Fate Points for Conan anyone?

Hello Hyborians!

Is anyone using a Fate Point system ? Something like from WHFRP & the WH 40,000 line?

Something like burning a Fortune Point to avoid death

Fortune Point spends to recover all Vigor or Resolve (Second Wind) or to be able to ignore the effect of Wounds (Overcome Weakness) for the current scene is something like that.
Then you have the Fortune Talent “Better Lucky Than Dead” which allows you to ignore 1 Wound for 1 Fortune.

But spending Fortune to entirely avoid death takes the challenge out of any combat.
Most Conan characters are VERY competent anyway, hard to kill, and recover quite quickly.

I run Conan campaigns since the playtest phase. In my games we NEVER had a PC death. The characters are that competent and spending Fortune, acting as a group, etc. helps avoid such severe consequences quite nicely.
Actually, I find it really hard to adequately challenge Conan characters, because they are so tough and competent.

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Beat me to.
Conan PCs are extremely resilient and I can’t see the need for additional help.

Even starting characters… :frowning:

Thanks for your response. I think i,m coming from other systems where despite the characters having access to high technology inc deadly weapons, they have a good chance of being killed e.g 40K, WHFRP. So far, from the few sessions of Conan that i have ran, i concur that PC’s are damn tough & the most a PC has taken is 2 wounds. That character is a scholar at heart whose skills lay elsewhere other than combat. I just thought that Fate Points would give the option for characters to survice a bit better. In conclusion, it’s too early to call the deadliness & so i,d better wait and see!

I’ve killed multiple characters, all of them by drowning. It is super, super easy to drown in this game. As a matter of fact, my own character came very close to drowning in the last session. He’s a combat-specialized character who has never suffered a wound. But the sea doesn’t care.

All the same, I don’t see any need to modify Fortune in this way. As others have addressed, there are already ample ways to use the rules to cheat death. PCs are tough to kill by design; this is meant to replicate how pulp heroes frequently skate by on luck, ingenuity and sheer endurance. I liken it to action films too. “Burning” a Fortune point to just avoid death like you would in Dark Heresy sounds too punishing, and too simple. Simply by spending a Fortune point, I’d allow a player a last-ditch effort to save themselves. Crawling from the wreckage barely clinging to life or that sort of thing.

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Depending on the situation, Fortune Points already accomplish this. A player can use a Fortune Point to add a narrative element to any scene, like a safe-ish means of escape from certain death or finding a health potion or venom antidote. The only stipulation on this most esoteric rule is that must make sense and be approved by the GM.

As a side point, Conan survives stories by exactly these means.

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I don’t us the fortune system, as I prefer it less cinematic.

Yeah fair points. Forgot about the Fortune Point use for narrative escape! Looking forward to players invoking that clause when it goes â– â– â– â–  up for them!