JohnSnow said:
While I appreciate ThirdWizard's adamant defense of my points, I'd like to clarify what I was saying (since my first post was a quick throwaway, not a well-crafted explanation).
D&D's class system provides a baseline of character ability as you go up in level (skills improve, characters get more feats, etc.). On top of that, the system assumes the characters receive an escalating "pool of points" that the characters use to "buy" additional powers over and above their class abilities. In D&D's case, the "buy" is quite literal (in-game as well as out) using the default GP wealth table in the DMG to provide the "points." Iron Heroes leaves in place the class abilities and eliminates the "point buy" part of class balance in favor of more "class abilities."
I wouldn't call the recommended character wealth a diehard system that determines where a character should be at that level. It is a gauge at best and one that is easily replaced in low-level campaigns. My problem with your statement is that you claim that Iron Heroes does this "tremendous" job in making character creation easier, when all it really does is take away you picking magic items(which could be rolled using one of the charts) and replace it with picking additional skills and training. It doesnt really do anything different. It takes away magic and replaces it with magic like special abilities called stunts. Just because I take away the cherry and put a strawberry on top of it doesnt mean that its going to take more or less time for me to eat that pie. (sorry hungry so only food analolgies today).
I'm not talking about replacing gear that wears out. I'm referencing the need to upgrade a sword from +1 to +4 over the course of 18 levels. And your armor. And to swap your wand for a staff, and to pick up gloves of dexterity, a pearl of intellect, and so on, and so on.
This isn't a neccesity and something I dont see in games. I see pcs want to buy more unique magic items but the power + power is rarely a factor. They are more worried in later weapons at having the special abilities on the weapons to handle particular kinds of monsters. Again, Iron Heroes doesnt really get away from this thinking anyway, they only provide you with stronger stunts. As you grow in levels you have to choose abilities and stunts approriate for that levels. All IH does is replace magic with stunts (as far as this aspect of the rules goes). In many cases the stunts equal magic items. J
"Realistic" is not a word that makes sense to me in regards to magic. For instance, in my conception of things magic swords don't lose their edge from regular use. That may not be realistic but it fits with my idea of how a "magical sword" behaves.
Ah, you complain about the power of magic weapons but yet you go against reality and make them more powerful and magical. I find this odd considering your position. But you have to admit, having an upkeep cost on magical items does solve this problem. My thinking is that the magic eventually fades and I have a nice little chart for players whom try to skip out on their upkeep costs.
If a character's power depends on his personal "Gear," he will invest a very small amount of his resources towards things that don't involve increasing his powers. I take it your players find all their weapons?
Quite the contrary, my players rarely find usable weapons. Everyone still have their original weapons after 2 years of actual game play (50 sessions). And the magical weapons they do find are dire evil or cursed. They learned a long time ago not to take anything of the enemies unless they know of a good black market to sell it on. The one player whom found a good magical weapon uses that, but its an artifact magical weapon she found 42 sessions ago. I think its up to the DM to shift the emphasis off of gear and on to the adventure. I consider that apart of managing the tempo. I don't follow the wealth chart (which is just a guide) unless the player is making up a character. And even then I don't manage it, essentlally they can have anything they want so long as no one item is half of the wealth. When an enemy falls in battle, i make note of them searching the body. Anything of interest is noted quickly and it is not until the end of the segment or dungeon that they know what was retrieved.
The initial poster was talking about doing away with handing out loot in exchange for a static "shopping trip." That implies (strongly) that the PCs are buying weapons and magic gear. Compared to the wealth level of a typical PC of Level 7+ (per the DMG), upkeep is meaninglessly small.
Depends on what you're doing for upkeep. I can't remember where I read it, but upkeep was calculated at 10 percent of the expected character wealth, no matter if they have that much wealth or not. Spell casters have to buy components, which means they have double costs. Priests have to pay a frequent tithe at level (which increases with each level -higher membersips dues). I think this is where alot of DM's get gaffled. A number of dms dont use spell components. Which is fine, i dont use the listed spell components but I do use the cost system for the spell components. When I say upkeep cost I'm not talking about bread and wine. I"m talking about taxes, airship fees, upkeep of living facilities and supplies. Keeping track of this is quite easy. After a big adventure when they return hme I just tell them how much they owe. Sometimes i caculate and sometimes I just throw a number out that sounds right.
When they do shop the shops have inventories and unless its a major city theres rarely any special magical weapons or armor. There are black markets that can produce and fix "special items" but as the pcs found out the last trip to the black market shops (when an npc stole maps to their next dungeon) there is a price to it.
In D&D, I have to stat up a character, pick his feats, his stat boosting items, spend his gear, upgrade his equipment. It's not picking spells that takes time, it's getting the character's abilities in line with what they ought to be at his level.
At most, with a normal character you have to pick FIVE feats in the entire lifespan of the campaign. YOu will increase a stat ablity about FOUR times. That's hardly a chore. You get one or two spells everl level. Tell your players if they are going to a familiar town to know waht they want to buy well ahead of time before they go into a shop. And i dont see how difficult that is. I want X weapon. GIve me X gold. Sweet I am out.
A high-level Iron Heroes character stats up almost as fast as a low-level one. Any extra time you spend is spent customizing the character to fit a concept, not making sure he's not a pushover because you didn't buy the right gear.
I don't see how this is different than 3.x. Yeah the items get more expensive and you got to carry an additional 0. I'm sure most of us got past long division. I don't get it? The way I hear people complain I swear they hire accountants for their game.
Again, you're ignoring the magic items. There's a huge difference between creating an 8th-level character and a 9th-level character that has nothing to do with his class abilities. This is less relevant for players (who only do it once in a while) than DMs who make several such characters all the time (or always use the same pre-gen ones).
I"m going to recommend your next favorite thing. Buy NPCdesigner (PLUG) which is a featured sponsor at Enworld. It's only 15 bucks but its the most usefull tools. Every NPC I build from the lowly guardsmen to the higher level sorceror I build with this program. I don't care too much for trying to get the character the right magical items prices correctly too. So I just push a button and in 3 minutes i have a statted character.
What did I do before this program. I only provided the magical items that were pertinent to the character. If i didn't care Id roll on the ole percentage chart in teh dmg. I don't think it would take any longer and there's no NPC Designer (PLUG) for Iron heroes (yet he is working on ARcana Evolved now).
In Core D&D, your characters are adventuring for loot. If they don't get loot, they can't keep adventuring against challenges of their level. You can compensate for it, but it's a pain in the neck.
If my characters were adventuring for loot they would have quit a long time ago. My characters adventure for various things. One is adventuring to find out and kill the person who betrayed her. The other is adventuring to serve her gods, another is adventuring to build a great library and another is adventuring to save her homeland. No ones in it for the money. One character was doing it for the fame, but changing the timeline so that his family became rich and famous he found himself locked in a tempoeral prison.
Firstly, joke. Based on the following:
If PCs in Iron Heroes get money, they spend it on influence, wealth, ale & wenches, castles, businesses, or whatever. They do NOT spend it acquiring a "+9 Hackblade of Ogre-slaying."
We're doing the same thing with this one. Are you sure we're playing different games? AGain I consider these things upkeep and entertainment costs which bost a lot of the party's money (in particular bribing the drow king and funding a war from both sides).
True. It is a preference thing. I've been playing D&D for almost 30 years. And my big objection to 3e is that I don't want to play "Go-go Gadget PC." I have a strong objection to "Christmas Tree PCs" who are decked out with dozens of stat boosting items. One magic item is fine. Even a few is fine - but I hate PCs with a dozen. We used to refer to games with that level of magic as "Monty Haul." So my personal preference is to play games where magic is special. Core D&D has to be re-written (and re-balanced) to make that work - Iron Heroes doesn't.
Again I like a low level magic campaign every now and then, and my next campaign is going to be centered on that. But I also don't believe in the decked out magical item'd party either. I am not sure if I'm thinking of the ELEMENTS OF MAGIC (PLUG) system I'm using but can't you only carry 12 magical effects worth of items. But this is where dm'n comes in from. Just limit the items of your players. My characters can't carry any more than 4 permanent magical items at any one time. But thats a DM controlling the world which I think is a big responsiblity.
Simply pulling the magic out of Core D&D does work, and any good DM can do it. I know - I have. But the problem is that doing that cuts down on player options and makes the game less fun for players. Iron Heroes fixes that by giving the players more to do now that they're no longer managing their magical powers. So it gives with one hand as it takes away with the other. The side effect (IMO) is that combat is more interesting and more fun. And nobody's forced to play a class they don't want to because that's how the game was written *cough*Cleric*cough*.
Hey I agree with you that forcing players to play classes they dont want sucks. There's no cleric, someone has to be one. I think some DM's give the game a bad name by playing their setting like that. The DMG nor the player's hand book have anything about required classes for a party. But as a low-level magical setting IH is one of the best.
If I had to do this campaign all over again, I'd use one of the point buy varients. I'd even consider using IH (when i bought the setting at Gencon I damn near upheaved the whole campaign to replace it with that and the three mage classes Elements of Magic book). I've eliminated the cleric class and the magic classes from my campaign. I know use the EOM's mage and characters are allowed to build their magic characters from those (very flexable system).
But like you said, it's a preference thing. I prefer my game system to support my preferences for magic being less ubiquitous. Iron Heroes does. Core D&D doesn't.
I liked Iron Heroes because I liked what it did with the merceanry classes and what it didnt do with the magic system. I agree, the magic system in the core book sucks, and I dont use it with the exception of picking magic items. But I like magic which is why I chose a better system. But I don't think that IH is any easier, its just a different system and probably one of the best systems for low magic .
