Iron Heroes questions

Hey, my group and I have been playing 3.5 for a year or two and it's starting to grate a bit, so I got my hands on a copy of Iron Heroes have been reading it over recently. Before I bring it up with my group, there are a couple of things I'd like to clarify.

I'm confused about the trait Mighty Build. When a character uses a weapon that is intended to be larger than their size, (such as a Large long sword Arming Sword), would it be used normally, or would you adjust effort levels for size? For example, would a character wielding a Large long sword Arming Sword be wielding it in one, or two hands? If the latter, would you not be able to use any two-handed weapon as a size larger?

Also, the Weapon Master weapon selection could be clearer. Is it one single weapon type (maul, pick, mace etc.) or is it one single weapon (your character's maul, pick or mace, etc.). This could crop up if, say, you have a Weapon Master in the Razor Fiend tree, who might carry two daggers for fighting and several more for throwing. Would these all count as favoured weapons for the character, and gain the favoured weapon bonus?

Does tumbling count as using a move action for the purposes of the Harrier ability Mobile Assault and similar rules?

Does the Harrier's Rapid Assault ability stack with Razor Fiend for the extra attacks? For the attack penalties?

Those later things are things that I could just house-rule, but I'd like your input on how you'd play it, especially in terms of balance.

Slightly less directly related, are there any character builds that I, as a DM should watch out for?

Hi,

I recommend you start at the Iron Heroes FAQ & Errata wiki:
Iron Heroes FAQ and Errata / FrontPage

This has lots of clarifications of how rules interact, and - as assume you have the original, not the revised book - a PDF of errata:
http://ironheroesfaq.pbwiki.com/f/IHRevisionSummary.pdf

A lot of your questions - plus many you haven't though of yet - should be answered in those two links

In general, the best place to get a reply for your future IH rules questions, and for feedback on actual play experience, is here:
Iron Heroes - Malhavoc Press - Okay -- Your Turn - Message Board Yuku

Briefly:
A character with mighty build wields weapons of one size category larger exactly as if they were weapons of his own size category. So a medium-sized character with this trait could wield a large longsword in one hand, would treat a large light mace as a light weapon, and would be able to wield a large greatsword in two hands.

Weapon masters pick a single specific weapon type. So if you choose "dagger", it applies to all 10 daggers you carry.

Harriers: If you move from square to square, it's movement, regardless of whether it is tumbling, walking, swimming, climbing, or hopping on one leg

Rapid Assault and Razor Fiend stack for both number of attacks and penalties.

I was going to add something and then the guy that officially answers questions chimed in.
Welcome to the Iron Heroes fun. Feel free to leap upon the backs of wyverns, pin their wings, and drive them face-first into the ground. Afterward, you can take the head as a trophy and pitch the body at another troublesome flying worm. (Hey, it happened in one of my games, you can have it happen in yours.)

The biggest drawbacks to Iron Heroes are:
1) little to no support for magic. This is also one of the big appeals.
2) low level heroes are insanely tough. High level heroes are merely tough. This is because the armor-as-DR thing just doesn't scale well. It's a lot of fun, but it starts too good and ends too weak.
3) weapon masters are boring. They don't suck like Bards (whom I love, but the class sucks), they are powerful enough, they are simply dull.
4) hunters are confusing, flavor-wise, and take a few levels to be worthwhile; at which point they start to rock out.
5) never enough feats. Although it is not broken to give all characters a feat at every level, plus class bonus feats. This is almost enough feats.
6) everyone says they want to play a Harrier. Only a fifth of them actually want to play a Harrier.

Good luck getting your group to go for it. It can be a heck of a lot of fun.