Problems with Iron Heroes?

[Gothmog]

That is exactly right. The reason for this is that an Iron Heroes party at Level X is meant to be exactly as capable of taking on a CR X challenge as a regular D&D party of Level X. The D&D party does this, partially, through incredibly powerful magical items. The Iron Heroes party does not necessarily have any magical items, and the ones they have may be cursed and too dangerous to use except in dire emergencies. Thus their capabilities come from their inner resources. Thus an IH character is pound for pound tougher than a D&D character (sans magic items) of the same level (except at 1st level, when no magic items are expected).

So instead of Sir D&D wielding his +5 Dragon-Bane Holy Greatsword vs. the Dragon, we have IH the Mighty wielding an ordinary greatsword (well, maybe masterwork), but IH is badass enough that he can take on the Dragon too.

Yep, I understand that, and I know a lot of people like that playstyle. The whole reason my group decided to try IH was because we were tired of the high-powered D&D stuff, and rather than being more subdued, IH was more over-the-top than D&D. While IH characters aren't lit up like Christmas trees with gear, in 1-on-1 fights between IH and D&D characters WITH their gear, we found the IH characters win slightly more than 60% of the time.

What we had troulble with in D&D and IH is identifying with characters that were so much larger than life. My group likes a more mundane playstyle, where we can see the characters as ordinary people, and not superheroes. Grim Tales and WHFRP2 are the best fits for us, because the characters still have to fear a knife in the dark, poison, disease, and the odd lucky shot by a goblin. Neither IH nor D&D is such a game, and while they can both do heroic sword and sorcery fairly well, they do not do low fantasy or fantasy with darker or more horrific twists at all.

 

[Odhanan]

Neither IH nor D&D is such a game, and while they can both do heroic sword and sorcery fairly well, they do not do low fantasy or fantasy with darker or more horrific twists at all.

I agree that IH and D&D may not be appropriate for gaming groups who want to play mundane characters, since IH and D&D characters are essentially larger than life. However, I disagree that IH and D&D wouldn't be able to reproduce dark and horrific twists. "Heroic sword and sorcery" is not the opposite to "dark and horrific fantasy".

The horror and darkness of a game doesn't depend on the amount of hit points a character has, unless you let this rule parameter define every facet of your role-playing. Conan is the most larger than life fantasy hero I can think of, and on occasion he can face some pretty horrific stuff in Howard's stories! This kind of horror or dark fantasy stories, Iron Heroes can reproduce very well, in my opinion.

 

[Wik]

5) Understand that an IH party may be a bit stronger than a D&D party at low levels (1st-3rd). A berserker 1 with the right traits is a bit more robust than his barbarian cousin, and trait abilities like Mighty Build and Weapon Bond can make certain PCs into damage monsters right off the bat. I'd assume the party is one level higher when setting ELs from 1st-3rd level.

I would second this. In fact, when I ran an Iron Heroes adventure for 1st level PCs, I was blown away by just how easily they pushed aside every encounter.

I used a large number of 1st and 2nd level warriors, and ran them intelligently (using their power attack wisely, setting up flank attacks, etc...). They were decimated. The group burned through a 4th level caster in one round using missile weapons - I didn't think two 1st level PCs with bows could inflict upwards of 25 points of damage! (no crits)

I also threw many dire boars at the group, and I think only one PC got hit (and remember, IH PCs have much lower ACs). Even the Amalgam creature (from Monte Cook's Year's Best d20) Boar/Human hybrid wasn't much of a match against the Weapon Master, who killed it in two rounds (and that was only because she missed in the first round).

We had fun, but it felt like the PCs were incredibly over-powered for what I thought would have been a very tough adventure for 1st level PCs. And did I mention that no one even really used stunts, challenges, or tokens?

***

I have used the Arcanist, and I find it worked alright - the Player had a lot of fun playing one, and we didn't really think it was too powered. I did find the arcanist's free ranged attack to be a little bit annoying - it seemed a little too magical for a game that's supposed to be grim and gritty. Our mage also used Enlarge quite often on his teammates, who were terrified of him (since they knew if he failed an enlarge roll, something bad was going to happen to them...) I think, thanks to the RP elements of our group, the mage wasn't the powerhouse he could have been, but still. I would've preferred a more D&D-like caster.

 

[hong]

So instead of Sir D&D wielding his +5 Dragon-Bane Holy Greatsword vs. the Dragon, we have IH the Mighty wielding an ordinary greatsword (well, maybe masterwork), but IH is badass enough that he can take on the Dragon too.

... that probably depends on the dragon.

My impression thus far is that IH basically has a flatter power curve than D&D. At lower levels, an IH character will generally be tougher and have more abilities than a same-level D&D character. At high levels (say 15+), the D&D character including their gear will reach, and eventually overtake what the IH character is capable of.

Don't get me wrong; characters in IH are still much more OTT than those in d20 Modern, Grim Tales, etc. But here's a short list of what D&D characters have that IH characters don't:

- AC/weapon/stat buffs. IH's higher starting stats and class defense bonus go some way to replacing this, but 760,000 gp worth of bling plus spells takes some replacing. Eg the +5 holy dragonbane sword does a minimum 7 + 4d6 points of bonus damage vs dragons, on top of the +7 attack bonus, and few people in IH can match that.

- Addendum to the above: ways to bypass DR. DR 20/magic is trivial for a high-level D&D party, but a very big deal for an IH party. One fiendish dire bear (DR 10/+3 using 3.0E rules) nearly caused a TPK for our 9th level party some years back, because we didn't have +3 weapons; I'd hate to have to face that on a regular basis.

- Game-transforming powers: flight, teleport, scry, etc. Just the first two alone leave an IH party at a disadvantage unless the terrain is tailored to them: enclosed spaces in dungeons, basically. But dungeons aren't a huge part of the IH zeitgeist.

- Resurrect, dispel magic and remove curse. While IH characters don't generally have instakill powers, D&D monsters still do. Things like dominate and confusion are particularly bad if you can't get rid of them (as Ruleslawyer mentioned above). Lack of resurrect also makes it very hard to sustain a prolonged campaign if you're at high levels and want to use D&D opposition.

Now I think that all of this is GOOD. One of the reasons many people find D&D hard to run at high levels is precisely because of all the game-breaking superpowers available to PCs. Taking them out makes IH a lot easier to run, not to mention less mood-breaking if you're not after a supers game. But the flipside is that D&D monsters also have superpowers, so using them in IH is going to require some careful planning.

Also, I'm not sure that IH combat really is inherently slower than D&D combat. A lot of it is probably down to familiarity -- if you know what a game is like, it'll play much faster than otherwise, and on this board at least, people are probably much more familiar with D&D than with IH. Certainly tokens should be a breeze compared to spells and spell slots; challenges are basically like cut-down Power Attack and Expertise; and any extra tactical options should still be more straightforward in play than choosing which spell to cast, or which item to use.

 

[hong]

The group burned through a 4th level caster in one round using missile weapons - I didn't think two 1st level PCs with bows could inflict upwards of 25 points of damage! (no crits)

? Two 1st level D&D PCs with Rapid Shot could do the same....

 

[Wik]

? Two 1st level D&D PCs with Rapid Shot could do the same....

Maybe. But in IH, it was one archer and one character with a crossbow. I realize it's altogether possible in D&D - in fact, if it were D&D, I would expect the mage could contribute an extra 2-5 damage thanks to magic missile...

I just wasn't too thrilled in seeing characters who don't roll crits or anything to inflict so much damage in one round. And I saw enough of that in IH that I can honestly say that at lower levels, IH is definately more powerful.

 

[ruleslawyer]

.Also, I'm not sure that IH combat really is inherently slower than D&D combat. A lot of it is probably down to familiarity -- if you know what a game is like, it'll play much faster than otherwise, and on this board at least, people are probably much more familiar with D&D than with IH. Certainly tokens should be a breeze compared to spells and spell slots; challenges are basically like cut-down Power Attack and Expertise; and any extra tactical options should still be more straightforward in play than choosing which spell to cast, or which item to use.

Seconded. I played D&D for four-plus years before adopting IH, and we're already at the same combat resolution speed IMC.