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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ValhallaGH" data-source="post: 3286384" data-attributes="member: 41187">Stylistically, I've seen very little difference between IH and Connan.  Both encourage characters to be movers and shakers in the world, both place a major emphasis on what characters actually do, and both let you kick the crap out of evil, at any level, with a whole lot of style.1) Both rule sets have one or more PC caster classes.  These can be banned, for players, without a problem.For NPC casters, I prefer IH as not only does it encourage you to use whatever you want (such as standard D&D casters) but the Dreaded Sorcerer villain class (see Mastering Iron Heroes) is quite possibly the best evil magician of all time.Connan villainous casters, as far as I've seen, have all been based upon the PC casting class.I'd give the edge to IH here (unless you want to eventually include PC casters, then it goes to Connan).2) The Connan world has a lot of detail and flesh, as it's all based upon the primordial world created by Robert Howard.  Iron Heroes has the Swordlands, a vague and loosely defined world in which humans were made by powerful magical beings called The Masters and now live in the recovering waste of what's left after the masters' magical civil war; since the swordlands has practically no definition, it would be extremely easy to adapt it to your purposes.Both systems can be adapted to other settings, though the races, skills, weapons, etc of Connan have a great deal of the setting's flavor built into them.IH's undefined sample setting easily meets this criteria better, so point two goes to it.3)  I've found IH combat to be more fun, but that's entirely subjective.IH introduces several new mechanics (stunts, challenges, token pools) that really let the PCs do some amazing things.  Unfortunately, new mechanics mean new learning, so until people become comfortable with their characters and their options, combats actually take a little longer though they are usually more colorful and just as brutal.  Once everyone has learned how their characters work, everything flows as fast and powerfully as the players allow (we've all played with that one guy that takes ten minutes to say 'five-foot step and full attack'  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /> ).Connan combats tend to be fast and brutal but they are fairly simple as there are few options beyond those found in D&D.  Simple quickly becomes boring.I'm glossing over some things because I don't want to give you the blow by blow comparison and explanation; I don't want to spend that much time on this (sorry :\ ).  Hopefully someone else will give you an in depth analysis, but I stand by my summary.I'll tentatively give this point to IH.So, on the three criteria presented, I find IH to come out ahead across the board.  Though you really can't go wrong with either system.</blockquote>

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