Iron Lore: Malhavoc's Surprise?

[Celebrim]

Token usage

Nope, just most of them. IIRC, men-at-arms, the harrier, and the arcanist do not use tokens.

Now that really suprises me. The arcanist seemed like a perfect fit for the token mechanic. I had envisioned it working very much like the Hunter (itself something of a buffing 'magic' expert), except that it could spend tokens to buy spell effects off the list of spells it knew. In fact, the more I see of the Iron Lore system, the more convinced I am that it would make a fantastic spell casting system. So that the arcanist is somehow not a part of the system but operating out somewhere on its own seems really bizarre to me.

The harrier just didn't fit with tokens...

And again, I find that surprising. The ability to make extra attacks is so powerful (think haste) that I thought for sure that the Harrier was a perfect fit for 'velocity tokens' or some such.

 

[Celebrim]

CR Equivalence

The key from a mechanical perspective lies in a few minor, but important, changes to th system. For example, who says that level drain has to work the same in all d20 games? Stuff like that. There is also some advice on working with such abilities in, I believe, the monster book. For instance, if a PC is turned to stone by a medusa, the PCs might have to go on a quest to find the elixir to cure him.

Oh brother. Apparantly 'capable of going toe to toe with an equivalent CR encounter' means capable of going toe to toe with anything that is itself not magical.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Oh brother. Apparantly 'capable of going toe to toe with an equivalent CR encounter' means capable of going toe to toe with anything that is itself not magical.

That's not entirely fair.

If Iron Lore heroes are better equipped to defeat the gorgon in the first place (and in my case I'd revert to something like higher saves/Action Points/Fate Points) then there's no need to worry about being turned to stone.

'Turned to stone' is, essentially, 'dead.' Given that characters can die in other ways through perfectly mundane avenues of 'failure' (the loss of hit points being the most obvious) then this makes a certain kind of sense.

Note that the gorgon, despite it's "save or die" ability, is still just CR8. This means that it's balanced as a moderate encounter against PCs who do not yet have access to Raise Dead, let alone Stone to Flesh.

What this essentially says is that the "difficulty" of overcoming the combat aftermath (ie, whether or not somebody got turned to stone) is not really factored into the gorgon's CR. It's assumed that the PCs, through whatever resources they have, are not going to fall to the gorgon in the first place.

This is important: CR does not concern itself with the aftermath. It is used ONLY as a guide to the likelihood that the PCs can overcome a single encounter.

Can four 8th level D&D fighters tackle a gorgon? Well, the rules say yes (and I tend to agree).

So four Iron Heroes (whose magic weapons and cloaks of resistance are built into their basic advancement profiles) should have about the same difficulty.

Though it is easy to leap to Mike's defense here, I am still concerned about a few other critters (and their relative Iron Heroes CR).


Wulf

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Yep, the only truly unique quality about being turned to stone is that there is a strong implication that there is a narrative solution to that particular delimma.

There is a lot less implication for dead, but its essentially still there.

Basicly, there is a lot of magic in DnD RAW that seems unnecessary to me. Planar travel, raise dead, undo curse, and such as that all seem to be basicly cheats for getting around conditions that would otherwise result in seperate stories.

There are reasons that approach works, but I don't think you actually loose that much in terms of balance by taking those cheats out of the game.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

And again, I find that surprising. The ability to make extra attacks is so powerful (think haste) that I thought for sure that the Harrier was a perfect fit for 'velocity tokens' or some such.

Someone pointed out that all of the token gathering methods we have seen thus far involved sacraficing actions in order to get tokens.

Given that I can certainly see why it doesn't fit for a character who's schtick is extra actions.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Someone pointed out that all of the token gathering methods we have seen thus far involved sacraficing actions in order to get tokens.

Which, actually, has been rubbing me the wrong way for a while now.

Mearls has essentially built a mechanic that rewards characters for doing nothing, which seems the antithesis of the high-action game premise.

I admit I am way, way, outside the line commenting on that without having played the Token system yet, but it's been bugging me for a while now.

Rage tokens seem much more up my alley, personally. I would probably never play a Hunter (or maybe even the Archer), though I have seen plennnnnnnnnnnty of players who (frustratingly) stand around doing jack when they could be helping.

Rewarding that kind of behavior would drive me up the wall.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Basicly, there is a lot of magic in DnD RAW that seems unnecessary to me. Planar travel, raise dead, undo curse, and such as that all seem to be basicly cheats for getting around conditions that would otherwise result in seperate stories.

Very well put.

And in 50 words or less!

 

[Particle_Man]

Rage tokens seem much more up my alley, personally. I would probably never play a Hunter (or maybe even the Archer), though I have seen plennnnnnnnnnnty of players who (frustratingly) stand around doing jack when they could be helping.

Mearls said something about different people not only having different favorite classes, but classes that they would never play.

But think of it this way. In regular games, the guy that does nothing doesn't help the party at all. In IH, at least the guy that does nothing will be able to help the party a *lot* 5 rounds from now.

 

[Felon]

Oh brother. Apparantly 'capable of going toe to toe with an equivalent CR encounter' means capable of going toe to toe with anything that is itself not magical.

I don't get this mentality. Never have. When Conan battles the mirror monster in Conan the Destroyer, does he need a magic weapon, special powers, or some other readily-identifiable bypass mechanic to overcome its seeming invulnerability (I suppose it equates to high DR)? No, he just had to figure out he needed to smash the mirrors.

When Perseus fought Medusa, did he he get to make sure that he had a backup spellcaster with flesh to stone or break enchantment handy? No, he just had to employ some tactics.

Defeating seemingly invincible foes through personal resourcefulness s one of the major staples of fantasy fiction. It just doesn't happen to be a staple of D&D. So I ask you, is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

Why does there have to be a clearly-delineated and categorized rock-beats-scissors mechanic for everything? Is it unreasonable for heroes to sometimes crap their pants trying to find the damn rock so they can prevail? IMO, that's a hell of a lot more heroic than just bitching at the game or at the DM because nothing in your golfbag-o'-weapons penetrated the monster's DR.

"I tried the silver weapon, the cold iron weapon, and the adamantine weapon! I've used lawful, chaotic, good, and evil versions of each! That's it! I've tried everything!"

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I don't get this mentality. Never have. When Conan battles the mirror monster in Conan the Destroyer...

Ugh.

Defeating seemingly invincible foes through personal resourcefulness s one of the major staples of fantasy fiction. It just doesn't happen to be a staple of D&D. So I ask you, is that really the way things should be?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach.

But that approach has nothing to do with CR. CR is a numbers game: all mechanics, zero story. CR is supposed to be an absolute that does not care where the encounter takes place and without regard to the party makeup.

So if the promise is that Iron Heroes can go toe-to-toe with equivalent CR, there's an expectation that their ability to do that will be built, mechanically, into the equation.

This is why, early on, I speculated that Mike had addressed the problem by assigning CR-equivalent mechanics to things that have typically been "story" solutions. Again, his success in that regard can be measured by the number and kinds of "story" elements that he has managed to subsume under the "mechanics" umbrella.

Again, his success in this regard has nothing to do with the success or quality of Iron Heroes in its own right, it is merely something of great personal, professional interest to me as a designer.


Wulf