Since my group likes their fantasy a bit more traditional, I’m trying to make the game more fun for everyone by adding rules for the more High Fantasy aspects.
Here’s my attempt at bringing elves and dwarves to the Conan ruleset.
To be an elf or dwarf, you need to select the first talent during step 9 of character generation. Afterwards, you can buy the corresponding talents, but you’re not required to. Obviously, apart from the talents, there is no functional difference between an elf, dwarf or a human, merely a cosmetic one. I should probably think about doing a human talent tree to balance everything out, which would result in a higher-powered game.
For now, it’s only a thought experiment… let me know what you guys think.
Racial Talents.pdf (468.7 KB)
Beware any rule or system that ever needs you to create a set of ‘human’ bonuses or talents etc for balance. It always leads to a power creep (which I don’t think Conan could bear) and it suggests something fundamentally at odds within your premise.
I’ve thought about the same thing and I’d probably go with the following:
Use Shadows if the Past (my players have suggested double-applying this, do a base attribute of 5, for campaigns)
Maybe some attribute exchanges could be mandatory for some races, such as Brawn/Coordination for Elves.
The idea of racial Talent trees sounds nice, but I think some of yours are going to lead to OP characters. Using Survival instead of Ranged Weapons would mean half the cost of advancement for both skills. Where would the player spend his XP? Conan doesn’t really have the open-ended ‘Abilities’ concept that say D&D has, so new Talents have to stay within the existing framework of bonus d20, lower difficulty, substituting skills, etc. And that is whiteboard to modify without a risk to balance. Personally I wouldn’t go further than the odd Talent, balanced with losing something else.
Maybe Elves all have the Sorcerer Talent as a Homeland talent?
I share your concerns about OP characters. As i said, it is just a thought experiment atm, I’m not using other races in my campaign atm.
The idea of racial talet trees is a very appealing one to me as it is a different approach from the usual “+1 dex, -1 con” approach. Race should not really play into attributes unless it is what really sets the races apart, hence the (literally) Inhuman attribute at the end of the talent tree. Also a unique talent tree sets the race apart from someone who just buys all the right talents and makes them different to everyone else. Hard to balance, though…
As for the substitution talents, there is precedent for that (for example, the stealth talent tree), but I concede that it might be a bit over the top. On the other hand, it really only affects your skill rolls. The true power of skills lies in their talents, and I have a homerule in place, that you can’t have attributes of a higher tier than the skill focus in their controlling skill and you can’t have a focus higher than the expertise value of the skill. So in order to have top tier ranged talents, they still need to have a high ranged skill. But the governing attribute becomes a different one.
But thanks for the feedback, it confirms my own thoughts… it’s a bit of trial and error there. But it probably beats waiting for a 2d20 Generic or Skyrim edition (if ever one should come out).