Iron Heroes

[Starfox]

Quoted from a different thread:

They're not that great at being narrative, either, though. There's no rising action. There's no building threat. You can go nova on your first swing out the door, which isn't narratively satisfying, either. If they were narrative, I'd expect an Iron Heroes style "build up your strength" mechanic.

Iron Heroes sounds interesting: someone care to elaborate?

 

[Tuft]

Quoted from a different thread:

Iron Heroes sounds interesting: someone care to elaborate?

The wikipedia article seems fairly extensive:
Iron Heroes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Particle_Man]

A lot of the Iron Heroes classes use various "token" mechanics. Usually the class does something to "build up" the tokens during combat, and then spends the tokens to do something awesome. Sometimes other things build up tokens.

So archers can build up tokens by aiming for a while. Berserkers can build up tokens stoking their rage (although if a buddy goes down that gives them tokens too). The hunter is everyone's best friend because he can give other people tokens.

There are a few classes that don't use tokens, and there are a few few chains that have their own separate token mechanics.

I would recommend giving this game a look. It is a little rough around the edges, but there is a lot of RAWR factor in the game.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Iron Heroes sounds interesting: someone care to elaborate?

It was a low/no-magic, high-action, high fantasy variant of 3.5 gaming (created by Mike Mearls pre-WotC). The PC classes were entirely non-magical (except for the optional caster class, and the other caster that came in a later splat-book). Despite the lack of spells, magic items, or fancy equipment, the design was intended for PCs to face exactly the same challenges as their D&D 3.5 SRD counterparts. Mostly the design worked. Wiki entry

One of the features was a "token system" where a character would build up tokens during an encounter, and spend some or all of them to activate certain (powerful) abilities.
Example abilities include, extended rage for the Berserker class, extra dice of sneak attack for the Executioner class, ignoring / increasing / creating terrain bonuses for the Hunter class, increasing damage reduction for the armor-focused Armiger class.
Feats could also provide token-abilities.

The game still exists, and is going into a second edition, bought out by the current owner, Adam Windsor. You can still pick up the original as a .pdf (regular or revised) or try to get it printed through lulu, and maybe the second edition when it finally comes out. You can also check out the forums, which still have sporadic activity.

 

[Voadam]

A lot of mechanical resource management. They dumped this resource management on the PCs though and made separate classes for NPCs and used fairly standard 3e style monsters for their monster book.

Still too mechanically fiddly for my tastes as a player.

 

[Verdande]

I really liked it, although I've never gotten to try it out. While the token building mechanic does feel fiddly, it also means that players have to earn their powers through fighting and "charging up" in order to get their powers.

In essence, it rewards you for "roleplaying" you class during combat, instead of in between combat. It's a pretty cool idea, with fairly good execution.

Also, the magic class is entirely optional, and one of the coolest magical classes I've seen in any game. I recommend checking it out, if you're even the least bit interested.

 

[MerricB]

I've played it, and "underdeveloped" comes to mind. There were hideous problems of balance between the classes, with some classes really not having a reason to exist because another class did their job better!

"Fiddly" also comes to mind.

There were lots of good concepts in Iron Heroes, but the game needed a big overhaul; the basics just didn't mesh together.

Cheers!

 

[jedavis]

IH was good fun, but yeah, some of the classes had issues (poor armiger... you were so cool, but just couldn't hack it). Their armor as DR implementation had fundamental scaling flaws (damage output simply outstripped armor DR as level increased, making it an ineffective means of defense). However, tokens were a ton of fun, and berserker was just a beautiful class. Glory Points (from Mastering IH) were also about the only action point implementation my group's been able to stomach.

 

[Starfox]

Mike Meals as a designer does not sound all that encouraging. And "fiddly" is not my thing. Still the basic premise sounds interesting.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Mike Meals as a designer does not sound all that encouraging. And "fiddly" is not my thing. Still the basic premise sounds interesting.

IH was underdeveloped and had some holes, but was relatively well-done and had numerous excellent ideas, even if the execution was somewhat lacking.

I remember having high hopes for 4e when I heard that Mearls was at the helm...