Iron Heroes threaten my GM style of low magic items...

[Varianor Abroad]

Why on earth is giving orcs levels and toys cheating? There is an entire section on advancing monsters in the Monster Manual. Certain monsters advance "by level" which means they get NPC treasure and gear, and class abilities from their levels.

Molonel, good points!

Where have you been?

 

[Voadam]

Von Ether,

D&D can run fine with different wealth levels. It is designed and balanced with the default wealth and there is some discrepancy in spellcaster vs. nonspellcaster power without magic items, but not anything that can't be adapted to.

IH is designed to provide characters with the same power level in character abilities as D&D characters have with magic items for their levels. However there is nothing wrong as a DM with wanting a different level power measure than the default D&D one or with being comfortable as a DM with the D&D class abilities and options as opposed to the IH stunts and talents.

I don't own IH but from the descriptions it seems to give characters more story control in combat, more like Feng Shui and less like the DM-Player scene control balance provided by D&D.

Sticking to what you are comfortable with and have fun with is a valid DM choice.

 

[ruleslawyer]

That's fairly close to the reason that I am ambivalent towards IH. I never bought into this "MUST... HAVE... LESS... MAGIC... ITEMS" sensibility that some seem to have. As it is, 3.xe puts a lot of power in the players' hands. I see magic items as my tool to introduce capabilities to the party that I want them to have to face challenges I have in store. Taking the power alotted to players via magic items and putting it all in there court seems as if it makes the game all the more chaotic and managing PCs all the more like herding nuclear powered cats.

I'm with CCamfield here, Psion. I don't actually think that the philosophy IH is about ENFORCING a policy of no magic items; far from it. I'd say (based on my limited experience running three sessions of a D&D/IH/AE hybrid game) that it simply frees DMs from the need to adhere to the wealth-by-level guidelines when handing out magic items, and more specifically obviates the need for all those boring +x items that are a necessary part of games that depend upon core rules assumptions. You can still give out magic items to award a particular capability to the PCs, and in fact, the qualitative capabilities of those items, rather than the purely quantitative +1 vs. +2, etc. become all the more important in an IH game, especially given that 1) IH characters have no ability to attack large numbers of foes from a distance, fly, teleport, go invisible, bypass x/magic DR, etc etc; and 2) unlike in a standard D&D game, PCs can't simply manufacture the desired items out of hand. You can run a RARE magic, rather than NO magic, game with IH rather more easily than you can do so with core D&D rules, which is really what I think the point of the game is.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I'll point out that Mastering Iron Heroes does have rules for magical items . It also has drawbacks for magical items. So, a magical sword, for example, might have a history of its owners dying horribly. The mechanical effects of that might be that enemies get a +10 bonus to their crit confirmation rolls. Definately an interesting take on magical items being both special and dangerous.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Oh, and just in case you might think my point was to come to out-and-out disagreement:

I am a *big* fan of putting magic in the game when and where I want, in order to provide the PCs with particular capabilities or pursue particular story points. However, I think that this process is hindered, rather than aided, by the wealth-by-level MI guidelines and by standardization of item production and purchase through item creation feats and absolute market value figures. Thus, I find it liberating to tweak those figures. IH makes this easier by providing baseline characters who don't NEED a particular amount of wealth to handle standard D&D encounters. That doesn't mean they CAN'T use magic items, just that they don't need to adhere to the standard wealth-by-level guidelines / PCs-of-x-level-should-have-y-worth-of-item-bonuses components of the D&D core ruleset. To be honest, I find THOSE far more restrictive than the IH rules. Now, if your problem is that IH allows the PCs too much freedom to customize their characters, I don't really see that so much. IH PCs aren't uncontrollably customizable in the same way that, say, D&D wizards are. I find that it's much easier to gauge the abilities and progress of my current group than it was my last (core D&D with some AE components) group.

To the original poster: It sounds like your problem is more with power levels than with low or high magic, in which case IH is definitely not your cup of tea. May I suggest Grim Tales, or just resetting to lower-level PCs?

 

[Aus_Snow]

I can tell you what is running through your players mind when they get a magical item. "About damn time" as opposed to "Yes!".

If they are 11-year-old powergamers, then that might be more of a 'given'. Otherwise, how on Earth can you assume something like this?

 

[Terwox]

I've played in a game where we were 18th level in a party of six and we each had an item that wasn't worth much, like a +2 weapon and normal armor. Really didn't like it.

The game doesn't remotely balance at this point -- you can't take a party of 4 9th level people and just chuck them against a CR 9 monster out of a MM if your wealth levels are non-standard. That might seem like it isn't a problem, but it's a ton of more work on the GM's part to make battles that are challenging but non-lethal.

I can say that I get significantly frustrated with low magic campaigns in D&D simply because most people fail to take into account the vast amount of things that get altered when at whatever level you have less than 1/25th of the item value you're supposed to have. It hurts the fun for me personally.

Von Ether, if having wealth off doesn't hurt the fun for you, that's totally cool -- just make sure it's not hurting the fun for your players. You might also consider a one shot that just goes with the rules as written, whatever ECL characters, with normal amounts of cash, against typical CR beasties... it's a load of fun, and you don't have to do NEARLY as much guesswork and head pounding as you do when the CR doesn't mean anything because the wealth system is off.

Good luck either way, though!

 

[tetsujin28]

If they are 11-year-old powergamers, then that might be more of a 'given'. Otherwise, how on Earth can you assume something like this?

Because you get sick and tired of getting your butt handed to you after every combat, even facing things below your CR. If you don't give out the recommended amount of magic items, D&D breaks down. It's that simple. That's the whole reason IH was invented.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Because you get sick and tired of getting your butt handed to you after every combat, even facing things below your CR. If you don't give out the recommended amount of magic items, D&D breaks down. It's that simple. That's the whole reason IH was invented.

Sure, IH is one way of addressing that issue. There are others, though. It's really up to the GM and players to figure out what they like, what works best and so on. That might be IH, it might be Arcana Evolved, Grim Tales or house rules a-go-go. Or something else again.

 

[Hussar]

IMO, using 3.X D&D to run a low magic (items or magic itself) campaign is like driving a screw with a hammer. It can be done but it's much easier with a screw driver. IH is one of those screw drivers. There are others aout there. If you dislike IH, there's other opitions out there. 3E is just a poor choice IMO.

Quoted for truth.

Yes, you can play d20 with low magic. However, to play 3.5 DnD with low magic items requires so many tweaks/changes/house rules etc, that it's not really the same game anymore. If you have to alter the abilities of nearly every class, rearrange the expectations of difficulty for every encounter, and redo many other facets of the game, then, well, is it really DnD anymore or is it your own game based on DnD.

The rules for DnD assume a certain baseline of equipment for a given level of character. No one will argue that. If you want to change that assumption, you have to change many of the rules. That's fine, you can do that. But, what I find very surprising is that people complain that you have to do lots of work in order to do it. No kidding. Really? When you change the base assumption underpinning most of the game, you have to do a lot of work? Da heck you say!?!

There are other systems which are based on a lower equipment/wealth assumption than DnD. They are still d20 systems and are close enough to DnD that you don't need to reinvent the wheel to play them. My advice to anyone who wants to change base assumptions in a game - buy a different game. Don't complain that your hammer won't drive screws. ((Thanks for that image.))

I wonder if the White Wolf boards see people complaining that they can't run a science fiction Vampire game or the Paladium boards see complaints that Rifts is too hard to use to run a low magic game. It astounds me that people complain that DnD won't do certain things when the assumptions of DND are hardly a secret.