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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 2937444" data-attributes="member: 537">... that probably depends on the dragon. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />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.</blockquote>

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