Trying not to die!

Conan: Adventures In an Age Undreamed Of
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Question on using armour and shields to avoid getting splattered. In the rules it states that you can basically break the armour or shield in order to prevent a wound. Is the intention to prevent all the wounds from a single hit or literally just 1 of the incoming wounds?

I ask as I took 14 points of damage and that creates 3 wounds by my count (unless I am wrong about that?). That will smoke me. I have an intact shield though to sacrifice to try and stay alive.

-Erik

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Yes. You are wrong.

You can only take up to 2 wounds in one hit, as there are only three conditions that cause a wound, and only two of them might apply at the same time:

  1. Receive 5 or more points of stress damage in one hit (no matter if it is just 5 after armor reduction or 50 points, the condition is “5 or more”).
  2. Your stress track falls to 0 (that could happen any time with any amount of damage. If you are at 2 Vigor and receive 2 damage this will trigger as well as if you are at full Vigor of 15 and receive 18 damage.)
  3. Your stress track is already at 0 and you receive 1 or more points of damage. (A single point of damage while your stress track is at 0 will cause a Wound.)

Two of those conditions could happen at the same time: 1 and 2 or 1 and 3.
If two apply, then you receive 2 Wounds, else only 1 Wound.

If the attack came from a weapon with the Intense quality, and if you receive at least 1 Wound from this attack, the Intense Quality adds another Wound. That means: if you receive 1 Wound by the attack, with Intense that makes it 2 Wounds. If you receive 2 Wounds by the attack, with Intense that makes it 3 Wounds.
Do not forget that after an Exploit action, the Unforgiving X quality transforms iinto Vicious X plus Intense for one attack, so there is a “hidden Intense” included.

There is a Melee talent that allows you to add 1 Wound to the damage for 2 Momentum. If a PC or an NPC has that Talent, there could be the case of receiving an additional wound.

So with this Talent, with an Intense weapon, hitting for a lot of damage that causes 5 or more damage in one hit and drops the Vigor track to 0, a character could cause 4 Wounds max. And that is a fringe case.
It would be enough to incapacitate, though not outright kill, even a Nemesis NPC or a PC.

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3

Just a single wound. You calculate the total number of Wounds you would receive, then sacrifice your shield to reduce the total by 1 wound. You will still suffer the remaining wounds - unless you only received 1 Wound in the first place.
Note: for this, apply the Intense quality and any Talents or Doom spends first, to reach the total number of wounds.

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It could be four wounds, with the addition of the Killing Strike talent.

5

Yes, and that is for the first attack - add a swift action for 2 Momentum (or only 1 Momentum if using a different weapon) and such a PC can insta-kill a Nemesis NPC in the first turn - and all necessary Talents are available for starting PCs, so 0 XP necessary.
Conan PCs that are optimized that way are scary right away - and with a few thousand XP they become “superpowered”.

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Thats the “pulpish” part of conan and the system. But yeah, thats right optimized fighter character can handle a nemesis NPC very quickly.

Thats why I often have the real challenges in my adventures not being the fights. Let it be riddles or investigations or else.

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Hi there, this explanation helped me understand tis part of the rule.
I ran my first session last week, i am an experienced master since 30 years (the one ring 2nd, d&d, chtullu etc)
I really dislike DnD, for all this bad rules and the melting pot of all bad clichet you can find in fantasy.
I really like the TOR 2nd edition, actually it is the absolute best combination of skills, talent, and dice. it offers a simple way to manage the game, and the numbers of dice enhance the propability of successes. its logic is unbreakable.
Now in the 2d20 system, i found similarities in choosing to add dice and a nice doom/Momentum system. but:

  • the rule book is …chaotic, rules are somewhere in the middle of tons of useless text. I had to read rules from Achtung Chtullu to understand what happens if your vigor goes to zero. No tables, so confusing, its always subject to interpretation.
    example :
    For me the sacrifice of a shield or piece of armor prevents also the loss of vigor, i need to read it again.
    2nd example
    On Volley it says you can use 1 point of momentum to add a D20 + D6. Didnt say “only 1”, it says one. But then you find the skill “Volley” you can use 2 momentum … so if you don’t have the skill you can use only one. Very confusing. I think it needs lots of session to understand fully how Conan works, especially for the players if they want to use every advantage in game.
    I really love the Conan world, and all the novels, so this game is really close to what wrote Robert E.Howard and i want to push more deep in the game.

But i feel like it is unbalance.

  • Fights: minions are completely useless: 5 vigor 1 damage 1 dice attack no parry. Thoughenned are a little bit more interesting, but still useless with 2 damage and such low charasteristics.
    Characters are build with strong attacks and do so many hit points with like 6 dices, the more they trhow dices the more they have sucesses (what is perfect in TOR) so always with momentum. As a DM you just see what you planned as a dangerous moment turns out like a butchery momentum for players, loosing all the danger. I could use Doom to add more minions, so it turns like an endless fight, still no danger. Most of the weapon have parade or with the skill parade (owned by 70% of players) players get a free parade, so with a minion you will never ever do dammage or you have to use the horde rule, but with 4 players you have to use 4 horde to have a balance fight. I see this because a minion as no opportunity to do consequent dammage. The Knight thoughened is a joke, like in 1 turn he s dead against the group of player. Then they can turn every scene into butchery if they want and even if you put some difficulty, make pop some mobs it is still a joke.

What I mean is : there is no good mob before a nemesis, a nemesis is simply an important npc in another game. Minions and thoughned are useless, especially when the rule states that at the end of the scene you get your vigor to the maximum.

The xp rule is weird also, you gain like 200 xp for one campaign (lik 2 or 3 session). The cost is huge to raise skills. When i build a character, I see that he is so powerfull in combat that in the end the rest is secondary.

The mental fight is weird, like i can steely glare you every round until you get mad ? I am a bit disappointed with this. If you want to focus your character on that you will use steally glare and some posture when it is possible, it means even an expert you will always do same attack, and ther is no malus or difficulty, if I do stealy glare all round and the enemy attack with a sword, I am not sure the enemy will be scared after the 1 round. I don’t see that as close to what could happen in combat. If i scare you, you ll run aways, you don’t turn mad or then put some high attacks you can gain with high lvl skills.

The rest of the skills that are not related to combat are not that usefull, when you are full of money of weapon and momentum. who needs to bargain, who needs to socialise etc…

I fell there is some mechanic i don’t understand, or i do wrong, the overhall feeling is : it is too unbalance and offer no option to balance it unless you have more than 5 or 6 doom to use per player per fight so you can still put some pressure on them for a total of 24 doom per scene for 4 players. And against players that have to roll lets says 2 times more than a DM they will always have Momentum to spend.

Another part i don’t understand : out of a scene you use observation to locate let say a cave entrance. You roll a 1 and a 6, on focus 6, so 5 successes, you need 1. you will store 4 momentum. they says minus 1 after a turn, minus 1 after end of scene. We are not in a scene here we are between 2 scenes. For me this roll should not provide any momentum ?

I am thinking that i should create character with strong secondary skills like social etc… and make them very low on combat, but no one wants to play like this. because it is easy in character creation to make a strong fighter but it is very long to raise skills while lvling.

May be someone can help me understand where i am misunderstanding , or probaly my way of playing combat is not adapted to the rules, I don’t see how i can entertain the full session with actions, I mean role playing is always the same, you speak with people, resolve puzzle, riddle, think, read book etc… nothing change from other games, here with momentum, even with low characteristic it is always possible to get informations etc…