Iron Lore ... can't wait ... Any playtesters here?

[Ashanderai]

Regarding how to fight incorporeal creatures: I will bet that it has something to do with the skill stunts that were mentioned. I have worked up a class that defeats incorporeal creatures and possessing entities using skills and class abilities, sometimes without even resorting to combat. I am sure that Mike Mearls has done something along a similar vein, but made it something that all IL characters can handle doing.

Regarding the combining of IL character classes and other character classes in the same campaign: I would justify the difference in these classes as coming down to DNA, like a mystical or nonmystical bloodline or heretage of somesort. PCs with the standard classes will be descendents of an ancient bloodline that only occasionally crops up in the population of the setting. This bloodline allows them to use magic items and maybe even cast spells; however, an individuals "strength" in this bloodline varies considerably from individual to individual. One might be able to use magic items, but never cast spells, one might allow them to do both; that would be your standard classes.

Your IL classes (those without this bloodline) couldn't use magic items like those with the bloodline (and thus not having a standard class). The bloodline might be erratic and skip several generations at a time. It's origins could lie in the events of an ancient, magical cataclysm (causing the current era of the campaign to be less magical, but allowing for the discovery of magical weapons in ancient ruins) or be due to characters with the bloodline to be the descendents of an ancient deity that came to the mortal realm to have fun or generally slum it with mortals (Son of Zeus anyone?).

As to the multiclassing of these disparate classes I would say that comes back to the "strength of the bloodline and perhaps even the ability to learn how to harness that bloodlines abilities over time (kind of like in Wheel of Time with those who can channel). An IL character who takes levels in a standard class is simply learning to access that bloodline at the expense of some other abilities. An arcanist is simply somone without the bloodline (or hasn't learned to tap it's abilities yet) who is learning to force magic to his will in a less finessable (sp?) way than someone who has learned to use his bloodline abilities with spellcasting (and has levels in a standard spellcasting class).

The use of magic weapons/items for a mutliclass character would be ruled by the limits recommended above. No one may use a magic weapon/item with a GP value of more than what is recommended for the total number of standard class levels in the DMG. This also represents the relative "strength" of one's bloodline; or at least the amount of the bloodline the character was able to tap into.

 

[Particle_Man]

So long as the bloodline issue is what makes it impossible to "buff" IL characters with non-IL magic (or reduces the power (effective caster level) of such "buffs" on multi-class characters to the lower of the caster level of the caster of the buff, or the total class levels of non-IL classes of the "buffee" (this should also affect the spell levels that can buff the buffee: treat the "buffee's" non-IL levels as an equivalent to wizard levels for the purpose of what spell levels can effect the buffee (a 5th level IL/5th level non-IL character could be buffed by 3rd level spells, but not 4th or higher, and the caster level of the buff spell would be treated as if 5th level or that of the caster, whichever is lower )).

Otherwise an IL character could munchkin out with a non-IL cohort to buff him up all the time.

 

[Ashanderai]

Certainly. I had forgotten to include that, but I would only allow a character with IL levels to be "buffed" by imposing a penalty equal to his total IL class levels to the effective caster level of the character casting the buffing spell. So, if the caster were a 7th level wizard buffing a 6th level weapons master, the effective caster level would be 1. If they were both the same level, then the effective caster level would be 0. Since most players are going to be of about the same level I bet this would make buffing much less of an issue than it looks on the surface.

I am sure there are still ways to "buff" in IL, but I bet they are extremely dangerous from what I hear about the arcanist.

 

[Particle_Man]

Hmmm...maybe I should revise and have the Real Roleplayer be the "sneaky thief-type" (forgot the name of the class), the loonie be the "arcanist" (who tries magic ALL THE TIME!) , and the Real Man be every other IL class.

Edit: for the record, the "sneaky thief type" is called the thief. Whodathunkit?

 

[Particle_Man]

Certainly. I had forgotten to include that, but I would only allow a character with IL levels to be "buffed" by imposing a penalty equal to his total IL class levels to the effective caster level of the character casting the buffing spell. So, if the caster were a 7th level wizard buffing a 6th level weapons master, the effective caster level would be 1. If they were both the same level, then the effective caster level would be 0. Since most players are going to be of about the same level I bet this would make buffing much less of an issue than it looks on the surface.

I am sure there are still ways to "buff" in IL, but I bet they are extremely dangerous from what I hear about the arcanist.

Damn, but that was better and simpler than my idea. Guess that is why I don't design games.

 

[Ashanderai]

Don't worry about it. I have had a little practice over the last year, what with designing a couple of new classes for the setting I am hoping to get published (see sig.).

Has anyone seen the Hunter class preview over at Monte's site? Wow! I just finished reading it and I am blown away by the detail and thought that was put into those class abilities for making an intelligent, strategic-minded fighting class. A lot of what I read in that class is exactly what many a squad leader in today's army has to think about when directing his team into combat. Now we just need feats for directing these leadership-like class abilities into a longer range via hand signals and team members relaying commands down the line.

Unfortunately for me, even though that preview answered a lot of questions, I now have a lot more questions about the system. But first of all, where are the saving throw columns for the class? I guess we will have to wait till August to see those. What happens to a character who is left with too many tokens at the end of a battle? It sounds like it is supposed to be a bad thing. What skills are broken down into what skill groups? What do those columns of bonuses do exactly for those Lore Groups? What about...

Anyway, I guess my questions will have to wait till GenCon, unless they get covered in a design diary sooner.

 

[Andor]

Yah. Some nifty stuff revealed in the sneek peeks. Did you catch the reference to a HP reserve in the playtest diarys? Presumably a pool of hp to refresh you between combats. A nice compramise between compensating for a lack of magical healing and maintaining the tension in a series of running fights.

And yeah the hunter looked cool. Although I forsee some players using the 'helpfull advice' bit to annoy the hell out of people. "Lift with the legs Rogar, not the back."Still, a really interesting leadership/support class. I wonder why they called it a hunter? Maybe Mike wasn't kidding when he claimed to be bad at naming things.

 

[A'koss]

The Hunter

I just finished having a good read-through of the Hunter and all I can say is... awesome.

Concept: The thinking man's warrior has been a long time in coming to this genre. I guess you can say the closest modern analog would be the guerilla fighter. A huge list of class abilities, I thought for second I was looking at the monk! Much more than I was expecting and some very interesting game design here...

Hit Points: 1d4+4. The broad range in HPs in D&D has been a sticking point for many (including myself). How many people do you know use "Average, round up" or "3/4" when assigning HPs? I've seen this idea before as well and it's a good compromise between the two.

Skill Groups: Now we get to see some of the different Skill Groups in IL and even a little on how to gain ranks in them. From the 1st level character example we can determine that 1 skill point = 1 rank in an entire Skill Group. Each class I assume has their own skill groups they specialize in and therefore gain ranks in these skills the easiest. Interesting!

Feats: Ahh, so now we get a peek at Feat Mastery and the bonuses you can expect when you take feats that fall in a certain category. Going by the "Vorpal Hurricane" feat we saw in the IL brochure, we can see (I assume) what bonus you need to have in order to make use of the expanded features of the feat. A hunter whose Weapon Category of choice was Power Weapons and who had this feat could use it at it's Base Mastery level @ level 7 and gain the 1st Expanded Mastery ability by level 13. He won't be able to use the 2nd Expanded Mastery ability as it would require a base bonus of +9 and his tops out at +8. Again, if I'm reading into this right...

I also see that IL character might have some kind of level cap @ 20th level, going by the feat mastery bonus caps.

BAB: No departure from the norm...

Base Defense Bonus: Nice... I can see some of the class abilities can really bolster your AC at higher levels if you want it to. More thoughts on this later.

I'll get into the Hunter abilities in detail in another post... But first, food!

Cheers!

 

[Driddle]

I wonder if we can convince the company to release it several weeks early. Y'know, because we're such good people.

Corporations do that sort of thing all the time.

 

[A'koss]

Unfortunately for me, even though that preview answered a lot of questions, I now have a lot more questions about the system. But first of all, where are the saving throw columns for the class? I guess we will have to wait till August to see those. What happens to a character who is left with too many tokens at the end of a battle? It sounds like it is supposed to be a bad thing. What skills are broken down into what skill groups? What do those columns of bonuses do exactly for those Lore Groups? What about...

I'm sure the saves were just omitted... maybe to save space. As far as the tokens go, the description said all that happens is that you lose all remaining tokens after the encounter is over. Next enounter, start with a fresh pool. Skill groups you could probably guess for the most part. Those bonuses for the various feat groups pull double duty I think (but I could be wrong here). First, I guess if a feat grants some kind of bonus -this is it. Other feats that have certain advanced features, like the "Vorpal Hurricane", open up to the character when he reaches a certain bonus (Base level @+3/Advanced feature #1 @+6/ Advanced feature #2 @+9).

Yah. Some nifty stuff revealed in the sneek peeks. Did you catch the reference to a HP reserve in the playtest diarys? Presumably a pool of hp to refresh you between combats. A nice compramise between compensating for a lack of magical healing and maintaining the tension in a series of running fights.

I wonder if they'll work anything like Reserve Points from UA.