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IHDifferences

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 4 months ago

Technical Differences between Iron Heroes and D&D 3.5

This list is meant to help DMs and players deal with the multiple "gotchas" in the IH rules, where they differ from the familiar 3.5 rules in tiny ways. It's not for broad technical differences that are obvious, like "There are new classes! Active Defense exists!" and so on. It is designed in the same spirit as the list of differences between AE and 3.5.

 

Attacks of Opportunity

  • AoOs are triggered by taking any standard or full-round action that isn't a melee attack. Move, swift, or free actions never provoke unless they are specifically called out to do so.

 

  • You draw an AoO by moving more than 1/4 of your speed through a threatened area, rather than simply moving a square. As well, you trigger the AoO when you enter the square that exceeds 1/4 of your movement, rather than when you leave.

 

  • Even if you have Combat Reflexes or another method of gaining additional AoO attempts in a round, you can still only take a single AoO against a particular opponent in a round, unless you have Combat Reflexes 7.

 

Feat Masteries

Every class has a rating in any particular Feat Mastery type. For instance, level 1 armigers have a Feat mastery rating of 2 in all armor type feat masteries, while they have a 0 in any finesse type feat masteries. This means that a level 1 armiger can take any armor feat mastery up to rating 2 at level 1. So, for example, they could take Armor Mastery 1 or 2, Shield Mastery (which is an armor type) 1 or 2, or even Improved Shield Bash(another armor type) 2.

 

There is a small restriction however. You must take the _base_ mastery in which ever one you want to take. So, in our above armiger example, he cannot just take Armor Mastery 2. He must take 1 first, which is the base mastery. Most base masteries are the "rank 1" mastery, but some are higher level.

 

This restriction, however, does not imply that you must take everything in order. Lets take our armiger again. He takes Armor Mastery 1. Now that he has the base mastery, he is free to take which ever feat masteries are in the Armor tree, up to whatever his mastery rating is. Lets say he gets to level 4 and has a feat. He already took Armor 1 at level 1, but has no other masteries in the Armor tree. His Mastery rating (from the chart in the armiger section) at level 4 is a 3 in Armor type feats. That means that, since he has the base mastery already, he can take Armor 2 or Armor 3. He does not have to take Armor 2 before Armor 3. Indeed, he can (assuming he gets to 16th level) only take Armor 1 and Armor 10 if he so desires.

 

Tokens

Tokens are a mechanism to reflect time spent focusing, getting angry, or some other resource that you may have. Once you collect so many of them over the course of an encounter, you can use them to do something iconic to your character class.

 

Lets take our Armiger again. He's been fighting an ogre, and has been absorbing the damage from the ogre's blows with his armor. Finally, he has absorbed 10 points worth of damage. Because of this, he gets 1 armor token. Over the course of the next couple rounds, he absorbs another 10 points of damage, and gets another armor token. Now, having a pair of armor tokens, he can spend them on one of his armiger abilities. For instance, lets say he takes an action and sets up for an Armored Trap. The ogre attacks again, and hits the armiger! This time, though, he's ready. He absorbs some of the damage (as he would with a regular attack), and while the ogre is attacking, he spends the two tokens and hits the ogre while he has his guard down!

 

Saves

Rolling a 1 on a save is *not* automatic failure. Rolling a 20 is still auto-success, and rolling a natural 1 or 20 on an attack works as normal. This is a blanket change, and applies to both monsters and PCs.

 

Reach

If a creature is being threatened by two or more creatures with Reach, each of the threatening creatures takes a -2 penalty to their attack.

 

Due to the changes in AoOs, Reach as defined in the book (identically to D&D) is almost completely unable to trigger a movement-based AoO. Some houserules recommend that Reach be changed to simply double your normal threatened range, with no missing area. Crowroadaw, owner of Iron Heroes, recommends changing Reach to exclude only areas less than 1/2 of the creature's normal reach. On a normal Medium creature, this would allow him to threaten areas out to 10', but not areas less than 2.5' (rounded to the nearest square, this is areas at 0'; that is, he doesn't threaten his own square).

 

Incorporeality

Iron Heroes have only a 50% miss chance when using normal weapons against incorporeal and ethereal creatures (rather than 100% as in D&D). Magic weapons must be Ghost Touch to avoid the miss chance entirely, just as in normal D&D.

 

Harmful Permanent Status Effects

Permanent status effects such as petrification that are intended to be cured magically (and thus are incurable in IH) are instead changed to be temporary.

 

 

 

In progress

''Thanks to Raleel for the Feat Mastery and Token sections

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