” solution for why Conan was able to take Aquilonia - he was 13th or 14th level and had the personal power and reputation to do so - all he had to do was put his will to it.

On the other, we know that this Stygian sorcerer will be hard to topple directly because ACKS shows us how much divine/sorcerous power he has available to him due to the cult/population he controls (Auran campaign excerpts on divine spell cost/divine power of creatures), and we’ll have to trick him into defeating himself, through his own hubris or obessions.

It’s got a class-and-level based answer to the “Riddle of Steel”, I guess is what I’m getting at.

I’d like to see what happens taking ACKS out of the box of Gygaxian expectations.

Yeah. I keep coming back to the idea to publish a supplement called “Black Lore of Zahar” that transforms ACKS into a sword-and-sorcery game.

There’s lots of excellent stuff out there that could easily help build ACKS into a S&S game.

I’d like to see a good rules set for building nonhuman races, so we can have our serpent/ape/catmen and/or Martians. :slight_smile:

I’m doing something along these lines, though with (mostly) regular ACKS magic*:

http://spacecockroach.blogspot.co.il/search/label/Barbarian%20Conqueror%20King

This is a setting called Barbarian Conqueror King, which is a sword & sorcery setting for ACKS. The Elevator Pitch is “Aztecs meet Ancient Near-East with Dinosaurs, Cthulhu and Sorcery”.

It has lizardmen, geckomen and bugmen as the non-human races, and serpentmen as a past empire.

  • The main house-rule for magic is that ALL magical research requires Experimentation of some kind, so item creation/research is a bit riskier.

What might be neat would be some modified Magical Research for every spell, so if you find one on a scroll it might be more or less powerful when you put it into your repertoire, depending on your roll. The drawback, of course, would be having to figure out every scroll for it’s own individual power level.

I’ve said it before, but I love your setting.

Thanks!