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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 3760446" data-attributes="member: 3586">I've just come away from playing an extremely unfun session of Iron Heroes, and I've been thinking about the reasons that I found so it such a bad experience.We've played 4 sessions of IH in this current minicampaign, starting from level 1, and here's my biggest problem with it: I was playing a Hunter, and the character was weaker than every other character.I wasn't the best archer (I wasn't even close), I had the worst hit points, the worst AC, and the other PCs were pretty much better in melee than me.My special abilities? I could ignore 1 point of cover AC/round - and give my friends the same bonus. Oh, and get this... I could spend an entire round making a DC 10 Intelligence check to gain a token that I could spend later in the combat to give a couple of combatants +4 to flanking instead of +2. That is, if I made the check. I had a 16 Int, so 30% of the time I'd just stand there doing absolutely nothing in the round.Call that fun? Because I don't.The other players were gaining tokens to help them be more effective in combat. Them, not the rest of the party.A player needs to be able to do something that distinguishes them from their friends. In AD&D, the 1st-level magic-user was fairly useless most of the time, but they could cast sleep, which was far and away a "bomb" spell. 4-16 kobolds asleep? Cool! The thief could backstab. The cleric, if a just a little weaker than the fighter in melee, could turn undead if they came up.Now, I'm leaving out the cleric's spells, because casting bless or cure light wounds isn't fun. It's occasionally effective, but giving a bonus to all your friends isn't as fun as, say, casting righteous might on yourself. Personal spells say, "I can do something better now, watch me roar!" Consider if bless was "each ally gets +1 to hit, you get +2 to hit", would that make it a more fun spell? I think it would.Browsing around, I see that the hunter would get a lot better at 4th or 5th level. I consider that bad design. A class doesn't have to be at its best from the beginning, but it *does* need something to make the poor levels palatable. The AD&D magic-user got sleep. That allowed them to pass the bad levels until level 5 came along, and they really got interesting.So, if any of the 4e designers are reading this, please make each class have something compelling it can do from 1st level.And, please, for the leader classes, make their global effects help them just a little bit more than the others!Cheers!</blockquote>

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