What are everyones thoughts on Iron Heroes?

[Jackelope King]

When I first heard about it, IH jumped to the top of my "must buy" list. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on it.

 

[Merlion]

And, CR is very useful if you follow those wealth guidelines.

CR has been more or less useless in every game I've played in or run regardless of how wealth was handled. If nothing else than because its not very good at dealing with a difference in party size. Most of the games I've played in included 6+ players instead of the usual 4, and the one of the ones I ran only had 2.


Also, how does one really follow the wealth guidlines? I mean you can never be sure exactly when a level is going to be gained. One would have to precisely add up each and every item of treasure or money you included, and try and compensate for the changing level of the party all the time.


I think its a bad system, and I think emmeshing magic items that much isnt really a very good idea. Of course thats partly because I also dislike it...I'd prefer to have the option of classes standing on their own abilities...thats one of the things I like about Arcana Unearthed. Since most of the classes have a wide variety of abilites..and since feats are allowed to do more...it can be less of an issue.

It would probably be interesting to see how Iron Heroes handles all this, but if its a totally different paradigm it might not be that useful for standard DnD.

 

[BlackMoria]

About Iron Heroes: I am afraid that the new rules will make the combat system heavier than it already is, and thus combat will last even longer than in regular D&D. Any clue about that?

Playtester here.... I can't get into any detail due to NDA but our group which playtested Iron Heroes and the Iron Heroes bestiary did not find any difference in combat between IH and core rules as far as time is concerned. On the surface, it may appear that the nature of the IH rules makes for longer combats but it takes about the same amount of time...... the caveat being equal familiarity with the core and IH rules. The first several combats will take more time as players and the DM get familiar with the IH rules.

I'm curious about the management of combat from the DM's perspective -- is there a "tokenless" method for DMs?

And I'm very curious about the magic system.

I am looking forward to discovering the answers!

The Iron Heroes bestiary has a novel system for doing NPCs, making it possible to make any sort of NPC from 1st to 20th level in under 5 minutes per NPC. Seriously....under 5 minutes.

Due to NDA concerns, I can't get into the any detail on the magic system. That said, it has been mentioned that magic is inherently dangerous in IH. Dangerous to the caster as well. With consequences for spell failure or miscasting depend on school of magic. If you like playing a character who takes chances and enjoys the notion of being 'hero or zero', then you will like the arcanist.

 

[GlassJaw]

Black Company, Grim Tales and Dark Legacies have all handled my d20 gritty factors pretty well but this looks to add some "omph" to the grit and be low magic as opposed to purely low powered.

So are you saying those settings/rulesets are "low-powered"? I certainly wouldn't agree but whatever.

I'm skeptical of IH. My initial impression (from what I've seen/read) is that instead of a 20th level fighter having a +5 sword, the IH 20th level fighter will have a BAB of +25. If that ends up being the case, I'll pass. *shrug*

Also, the claim that an IH character will be able to stand up to any creature of a comparable CR from any book is a strong one. I really want to see how this gets accomplished. If it takes some hand-waving on the DM's part, I'll probably pass as well.

 

[Slobber Monster]

CR has been more or less useless in every game I've played in or run regardless of how wealth was handled. If nothing else than because its not very good at dealing with a difference in party size. Most of the games I've played in included 6+ players instead of the usual 4, and the one of the ones I ran only had 2.

I DM a group of eight every week and I still consider CR and EL to be useful guidelines. The thing with larger groups is you usually need to increase the EL by adding more lower CR opponents or special circumstances, than by simply using higher CR creatures. The problem with higher base CR creatures is that they often have special abilities or DR which is too hard for lower level characters to overcome, or the damage of their melee attacks is so high they ten to one-shot kill PC's.

 

[Eltern]

I hate character dependence on magic items to be "cool," for flavor reasons. As such, I'm really excited about this book, especially the token system for more tatical combat. However, I pretty much just run store-bought adventures, so I need to be able to pit IH characters against standard D&D characters and monsters with minimal trouble. I can handwave away items, just say that the bad guy was using a normal sword, but use the stats of the +3 shocking weapon, but if it's significantly more than that, there will be trouble.

Any thoughts on that, playtesters? I want to use IH in Shackled City!

 

[devilbat]

I am hoping it will be a good potential system for a modified Game of Thrones campaign.

Thats exactly the type of game I'm looking forward to trying IH with.

I was fortunate enough to get into one of the IH games at Gen Con. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Any thoughts on that, playtesters? I want to use IH in Shackled City!

I've been thinking about doing the exact same thing.

The temptation to really run this system through and see how it deals with a traditional DnD adventure is truly powerful.

 

[Slobber Monster]

I don't buy many different RP games, since as it is I only have time for one session a week. For any other gaming the people I know would rather go with board or video games. Still IH has me interested enough I'll probably take a look at it. Unfortunately my 3.5e campaign is at least a year from wrapping up, and I had already wanted to follow with Sopranos style mafia game. So it might be a while before I get to use it.

 

[Belen]

Bleh...I wrote this one off when they described the tokens. I do not need even more complex gamist options for combat.

Midnight's Heroic Paths are a far better utility to cut down on the need for items. It is sad because I thought it was a great idea when first mentioned, but everything I have seen since has been a turn off.