Iron Kingdoms – Let’s Make an Ironhead!
No Quarter Issue #52 is out, and it brings the love of the Ironhead career for the Iron Kingdoms Role-playing Game, allowing player characters (who aren’t from Khador) the ability to wear steam-powered armor. Let’s make one!
The Ironhead career is for player characters who are engineers with a very particular breed of interest: the construction and endless modification of their personalized steam-powered armor. Ironhead armor can be likened to Khador’s famed Man-O-War armor, which is a mass-manufactured concept used by the Khadoran military. In terms of game mechanics, it grants effective extra wounds not unlike a warcaster power field in addition to increased strength and a high ARM modifier, all at the cost of difficult SPD and DEF penalties and the inability to run or charge. Such armor is often large, bulky, and not the least bit appropriate attire at an upscale, elegant soiree. Walking into a tavern wearing a full suit of ironhead armor will make a powerful statement about ones purpose, so care should be taken when considering your secondary career and thought given to the nature of the campaign that you’re playing in.
Step One: Race
There are two racial options for Ironheads: Dwarves and Humans. Dwarves make an excellent candidate for the Ironhead career due to their native Load Bearing ability, which will reduce the SPD and DEF penalty of the cumbersome steam-powered armor slightly to make them more mobile and defensible at early levels. Consequently, a dwarf will only suffer -2/-2 to both stats instead of the usual -3/-3. With the Dwarf race’s starting SPD value of 4, this means that my character will be moving a measly two inches per-turn at first level even with Load Bearing unless I do something to get him moving quicker, but these options won’t present themselves until later in character creation, so I’ll leave it until then.
Step Two: Archetype
Now that my race is chosen, it’s time to pick an archetype. Out of the four available archetypes (Gifted, Intellectual, Mighty, and Skilled), Intellectual strikes me as a particularly fitting choice given the nature of the Ironhead career itself, specifically that an Ironhead is really a mechanical engineer. The native Intellectual benefit of giving nearby characters a +1/+1 bonus to attack and damage rolls will be made all the easier if the one giving that benefit is encased in a suit of protective mechanical armor. There are several other benefits to choose from at first level that are also advantageous, like Flawless Timing, which allows the user to spend a feat point during their turn to target an enemy. When that enemy attacks the user, their attack automatically misses. Given the dreadfully low DEF stats of Dwarves and the punishing DEF penalty from wearing Ironhead armor, this would help quite a bit with survivability. Quick Thinking allows the user to spend a feat point to make one attack or quick action at the start of another character’s turn. Genius and Hyper Perception grant boosted INT and PER rolls respectively. Photographic Memory allows the user to request information from the GM on anything that he has seen or experienced.
Any of these options would be great, but I’m going to with Genius for the boosted INT rolls it provides. This will give my Ironhead the ability to troubleshoot non-combat situations as well as giving him a much easier time of repairing his armor both in and out of combat with the Mechanikal Engineering skill and Patch Up ability.
Step Three: Career and Equipment
Now that my race, archetype, and first career are chosen, it’s time to pick my second career. Choosing the Intellectual archetype has inspired me to want to drive the process farther in that direction, making me specifically want to stay away from combat classes directly designed around hitting or shooting things. There are several options that jump out at me, like the Searforge Trader career from Urban Adventure. This would give my character increased access to resources from Rhul as well as serious ability in social situations, particularly those based around bartering and commerce. The Rhulic Field Mechanic from No Quarter 49 would also be a solid choice, allowing my character to start with a Grundback Gunner or Blaster warjack in addition to more abilities and skills in the engineering field. For those without NQ 49, you need only know that the difference between the regular Field Mechanic and the Rhulic variant is that the Rhulic Field Mechanic has the above listed warjacks to choose at from at creation instead of a light laborjack, and it can only marshal Rhulic steamjacks.
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| The Grundback Gunner Light Warjack |
The Rhulic Field Mechanic feels right to me, so I’ll run with that and choose a Grundback Runner with a light cannon to start. Runners are extremely durable little warjacks and its light cannon has solid range, accuracy, and damage output. The Genius benefit from the Intellectual archetype will also be quite helpful in allowing me to repair steamjacks as well, allowing me to rely on them more during combat.
Finishing off this step in character creation requires that I use my available assets to purchase starting equipment, choose a mechaniks organization and a Rhulic clan as connections, and to choose military skills based on available options from my careers. I already have a suit of ironhead armor, a Grundback Gunner light warjack, a mechanik’s toolkit, 25 gc, and the choice of a single equipment upgrade from my armor. The first thing that sticks out to me is that my character is dreadfully slow at SPD 2. While I still have the option to increase my SPD value during the final stage of character creation, I can only increase it by one before I hit the SPD limit for starting dwarf characters. Since characters in ironhead armor cannot run or charge, I desperately want to get my functional SPD up to at least 4. Despite not being a particularly sexy option, I’ll do the smart thing and start with Weight Compensators to reduce the SPD penalty of the armor to -1 when combined with Load Bearing.
It’s worth mentioning that there is a wealth of great options to choose from here, like Ablative Armor for extra hit points, Artillery Mount to allow my armor to carry a light steamjack ranged weapon, Force Amplifier for an increase to STR, or Heavy Boiler to allow my character to run, charge, and make further upgrades easier to install. As you gain resources and money, these upgrades can be added one-by-one to your rig.
This leaves me with 25 gc for equipment purchases. This isn’t a lot to play around with so I’ll keep it simple with a maul for some hard-hitting melee punch. I’ll also pick up some goggles, because this is steampunk, damn it. Since I chose the maul as a my melee weapon, I’ll take Great Weapon 1 as my melee weapon option from Ironhead. Light Artillery 1, my other option, is solid, but I don’t have the finances to afford that type of weapon, so I’ll leave that until later.
For my mechanik’s organization, I’ll go with Ironhead Station in Cygnar. It’s one of the most well-known and renowned Rhulic enclaves in Western Immoren, and should provide me both with resources and well as some inspiration for back story. For my clan, I’ll leave this choice for later once I start writing up my character background.
Step Four: Stat Increases
Finally, I finish off creation with three stat increases. Currently, my stats with native stats listed first and stats in ironhead armor listed second are:
Next would come the process of writing up the back story for this character, which will involve sitting down with my role-playing group and going over the campaign and group dynamics, because that’s how we roll.
That’s just a quick look at the character creation process for the Ironhead. Since the release of the Core Rules about 16 months ago, we’ve seen tons of new content through No Quarter, Full Metal Fridays on Privateer’s website, as well as new IK-specific publications like Kings, Nations, and Gods. Who knows what 2014 will bring?
