JohnSnow
Hero
JPL said:
Well, opinions vary as to whether this is really "Chinese sword Opera" (Wuxia) or whether it's more like "high-octane adventure." PirateCat's group was playtesting it and he identified the tone as Conan-esque, not in the "Grim'n'Gritty" sense, but in the"Heroic Asskicking" sense.
Yair said:
A LOT of generic D&D's complexity comes from its magic system. A lot of the issue of statting up high-level NPCs comes from not knowing what feats to pick and having trouble allocating skill points. Attempts to remove those elements usually result in a less fun game for players, since they have fewer options in combat. Finally, generic D&D is balanced on the notion of the "Core 4" party. Iron Heroes addresses all of these as follows:
1.) Characters are not assumed to have ANY magic items. They can tackle CR appropriate encounters without them. They get class abilities that do more, and some feats that provide better bonuses, but are only available at higher levels.
2.) Feat mastery levels (which go up to 10) replace prerequisites. Each class masters certain "categories" of feats which are appropriate to its flavor. Many old feats have been built into trees with many expanded versions. For example, there are 10 levels of Power Attack that do different things. A higher mastery feat requires only the base feat and the appropriate mastery level, so you can take Power Attack 1, 4, and 6 (if you have Mastery 6 in Power Weapons). In most cases, choosing a high-level character's feats is a simple matter of picking a mastery feat at his highest mastery level and then filling in the lower ones.
3.) Since characters no longer get special abilities from magic items, they get more class abilies to play with instead. And rather than being balanced by X uses per day, character special abilities are triggered by spending tokens, which classes gather by acting like the class in question (archers aim, berzerkers get hit or get mad, etc.). Some feats provide token-based abilities as well. The effect of this is that Iron Heroes tends to be balanced per encounter, rather than balanced for X encounters/day adventuring.
4.) Class abilities are level specific, so a 14th level archer gets to pick about 7 appropriate archer talents (5 "lesser" and 2 "lesser or greater") from a list of about 14 (7 lesser, 7 greater). Making these choices should be much faster than buying 140,000 gp worth of magical items.
5.) Skills are bought either in groups (2-5 skills for the price of one) or individually. Each class gets access to certain class-appropriate skill groups (usually 1-5 less than they have skill points), but no cross class skills exist. So all skills have a max rank of level +3. So characters have more skills available, and even their "secondary skills" can be useful to them.
6.) AoOs are simplified. Any action which is not defined as an "attack" provokes an AoO.
7.) Many defensive capabilities go up without player effort. Classes get Defense Bonuses. Saving Throws increase. As an aside, armor provides variable DR rather than boosting defense.
8.) Bonus types are streamlined. AC for instance, appears to have only 3 bonus types - Passive, Active, and Dodge. (As an aside, from what we've been shown, Class Defense and Dex are both "Active" and would therefore be lost when you're flat-footed.)
8.) No vital resource is "exclusive" to a particular class, so no class is "required." Spellcasting appears to be restricted to the arcanist class, but isn't "necessary."
9.) Classes can pull off "stunts" to gain benefits in combat. A stunt can be based on any skill, and the basic mechanics for stunts are the same regardless of the skill used.
10.) Mechanics for putting things in that have long been in the game without mechanics, like areas where hazards exist, such as collapsing bridges, unstable footing and the like. (This is actually zones which will be in the later release, Mastering Iron Heroes, and not the book that comes out next week).
The only complexity Iron Heroes really adds is the token-based class abilities, which, while complicated, seem like they'll be less difficult for DMs to handle than spells & magic items. We haven't seen much of the Iron Heroes magic system (there is a spellcaster class) other than some intriguing hints in the previews. So we'll see what they actually did with it.
Obviously, though, if you don't like meaningful mechanical options in play and prefer your game to be more "narrative," this isn't the game for you.
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