Cumag's page

Lisa - fantastic. Thank you for sharing this!

I think dropping in IH rules to PF would be tough.

Overall the IH rules are balanced for a world where players have NO ACCESS to magic items - or that the magic items they can use are so frightening that they will use them only once or twice.

Therefore "adding them in" will produce power surges that the rules won't handle nicely. Base Defense mirrors the PF expectation of magic armor bonuses, and the Base Attack progression mirrors the PF expectation of magic weapon bonuses.

What I have found to work well is to use strictly IH classes for PCs, along with the core combat & feat rules, and then you can run everything else as Pathfinder. IH really works best as a Conan-style game (or 300, or Centurion, or the like) where magic is rare and scary, and even the party does not have reliable access to magic use.

I've run a game since 2007 that started as Iron Heroes, converted to 4E, and now converted back to Iron Heroes + Pathfinder.

Here's what I've learned:

* Iron Heroes is an awesome ruleset for a Conan or Celtic style campaign.
* You have to restrict the players to IH classes.
* Don't use Arcanist or Spiritualist. PCs in IH should not have magic.
* Use monsters, adventures, and additional feats from Pathfinder.
* Creatures that can only be hit by magic are much more deadly in IH.
* To keep the feel, have at least 60% of enemies be mundane (i.e. orcs, humans) and save magic for really creepy or evil foes.

This has worked well in my campaign. We have 4 PCs played by grown-ups (age 30+) who are looking for a gritty, challenging, Conan-style world, not a Forgotten Realms where magic swords and potions are available at the general store.

Happy to answer further questions!