Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes
Too much magic in your game and not enough fantasy? Iron Heroes aims to please.
Iron Heroes is a d20 fantasy ruleset. It’s billed as an "alternative player’s handbook", but I find that term misleading. There’s enough material that’s been tweaked and rewritten so that it would be false to say that there was seemless integration between Iron Heroes and the material in the PHB, but that’s what the term "alternative player’s handbook" implies. Otherwise, if Iron Heroes is an "alternative player’s handbook", you could make the case that so is Green Ronin’s True 20. Iron Heroes is really a deviation from the core d20 rules meant to support the heroic action genre found in such TV shows as Hercules and Xena or movies like The Scorpion King. You can not seamlessly drop Iron Heroes material in a standard d20 fantasy game or vice-versa. But that’s belaboring much too long on what really is just a point of advertising.
The book itself is very nice. It starts out with a lot of color illustrations and as things progress it drifts to a smaller number of black-and-white images. That’s a clever way of doing things. You start off with a big punch and by late in the book you ease up so the more serious readers have something to chew on. Layout is good as is the index and table of contents. The art is very nice for a d20 book, though WotC still reigns supreme in this regard. There’s only one picture in there that I would call a gratuitous use of the female form. That being said, a lot of the Iron Heroes women arc their backs in combat.
The Introduction defines the book. What “action fantasy” is and how the book aims to achieve gaming in an action fantasy setting. It is meant for people new to the hobby. I think it’s a little optimistic to hope that someone new to RPGs will be picking up Iron Heroes with no one to guide them, but it’s as good an introduction as any. Character generation is outlined here as well. I recommend not skipping over the Introduction as there’s a lot in there that tells you what makes Iron Heroes game mechanics different from D&D.
Chapter One covers ability scores, what they are used for, and how to determine them. Essentially it is 36 point buy. A few sample arrays are given, which I like. But the rules suggest starting out at 10 and then using normal 24 point buy. I mention this because later in the review I’m going to be posting an Iron Heroes character for the reader to compare to their d20 campaign and I don’t want anyone calling foul. It strikes me as high powered considering that Iron Heroes characters are supposed to be compatible with the Monster Manual and there are plenty of other factors that I would say even things up. Then again, there is very little magic available in Iron Heroes, so maybe over the course of a campaign it makes sense.
Chapter Two is Traits. Traits are a little like bonus starting feats, only weaker and stronger depending on what you choose. Traits are basically what you get instead of racial ability bonuses. You get two traits related to Background, Mental, and Physical character development. This allows you to customize your starting race. There’s a nice range of traits given and I didn’t see any obvious gaps in character themes.
Chapter Three covers pages 24 to 72. I will not be covering all the character classes in detail. Most of the Iron Heroes character classes have a token pool available to them. Some of them start out with this pool at the beginning of every encounter, others gain the pool points by taking actions in combat. Others get no points at all. So an archer gains points by holding aim on a target, an executioner gets points at the start of a combat, and the man-at-arms gets no pool at all. All of the classes get a lot of feats. While none of them – with one exception – have any magic spells they can cast, they all have abilities that range from what you’d expect in a gritty setting at low level to what you’d expect in a Hollywood blockbuster at high level. To paraphrase Arthur C Clarke, some of these abilities are so powerful as to be indistinguishable from magic. For example at 20th level the hunter can make an opponent charging him trip because of the terrain. Say what? “Even if the ground is clear, your position requires the foe to move across a barely noticeable pothole, an exposed root, or similar hazard”. That being said, spontaneous pothole creation happens enough in Pennsylvania, why not in Iron Heroes? All classes are given suggested roles and tactics. I liked that touch as I’m not the world’s best tactician and the extra clue is always nice.
The Arcanist is the wizard in Iron Heroes. The class is given here, but I’ll lump it in with the magic section later on. All of the classes gain a lot of feats. I’ll touch on that shortly. But trust me, you’ll burn through those feat selections in a nonce.
Chapter Four covers skills and ability checks. There’s nothing much to see here if you’ve played a lot of d20 before. However, the skills can operate differently than d20. Diplomacy is an excellent example. You can only improve the disposition of your target once and the target numbers are higher. Iron Heroes also lets you pick skill groups. A skill group is several skills bundled into one. So you can get four skills raises for the cost of one skill point. As near as I can tell there are no cross-class skills, which I like. However you can’t take another skill group if your class does not have access to it, which makes sense.
Chapter Five starts at page 114 and covers Feats. Lots and lots of feats. You don’t get magic items in Iron Heroes, but you get a lot of feats. Mastery Feats expand on the normal concept of feats and have mastery ratings that are given in each class table. So a Thief can gain the maximum Social Mastery rating of 10 at level 17, but a Berserker will only get as high as rating 7. Mastery feats have no other prerequisites as a general rule. This section could conceivably be cut and pasted into standard d20, but few d20 classes gain enough feats to really capitalize on all the choices.
Chapter Six involves roleplaying. Suggestions are given on playing a combat character in an action-oriented world. A sample setting is given, the Swordlands and a sample race, The First. Elves, Orcs, and others are not touched upon. The setting is not really even an outline. Frankly, you can go to just about any homebrew website and find more setting detail than what’s given here.
Chapter Seven covers equipment. Money is identical to that found in D&D. I’ll be honest, I was hoping for a 1:100 jump from coin to coin rather than the standard 1:10. Weapons are given a rewrite. For example, a dagger is no longer a dagger. A dagger is a weapon of type dagger, finesse and then you have to decide if it’s piercing or slash. If the dagger is too small you subtract damage, too large and you add damage – in both cases suffering a hit penalty. There are fewer types of armor in Iron Heroes but they do have damage reduction in addition to the traditional bonus to armor class. In keeping with the genre, most people don’t get heavy armor. There are no types of weapons or armor other than masterwork. A shame, I was hoping to see the return of Arcana Unearthed dire weapons. The sparse equipment table is appropriate to the setting, but one is left wondering what do they adventures do with their gold? The answer is of course that they don’t get much gold in general, but you could give the party a mountain of the stuff and there would be no way for them to spend it. This is very much a game balance issue and should be considered a warning to DMs who have a habit of slipping up and giving out too much treasure. This game can handle the PCs getting lots of abilities; it can’t handle lots of equipment.
Page 173 marks the start of chapter 8: combat. This chapter should have had an example of play. There have been enough changes made to the combat system to make it non-intuitive even though it works basically like D&D. Grenade weapons make an appearance here, though they were absent from the equipment section. Combat Challenges and Stunts are new to d20 and presented here. A combat challenge is something like forcing an opponent to move if you hit successfully or increasing your damage reduction if you accept a defense penalty. Stunts allow for skill use in combat and primarily server to disrupt opponents or get the jump on them. I would have liked to see the book delve more into these. Examples are given, but I would have honestly preferred to see an offensive and defensive sample stunt associated with every skill. There’s a lot of pressure on the DM in this section and a silver tongued, argumentative player has a lot of leeway. The ideas that are brought forth are very cool, but here again some of the abilities granted in these skill checks go beyond what is traditionally found in D&D, such as interrupting a dragon’s breath weapon. Adjudication of these abilities is non-trivial and quite honestly some hand holding is needed in this chapter.
Chapter Nine covers adventuring topics, like how hard it is to break down a door. This is nothing new here other than an extension of the encumbrance table which is nice, but given that nobody has any equipment to encumber them in Iron Heroes the inclusion is a head-scratcher.
Chapter Ten is the magic chapter! Hooray! The magic system is non-standard d20. I’ll say up front that I prefer the Channeler from the Midnight setting, you’ll see why in a bit. The Iron Heroes system is a mechanical overhaul of the d20 magic system, but thematically it is very similar. It’s a little hard to describe in brief. With every level the Arcanist gains a number of mana points. You allocate the number of mana points to cast a spell, you can go into negative numbers, but then you have to make a saving throw to avoid ability score damage. These mana points form the spell. Now you can cast the spell, but here I think there may be a typo. To cast the spell you need to beat a roll of: mana used + 5 + Intelligence modifier. Your d20 roll is modified by your rating in a given spell school of the usual traditions: Abjuration, Evocation, Necromancy, etcetera. So, essentially the smarter you are the harder it is to cast a spell. What, as they say, is up with that? I’m guessing you subtract your intelligence modifier. To give you an idea of how hard things are, at level 10 your secondary school rating is 5, which isn’t modified by diddly. You can safely use a small amount of mana to do 2d6 points of damage or the equivalent effect in other schools, but an Arcanist is pretty much going to be a secondary support class and not a heavy hitter. This absolutely nails the role of spellcaster sidekicks in the genre.
Now, if you are anything like me, you are now wondering what the minimum level the bad guy has to be to turn into a giant snake. This is absolutely critical. If you don’t understand how important it is for the bad guy to turn into a snake, Iron Heroes may not be for you. The answer, as best I can tell, is seven. A little low, but then bad guys can’t turn into giant snakes often enough.
The problem is, as I mentioned, the lack of theme. For example, if you’re thinking about being a fire wizard who turns into a fire snake, you can do that within the mechanics, but the mechanics don’t encourage that any more than they encourage such specialization in the core rules. In D&D a diviner specialist can have a bunch of feats enhancing evocation spellcasting and the spell selection can be as random as you please. This is carried over to Iron Heroes.
Additionally, each spell is supposed to have slight variations of effect upon each casting. This, like the combat system, puts a lot of work on the DM. Either the DM has to come up with each special effect or he or she has to completely trust the player to do it without that player eeking out extra benefits from the spell. This is why I prefer the more gearhead mechanics of the Midnight setting. Just as generic, but you don’t have to worry about a spell’s aurora of light blinking on and off in Morse code. Is that stupid? Of course it is. But I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: rules should not just support happy healthy functional groups; they should also work for the dysfunctional argumentative groups, because those are the groups are the ones who need the most support from a store bought product.
Finally we have an appendix that basically wins the 5 out of 5 rating from me. By this point I was going to give the book 4 out of 5. However, when I saw the lengthy conversion notes to go from Iron Heroes to D&D, I was gratified. This was a problem that weighed heavily in my mind as I wondered if I would be able to play any part of this game. With the conversion notes, it’s easy enough for me to beg my DM to let me play an Iron Heroes character with the stipulation that I don’t get to collect any treasure and that the recommended amount of treasure will be ratcheted down as if I was not there. Or I can keep my yummy-yummy magic items, but my token costs – remember tokens? – would be doubled. So, if the class does not use tokens, don’t import it into D&D, which is what Iron Heroes recommends anyway although the Harrier is a non-token using class that escapes special notice. For the record, though I love the Harrier class, I would not recommend it for import into a standard D&D game. That said, feat importation to regular D&D is covered and notes are given for Arcana Unearthed as well. It’s a really good appendix.
Conclusions
This is the definitive d20 heroic action fantasy book. Hence, it wins the 5 out of 5 from me. I wish there were less pains taken to make it stand on its own so that more room could have been given to cover things like combat, which is what this game is about. I already know how to break down a door, but stunts are new; this book assumes the opposite.
While reading this I was thinking how great a match it would be for the Valus d20 setting or Midnight and to a lesser extent Murchad’s Legacy. You could use it with Morningstar as there isn’t a lot of spellcaster support in that setting even though it is very high magic. I would not use it for settings like Eberron or others that have magic-as-technology feel to them.
In closing, I’d like to highlight that the “perfect” score does not mean a perfect book. This isn’t one. However, it does successfully create a genre within d20 gaming and it does a very fine job of it. If you are mining this product for ideas, I think it is a good value. If you are looking for heroic sword and steel gaming that echoes of Conan and Camelot, this is your book.
Appendix
Is this the first d20 review with an appendix? That, as they say, would be totally fabulous! Anyway, this is my iron hero, presented here so the reader can get an idea of a 1st level character:
Shasta, Queen of the Leopard People
S 14 D 18 C 14 I 10 W 10 Ch 14
Traits: High Born, Inspiring Presence
Skill Groups: Agility (+8) Athletics (+6)
Skills: Diplomacy (+6) Handle Animal (+6) Listen (+4) Ride (+8) Sense Motive (+4) Spot (+4)
Feats: Dodge, Weapon Finesse
HP: 10
Leather Armor (DR 1d2), Short Sword, Javelin, Traveler’s Outfit, Light Warhorse, 6gp
Technically, Shasta can not be queen, but phooey on that. They’re a very small group of Leopard People, OK? Also, there are no rules in the book for buying a giant leopard as a mount. This is a critical oversight and I hope it is included in some errata shortly.
no offense, the english is ok but I think with one more read you can really polish it.
