Iron Heroes...what's your opinion?

[mhacdebhandia]

I really like Iron Heroes. Mike has been very upfront about the problems with the magic system and the editing, but Malhavoc rushed the errata out as soon as possible, which was very responsible of them. As for the magic system, it's not impossible to fix. I would probably prefer to run a game of Iron Heroes without arcanists in the party anyway . . .

Iron Heroes can't do everything, and it's not low-powered or grim-n-gritty or any of that. It's a straight-up D&D-level action-oriented heroic fantasy game, and it's damn good at it.

(It also has surprisingly useful social mechanics.)

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I like it a lot. I might say that I love it.

In my limited experience with it, thus far, combat has, in fact, sped up.

Mind you this is clocking the number of combats in a session not the length of individual combats, but I am confident in saying that combat is now a much more effecient aspect of my game than it has been in the past.

Potential factors for why this is so:

- Recovery time from an individual combat is much faster and does not take place within combat.
- Skills are more potent, useful, and spread throughout the party. This means that everyone is useful throughout an individual encounter and thus everyone tends to help out at every aspect and things go faster.
- Stunts make it much easier to deal with rules questions and unusual situations.
- The characters are just more robust and players feel much more confident about using them. It should be noted that things are just as deadly for players resource-wise, they just take less time deciding how to spend those resources.
- The token system together with its request pausing is probably saving us time. A player who drops out of the action for a round and then comes back with a very effective attack is a very effecient user of playing time. In many ways it's sort of institutionalized the player pause, I no longer have to wait for someone to decide since gathering tokens is always a good default decision.

It should be noted that thus far I have run normal DnD characters against IH characters.

In terms of Glassjaw's critique. I find the IH version of Conan to be slightly better than the one in the Conan OGL, though they emphasize different aspects of the character and get different things right, and I think the IH version of something like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser is very very close to the mark. I think Glassjaw is likely bringing a different set of experiences with prior gaming systems and their justifications to the table than I am and as such IH is competing against a different crowd for me. Figuring out why we differ would take a goodly long discussion and a good amount of free benevolence. Some of his critiques I would likely agree with but not consider a high priority. Others I would likely not agree with but probably only out of different goals or measuring parameters for an RPG system.

The reserve system, for instance, strikes me as far more elegant than a VP/WP system. I recognize, as I assume Glassjaw does, that it provides one solution to a number of different questions implied by the hit point system in game play where VP/WP provides a number of solutions to a couple of distinct questions. For me going from many to one is a benefit as it reduces the scope of the debate, for others I'm certain it seems like a dodge since some of those questions could have used individual answers.

I have not yet messed with magic. I like the Arcanist class, but I pretty much always intended to convert it into an AE class or XPH class for their magic systems and then bring it back into the game. Noone in my game is playing a magic-user thus far.

My players love it. It's been very inspiring to me. That's what I got.

Large portions of it will be freely portable others less so. Still not certain what the specific logic for deciding on feat masteries for classes converting to IH would be.

 

[Gold Roger]

I like it a lot. I haven't actually played it, but I've run through a cupple of test fights, to get familiar with the system and to see how good it really is.
Combats are reasonably fast, defenitely not slower than 3.5 once you know the rules. The Mastery system and classes are genious as is the skill use. Token are great, though sometimes not necesarry. I scraped the magic system and still have some problems with the stunt system. Traits are a great thing as well, though I think of those presented as examples. I advice on creating your own traits and just pic up those from the book you like/find appropiate for your campaign. They are a great tool for world-building.
Iron heroes isn't perfect, but it's a great system and a deffinite alternative to 3.5. Most of the content should be easy to export to other systems, expect for the classes, those should be left where they are.

 

[GlassJaw]

I think Glassjaw is likely bringing a different set of experiences with prior gaming systems and their justifications to the table than I am and as such IH is competing against a different crowd for me.

As soon as IH was announced, the comparisons began. When I read through it, I tried to be as unbiased as possible. I wanted to read through the book for what it was, not what I wanted it to be or what it wasn't. While my comments in my post reflect my overall view (and obviously I made comparisons to other products), I didn't start out not liking IH.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, I was disappointed, plain and simple. Disappointed doesn't mean I completely hated it - there's a lot of cool stuff in there - but on the whole, I felt it lacking.

Again, IH pats itself on the back multiple times throughout the book for being action-packed and fast-paced yet many of the classes are required to spend actions doing nothing to gain tokens. That's poor design IMO. IH points out that instant-death spells are much more deadly in IH. Yeah, duh. The solution? Reduce the number of times per day the creature can use its ability. How is that a solution? Why doesn't the author merely tell the user not to use those creatures? Again, I feel IH doesn't know what it wants to be.

I find the IH version of Conan to be slightly better than the one in the Conan OGL

Well I'm not sure if you've actually read any Conan stuff but I couldn't disagree more. If you took Conan and IH and printed out the mechanics only and removed all references to setting or publisher, Conan's ruleset immediately answers up the "why" and "how" the mechanics are what they are. If a set of mechanics can intuitively evoke the mood and feel of a genre or setting, it gets my praise. Conan does this. If you just had the mechanics from the Conan book and nothing else, you know what the style of play is.

I didn't get that feeling when reading IH.

Is it trying to be normal D&D? Is it a gritty setting like Conan? It is like Errol Flynn/Robin Hood?

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I agree with Glassjaw.

I was very much looking forward to this book. When I saw it in my FLGS, I bought immediately.

Now, I'm lukewarm, for very much the reasons Glassjaw mentions.
Haven't finished with all the skills yet, but I think that the treatment of Diplomacy, where if you haggle with a merchant, you keep on rolling and rolling until someone tires out, really isn't fastpaced action... YMMV.

I have a feeling that I will snatch some of the rules, and then sell the book. I also sold off my copy of AU. Do I see a pattern :\

 

[JimAde]

For those who like IH, but not the magic system: Could you reasonably use regular D&D spellcasters in an IH game? Or do you think it would mesh well with Elements of Magic (Revised)? That sounds like a good combination but I haven't seen IH yet so it's hard to say.

 

[GlassJaw]

For those who like IH, but not the magic system: Could you reasonably use regular D&D spellcasters in an IH game? Or do you think it would mesh well with Elements of Magic (Revised)? That sounds like a good combination but I haven't seen IH yet so it's hard to say.

I honestly don't know why IH didn't just use the sorcerer and alter the stats to be in line with the IH mechanics.

 

[Denaes]

asdf

I purchased the PDF for IH last week as well as Spycraft 2.0.

I've only skimmed the IH PDF and noted that the art/layout utterly turn me off.

Spycraft 2.0 has captured my attention and is a really deep read, so I'm stuck on that right now.

I really hope I at least get some milage from the Skill section and using skills for stunts. Those are what intrigued me the most out of the book.

 

[Khairn]

For those who like IH, but not the magic system: Could you reasonably use regular D&D spellcasters in an IH game? Or do you think it would mesh well with Elements of Magic (Revised)? That sounds like a good combination but I haven't seen IH yet so it's hard to say.

IH just like original AU is presented with only a skeletal setting. This does IH a diservice IMHO as it doesn't provide the hooks to really draw in the readers. The book is full of crunch, and unless you can visualize it in your head as you're reading it, its hard to get excited about "just rules".

That being said I really do like what IH has done with the skills, tokens and combat.

Regarding the magic system, I was not too "enthralled" with what was presented (much like everyone else) but I've been pulling together some idea's about using EoM, and I'm begining to get really stoked about the possibilities.

 

[Stormborn]

I think that the combat system and most of the classes, as well as the skills and stunts and manuvers, are over all the thing that my group has wanted. It will def require some sample combats to work it out, but I think they will like it. They are always wanting to do things "like in that movie" or "that book" and I think the system has a better chance of doing that than standard d20.

I, like others, don't care for the magic system. And would replace it with something else escept that I honestly don't expect any of my players to want to be a spellcaster in this system. Instead I will likely just use standard d20 NPC spellcasters as villains, replacing their magic items with tattoos, grafts, or demonic boons or something.

If I did have a player who wanted to play a caster I would likely take the Arcanist class and adapt the spell mechanics using a homebrew, Black Company, Conan, or something else that fits the style of the campaign.


I too am not really please with the setting as given. I feel like mechanics and setting have to drive one another, and that obviously isn't the case here - although the "Swordlands" do seem to fit there isn't enough of it to be sure. But, I have never ran a published campaign setting, so for me that isn't as big an issue. But having a model would be nice.