Wow. That sounds extremely disappointing. I had planned on buying this PDF tonight, but now I'll hold off a bit.
One of my biggest beefs with Iron Heroes is the half-baked nature of the final product . . . lots and lots of great and promising ideas, but with seriously spotty implementation. This first report on True Sorcery sounds all too familiar.
Perhaps there is some epic level curse on the whole arcanist class?
Now that WOULD explain a few things...
I should caveat with a couple statements. Fire-and-Forget Vancian magic is the elephant in the living room in my enjoyment of D&D. I've NEVER liked it. Yes, it's a sacred cow...but I've said before, D&D magic lets you play one type of fantasy well - D&D fantasy. Since I got into D&D to do Sword & Sorcery, High Fantasy, etc., that's never sat well with me. Secondly, the 3e reliance on magic items to achieve game balance...well...I hated it. The problem is that I always thought the fighter types were the cool ones in the fantasy stories. Almost EVERY D&D game designer (from Gygax to Cook) is not shy that the "best" character to play is the wizard (or if you must, the Cleric - a Wizard with armor). If you don't want to play a primary spellcaster, they're not designing the game for you.
With
Iron Heroes, Mike Mearls actually TRIED to design a game to let non-spellcasters have the fun. And, for the most part, he succeeded. IH works great. Tokens work great. But the system doesn't work with D&D magic. It NEEDS a magic system, because it's fantasy, but it needs a magic system that supplements the combat/skill classes, rather than overshadowing them. That's a TALL order. One that needs a designer with the skill to make the powerful wizard types...and the desire to restrain themselves so that the class doesn't overwhelm it's neighbors.
Not counting the magic system, I think
Iron Heores is VERY well done. Not everyone's cup of tea...but VERY well done. Magic should just have been removed from the final product and done RIGHT. I mean...I suppose NO magic system is another Elephant in the Living Room for a "fantasy" roleplaying game...but considering what Mearls goals were, he nailed 90% of them.
Just my opinion. But as far as magic goes, I agree. This is another system that's
Iron Heroes-compatible, and yet still flawed. I dunno. Maybe what we want just can't be done. Our group efforts on the IH boards haven't produced a good, properly balanced system EITHER.
The BCCS system is SO close. So was Elements of Magic - Mythic Earth. So is True Sorcery. They're spitting around the perfect magic system for
Iron Heroes. But they still haven't hit it.