D&D 4E 4E vs. Iron Heroes- per encounter abilities

[ruleslawyer]

mostly true, however you could have NPCs take feat chains which used tokens.

True, although very few of those feats are really appropriate for NPCs anyway. (And IH Combat Expertise and Dodge are IMHO not so well written; hong's house rule fixes are superior and don't use tokens.)

 

[Nifft]

I really wish the designers of 4e would go with the Book of Iron Might approach to maneuvers. No tokens. No B09S lame names or lame maneuvers like healing someone by scoring a crit, and no limitations on attempting a maneuver one round after another other play choice due to a maneuver's riskiness (BAB penalties, drawing AO's, opponent's save negates effect, etc.)

So what's the risk mechanic in BoIM?

I might check out the PDF of that.

Thanks, -- N

 

[Sir Brennen]

I really wish the designers of 4e would go with the Book of Iron Might approach to maneuvers. No tokens. No B09S lame names or lame maneuvers like healing someone by scoring a crit, and no limitations on attempting a maneuver one round after another other play choice due to a maneuver's riskiness (BAB penalties, drawing AO's, opponent's save negates effect, etc.)

Except the BoIM is aimed squarely at fighters, with other martial characters in the splash radius. It doesn't really have much to offer spellcasting classes.

Same thing with IH. What does a druid do to gain tokens, and what does he use them for? Or a wizard? The cleric has an obvious route of "heal people", but that would put them back where 4E is trying to get them away from, namely primarily being a support character.

I don't know if the options of IH are extensible enough for a standard D&D game, especially as more core classes are going to continue to be added. It could be done, but after a while token generation will get more and more "gamey" and less explainable within the context of a fantasy world "reality".

 

[ruleslawyer]

IMHO, tokens seem like a better fit for a 4e than maneuvers in part because people are getting used to tick-based systems, and in part because as written in Iron Heroes, token abilities don't "break the rules" to the extent that the Bo9S maneuvers do, enabling one to keep magical and non-magical abilities in two clearly separable buckets. That allows a DM to control to what extent fighters' abilities are "supernatural" in flavor, whereas trailing a 5-foot stream of fire from your weapon a la Bo9S is rather unambiguously supernatural.

Nonetheless, it seems more likely that we're going to get maneuvers rather than tokens in the new edition. They're more directly comparable with spells, which is good from a class design perspective, and they have a prior edition precedent in Bo9S. The playtest reports also have hinted at abilities that sound a lot like maneuvers, so that might clinch it right there.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

That's an interesting possiblity, but I don't think it will happen.

The reason is, every combat is so different. Each combat will have different opponents with various special abilities, different terrain to maneuver around, and different chaos to manage.

I think it would be pretty difficult to execute an "attack routine" for each battle. Round 2, you want to power attack your opponent, but the ranger killed him, he moved out of range, he used one of his special abilities on you, the trap nailed you, etc. No plan survives contact with the enemy, that type of thing.

In the IH one shot I played in, I was an archer and had this problem CONSTANTLY. The tokens required you to use an action to accumulate and only accumulated towards a specific target. If that target was removed from combat, all the tokens just went *poof* into the "I just wasted the last two rounds" ether. The Berserker, on the other hand, was gaining tokens reactively, which were then used for self buffs and never wasted unless he just hadn't used them by the time the entire combat was over.

er, not that I'm still bitter...

Seriously, the token pool system is a decent model but the implementation for some IH classes brought back Kill Stealing and attendant ill will with a vengeance....

 

[Dragonblade]

D'oh! Forgot about the villain classes.

 

[Sir Brennen]

IMHO, tokens seem like a better fit for a 4e than maneuvers in part because people are getting used to tick-based systems [...]

They are? Can you give some examples of such systems that are widely popular enough to support that people are getting used to them? I only ask because IH is about the only "tick-based" system I'm familiar with (though I may not be remembering such a mechanic in some other system I've played.)

 

[ruleslawyer]

I don't know if the options of IH are extensible enough for a standard D&D game, especially as more core classes are going to continue to be added. It could be done, but after a while token generation will get more and more "gamey" and less explainable within the context of a fantasy world "reality".

I'm not sure that's the case, actually. I prefer the True Sorcery arcanist (which uses token mechanics in IH) to the D&D wizard, and it's a pretty powerful spellcaster. Likewise, people (myself included) have written up druid variants that use tokens. The mechanics aren't necessarily "gamey" if you're gaining tokens by tapping the Weave, drawing upon divine might, channeling feral power, or what have you. In many ways, they can be more flavorful than just using spell slots. Perhaps defiling wizards gain tokens by draining the land of life, or dark wizards get tokens by sacrificing creatures?

 

[ruleslawyer]

They are? Can you give some examples of such systems that are widely popular enough to support that people are getting used to them? I only ask because IH is about the only "tick-based" system I'm familiar with (though I may not be remembering such a mechanic in some other system I've played.)

Lots of videogames use tick-based mechanics; cooldown mechanics are tick-based in essence (e.g. WoW).

 

[Sir Brennen]

In the IH one shot I played in, I was an archer and had this problem CONSTANTLY. The tokens required you to use an action to accumulate and only accumulated towards a specific target. If that target was removed from combat, all the tokens just went *poof* into the "I just wasted the last two rounds" ether. The Berserker, on the other hand, was gaining tokens reactively, which were then used for self buffs and never wasted unless he just hadn't used them by the time the entire combat was over.

I've played IH one-shots at a local gaming store and got stuck with an archer both times. I feel your pain. Still, I enjoyed what I saw enough that I bought the books. For the play-style it supports, it's excellent. I just don't think it'd be a good fit for standard D&D. Many classes would just be another archer waiting to happen.