He's never, ever described anywhere like a theif, he's always animalistic.
'cept in the Nemedian Chronicles.
"Know oh Prince that between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of recorded history, there was an Age undreamed of... When shining Kingdoms lay spread across the world- like blue mantles beneath the stars... From the north came a CIMMERIAN - sword in hand. A thief, a reaver, a slayer, with GIGANTIC melancholies, and gigantic mirth - to tread the Jeweled thrones of the earth under his sandaled feet." ~The Nemedian Chronicles
I said like a theif (the class), not a theif (any person who steals stuff). Commoners can be the latter type, too.
==Aelryinth
This is from the page of the guy who did Conan stats, all 20 levels, for 3ed......
"After escaping the Hyborians, Conan comes to Arenjun, the notorious "City of Thieves". Green to civilization and wholly lawless by nature, he finds, or carves, a niche for himself as a professional thief, among a people to whom thievery is an art and an honored calling. Being still very young and more daring than adroit, his progress in his new profession is at first slow.
While Conan didn't engage in pick pocketing or disabling devices, he did learn a lot of skills and stealth during this period, as well as learning the advantage of catching people off their guard, so he is given a level in rogue."
He's a professional thief, in a city of professional thieves; sounds like more than a kid who snatches apples from the street vendor. He wasn't bopping around Arenjun, doing rangery things like checking traps and carving scrimshaw on walrus tusks, and tanning hides. He was THIEVING. In a city of rangers. Oops I mean a city of thieves.
Round the time he was in that story "Rangers in the House." Oops,....I mean "Rogues in the House."
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This is from the page of the guy who did Conan stats, all 20 levels, for 3ed......
"After escaping the Hyborians, Conan comes to Arenjun, the notorious "City of Thieves". Green to civilization and wholly lawless by nature, he finds, or carves, a niche for himself as a professional thief, among a people to whom thievery is an art and an honored calling. Being still very young and more daring than adroit, his progress in his new profession is at first slow.
While Conan didn't engage in pick pocketing or disabling devices, he did learn a lot of skills and stealth during this period, as well as learning the advantage of catching people off their guard, so he is given a level in rogue."
He's a professional thief, in a city of professional thieves; sounds like more than a kid who snatches apples from the street vendor. He wasn't bopping around Arenjun, doing rangery things like checking traps and carving scrimshaw on walrus tusks, and tanning hides. He was THIEVING. In a city of rangers. Oops I mean a city of thieves.
Round the time he was in that story "Rangers in the House." Oops,....I mean "Rogues in the House."
You can stow the snark. It doesn't change Aelryinth's points at all. The classes are simply frameworks on which we build characters. There are urban rangers (although, I wouldn't classify Conan as such), and a straight class ranger can qualify for the assassin prestige class. Personally, I am leaning toward barbarian/fighter, but a ranger with a certain archtype is a good interpretation of Conan's capabilities. If the end all be all of your character is the name of the class you choose for him, then you're doing it wrong.
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A barbarian/ranger multiclass would still be able to pick locks and find traps.
You don't have to be a rogue to pick a lock or disable device. They are only skills now. You need the Trapfinding to be able to disarm magical traps. There are several archetypes that grant the ability if needed. One of which takes away your ranger spells and allows you make traps. Which if I remember correctly, Conan has done before.
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Even if Conan only had 10 Intelligence (he's likely got more) he'd get 5 to 6 Skill points per level being a human Barbarian (assuming it's his favoured class) - that's plenty to cover his basis of skills over a few levels.
I'd be tempted to give him a level or two of Rogue because he seems to do a lot of Roguish stuff. He certainly seems to benefit from extra Back Stab damage now and then.
On the other hand, I don't see him doing anything Ranger-specific... just using Skills which tend to be seen as Ranger-ish.
But, as mentioned before, there's a ton of ways to build the guy in a game like Pathfinder, and no build will ever be the one 'true' Conan.
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My version of Conan:
Conan CR 19
Male Human (Cimmerian)
Barbarian 3 / Fighter 15 / Rogue (Thug) 2
NG Medium Humanoid (Human)
Init +10; Senses Perception +30
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DEFENSE
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AC 15, touch 15, flat-footed 14 (+4 Dex, +1 dodge)
hp 226 (3d12+15d10+2d8+100)
Fort +17, Ref +13, Will +11
Defensive Abilities Bravery +4, Evasion, Trap Sense +1, Uncanny Dodge
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OFFENSE
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Spd 40 ft.
Special Attacks Sneak Attack +1d6
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STATISTICS
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Str 24, Dex 18, Con 20, Int 18, Wis 17, Cha 18
Base Atk +19; CMB +26; CMD 41
Feats Alertness, Bleeding Critical, Blind-Fight, Blinding Critical (DC 29), Bloody Assault, Cleave, Combat Reflexes (5 AoO/round), Critical Focus, Dodge, Dreadful Carnage, Furious Focus, Great Cleave, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Lunge, Mobility, Power Attack -5/+10, Rogue Weapon Proficiencies, Step Up, Strike Back
Traits Natural-Born Leader, Reactionary
Skills Bluff +17, Climb +30, Handle Animal +17, Intimidate +27, Linguistics +10, Perception +30, Ride +27, Sense Motive +20, Stealth +27, Survival +26, Swim +30
SQ Armor Training 4 (Ex), Fast Movement +10 (Ex), Powerful Blow +1 (1/rage) (Ex), Rage (13 rounds/day) (Ex)
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SPECIAL ABILITIES
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Armor Training 4 (Ex)
Bravery +4 (Ex) +4 Will save vs. Fear
Frightening (Ex) Intimidate to demoralize shakes target for 1r longer, or if shaken is 4+ rounds, target may be frightened for 1r instead.
Natural-Born Leader Your cohorts, followers, and summoned creatures gain +1 vs. Mind-affecting effects, +1 Leadership score if you have the Leadership feat.
Powerful Blow +1 (1/rage) (Ex) One attack per rage deals +1 damage.
Rage (13 rounds/day) (Ex) +4 Str, +4 Con, +2 to Will saves, -2 to AC when enraged.
Sneak Attack +1d6 +1d6 damage if you flank your target or your target is flat-footed.
Trap Sense +1 (Ex) +1 bonus on reflex saves and AC against traps.
Uncanny Dodge (Ex) Retain Dex bonus to AC when flat-footed.
Weapon Training: Blades, Heavy +3 (Ex)
Weapon Training: Axes +2 (Ex)
Weapon Training: Blades, Light +1 (Ex)
I decided that his ethnicity, Cimmerian, is the equivalent of Pureblooded Azlanti.
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Why would you need a ton of feats? That's why I was leaning to ranger. weapon prof, armor prof, tons of skills, and a FE bonus that covers AC, TH/DMg and Saves basically takes care of his stat bonuses. Conan displays too much use of too many skills to stay a barbarian. He reads and writes multiple languages...he's far from dumb, he's just not a scholar.
A level of barb for speed, idle rage, and a level of fighter for a feat (leadership) and heavy armor prof, and you're pretty much set.
And as for being a professional theif in a city of theives...he never picks a lock, disarms a trap, picks a pocket, runs a con, or practices an ambush. He climbs walls and sneaks in places, sneaks out. Sounds like a theif, but that's a ranger's job. THe FE bonus against humans just means he's really good at it.
If it's an E6 world, I'd make him barb/1 r/5 and just pick up heavy armor prof. +4/+4 against humans at 6th is something no other class can emulate in a humanocentric world.
===Aelryinth
You can stow the snark. It doesn't change Aelryinth's points at all. The classes are simply frameworks on which we build characters. There are urban rangers (although, I wouldn't classify Conan as such), and a straight class ranger can qualify for the assassin prestige class. Personally, I am leaning toward barbarian/fighter, but a ranger with a certain archtype is a good interpretation of Conan's capabilities. If the end all be all of your character is the name of the class you choose for him, then you're doing it wrong.This is from the page of the guy who did Conan stats, all 20 levels, for 3ed......
"After escaping the Hyborians, Conan comes to Arenjun, the notorious "City of Thieves". Green to civilization and wholly lawless by nature, he finds, or carves, a niche for himself as a professional thief, among a people to whom thievery is an art and an honored calling. Being still very young and more daring than adroit, his progress in his new profession is at first slow.
While Conan didn't engage in pick pocketing or disabling devices, he did learn a lot of skills and stealth during this period, as well as learning the advantage of catching people off their guard, so he is given a level in rogue."
He's a professional thief, in a city of professional thieves; sounds like more than a kid who snatches apples from the street vendor. He wasn't bopping around Arenjun, doing rangery things like checking traps and carving scrimshaw on walrus tusks, and tanning hides. He was THIEVING. In a city of rangers. Oops I mean a city of thieves.
Round the time he was in that story "Rangers in the House." Oops,....I mean "Rogues in the House."
IDK; Conan being a professional thief in a city of thieves seems pretty straightforward to me, when somebody says they don't see Conan anywhere described as a thief.
Meh,....the whole argument's pretty much "meh" anyway.Maybe the camel he punches out in every movie is his animal companion.
Why would you need a ton of feats? That's why I was leaning to ranger. weapon prof, armor prof, tons of skills, and a FE bonus that covers AC, TH/DMg and Saves basically takes care of his stat bonuses. Conan displays too much use of too many skills to stay a barbarian. He reads and writes multiple languages...he's far from dumb, he's just not a scholar.
(snip)
===Aelryinth
PF Barbarians are no longer auto-illiterate. High Int Barbarians can thus read and write quite a few languages. Since they get more skill points than Fighters... they could be quite a bit more erudite.
PF Barbarians are no longer auto-illiterate. High Int Barbarians can thus read and write quite a few languages. Since they get more skill points than Fighters... they could be quite a bit more erudite.Why would you need a ton of feats? That's why I was leaning to ranger. weapon prof, armor prof, tons of skills, and a FE bonus that covers AC, TH/DMg and Saves basically takes care of his stat bonuses. Conan displays too much use of too many skills to stay a barbarian. He reads and writes multiple languages...he's far from dumb, he's just not a scholar.
(snip)
===Aelryinth
All I can say to that is "woops". Somehow I don't think erudite Barbarians was the goal. <smirk>
Now I have to stat Conan the Librarian. Erudite Barbarian. Rage on!
Being a theif means you are stealing stuff for a living. It doesn't mean you took a level in the class. He's stealing stuff throughout his career, but never like the true theif-class people in the story are.
==Aelryinth
Rogue doesn't necessarily mean thief. It could mean Spy, COn artist, and any number of things. While taking stuff is definitely a measuring stick for a thief It needn't necessarily fit wholly into the rogue class. Ther are all sort of character traits that give you roguish class skills that could be taken to symbolize conans skills in thievery without dipping into this class or that class.
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Concrete jungles don't exist in worlds like Golarion. You're about a thousand years too early.Oh sure, I see how it is. Way to move the goal post! Never said anything about golarion before. Now I can't even use Sharn as an example. Tch! :)
If we're talking Golarion, I'd say that Magnimar and even Absalom have a flavor of a concrete jungle ... only, it's more dilapidated wood, cobblestones and the like.
Any large city system in the middle ages would have had its own semblance of what we construe today to be a concrete jungle.
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I watched Conan once, some time ago. When he was on Late Night. I'd have to say he is a bard. Not a very good bard, but slightly more funny than most barbarians. Although the Capitol One barbarians might give him a run for his money...
The other question is... what is Andy? It's more like Conan took the leadership feat and well... there's Andy, his cohort. I guess the band is the rest of the followers...
Considering that RE HOWARD probably only considered 'barbarians' as people living outside civilization, and not people that rage their inner primal natures, I really don't think the Barbarian levels apply.
COnan is definitely a ranger. Has some fighter, may or may not have rogue.
Barbarian rage only holds any meaning for us RPG players.
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I'm trying to picture Conan with a feather in his hat and a long bow moving stealthly in a forest, and its just not coming to me. Conan to me just doesn't seem that sort of character. He is certainly not a Robin Hood with his band of merry men.Considering that RE HOWARD probably only considered 'barbarians' as people living outside civilization, and not people that rage their inner primal natures, I really don't think the Barbarian levels apply.
COnan is definitely a ranger. Has some fighter, may or may not have rogue.
Barbarian rage only holds any meaning for us RPG players.
I have seen MANY different ranger concepts in my 31 years of D&D, but never, and I mean NEVER has anyone ever had a feather in his hat and acted like Robin Hood.
If classes define characters that concisely, I shudder to imagine your games.
Why can't he just be a straight barbarian with awesome stats and ranks in stealth?
There are ranger combat styles other than archer you know and not every ranger focuses on a single combat style. Belkar is not Robin Hood is not Aragorn is not Conan. Why is Conan not a ranger while the others are? Who else is the poster child for the two handed weapon ranger?For Robin Hood, the sword was always his secondary weapon, he is most famed for his accuracy with the bow, hence the splitting of an arrow in the bullseye with another arrow. Robin Hood is no match for "Little John" in a wrestling contest, while Conan might prove a match for Little John if he doesn't get the better of him in a melee arena. I believe Rangers are more like Robin Hood than Conan.He is damn good with a sword. In one of the novels, he defeats 7 master swordsmen. In many others, he is a master archer, and dagger thrower.
Mighty Thoth has left his mental signature
BTW, alwyays love to see gamers take on Conan's stats and classes.
And more directly, the 'skill with a bow' that you are referring to is measured in PF in feats and BAB; one of those is the same for both ranger and fighter, and the other one.....well the fighter has a few more.
I'm not saying Robin Hood isn't a ranger, I could see it both ways, or Gods forbid...he could be multiclassed. However, I believe your measuring stick for comparing classes' propensity for, and skill with, various fighting styles is flawed.
Robin hood is definitely a ranger-type...he's actually the iconic ranger archer archetype of stories.
However, Aragorn, Jack the Giant-Slayer, and Fafrhd all do the ranger-wielding-big-weapons shtick.
Conan's a barbarian by birth, but just doesn't fit the class as well as he does a barbarian-born ranger. He just hunts men more then beasts. He does seem to get along with and understand animals a lot more then civilized men do, too...and his whole Pict border fighting episode basically drove the point home to me more then anything. He was just a sneaky, cunning bastard who could out-stealth a Pict in their own forests.
Conan at level 10 with +6 th/dmg Humans, +6 Dodge AC and +6 Saves against them would be a titanically lethal foe in a humanocentric world.
==Aelryinth
Oh Conan. Oh Conan, Oh Conan oh Conan!
Hyper-Heroic, I-can-do-whatever-I-need-to-do-for-the-sake-of-the-story, kind of characters are best created using 3.5 gestalt rules. Or in this case by applying those rules to pathfinder. Conan is a lone hero, he rarely teams up with others (There's that guy in Beyond the Black River, the Red-Head in Red Nails, and then Robert Jordan wrote some with this one-eyed fella name Hodar or something) and so converting him into a character class that necessarily relies on team-work to get through the day is intensely challenging.
That being said, I agree that he needs at least one level of Barbarian. The Barbarian seems to have been modeled after the guy after all. He has raged, just not often. He's tough as all heck, and for sure is rocking a couple d12s for HD.
On the other hand, he's definitely not straight Barb. I like where the ranger thing is going, and after reading the different arguments I'm inclined to veto rogue in favor of ranger. Here's a NEW reason why. Rogue's don't get full BAB, and Conan never misses a strike. If he is a rogue of any kind, he's a wilderness rogue, because he's never accustomed himself to the city. Perhaps "accustomed" is the wrong word, but he's never been urbanized. He lives in cities for a time, but eventually he just takes off again, and is definitely in his element in places "civilized men" dare to tread.
So back to my point about Conan being gestalt....
{Barbarian 7/Ranger 3][Fighter 10}
Ranger 3 because he's really formed a hunter's bond with anything except his sword.
Straight Fighter on the other side for obvious reasons.
I liked the suggestion that Conan has the Superstitious Archetype for Barbarian, and perhaps the Infiltrator Archetype for Ranger. That would pretty well let him do all the Slightly Roguish things, and Piratey Things, etc etc that have been tearing up the boards
Conan was a Barbarian early in his career. He then became a thief for awhile before becoming a pirate, mercenary, and then a king.
My take:
Barbarian 4 (uncanny dodge)/ Rogue 4 (few levels of sneak attack and skills to assist piracy)/ Fighter 12 (no real archtype).
So we're necroing this? I'd say Conan is some form of slayer. Of course those didn't exist when this thread was new.
So we're necroing this? I'd say Conan is some form of slayer. Of course those didn't exist when this thread was new.
Was about to say the exact same thing when I noticed the necro post. Definitely slayer. Covers everything Conan does.
Which Slayer archtype provides rage?
In which Conan story does he rage?
I was scrolling through the entire first page very surprised no one mentioned Slayer.
Then I saw the dates... Why on Earth did you resurrect a four year old thread?
It happens.
I'd rate Conan as a barbarian (a few)/ranger (no more than 3)/fighter (everything else), maybe even a Horizon Walker, because Conan had been everywhere in his world.
Barbarian is how he starts out - wilderness savvy, raging, a little reckless. Then he gets into the city and uses his wilderness skills of stealth and climbing (he was a notoriously good climber) and his knack for detecting traps and enemies to make a living as a thief. That doesn't mean he's a rogue, it means he has some of the skills and abilities we think of as being rogue skills: Perception, Stealth, Climb, and the Uncanny Dodge ability - all of which are also talents he has honed in the wild (hence, barbarian/ranger at this stage). One thing Conan had no taste for was sneak attacking people, which is why I don't think rogue or slayer would be good choices. It's not that he never did, it's that he really didn't like doing so if he could avoid it.
Then later in life he starts thinking, and he starts fighting intelligently, using tricks and maneuvers, fighting from horseback, using multiple weapons etc. This is when he goes fighter, and racks up the feats. I doubt he'd rate as the best at mounted combat, or two-weapon-fighting, or at maneuvers, but he could do them all well enough to get by using whatever weapons he picked up along the way.
What Conan has, more than anything else, are heroic ability scores. We're talking 4d6-drop-the-lowest and the player got awesomely lucky. Massive strength and constitution, good dexterity. Decent intelligence (even when young he could think outside the box) and charisma (he had a lot of animal magnetism), wisdom not-so-much (explains the lack of spells as a ranger), but I expect he got Supersticious and Iron Will into the bargain.
Rogues are not any better than other classes at stealing things. If you wanna talk about the actual game term Steal, the combat maneuver, Barbarian/Ranger Conan is objectively better at it. This gets more pronounced the higher level you make him.
Speaking of, people always overlevel characters from books and movies. This is very apparent in any given LotR conversion. Aragorn wasn't 15th level. Not even close.
Rogues are not any better than other classes at stealing things. If you wanna talk about the actual game term Steal, the combat maneuver, Barbarian/Ranger Conan is objectively better at it. This gets more pronounced the higher level you make him.
Speaking of, people always overlevel characters from books and movies. This is very apparent in any given LotR conversion. Aragorn wasn't 15th level. Not even close.
They overlevel Aragorn because 20 RP races are usually not allowed, that and he has amazing stats.
Dúnedain are amazing.
Just deleted my post. No need to join in on a 4 year necro:)
Thank you for this. I am reading in light of Marvel taking and publishing Conan comics again.
Yeah, I think he was statted out in a Dragon magazine issue in the early 80s. Can't remember much about how they did it, though.