Iron Heroes Balance Issues

[lior_shapira]

I'll try to be a bit more encounter specific (some spoilers!!)




- Two Cliff Ogres (IH Bestiary) EL 5/6: good fight, not too easy but once the Ogres did the mistake of closing in they were doomed. If they would have stayed up on the cliffs, enjoying their ranged advantages they might have won.
- Four Goblins EL 1/2: entertaining role-playing wise, but no real challenge
- One Cliff Ogre, Six goblins and Two (or three) Bugbears EL 7: good fight, the cliff Ogre dropped a chandelier on the character's head, and although most of the goblins were Primal Howled out of there, the fight was still interesting
- Two Wyverns (baby and mother) EL 7: First encountered the baby Wyvern. He was supposed to be enough but the characters ganged up on him. So I added the mother to the mix but she didn't have much success either... bad fight.
- Auromvorax (CR 9): Custom monster from the adventure, not a really good one in my opinion, a small doggie with DR and eight legs... meh. I think the lesson here was that no matter how strong a single monster is, if they can gang up on it, its dead.
- Juvenile Blue Dragon (CR 8): The dragon strategically placed itself in the mdidle of a shallow lake of water which made it very hard for the adventurers to reach it. When they waded into the water he breathed lightning into it, frying them. Unable to gang up on him and dish out damage, the dragon finished them off pretty easily. I gave him some abilities of the villain class 'Dreaded Sorcerer' to make up for taking away his spells.

 

[Technik4]

I'll try to be a bit more encounter specific

It seems like the module was about right. I mean, some fights are going to be easy to a group of adventurers and some aren't, period. The epic battles where the entire party is on single digit hp and they just barely manage to kill the bbeg are hard to come by, especially in a module. That is usually a result of good DM'ing or just plain luck.

I think you should ask yourself if the typical D&D group would have had more trouble with the encounters your IH group found easy...

 

[ruleslawyer]

I've looked through the revised edition, the revisions list and the FAQ and errata and could not find anything that indicates that additional tokens are not added to the DC. The DC calculation is still (DC 10 + half your berserker level + your Strength or Charisma modifier + tokens spent). How do you know its a mistake? I agree that its a bit ludicrous that if you have 10 tokens and spend them to howl as a free action, it also raises the DC by 10, and yet it is not officialy supported.

Fair enough, but this is something that, as you indicate, is "ludicrous" enough that it should be errata'd. Bag of rats existed for a long time too!

Adam, any word on this?

 

[ruleslawyer]

Its "deadly" because its parallel (in my opinion) to the Turn Undead ability of the D20 cleric. The difference is that there are no limited uses, it works on a much wider variety of foes, and is much harder to beat.

There is a limit on the number of uses, most definitely. Token-based abilities have, well, a token cost. Based on my own play experience, average token generation runs 2/round at low levels assuming you use a move action to gather tokens. That means you can use this ability once every other round, max.

Second, primal howl is pretty weak in that it only works fully (causing fright) in foes with lower HD than you. Turn undead does not have this limitation, and moreover, undead are among the few foes that can have (in the case of vampires and liches) relatively low HD relative to CR. (Undead are of course immune to primal howl, as are constructs, oozes, vermin, etc.) Shaken is pretty tough, but not really a fatal state to be in.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Primal howl is simply poorly written. First off, the text makes it seems like when you spend additional tokens to reduce the "casting time," those tokens add to the DC (that is a mistake).

Check the errata/FAQ my friend, this is covered and you're incorrect.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Note my post immediately above. I said it *should* be errata'd, not that it *has been* errata'd.

That said, now that I look at it again, I'm thinking that the real balance issue you're seeing (to the OP) is that the save DCs for some of these abilities are very high, but that maybe you're not taking into account token cost or level of effect. As I noted earlier, Primal Howl is basically a mook-buster; it inflicts the shaken condition on pretty much any opponent that would pose a reasonable fight to the PCs, and leaves the frightened condition to opponents who likely would just be speedbumps. Moreover, it's not a "Round One and the fight's over" ability, *especially* if you're talking about the DC getting up there. Sure, a 5th-level berserker can get 10 tokens and use Primal Howl with DC (10 + 5/2 + 5 + 10 =) 27 as a free action. Is that enough to drive off any 4 HD mook? Sure. However, think about what the berserker had to do to earn those tokens. Either he had to save tokens over 5 rounds (in which case he wasn't using *any of his class abilities* from Rounds 1-5) or he had to see an ally fall, or he's wasting a bunch of actions stoking fury, or he's getting damaged a lot. None of these are *good* things from an overall combat perspective.

If, OTOH, the 'zerker is using Primal Howl as a base: Well, it's got a DC of 17. Sure, if the party encounters a bunch of goblins, it's a walkover to use 2 tokens and a standard action in round 2 to disperse them. However, that's still assuming that there was either an action spent gathering tokens, or the 'zerker took damage. A fighter can do the same thing with Great Cleave and a full-round action.

Anyway, even using Primal Howl as written (and I think Adam's right; it's fine by RAW), I don't see how this is a balance issue. YMMV.