Introduction
Monte Cook Presents: Mastering Iron Heroes is the second supplement for Malhavoc’s Iron Heroes line. The other two are Iron Heroes and Iron Heroes Bestiary. This is a review of the pdf version which (for those who care about such things) I paid for myself. Iron Heroes uses the d20 system so this review is based on the assumption that the user will also have the DMG, or at least access to the SRD.
I am a big fan of Iron Heroes, but I was not particularly impressed with this product. Hopefully I will be able to provide enough information for you to make up your own minds. Please note that I haven’t checked any stat blocks, and I haven’t play tested it.
Presentation
The pdf is 98 pages long, although this includes the front cover, the credits page, two pages of advertisements and the back cover. In common with the other two Iron Heroes products, the text on the back cover of my version was corrupted. I don’t know if this is a common occurrence, or whether I have just been unlucky. The OGL takes up a further half a page.
As is common with the other two Iron Heroes products, the book marking is first rate, being sufficient but not excessive.
The artwork is black and white, except for the cover which is in colour. The style of the artwork in the Iron Heroes line does not appeal to me. It seems too much like a cartoon for my taste, although obviously opinions vary.
The layout is clean and crisp, with plenty of white space. I like it, and I find it makes for an easy to read document. Some people might consider it somewhat sparse.
Contents
There are 7 chapters and an appendix.
One of my problems with this product is I am not sure what audience it is aimed at. The original product, Iron Heroes, stated that it was not aimed at beginners. Thus the designers were free to include complications such as token pools, skill stunts and feat mastery.
Chapter 1 (Abilities), Chapter 2 (Characters and the Campaign World) and Chapter 7 (Campaign Options) seem largely aimed at beginners. Note that as this is a d20 supplement (rather than simply an OGL product) it should be assumed that you already have the DMG.
I accept that even the most experienced GM can still learn new things about running a game, but the majority of the information in these chapters was of no use to me.
For example, I don’t need to be given alternative methods of generating ability scores. I don’t need to be told that I am free to disallow certain classes from my campaign if I so wish – or that such a move might disappoint my players. I also don’t need to be told that one way to encourage a certain type of behaviour from the players is to award Experience Points for it!
There were useful parts. I liked the glory points variation, where acting heroically gives players points they can spend later to undo bad stuff like ability damage.
Interestingly, some of the variant experience systems amounted to complete rules for character advancement, and it was my understanding that wasn’t allowed in a d20 system supplement.
If you feel such information would be useful to you, then I’d award the product four stars rather than three.
Chapter 3 (Character Classes) is my favourite chapter. It introduces the NPC classes from the DMG, as adjusted for Iron Heroes, which is very useful. The poor, unloved warrior can’t get any mastery feats until 6th level, so has been well and truly reduced to the role of cannon fodder.
The real gem in this book is the Villain classes. They are designed to be quick and easy to generate, whilst also providing stern opposition for the PCs. Their abilities are determined by their challenge rating rather than vice versa. If you want a CR 9 boss fight using brute force, use a CR 9 Demon Brute. Prefer magic – use a CR 9 Dreaded Sorcerer. Want a group fight, use a Warleader and his minions.
The Demonic Brute is described as the weakest of demons (however, arguably the demonic minion in Iron Heroes Bestiary is weaker). Its tactics are to rip its foes apart with tooth and claw, and higher level demons have additional special abilities such as fiery breath.
The Dread Sorcerer in some ways resembles the warlock from Complete Adventurer. He is physically weak, but he has a damaging arcane bolt attack, and a number of other special powers.
The Warleader is designed to fight in concert with his underlings, co-ordinating their efforts to great effect.
All these classes are designed to be easy for the GM to run e.g. the Dread Sorcerer can use most of his abilities, including the arcane bolt, an unlimited number of times per day and none of the villain classes require the GM to keep track of tokens.
Chapter 4 (Combat) introduces the concept of Zones. These are a good idea, but the presentation is a bit too jargon filled for my liking. The chapter manages to make a very simple concept seem complicated.
Action zones are areas where characters can do “cool” things – for example a chandelier is an action zone, enabling the character to swing across the room on it, or cut the rope and try to damage enemies standing below. In many ways they are similar to skill stunts, but as they are designed by the GM in advance they can be more powerful, and also the GM is able to encourage the players to be creative by pointing out to them the action zones in advance of the fight.
Condition zones are basically ongoing events that make things more interesting for everyone involved – for example a storm tossed ship might require balance checks each round.
Event zones are similar to condition zones, but are triggered by something (whether the actions of characters, or the simple passage of time) and might only happen once.
Some of the time the GM saved by using the Villain classes can be spent spicing up the encounters by adding zones. For an example of the fun you can have with a simple farmhouse, I recommend the free web enhancement Borgnok’s Raid – among other things you can stampede the pigs into your enemies, attack multiple targets in one go by swinging the well bucket at them, or set fire to the haystacks.
The chapter also includes “condition zones” that would normally be referred to as effects of the environment, such as sandstorms. Traps, long a staple of fantasy role-playing, are also a type of event zone.
This brings me on to my second main criticism of the product. Chapter 4, in common with most of the rest of the document, is considered closed content, except where the material is already in the SRD. The only way to know which is open content is to know what is in the SRD.
Thus, if another publisher wants to use rules for swinging on chandeliers they will have to come up with their own, which is a shame. Traps are given as an example of an event zone, but of course you can’t call them that because the term is closed content. The table for underwater combat is straight out of the DMG, and I can only assume its in the SRD, but there’s nothing in the text to distinguish it from (say) the sandstorm rules, which I don’t think are in the SRD (but I could be wrong).
If the amount of open game content in a product is important to you, reduce the rating from three stars to two.
Chapter 5 (Treasure, Rewards and Experience) includes a new mechanic, wealth feats. You gain these feats automatically when you have enough wealth (and are prepared to spend it). Thus you could gain a cohort, or get away with a minor crime. This is useful because in a low magic game the characters might otherwise have nothing to spend their money on.
Chapter 6 deals with magic items. These are all open game content, which is only fair since the weapons and armour abilities are straight out of the SRD, and the potions and wondrous items are nothing very new – for example a boost potion gives you a +4 enhancement bonus to one ability score.
What is new, and in keeping with the theme of Iron Heroes, is that magic items come with one or more drawbacks. For example, a potion might cause mutations, or a weapon might make you more susceptible to suffering critical hits. These are interesting enough that I anticipate those GMs who were planning to run the game completely without magic items may decide to include a few in order to reinforce the idea that using magic in the Iron Heroes setting is very risky.
The Appendix covers importing other characters into an Iron Heroes game. Its useful if that’s what you want to do.
Conclusion
This was a difficult product to rate. I have given it 3 stars on the grounds that it is a 98 page pdf with what I consider to be too little of substance in it. Ironically, had it been a much shorter pdf, with basically only the Villain classes, magic item drawbacks and action zones in it, I’d probably have given it 5 stars. It is still worth owning just for those parts.
In addition, there are some useful snippets of information on how an Iron Heroes campaign is different to a “standard” campaign. If they were gathered together they would probably only take up one page or so.
As I mentioned in my review, if you think the GM advice would be useful to you (it wasn’t to me), increase the rating. If you care about having open game content (I don’t), then decrease the rating.
