Iron Lore Excerpts

[Andor]

NPC troubles

I recieved the rather strong impression that the Hunter is the only class to start an encounter with tokens in his pool. Everyone else (I think) must earn them. Therefore you only have to manage your NPCs token pools if you wish to. Also Mike said in another thread that there are NPC classes in the books to further simplfy things. And didn't PirateCat say it took 5 min to stat up a high level NPC?

And it does look like the IL Characters probably do have more inate options than all but the most feature laden of the core classes but when you take into account that they do not have access to the truck loads of magic items and spells of standard DnD that's gonna simplfy things a LOT. I've been playing DnD since you had to ink your own dice and I still have trouble tracking all the buff modifiers of a 3.5 character.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Character traits sneak peak:
http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mpress_IL_excerpt1

Hunter class sneak peak:
http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mpress_IL_excerpt2
City Rat trait
The City Rat's ability to track down "dealers and informants" seems pretty vaguely described. Moreover, is this intended to compliment or supplant Knowledge (local)?

OTOH, the mechanic for using Survival to track down items has a specific formula that I think is a little unworkable. A 1000 gp item has a reasonable DC of 20, while a 2000 gp item requires a DC 40 check. Now IL may well have a different scheme for pricing than D&D, where the discrepency of 1000 gp is accurately represented by a 20 DC gulf, but it seems dubious. Perhaps characters have significant options for adding on skill enhancers, so a 40 DC check isn't as outrageously high as it is in D&D.

If magic items are uncommon (and not needed) for Iron Lore characters, that might mean that 2.000 gp is indeed an extremely rare object. If the best you can get is a Masterwork item, you will have a hard time finding anything above 1.000 gp on the equipment list (except maybe a few heavy armors)

 

[Khorod]

Black Company has a very nice structure of Masterwork Items that can get up to such things as +3 to hit and +2 to damage (going with fairly boring improvements). I would be surprised if Iron Lore neglected the replacement of magical gear with an expanded mastercrafting system.

It is also a staple of the Swords & Sorcery genre that you don't spend your years endlessly building up wealth. Characters come into money, even palaces, and then lose it all with great regularity. Except modes of transportation- they usually have horses or a boat at any given time, or the ability to quickly steal such.

So Iron Lore might solve the 'things to spend money on' problem by establishing that characters don't keep their money. You drink it, get mugged, and perhaps try to retire on your fortune a few times only to find you lack any business sense.

 

[Gez]

And running out of ways to describe hits is not a problem? You've never seen a player bored to tears by simply hitting something again... and again... and again... for nickel and dimes of hit points at a time?

That's why I use the system I've said. It changes nothing in the rules, it's flavour only. But it allows to make combat more vivid. When the players says how high the AC he hits, and how many damage he inflicts, depending on the number of remaining hp of the enemy, I describe it differently. For the same number of damage in one hit, depending on when in the combat it happens:

"He dashes sideway and dodge your blade elegantly, with a scornful smirk."
"He barely parries your attack, you see sweat on his forehead."
"Your sword pass dreadfully close to your enemy, who now breath with difficulty, exhausted by the effort to evade your attacks."
"He nearly avoided the blow, this time. Nearly. You connect and leave him with a torn shirt and a scarlet line on his chest."
"Stressed, tired, he tried to parry your strike, but he hadn't enough strength remaining in his wrist and didn't block your blade. Your sword bites cruelly in his flank, and he falls on the ground, breathing heavily, clutching his side..."

(Of course, that's for dramatic fights. Most combats will be much less wordy, long descriptions slow things down.)

I like it that way. It conveys the idea that swinging your weapon around violently is tiring and you can't do it for really long.

 

[TerraDave]

Character traits sneak peak:
Without getting bogged down in the various arguements going on in the other Iron Lore threads, I wanted to make some observations on these excerpts (and then we get to have all-new arguements wheee!). Heck, maybe Mike will stop by and take some notes.

[EDIT--Feel free to insert your own observations!

You can't have enough threads, especially 3 months before the book actually comes out

 

[A'koss]

That's why I use the system I've said. It changes nothing in the rules, it's flavour only. But it allows to make combat more vivid. When the players says how high the AC he hits, and how many damage he inflicts, depending on the number of remaining hp of the enemy, I describe it differently. For the same number of damage in one hit, depending on when in the combat it happens:.

I've seen people try variations of this before but they always break down on a fundamental level when you introduce any special effect attached to the attack - poison, energy drain, blood drain, disease, ability damage, wounding, severing, etc.. Now all your "non-hits" have to be real hits again... In IL, if it follows Iron Might, characters will have access all kinds of additional effects to their attacks - blinding, hamstringing, dazing, stunning, incapacitating limbs, etc..

If I were to actually change a rule to help address this I'd rework how iterative attacks worked. Everyone gets just one BAB adj. and if you wish to make multiple attacks, a cumulative -4 penalty / per attack is applied to all attacks (to a min. +0 BAB). Eg. Attack Adj. +15 (BAB +10 / Misc. +5) = 1 attack @ +15, or 2 attacks @ +11 each, or 3 attacks @ +7 each.

That way you can always opt for the "safe" single attack or increase the risk with multiple attacks - player's choice.

 

[mearls]

Black Company has a very nice structure of Masterwork Items that can get up to such things as +3 to hit and +2 to damage (going with fairly boring improvements). I would be surprised if Iron Lore neglected the replacement of magical gear with an expanded mastercrafting system.

Iron Lore definitely does not do this. There's no point in saying "we're going to remove magic items" if you just take them out, then put them back in with a different name. I didn't want to do that with this design. It works, but that path doesn't fit this game.

About money - the DM's guide has advice and guidelines on it. There's also a variant XP system (or two) thats tie into it.