Iron Lore: Malhavoc's Surprise?

[Andor]

The one thing I don't like about a la carte spell systems is that they're either way to restrictive (by allowing you to only purchase effects from a list) or way to open ended (like Mage: The Ascension, where anything is possible, but must be adjudicated every single time). I've never seen one that allows for a happy medium of interesting spells (such as can be found in the Player's Handbook or Arcana Unearthed) while not requiring constant adjudication. We'll see.

In a brief dive off-topic: Have you ever seen Ars Magica, or the slightly expanded (and thoroughly explored) version of it in World Tree?

 

[Particle_Man]

I wonder how much the spell system will resemble The Elements of Magic.

I also wonder if illusions are changed at all. I would love to see Mearls' take on them.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

In a brief dive off-topic: Have you ever seen Ars Magica, or the slightly expanded (and thoroughly explored) version of it in World Tree?

Or even the BCCS for that matter.

On the note of the Bestiary, I don't know that you should see it as evidence against plug and play. Based on the playtest notes plug and play seems to be exactly what people have been doing, on the one hand, and on the other there are a lot of encounter scenarios that don't fit into the CR system properly.

Note the hint about encounter zones in the second playtester interview and I think you might see what I'm anticipating there.

 

[Irda Ranger]

The setting appeals to me, even in a bare bones version, because I think the vocabulary of world building is going to be so different for IH than it was for something like AU.

Yeah, in the sense that there hardly is any. As you said, the AU classes pretty much define how any setting with them worked - especially the more flavorful ones, like Akashic, Witch, Runethane, Ritual Warrior and Runechild. IH is going to be much more "real world" with fantasy flavor, rather than wholly fantasy.

It's harder to see that with fighting traditions since you figure most cultures are going to need a good mix.

You're right about most societies needing a good mix (of several at least, though not all). This doesn't make it harder though, just more open-ended. You can model pretty much any society from the real world, ancient legends, or pre-Terry Brooks fantasy and then add the Arcanist and monsters. The classes just fall into place and, ideally, disappear entirely.

Mearls has given us some clues with the 'archetypes' section in the class write-ups. Hunters being frontiersmen or elite agencies sort of a thing. So that's a help, but it's still not as formative as thinking well if you've got totem warriors then you're dealing a lot with spirits or Barbarians probably aren't as emphasized in armor happy cultures.

You're absolutely right that it's not formative, and that's a feature, not a bug. I think the archetypes section was meant to help people break out of the mind-set that a class is the end-all and be-all of what defines a character's role in society. What's true for a Cleric or Akashic should not be true for an Armiger or Archer.

I suspect from the Berzerker preview that the basic vocubulary for adventuring in cultures will actually be traits+classes and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works on a macro level since we probably won't see all of the traits until the book comes out.

Traits + Classes, yes, but also feats, and I think the feats + traits will be much more important than the classes. Every culture will have some kind of "ranged attack guy", but not every culture will have the "Winter Born" trait or access to the same feats. From a magical perspective, I suspect some methods and recipes will be common among some peoples and unknown to others. Maybe one society's Arcanists are the only ones who know the spells to make purple dye, and they're also good sailors.

 

[Irda Ranger]

In a brief dive off-topic: Have you ever seen Ars Magica, or the slightly expanded (and thoroughly explored) version of it in World Tree?

No, I haven't.

What's BCCS?

 

[Particle_Man]

Do multi-class characters exist?

 

[Andor]

No, I haven't.

What's BCCS?

I don't know what BCCS is, but both Ars Magic and World Tree use a skill based Verb and Noun magic system with both set spells and easy improv. Each Verb and each Noun is a seperate skill.

Say for example you want to cast a fireball. That would be Create + Fire. If your total skill equals (say) 15 you can learn the book version of the spell and just cast it by paying mana. If your skills aren't good enough or you just haven't learned the spell you can roll your skill checks and try to get a 15 (with modifiers for improvising). If you fail, you fail, or back fire if you fail badly enough. If your create isn't good enough you could try to improve a Move + Fire to send fire from your touch at the bad guy.

 

[Andor]

Do multi-class characters exist?

In Iron Heros? Yes, with no multiclassing penalties.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

We have no indication that multi-class characters do not exist.

BCCS is the Black Company Campaign Setting. The setting is one thick book remarkable for four reasons:

- it's a really good compendium of information on the series in question

- it had very cool rules for grit in DnD that were minimally invasive, including nice stuff for ambushes and a more n decent system of action points

- a nice mass combat system which I like very well with one major flaw, IMO

- a talent based magic system, the magic of the books in question was remarkable for four reasons: very flexible at low levels, very slow and massively deadly at high levels, being rampable that is that a low level guy could produce a high level effect given time, and a wizard was the equal of an army and vice versa. Wizards could easilly turn battles but they could also be taken out by one good company. The RPG managed to achieve all of these effects very well and missed only one or two other things from the books.

I primarilly mentioned it because of the spells as feats system. It seemed to work very well, characters weren't all that limited at low levels because having a spell feat like 'shield' gave you a lot of flexibility. Spellcasters were interesting because in battle they were very much a strategic rather than tactical resource, relying a great deal on their power over environment and minds to turn things in the favor of their fellow combatants. Even at the high levels they were more like bombers than artillery, sometimes very literally.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Yeah, in the sense that there hardly is any. As you said, the AU classes pretty much define how any setting with them worked - especially the more flavorful ones, like Akashic, Witch, Runethane, Ritual Warrior and Runechild. IH is going to be much more "real world" with fantasy flavor, rather than wholly fantasy.

Well in terms of this, the way I think about it with something like AU is that every class has one or two equivalent cultural role of niche, so:

Runethane=sage/craftsmen
Akashic=sage/diplomat or explorer
Magister=priest/wizard
Witch=mystic/outlaw
Warmain=noble soldier
Totem Warrior=hunter

and so forth. Now that's helpful because if I have a society of agriculturalists living on a relatively uncontrollable river and menaced by wandering barbarians well that comes out to:

floods need predicting=needs sage priests=magisters
cities need defending=needs heavilly armed soldiers=warmains
they're agriculturalists and they live in a very elementally aligned area=would develop something from that lifestyle=witches

My point with IH is that it's a little bit more difficult to figure out. I can certainly conclude from the above formula that the culture will probably need arimigers. I might also go with arcanists and hunters, but I really worry that that's what I'm going to get for way too many of those formula. It's good to have so many flavors of warrior, but until I see the traits I'm worried that there's not as much variety in terms of other basic roles. In the example above, for instance, the slot I filled with magisters could as easilly have been greenbonds, akashics, or runethanes and each one of those would have given you an idea of a very different society. And that's a neat world building tool.

On the other hand, the Berzerker write up in the back of transcendance gave you a much better idea of the culture that character is from than almost any write up I've seen in other DnD terms. And I take a lot of hope from that, so my only real complaint is that I want to start doing cultural write ups in those terms as soon as possible, particularly since my more common method is a wee bit stymied.

Traits + Classes, yes, but also feats, and I think the feats + traits will be much more important than the classes. Every culture will have some kind of "ranged attack guy", but not every culture will have the "Winter Born" trait or access to the same feats. From a magical perspective, I suspect some methods and recipes will be common among some peoples and unknown to others.

Some DnD stuff does this already, Forgotten Realms for instance, but admittedly I hadn't thought about it too much in IH terms. You could certainly do it with something like a talent mechanic and the extra feat characters get at first level. More importantly it would be interesting to see how it worked in terms of traits which seem to do the job feats do in FR several times better.

Maybe one society's Arcanists are the only ones who know the spells to make purple dye, and they're also good sailors.

I s'pose they'd also be the one's best at writing.