[RedSlayer]

Mike Mearls for president!

Seriously, having recently picked up Iron Heroes, Mearl's Variant Players Handbook, I have come to the conclusion that this man is genius.

Iron Heroes, from Malhavoc Press (although it was picked up by another publishing company), is an attempt to put together a no-magic system that was capable of being on par with standard rules. I must say, it does so wonderfully.

I'll summerize the main points:


COMBAT: Options and Choices
Irone Heroes(IH) focuses on fantasy action and adventure. As such, combat plays an important role in the system. At its core, combat works the same as in the core rules. Initiative, critical hits, attack rolls, and sacing throws remain unchanged. Some portions of the rules, such as attacks of opportunity, appear in simplified forms. In most cases, the changes simply add to the system rather than trule alter how things work. The IH combat rules, and by extension, classes and feats, are designed with the idea that options and choices make a game fun. While you can simply charge into a fight and hack at an opponent, Iron Heroes supports a variety of styles. It does this in a number of ways.

First, "Combat Challenges" are additional benefits you can apply to an attack in return for a penalty to an attack in return for a penalty on your roll. You can also accept penalties to defensive abilities in return for other benefits. For example, you can take a penalty to an attack for the chance to force your opponent to move away from you. In this case, you make a wild, powerful swing that knocks your target backward if you hit. Or you might accept a penalty to your defenses, to go on the offesnsive to gain a bonus to attacks and damage. These challenges allow you to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of an aggressive attack or a passive defense. If a foe is near defeat, you can cast aside caution and throw verything into an attack to finish him off. When the battle goes against you, just dig in, defend yourself, and wait for allies to rescue you. The challenges are open to everyone; you do not need any special abilities or feats to use them.

The "Rules for Stunts" give you the tools to cover a wide range of actions beyond the scope of the standard combat rules. Stunts are effect based, which means you first figure out the stunt's result in game terms, then build a description around it. When you attempt a stunt, you make an ability or skill check. The total result of your stunts effectiveness. You can use stunts to gain a bonus to attacks and damage, inflict a penalty to an opponents actions, knock a foe prone, and other benefits. In essence, stunts are free-form actions that aid your attack actions.

"Defense", a measure of your ability to dodge and parry blows, replaces Armor Class. Armor in IH provides you with DR. Your defense bonus represents your ability to avoid attacks in general. Defense Bonus advances by class by level, like Base Attack Bonus. It increases at a ate determined by your class' focus on defense, speend, and agility. This has two important effects. Touch atacks become less of a sure thing, but on the other hand, being flat footed is a recipe for disaster.

Combat in IH is designed to bring ouy your creativity.



CHARACTER CLASSES
The Character classes in IH each embody a particular style of fighting rather than professions or roles. They are intentionally divorced from any tight conncetions to a specific ethos, culture, or organization. Instead, they form distinct sets of tools that you use to interact with the world. The Berserker fuels his attacks with his inner fury, the Hunter uses battle tactics, while the theif uses deception. Choosing a class is a matter of finding the fighting style that suits your taste.

Many of the classes use "Token Pools" to reflect their talents. Tokens encourage you to embrace your class' favored tactics. When you follow these tactics, you build up tokens that you can spend to activate special abilites. Think of the toeksn as an abstact method of representing a combination of maneuvers that yields a result greater than the sum of its parts.

For example, the "parry" toekn pool allows you to build up tokens when an opponent attacks and misses you. This represents your ability to turn aside blows and set up a foe for a devastating counter-attack by knocking his weapon aside or luring him into overextending himself. As you evade more attacks, you can take greater advantage of your opponent's frustration and increasingly risky attacks.

Classes in IH have a few other distinctive features. They have much better saving throws than classes from other games, and their base attack bonuses are higher than normal too. IH characters have far more hitpoints (via "Reserve Hit Points), plus they have about twice as many feats as the average character from other games.

With these advantages, you might expect that IH classes are far more powerful. In some ways, this is true. However, IH classes are designed with the assumption that the characters do not have access to magic itmes. In the Implied Setting of IH, magic is dangerous, unpredictable, and almost impossible to control. Arcane power is the province of powerful monsters, strange beings, and deadly villians. You must rely on clever tactics, training, and natural abilities to defeat enemies. You'll never have a magic wand, scroll, or magic sword waiting in your backpack to save the day. What you have is your talent, skill, and inventiveness.


FOCUS ON SKILLS
Without access to reliable magic spells and powerful enchanted items, skills play a big role in what you can do.

The "Skill Challenges" are the main addition to IH. In exchange for a penalty to your skill check or an increase in the skill attempts DC, you gain added benefits from a successful result. You can climb faster than normal, search an area for traps and disarm them in a single action, or perhaps use another skill as a free action.

Skills are also critical to completeing Stunts. When you attempt a stunt, you must pick a skill relevant to the task at hand. You might use Climb to scramble up a giant's back, or Knowledge to figure out how to send a pillar tumbling down on top of the same giant. You use your skills as flexible tools you can use to overcome your problems. The key is to use your imagination.

IH makes no distinction between class and cross-class skills. Instead, any character can spend ranks in any skill without penalty. Howeever, each class grants access to different "Skill Groups". A skill group is a set of connected abilites that have a natural synergy. Like the "Athletics" skill group, which includes climb, swim, and jump. If you spend ranks to improve a skill group as a whole, you gain rans in all the skills it overs.


MORE + DYNAMIC FEATS
Characters in IH gain far more feats than normal. Feats in IH grow with your character as the PC gains levels. Each feat includes a variet of expanded options you can select to improve the base feat. At 1st level, Weapon Focus grants a +1 to your attacks. By 20th level, you can spend additional feat slots on it to raise that +1 on attacks to a +5 Bonus and an addtional +6 to daamage. Other feats grant access to new combat maneuvers, special attacks, and other abilities.
IH introduces the concept of "Mastery", a measure of your skill and training in a specific area. Many feats are rated in a mastery category. In order to take the feat (or a certain expanded option of a feat), you must have the minimum master rating in the proper category. Your mastery increases with your character level, depending on your class. Mastery ratings replace the standard prerequistes for feats. Some feats only work with certain weapons, usually by category. (e.g. Power Weapons, Finesse Weapons, etc)
For example, the Armiger, a defense and armor specialist, has an Armor Feat Mastery that spans 2-10 over 20 levels. His Defense Mastery spans 1-9, while his Power Mastery ranges from 0-7. This means he has the quickest and most top-tier access to armor-based feats, next to best defense, and a slow progression on heavy-hitting attack feats.



Well, thats a pretty good introduction. I give it the highly recommended rating of 9.5/10. This book is solid gold. I can and will gladly go into more depth with any rules questions, as most of the book is OGL.