Iron Heroes Campaign Starting--What Classes Are Good?

[ruleslawyer]

I've been looking through the classes for an upcoming IH campaign, and some of them look a lot less cool than my initial impressions led me to believe, mainly because I didn't look at them as starting from 1st level (which is where this party's starting).

Weapon Master-
Harrier--

Those are the two main classes I'm having issues with. Can anyone help me get a better handle on them?

Hmm. My immediate thoughts:

1) The Weapon Master: Perhaps no class with the exception of the Arcanist is so often house ruled (and the Arcanist only because of magic system changes). IMHO, the weapon master should be houseruled for improved play. Ask your DM if he will allow the weapon master to gain tokens against anyone, and not have to select a party against which token abilities will apply. IMO, this does not overpower the WM, and makes him much more useful in a variety of situations. True, he'll be able to pick up tokens against mooks and channel them all to use against the main villain, but that doesn't seem like a problem to me.

2) The Harrier: Speaking from play experience, this class works just fine. Keep in mind that finessable weapons in IH play much stronger than their equivalents in D&D, as does this entire style of combat. Due to the looser AoO triggering rules, and especially with the existence of traits (Lithe Acrobat and Weapon Bond being the ones that come to mind), the harrier can start play quite tough. It *is* one of those classes that, like a D&D primary spellcaster, requires a strong ability and feat focus to be effective. However, also like a D&D primary spellcaster, the harrier yields great rewards from focus. Yes, almost any harrier you see played will have an astronomical Dex, Lithe Acrobat, City Rat (Bravo) or Weapon Bond (Dex), maxed Tumble, a rapier, and lots of Weapon Finesse feat. All of those pay off quite well, though!

 

[Felon]

The weapon master is not just a boss killer, it's a killer. Except for opponents with loads of HP you are likely to kill them before tokens will do any good. This does not mean that the class is weak, rather that it is quite strong and doesn't really need tokens to hold its own. In short the weapon master is all about melee full attacks and a bit dull. There are several attempts to tweak the class in order to make it more interesting, you can find them on Monte Cooks message boards.

Could folks qualify their remarks a little? I have some assurances that the weapon master is a powerful class, but nothing specific is cited.

 

[A'koss]

Could folks qualify their remarks a little? I have some assurances that the weapon master is a powerful class, but nothing specific is cited.

Ignoring the tokens entirely, the WM still has the best melee BAB of any of the classes, the best Defense Bonus of any class, level 10 mastery in their Primary Feat (Armor, Defense, Finesse or Power) and only the berserker gains more HPs...

 

[ruleslawyer]

Okay; for some slightly more quantitative responses:

1) Harrier + finesse weapons: IMHO, this is of the same species as the rogue's restriction to certain weapons: Namely, flavor. hong actually refers to the same issue in his IH hack:

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/ih/harrier.htm

2) Weapon master & quantitative analysis: Well, I'd submit that it's difficult to make a suitably rigorous quantitative comparison between the weapon master and equivalent melee-monster PC archetypes. As A'koss says, the WM has a higher BAB, BDB, and max feat mastery than its nearest equivalents (the straight-up berserker and the man-at-arms melee weapon specialist). It has lower damage-dealing capability than the 'zerk (+1/5 levels BAB is little match for berserk strength combined with Power feats) and roughly equivalent resilience (BDB balances out the 'zerk's superior hp and Con boosts). The WM trades the 'zerk's range of potential immunities for cool weapon tricks, with a roughly similar power-up rate. So the question is: Does its higher feat mastery and cool trick array compensate for the 'zerk's damage-dealing ability? Answer: Maybe (if the WM has token restrictions based on opponent) and definitely (if the WM's token abilities have no restrictions based on opponent). That's my back-of-the-envelope.

 

[monboesen]

Could folks qualify their remarks a little? I have some assurances that the weapon master is a powerful class, but nothing specific is cited.

The 5th level weapon master from my game.

HP: 69
Defense: 19
DR: 1d4+1
Attack: +11/+6 (with the option to power attack for -1 to -6)
Damage: 1d10+5 (bastard sword, can be used two-handed to improve power attack damage)

 

[Rystil Arden]

The 5th level weapon master from my game.

HP: 69
Defense: 19
DR: 1d4+1
Attack: +11/+6 (with the option to power attack for -1 to -6)
Damage: 1d10+5 (bastard sword, can be used two-handed to improve power attack damage)

The 3rd-level Armiger from my game had-

HP: 41
Defense: 14
DR: 1d6+2
Attack: +9/+4
Damage: 3d6+6

Pretty monstrous, actually. She might give that Weapon Master a run for his money.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I personally think any class that is designed solely to be hit so that the rest of the group can focus on killing the monster is, well.... boring.

Understandable. It's not your thing. For me, being able to sit there and have two enormous critters pound on me round by round while the party stands far away and destroys them is just too heroic!

As far as the other two classes under debate, I would say this. Try them over a couple of levels, and with the errata. A lot of IH stuff builds towards greater power. It sucks to be 1st or 2nd level in any D&D variant.

 

[Odhanan]

Understandable. It's not your thing. For me, being able to sit there and have two enormous critters pound on me round by round while the party stands far away and destroys them is just too heroic!

Definitely agreed: the Armiger is not designed to be everyone's cup of tea. It's actually designed for a particular type of player who can make the best out of a potentially passive role. If you love playing sort of 1st-ed-clerics and can use all kinds of tricks to get the attention of your opponents and get them to care for you first (using abilities or not), then you'll love the Armiger.

If you need a very active character class with abilities that are in-your-face up-front, that's not the best class to make a character with.

 

[Particle_Man]

Note: There is a Perform skill that allows the Armiger to taunt people into attacking him. Helps the whole "tank" idea considerably.

 

[A'koss]

My 2nd-level Weapon Master from the PbP game I'm in -

HP: 27
Defense: 18
DR: 1d3
Attack: +5
Damage: 2d8+3 (large bastard sword)

And surprisingly good with the tumbly-jumpies.