Conan 2d20: Narrative Combat Spends

One of the great parts of Conan and 2d20 is succeeding by measure. The ability to not just succeed but succeed WELL is a narrative gold mine! The base rules have a table of momentum spends for action scenes on pg. 118. A more experienced player with the system will probably be able to look at that table and come up with narrative descriptions for each action and use them to craft a description of their attack. But what about that player with less experience, or one that is shy and has trouble coming up with those things? Below that table is a line that states, "These are in addition to the normal uses of momentum and any others that the players or game master create for themselves."

Like many things in 2d20 they have left it open for us as the players to build upon what they have already done, and so we come to what this article is about: Descriptive combat spends, things like spinning sword slashes, kicks to the chest, shoulder checks and the list goes on and on. So pull up a chair, watch some sword & sorcery movies and read some sword & sorcery books, and lets make up some cool moves for your players to plug into their combat encounters.

We will start with the idea of how we might build some of these from the listed momentum spends and finish off with some ideas that I have come up with that I though would add a lot of narrative depth to your combat encounters.

First up we chain 2 momentum spends together and provide a basic description of what that might actually look like. It should give you a good idea of how you can generate some cool combat narration from the provided list

Chained Momentum Spends	Description
Penetration+Penetration 2m+2m	The sword slashes wildly at the beast before it's keen point is turned and stabbed easily through it's hide. The razor edge of the sword cuts at the Vanir warrior, finding a weak point in his chain armor
Disarm+Swift Action 2m+2m	Conal deftly kicks the shield from the guards hands before his blade slashes at him.
Called shot+Damage 2m+2m	Sven swings his mighty axes catching the hyperborean square in his unprotected neck, blood gushes from the grievous wound.

Lets take this one step further with some of Howard's own words.....

Chained Momentum Spends	Description
Break Guard+Swift Action 2m+2m	But his return spring was like that of a starving wolf. He was inside the lashing arms and driving his sword deep in the monster's belly.... -REH, Beyond the Black River.
called shot+Penetration 2m+2m	A tall corsair, bounding over the rail, was met in midair by the Cimmerian's great sword, which sheared him cleanly through the torso, so that his body fell one way and his legs another. --REH, Queen of the Black Coast.
Penetration + Damage 2m+2m	In the interim one of his comrades lifted a broadsword with both hands and hewed through the king's left shoulder-plate, wounding the shoulder beneath. In an instant Conan's cuirass was full of blood. --REH, Phoenix on the Sword.

Going back to that table on page 118 and our basic momentum spends, we can get an idea of the approximate power of a momentum spend. Items like Disarm and Break Guard cost about 2 points of momentum. We also see my favorite spend, "Penetration". With it we are essentially putting the weapon trait "Piercing" on weapons that do not have it. This should give us a lot of fodder to move forward. Maybe we can add grapple or knockdown to the list? Vicious? Maybe!

I would have no problem adding the following to the table.

Knockdown	2 Gain the knockdown quality on your attack.
Stun	2 Gain the Stun quality on your attack

Some qualities are represented by talents, so we need to make them more expensive for people to use them, or the talents are pointless. For exampple, Killing Strike grants an additional wound for 2 momentum and Blood on Steel provides Vicious 1 for 1 momentum.

Intense	4 If you caused a wound, you may cause another wound. Does not stack with Killing Strike.
Vicious X	2 R Each 2M adds 1 point of vicious. Does not stack with Blood on Steel.
Grapple	2 Gain the grapple quality on your melee attack Grapple is counted as unarmed

And finally I present a table taking all of these ideas into account. This table builds on what we have in the core rules, adding basic narration seeds to a few basic spends. In addition to these we have used the idea of how chained spends might look together and mixed in our new ideas to come up more creative ways to spend your momentum. I hope you enjoy this idea and it helps bring loads of colorful combat to your table.

Description	Effect	Cost
Shoulder Bash!	Stun	2
Trip and Stab	Knockown+Penetration +1 Doom to enemies next reaction	5
Kick to the chest	Break Guard+Stun +1 Doom to enemies next reaction	5
Stab or cut at the joint	Penetration	1R
Recover from glancing blow	Re-roll damage dice	1
Twist blade in the wound	Add Vicious X	2R
Sand in the eyes!	Break Guard	2
Swing through a deadly arc	Secondary Target	2
Pommel strike	+2 damage+Stun	4
Head butt	Stun	2
Cleave the skull	Hit Location+Intense	6
Elbow to the Face	Stun, 1cd +1 Doom to enemies next reaction	4
Hack and slash	Spend 2m to kill 1 minion.	4
Cleave through armor	Piercing 4	2
Slash/smash/stab the head/leg/arm/torso	Choose hit location	2

If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

Make sure you don't miss a single post and subscribe by e-mail today!

If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!