D&D - Iron Heroes...between the poles

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Well, I'll generally go the route of civility here. I've been packing all day and don't have enough energy to truly rise to Canis's overblown rudeness. Sort of a let-down, really.

For me, one of the larger problems with running higher-level D&D combats is the STATUS EFFECTS. Player A casts Spell B, causing Status Effect X to Monsters Delta-Epsilon. Eventually you're trying to track one guy who is enervated for 3 negative levels, blessed for +1 to attacks, Inspired for +1 damage, but Shaken for -2, and yet Bull's Strengthed and Raging ... but Ray of Enfeebled ... who has boots of Springing and Striding but stepped on a caltrop, who Death Knells a dying monster and then casts Prayer and gets hit with a Blashphemy ... stunned, blinded, shaken, impeeded, enfeebled, inspired, blessed, prayered ... even with software, eventually it gets hard to track. What stacks, what doesn't, what your final strength bonus is, what your Attack Bonus is when you've got all that going on and you decide to do a Smite with 3 points of Power Attack in a spirited charge.

A higher-level GT Strong hero, for instance, might have +5 damage with a Greatsword from Melee Smash 3 and Specialization, might topple columns of stone with feats of strength, and a few other things. But they generally seem to be static and easily tracked. There's no alternate ability that reduces bonuses from Melee Smash when the moon is at its zenith and the Almachus is in the rising house. Heck, sometimes I'd like a little more ... maybe a token pool for some more interesting tactical considerations. Just not 2-4 pools or 4 different ways to spend out of one pool at differing ammounts, half of which involve GM fiat and the other half countered by pools and tokens from other classes.

I think there are alot of fundamentally interesting ideas and concepts in IH. Skill groups and the like are something I've contemplated in the past. I think abilities activated in-combat via opportunity-costs are VERY interesting. It's just that when somebody says: "They'll be able to take on the same challenges, it just might take a little longer to resolve combat." ... eh. I'm all for players having options, I just don't need any MORE time taken up.

I'll illustrate... might help. (It's late and I'm rambling.) In D&D it's pretty much expected that a party will have access to a Wand Of Cure X, and that this wand will allow them to get back into combat relatively quickly without spending days regenerating HP. We can get rid of this wand by adding in a system where the PCs will get back more HP somehow "naturally" but where we still count off charges/pools/etc in a daily allotment (as opposed to a finite Charge allotment in a wand) or we can do it with a system like GT where we can have armor converting part of the damage taken to NL, which we can heal up more quickly. Which, I think, accomplishes the goal with less in the way of resource-wrangling.

This is the same sort of situation with Armor As DR. While rolling a die for DR might be cool, in the end, it's just adding another die roll to a combat already repleat with die rolls. Why not just a fixed number? That would be faster. Bob removes 3 points from incoming damage each time ... he can remember that. Or Bob converts 3 points or whatever. But if Bob takes 3 full attacks from 3 ghouls in one round and has to roll 1d8 for each attack to see how much got absorbed, that's 9 additional dice throws we could have done without.

--fje

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, I'll generally go the route of civility here. I've been packing all day and don't have enough energy to truly rise to Canis's overblown rudeness. Sort of a let-down, really.

For me, one of the larger problems with running higher-level D&D combats is the STATUS EFFECTS. Player A casts Spell B, causing Status Effect X to Monsters Delta-Epsilon. Eventually you're trying to track one guy who is enervated for 3 negative levels, blessed for +1 to attacks, Inspired for +1 damage, but Shaken for -2, and yet Bull's Strengthed and Raging ... but Ray of Enfeebled ... who has boots of Springing and Striding but stepped on a caltrop, who Death Knells a dying monster and then casts Prayer and gets hit with a Blashphemy ... stunned, blinded, shaken, impeeded, enfeebled, inspired, blessed, prayered ... even with software, eventually it gets hard to track. What stacks, what doesn't, what your final strength bonus is, what your Attack Bonus is when you've got all that going on and you decide to do a Smite with 3 points of Power Attack in a spirited charge.

A higher-level GT Strong hero, for instance, might have +5 damage with a Greatsword from Melee Smash 3 and Specialization, might topple columns of stone with feats of strength, and a few other things. But they generally seem to be static and easily tracked. There's no alternate ability that reduces bonuses from Melee Smash when the moon is at its zenith and the Almachus is in the rising house. Heck, sometimes I'd like a little more ... maybe a token pool for some more interesting tactical considerations. Just not 2-4 pools or 4 different ways to spend out of one pool at differing ammounts, half of which involve GM fiat and the other half countered by pools and tokens from other classes.

I think there are alot of fundamentally interesting ideas and concepts in IH. Skill groups and the like are something I've contemplated in the past. I think abilities activated in-combat via opportunity-costs are VERY interesting. It's just that when somebody says: "They'll be able to take on the same challenges, it just might take a little longer to resolve combat." ... eh. I'm all for players having options, I just don't need any MORE time taken up.

I'll illustrate... might help. (It's late and I'm rambling.) In D&D it's pretty much expected that a party will have access to a Wand Of Cure X, and that this wand will allow them to get back into combat relatively quickly without spending days regenerating HP. We can get rid of this wand by adding in a system where the PCs will get back more HP somehow "naturally" but where we still count off charges/pools/etc in a daily allotment (as opposed to a finite Charge allotment in a wand) or we can do it with a system like GT where we can have armor converting part of the damage taken to NL, which we can heal up more quickly. Which, I think, accomplishes the goal with less in the way of resource-wrangling.

This is the same sort of situation with Armor As DR. While rolling a die for DR might be cool, in the end, it's just adding another die roll to a combat already repleat with die rolls. Why not just a fixed number? That would be faster. Bob removes 3 points from incoming damage each time ... he can remember that. Or Bob converts 3 points or whatever. But if Bob takes 3 full attacks from 3 ghouls in one round and has to roll 1d8 for each attack to see how much got absorbed, that's 9 additional dice throws we could have done without.

--fje

Only regarding your last example: There is a specific rule allowing you to chose not to roll and instead take the average (rounded down). But there are some balance reasons for using die rolls instead of a static value - attacks that generally deal low amounts of damage have little chance to break a higher value of DR.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Well, I'll generally go the route of civility here. I've been packing all day and don't have enough energy to truly rise to Canis's overblown rudeness. Sort of a let-down, really.

I'm not dissapointed, I thought this post was really interesting.

For me, one of the larger problems with running higher-level D&D combats is the STATUS EFFECTS. Player A casts Spell B, causing Status Effect X to Monsters Delta-Epsilon. Eventually you're trying to track one guy who is enervated for 3 negative levels, blessed for +1 to attacks, Inspired for +1 damage, but Shaken for -2, and yet Bull's Strengthed and Raging ... but Ray of Enfeebled ... who has boots of Springing and Striding but stepped on a caltrop, who Death Knells a dying monster and then casts Prayer and gets hit with a Blashphemy ... stunned, blinded, shaken, impeeded, enfeebled, inspired, blessed, prayered ... even with software, eventually it gets hard to track. What stacks, what doesn't, what your final strength bonus is, what your Attack Bonus is when you've got all that going on and you decide to do a Smite with 3 points of Power Attack in a spirited charge.

I haven't messed around with the magic yet, so that could surprise me, but from all I've seen this aspect of the game has been profoundly simplified. There are numerous resources but a limited number of effects. I've yet to see a bonus described as anything other than a bonus, which by IH's own mechanics seems to imply that they all stack. At a high level you might still be adding a lot from options, but that's gonna be a player task most of the time and I honestly picture it going pretty smoothly. Again, could very well be naive.

A higher-level GT Strong hero, for instance, might have +5 damage with a Greatsword from Melee Smash 3 and Specialization, might topple columns of stone with feats of strength, and a few other things. But they generally seem to be static and easily tracked. There's no alternate ability that reduces bonuses from Melee Smash when the moon is at its zenith and the Almachus is in the rising house. Heck, sometimes I'd like a little more ... maybe a token pool for some more interesting tactical considerations. Just not 2-4 pools or 4 different ways to spend out of one pool at differing ammounts, half of which involve GM fiat and the other half countered by pools and tokens from other classes.

This actually seems pretty close to the level of complexity in IH. There's certainly nothing in the core game about astrological bonuses. There are no pools that counter other pools. You can get both defense and attack bonuses and there are some abilities that can inflict a disadvantage. None of these seem to be in any way onerous to track since there's no bidding or counter-bidding you just mark them on the sheet and since most of them are one round or one roll you probably don't even need to do the marking.

As far as I can tell the only level of GM fiat that will really have an impact on your capabilities is whether or not the GM decides to run any combat that session. Should the GM decide to run no combat whatsoever then I cannot recommend IH to their group. Not that IH can't handle non-combat, but that you really aren't using IH to its best potential by not having frequent combats.

The Player's Guide to the Middle Ages has phenomenal non-combat rules and I may even import them should I try to do a high combat/high intrigue game such as Game of Thrones. They would add a lot of breadth to IH's already phenomenal social rules.

I think there are alot of fundamentally interesting ideas and concepts in IH. Skill groups and the like are something I've contemplated in the past. I think abilities activated in-combat via opportunity-costs are VERY interesting. It's just that when somebody says: "They'll be able to take on the same challenges, it just might take a little longer to resolve combat." ... eh. I'm all for players having options, I just don't need any MORE time taken up.

When you are scanning this complaint keep in mind that most people making it are being very YMMV in their analysis.

If you were comparing IH to Castles and Crusaders I wouldn't be here at all. I've heard from guys who run C&C combat with 12 PCs and half that number of higher level NPCs in 15 minutes from start to finish. Yes, there is no way Iron Heroes is going to be geared or regeared toward that style of play. If I were comparing DnD and C&C then I could have that conversation since you could probably come pretty close to that time by really dumbing down DnD. Now the guy I was discussing this with really loved kung fu and action, but he was more in love with the quick gameplay and really anything that introduced any level of complexity was anathema to him even things he might otherwise love.

Since you are comparing it to Grim Tales I can come in and pretty confidently say that the realm of probability is slightly less time for IH, no more time for IH, or slightly more time for IH.

I tend to run a pretty Feng Shui, the High Flying game of Hong Kong Action, game even in DnD. Almost all of my combat time is taken up by player and DM description of action. There is no way IH is going to take longer and it is almost certainly going to be shorter since IH rules provide a much clearer schemata for action than either DnD or Feng Shui, though I will always love Feng Shui for its crazy dice mechanic and transformed animals. If you run GT without any player or DM description of combat, no adjustable combat options, and timed decisions, which is how this guy was running C&C, then, again, I cannot recommend IH for you and, honestly, I'd probably recommend C&C since you're wasting GT's features.

One feature I can guarantee IH giving you out of this comparison, at least with regard to vanilla DnD, is that it is much much easier to set up these combats in your mind and prep them than it is in DnD. Having more options means that you know more about what can happen and knowing that means you can use your prep time more effectively. Again YMMV cause if you are already spending the max amount of prep time then you may just be prepping more effectively rather than reducing.

I'll illustrate... might help. (It's late and I'm rambling.) In D&D it's pretty much expected that a party will have access to a Wand Of Cure X, and that this wand will allow them to get back into combat relatively quickly without spending days regenerating HP. We can get rid of this wand by adding in a system where the PCs will get back more HP somehow "naturally" but where we still count off charges/pools/etc in a daily allotment (as opposed to a finite Charge allotment in a wand) or we can do it with a system like GT where we can have armor converting part of the damage taken to NL, which we can heal up more quickly. Which, I think, accomplishes the goal with less in the way of resource-wrangling.

From what I can tell via your description and comparison here IH's solution is going to be simpler and faster than either of the alternatives you have just listed. The GT & IH mechanics are going to be very close, but based on your description it has essentially the same mechanic as GT save with one less step in that there's no armor conversion. In IH reserve functions as a means of bringing NL style quick healing to Lethal damage automatically.

There are options for speeding up the process via feats, skills, and magic, but these do seem to only exist as options for players who want to be cool by virtue of them. They don't change the fundamental character of damage in the same way that, say, DnD healing does.

This is the same sort of situation with Armor As DR. While rolling a die for DR might be cool, in the end, it's just adding another die roll to a combat already repleat with die rolls. Why not just a fixed number? That would be faster. Bob removes 3 points from incoming damage each time ... he can remember that. Or Bob converts 3 points or whatever. But if Bob takes 3 full attacks from 3 ghouls in one round and has to roll 1d8 for each attack to see how much got absorbed, that's 9 additional dice throws we could have done without.

Hmm, my counter to this is that not all die rolls are equal. Armor DR resolves very quickly and generally doesn't disrupt the flow of combat.

To illustrate: an average conversion rate isn't going to save you that much time.

-A ghoul attacks and hits. DM rolls for damage and informs. DM moves on to next action. Player keeps one number in head that of damage. Player rolls armor. Player references die roll and subtracts from number in head. Damage is recorded.

-A ghoul attacks and hits. DM rolls for damage and informs. DM moves on to next action. Player keeps damage number in head. Player either finds average number on sheet or has to recall it in addition to remembering damage from DM. Player performs subtraction operation. Damage is recorded.

There's about the same number of steps in each process. The first involves less mental work, which, IME, takes up more time than dice rolling, but it's gonna be close either way.

Now, if the DM and player are smart you aren't making nine seperate rolls either. Your making nine seperate to hit rolls, one ghoul damage roll, and one armor subtraction roll. If you've got the right number of dice you can do it in three rolls, with two being the maximum number performed by one person.

Outside of the theoretical, this combat is going to take a lot of time out of the game since facing a large group of ghouls who hit the party with every single attack is going to clearly indicate to the players that they are facing an orchestrated TPK and they are going to be righteously pissed off.


To cap off, I don't know that I or anyone else is going to break down your resistance to IH and I don't really care. I'm not concerned about you, you seem like a good player who runs good games and I don't think you're going to stop doing that because you don't adopt IH, but I really appreciate this conversation since it's certainly making my IH game better. Thank-you.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Maybe I'm just missing something, but if you want lower-power characters in Iron Heroes, can't you just make them lower level? Or raise the CR of their opposition? Either way, it's one variable. It sounds like a level X character with a +1 sword is about as good as a level X+1 character. (You trade extra HP for the ability to ignore nonmagic DR.)

That's easier than taking low-magic stock D&D classes, and raising the level to compensate (because the higher level presumes more magic items). That requires you to adjust for the lack of magic, and the higher level. Multiple variables, and they're interrelated.

 

[nothing to see here]

This thread has certainly gone in a different direction than I thought it would when I started it. Not that I'm complaining (its interesting), just that it's unexpected.

Perhaps the best way I could rephrase my original post is this. While I am happy with the standard power-level of d20 based rules (be they based on the Iron Heroes or Dungeons and Dragons rulesets). I find the all-or-nothing, mentality towards magic a bit off-putting. D&D you have a glut of them. IH you are supposed to have next to nothing.

Aldarc mentioned that a future IH product will cover rules for limited magic items, which I'm optimistic will help. Until then however I find myself pining for a "middle dial" between the IH and D&D extremes - reduced (though not rare) magic items, compensated by significant (though not extreme) improvements inherrent character abilities. Such a middle dial would also present, as a side benefit, increased compatability between the classes of the two rulesets, so you could have a bard, cleric, executioner and harrier roaming around the dungeon (I'm a more options = more fun kinda guy).

 

[PeRfEcT^InZaNiTy]

Let me address the original question. There are only a few things to think about when putting magic equipment into IH.

First, it's armor: the DR from armor is /magic. The easiest way to fix this is to decide that magical weapons do not count as magic for purposes of DR (since PCs have other ways to handle DR in IH).

What people seem to forget is that you can run DnD without magical items, it just messes with the CR. It's just the same with using magical items in IH, it just messes with the CR. However, giving a few magical items to IH PCs will mess up the CR less then taking away most of the magical items in DnD.

Hope that helps.

 

[Denaes]

Let me address the original question. There are only a few things to think about when putting magic equipment into IH.

First, it's armor: the DR from armor is /magic. The easiest way to fix this is to decide that magical weapons do not count as magic for purposes of DR (since PCs have other ways to handle DR in IH).

What people seem to forget is that you can run DnD without magical items, it just messes with the CR. It's just the same with using magical items in IH, it just messes with the CR. However, giving a few magical items to IH PCs will mess up the CR less then taking away most of the magical items in DnD.

Hope that helps.

I didn't know people actually used CR's in practice.

Most of the GMs I've gamed with recently (including myself) use it as an eyeball guide and thats about it.

To me the only balance there is happens within the group. So long as everyones on par, it's game on

 

[Psion]

I didn't know people actually used CR's in practice.

Most of the GMs I've gamed with recently (including myself) use it as an eyeball guide and thats about it.

I learned the hard way the folly of that.

No, they aren't flawless. But from a reliable publisher who does their homework, they are a good starting point.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

What people seem to forget is that you can run DnD without magical items, it just messes with the CR. It's just the same with using magical items in IH, it just messes with the CR. However, giving a few magical items to IH PCs will mess up the CR less then taking away most of the magical items in DnD.

Hope that helps.

What people seem to forget is CR is based on many factors, not just "raw power". If you remove magic items and don't come up with a good replacement, PCs are going to have a hard time avoiding getting hit, making saves and perhaps dealing damage, but they're going to hit things just fine.

It also interferes with intra-party game balance, giving a huge edge to spellcasters. Removing magic items is more complicated than just adjusting CRs.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Well, I'll generally go the route of civility here. I've been packing all day and don't have enough energy to truly rise to Canis's overblown rudeness. Sort of a let-down, really.

Like Dr. S, I am not disappointed, and in fact rather pleased that someone responded in a high-minded fashion. Believe it or not, I'm not a raving loon and only occasionally a jerk. I am also slightly embarrassed by my earlier outburst. I have, however, found that when people are throwing up empty, intellectually devoid phrases like "low-powered game" the simplest way to deal with the situation is to declare the emptiness of that phrase in a loud voice. Did I go about this with less diplomacy than was perhaps called for? Absolutely. I'll cop to that. I was perhaps a little irritated with someone else's presumption that I was an ass, and I've found that the most polite thing to do when someone decides on poor evidence that you're an ass is to live up to their expectations so they can sleep better at night. After all, I know there's nothing that irks me at night as when I committed an unjust accusation, so I might as well help others sleep the sleep of the just. The unfortunate side effect is that once I am being an ass I irritate the hell out of people like yourself, who were really just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That being the case, I apologize.

In any case, it seems from your description that "high-powered" isn't your problem, it's over-complication.

Not for nothing, but that's a LOT more clear as a descriptor than "high-powered" and "low-powered." It actually means something, and people can talk about it without jerks like me going off the deep end and posting a rant.

And now I return you to your regularly scheduled intelligent discussion without further sidetracks.