I was trying to build a couple of literary characters and realized it does not work. I am not able to cover all the things that character does in the books. So I thought I ask the experts :)
The first in question is Conan the barbarian, as he is described by Howard in his stories, not as shown in the movies. The man is a great warrior, he excels in all physical disciplines, he used to be a thief, a scout, a mercenary, an officer, he ruled a kingdom in the end. The only thing he doesn't do is cast spells, but he does have a little historic and arcane knowledge.
The second is Silk from the Belgarion books, namely the first set. He is a thief, a conman, a trickster, a diplomat, he knows how to disguise himself and he is a great knife fighter. He knows the ways of the world and it's customs. He is at home in the poor quarter, a palace, a barbarian ship or a marketplace.
Which class(es), archetypes, PRC or combination thereof would work best? I look at the time before either of them laid eyes on a crown. That would be Silk when he joins the party and Conan at the time when he first meets Belit to "Beyond the Black River" (before he becomes respectable).
First, in a game there is an underlying assumption of being bound by the rules. This of course is not the case for a literary character. If Conan needs to charm the pants off of the Queen, why he can, must he be preternaturally observant, he is...
You cannot quantify the value of having the writer on your side.
Before you get to classes, you need to address statistics. You cannot even approximate the characters with a standard point buy. Neither has dump stats. You should be able to do them adaquately with a 25 point buy and the Advanced Template.
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I don't buy the idea that Conan is over level 20. Most characters in classic literary fantasy can be quite well modeled in the level 5-10 range. See the Alexandrian's commentary.
Well above standard heroic stats... probably. If it's just a for-fun exercise or you're the GM making NPCs you can just give them the stats you think are reasonable. If it's a PC concept just do the best you can with what you have, it'll be a close enough approximation to have fun with.
As for class, I would suggest Conan is mostly Slayer, possibly with the Vanguard archetype. That gives him good combat, thieving, and scouting skills off the bat. Vanguard rounds out the "officer" role a bit more. Add 1-2 levels in Brawler for unarmed fighting. Diplomacy, Knowledge(History), and Knowledge (Arcana) aren't class skills but you can still put ranks in them - or even get at least two as class skills with traits.
I'm not familiar with Silk, but he sounds like a Knife Master rogue with Diplomacy, Bluff, Disguise, Knowledge(Local), and maybe Disable Device, Acrobatics, and Sleight of Hand.
Silk sounds like a mid-to-high level Vigilante, able to assume many different disguises. Almost all of the stuff you listed is handled with high Cha and 6+Int skill points per level, supplemented by social talents. Knife fighting is Stalker with some talents for better feinting or getting hidden strike damage another way.
In regards to Silk, he is one of the prophecied companions of the BBGG of the world, it would not be out of line to give him mythic tiers. He is perhaps the highest level, or close to it, spy in the world as well. So straight rogue with maybe a splash of stalker or swashbuckler, or even duelist, would do the trick.
Much as it pains my piratical hear to say, Silk would probably be a ninja of some sort. Sneaky with hand-to-hand skills and an encyclopedic knowledge of poisons, antidotes, and their various tastes.
You have your characters mixed up, you are thinking of Sadi the Eunuch, or maybe that other Nyassan assasin who was missing an eye.
IIRC, Silk was also adept at unarmed combat (see his fight with Kordoch the Dagashi in Rak Cthol). You could also try using Tripod Machine's Spy class for him as well. Stats wise, he was pretty much good at everything, with the emphasis on DEX, CHA, INT.
The one-eyed assassin was Issus of Sthiss Tor.
A lot of what they are depends on how you see their world. Conan is about the most bad-ass fighter in the world, so does that mean he is level 20, or does it mean he is level 5? You could make arguments for either. The same is true for things like Strength, does Conan being very strong mean he has an 18, or does it mean he has a 24, once again, it depends greatly on your view of how their world is 'balanced'. If everyone else has the basic NPC array, even a 16 is a huge stat that few can match.
I think you can indeed make Conan just fine as a barbarian. Most of his 'theif' stuff was climbing and being sneaky as I recall, and a barbarian is just fine at that. His eventual 'fame' was from his martial prowess, not his great thief skills, and Barbarian is one of the premier martial classes. Slayer would of course be workable too, and a Rogue dip is possible if you really want it.
Silk could be made fine as a rogue. The martial weakness of rogues is balanced out by him being one of the higher level characters in his world (even if a Rogue isn't the most powerful warrior, if you are comparing a level 5 Rogue to a level 2 fighter, the Rogue looks pretty cool.) UnRogue or Slayer would be workable as well. Vigilante is possible for Silk as well, but unless their are social talents I am unaware of, it actually isn't really any better at having multiple important, well known identities (Prince Kheldar, Ambar, Radek, and probably others) that just the disguise skill and preparation.
You have your characters mixed up, you are thinking of Sadi the Eunuch, or maybe that other Nyassan assasin who was missing an eye.
Hrm. It's possible. Will have to go re-read the Belgariad and Mallorean again, it seems... back in a week or so with some follow-up :)
IIRC, Silk was also adept at unarmed combat (see his fight with Kordoch the Dagashi in Rak Cthol).
That's the scene that made me say "ninja" rather than rogue.
Yep, that's the scene. Finished with a Tactical Reposition to fling Kordoch/Brill over a wall.
I was trying to build a couple of literary characters and realized it does not work. I am not able to cover all the things that character does in the books. So I thought I ask the experts :)
The first in question is Conan the barbarian, as he is described by Howard in his stories, not as shown in the movies. The man is a great warrior, he excels in all physical disciplines, he used to be a thief, a scout, a mercenary, an officer, he ruled a kingdom in the end. The only thing he doesn't do is cast spells, but he does have a little historic and arcane knowledge.
The second is Silk from the Belgarion books, namely the first set. He is a thief, a conman, a trickster, a diplomat, he knows how to disguise himself and he is a great knife fighter. He knows the ways of the world and it's customs. He is at home in the poor quarter, a palace, a barbarian ship or a marketplace.
Which class(es), archetypes, PRC or combination thereof would work best? I look at the time before either of them laid eyes on a crown. That would be Silk when he joins the party and Conan at the time when he first meets Belit to "Beyond the Black River" (before he becomes respectable).
Conan has been at times sketched as a fighter/thief, barbarian, barbarian fighter.
As for Belgarion, the D20 system does not work well for demigods, he's too powerful even for a combination of mythic and epic.
Thanks for all the answers.
I had hoped for more advice on actually building them (I am happy with an approximation), since I don't know much about martial archetypes, or if one of the rogues can maybe use a stat for more than one purpose, etc., but I take what I can get :)
The ACG is one of the books I read only once over. I better re-read the mentioned classes. I don't have the book with the Vigilante, so I don't know the class, but that is easily remedied.
(Yes, it is pretty much impossible to add all of Silks abilities, I completely forgot about the unarmed fighting style. And I never get all skill points I would need, unless there is some trick to make skills double up as for the bard.
And yes, Conan did mostly stealth, climbing and breaking in, there was no lockpicking or disabling traps. Still, given the system he would need some skill with traps, the let's-see-what-happens-when-I-touch-this method doesn't work in the long run.
Sadi was easy...I liked the character, he makes a good NPC, too. Maybe I should just go with the personality and some key features for the others. I need them as memorable and recurring (heroic) NPCs; they will go by other names, of course.)
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EDIT: you may not need a ton of thief skills for Conan, but I'd still go Slayer to get a wide range of skills. Stealth, Perception, Diplomacy, Climb, Acrobatics, Linguistics, Survival, and a smattering of Knowledge skills.
That said, Wild Stalker ranger is worth considering, since you get the wilderness/stealth abilities along with rage and rage powers (superstition does sound characteristic). Add skirmisher to get rid of spells.
I do think as you stated Weirdo that Conan fits better into the Slayer class as it compound of rouge and ranger which covers a lot of the ability Conan shows in the books, but it still miss a lot of points. there just may not be enough of feats in that single class to cover everything.
Martial flexibility from multiclassing in Brawler gives you access to a lot of odd combat tricks that you'll use occasionally - though I do agree with your overall point that having feats for everything makes it hard to represent the versatility of characters in literature or film.
Vigilante is possible for Silk as well, but unless their are social talents I am unaware of, it actually isn't really any better at having multiple important, well known identities (Prince Kheldar, Ambar, Radek, and probably others) that just the disguise skill and preparation.
Sounds like a neat idea for a vigilante archetype.
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I was trying to build a couple of literary characters and realized it does not work. I am not able to cover all the things that character does in the books. So I thought I ask the experts :)
The first in question is Conan the barbarian, as he is described by Howard in his stories, not as shown in the movies. The man is a great warrior, he excels in all physical disciplines, he used to be a thief, a scout, a mercenary, an officer, he ruled a kingdom in the end. The only thing he doesn't do is cast spells, but he does have a little historic and arcane knowledge.
The second is Silk from the Belgarion books, namely the first set. He is a thief, a conman, a trickster, a diplomat, he knows how to disguise himself and he is a great knife fighter. He knows the ways of the world and it's customs. He is at home in the poor quarter, a palace, a barbarian ship or a marketplace.
Which class(es), archetypes, PRC or combination thereof would work best? I look at the time before either of them laid eyes on a crown. That would be Silk when he joins the party and Conan at the time when he first meets Belit to "Beyond the Black River" (before he becomes respectable).
Conan the Barbarian would easily be covered by a Rogue and martial (ranger, fighter, or barbarian) multi-class. I'd lean towards a Ranger/Rogue build, despite his name, as I think skills and favored enemies/terrain fit Conan better than berserk strength. Sneak attack is definitely something Conan has trained. I'd probably take my first level as rogue, then build up all other levels as the martial class.
Haven't read any of the Belgarion books, so I'll leave that one alone.
[Conan the Barbarian would easily be covered by a Rogue and martial (ranger, fighter, or barbarian) multi-class. I'd lean towards a Ranger/Rogue build, despite his name, as I think skills and favored enemies/terrain fit Conan better than berserk strength. Sneak attack is definitely something Conan has trained. I'd probably take my first level as rogue, then build up all other levels as the martial class.
Haven't read any of the Belgarion books, so I'll leave that one alone.
Seriously if your gonna MC rogue and ranger there is no reason to not just go Slayer instead.
It does everything your taking rogue and ranger for and it is one class meaning you do not have to worry about abilities getting watered down or not advancing from multiclassing.
You have your characters mixed up, you are thinking of Sadi the Eunuch, or maybe that other Nyassan assasin who was missing an eye.Hrm. It's possible. Will have to go re-read the Belgariad and Mallorean again, it seems... back in a week or so with some follow-up :)
OK, re-read both Belgariad and Mallorean ... yes, had combined a bit of both in my head... will post recommendations for building a version of Silk for PF when I have a bit more time...