Iron Lore: Malhavoc's Surprise?

[JohnSnow]

I should add that "Weapon" comes in three flavors: Power Weapon, Projectile Weapon, and Finesse Weapon.

This is born out by the feat from the preview: Vorpal Hurricane, a mastery 3 power weapon ability (with mastery level 6 and 9 variants). The first lets you threaten all the squares around you and attack any opponent who begins or ends their action in said square, at your highest BAB at the cost of a full attack action. At levels 6 and 9 you can do this as a standard action (allowing you to move before or after you do it) or a free action (this is how you defend yourself - Conan anyone?) respectively.

So apparently, not all feats have mastery levels 1-9. Verrrry interesting. Makes feats much more "spell-like" in their progression. And if you wanted to, you could forgo the Level 6 mastery and just take the level 9 mastery when you're eligible for it...hmmm.

Oh, and sorry to disagree Dr. Strangemonkey, but I think Power Attack has mastery levels from 1-10. If you assume the berzerker has advanced mastery of the Power Weapon tree, he could have taken Power attack 1 (level 1 feat), Power Attack 2 (level 2 feat), Power Attack 3 (Level 4) and Quick Draw (Level 6). Alternatively, he could have taken Quick Draw earlier if it's part of either his secondary or tertiary Feat categories. So we just don't know where QD is.

Oh, and you have to have the base level of a feat before you can take the expanded mastery levels (from Mearls' design diary). So you couldn't take level 2 feats without taking the level 1 feat first (unless the base mastery level for the feat was 2, not 1). And since the mastery doesn't improve at level 2, you'll be able to take the mastery level 2 feat at 2nd level if you have advanced mastery in that feat category (i.e. a berzerker taking Power Attack 2 with his 2nd level feat, as I stated above).

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I wonder if this means I should change the title of my Mythic Heroes book...

Man, I like Iron Lore so much better as Iron Heroes. Good, good change-- whatever the reason.

Yeah, it's a great change. I was looking at all the name changes to the articles on their site contrasted with the cover with Iron Lore in big letters and I am sad they have to go through this hastle, but at least they got a great name out of it.

Mythic Heroes is great. I don't really think we can have too many heroes.

Though Mythic Lore honestly isn't that bad either.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I honestly don't like the new title all that much compared to the original... It seems every book these days is adding "heroes" to the title. It is going to take a while to get used to the change.

Honestly, this new system isn't quite as revolutionary as I had hoped for. It is really just a new categorization system with class-based prerequisites. It adds to some of my worries that the classes are too well defined or even pidgeon-holed. I like classes to be somewhat flexible, so I hope this is just a misunderstanding. Certainly some concrete examples of feat chains would be appreciated.

How many different feat groups can there be I wonder? So far we know of the 7, with some apparent overlap. Too many more would dilute the groups too much, so I expect there to be 9 or 10 at the most.

 

[Dark Psion]

http://gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=17231&mode=thread&order=0
-----------------------------

The new rulebook's title became an issue when, one month ago, software developer Iron Lore Entertainment demanded that Malhavoc Press and its publishing partner, White Wolf Publishing, cease using the name "Iron Lore." While the software company did not hold a trademark on "Iron Lore," it had applied for ownership of the trademark "Iron Lore Entertainment." In a letter from its legal representatives, the software company claimed that Malhavoc's use of the title would confuse consumers.

"While I don't agree with these assertions, I'm not willing to engage in a prolonged legal battle over the title," Monte said. "Fans have been waiting months for this new book. A lawsuit would only mean many more months of waiting."

 

[mearls]

Hey all,

I haven't had a chance to stop by here in quite a while - work and moving across the continent have kept me rather busy. I can chime in on two things:

* PCs gain two feats at 1st level.

* You only need the base feat to take its expanded masteries. If you have the basic feat, you can take mastery abilities 3, 7, etc. You don't need to take them in order. In some cases an expanded mastery builds off another, lower mastery ability. In those cases (and there aren't too many) you need the lower mastery ability first.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Hey all,

I haven't had a chance to stop by here in quite a while - work and moving across the continent have kept me rather busy. I can chime in on two things:

* PCs gain two feats at 1st level.

* You only need the base feat to take its expanded masteries. If you have the basic feat, you can take mastery abilities 3, 7, etc. You don't need to take them in order. In some cases an expanded mastery builds off another, lower mastery ability. In those cases (and there aren't too many) you need the lower mastery ability first.

I like the idea of this a lot. This should really allow one archer to be very different from another archer of the same level, which I assume was a major part of the idea.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Honestly, this new system isn't quite as revolutionary as I had hoped for. It is really just a new categorization system with class-based prerequisites. It adds to some of my worries that the classes are too well defined or even pidgeon-holed. I like classes to be somewhat flexible, so I hope this is just a misunderstanding. Certainly some concrete examples of feat chains would be appreciated.

I had thought a bit about this too.

If there's a lot of multiclassing or hardly any depends on what's more important - Mastery/ Feats/ Stunts, or Class Abilities. If it's the former, you'll see a situation in D&D similar to how all of the melee classes could multi-class pretty freely, because the BAB, HP, and Feat progressions either stacked or were a fair trade-off. In this scenario, where Feats are more important, as long as you take a class with some similar-ish Mastery progressions they'll stack nicely and you can get the high level Feats.

If the class abilities (like the Archer's Sniper and Killing shots) dominate play however, then you'll see a situation similar to D&D spellcasters - little to no multiclassing all. In this scenario it would "cost too much" for an Archer to take more than a level or so in some other class, because you'd always be a couple levels behind in the "stuff that counts." For D&D spellcasters, it was spell access. If for IH PC's it's the class abilities, you'll never see a Archer 5 - Weapon Master 5.

That being speculated, it's too early to say "Oh crap, everyone's pigeonholed.", but this is something I'm watching for. It would be nice to know if any of the playtesters tried out multiclassing much, and what they thought of it. Also, it's obvious that the Archer cannot take all of the Shots available to him, and I expect there will always be more tasty Feats than you're allowed to have. There will definately be some variability within the classes, even if multiclassing is not attractive.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Looks awesome to me.

I gotta admit... Vorpal Hurricane makes me a little... turgid.

I predict that the Feat Mastery will be one of the most-yoinked aspects of the rules (just edging out Tokens because it is easier to implement: they're really just feat chains).

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Theoretically, though, I think that Feat Mastery will take up less space and be a lot easier to organize.

And I like Mike's rationale on using it in place of a lot of prerequisites.

Two feats at first level?

Well, there goes our well established feats at even levels conclusion. I wonder why it never showed up in the archer and hunter sample builds.

As a basic idea, however, I approve. Means that the feat mastery levels will give a lot more flavor to your basic character concept.

 

[Celebrim]

If there's a lot of multiclassing or hardly any depends on what's more important - Mastery/ Feats/ Stunts, or Class Abilities. If it's the former, you'll see a situation in D&D similar to how all of the melee classes could multi-class pretty freely, because the BAB, HP, and Feat progressions either stacked or were a fair trade-off. In this scenario, where Feats are more important, as long as you take a class with some similar-ish Mastery progressions they'll stack nicely and you can get the high level Feats.

If the class abilities (like the Archer's Sniper and Killing shots) dominate play however, then you'll see a situation similar to D&D spellcasters - little to no multiclassing all.

As far as I can tell, the 'stuff that counts' - really counts - in the class abilities is the improved ability to fill that character's token pool. The improved selection of things to spend the tokens on has been by comparison a rather small improvement. Since token pool replenishment maxes out for the archer at level 15, and for the hunter at level 17, if tokens are really valuable at all then we aren't going to see alot of multi-classing in either class. However, just from what we've seen, an Archer 15/Hunter 5 doesn't seem to me to be a bad package. Also, looking over the archer's list of class abilities, I don't really see anything that I think is going to make it worth giving up a full attack action, and I think the most common things to spend tokens on would actually be the earliest available class abilities. The 'sniper' and 'killing' shot abilities are really narrow and less generally useful than the 'deadeye shot' abilities.

That being speculated, it's too early to say "Oh crap, everyone's pigeonholed.", but this is something I'm watching for. It would be nice to know if any of the playtesters tried out multiclassing much, and what they thought of it.

Yes, it would. It would be nice to know alot of things about playtesting, like in particular whether anyone tried any games outside of D&D's acknowledged 'sweet spot'. So far both playtester groups seem to have focused on levels 3-7, which already work quite nicely in D&D as far as I'm concerned and so its not really that impressive that the game works at that level of play. What would be impressive to me is if Iron Heroes allows characters to compete in typical published modules for say 12th level characters without resorting to anything more than a +1 sword.

As far as the Feat Mastery mechanic goes, I'm not nearly as disappointed with it as I've been disappointed by the 'mundane spellcraft' that seems to be a part of the token system. The richochet shot, the arrow ladder (if this works, why do you need a feat for it?), and the 'hunter's (horrible name) ranged trip ability all just seem a little cheesy to me, and if the general answer to question 'how do you let PC's compete without magic?' is 'pretend it isn't magic' then it a little disappointing. However, there are a few things that bug me about the feat mastery mechanic, at least given the partial details that we've been given.

One thing that bugs me is that I would think that feat mastery would stack with your ability score bonus in the relevant ability. For example, 'Dodge 1' as a feat might be available to characters with DEX 12+, or to charactes with Defensive Feat Mastery +1. 'Power 10' would be available to characters with Power Feat Mastery +10 and a 10 STR, or with Power Feat Mastery +5 and a 20 STR. But if this is the case, it certainly isn't explained that way. I can only assume that the new feats are written in such a way that they are only fully exploitable if you have the relevant base ability, otherwise the feat will likely be able to replace the relevant base ability such that I would always be tempted to play (for instance) a Beserker with high DEX and relatively low STR knowing that the character's feat mastery of Power feats will more or less completely make up for it. In other words, I see this as being a more general version of the problem of Power Attack being mostly advantageous to finesse fighters with low strengths.

Another thing I find worrisome - and admittedly this worry might go away on seeing the actual feats - is that I am hard pressed to imagine how a feat tree can be extended out to 10 feats without the upper end feats being utterly abusable. Can someone here show me how power attacked can be improved 9 times without making 'improved superior greater power attack' utterly broken, or is 'power attack 2' is just a synonym for 'cleave' and 'power attack 3' is just a synonym for 'great cleave'?

Lastly, if the feat trees do go out to 10 feats in at least some cases, then their will be a strong temptation to advance as far down the tree as possible. That means that even if the new classes are getting 20 (or more) feats by 20th level, almost half (and in some cases more than half) of those feats will be spent making your character good at the one thing that that character does. This means character abilities which are deep, but not broad, despite the increased number of abilities/feats. It's going to be very difficult to balance the increasing marginal value of additional specialization with the marginal value of going broad, especially with feat trees this tall and (to me conceptually) unwieldy. Looking over the feat trees of approved feats in my campaign, I see that feats like Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Expertise, Power Attack, and Toughness do open up the way to 10-14 different feats each. BUT, on the other hand the feat tree for each is never more than about 3 feats deep and I consider this a good thing. The fact that the vast majority of feats on the list are available by 6th level if you decide to narrow your focus is deliberate and I like it. It makes low level characters more diverse in their abilities. Granted, I have a few homebrew feats which require BAB of +9 to +12 which only high level characters have access to - something standard D&D doesn't have enough of - but I don't want to make too many things like that. If you are going to do that, you might as well make all feats into class abilities. Why wasn't limiting a few feats to higher BAB an acceptable solution? What does feat mastery give you that this doesn't?