So can you spend your momentum after you,ve rolled your damage dice? If not, then it’s a bit ■■■■ if you don’t get any 5 or 6’s ? kind of a waste of momentum & it states that momentum is never wasted!
How do you all play this talent?
Thanks
You already mentioned that Momentum is never wasted. So if no timing is specified, you spend your Momentum at the ideal moment, which would be after you rolled (and potentially re-rolled) all of the 
dice.
It’s the same thing with the “re-roll damage” spend. You roll your damage first to see if you actually want to re-roll anything.
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Thanks Shran. Suspected it was the case of spend when it’s best! My Pict barbarian PC has been dealing out some impressive damage with this talent!
Just a quick question : Do you think axes with the Intense quality are too good? I mean what are the downsides to using an axe? Battleaxe : Vicious 1 & Intense; two really good qualities in a weapon.
Do many of your players use battleaxes ?
Yes, axes are very popular for close combat oriented PCs.
Dealing lots of damage, having the ability to often cause 2 Wounds in a single attack (by causing 5 or more damage in one hit and dropping the opponent’s Vigor to 0), adding to that Intense for a third wound and maybe Killing Strike (requires Blood on Steel), and you can drop a Nemesis NPC by dealing four wounds in a single attack.
The combination Tower Shield + Battle Axe is very good for protecting yourself and dealing a lot of damage. So it is one of the most popular for strong PCs with melee focus.
Appreciate your response Frank F!
I have a question on Vogour/Wounds if i may:
If an opponent has 0 Vigour and is hit, does ANY damage (after soak) cause a wound?
If it always takes 5 vigour loss to cause a wound, why even have a Vigour score?
Thanks
Yes.
So that you take 2 Wounds when you take 5 or more damage and your Vigor is at 0 
Vigor is kind of a buffer. Sometimes you take less than 5 damage, so you don’t immediately get a Wound.
Totally answers all my thread questions. Thanks to Shran & FrankF for these.
Think i,ll be blowing 3 doom (like a fortune point) to restore combatant’s vigour next fight!
Forgot to ask : do you take a wound/trauma for every 5 points of stress taken? e.g 10 vigour lost = 2 wounds? Sorry to keep banging on Shran!
No. There are only three condition to take Trauma or Wounds:
- Suffering 5 or more points of damage to your stress track (Resolve or Vigor) in one hit.
- Your stress track falls to 0.
- Suffering 1 or more points of damage while your stress track is already at 0.
That means, only two of those conditions can apply at any one time:
a) Your character suffers 5 or more points of damage to the stress track which causes the track to fall to 0. => 2 Wounds/Trauma.
b) Your character suffers 5 or more points of damage to the stress track which is already at 0. => 2 Wounds/Trauma.
You only look for the condition of “5 or more damage in one hit”, NOT “for every 5 points of damage”.
So it does not matter if you suffer 5 points or 10 oder 20 in one hit, it only triggers the “5 or more” condition (and maybe causes your stress track to fall to 0 for another Wound/Trauma).
The problem with games and axes that is usually never addressed is the very easy deflection. Unless you land a blow just right a axe blade will twist sideways and away, just becoming a mace/club.
Until you try to land a blow in real life, it’s a often missed problem. On a tree not a person, but add to the mix a target moving or armour and it’s not very easy. You can get all simy and house rule something, but it’s worth not over playing there power.
Still wrapping my head around the system, but the more I grasp, the more I appreciate the badassery of PCs from character creation. No running from giant rats in this game!
No, not much running from anything if they’re ‘fighting men’. In fact it can be tricky to challenge them if they are. That said… if they use some of the more esoteric archetypes, such as philosopher, oracle, pilgrim, not so much.
Yes, if you have a hero group made up of one or two “combat monsters”, combat optimized characters, and then some scholarly types, sages, priests, merchants etc., any opposition that might challenge the combat monsters, will outright kill the other, less combat-oriented characters.
It is quite a challenge for a GM to find the balance of how to design oppositions for such a group.
Well, from the movies, keep in mind Akiro mostly stayed out of the way when sword-swinging was happening. It’s up to the players of those kinds of characters to find a way to stay out of the way.
Depending on the situation, “staying out of the way” requires some combat-relevant abilities in the first place.
And lacking those, such characters are “collateral damage” in no time at all.
Well, if you’re going to be a complete non-combatant in Conan’s reality those are the chances you take.
To be honest it’s not much different that the old D&D problem for low-level wizards, and frankly not much different than real life.
It’s better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.
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I actually find that 2d20 does relatively well with this as many enemies are only dangerous if you spend Doom on them.
Simply by spending your Doom heavily against the combat character and lightly vs the non-combat characters your can dynamically balance the challenge.
It’s generally obvious what you’re doing, but that’s the nature of the game so a savvy player will see it as you making it fun for everyone.
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The combat format lends itself to a very cooperative endeavor. In one scene the characters were ambushed by a giant crocodile. I rolled randomly to see who was the primary target and it turned out to be the knight . . . He won the struggle and used his momentum to break guard on the beast. The lore master, armed only with a Zanzibar knife and lacking any combat training, uses the remaining two group momentum and granting me one doom, uses the opening the knight created to gut the exposed creature causing a harm and I think the knife gives a second one . . . And BOOM!!! Dead giant crocodile but a completely memorable roleplaying moment that had everyone cheering. I really do love this game.
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I think that’s a really good example of how the game is uspposed to work. The players just have to work it out.
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