Iron Lore: Malhavoc's Surprise?

[mhacdebhandia]

I will quote Mike Mearls from his LiveJournalhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/mearls/14412.html almost precisely two years ago, in a manner which I hope will answer the questions about the way he's presenting his game:

Simply put, the more you do to drive away people who won't like your game's play style, the better your design will function.

It's a very simple idea. If I'm designing a car, I should design it with people who want to drive in mind. I don't ask people who hate cars what I can do to make my car more appealing to them. The same thing goes for all aspects of building an RPG. Pick your target play style, then build rules to support that . . .

. . . Character creation should ram certain options down players' throats, whether they like it or not. If you pick the right options to force on people, the only folks who won't like your design are the ones who wouldn't like it anyway.

I happen to strongly agree with him. I don't think Iron Lore should make any rules concessions to those interested in playing a game of political intrigue, because that's not what the game is for.

I think specific trumps generic every time.

 

[Felon]

I think DnD does a miserable job of giving you enough skill points to acomplish what your character needs to, and flesh out your character. Consider for a moment the skills posessed by a roman centurion, and then figure out how many skill points that is in DnD. A fighter needs to be what level to be that competent?

I don't know. What skills are needed, how many ranks, and perhaps most importantly, how smart is the centurion? I often find it odd that folks will resent the notion that a fighter needs to be exceptionally smart to be exceptionally skilled.

Also consider what skills are likely to be in the perception skill group. Spot, Listen, maybe search. Athletics? Climb, jump, swim. Stealth? Hide, move silently....Granting other skills are not quite as requisite a pairing as hide and move silently, but spot and listen are almost always taken as a pair, and the physical skills (climb, jump, swim, balance) are so rarely used that is seems a mere kindness to give them a group rate.

This is a very good point. I find myself trying to subtly hint to a couple of DM's that my characters are basically wasting points on Listen because they seem to prefer Spot hecks.

If 6 points/level represents the extreme end of skill point allotment, and "groups" are typically just a couple of skills, I could go for that.

 

[Particle_Man]

One point brought up earlier in the thread:

We don't see a "calvary" class a la Nomad in Conan. Would this be a good idea? I think the trouble is that Calvary, unlike the others has the problem of not being able to use their powers a lot of the time (ie., in any area in which they cannot bring their horse) and so would need something to compensate, but then if they had that something to compensate, would be overpowered at the time that they *do* have their horse with them.

 

[Azgulor]

how well could this product interface into Mongoose's conan?

This was the first thing I thought of when I first heard and read about Iron Lore. In one of the posts on Malhavoc's boards, this question came up. If I remember correctly, Mearls responded that the two could be combined. As to how seamlessly, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Azgulor

 

[Werther von G]

Not really. It's a category-allocating, points-distributing game. You prioritize things like Status, Attributes, Skills, Magic, &c in a range from A-F. This then gives you X points to spend on the abilities related to that category. It has no "classes" or "houses", as such.

Ah! So, sort of like Shadowrun then? I can understand that. (Although Shadowrun provides, through its templates, some class-like options.)

 

[A'koss]

One point brought up earlier in the thread:

We don't see a "calvary" class a la Nomad in Conan. Would this be a good idea? I think the trouble is that Calvary, unlike the others has the problem of not being able to use their powers a lot of the time (ie., in any area in which they cannot bring their horse) and so would need something to compensate, but then if they had that something to compensate, would be overpowered at the time that they *do* have their horse with them.

I think riding ability is best handled by skills, feats & stunts (or a Prestige Class?) for that exact reason. Althought a neat idea, IL characters seem to designed so you can "turn it on" in nearly every encounter.

And on a slightly different tangent, I think the best news I got out of the last design diary was that the Weapon Master class is shaping up to the Duelist class, v2.0. As I touched upon earlier in this thread, the 1st ed. Duelist was (conceptually) my all-time favorite D&D class and I was hoping to be able to replicate that style in IL. And for those too young to remember , the Duelist was a lightly armored, quasi-assassin, single-combat specialist that appeared as an "NPC" class in Best of Dragon Vol. II, I think.

It's news like that which pushes me further and further away from the DM chair. This is the game I want to play in.

A'koss.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

One point brought up earlier in the thread:

We don't see a "calvary" class a la Nomad in Conan. Would this be a good idea? I think the trouble is that Calvary, unlike the others has the problem of not being able to use their powers a lot of the time (ie., in any area in which they cannot bring their horse) and so would need something to compensate, but then if they had that something to compensate, would be overpowered at the time that they *do* have their horse with them.

I think it's very possible to do, Conan's Nomad actually does it very well in that all of the class's abilities work very well with horses, bonuses to charging, landscapes, certain weapons and mobility are the classes forte, but that doesn't mean that without the horse the abilities are useless. Well, aside from horse specific abilities that give you bonuses on taking care of and choosing horses but I don't really think those are game unbalancing since the whole party is likely to benefit from those when the party has horses.

There are two other ways I think you can do the class:

first, is a sort of beastmaster basic concept. That way even when you can't bring a horse into a situation you still gain the horse related to bonuses to animals that you can bring into the situation. This may seem like a twinky concept but I submit that's only because of the movie fantasy archetypes for this stretch from hawking nobles to dog keeping peasants to Hagrid.

Second, is a knight. That is someone who's real skill is impressing the world with his nobility, both as a status and virtue. To my mind this is innately related to riding horses in combat as establishing that sort of hierarchical relationship is pretty much intrinsic to convincing a horse to take you into combat and that basic approach is far from useless in non-horse situations.

Now, I can easilly see ways of taking anyone of these three concepts into the Iron Lore system and fitting them into what we know of the class structure, and I think any one of them would rock terrificly, particularly the knight since you could open up the whole virtue in combat based ethos that people seem to be picking up, but I think that Iron Lore would probably let you do this another way:

through racial traits.

That is if you think of yourself as a Pirate or a Nomad I don't think Mearls is going to make you waste feats to play your concept. One of the defining traits of Iron Lore as of now is that you don't wait to play your concept you play it right out of the box. You wanna necromancer, you play a first level arcanist necromancer, or at least a fourth level. You wanna play an assassin you pick up an Executioner with the City Rat trait. Templar? Armiger with Man of Faith.

And I think we are going to see that right out of the box: traits for pirates and nomads and knights all the basic meta-archetypes. We pretty much see that right now with the Child of Faith, City Rat, and the various Barbarian traits Mike name dropped in the picture challenge earlier in this thread.

Now that said, I'm certain there will be feats dealing with combat from horseback, how could there not be, but that's always been true and never really been what defined a nomad versus say an Archer who could ride anyway.

 

[Felon]

Well, there are all kinds of mounted combatants after all. Archers are an obvious choice for light cav, and harriers may be as well if they can fire more bowshots in a round than anyone else. Armigers and executioners would be effective as different components of heavy cavalry.

What do you really need to be effective cavalry besides certain feats, Ride skill, and maybe some Handle Animal.

 

[sword-dancer]

Could be; I've only skimmed TRoS, although it's high on my list to things to investigate. Does it have sub-groups that fill the role that classes do in D&D or Hermetic Houses do in Ars Magica?

No, it´s a classless system, where you buy your character together with a priority ressources, and then add to them if fitting your spritual Attributes.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Well, there are all kinds of mounted combatants after all. Archers are an obvious choice for light cav, and harriers may be as well if they can fire more bowshots in a round than anyone else. Armigers and executioners would be effective as different components of heavy cavalry.

What do you really need to be effective cavalry besides certain feats, Ride skill, and maybe some Handle Animal.

Well, there's no denying effective mounted combatants, but there's a difference between that and a nomad or a knight, where mounted is the defining initial element.

So yeah, give em armiger, archer, or executioner but recognize there is room for someone who is a great horseman and that is what they do.