Iron Heroes: Man-at-Arms option tweak

[malladin]

Hi folks,

I've just started sorting out an Iron Heroes game. I've done some pre-gen characters and I'm pretty happy with how its working out so far, apart from a social character I fancied doing. Initially I thought the thief would be the obvious choice for a social style character, but on looking at the class there's a number of things I don't think particularly fit with what I was trying to achieve, so I made the character using the Man-at-Arms class instead, which worked out much better. My only problem is that he's just a bit too tough and doesn't quite have enough skill points for what I was wanting, so I got to thinking about a minor tweak to the class to make it even more versatile and enable me to get the extra skills I needed.

The end result was an extra feature at first level:

Focus: At first level the Man-at-Arms chooses a focus for his character which alters some of his class features. The Man-at-Arms must choose to be one of the following: Brute, Combat Adept, Skilled or Warrior.
Brute: The brute gains an additional +2hp per level, but their defense progression is moved down one step.
Combat Adept: Combat adepts gain an extra 2 skill points per level and can choose an additional skill group, but suffer a -2hp per level penalty.
Skilled: Skilled Men-at-Arms gain an additional 4 skill points per level and can choose 2 extra skill groups, but suffer a -2hp per level penalty and have their attack progression reduced one step.
Warrior: No change on the standard Man-at-Arms package.

Any thoughts?

 

[Ry]

Uh... well, I'm thinking of running a campaign with just masters at arms and warlocks. So, umm... yoink?

 

[Ry]

I'm assuming Warrior just means no change, right?

2hps / level is a pretty big penalty - reducing the attack modifier is not something that I'd be jumping up and down to do if it can be avoided. I would go: Sacrifice 2 hps / level, get to choose 6 skill groups instead of 3, no extra skill points.

 

[malladin]

I'm assuming Warrior just means no change, right?

Oops... Yes. I've updated above.

2hps / level is a pretty big penalty - reducing the attack modifier is not something that I'd be jumping up and down to do if it can be avoided. I would go: Sacrifice 2 hps / level, get to choose 6 skill groups instead of 3, no extra skill points.

I see access to 6 skill groups of your choice as being majorly powerful. My aim here is to make the varient Men-at-Arms classes feel more like the other classes in IH. The trend in IH seems to be to have access to more skill points without too many more skill groups. Also, the balance of skill points, hp, and attack and defence progession seems to be fairly balanced between the different classes. Skill groups seems to be more of a flavour issue. Plus reducing the skill groups means more customisation of the class to the specific needs of the concept rather than just making them a powerful skills class.

The character I made was a spy, quite James Bond in style but fantasy-ized. I used the combat adept option and took social, robbery, perception and academics skill groups. I suppose athletics and stealth might also have been nice, but I like how this focuses the character and defines a very james bond style of spy rather than a more typical fantasy style rogue-base spy character.

Ben

 

[ruleslawyer]

I think this is a brilliant idea! Want an S&S campaign? You've got the swordsman and the sorcerer. Done!

I think those tweaks would work quite well. If you want to get *really* fancy, think about adding in a rage ability version (the "berserk" MaA) and a finesse version (the "duelist" or "stealth" MaA). Berserk loses defense progression AND skills, but gains hp and a progressively good rage ability. Finesse loses hp and armor proficiency, but gains sneak attack.

Although this may carry you a little too close to IH as written. Your call.