IKRPG - balance questions

[sonofzeal]

Greetings all!

I'm fairly new to IKRPG and really enjoying it so far. Working off of 2d6/3d6 reduces the swingy nature of d20s, the dual-class system makes for varied and interesting characters, and the tiered advancement scheme feels fluid and natural.

That said, the balance seems kind of wonky. I get that some things are more combat-focused than others, but Humans seem far better than Gobbers (and that's even before considering the social issues of being a Gobber, or the massive number of classes you're restricted from), Terror and other attacks that target Willpower inevitably fail, and Warcaster/Warlocks just rule.

Has anyone else here played it, and if so what did you think of the balance? Is there something I'm missing, or do you have houserules set up to smooth it over? And, what are your favorite character concepts in the system?

[Airk]

I've played it, and honestly, I feel like it has nothing to recommend it as a system. Everything it does has been done better elsewhere. Balance is only one of its many issues.

Game has an interesting setting, and that's about the best thing I can say about it.

[sonofzeal]

I've played it, and honestly, I feel like it has nothing to recommend it as a system. Everything it does has been done better elsewhere. Balance is only one of its many issues.

Game has an interesting setting, and that's about the best thing I can say about it.

Oh? What other issues did you find?

And, just to clarify, this was the actual IKRPG you were playing, not the Iron Kingdoms d20 system, right?

[Airk]

Oh? What other issues did you find?

And, just to clarify, this was the actual IKRPG you were playing, not the Iron Kingdoms d20 system, right?

Correct. The IKRPG.

Issues include:
Social skills are a mess - basing them on no stat in particular sounds like a good idea until you realize that outside of like, intimidation, it makes no sense to base these skills on any of the stats the game actually has. ("I'm going to roll Oratory+Agility!")
Monstrous variation in terms of character effectiveness
Tons of trap choices in terms of advancement
The line between "trivial" and "TPK" in combat is very narrow, and even worse in a party where some characters are combat monsters and others are not.
Skills end up being pretty useless, because they are heavily overshadowed by stats and the ability to roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 in terms of how good you are at something.
...EXCEPT that skills are often "trained only" which makes the skill list into less a list of "what you are good at" and more a list of "What you are allowed to try"
Skill list is also really random, with some skills seeming hilariously broad ("Negotiation","Detection") and others extremely narrow ("Law","Jumping") and still manages to have "blind spots" where you feel like there really should be a roll for a skill here, but can't find one.
In spite of being a "skill point" system, your character is basically locked in to what they can do by their careers - a character who doesn't have an appropriate career can spend a year on a sailing vessel and still not be able to roll Sailing. At all. Because they can't put any points into it because it's not in their career, and they're not allowed to roll it without training.
Magic "system" not really deserving of the name, mostly just a list of different ways to do indifferent amounts of damage in combat.
System basically an incredibly generic "roll 2d6 and add a modifier" system with all the usual arbitrary target numbers with nothing modern or otherwise recommendable. Except maybe for the Battletech-esque Steamjack building system, which is only accessible to like 2 careers.
Tier based advancement system interacts weirdly with careers with wildly differing priorities - some career combinations will stop having useful ways to spend skill points very quickly (I guess I'll put a point into "Animal Handling"), while others will find that they don't really have many worthwhile "abilities".

None of these are huge killers by themselves, but there are just so many issues with the game, and so few actual good reasons to USE it that it wound up to being a deeply disappointing game for my group, who all eventually concurred that we were having what fun we were having in spite of the system, rather than because of it.

[sonofzeal]

Correct. The IKRPG.

Issues include:
Social skills are a mess - basing them on no stat in particular sounds like a good idea until you realize that outside of like, intimidation, it makes no sense to base these skills on any of the stats the game actually has. ("I'm going to roll Oratory+Agility!")
Monstrous variation in terms of character effectiveness
Tons of trap choices in terms of advancement
The line between "trivial" and "TPK" in combat is very narrow, and even worse in a party where some characters are combat monsters and others are not.
Skills end up being pretty useless, because they are heavily overshadowed by stats and the ability to roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 in terms of how good you are at something.
...EXCEPT that skills are often "trained only" which makes the skill list into less a list of "what you are good at" and more a list of "What you are allowed to try"
Skill list is also really random, with some skills seeming hilariously broad ("Negotiation","Detection") and others extremely narrow ("Law","Jumping") and still manages to have "blind spots" where you feel like there really should be a roll for a skill here, but can't find one.
In spite of being a "skill point" system, your character is basically locked in to what they can do by their careers - a character who doesn't have an appropriate career can spend a year on a sailing vessel and still not be able to roll Sailing. At all. Because they can't put any points into it because it's not in their career, and they're not allowed to roll it without training.
Magic "system" not really deserving of the name, mostly just a list of different ways to do indifferent amounts of damage in combat.
System basically an incredibly generic "roll 2d6 and add a modifier" system with all the usual arbitrary target numbers with nothing modern or otherwise recommendable. Except maybe for the Battletech-esque Steamjack building system, which is only accessible to like 2 careers.
Tier based advancement system interacts weirdly with careers with wildly differing priorities - some career combinations will stop having useful ways to spend skill points very quickly (I guess I'll put a point into "Animal Handling"), while others will find that they don't really have many worthwhile "abilities".

None of these are huge killers by themselves, but there are just so many issues with the game, and so few actual good reasons to USE it that it wound up to being a deeply disappointing game for my group, who all eventually concurred that we were having what fun we were having in spite of the system, rather than because of it.

Weird, my experience has been very different so far.

Social skills I don't mind too much. Oratory+Agility doesn't make much sense, but Seduction+Agility might, and that's explicitly up to DM discretion anyway. Intelligence and Perception are probably the easiest for the players the justify in most cases.

The "trivial"/"TPK" line hasn't been very narrow for us. It actually seems far more forgiving than many other systems I've played in, what with relatively gentle Critical Injury tables. We did have one character death when someone rolled triple-1 on it, but usually it's something someone else can snap them out of in a round.

I'm not sure where you're coming from on the magic system being exclusively about damage. I mean, yeah there's not a huge difference between the various 2-Cost damaging spells, but only about 20% of the spell list is about doing damage directly. There's a huge number of buff, debuff, battlefield control, and utility spells. My latest character has a defensive buff, an offensive buff, an upkeep spell to prevent knockdown around them, a spell to speak to the dead, a debuff, an attack spell, a spell to make a rock wall, and a spell to shut down nearby non-Warjack meckanica. That's a pretty wide variety.

I mean, I get that not all career combinations will be equally viable. Builds with only pure-combat careers will run out of useful skills, etc. But by the time you really end up painting yourself into a corner, the system gives you the opportunity to add a third, or fourth, career. Don't have Sailing after a year at sea, and struggling to find useful skills/abilities? Multiclass into Pirate, for a whole new set of options!

I've never once seen an RPG system worth a darn where players couldn't accidentally screw up their own builds. The price of customization is the possibility of self-sabotage. But with some forward planning, or that failing a flexible DM, it's a lot more forgiving than most I've seen.