Iron Heroes as a 'God of War'-esque campaign

[Kirin'Tor]

I'm looking at setting up a Iron Heroes campaign, and doing something in the vein of the video game 'God of War', where-in the heores would be sponsored champions/avatars for various gods (possibly from various pantheons).


So, in the spirit of that game, I'm thinking of trying to add some kind of additional resource-management as an alternative to XP for extremly low level creatures. You'd have the option of taking some short-term boon instead of XP whenever a creature was felled (representing your ability to take on it's soul energy).

My current thought for boon's are pretty basic, and totally untested. So,I'm brining them here, to see what others think! The idea is they all trade advancement for temproary power (like grabbing a power up instead of a 1up, in video games)

Instead of XP
1) You could gain a bonus to your reserve HP pool equal to the creatures HD. If this amount would take yoru reserve higher than it's normal maximum, the rest spills over into healing real HP. your rHP & HP can never equal more than the maximum.
2) You gain a bonus to your mana pool equal to the creatures highest mental ability modifier. This bonus _can_exceed your daily mana cap, but not by more than your Arcanist class levels.

Do these seem balanced within their limited scope? Does anyone have alternatives and/or revisions to either of them? Feedback of all kinds apprecaited (even if you think the whole idea of XP trade is stupid!)

 

[Kirin'Tor]

No one has thoughts on the concept at all?

 

[DralonXitz]

I don't have IH yet, but I'm a HUGE God of War fan. I think that would you have came up with is actually a pretty solid idea, and I think it could make for some very fast paced combat heavy campaigns.

 

[Odhanan]

Would this mean you waste *all* XP gains on the creature to benefit from these boons? That seems harsh. I don't imagine any smart player sacrificing XPs for temporary boons. In any case, on the long run, that would be a bad choice. If you play a one-shot session, on the other hand, that would always be the good choice.

I think XP sacrifice isn't the way to go, even if the idea in itself is good.

 

[Kirin'Tor]

Well, my thought was, if you're fighting a horde of kobolds (for example) and your reserve/HP is low, you just might skip out on the XP for minion or two, in preparation for the big fight.

I thought no magical healing/resurrection might make the choice seem more viable...but these are the opinions I want to hear!

 

[Odhanan]

What could be really neat is to be able to convert HPs into temporary boons.

See the problem I see is that you are sacrificing a permanent benefit (XP) for a temporary boon. It's either never a good choice or always a good choice (see my previous post). So in the end there is no real choice.

If you sacrifice something temporarily for a temporary benefit, however, that may work just fine. Hence the Hit Points suggestion. But that's perhaps not the kind of flavour you want to explore. I hope it inspires you though!