Opinions on Iron Heroes RPG?

I've heard both good and bad things about Iron Heroes, and I'm curious what the Playground thinks. I'm currently in the process of writing a campaign inspired by the classic Fafhrd and Grey Mouser novels of my youth, some of the stranger modules for LotFP (Maze of the Blue Medusa, Deep Carbon Observatory, Veins of the Earth) and Berserk, which I got into fairly recently (I find I'm enjoying it, though the sexual violence is largely unnecessary at best and makes it a bit hard to get through). The idea being a straightforward rare/low magic swords and sorcery style world which slowly peels back to reveal a layer of maddening weirdness, and a power curve that enables the players to go from scrappy mercenaries and sellswords to full on powerhouses able to take on the world.
However: I don't want to lose the sense that the players can die. That's what's interesting to me about Berserk, the fact that it maintains its gritty brutality even as Guts is clearly a ridiculously powerful figure. He gets scarred, wounded, hurt, has to recover, is driven to exhaustion, all things that standard D&D doesn't really provide for in my experience.
So yeah, I've been looking at a few systems. I'd like to stick with d20 systems or if not, something easy for my players to pick up. In the d20 vein, Dungeon Crawl Classics caught my eye, as did Iron Heroes, but I have less of a bead on exactly what sets Iron Heroes apart. Thoughts?

DCC is excellent. I don't know about Iron Heroes though.

DCC has really been catching my attention. My main question is how does it handle player progression? Do characters stay relatively weak/killable, do they scale up ridiculously in the vein of 3.5e, or something in between? Would it be easy to tell a higher level character from a lower level one, or is it hang more towards realism with character power levels?

What happens when Iron Heroes fight Rust Monster Villains?

I'm running a Sword and Sorcery version of Kingmaker using Iron Heroes. So far, it's cool, we like the whole idea of making magic a rare thing, a force which corrupts and which humans should not meddle with. Bear in mind that Iron Heroes has TONS of options so it sometimes is a bit mind boggling and requires a lot of time investment to learn all the skills/feats/new rules for both players and DM. We just skim over them and go with the flow (players are OK with not min-maxing the best possible build, as long as the character "makes sense" in-game and is not obviously useless rules wise).

Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

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Originally Posted by Koo Rehtorb

Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

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LotFP is interesting.

As written nothing can keep up on the damage front with a mid level magic user who knows magic missile. The spell deals 1d4 damage per level, while no other class gets scaling damage. Also note that, rules as written, weapon damage is just the die.

The system also isn't low magic, for people who find that important. Oh sure, the adventures and settings are low magic, but by the rules it's as high magic as old D&D was.

I could go on. But essentially, with regards to lethality, it's only about as much as your next B/X retroclone.

Iron Heroes is a mess. The numbers are wonky, the token system can barely be described as anything of the sort, the feat system is an interesting idea that is completely terrible in practice, characters are far more pigeonholed than they typically are in the genre it's trying to ape, and heroes simply don't have the tools to deal with a lot of the challenges that d20 often wants to throw at them.

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Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard

I could go on. But essentially, with regards to lethality, it's only about as much as your next B/X retroclone.

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Yeah, LotFP's reputation for lethality has very little to do with the system, and a lot more to do with adventure design. The guy behind it is terribly fond of what I would describe as "gross killer-DM shenanigans." YMMV.

I don't recall specifically why I think this, but my impression of Iron Heroes was that it was an early attempt at making a modern game with D&D trappings, so they used tokens for various sub-systems -- some of which were pretty decent, others of which were just plain counter-productive. (Except it wasn't actually all that early.)

If there were a good autopsy done on the system, with a focus on what worked vs. what failed, it seems like that could be a very useful tool for designing future games.

But overall it was interesting as an experiment, not useful as an end-product.

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Originally Posted by Nifft

But overall it was interesting as an experiment, not useful as an end-product.

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Well, yeah. It's a Mearls product. The man is the master of "flashy premise that doesn't get fully developed". Here is a detailed, though aggressive, rundown of Iron Heroes.

I don't care for the token system. I have to admit I never played it and can only go by my read of it, but my impression is by the time you accumulate enough tokens to do your Cool Thing the combat is over or almost over it's a finishing move when you're about to win anyway. If you have a lesser Somewhat Interesting Thing instead for less tokens might as well do that so at least you did something besides "I attack" that combat.

It was published before 4E existed. Even though I didn't like 4E, for the similar concept as Iron Heroes 4E did it better. If you enjoy Iron Heroes have fun. You don't need my permission or approval.

As I said, I think IH is a bit bloated in some aspects so we don't try to run everything by the rules, because to remember everything would be dizzying (and bear in mind 2 of my 4 players are not really that much into crunchy stuff, so it's even worse for them).

That being said, I don't think IH is that wonky, and the token criticism you guys say is not really accurate. For several abilities, you start combat with a reserve of tokens. You keep "charging" them doing other stuff during combat, which I think makes sense: you start with some capacity to do some stuff, but your amazing stuff only comes later in combat. This also forces you to take some tactical decisions because some of the tokens are acquired doing certain actions (for example the archer has to spend movement actions or standard or full round actions to "aim" at someone and gain tokens). That way, combat is not only "I swing, ok I hit, roll for damage. OK your turn".

Of course sometimes trying to make combat too tactical can result in the opposite of linear: a mess with a gazillion things happening. I guess it's a matter of taste.

Oh, and several feats and abilities don't need tokens to work. For example some dude with a hammer and feats specialized in fighting with it can power attack, and if he takes a -3 or more (IIRC) penalty he would cripple his opponent and reduce his movement (striking his legs or something).

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Originally Posted by gkathellar

Yeah, LotFP's reputation for lethality has very little to do with the system, and a lot more to do with adventure design. The guy behind it is terribly fond of what I would describe as "gross killer-DM shenanigans." YMMV.

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Yeah, the horror reputation is similar. The rules are pretty much just houseruled B/X, although better organised than some retro clones (darn it Basic Fantasy, why is my to-hit bonus in the combat chapter?).

The adventures are also the best and the worst of old school design. Powerful monsters can sit the sandbox, but they can generally be avoided or reasoned with. But there's no excuse for some of the traps. I'd never run them without alteration, but they're good enough quality to be worth altering.

I actually used a LotFP module in my IH version of the Kingmaker PF Adventure Path (talk about mixing stuff). It resulted in the death of one of my PCs. So yeah, adventure design is very deadly.

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Originally Posted by FreddyNoNose

What happens when Iron Heroes fight Rust Monster Villains?

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They run. Run like the wind!

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Originally Posted by guileus

I actually used a LotFP module in my IH version of the Kingmaker PF Adventure Path (talk about mixing stuff). It resulted in the death of one of my PCs. So yeah, adventure design is very deadly.

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Must have been overlevelled for it, that's an amazingly good outcome.