CaptainChaos
First Post
WyzardWhately said:
Mike is not one of the designers. He's a developer. That's not the same thing.
D&D 4E Iron Heroes for 4e?
- Thread starter DeathMutant
- Start date
Mike is not one of the designers. He's a developer. That's not the same thing.
Well, I'm in an Iron Heroes campaign that is slowly dying as more and more warts are uncovered.
On the one hand, IH wants you to do wild stunts--swinging from chandeliers and jumping on top of barrels and whatnot; on the other hand, it not only retains full-round attack actions, but thanks to certain feat chains and class abilities, allows for even more attacks than D&D. There's no tactical advantage that I can get from swinging from a chandelier that is going to match what I can get by standing still and making six or seven attacks in a round.
On the one hand, IH wants you to use various token pools as a kind of tactical mini-game, which is a wonderful idea in the abstract; on the other, token pools in practice tend to require so much effort to build up that by the time you're ready to spend them, it's too late. There's a real lousy economy at work, where characters have to trade off actions in order to generate tokens for future use, then they have to bank those tokens on an attack roll that might miss outright. Most of the sub-10th-level token abilities really stink too. I mean really, I've played a weaponmaster and executioner, and I openly regard their token abilities as trash.
That's just the tip of the turdberg. IH is a great rough draft for an RPG, but it badly needs a new edition, and that's without regard to 4e.
On the one hand, IH wants you to do wild stunts--swinging from chandeliers and jumping on top of barrels and whatnot; on the other hand, it not only retains full-round attack actions, but thanks to certain feat chains and class abilities, allows for even more attacks than D&D. There's no tactical advantage that I can get from swinging from a chandelier that is going to match what I can get by standing still and making six or seven attacks in a round.
On the one hand, IH wants you to use various token pools as a kind of tactical mini-game, which is a wonderful idea in the abstract; on the other, token pools in practice tend to require so much effort to build up that by the time you're ready to spend them, it's too late. There's a real lousy economy at work, where characters have to trade off actions in order to generate tokens for future use, then they have to bank those tokens on an attack roll that might miss outright. Most of the sub-10th-level token abilities really stink too. I mean really, I've played a weaponmaster and executioner, and I openly regard their token abilities as trash.
That's just the tip of the turdberg. IH is a great rough draft for an RPG, but it badly needs a new edition, and that's without regard to 4e.
Irda Ranger
First Post
Just in case you haven't seen it yet, you should check out some IH hacks that EN World post hong put together: http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/ih/Felon said:
We use his Executioner in my game, and it's really good. The other classes are much improved as well.
I generally agree though that IH is a great rough draft of a game. It's required extensive house ruling by my GM to help it live up to its potential.
ruleslawyer
Registered User
And in fact, I will probably lift the best parts of 4e to graft onto the IH game we currently run, because a) I don't want to start a new campaign yet and b) I quite like how the classes, token pools, and skills work once you apply hong's tweaks and my own.
Betote
First Post
Pbartender said:
And how's that different than the way it is in 3.x?
Because what you're saying is "the 4E rules are designed to play without magic items because you can houserule it that way".
If you need to create a house rule to achieve anything, no matter how easy that house rule is to implement, you are not playing by the book and, therefore, you can't say that your house rule is the way the rules are written.
I can't say, for example, that 4E will have Euclidiean geometry based on my decision to keep the 1-2-1-2 when I play it.
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Pbartender
First Post
Betote said:
No... What I'm saying is that in 4E, the challenge level of encounters take into account an assumed bonus to attack, damage, saves and AC, which is calculated according to a formula derived by the game designers and is provided in the standard game by three basic magic items, but could practically be provided for by any other method you could possibly imagine -- heroic skill, adventurous virtue, luck, grace of the gods, guardian spirits, whatever. Changing the vehicle for those bonuses is a house rule, yes, but it's purely a "fluffy" stylistic houserule that has no impact on the mechanics of the game whatsoever. By this means, you eliminate the "dependence" on carrying magic items, since secondary magic items are factored into the challenge level of enounters and can therefore be left out entirely.
3rd Edition, on the other hand, assumed a particular monetary value of magic at each level without regard for what type of magic items were being used. There was simply no way to divorce magic items from challenge level calculations.
4th Edition makes it easy... Just ignore secondary magic items, and change the source of the bonus that normally comes from primary magic items. It's trivial.
4E may not be specifically designed to play without magic items, but the designers seem to be making it excessively easy to make that adjustment.
At any rate the point to my earlier response had nothing to do with houseruling, but the fact that there is a difference to requiring magic items (3E), and requiring a bonus to certain stats (4E)... In the standard rules, the required bonus is normally granted by magic items, but it doesn't have to be. So long as the assumed bonus still exists, magic items can be eliminated.
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Betote
First Post
A 3.5 level 7 fighter is assumed to have a +1 full plate, heavy steel shield, masterwork melee and distance weapons and 2.300gp in cash or assorted secondary items (or, at least, my DMG says so). So, if I wanted to get rid of magic items on my 3.5 games, I should make the oh so big effort of adding +1 to the level 7 fighter's AC and BAB.
See? 3.X is obviously designed to be played (or easily, fluffily houseruled) without magic items of any kind
As i've already stated, the same can be said about 3.x. With the exception that, in the 3.x case, I can prove just pointing to a page on the DMG. In the 4E case, it's just smoke and mirrors and a Mike Mearls' post.
I think you should re-read your DMG. It is quite clear on which magic items and which bonuses does a character of a specific class/level should have.
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ruleslawyer
Registered User
So without magic, how does the 15th-level fighter reach his flying enemies, or defend against Will-save-or-die attacks, or.... never mind.
Your post is extraordinarily counterfactual in light of the hurdles through which people who actually *run* low- or no-magic D&D games have been forced to jump. Mike Mearls talks about how difficult in was to strip magic items out of D&D in order to write IH, and given the 288-page rulebook that he's written on precisely this issue, I trust his take more than I do your bald assertions.
Your post is extraordinarily counterfactual in light of the hurdles through which people who actually *run* low- or no-magic D&D games have been forced to jump. Mike Mearls talks about how difficult in was to strip magic items out of D&D in order to write IH, and given the 288-page rulebook that he's written on precisely this issue, I trust his take more than I do your bald assertions.
ZombieRoboNinja
First Post
Dausuul said:
Just because it's a half-hour job to IH-ify 4e doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to see a short splatbook that spells it out. Maybe with some added martial classes/feats/abilities to broaden the range of martial characters...
Hmm. Actually, isn't WOTC coming out with a martial splatbook soon? Maybe that will have some rules on demystifying 4e.
Betote
First Post
ruleslawyer said:
The DMG says he does it with his +1 ranged weapon. How will the 4E 15th-level fighter do it? Because the ability to fly is not a "plain numeric bonus easily houseruled".
And Mike Mearls' IH is also extraordinarily counterfactual in light of the easiness of my low-magic D&D games, achieved just by saying "no magic item shops" and giving two ability bonuses instead of just one at levels 4-8-12-16-20. I trust my experience more than I do his bald 288-page rulebooks
