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View Full Version : Doing up Wizards in the Hyborean Age...



Charles Phipps
2008-03-07, 01:36 AM
I thought I'd share how I'm going to run magic in my next Hyborean game based on how I ran it in the last couple. I'd appreciate some feedback on what people think of it and how they'd recommend I proceed.

How Charles Phipps runs his Sorcerers

In general, I make it a point to do something very "non-Howard" with my Sorcerers.

Basically, the vast majority of Magicians in Hyborea are frauds. The Hyborean Age at my table is literred with people like this guy.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f350/Willowhugger/Me/Conan/bluffrj8.jpg

And I don't mean in Conan the Destroyer.

Almost every priest in Hyborea, sans Cimmerians, claims the power to work powerful miracles and awesome wizardry. Furthermore, there's plenty of professional fortune tellers and oracles plus all manner of genuine full-time magicians that ply their trade in nearly every damn city in the continent.

The simple fact is almost every one of these guys is an utter fraud and has about the same level of magical power as your typical priest in the modern world or Fortune teller. The fact is that people in Hyborea are no more intelligent and educated than the majority of ones in the real world.

What's different is the fact that plenty of "Genuine Wizards" exist as well. However, they're genuine in the context of Arthur C. Clarke meets Harry Houdini. In the Hyborean Age, a man who knows some basics of chemistry and stage magic can get away with a whole lot. One of the favored services of wizards during my game is people who actually know something about astrology and measuring the weather since the advice they provide is USEFUL, it's just that what we tend to term as a Farmer's Almanac is divination to most folk.

I like 300's take on the thing to some extent. There's people who put smoke powder in skulls, keep gords of Flaming Oil to "breathe fire", and otherwise jealously guard their superstitious power. It's not that difficult to claim to be a powerful sorcerer in the Hyborean Age and get away with lives of luxury or power.

Here's the rub though, almost all real wizards are like this too.

I'm considering ditching the Scholar Class completely (which is a poor title for a Magic User in my opinion anyway). In general, the whole "Lovecraftian" magical take seems to be much more appropriate for my work, though I'll have to find an appropriate Spell Casting Class or create my own variant on it.

But generally, the idea is Magic is Frickin' Hard

Thoth-Amon showed up in one of our games and I had their dinner table served by "zombies" who kept their mouths sewn shut. Some of the players were shocked to discover they were zombies in the Haitian sense, a bunch of people drugged pufferfish that had their mouths sewn shut only a little so they could open it to drink broth. Why would Thoth-Amon, the most powerful wizard period in my Hyborean Age resort to such cheap trickery?

Because it was impressive and freaked people out, which is something he needs to do a lot of to keep people scared of him. However; I had an NPC servant of his comment that his real rituals required hours of preparation, meditation, and human sacrifice to carry out. It was physically and mentally taxing to the most amazing levels possible.

So yes, as it's described in the Masters of Yimsha, the spells require the right astrological signs and god knows what else. Almost all magic a real wizard uses to establish his credentials is mummery and theatrics.

Likewise, I think my new wizard class (If I make it) will almost certainly require the Aristocrats "Do you know who I am?" Most magicians are pretty damn helpless in my Hyborea before Conan and company, they just need to use their terrifying reputations and assembled minions to keep people away before the climax.

So any suggestions, critiques, ideas?

* Thanks to the Conan Motivational Poster thread for the poster.

Skjaldbakka
2008-03-07, 01:51 AM
Difficult to implement as a PC, or even as an NPC, becaue your players will know, and thus they have to pretend they don't. Also, a magic using class that uses magic that is really frickin' hard isn't very rewarding to play.

Pretty much, this idea requires that your players be awesome RPers for it to work.

Charles Phipps
2008-03-07, 02:04 AM
Difficult to implement as a PC, or even as an NPC, becaue your players will know, and thus they have to pretend they don't. Also, a magic using class that uses magic that is really frickin' hard isn't very rewarding to play.

Pretty much, this idea requires that your players be awesome RPers for it to work.

Well, it helps that I don't think anyone in their right mind would be a Sorcerer in the Hyborean Age and it would probably go well against the feeling I'm trying to evoke. I wouldn't really be playing Conan the Barbarian if I wanted to have my players being mystics.

The easiest way to D&D it without changing rules would require levels in Aristocrat and a level in Bard before taking any Spellcasting levels. That seems needlessly complex though.

I was imagining this as an NPC class for the most part.

Likewise; I think most PCs would be aware that the vast number of wizards would be frauds, being the well-traveled heroes they are. Part of the fun is them showing that wizards CAN be fought.

TheOOB
2008-03-07, 03:06 AM
Wasn't there only a few magicians which anything resembling strong magical powers that weren't jerks following evil gods in the Conan books?

Anyways, Conan is a very very low magic setting, and the world has a tendency of letting the action hero win, while having everyone else die, which means having a good mage character who is at all effective and survives is kinda out of character for the setting.

Anyways, the best way to make a real mage in a conan like setting is to make their magic as subtle as possible, to the point where most people arn't sure if whats happening is just good luck, or magic at work. Subtle tricks of fate, minor divinations, small changes to the enviroment (wow we are lucky that wind kicked up and ruined their bow shots), curses and blessings (maybe that gypsie curse acually was real). Stuff like telekinetically lifting objects and (god forbid) shooting fireballs should close to kill most mages, even if they have a powerful magic focus device to use.

RTGoodman
2008-03-07, 07:40 AM
If you come up with something, I'd be interested in it. One of my friends is finally going to stop working 7 days a week and was talking about running a Conan d20 game, but the crazy-complicated rules for magic turned me off from that sort of class.

Not to toot my own horn, maybe you could make the thing skill-based like I sort of started with my Craft (Folk Magic) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3981485&postcount=157) skill over in the Swampgas project thread. Basically, it's for charlatans, snake-oil salesment, and others to make "magic items" like gris-gris bags and love potions, but the effects are basically psychosomatic and non-magical. This seems like the sort of thing you're going for, and if you decide to use or even change it up, I'd be interested to hear how it went (since I haven't been able to playtest it or anything like that).

Alas, I've been sidelined by school-work, so I haven't had time to come up with more than three or so items, but I intend to do more at some point. If you come up with other stuff, I'd be interested to hear about it, too.

Benejeseret
2008-03-07, 12:02 PM
I was going to run a similar idea for primitive spellcasters. My plan was to actually have the PC's play as a lineage.

Start as lvl1 limited to fighter, ranger, druid. Ever 2 levels their character becomes capped. To go higher than 3,6,9 etc they need to find a mate/partner and children will start at their parents level by the time they are ready to adventure (training by parents).

The children will be randomly assigned stated from either parent and starting feats/skills chosen from 2 parents or close tribemembers. The only way to get new classes is to marry/mate into a tribe with that training to get it in the next generation.

Spellcasters work exactly as you mentioned, being frauds masked by physics or tricks. The spells work just like normal and the saves are the same (fluffed that much of the save is vs. disbelief).

Instead of days or weeks between encounters it is years, and after many generations society will change and build up too until by lvl20 they are the founding characters of early-modern Faerun.

Charles Phipps
2008-03-07, 08:18 PM
My rough idea is that I'm going to have to focus on finding those spells that are appropriate for the Hyborean Age. Pretty much every "attack" spell is more or less out. It just doesn't really fit the depiction of Magic in the Hyborean Age.

There's alot of fun spells in the Mongoose Conan D20 book that'll be appropriate though when I assume the spell list though.

Some basic ability ideas I had are this.

1. "I'm a Wizard Mind you." The PCs receive a bonus of their level to their Bluff and Intimidate Scores (which is a class ability here) when trying to convince others they wield unfathomable powers and it would unwise to harm them.

2. Mesmerism: Which is important to handling the whole Hyborean Age Feel.

3. Parlor Tricks: Basically, something very similiar to cantrips.