Your attack bonus with a melee weapon is:
Base attack bonus + Strength modifi er + size modifi er + other applicable modifi ers
With a ranged weapon, your attack bonus is:
Base attack bonus + Dexterity modifi er + size modifi er + range penalty + other applicable modifi ers
Damage
When your attack succeeds, you deal damage, some or all of which may be negated by your opponent’s armour. The type of weapon used determines the amount of damage you deal. Effects that modify weapon damage apply to unarmed strikes and the natural
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physical attack forms of creatures. Damage reduces a target’s current hit points. The following special considerations apply to damage:
Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage.
Strength Bonus: When you hit with a melee or thrown weapon, including a sling, add your Strength modifi er to the damage result. Some bows are made with particular Strength ratings, which affect how much of your Strength modifi er you can apply to the damage result. See the Equipment chapter for details.
Off-Hand Weapon: When you deal damage with a weapon in your off hand, you add only ½ your Strength bonus. Wielding a Weapon Two-Handed: When you deal damage
with a weapon that you are wielding two-handed, you add 1½ times your Strength bonus. However, you do not get this higher Strength bonus when using a light weapon with two hands.
Multiplying Damage: Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifi ers) multiple times and total the results. Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage. Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon’s
normal damage are never multiplied.
Ability Damage: Certain creatures, feats and magical effects can cause temporary ability damage, that is, a reduction to an ability score.
Defence
Characters in the Conan stories are effectively invulnerable to many weapons if wearing suffi cient armour. Armour absorbs damage rather than making characters harder to hit. To determine how diffi cult it is to hit a character, a set of scores is used called the Defence values. In addition to his base Defence, a character has two Defence values, calculated as follows: Base Defence = 10 + size modifi er
Dodge Defence = Base Defence + Dexterity Bonus + Dodge Bonus
Parry Defence = Base Defence + Strength Bonus + Parry Bonus
Base Defence is always 10 for Medium-size characters. Some modifi ers lower your Dodge or Parry
defence. For example, if you are surrounded on all sides and cannot
dodge effectively, you suffer a –2
penalty to Dodge Defence. Such modifi ers only affect the kind of Defence they refer to. For example, if you were surrounded on all sides and suffering a –2 penalty to Dodge Defence, your Parry Defence would not be affected.
A modifi er that simply affects your ‘Defence’ (without specifying Dodge or Parry) is added no matter what kind of Defence you are using and also applies when you cannot dodge or parry. For example, when charging you suffer a –2 penalty to Defence. If you ever have a Dexterity penalty rather than a bonus, then you apply this penalty to your Defence, not just your Dodge Defence. For example, a Medium-size character whose Dexterity has been reduced to 5 by poison would apply a –3 penalty to his Defence. A sleeping or unconscious character has an effective Dexterity of zero, as he is not moving at all, so he has a –5 penalty to his Defence.
Whenever a character has a chance to defend himself, he must declare whether he is dodging or parrying his enemies. Changing between the two modes of defence is a free action. It can be done each time the character is attacked if desired but must be done before the opponent makes his attack roll. The Dodging and Parrying sections, below, explain how to calculate the Parry and Dodge Bonuses.
Note that armour limits your Dexterity bonus, so if you are wearing armour, you might not be able to apply your whole Dexterity bonus to your Dodge Defence.
Sometimes you cannot dodge or parry at all. If you cannot react to a blow, such as when an opponent takes you by surprise and you are ‘fl at-footed’, then you can use neither Dodge Defence nor Parry Defence. Equally, if you cannot move freely, then defending yourself is also impossible; a character is unable to use either his Dodge Defence or his Parry Defence when he is clinging for life on the edge of a mile-high cliff-top. Under these circumstances, you are vulnerable to sneak attacks.
Other Modifi ers: Many other factors modify your Dodge and
Parry Defences.
Enhancement Bonuses: Enhancement effects can improve your Defence values.
Equipment: You can parry more effi ciently with a shield than with a weapon, as it is designed to block damage. Shields give you a bonus to your Parry Defence.
Dodge Bonuses: Some other bonuses represent actively avoiding blows. These bonuses are called dodge bonuses. Wearing armour does not limit these bonuses the way it limits a Dexterity bonus to Dodge Defence. Unlike most sorts of bonuses, dodge bonuses stack with each other. Dodge bonuses only apply to a character’s Dodge Defence. They do not add to the character’s Parry Defence at all. If you are in a situation where you cannot dodge, then your dodge bonuses do not apply.
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Parry or Dodge?
In Conan the Roleplaying Game, every character must decide in combat whether to defend by Dodging or Parrying. Most characters will have a preferred method of defence and it is often easiest to assume that said preferred method is in use each round unless the Player specifi es otherwise.
It should be noted that the terms ‘parry’ and ‘dodge’ are inevitably abstractions. A character who is dodging is more likely to make use of his knowledge of his enemy’s reach to stay just out of distance, rather than simply hurling himself to one side. Likewise, though the word ‘parry’ is used because it is a familiar one to most gamers and fantasy fans, both Conan and real-world medieval fencing-masters would have been more familiar with the idea of ‘setting aside’ an enemy’s weapon – defl ecting an attack so as to ensure it just misses, while setting oneself up to deliver a counterattack. Inevitably, the lines between parrying and dodging also blur and many techniques will use a little of both.
Thus, declaring that one is parrying or dodging is more a refl ection of combat style – either fl uid and footwork-based, or aggressive and steadfast respectively – than a precise description of one’s actions. It can certainly be used as a good basis for such a description, however.
Size Modifi ers To Base Defence
Size Size Modifi er
Colossal –8 Gargantuan –4 Huge –2 Large –1 Medium +0 Small +1 Tiny +2 Diminutive +4 Fine +8
Dodging
A character’s total Dodge Bonus is calculated by adding together his base dodge bonus (derived from his character class) and any other dodge bonuses, such as from the Dodge feat.
A dodging character needs at least one adjacent square either unoccupied, or occupied by friendly creatures, to be able to dodge effectively. He need not necessarily move into the space as part of his dodge but he does need a certain amount of room to move around in. If he does not have at least one adjacent unoccupied or friendly square, he has a -2 penalty to his Dodge Defence.
Dodge Bonus = base dodge bonus + additional Dodge bonuses
Parrying
A character’s total Parry Bonus is calculated by adding together his base parry bonus (derived from his character class) and any other parry bonuses, such as from the Parry feat.
A parrying character must wield a weapon, shield or at the very least an object of some kind in order to fend off his opponents’ blows effectively. It is possible to defl ect blows without having an item in your hand; however, if a character is completely unarmed, he receives a –4 penalty to his Parry Defence. Characters with the Improved Unarmed Strike feat count as armed for the purpose of using Parry Defence.
If a character attempts to parry with a weapon with which he is not profi cient, or with an improvised weapon such as a bar stool or length of fi rewood, he suffers a –1 penalty to his Parry Defence. A character with the Versatility ability from the barbarian class suffers no penalty under such circumstances, as barbarians are so adept with improvised weapons. The Games Master is at liberty to apply additional bonuses to a character’s Parry Defence when he uses especially suitable or obstructive improvised blocking weapons.
If you are using a reach weapon, you can parry an adjacent attacker with it even if you would not be able to attack him. It is not possible to parry a ranged weapon attack. Parry Bonus = base Parry Bonus + additional Parry bonuses