Iron Heroes hype

[ZiggZagg]

So, I'm looking for a way to eliminate the massive gear dependency that goes along with playing standard D&D. I have heard that Iron Heroes goes a long way towards fixing this issue, and that the characters themselves are awesome, and not the gear.

So what exactly have they done to have achieved this? What makes Iron Heroes as good as it is?

[Particle_Man]

Partly they give extra bonuses to the characters, including interesting token mechanics to have them to "cool stuff".

Partly they have a hit point recovery mechanic that doesn't require magical healing.

Partly the GM advice is to change the monster powers a bit (so medusa petrification doesn't last forever, etc.) also reducing the need for magical cures.

Mainly they have about 10 classes of fighters, 1 class of thief, and 1 class of warlock (that has a dangerous "backfiring" magical mechanic which is appropriate to the setting). So the Tiers are smooshed together.

Oddly, Iron Heroes has some very nice social mechanics, which I did not expect in a "Conanesque" kind of game.

It has NPC classes where the PCs are clearly wayyyy better but an interesting way to design NPC opponents too. And the monsters in the bestiary are fun.

I had a blast running it.

[GunMage]

I'm running it right now, it's a lot of fun.

The essential changes are that the classes now have a base defense bonus which adds to your ac, negating the need for protective items, all classes have good saves all around, and armor functions as damage reduction. On top of that, the classes have something called skill groups, which are collections of similar skills that you can buy for a discount so characters have more skills than normal, and skills have little built in maneuvers you can use them for, like you can use a move action to listen in combat and give yourself a small bonus to defense or other stuff like that.

That having been said Iron Heroes assumes a low magic setting right from the get go and has a hard time working any other way. the spell casting system is a bit weak, and it can penalize you pretty hard for messing up a spell. In the world of Iron Heroes the characters are not gear dependent, but neither are they able to perform supernatural moves. Superhuman Conan-esq stuff sure, but nothing outright supernatural.

Oh yeah, and the feat system is really cool too.

[ZiggZagg]

Alright, I will have to look at things a bit closer. Reason I ask is I am trying to build my own D20 system, and trying to find a way to make the typical fantasy campaign, like D&D, but without as much gear dependency and with much better balance between classes. So low magic probably isn't in the cards, but I will take a look at what they did with their fighters and the various feats and such. I already created a new spellcasting system that makes magic not a guaranteed thing anymore, and can cause damage if you screw it up. Thanks for the input. How does the book hold up to say Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords? Would mixing them be advised?

[Cieyrin]

Mainly they have about 10 classes of fighters, 1 class of thief, and 1 class of warlock (that has a dangerous "backfiring" magical mechanic which is appropriate to the setting). So the Tiers are smooshed together.

Don't forget the Player's Companion, which includes 3 new classes, one which works well for ascetic types, another fighter type and a token based caster that I like much better than the Arcanist, given they put some thought into it rather than just slap it together at the last minute before publishing. Also, I would say that, between the core book and the Companion, they cover Fighters, Rangers, Barbarians, Rogues, Monks, Swashbucklers, Sorcerers and Spirit Shamans fairly well.


How does the book hold up to say Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords? Would mixing them be advised?

Thematically, I would say that Iron Heroes can be just as cinematic and wuxia as ToB is, though it accomplishes it a different manner without being Vancian about it. I'm a bit unsure of how well mixing ToB into IH would work, though if you meant just to include Martial Study and Martial Stance in, as well as the rest of the feats, I think you could probably get away with that, though it would probably work better by making each of the disciplines into a IH Mastery Tree. If you mean including the classes and PrCs, that may not work out so well, given there aren't any PrCs written for IH, though multiclassing is alive and well.

[Yora]

I havn't seen the game in action, but I think it's greatest strength is how much fun it looks.
I don't care for the classes, because I dislike the Tokens mechanic, but the stunts and challenges are were the real gold lies. The game encourages you to visualize the place where the fight is taking place and using anything you can find to your advantage. There are stairs: Push an enemy down. Wooden railings? Kick an enemy through them. Flip tables to create cover, throw dust at enemies faces, use a barrel of oil as an iprovised range weapon and follow it up with a thorch. It's not just "I hit it again", you're supposed to come out with creative and outrageous plans the whole time. There are a couple of simple generic maneuvers, but GMs are instructed to always have the players explain of what parts of the environment they make use. You can't just say you use a stunt to force a penalty to attack on an enemy. You also need to describe what you are doing to achieve that. A hand full of sawdust or ash, or spiting burning liquor at someones face. Ripping of a curtain and throwing it on his head, whatever you can come up with.

Stunts and Challenges can be adapted to any d20 without much need for adjustment and they are by far the most interesting parts of the game to me.

[GunMage]

Alright, I will have to look at things a bit closer. Reason I ask is I am trying to build my own D20 system, and trying to find a way to make the typical fantasy campaign, like D&D, but without as much gear dependency and with much better balance between classes. So low magic probably isn't in the cards, but I will take a look at what they did with their fighters and the various feats and such. I already created a new spellcasting system that makes magic not a guaranteed thing anymore, and can cause damage if you screw it up. Thanks for the input. How does the book hold up to say Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords? Would mixing them be advised?

Well, if you want to make your own system and take some of the stuff from it, the big things to get would be the stunts and challenges like yora mentioned and also the little skill bonus maneuvers. Also take a look at the Book of Iron Might from Malhavoc Press, which contains some of the same ideas and also a sort of maneuver system that is nonmagical.

I personally wouldn't want to mix the Iron Heroes feat/token system and the ToB maneuver system, just because the potential for stacking them could get ridiculous, but if that's your thing then maybe. Actually, the game I'm running now is pretty heavily inspired by Wuxia films, and so far the system has worked just fine for that feel, ToB does too but in a different way.

If you want to make characters less gear dependent as a whole (including spellcasters) my advice would be to add in class defense bonuses to ac, to eliminate the need for simple protective items/ magical armor, and add a similar bonus to attack rolls and damage to compensate for the lack of magic weapons, then take a look at the Book of Iron Might for maneuvers and take the skill challenges/stunts from Iron heroes and you have characters who can do a wide variety of cool things informed by their skillsets rather than their equipment.

[ZiggZagg]

I will look into the Book of Iron Might, then. Thanks.

On another note, I was looking through some files I have, and I found a "Book of Eldritch Might". Are they from the same publisher, and does it add anything interesting for spellcasting types (I'm assuming that's who it was for, anyway :-p )

[GunMage]

Yeah, it was part of a series containing the books of iron, eldritch, and divine might respectively. I'm not familiar with the other the other eldritch and divine books since my games have always had way too many options for casters anyways, but they are probably solid. Malhavoc usually printed good stuff.

[eggs]

I've been reliably unimpressed with the other __ Might Books.

If you use Iron Might, you're going to want to do most of the paperwork on it ahead of time. It gets really fiddly in play.

EDIT:
One thing that could be interesting is turning ToB into a token mechanism. But ToB plays on a much higher power level, and the Crusader/Swordsage magical schools kind of break the low-magic environment - I wouldn't expect them to combine smoothly unless every player were both dipping ToB and avoiding the magic aspects.

[Fouredged Sword]

It would be interesting if you broke down the ToB classes and made a class for each path, each with it's own system of tokens.

Tiger - Frenzy tokens - Lot of tokens whenever you crit, small pile when you charge.

Raven - Advantage Tokens - Tokens gained when you provide advantages to allies, such as when an ally hits an enemy you are helping flanking.

Devoted Spirit - Endurance Tokens - Gained slowly over time, cannot be sped up, but take no action to gain.

Diamond Mind - Focus Tokens - Gained when an attack misses or with a concentration check

Stone dragon - Stand Tokens - Tokens rapidly grow automatically, but are all lost when you move positions.

Desert Wind - Shift tokens - Gained with you move during combat.

Setting Sun - Flow Tokens - Gained by tripping or disarming foes.

Iron Heart- Heart Tokens - Gained whenever you make a save during combat

Shadow Hand - Shadow Tokens - Gained by fainting in combat as well as dealing a successful sneak attack or during a surprise round.

Now the stances become token cost to activate states that grant bonuses that last for x+mod rounds. Others can become just class features.

You want to have multiple paths, just mix and match and create your own style of play.

[ZiggZagg]

Well, after looking at both Iron Heroes and Book of Iron Might, I have to say that I am bigger fan of the Challenge and Stunt system than the maneuver system from Iron Might. Just seemed a little more well thought out to me.

As for changing the ToB Disciplines to token mechanics, I don't think I am going to adopt the Token Mechanics from Iron Heroes, but I am thinking of taking a lot of ideas from the game, and breaking the ToB Disciplines and abilities up amongst a couple of classes. Give the Iron Heart and Stone Dragon stuff to a reworked fighter, Devoted Spirit to Paladin type classes, White Raven to a commander class, etc.

Thanks for all the input so far. I can definitely see the allure that Iron Heroes gives to people that want their characters the be bad ass, rather than their gear.

[Cieyrin]

It would be interesting if you broke down the ToB classes and made a class for each path, each with it's own system of tokens.

Tiger - Frenzy tokens - Lot of tokens whenever you crit, small pile when you charge.

Raven - Advantage Tokens - Tokens gained when you provide advantages to allies, such as when an ally hits an enemy you are helping flanking.

Devoted Spirit - Endurance Tokens - Gained slowly over time, cannot be sped up, but take no action to gain.

Diamond Mind - Focus Tokens - Gained when an attack misses or with a concentration check

Stone dragon - Stand Tokens - Tokens rapidly grow automatically, but are all lost when you move positions.

Desert Wind - Shift tokens - Gained with you move during combat.

Setting Sun - Flow Tokens - Gained by tripping or disarming foes.

Iron Heart- Heart Tokens - Gained whenever you make a save during combat

Shadow Hand - Shadow Tokens - Gained by fainting in combat as well as dealing a successful sneak attack or during a surprise round.

Now the stances become token cost to activate states that grant bonuses that last for x+mod rounds. Others can become just class features.

You want to have multiple paths, just mix and match and create your own style of play.

I would say you could tie a lot of disciplines into existing token pools, like Cleave does for Berserkers. Tiger Claw could definitely work with Berserkers, White Raven with Tactics of the Wolf's pool, etc.

[shuyung]

I like Iron Heroes. The token pools are easier to deal with, I find, when you've got actual objects to represent them (in my case, poker chips), and I've got players who are familiar with Deadlands and Savage Worlds (and poker) so the handling of the chips is smooth and doesn't require any real extra effort to track.

As for gear, you're making up for external dependencies with intrinsic bonuses. The premise of the Iron Heroes base setting (and much of the mechanical design), is that magic is horribly dangerous, and best to stay away from it. Even magic items carry terrible risks. As such, if you attempt to give an Iron Heroes class regular d20 magical gear (as opposed to the drawback-laden Iron Heroes magical gear), the interaction is going to result in unwanted unforeseen consequences for the DM.

Status effects and healing are tricky, if you want to have things like medusae, basilisks, and even the plain old ghouls and ghasts. Because there is basically no magical healing, nor any real protection against such things, you have to be very careful. Paralysis and stoning, and even poison and non-physical damage are vastly more powerful in Iron Heroes than in a basic d20 setting.

[Cieyrin]

I like Iron Heroes. The token pools are easier to deal with, I find, when you've got actual objects to represent them (in my case, poker chips), and I've got players who are familiar with Deadlands and Savage Worlds (and poker) so the handling of the chips is smooth and doesn't require any real extra effort to track.

As for gear, you're making up for external dependencies with intrinsic bonuses. The premise of the Iron Heroes base setting (and much of the mechanical design), is that magic is horribly dangerous, and best to stay away from it. Even magic items carry terrible risks. As such, if you attempt to give an Iron Heroes class regular d20 magical gear (as opposed to the drawback-laden Iron Heroes magical gear), the interaction is going to result in unwanted unforeseen consequences for the DM.

Status effects and healing are tricky, if you want to have things like medusae, basilisks, and even the plain old ghouls and ghasts. Because there is basically no magical healing, nor any real protection against such things, you have to be very careful. Paralysis and stoning, and even poison and non-physical damage are vastly more powerful in Iron Heroes than in a basic d20 setting.

Your stats will rocket if you include d20 magic, certainly.

As for difficult monsters, it's touched on in the later parts of the core book but really delved into in Mastering Iron Heroes and the Iron Heroes Bestiary.

[ZiggZagg]

My goal isn't to combine the system of D&D and Iron Heroes. Since I am building my own system, I was looking to see what Iron Heroes did right, and use some of those elements. At the very basis of it, I'm creating a D20 game with a lack of gear dependency, similar to Iron Heroes, but that still uses spellcasters in a more general sense, albeit the magic system itself will be redone and the spells rebalanced in an attempt to keep them from dominating gameplay. Magic gear will be exceedingly rare. I want the characters to be bad ass because of the things they can do, not the stuff they wield.

[ngilop]

I havn't seen the game in action, but I think it's greatest strength is how much fun it looks.
I don't care for the classes, because I dislike the Tokens mechanic, but the stunts and challenges are were the real gold lies. The game encourages you to visualize the place where the fight is taking place and using anything you can find to your advantage. There are stairs: Push an enemy down. Wooden railings? Kick an enemy through them. Flip tables to create cover, throw dust at enemies faces, use a barrel of oil as an iprovised range weapon and follow it up with a thorch. It's not just "I hit it again", you're supposed to come out with creative and outrageous plans the whole time. There are a couple of simple generic maneuvers, but GMs are instructed to always have the players explain of what parts of the environment they make use. You can't just say you use a stunt to force a penalty to attack on an enemy. You also need to describe what you are doing to achieve that. A hand full of sawdust or ash, or spiting burning liquor at someones face. Ripping of a curtain and throwing it on his head, whatever you can come up with.

Stunts and Challenges can be adapted to any d20 without much need for adjustment and they are by far the most interesting parts of the game to me.

wait wait wait.. so Iron heroes actually made mechanics via 3rd ed rules to do what a 1st/2nd ed player did in combat via roleplaying? ( I bolded the relevant part of teh quote for reference)

SO.. I just may have found a new system to play is what You are telling me Yora. because ive never really looked at Iron heroes before (though it was some kind of steam-punk setting tbh). and what you just said makes me think I might just enjoy it.. immensly!

[Fouredged Sword]

I would then suggest you throw magic items out altogether. Make magic a living breathing force that cannot be placed in cold stone.

The problem is that if something is rare, it has the tendency to be powerful to increase the dramatic power of the item. The party will get their hands on one or more unless you flat out prevent it. This will make your game even more focused on magic items because they are even more important.

Better to do without all together.

One thing to consider is this though.

https://sites.google.com/site/avatard20/itemenhancement

Its avatar d20's non magic item enhancement system. It lets your fighter have more than just a masterwork sword without the blade having to be on fire or something.

[ZiggZagg]

I don't know...some of those look a little too close to magic for my taste. I am going to eliminate magic items except when I want them there. Justification is that it takes a very special ritual and material to allow an item to hold magical energy. Special materials will be kept, to keep things more dynamic, and the alchemy and crafting skills will be expanded to give characters more options with their items.