Customer Reviews

Monte Cook Presents Iron Heroes (Iron Heroes d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying

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Iron Heroes is a variant Dungeon & Dragons player's handbook. While the traditional D&D settings offer several different styles of play, it does not work for several classic fantasy settings.

Settings like Conan the Barbarian, Sinbad the Sailor, or The Lankhmar tales of Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, where the heroes rely on wits and steel to survive against monsters and evil wizards. That's what Iron Heroes provides, a setting where the fighter is king and magic is rare.

The classes in this book are based on fighting;
Armiger: Knight in Armor, Hunter: Tracking and tactics, Barbarian: Raging warrior, Archer: Master of the Bow, Executioner: Assassin, Man-at-Arms: Basic Warrior, Weapon Master: Master of one weapon, Thief: Dirty Fighter, Harrier: Mobile fighter.

This book modifies several rules;
Skill Groups: Spend 1 rank in a group to get 1 rank in all skills in that group
Feat Mastery: Feats that get stronger with additional levels

It also introduces several new rules;
Armor providing damage resistance
Base Defense Score for when you are caught with your chain mail down
Reserve Hit Points to heal your self in a world without Clerics.

While it would be tricky to play these classes in a normal D&D game, there are several new ideas here that can be adapted. Or if you just want to try a different style without having to learn an entirely new system, then this book may be for you.

This book is an excellent example of how the rules of D&D can be adapted to a setting. The rules can be adapted to fit several TV & Movie settings as well, it would work for everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the Lord of the Rings.

Overall, a very good book!

I thoroughly enjoyed this rule book. As several other reviewers have stated, I too am tired of the prestige classing, superpowering, magic hogging heroes that D&D now turns out with 3rd edition. Very few campaigns survive for long in the current world order unless you supply the characters with loads of magic and money, and let them destroy all opponents that they encounter. Gone are the days when you had a beefy fighter with a masterwork weapon, and good armor. Now, a beefy fighter has to have magical armor and a +5 vorpal sword in order to feel successful.
Mike Mearls and Monty Cook change all of that. Their mechanics and saavy rulesets for characters enable characters to get by on skills and standard weaponry. Magic becomes "magical" again, and wins back all the mystery it loses in the D&D world, where everyone has a +5 Vorpal Sword and a Dragon for a familiar. Even if you do not adopt it wholesale, there are enough nuggets herein to enhance the 3rd edition rules, to bring the magic back to the game.
Bravo Messrs Cook and Mearls!

This is a very LEVEL playing field this rpg brings forth using 3.5 or d20 rules. No big fireballs or arcane anything to help you. All humans makes ones really think hard. The classes are a bit bland but they get the job done. I love how the magic system is! I'd have to incorpate that into my own system. No fireball to save the day here! You use your wits and strength and hopefully you will make it, if not.. Oh well. That is what I so much like about it. So very flexiable and not much to get in the way of the dms or gms to get in the way of making a strong compelling storyline for the players to work in! Always thinking ahead and wise planning and even teamwork is stressed here. That is what an rpg should be! Get it, if not at least for the magic system!

This book has tons of new options for any one wanting to give a new flavor to their d20 game. Magic is rare but you wont be short on options with all the new game features.

The only down side is it has only a few color pictures.

It could be reasoned that this review is an exercise in futility as 4.0 is right around the corner. In the face of this fact, I would propose to offer an abridged assessment of Monte Cook Presents: Iron Heroes by Mike Mearls.

As a finished product, the book was bound well and shares the size of other 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons core books. This book rings in at 254 pages, none of which are repetitive. The book features a gun-metal blue/grey cover, and although Black and White on the inside, the art work is well done and the font type is attractive as well.

The idea of the game is simple; it's about your character, not the gear he/she carries. All the bonuses and power advancements that are figured into a character's power level in standard 3.5 D&D is factored into the heroes' abilities during level progression in Iron Heroes. The game features new mechanics that provide your character new options in combat in the form of tokens, stunts and challenges.

My favorite fantasy game, in both mechanics and style is a game once published by Avalon Hill called Powers & Perils (all fantasy games featured matched leading consonants and an ampersand). It's not too far of a stretch to say that if P&P were translated into a d20 game, it would very closely match Iron Heroes. In that regard, I found the game very refreshing.

Unfortunately, it feels as if magic were an afterthought in this game. Clearly magic is still an integral part of the game, but it felt as if it were relegated to the "evil sorcerer" where he/she would use the regular 3.5 magic system. PCs, on the other hand, have the Arcanist class, that pales in comparison. The real sad part of the magic system is that the developer came so close to a stroke of brilliance with building what could have been the best magic system (an open-ended magic system would have worked best - one without boundary and definition), but fell far short of the finish line.

If we were to assume that 4.0 were NOT to be released, there are many great reasons to play this system, magic system problems notwithstanding. In the end (both literally and figuratively), the deal-breaker for Iron Heroes is taken from statement directly from the book: "Battles in Iron Heroes tend to last longer than in other games,..." That's not exactly what I wanted to hear. With all the options that make for a better game in Iron Heroes, they introduce fights that are wrought with tedious die rolling and options that convolute fast-paced gameplay. All the reasons that D&D (allegedly) decided to start development to bring 4.0 to the market.

As a side note, I believe that this game (which in some cases I believe inspired portions of 4.0) is worthy of a 4.0 rendition. I'd buy it.

While this is biulled as a DND products, its really an advancement of the rules. The main differences are thatwhereas DND is all about you +5 Vorlam singing celestial greatbastardsword of carrot slicing, and every mage exists to cast greater delayed machinegun thermonuclear lightingball of earthquake creation, and the really balanced greater diety prestige class, this is more about the skills you have as a character. Magic has a serious risk of backfiring and is generally less powerful, but needs more creativity to use and is generally more satisfying. Combat has been streamlined, and the feats system has been reworked. You can take a feat multiple times for greater effects, and every class has different core abilities you can spend "tokens" on to power, and you build up dokens in various ways. There are more classes and they can be customised a great deal.

The book itself is well laid out with a useful index and some good quality black and white artwork. If you are looking for a good alternitive to the mayhem of general dnd, this is well worth a look.

most of my d & d games are very little magic and i hate the go to that magic wal-mart games were you go to buy this and that, always trying to make your character better. this system does away with that. your character is the great fighter not you have great magic items that make your character a great fighter. a must have for anyone that is tired of the magic wal-mart magic shopping lists.

NOTE: The name for this product was changed from Iron Lore to Iron Heroes.

Iron Heroes is an absolute must buy. This is the best D20 book published to date. I cannot say enough about it. The game mechanics and the overall flavor are almost perfecct. Kudos to Mike Mearls.