JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Well, since i can't add it to the database yet, here's my draft review...
Monte’s first book from Malhavoc Press was the Book of Eldritch Might. After two sequels, another series, Hallowed Might followed. Now it’s time for spellcasters to move over and allow the fighting men time in the sun.
Written by Mike Mearls, the Book of Iron Might comes is 64 black and white pages and retails for $13.99. Interior art by Kev Crossley and Scott Purdy. The former manages to capture several scenes of intense action, of figures in combat that contains the essence of their movement. Scott on the other hand, does excellent character work where the figures are bursting with power, like the illustration of the barbarian warlord lashing out with his axe on page 43.
Space use is fair. The margins have no borders unlike Scared Lands or Necromancer titles, giving the two column pages a clean and easy to read feel. A page is used for credits, another for contents, another combines notes for using this material with Arcana Unearthed and the OGL license, and two pages of advertising. Not bad for a 64 page book for $13.99.
The book is broken up into four chapters; combat maneuvers, the Ironborn, feats of iron might, and skills and stunts. These options present a lot of utility to the game but all should be taken with a grain of salt and some playtesting as they may not fit your particular campaign but are worthy of investigation.
To start with, the combat maneuvers are created through four ‘building blocks’ that involve the effect, the drawbacks, the net effect and the visual. Well, what does that mean? Let’s take a melee attack effect. The second one is Area Attack and has a prerequisite of having some way to effect the targeted area such as a reach weapon. This represents a single attack, as opposed to say Whirlwind Attack, where you attack multiple targets with individual rolls. You take a –5 penalty for each square that you attempt to hit and make one roll, rolling damage individually for each square that you hit.
It sounds simple and for the most part, it is. It adds another layer of complexity to combat and while I haven’t playtested it at higher levels, I can see some potential abuses as things like Weapon Focus and it’s children combined with powerful magic items and high ability scores in essence make the penalties meaningless. That allows you to have a game much like Exalted or another action based game, but means that lower level characters aren’t going to be able to pull off the stuns quite as effectively, limiting it’s use, but with Action Points or the Arcana Unearthed Hero Points, allows them to use them occasionally.
The good news is that the author has provided lots of drawbacks, campaign integration notes, and other tidbits, including a lot of examples, to let the GM run with the material as much or as little as she wants. For example, you might like some of the maneuvers like the example, Power Hammer, capable of knocking foes back and down, but leaving you not only open for a counter attack, but if you fail the strength check to knock the enemy down, leaves you open to being hit by the Power Hammer yourself. ON the other hand, you might not like others like Jawbreaker where a character attacks a creature’s jaw to shatter it’s teeth.
Moving onto the Ironborn, they remind me a little of Phil Reed’s metal men in his PDF file in that they aren’t all one generic cast like the Warforged of Eberron. Then again, if you’ve got the Monster Manual III, they’re not a one trick pony anyway. Regardless, the Ironborn have more versatility than most other metal men I’ve seen in that players have more freedom to customize their character. This includes ability score modifiers and size modifiers (yes, you can have a Large Ironborn with a 20 strength). Now all Ironborn do have standard traits, including being of the Ironborn Subtype and in effect, being immortal as they never age and have a natural +1 armor class bonus.
The unique factor kicks back in with their ability packages. They can select one ability package, if Medium sized. These packages range from things like Centurion, where you’ve been crafted for war, giving you an armored body and a light fortification (25% chance to ignore critical hits), to Trailblazer, perfect for rangers nad scouts as they gain resistance to fire and cold (only 2 points mind you), in addition to not needing food and water, and an innate affinity for the natural world, expressed in game terms with a +2 bonus to Handle Animal and Survival checks.
Ironborn can continue to be customized through the choice of their favored class, although one picked, it can never be changed, and unique Ironborn Feats. These can add a nice gestalt effect as you take something like Holy Icon, where you have a holy symbol upon your body that allows you to spend a spell slot to gain a bonus on turning or to have weapons on your limbs with the feat, Weaponized Limb.
Moving into more general waters, chapter three introduces the Feats of Iron Might. These take three forms, the Arcane Battle Feats, Battlemind Feats, and Fighting Style Feats. The Arcane Battle Feats remind me a little of some of the feats in Arcana Unearthed like Infuse Weapon. They grant your warrior some type of supernatural abilities without giving up his warrior core. To start with the Arcane Battle Mastery, you have to have an Int 13 and a bab of +1. Not for every warrior, true, but those who take it, start off small with Concentration, Knowledge (arcane), and Spellcraft as Class Skills, but it leads to other feats. The nice thing about this though, is that spellcasters who can prepare arcane spells and have those skills as class skills and have a bab of +1 or higher, are considered to automatically have Arcane Battle Mastery.
So what can you select once you’ve got your base feat spent? How about another starter like Arcane Weapon? Your weapon is augmented based on your level. Sure, it’s nice in the pinch when you need an extra boost, but chances are you’ve already got something nice in terms of magical items. But still, you can then move to something like Death Strike, where you do an extra 2d6 points of damage with your attack, as well as potentially causing Strength and Constitution damage.
The bad thing is that most of these special effects have a uses per day. For example, that Arcane Weapon? It can be used as you divide your base attack by three, rounded down, +1. For Death strike, it can be used your based attack divided by 8, rounded down. Neat little tricks, but of limited availability, almost like special moves.
When looking at Battlemind Feats, where the martial aspect is turned towards the warrior’s mind and how to maximize combat ability. These feats are different in that you have to plan ahead to take them, and that once you do, you’ve got to take the feat. Ideas for the GM in making mentors and providing interim abilities, or Method bonuses, are included.
The first feat, Avatar of Carnage, requires you to have a Charisma of 15, Intimidate 8 ranks at a bab of 5+. Your method gives you a +2 bonus to Intimidate Checks, and when you get the benefit, all foes within 60 feet of you suffer some type of feat effect ranging from a minor morale penalty to attack rolls and checks to being effected by feat. It can only be used a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and lasts for a number of rounds equal to 5 plus your Charisma modifier.
I like the concept and the addition of the Method to give the character some benefit for planning his character out ahead of time. Might not be good for one shot games or convention games but perfect for longer term games. If you’ve ever wanted to mimic something like the Flute of the Fallen Tiger style attacks from Lone Wolf and Cub, this is another step in the right direction.
The last set of feats, Fighting Styles, provide the user with several abilities tied into a single feat, but they only gain the multiple options as they continue to gain in abilities, gaining one new ability for every five points of base attack they posses, and it doesn’t work retroactively, so if you take one of these feats after first level, you can only gain the extra abilities every five points after you took it. In some ways, the multiple benefits, they remind me of the tactical feats introduced in the Complete Warrior.
These range from emulating fighting abilities with particular weapons like Archer, to certain styles, like Fencing. Most of them require some not only an ability score of a certain level, and a bab +1, but also some third ability, like a feat. In some cases, these can be assumed feats like for Shield Bearer, you have to have Shield Proficiency, or Spiker, a master of using his spiked armor in combat, you have to have heavy armor proficiency.
In exchange, you can select a technique and then select more techniques as your bab grows. For Battle Captain, you have the option of Challenging Presence, Commanding Aura, Heroic Rally, Inspiring Battle Cry, Steadying Influence, and War Leader. These abilities range from the last giving your allies a +1 morale bonus on attack and saving throws, to the first’s allowing you to call an enemy out on the field.
The last chapter, Skills and Stunts, provides several new abilities for your skills. For example, if you have Balance and Climb skills and the feat, Run, you can try and do a Vertical Run. It requires a balance check (DC 20), and a Climb check (DC 25), and allows you to move 20 feet along the wall. It’s an idea that you should examine carefully, adding potential combat uses to skills based on the Bluff skill’s ability to remove an enemy’s Dexterity bonus and can add another dimension to your campaign.
Editing is pretty good but there are some points that could’ve been clearer. For example, when discussing the Ironborn, they have a variable size. Under the size Large description, it notes that they don’t gain it’s ability package’s secondary feature, but when looking at the Ironborn’s Ability Packages, it notes that only size Medium Ironborn get an Ability Package at all. The Heavy Weapon Fighting style feat is another one that could use some work. “You cannot use weapons that are too large for you to handle, but you are better at handling Large greatswords and similar weapons.” Uh, no, you wouldn’t be. See, a Large greatsword wouldn’t be useable by a normal person because it’s a two-handed weapon and according to the PHB, page 113, you can only use a weapon of a different size if it’s small enough to be used. So something like a large longsword that would require a single hand from an orge might be appropriate but not any two-handed weapon.
Overall I found the book a good read, full of ideas. I wish the book was larger mind you with some PrCs, some specifically designed to showcase how the Ironborn might be further customized by levels, or even say, some Ironborn levels similar to those found in Arcana Unearthed, or some PrCs that were masters of the new feat types here, like the Sword of Righteousness from the Book of Exalted Deeds. Heck, some new and unique magic items and lore of the Ironborn would’ve been good too. The old Book of Eldritch Might wasn’t stingy with thoese things and often featured PrCs, magic items, and even monsters. Sounds like the bones of a sequel in there.
Much of the material requires the GM to fully think about combat. It’s not something that’s going to allow you to read it once and leap into your campaign. You’ll have to plan to incorporate things like Combat Maneuvers and how they’ll effect the tone of your game. Players will attempt to use them for maximum benefit. You’ll have to review the various types of feat and see how much work you’re willing to put into making NPCs who can teach the players these new options.
If you’re a GM willing to do that, then the Book of Iron Might is going to open up new vistas for your game. It’s going to allow your players to be more heroic, to emulate the stuns and scenes of the movies and video games that they may enjoy. It’s going to allow fighters to go from power attack-cleave-great cleave, to some other feat trees. In short, its going to require some thought on how best to use it but would expand your game in many layers.
Monte’s first book from Malhavoc Press was the Book of Eldritch Might. After two sequels, another series, Hallowed Might followed. Now it’s time for spellcasters to move over and allow the fighting men time in the sun.
Written by Mike Mearls, the Book of Iron Might comes is 64 black and white pages and retails for $13.99. Interior art by Kev Crossley and Scott Purdy. The former manages to capture several scenes of intense action, of figures in combat that contains the essence of their movement. Scott on the other hand, does excellent character work where the figures are bursting with power, like the illustration of the barbarian warlord lashing out with his axe on page 43.
Space use is fair. The margins have no borders unlike Scared Lands or Necromancer titles, giving the two column pages a clean and easy to read feel. A page is used for credits, another for contents, another combines notes for using this material with Arcana Unearthed and the OGL license, and two pages of advertising. Not bad for a 64 page book for $13.99.
The book is broken up into four chapters; combat maneuvers, the Ironborn, feats of iron might, and skills and stunts. These options present a lot of utility to the game but all should be taken with a grain of salt and some playtesting as they may not fit your particular campaign but are worthy of investigation.
To start with, the combat maneuvers are created through four ‘building blocks’ that involve the effect, the drawbacks, the net effect and the visual. Well, what does that mean? Let’s take a melee attack effect. The second one is Area Attack and has a prerequisite of having some way to effect the targeted area such as a reach weapon. This represents a single attack, as opposed to say Whirlwind Attack, where you attack multiple targets with individual rolls. You take a –5 penalty for each square that you attempt to hit and make one roll, rolling damage individually for each square that you hit.
It sounds simple and for the most part, it is. It adds another layer of complexity to combat and while I haven’t playtested it at higher levels, I can see some potential abuses as things like Weapon Focus and it’s children combined with powerful magic items and high ability scores in essence make the penalties meaningless. That allows you to have a game much like Exalted or another action based game, but means that lower level characters aren’t going to be able to pull off the stuns quite as effectively, limiting it’s use, but with Action Points or the Arcana Unearthed Hero Points, allows them to use them occasionally.
The good news is that the author has provided lots of drawbacks, campaign integration notes, and other tidbits, including a lot of examples, to let the GM run with the material as much or as little as she wants. For example, you might like some of the maneuvers like the example, Power Hammer, capable of knocking foes back and down, but leaving you not only open for a counter attack, but if you fail the strength check to knock the enemy down, leaves you open to being hit by the Power Hammer yourself. ON the other hand, you might not like others like Jawbreaker where a character attacks a creature’s jaw to shatter it’s teeth.
Moving onto the Ironborn, they remind me a little of Phil Reed’s metal men in his PDF file in that they aren’t all one generic cast like the Warforged of Eberron. Then again, if you’ve got the Monster Manual III, they’re not a one trick pony anyway. Regardless, the Ironborn have more versatility than most other metal men I’ve seen in that players have more freedom to customize their character. This includes ability score modifiers and size modifiers (yes, you can have a Large Ironborn with a 20 strength). Now all Ironborn do have standard traits, including being of the Ironborn Subtype and in effect, being immortal as they never age and have a natural +1 armor class bonus.
The unique factor kicks back in with their ability packages. They can select one ability package, if Medium sized. These packages range from things like Centurion, where you’ve been crafted for war, giving you an armored body and a light fortification (25% chance to ignore critical hits), to Trailblazer, perfect for rangers nad scouts as they gain resistance to fire and cold (only 2 points mind you), in addition to not needing food and water, and an innate affinity for the natural world, expressed in game terms with a +2 bonus to Handle Animal and Survival checks.
Ironborn can continue to be customized through the choice of their favored class, although one picked, it can never be changed, and unique Ironborn Feats. These can add a nice gestalt effect as you take something like Holy Icon, where you have a holy symbol upon your body that allows you to spend a spell slot to gain a bonus on turning or to have weapons on your limbs with the feat, Weaponized Limb.
Moving into more general waters, chapter three introduces the Feats of Iron Might. These take three forms, the Arcane Battle Feats, Battlemind Feats, and Fighting Style Feats. The Arcane Battle Feats remind me a little of some of the feats in Arcana Unearthed like Infuse Weapon. They grant your warrior some type of supernatural abilities without giving up his warrior core. To start with the Arcane Battle Mastery, you have to have an Int 13 and a bab of +1. Not for every warrior, true, but those who take it, start off small with Concentration, Knowledge (arcane), and Spellcraft as Class Skills, but it leads to other feats. The nice thing about this though, is that spellcasters who can prepare arcane spells and have those skills as class skills and have a bab of +1 or higher, are considered to automatically have Arcane Battle Mastery.
So what can you select once you’ve got your base feat spent? How about another starter like Arcane Weapon? Your weapon is augmented based on your level. Sure, it’s nice in the pinch when you need an extra boost, but chances are you’ve already got something nice in terms of magical items. But still, you can then move to something like Death Strike, where you do an extra 2d6 points of damage with your attack, as well as potentially causing Strength and Constitution damage.
The bad thing is that most of these special effects have a uses per day. For example, that Arcane Weapon? It can be used as you divide your base attack by three, rounded down, +1. For Death strike, it can be used your based attack divided by 8, rounded down. Neat little tricks, but of limited availability, almost like special moves.
When looking at Battlemind Feats, where the martial aspect is turned towards the warrior’s mind and how to maximize combat ability. These feats are different in that you have to plan ahead to take them, and that once you do, you’ve got to take the feat. Ideas for the GM in making mentors and providing interim abilities, or Method bonuses, are included.
The first feat, Avatar of Carnage, requires you to have a Charisma of 15, Intimidate 8 ranks at a bab of 5+. Your method gives you a +2 bonus to Intimidate Checks, and when you get the benefit, all foes within 60 feet of you suffer some type of feat effect ranging from a minor morale penalty to attack rolls and checks to being effected by feat. It can only be used a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and lasts for a number of rounds equal to 5 plus your Charisma modifier.
I like the concept and the addition of the Method to give the character some benefit for planning his character out ahead of time. Might not be good for one shot games or convention games but perfect for longer term games. If you’ve ever wanted to mimic something like the Flute of the Fallen Tiger style attacks from Lone Wolf and Cub, this is another step in the right direction.
The last set of feats, Fighting Styles, provide the user with several abilities tied into a single feat, but they only gain the multiple options as they continue to gain in abilities, gaining one new ability for every five points of base attack they posses, and it doesn’t work retroactively, so if you take one of these feats after first level, you can only gain the extra abilities every five points after you took it. In some ways, the multiple benefits, they remind me of the tactical feats introduced in the Complete Warrior.
These range from emulating fighting abilities with particular weapons like Archer, to certain styles, like Fencing. Most of them require some not only an ability score of a certain level, and a bab +1, but also some third ability, like a feat. In some cases, these can be assumed feats like for Shield Bearer, you have to have Shield Proficiency, or Spiker, a master of using his spiked armor in combat, you have to have heavy armor proficiency.
In exchange, you can select a technique and then select more techniques as your bab grows. For Battle Captain, you have the option of Challenging Presence, Commanding Aura, Heroic Rally, Inspiring Battle Cry, Steadying Influence, and War Leader. These abilities range from the last giving your allies a +1 morale bonus on attack and saving throws, to the first’s allowing you to call an enemy out on the field.
The last chapter, Skills and Stunts, provides several new abilities for your skills. For example, if you have Balance and Climb skills and the feat, Run, you can try and do a Vertical Run. It requires a balance check (DC 20), and a Climb check (DC 25), and allows you to move 20 feet along the wall. It’s an idea that you should examine carefully, adding potential combat uses to skills based on the Bluff skill’s ability to remove an enemy’s Dexterity bonus and can add another dimension to your campaign.
Editing is pretty good but there are some points that could’ve been clearer. For example, when discussing the Ironborn, they have a variable size. Under the size Large description, it notes that they don’t gain it’s ability package’s secondary feature, but when looking at the Ironborn’s Ability Packages, it notes that only size Medium Ironborn get an Ability Package at all. The Heavy Weapon Fighting style feat is another one that could use some work. “You cannot use weapons that are too large for you to handle, but you are better at handling Large greatswords and similar weapons.” Uh, no, you wouldn’t be. See, a Large greatsword wouldn’t be useable by a normal person because it’s a two-handed weapon and according to the PHB, page 113, you can only use a weapon of a different size if it’s small enough to be used. So something like a large longsword that would require a single hand from an orge might be appropriate but not any two-handed weapon.
Overall I found the book a good read, full of ideas. I wish the book was larger mind you with some PrCs, some specifically designed to showcase how the Ironborn might be further customized by levels, or even say, some Ironborn levels similar to those found in Arcana Unearthed, or some PrCs that were masters of the new feat types here, like the Sword of Righteousness from the Book of Exalted Deeds. Heck, some new and unique magic items and lore of the Ironborn would’ve been good too. The old Book of Eldritch Might wasn’t stingy with thoese things and often featured PrCs, magic items, and even monsters. Sounds like the bones of a sequel in there.
Much of the material requires the GM to fully think about combat. It’s not something that’s going to allow you to read it once and leap into your campaign. You’ll have to plan to incorporate things like Combat Maneuvers and how they’ll effect the tone of your game. Players will attempt to use them for maximum benefit. You’ll have to review the various types of feat and see how much work you’re willing to put into making NPCs who can teach the players these new options.
If you’re a GM willing to do that, then the Book of Iron Might is going to open up new vistas for your game. It’s going to allow your players to be more heroic, to emulate the stuns and scenes of the movies and video games that they may enjoy. It’s going to allow fighters to go from power attack-cleave-great cleave, to some other feat trees. In short, its going to require some thought on how best to use it but would expand your game in many layers.
