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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 2700255" data-attributes="member: 63">First, understand that I'm almost completely unfamiliar with Iron Heroes. I haven't even seen a copy of the book. I just know a few things folks have talked about, namely that it's geared much more toward physical combat than to magic. Bear that in mind, since I'm just going to have to guess what's a decent power level for magic in that system.Do any classes in IH get 8 skill points per level? If so, that class, with a high Intelligence, ought to work as a full-spectrum wizard. Otherwise, . . . well, part of the balance of the rules is that your average character has to sacrifice his other abilities to gain magic. Honestly, unless IH has revamped the importance of other skills, the main cost in getting magic is the feat, not the skill points. Most people barely batted an eye at spending a few skill points to gain the ability to levitate objects or grant themselves a stat boost. They were a little more affected by the feat cost, but what I've seen in my own playtest is that most of the players were willing to spend a feat and a few skill points that they weren't going to miss for a single magical ability.If you started making it cheaper to gain access, people would probably jump at the chance of getting so much versatility so cheaply. Honestly, would you rather spend ranks in Diplomacy, or magical Charm?  Jump, or magical Move?By the way, it was a design choice that low-level Attack spells suck compared to simple weapons. In D&D it's not such a big deal, but in D20 Modern, the damage threshold rule (if you take more than your Con in damage in one hit, you must save or pass out) make 5d6 attack spells much more dangerous than in D&D. At low-level, though, most characters will be better of carrying a gun than shooting Attack spells. In the playtest game, no one took Attack at low level, and only now that they're edging toward 7th level is the primary caster dumping spare skill points into it so he can actually dish out some damage.Perhaps. Again, I'm not familiar with the power level of IH, but in D&D, giving up a feat is hard if you're planning to be a combat character. In d20 Modern it's a bit easier, since you get so many. If IH gives even more feats, you might want to require a slightly higher cost. Perhaps require a feat to gain access to any magic at all, or perhaps require the 'Arcane Skills' feat as a prereq for tradition feats.To use a term from Magic: the Gathering parlance, Mythic Earth was 'aggressively costed' for d20 Modern, meaning that I was willing to risk it being a little more powerful than other, non-magical options. I felt this was balanced by the chance of spell failure, and the limited number of times you could easily use magic in a day compared to, say, shooting a gun or using Diplomacy. Compared to D&D, the power level's a little lower, since I didn't want the system to overshadow the quite well-entrenched core magic.For IH . . . I dunno. Do you want magic to overshadow the combat system?Create, probably with the Elemental Focus feat. I'm pretty sure IH doesn't use Purchase DCs, but you could still probably use D20 Modern cost guidelines with Create. How much would a strong wind cost to create? Figure out how much a big fan would be. A snowstorm? Up the DC. Create is one of the hardest ones to handle accurately, and requires a lot of adjudication. Always feel free to eyeball it and say 'This feels like it'd be an Nth level spell.'Also, you could create a tradition feat specifically for a wind mage, that granted Create as a class skill, but gave him a penalty to creating things that aren't wind-based.I'm highly intrigued. Also, as the rules are all Open Content, you can do what you wish with them, with my blessing. I'd need to know more about IH to know how powerful it is, and how best to rachet the power level up or down as needed. But hey, I've heard lots of great things about IH, so the association of Mythic Earth with it pleases me.</blockquote>

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