Iron Lore: Malhavoc's Surprise?

[Narfellus]

This sounds great! If nothing else it sounds like it will have great ideas to derive piecemeal and tack onto any game or setting.

 

[Ozmar]

Iron Lore... Evolved?

Hi Mike!

This book sounds awesome! Now I have to hurry and finish my Eberron campaign so I can find the time to run my Arcana Evolved campaign in time to finish it and be ready to run an Iron Lore campaign in August!

Speaking of Arcana Evolved, will the initial Iron Lore book be a "director's cut"? That is, will it be an author's preferred vision that contains setting material, monsters and all the bits that you could dream up? Or will it be a trimmed, less bulky and expensive book in the vein of the original Arcana Unearthed release?

P.S. I recently purchased Ruins of Intrigue and plan to use it to structure my AE campaing. Kudos on a great product! And thank you for continuing to feed our addictions.

Ozmar the Gaming Addict

 

[ecliptic]

This book will totally kick ass!

Are you sticking with hit points or will you use something else such as VP/WP?

Also with it be a fully colored book or black and white?

 

[Driddle]

Will this product be as appealing to the player who likes nimble swashbucklers as it is to the muscled barbarian types?

 

[mearls]

If the magic items aren't necessary for IL characters, does this result into a reduced treasure curve, too? A big part of the treasure are in the core rules the magic items, but this aspect seems to be eliminated. If the IL character has the same amount of treasure as the D&D character, for what purpose the treasure is used?

The issue of treasure is covered in one of the follow-up books. There's guidelines and advice on handling treasure plus alternate ways of using it in the game. The book isn't in playtest yet, so I can't really go into details.

 

[mearls]

One question: Is this version more minis/AoO based than regular DnD?

Not really - it gives most speeds and distances in squares, but those are trivially easy to convert back into feet. I did this because it's a lot easier to express and deal with modifications and penalties to movement in squares rather than feet.

AoOs are there, but they're standardized and simplified.

 

[mearls]

I think Mike missed the point (or a point) the original question was based on. If I'm DMing an Iron Lore game, and Joe and Bob are playing, can Joe run an IL barbarian and Bob bring his 3.5 Druid and "just play together" Meaning, from my perspective, I run my IL game, I hand out treasure and XP the same as always, and the only thing the Druid complains about is a lack of treasure items.

I'm speaking from a single game perspective, and not acknowledging the fact that in the long term, the Druid would be hosed, due to not getting bigger magic items to beef him up.

I think people are interested in simple cross-over capability, for a one-shot say. You'd want to keep D&D magic items out of the hands of the IL PCs, and such.

It's kind of a litmus test on how compatible IL is with D&D.

If you open your PHB 3.5 to page 22, you'll see tables 3-1 and 3-2, the saving throw, base attack, and benefits (skills, feats) by level tables. Iron Lore uses different versions of these tables. You'd have to convert the druid to use the IL versions. Once you did that, especially with his spells in place, the druid would work fine in the game. The druid would also use a different HD, and he'd get a few class features that all IL characters receive.

The only other issue would be that, since there aren't any spellcaster-specific feats in IL, you'd have to let the player take feats from other sources.

 

[mearls]

Speaking of Arcana Evolved, will the initial Iron Lore book be a "director's cut"? That is, will it be an author's preferred vision that contains setting material, monsters and all the bits that you could dream up? Or will it be a trimmed, less bulky and expensive book in the vein of the original Arcana Unearthed release?

The book is more on the AU level, but I really don't see a director's cut on the horizon. The setting is intentionally kept a bit shallow (witness all the people who want to use IL in their own setting or a different one - unlike AU, the setting isn't so much of a selling point here).

The game is complete - it's actually about 25% longer than anticipated in terms of word count, so it's all there.

 

[mearls]

This book will totally kick ass!

Are you sticking with hit points or will you use something else such as VP/WP?

Also with it be a fully colored book or black and white?

Hit points - it proved the easiest way to keep things balanced with D&D.

The book will be black and white.

 

[mearls]

Will this product be as appealing to the player who likes nimble swashbucklers as it is to the muscled barbarian types?

Yes, it supports both characters through the classes.

In Iron Lore, you can play the loin-cloth wearing warrior. I have too many Reaper minis of bare-chested barbarians to leave that archetype out of the game.