Iron Lore: Malhavoc's Surprise?

[Felon]

Probably true. After all, the archer gets Finesse Mastery 8. And my immediate reaction was the same as I imagine yours was. In other words: "WTF?!!? An extra 4d6 of damage that is uable ALL the time and stacks with sneak attack?!?" But then I realized. This is a 17th level character with no flaming weapon, no frost weapon, no shocking burst weapon. Hell, he probably doesn't even have a KEEN short sword!! So he's not really doing much more damage than a D&D 3e rogue with a holy (+2d6) shock (+1d6) flaming (+1d6) rapier. He just doesn't NEED the sword to do it!

Also note that we have received no indication that Executioners and Thieves will receive 1d6 of sneak attack damage every other level as rogues do. I think folks have come to realize that's a bit grossly excessive, magic weapons or no.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Also note that we have received no indication that Executioners and Thieves will receive 1d6 of sneak attack damage every other level as rogues do. I think folks have come to realize that's a bit grossly excessive, magic weapons or no.

Oh, I don't know. 10d6 damage from a single attack isn't that horrific at higher levels. If anything it's sort of weak, a wizard's dishing that out at 10th level and while he may have a limited number of dishes per day his attack also isn't situationally dependent.

A character who has a 15d6 sneak attack option at 20th level seems fairly reasonable by that standard.

I'm not saying there aren't any number of ways you could still argue that its ridiculous, even the rarified opinion of the most objective critic must still admit many paths to many ends, but a system that uses as much of the DnD system as IH does is going to rely on people in the party having attacks that are close to that powerful or better at the higher levels.

Doesn't in any way mean that you are wrong though, we have almost no idea how those two classes will be set up at all.

 

[JohnSnow]

My call on sneak attack damage is that it will work anytime you loose active defense.

Given how every thing else works out making certain your flanks and positional tactics in general are going to become a much bigger part of everyone's game.

As someone else pointed out, a horde of mooks is a lot more intimidating when you realize how much that loss of active defense from flanking is going to hurt.

As the "someone else" who pointed this out, I had another thought. Do we have any reason to believe that Iron Heroes will have anything resembling Uncanny Dodge? We sure haven't seen it yet. And with all the emphasis on tactical positioning...I just don't know if it makes any sense.

Anyone have any idea whether Mike's using the standard 50 hit point Massive Damage Threshold rule, or whether he's using one of the many variants (like the ones in Unearthed Arcana for example)? It's not like it'd be that difficult to institute a default "MDT = Con +2 hp/level" or something. And that really does make that low level mook VERY dangerous.

On the other hand, maybe it will just have a passage on "rules variants for adjusting the level of grittiness in your Iron Heroes game."

Just a thought.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I had no intention of slighting you there JohnSnow, I was just breezing through the post and didn't know how many pages back the information was hiding.

From the description in PA my guess is that Massive Damage exists 'as is' in IH, but even from the feats themselves we can see that there are means by which individual characters can modify those checks even in the default game.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if variant massive damage rules recieve a good bit of discussion in Mastering Iron Lore.

 

[JohnSnow]

No slight taken Dr. Strangemonkey. I was just stating it for the new readers in the interests of "full disclosure," so to speak.

I also wouldn't be a bit surprised if variant massive damage systems got some discussion in Mastering Iron Heroes. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about this a fair bit and realized that if you combine a reasonable massive damage system with class defense bonuses, and armor as DR rules, you've essentially accomplished the wound/vitality point thing in a much less complicated way. Which is of course what the d20 Modern rules do.

See, in theory, if Defense escalated at the same rate as BAB, you wouldn't really need hit points to go up. Except of course, that battling "monsters" would get awfully tough. That means you need hit points.

Personally, I can see plenty of people adopting the skill system, challenge, stunt, feat mastery, defense bonus, and variable DR rules whether or not they actually choose to play an Iron Heroes game.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Anyone have any idea whether Mike's using the standard 50 hit point Massive Damage Threshold rule, or whether he's using one of the many variants (like the ones in Unearthed Arcana for example)? It's not like it'd be that difficult to institute a default "MDT = Con +2 hp/level" or something. And that really does make that low level mook VERY dangerous.

I see no evidence that Iron Heroes will want to lower the MDT or have any kind of "mooks are dangerous" design philosophy. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary; it's been repeated several times that the design goal was to make IH scale up parallel with D&D.

On the other hand, maybe it will just have a passage on "rules variants for adjusting the level of grittiness in your Iron Heroes game."

Much more likely-- 'core' IH isn't gritty; it's just low magic. I think we've been over this...

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I see no evidence that Iron Heroes will want to lower the MDT or have any kind of "mooks are dangerous" design philosophy. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary; it's been repeated several times that the design goal was to make IH scale up parallel with D&D.

Well, but core design philosophy for IH is that it will simplify some basic DnD rules. So that we've been explicitly told that AoO are going to be activated much more simply, and I suspect that division of defense into active and passive categories is going to get rid of flat-footed and touch attack ACs.

Doing either of those should grant some more advantage to mooks who can use the new rules well. I don't think IH is going to do anything like give mooks a straight up bonus for numbers, but I do think that the increased value in flanking is going to give mooks an incidental leg up.

My suspicion is that while straight CRs are going to come into IH with very little adjustment, situational CRs and complicated CRs are going to get worked over with a lot more finesse. Thus the new formulas in the IH bestiary.

I agree with you, though, that MDS is probably not going to have a default lower threshold or its mechanics reworked as with BCCS, but I do think that even from the few details we've seen the MDS is going to have a larger role in the default IH campaign then we see in regular DnD. Though, admittedly, all you have to do is state that MDS will no longer be optional to accomplish that goal.

My thinking, even or particularly after the prior long conversation, is that gritty elements will continue to show up in IH even if only as a result of other design philosophies rather than as a goal of the system itself. IH: Incidentally Grittier doesn't sound like so awful a tertiary tagline.

Of course I'm perfectly cognizant of the fact that crow may be eaten all the way around, but that I may be picking up some of the very choicest helpings.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

The summer quarterly for White Wolf is up and features a very extensive treatment of IH. I'm still trying to sift through it all.

Choices, man, choices.

The stuff on skills fascinates me to no end. Looks like the Bard dynamic of concrete results for ramping skill checks is going to be generally available to everyone. Are skill ranks the new magic items?

Also I suddenly realized how much less killer the new AoO rules are if you aren't reliant on healing potions. Also how much more killer actual combat may be.

Regardless of how compatible this may be with DnD I am certainly gaining the impression that it will be a very different experience.

Looks like a pretty full write up of the Harrier is in there, our very first non-token using IH class, and a skill monkey to boot which I would not necessarilly have predicted but am nonetheless grateful for. Hard to say whether or not it's more of one than the hunter though as it lacks the hunter's obscene number of skill groups.

The lack of tokens appears to be made up for by an increased emphasis on mobility and skill use. So the class certainly doesn't reward a character who insists on doing nothing, and appears to be keeping a lot of that tactical flexibility.

From what we're seeing you certainly could do a cavalier with a harrier, though I'm still feeling challenged to try it when I do theoretical world building the harrier is going anywhere there are horesmen. Though perhaps with the tumble checks replaced by ride checks where appropriate.... Hmm, yeah, I'm begining to see how there's certainly still room for a cavalier in a world with a harrier albeit with similar mechanics.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

How the Harrier gets fewer hitpoints than the archer is beyond me. They'd better have some frekkin amazing defenses or it's gonna be the glass ninja all over again only with a lot more glass.

 

[Particle_Man]

Maybe they can do something like a spring attack containing a full attack within it?