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One last bump and then I guess I just read a BoardGameGeek review or something.

I like it. If your group's familiar with the setting and/or game, it's worth a shot.

>>46988632
What particularly do you like about it?
In my group I am the only one who has played WM.

>>46988703
This.

I wanted to hear about it.

If they ever made a starter kit for Warmachine, I'd probably already own it.

>>46988703
The system uses a lot of the same mechanics and math as actual Warmachine, and as such the combat is very wargamey.

It's basically just a Pathfinder rip-off mashed-up with some WarmaHordes mechanics.

I've read a lot of source material about it and a couple of adventures.
I expecially appreciated the Five Fingers supplement and monster manuals.

I've played in a couple of campaigns and I was thoroughly unimpressed with the system. it isn't bad, I just didn't find much about it particularly interesting, and the character generation and progression felt very stilted and limited. I can understand wanting to stick to the wargames mechanics, but it left the system feeling very oddly skewed, and they failed to fix a big issue from the original 3.5 setting, that Warcasters were explicitly better than almost anything else.

>>46992761

This is bollocks though. The system has little to no resemblance to Pathfinder whatsoever. I can only assume the poster either has no knowledge of the IKRPG, or is talking about the original D&D 3.5 supplements.

>>46987822

I've been in a few games, both IKRPG and Unleashed. I come from a wargaming background so I didn't mind the combat. Squares get real niggly anyway.

I do take a few issues with it, even as a fan. In general, skilled characters outshine mighty characters. The issue is virtuoso and the extra attack and that defense is usually better than armor. That said, mighty benefits from extra attacks more.

Healing is barely a thing, so play it more like Dark Heresy. The caster/martial divide isn't really there outside of warcasters/warlocks. It kind of runs in the opposite direction, casters are crazy early level and curve off later. Focusers do not curve off and get insane, which is supposed to happen. Warnouns are cannonically very powerful, it's not uncommon to forbid them from play.

I played a mighty pirate/duelist, skilled cutthroat/alchemist, and a cunning Wolf of Oroboros/Chieftain. If your gm is worth anything, the cost of running and transporting jacks and beasts keeps thier numbers down in the party.

I did get to play a modernized Witchfire Trilogy using pathfinder. It was fun while it lasted.

>>46993825
Something I am afraid of is if the game is too "wargamey" (strategy/combat) does it cut into the natural roleplaying aspect?

>>46994633
The out of combat skill checks made sense iirc, mind you it's been at least two years since I last played. Roleplaying sort of falls in the player's camp in my opinion. And if you don't want to play with miniatures, you don't have to.

>>46994633
It's kinda light in RPing rules as-is.
Literally all spells are combat-use ones almost entirely lifted from the wargame except for a few in one book, but even those unique ones are entirely combat-based.

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>>46987822
It has issues, but on the whole, great fun. I went in expecting to hate it deeply, but my GM was a big fan of the setting, and I always had fun with what he ran, so I went for it. Right off the bat, the character creation is great. Choosing an Archetype, then combining two classes, gives a lot of flexibility, and once you know the system, you can make some crazy shit. I made a Skilled Spy/Duelist who started with a sword and pistol, then quickly turned in Revolver Ocelot. By the time all the players left for scheduling reasons, the GM and I were having such fun with it that we just stuck with it. At the time of writing, my character is up to Veteran Level, and has probably about 300 kills. We've replicated several Hotline Miami levels, literally. I'm under the impression my GM made repeating guns much more common than they are in the base setting, nearly everyone has a revolver in my game, my character carries at least 4 at a time in combat, alongside some other pistols. It's been a ton of fun, my all time favorite campaign, even if the system or setting aren't my favorites by themselves. All in all, simple, intuitive, and pretty character flexible, but it's just the Wargame combat made RPG. If you have a good GM like I do, you'll have a ton of fun.

PS. Fuck Khador.

>>46987822

So I know the kit has minis in it, but scale wise how do they compare to regular warmahordes? I really like the gator with a gun, and even though I obviously can't use him in warmahordes, I'd at least like to put him next to those models and not look out of place.

>>46995411
As far as I could tell they are plastic remolds of the exact same models, with maybe a 5% difference.

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>>46995553
Observe the base sizes.

>>46987822
It is a beautifully detailed setting with some surprisingly deep fluff that people who only play the wargame rarely give it credit for (and it really doesn't help when the wargame is accused of having no/shit fluff just because people compare it to GW and their piles on piles of material for their settings.)

I personally love the game, but it is very different to D&D. If you're looking for a change I can't recommend it enough, if you're looking to play more like D&D there are other editions of D&D that might be worth a look.
The setting is much closer to WWI industrial fantasy than medieval stuff for example, where you can sit at a cafe reading a newspaper and maybe even send a message via telegraph instead of meeting in a tavern with an ale.

Classes are one of my favourite things about it, you essentially pick two from a huge list, effectively allowing you to choose an RP focused one like say Spy, as well as a combat focused one like say Dualist and have a balanced character. Or you can pick to play a Noble Spy and go full RP, or a Soldier Knight for full combat. It allows you to make a lot of cool combinations, especially when you add in the Nations Kings Gods book with faction specific stuff. For example you can create an Iron Fang Uhlan by combining the Iron Fang and Horseman careers, or a Treancher Commando by combining Treancher and Ranger with some modified equipment.

Like the wargame you have a defense value and armour instead of an AC, defense being the number needed to hit you and armour soaking damage. Nostly you have the option of one or the other, heavier armour lowering your defense while a high defence usually comes with low armour. This means that instead of your sword and broad melee front liner being hard to hit he is piss easy to hit but your enemy needs to roll high to make him take any damage while your rogues with no armour are very hard to hit but if they get hit they go down quick.

I've played a decent amount of the 3.5 version of Iron Kingdoms. My uncle, cousin, brother and I played the Witchfire Trilogy, but my bro ended up dropping out because rpgs were not really his thing.
We all played as gun-based characters, with my character being the gunmage.
I really like the setting and all the technomagic stuff.
We haven't played in years but I'd love continuing the adventures of the Gun Bros. in the new version of the game.
The best part of the Witchfire Trilogy for me was exploring the clockwork church of the Machine Goddess.

The Iron Kingdoms is one of my favourite settings, and I've been GM of an IK group for a couple months now. I'll tackle the setting and system individually.

Iron Kingdoms/Unleashed are heavily tied to their fluff. Races, careers and even gear are all closely connected to the world. The world has had 15 years of development this year, and I can't stress the love and care the authors have given over to their baby. At it's core, people can equate it with D&D+Steampunk, but that's a very superficial and kind of outdated notion. There are no races akin to orcs and goblins that exist only as monsters, the monstrous races of the wilds have towns and villages, hopes and dreams, and Unleashed plays heavily on this side of the fence. Nations don't exist in a state of perpetual war, people slip across borders and smuggle with each other, the same god is worshipped in 3 ways across 3 countries, science came before magic and magic has pushed development in some areas way ahead of others (one nation will have a keep with a dragon in it, and across the border they have a telegraph for daily newspapers).

Mechanically, it's closely tied to the wargame. They have the same dice mechanic and basic stats, and add a skill and feat system on top of this. Character creation as detailed by many others consists of your race, archetype and then mixing two careers at first level. You can pick up other careers down the track. Each step means no two characters are the same, and a common mistake people make is to compare everything in combat and not by role. Some people will be better in combat, those people will not be better with skills. Some people can deal mass damage at range, those same people will not shrug off a blow to the face. Some people can tank the headbutt from a 9-ton warjack, most will be reduced to paste. Find your niche, and embrace it. I could talk at length about what I enjoy about the mechanics, but this is an over-all "I like the game, I love the world, I recommend it"

>>46987822
Play it it's good fun be warned it's a high lethality game.

I had a blast with it. There aren't many rules for roleplaying, but the game doesn't actively keep you from doing it as much as you'd need/want to (similar to 4e dnd). I do like the skill system, too.

Things to keep in mind:
1) Warcasters can be overpowered compared to other combat careers.
2) Magic is almost entirely combat-oriented. To be fair, this actually makes sense in the setting (where magic was developed during a war for the express purpose of driving off invaders), but don't expect anything like flight, illusions, or divination.

>>46996742
>>46996741
>>46996266
>>46995897
Can you give a description of a typical session, and how the "minis combat" and the classes of the PCs impacted the tone and pace of the game?
Is it essentially like D&D or do the minis and classes change it?

>>46996810
Minis and classes change it a lot, and it flows much better than DnD.

>>46996810
A particular combat heavy session recently involved waking up in the middle of the night in a manor house we were staying at on the settings equivalent of Halloween. There was some sort of commotion and we found the noble lady who owned the house outside her bedroom with some guards. Then the zombies came.

This was all played out on a grid but basically the came slowly down the hall from both directions, we'd put them down quick but nothing (not even our blessed/holy weapon) could keep them down. As they reached us and started attacking we realized the bedroom door was locked from the inside but the noble was with us in the hall under attack.

Our Alchemist blew a hole in the door with a bomb and we rushed in to find a pair of assassins with a magic artifact animating the zombies and buffing them. We (barely) managed to down the assassins but as soon as we got the artifact out of their hands the buffs fell and the zombies started staying down.

Our archer was very useful in the early stages, stacked for combat and able to down 3 zombies a turn consistently. Our more talkative spy character wasn't nearly as useful as could have been but could hold his own in a fight and was VERY useful in the session beforehand which was all RPing as we got to the noble's house and discussed a murder investigation with her.

The assassins were a huge problem for us because buffed we needed something absurd to hit them like a 18ish, on 2d6 + [our skill] where our skill levels are in the area of 6ish. My character being a commando had some nice bonuses, like rolling 3d6 drop the lowest, but the part that saved us was taking out the one casting the buffs first, because once we actually hit they died easily. My character also did the RPing thing of running out of bed towards the commotion without stopping to armour himself, which meant my Defense went up but Armour fell, which in the end became a net positive as the zombies had a very hard time hitting me.

>>46996810
Personal play style is going to account for a lot, but D&D isn't a bad frame of reference. In-combat turns will let you move, attack, etc. You'll walk around between those and talk to NPC's, make skill checks and try to recall information from previous sessions.

As for tone and pace, IK I like to describe as high-risk high-reward. You're going to be strong, you're going to plant a bullet between the eyes and blow a guys brains out in one shot, you're going to lose an arm if you go down combat. You're going to bite off more than you can chew and spend 2 weeks in bed recovering (my groups last session started with them coming back from 2-week downtime break as they recovered from the previous session being combat heavy). You're strong, enemies are strong, you're not durable unless you specifically build for that. There's very little magic outside of combat, spells are recent in the setting and either used as a weapon or for larger slower rituals that affect a lot. You're not gonna see stuff like ghost sound, or invisibility, you're going to do your detective work (and it will be detective work due to the urban nature of the setting unless you're playing Unleashed) with a notepad, cigar and stubble.

Models aren't required, but they are recommended. We use a grid, but the game works with inches and a tape-measure too.

If I can get it to fit, I'll track down a journal entry one of my players made if you're interested.

>>46996906
This guy is one of my players. You'll also note that where our group has a ranged-damage skew, that encounter was really dangerous due to enclosed spaces not allowing you all to mow down enemies indiscriminately. One person could complain about one career or combat style being OP, I prefer to balance things with different encounter designs on my side of the screen. Everyone has a niche.

Iosan book what classes do you guys want?

I like it, but holy shit fuck warlocks/warcasters. The moment one of them gets into a game, the whole sense of balance is irrevocably fucked.

>>46996982
I've never had a problem with either. Non-Warnoun spellcasters are generally better at actual magic and getting a worthwhile warjack or warbeast is almost entirely up to the GM. Warcasters pretty good at bonking people with a greatsword since they can buy/boost and start with good armor, but it's not that much better than someone who took Skilled archetype with Virtuoso.

>>46996963
Houseguard (Halberd/Rifle)
Dawnguard (Sentinel/Invictor/Destor)
Magehunter Infiltrator and/or Assassin
Stormfall
Force Mage
Ghost Sniper
Muhfuggin Electromancers
Iosan Warcaster

Maybe have soulless as a subrace or whatever.

>>46996963
Skorne slave

>>46997044
Dammit, I forgot Arcanist and Fane Knight.

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>>46997042
>getting a worthwhile warjack or warbeast is almost entirely up to the GM

We saved up and forced the issue on our gm. We didn't get exactly the punchbot we wanted, but it was and is more than good enough.

How plausible would it be to use the rules/classes from IKRPG in a different setting? I was the DM of the the D&D game and I think the world I made was close enough.

>>46997131
A ton of them are setting-specific, and magic doesn't even vaguely function like it does in D&D so you'd have to retool the entire mystical side of your D&D setting.

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>>46996982
>>46996742
I really had the opposite experience with warcasters. While if they do get a teched out jack they can tear shit up, they are so HORRENDOUSLY expensive compared to literally everything else in the book you're never going to get one. For the price of a medium level jack you can kit out your entire party in full mechanikal gear. Also, with the hp bloat of non-warjack characters compared to the wargames, jacks are actually pretty fragile if you can get through their armor.

We had problems with skilled characters, particuarly a cutthroat/pistoleer with a pile of quad irons that would almost always win initiative, and then proceed to pretty much shoot his way through the entire encounter in one go.

Although this was only with the first two books, maybe more stuff has come out since then.

>>46996963
I just want rules for Arcanika

And I can an...Arcane Arcanik?

>>46997131
I'd agree with >>46997149 but there is also the old 3.5 material for it, which I imagine would work better.

>>46997044
Most of these already exist, the base careers are light on the fluff specifically to allow combos that'll represent a wide range of things.

Soldier/anything or Rifleman/anything
Dawnguard I would like to see, but Sentinel/Invictor/Destor are just coupling the career with others
Mage Hunter is already in the main book, mix with Cutthroat for a better Infiltrator
Stormfall could be a new one, but it's more gear when we already have an Archer career
Iosan mages are just Arcanists with a new spell list
Ghost Sniper is just a Rifleman with a new gun
Electromancers I want to see as new career
Iosan Warcaster is just a Warcaster with different spell list and starting gear, probably a rule to use Iosan jacks specifically

Soulless would make a good sub-race and some racial options to play up the anti-magic stuff. I would also expect to see an Elven Blademaster, and stuff like the Escort and Voidtracer as Soulless-only careers.

>>46997173
Arcanist

>>46997184
I'd like to see a soulless escort pc try and make it to veteran level.

>>46997185
Arcanists aren't magical, they're more like Field Mechaniks. I want the guy who builds Arcanika.

>>46997442
You want an Arcane Mechanic, core book man :)

>>46997054
Don't forget that new sword master house

>>46997442
No, they make mechanika, not arcanika. Arcanika is what the elves use and has been stated to be different. It hasn't ever had rules published for it, not even in the old d20 edition.

>>46997552
Fuck meant to quote
>>46997463

>>46996963
>>46997044
So what should the Rhulic and Cryx classes be?

>>46994954

Funnily enough there is a thread on the official PP forums right now that kind of goes into why magic is only used for combat.

http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?249899-Non-Combat-Magic-in-the-Iron-Kingdoms

>>46997912
Rhulic have their own thing, they have casters and I think one other one but I can't remember. Cyriss and Legion also have their own classes but like Rhul its in the NQ (their monthly magazine). The Skorne book came out recently if you want to play them. and Cryx is probably the hardest to play, but the Satyx rules are in their free Full Metal Fridays stuff on their site.

>>46987822
If you want some more in depth stuff you could try asking this in the WMH thread of in /r/ikrpg

>>46996810

>give a description of a typical session

There's a lot you can do in the setting. I've played in games where the PCs were smuggling stolen warjacks from Khador and another where the PCs were on an expedition to find a set of ancient ruins.

>and how the "minis combat" and the classes of the PCs impacted the tone and pace of the game

Going gridless makes measuring smoother if not a bit more time consuming. Let's you avoid some of the positioning pitfalls grids have to deal with. Tone wise it's pretty quick and deadly, since even beefy guys start looking worse for wear in a few good hits. Also hitting zero health isn't instant dead, though when you do you roll on a chart of bad shit where you could lose a limb, get scarred up, or die.

Two more things I should mention that haven't been brought up are the feat points. You get 3 each session and you can replenish them by getting crits or killing shit, and are used to boost your rolls or activate a few abilities. They're good to use, but can run out quick if you go reckless with them.

The second thing is that there's no social stat, though there are social skills. When you do a social skill roll you use a stat appropriate to the situation. So if you're trying to intimidate a bruiser into cowering away you could use your strength, but if you're trying to intimidate someone more craft you might use your intelligence instead.

>>46994954
>>46994633
Have only read the rule book. No real play experience but I'm a warmachine fan.

GM decides LOS. As in that's the LOS rule. Combat has a lot given over to the GM in comparison to warmachine. AKA: Treating IKRPG like a wargame is a bad idea and don't do it.

They kind of assumed the group themselves will handle RP side of things.

>>47001667
What... LOS is just front arc, or literally the way you're facing. nothing really wargaming about it, plenty of other games have it.

And RP comes from both sides, hell the class mechanics lends itself greatly to an RP only group. Treating any rpg as a wargame may be a bad idea, unless your group just wants to hit things and be cool.

>>47001732
Page 200 IK core rulebook

Facing says what you said but then there is the Line of Sight section

>Many situations such as charging and making attacks require a character to have line of sight (LOS) to his intended target. Simply put, having line of sight means a character can see another character.
>The Game Master decides which characters have line of sight to eachother. He should begin each encounter by describing the terrain and how it affects line of sight.

It is theoretically possible for a GM to declare you have LOS on something in your back arc. If I was GMing and something like a Colossal was sneaking up on the party I'd say people had LOS on it regardless. Though that's an extreme example.

>nothing really wargaming about it,
Warmachine/Hordes have some very strict LOS rules that utilize volumes in order to handle terrain with a view obstructing height. Such as walls. This is because it's a wargame and the rules need to be complete enough to prevent or solve arguements.

As an RPG Iron Kingdoms gets to go "Fuck all that it's GM's choice" instead.

As for the RP comment. Well, D20 has set a weird standard. It had a lot of skills that are what people tend to think about when it comes to an RPG "supporting Roleplaying". Yet it's entirely possible for D20 groups to totally ignore all of that and just hack/slash.

I still want to make a steelhead character as either a potential BBEG or high experience PC that is a charismatic captain of a gigantic mercenary company on their own private island off the coast of Ord. Has lots of spies and works for anyone.