How does IH actually play?

[Ry]

I've had good experiences with the Conviction mechanic above in the past.

What I'm looking at doing is actually scrapping IH as a basis, and just building off of D&D's fighter bonus feats & warlock invocations (so no IH tokens, just Conviction action poitns). The two classes (as seen in the .xls file) will be very similar, but the Warlock's ability to Wild Card Invocation and the fighter's ability to Wild Card Feat should each provide them chances to do spectacular stuff (esp. in conjunction with Conviction).

 

[Pbartender]

Another suggestion might be to take a look at True20, and then add in things you like from IH (a lot of the best things in IH are taken directly or derived indirectly from True20, in fact).

True20's actually got most of what you're looking for built right into the system...

- Only 3 basic, but customizable classes... Fighting, Skills or Magic.
- Class abilities are purely feat driven (including supernatural powers).
- Fairly "rules light" and relatively faster play in comparison to D&D.
- An action point mechanic... It's even called "conviction".

All you need to do is add in combat maneuvers, and that's easily done by tossing in IH's combat stunts and mechanics as a house-rule.

 

[Ry]

Damnit, there just aren't that many synonyms for "the will to overcome adversity"

 

[Ry]

I'll definitely look at those feats. I bought blue rose ages ago before True20 was available separately - are all of True20's magic feats available in that document?

 

[Pbartender]

I'll definitely look at those feats. I bought blue rose ages ago before True20 was available separately - are all of True20's magic feats available in that document?

Dunno... I've never really looked at Blue Rose. The setting style never appealed to me.

I've got the paperback Pocket Player's Guide, which has all the important stuff. Based on that alone, I'm going to be buying each of my players a copy of the pocket guide for Christmas this winter and get the full hardcover for myself.

My wife is getting ready to run us through a one-shot of True20 this evening for the first time... None of us have played it before. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Ry]

Thanks! Any insight on well-done systems is much appreciated.

 

[Pbartender]

Thanks! Any insight on well-done systems is much appreciated.

Yup... As much as I like IH, I also fully realize that it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Right now, my three favorite systems to play are:

Iron Heroes - It does fantasy in the style I like, which is to say high action, moderately powerful characters but without the magical reliance of D&D. Much like the R.E. Howard and Fritz Leiber stories I'm so fond of, characters are good because they are good, not because they're equipment is good. To me, that's important for fantasy... The world's best swordsman should be able to pick up any rusty sword and and kick ass with it. On the other hand, the system was rushed to completion and has parts that can be very buggy. That's slowly changing.

Spycraft 2.0 - It is a very detailed game, with some exceptionally innovative game mechanics. It's a lot of fun, if you've got the time for it, and it let's you do some really cool stuff in the modern and near-future genres. The trouble is, for certain types of games, it's got too many rules... it's too detailed. Spycraft has rules for practically everything, and it can be tough to remember them all.

True20 - This is the game I'll be using in the future for any ganre that doesn't fit in with the previous two games, or any game that I want to go a little bit "rules lite" with. It's simple, generic without being boring, and canbe easily be converted to any style or genre of play. The genericness is also the downside - sometimes people want to have a concrete difference between longswords, rapiers and cutlasses as opposed to having just a "sword".

 

[Ry]

My best campaign to date was run on a system where the characters were defined like this:

Garat
Rank 5
Str +2
Swords +1
Command +1

and the mechanic was 2d6 + stat+skill vs. Target number. We didn't even have a damage mechanic (all descriptive). It was great (I mean, a 3 year campaign kind of great, totally wicked game), but I know it would only work for a very small subset of my potential players now.

Really, it was kind of unreasonable for me to expect to extract something that conforms to my tastes from Iron Heroes, so I realized during this thread that I should just be idea-mining. For example, from Iron Heroes the Wild Card feats can help me get stunts, and Skill groups will just be what I call skills.

But the idea to strip out the ability modifiers from the rest of the system has probably been the best upshot of this discussion; I don't even know what made me think of it.

 

[McBard]

...IH's combat stunts...

I was initially excited about the idea of this, but in play was very turned off by it because of having to make a somewhat time consuming d20 check [the stunt check] in order merely to find out if you get a fairly modest bonus to a second d20 check [the attack roll]. This approach reads well theoretically (and would seem to encourage "exciting maneuvers" and such), but the rule's game play, ironically, has the opposite effect by unexcitingly slowing game-play down.

However, IH's stunt system failure did lead me to develop more of the way I think something like this should be done. I now have a broader system for sacrificing move actions to grant automatically bonuses.

Quick example: use a move action to grant yourself a +1 bonus to whatever you want that round. In core d20 games, low level characters without iteratives usually end up using a standard action to attack once..and just "wasting" their move action by not having other options to use it on other than moving their Speed. In my "move action stunt system" they have a round-by-round tactical choice of buring the move action not merely to move their Speed, but to either grant a +1 bonus to attack (the "offensive tactic") or perhaps a +1 bonus to defense (the "defensive tactic"), just to cite a couple of examples. (And, yes, I have a mechanic that rewards high level characters even more bonsuses should they sacrifice a move aciton--and thus all their iteratives--to perform a "stunt".

Without going fully into the system, my point is that the sacrifice of the bonus is imbedded in the move action mechanic, NOT in extra dice rolls. It's an automatic choice that the player makes tactically each round.

Btw, rycanada, I love this approach:

My best campaign to date was run on a system where the characters were defined like this:

Garat
Rank 5
Str +2
Swords +1
Command +1

 

[Ry]

Garat there was a PC who was the equivalent of a 10th-level D&D character (in terms of stature in the campaign setting.

Anyway, this new thing will be actually pretty similar. You'll be able to go

Garat
Level 10

[list of 10 feats if Warrior, and 5 feats, 5 invocations if a Warlock]