Actually, this brings me to a question of my own:
If a character armed with a spear (Reach 3) and a buckler (Reach 1) squares off against a knif-fighter (Reach 1) and has his Guard broken, does the knife-fighter
a) gain 2d20 to his attack for the reach difference of 2 or
b) gain no advantages from breaking the Guard (apart from hitting easier), because the other fighter can use his buckler to defend at no Reach difference between the weapons?
Option b) is what I’ve been going with, just wanted to know if there are other opinions.
I would say that the Knife fighter gets bonus d20s until the defender regains Guard. Here’s why:
The weapon the defender was using was the Spear, right? The Buckler can be used as a weapon, but it’s mechanical function is to reduce the cost of a Swift Action for a second attack. It’s not being used for Guard as much as it is Soaking damage.
That said, I would allow the defender, in the next round, instead of Regaining Guard to declare the Buckler now as the primary weapon. The trade off, of course, is that now the Spear is ancillary and has no use other than to lower the cost of a Swift Action.
Good question. I can totally understand why you use B. But I would rule it this way.
The rules make it clear that the attacked-character can normally choose which weapon to use when comparing Reach.
From Corebook, pg 123 (my emphasis):
When a character makes an attack, the gamemaster should compare the Reach of the weapon being used with the Reach of the opponent’s weapon (opponent’s choice). The defender is assumed to be keeping the opponent at
bay with the preferred weapon.
There’s a reason spear, shield and shortsword/seax/etc was a popular set of weapons for soldiers in the historical period that inspires Conan. Conan’s ruleset does a good job of portraying that.
Reach is a significant benefit on an open field where the fighters square off against each other. It’s entirely reasonable that’s the case for that sort of combat. But there’s numerous ways to set up situations where that’s not the case: in particular Doom spend, Complications or terrain all are great for limiting its effectiveness (say the Spear+Buckler fighter rolls a Complication on their preceding Defend Reaction, ruling that their Buckler is “Knocked out of line” and they can’t use it for the remainder of the turn is a great Complication to set up for that character getting mobbed by Dagger wielding Mooks).
As a GM though, I’d rule that when you’re using a weapon trait then you need to use that Weapon’s reach. This is important for Parry: if you’re armed with a say a Broadsword and Dagger and you use the Broadsword’s Parry trait to Defend then you will be Reach 2, or a Dagger’s for Reach 1.
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Thank you for your answer. So my initial thought is correct: a minion with a lower reach weapon cannot hit a pc, unless doom is spend OR the minion(s) mob up to attack the single pc!
One additional point here, for people who like Knockdown weapons and don’t like the enemy to have Guard. Being knocked prone breaks Guard, so even after they stand up, the victim has to expend an action to Regain Guard or suffer the consequence of not having Guard. Note that a GM who doesn’t like that happening to his Nemesis BBG can spend Doom to avoid the condition, at a cost of one per Effect rolled, but it’s a good reason anyway to look at weapons that have the Knockdown trait!
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One additional question:
In the Core Book, Reach 3 weapons include the pike (average length of a pike was 5-6 meters), the halberd (average length 2.1 meters), and the two-handed sword (average length 1.3 meters).
Is it an error that the way shorter two-handed sword comes with a reach of 3? It does not make any sense if compared to the length of other weapons in the Reach 3 category.
Conan only has very few Reach categories, so that more finely grained distinctions will not be possible. You will always make “errors” compared to real world facts. Why does a shield have Reach 2 the same as a ■■■■■■■ sword (a sword for one-and-a-half-hand, an Anderthalbhänder - the type of sometimes one-handed, sometimes two-handed used long sword)?
An actual two-handed sword, a Zweihänder (meaning two-handed), is quite long and has quite a threatening range. It threatens a space that is comparable to what is threatened by most pole arms, and in actual use it is employed very similar to a “sharp longstaff”:
EDIT: How could I write the weapon type called “■■■■■■■ Sword” without the qualifying term being replaced by some black dots by the forum software?
“Bastardsword”? “Bastar_d Sword”? “Bas-■■■■ Sword”?
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I totally agree on the point that the Zweihänder is handled differently to a broadsword but I cannot see this reflected in the rules.
All my players use Zweihänder as the Reach gives them an advantage very all the other weapons without having any downsides. The only “sacrifice” to make is that they cannot use shields but with the additional dice gained by the reach difference and the Deflection talent, they mass up momentum while the more regularly armored foes spend up all available doom pretty early in combat to land at least one hit.
I feel like the rules do not really reflect the way such a weapon needs to be handled.
It depends on what your actual “needs” are in regard of modeling weapons in a very anachronistic fantasy setting.
In Conan you have armament, weapons, armor, warships, etc., of time periods and technological eras over about 2000 to 3000 years lumped together. That cannot work at all. It did not work, looking at our real world history.
But this is fantasy, so you will find a khopesh next to a zweihänder.
So you cannot expect any kind of historical, technical accuracy due to the genre being a hodgepodge of things that never belong(ed) together.
Another point of view would be the game aspect, balancing, making decent and entertaining challenges.
And in that regard, I totally agree, Conan leaves some things to be easily exploited.
The Reach of a two-handed sword had in my experience been the lesser problem compared to weapons with the Intense quality. Intense is THE killer quality to get rid of even powerful Nemesis NPCs in one hit (including the application of the Killing Strike talent which adds another wound).
The poleaxe with Reach 3, Intense, Piercing 1, Vicious 1 is one of the most effective weapons in the Conan rules. The battleaxe for dual wielding, too.
There are different “builds” to exploit that. The Riposte build is very good for weapons with longer Reach. Having a poleaxe with Reach 3 and decent Parry skill plus the Riposte Talent will make it harder for typical enemies with Reach 2 weapons to attack, making a successful parry more likely, and then the not defendable Riposte counter-attack using the Intense, Piercing 1 and Vicious 1 qualities.
For a more aggressive build, dual wielding battleaxes means the Swift Attack Momentum spend is only 1 for the second attack at +1 Difficulty. Getting hit twice by a weapon with Intense and Vicious 1, plus the Killing Strike Talent, that took care of lots of Nemesis NPCs I mustered up in my games in the first round of combat.
Some weapons are - not historically accurately represented, to note - simply better than others according to the Conan 2d20 rules.
I live with this, and sometimes I use those exploits by NPCs, too.
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Yes, in the end we came to fights were halberds and Zweihänder are used only. It “looks” stupid and totally kills my sense of Conan fantasy fight aesthetics, but in terms of game balancing it is the only way to make a fight a little more challenging without introducing sone random terrain effects that level out the NSCs and the PCs.
Maybe I am too used to D&D after years of playing it. I fancied the very well balanced micro game that fighting was within the roleplaying game.
But that Reach rules with granting a Reach 3 Zweihänder 2 bonus dice over a Reach 1 Short Sword seem unbelievably mighty.
But for Sure, there are even worse power gaming exploits to find.
There may be a misunderstanding of the Reach rules here.
If you’re an attacker, and your opponent has Guard and a longer Reach weapon than you, your Attack adds +1 difficulty per point of Reach difference (i.e., if you’re Reach 1 and your foe is Reach 3, you suffer +2 difficulty on your attack). Attacking an opponent when your weapon is longer grants no bonus.
If you’re an attacker, and your opponent has no Guard, then you get +1d20 for each point your weapon is shorter than your target’s.
A Reach 3 weapon shouldn’t be granting bonus dice just for being longer.
You got the rules regarding Reach apparently wrong.
If an attacker with a weapon with shorter Reach attacks a defender with a weapon with longer Reach, the Difficulty for the Melee skill test is increased by the Difference.
If an attacker with Reach 2 Sword attacks a defender with Reach 3 Poleaxe, the Difficulty would be D2 instead of D1 to successfully attack.
And only if the one with the longer Reach weapon loses Guard, the one with the shorter weapon gets actual bonus dice to attack, so after breaking Guard of the wielder of the two-handed sword, an attacker with a dagger would get +2d20 to attack the sword fighter.
And that is actually the way to challenge characters with Reach 3 weapons. Have an NPC with a Reach 1 weapon attack this character after breaking the guard (Momentum spend or due to a Complication). That way they feel how cumbersome it is, bringing a long and unwieldy weapon to an up close knife fight.
Ah yes true, I got that wrong. Of course you are right, the bonus dice only apply after breaking guard. I mixed that up.
But still, a reach difference of 1 or 2 between Zweihänder and broad sword / shortsword feels so mighty. With all the foes adding up Agility and Combat FoE to values rarely being higher than 10 or 11, an increase in difficulty to hit by one or two renders most enemy attacks fruitless.
But thank you for clarifying that Reach 3 for the two-handed sword is by design and not a mistake. Maybe my problem of understanding how combat in conan is supposed to work runs deeper than just this rule.