Iron heroes

Iron heroes is a low magic d20 variant, where the core classes are amped up considerably, but magic is rare, and magic always has a price.

This has a side effect of basically removing the wealth by level guidelines since, after all of your stuff is masterwork and you have a decent horse, who the hell cares? Start buying land and make yourself a lord or something

Money merely becomes a plot hook and way of keeping score

In Iron Heroes, all players abilities start out at 10, and they have 24 points which they can spend, in the standard, <15 - 1:1, < 17 2:1, <19 3:1 set up.

To make things easy they also just give precalced spreads, such as Standard, which is 16, 16, 14, 14, 12, 10 or Jack of All Trades, which are flat 14s.

My plan here is to make a harrier (ultra mobile spring attacking fighter), and I think I will start with a Standard layout

Str Dex Con Int Wis Cha
16 16 14 12 14 10

The next step is to pick traits, which are the Iron Heroes equivalent of races. As this is a low-magic setting, non-humans are not really part of the playable races by default, it would take only minor effort to convert them. The flavour is made up by allowing backgrounds to have mechanical influence on a character's abilities. Up to one trait can go into background, one or both traits can be spent on mental or physical aspects.

Because I intend to be a dodgy bastard, I shall take dextrous as one trait, which gives me +2 Dex, -2 Con

As for other traits, I was considering getting the Lithe Acrobat one, but on closer reflection it would seem I pretty much get that ability from being a harrier.

Looking through the backgrounds I am now thinking of a parkour type concept, maybe a little Prince of Persia-ish running around and taking advantage of the terrain. I can see 2 background traits fitting in with this, either City Born to represent the begger on the street aspect, and the parkour, or Desert Born which also fits, especailly Dune Stalker, which boosts Balance and Tumble.

I think I will take my old friend City Born (Bravo) however, since it gives me 1d6 Sneak attack, and this guy will be in a position to flank a lot, and to self-flank if a team mate is not present. (In Iron Heroes, if you start your movement on one side of an opponent and make your attack form the other side, say by tumbling around or jumping over him, then you get the benefits of flanking).

So that leaves us, post traits with:

Str Dex Con Int Wis Cha
16 18 12 12 14 10

+2 to Survival (Urban), Can use Survival to track down specific dealers and informals, can use survival when searching for items to find a seller, +1d6 Sneak attack

Now we add Harrier to the mix giving me

Simple and Martial weapon proficiency, Light armour proficiency, Combat Speed (+10 ft) and Combat Mobility.

I also have 9 HP, 36 skill points and 2 feats to choose, as well as a BAB of +1 and a Base Defense Bonus of +1.

Skills:

In Iron Heroes, there are no cross class skills, every skill can be bought for a single skill point per level, each class does get access to skill groups instead, which are a set of skills which can be raised as one for a single skill point.

As Harrier, I get both Athletics and Agility as skill groups, so I will max both of those.

Giving me 4 ranks in Climb, Jump, Swim, Balance, Escape Artist and Tumble.

I now have 28 skill points left.

The skills and thinking of are Hide, Move Silently, Sleight of Hand, Bluff, Survival, Use Rope, Spot

And now finally I need to pick feats, Iron Heroes has feat trees, and as a harrier I have access to non-tree feats, and to the first level of Defense and Finesse feat chains.

I am going to take Weapon Finesse [Base Mastery] for the use dex on your to hit roll with finesse weapons as well as Combat Expertise [Base Mastery], which is at the moment purely defensive, but as I level it up, I can use it in reverse.

Now for gear I am going to use the starting package as the base, because less effort and it even kind of fits.

So, here is our harrier.

Fleet Nashir

Str Dex Con Int Wis Cha
16 18 12 12 14 10

Hit Points: 9HP

Defense: 16/10 Active/Passive, +4 vs attacks of opportunity

Weapons: Rapier (+5 to hit, 1d6+3 damage, 18-20 x2 Crit), 4 javelins (+5 to hit, 1d6+3 damage, 20 x2 Crit), Dagger (+5 to hit, 1d4+3 damage, 19-20 x2 Crit)

Armour: Padded (DR 1)

Skills: Climb 4 [+7], Jump 4 [+7], Swim 4 [+7], Balance 4 [+8], Escape Artist 4 [+8], Tumble 4 [+8], Hide 4 [+8], Move Silently 4 [+8], Sleight of Hand 4 [+8], Bluff 4 [+4], Survival 4 [+5], Use Rope 4 [+8], Spot 4 [+5]

Feats and abilities: City Rat: Bravo, Weapon Finesse [Base], Combat Expertise [Base]

Gear: Backpack, bedroll, 50 ft of silk rope, torches (6), flint and steel, waterskin

Gold: 13

Tags: create a character, d20, iron heroes