Quick Iron Heroes Primer???

[Old One]

Can anyone recommend a good IH primer? I just signed up for an IH game at GENCON and need to get smart(er) quick !

TIA,

~ OO

 

[Rystil Arden]

Can anyone recommend a good IH primer? I just signed up for an IH game at GENCON and need to get smart(er) quick !

TIA,

~ OO

Here's what I told the last person who I taught the system (much of this you don't have to worry about because of the pregen):

*There are no cross-class skills--if you pick a skill group your class knows, you get all the skills in the group for the price of one. Otherwise, you can just buy any skill you want.

*Armour gives a variable DR instead of AC. To compensate, classes get a base Defense bonus. Oh yeah, since Armour isn't involved, it is called Defense instead of AC now

*Most skills have cool new uses that can allow you to do fun things during combat

*Skills, attack rolls, and other checks have 'challenges'. This is where you take a preemptive penalty to a d20 roll to get a special effect if you make it anyway. This is very similar to how accelerated Climb checks work normally, but you can do it more often. The only challenge that is a bit unlike the others (but still fundamentally similar) is the defense challenge, where you take a penalty to defense to get a bit of extra DR.

*Feats have big chains of special effects, so you can take, for instance, Cleave (1) and get normal Cleave, then Cleave (3) and get Great Cleave, and then Cleave (9) and get extra attacks on every critical threat.

*In order to govern the feat chains more easily, each class has a mastery rating for different sorts of feats, and these are the only prereqs to get to the goodies on the feat chains

*Many classes have tokens that they can gain in various ways and spend for special abilities. This allows them to avoid the X uses per day syndrome. Particularly, you are playing a Berserker. They can go into rage infinitely many times per day as long as they spend some fury tokens, and they can keep the rage going by cashing in tokens. They gain tokens by getting hit, howling in fury to stoke their rage (takes up an action), or watching their allies cut down around them.

 

[ValhallaGH]

What do you mean by primer?
A quick adventure you can run through to try out some of the mechanics and get used to the combat rules changes? Check out The King Must Die!
Some advice on how to play it well and have fun? You can try the Iron Heroes forum.
Character creation? Choose a person, decide how they fight and the rest will do itself.
The condensed version of the rules? That one I can't help you with (pesky laws and morals).
Something else entirely?

 

[Old One]

These help...

Thanks, folks.

~ OO

 

[Plane Sailing]

Other tips.

The magic user in the book (arcanist) sucks, don't play it if you can help it.

Most classes can acquire tokens to fuel their special abilities. Some have an easier time of it that others.

e.g. archers get aim tokens by spending time aiming,
armigers (armour wearers) get armour tokens by your armour absorbing damage (difficult to get these!)
beserkers get fury tokens as mentioned above
executioners get executioner tokens at the start of combat and by using sense motive
hunters get tactical tokens at the start of combat and by using actions to study the battlefield
weapon masters get weapon tokens by hitting an opponent - but lose the pool when they switch opponents, so they can't use their neat powers easily against mooks.

There are also token pools that various feats provide (cleave tokens, dodge tokens, parry tokens (combat expertise), strategy tokens, manipulation tokens, stun tokens...)

Also worth mentioning that the Hunter is possibly the worse mis-named class ever It is actually a small-group-leader class, who is good at taking advantage of the terrain and helping his party to do their stuff better (he can even give his tactical tokens to them, to use as any of their token types!).

 

[JohnSnow]

The magic user in the book (arcanist) sucks, don't play it if you can help it.

Unless you find they're using the variant arcanist from True Sorcery. As it's an official alternative, and MUCH better, I imagine many DMs would opt to use that instead. It's still a very different magic system from Core, so don't try it if you're not familiar with it.

Also, when you play, look around at your environment. Get creative. IH has rules for stunts and challenges. Very often, if the DM is good, the environment can be used to good advantage. Think of every battle as a set piece for Pirates of the Caribbean and you'll have the right mindset.

If you're more than mildly interested, the pdf can be downloaded from RPGNow for $14.00. That's not free, but it's not exactly an arm and a leg either.

Other than that, come to the IH boards...you know you wanna...

I'm IronSnow over there, Val's himself, and most of the others are identifiable...

 

[Rystil Arden]

The magic user in the book (arcanist) sucks

And how! Fortunately, the GM agrees, so OO won't have to worry about that stinker--the arcanist is really only good for dangerous comic relief with occasional positive effects. I had an Abjuration specialised Arcanist play in the very first IH game I GMed. In his first encounter, he gave an enemy +4 Defense, then gave himself -4 Defense and got beaten down. The enemy with +4 Defense almost wiped out the party because they had lots of trouble hitting

 

[Old One]

Thanks all...I also hopped over to Monte's site and there is a bunch of design/sneak preview stuff there, so I have some reading to do between now and then !

~ OO

 

[JohnSnow]

I highly recommend Mike Mearls' design diaries and the Playtester previews.

It gives a pretty good sense of how the game works. Those plus the boards and you'll have a pretty good idea of the differences between IH and standard D&D.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

If you do decide to DM, pick up the Battle Box. Fiery James' staff threw in some very spiffy token tracking cards that make a great deal of sense and work.