Iron Heroes... good or bad?!

[Melcar]

From this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?624446-Why-the-desire-for-low-magic/page3) thread:



Iron Heroes classes were built with the assumption that heroes' mundane abilities are just that good they don't need it, so for a low magic game.

So, that sounds really interesting... we usually play low magic campaigns - for the most part - but it often feel like being shoehorned into a poor fit... this might just be the solution.

Is there anyone who might be able to tell me about this book? Is is a good or bad 3rd party book, is is balanced etc. Anything really about this supplement would be greatly apprecianted. It sounds super cool on the face of it, but its completely new to me, so anyone who has experience with the supplement please chime in!


Thanks!

[Scots Dragon]

It's created by Mike Mearls, who has some controversial baggage at the moment, so I'd keep that in mind.

Beyond that, the Conan d20 rules by Mongoose Publishing are pretty good at basically the same set of goals, without the association with Mike Mearls.

If you want a more low magic and high adventure set of rules in general, you'd be best off maybe considering The One Ring.

[Particle_Man]

Back in the day I had fun running Iron Heroes. My comments are running from these distant memories, and may be inaccurate.

Basically it gives various martial characters "something to do" in the form of tokens and their management. So the various forms of token management becomes a sort of "minigame". So between class tokens and certain feat tokens, it becomes a matter of each player deciding which token minigames they want to play as part of the main rpg game. And there is one warrior class for those that don't want token management, IIRC.

I liked what they did with NPC classes in the game (so you could get a quick and dirty "bad guy sorcerer", which was nice). The Iron Heroes bestiary was pretty cool too, what with fighting mountains, a "skeleton factory" monster, and the "death field" skull (rather nasty if you have them around a group of innocent villagers).

It also is more generous with skills (via skill groups) and the one "skill dude" class does very well (including getting a literally unbeatable bluff as a capstone ability).

Magic is optional, but dangerous (and there are various ways to make magic items dangerous), which is interesting.

That said, if you use 3.5 monsters, note that you may have to rejigger them a little to make sure the Iron Heroes don't become Rusted Pancakes, especially at high levels.

Oh, and in addition to the various types of combat tokens, there were also various types of social tokens, which made for a surprisingly robust social ruleset for a "Gritty Combat" d20.

Amusingly, the default diplomacy DCs are raised, making initial meetings between neutral npcs breakdown to become slightly more hostile, perhaps fitting the rough nature of the default setting. But, hey it at least gives a motivation to use those social tokens! :smallsmile:

[StSword]

Hardly a perfect system but I figure I'd weigh in since I inspired this thread.

The meat of Iron Heroes is the classes, so here's a rundown.

Archer- Get tokens by spending time aiming, has mid BAB for melee combat, but BAB superior to a fighter for ranged combat, can spend tokens to do all sort of fancy tricks.

Armiger- Tank class that gets token from absorbing damage (note that armor is damage reduction in IH).

Berserker- The barbarian equivalent, gets token from seeing friends defeated, getting attacked, or spending their time stroking their rage.

Executioner- Assassin types, they start battle with tokens to represent their knowledge of how to kill things.

Harriers- Similar to the scout class, mobile combatants who run around avoiding blows and using their speed to increase their damage.

Hunters- Ranger types who gain tokens from studying the battlefield.

Man-At-Arms- The Fighter equivalent, not only do they get bonus feats but they have wildcard feats that they can choose from day to day.

Thief- Well duh

Weapon Master- Kensai the base class, get tokens from fighting a singular opponent to represent combo moves designed to set up a finisher.

Arcanists- Think Warlocks if warlock pacts came from scholarly pursuit of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and other Forbidden Knowledge, so it's Mr Exposition ala Giles from Buffy in between shooting arcane energy into the faces of ones opponents or casting spells by making channeling checks that might go wrong.

And all built on the model that they should be able to face monsters of the appropriate CR without magic items.

Of course, certain monster abilities are still going to be problematic.

There's a book with crossover rules for those wanting an Iron Heroes/regular DnD and I think Arcana Unearthed games, it's been years so my memory is rusty.

So I'd say the question is "Do those classes sound like something you want to play, whether in an IH game or otherwise?"

I've always wanted a game where IH is on another continent that just got discovered or something, and have hijinks ensue.