Back to Iron Halberd! It's been a long while (five months, actually) since I've had anything to say, primarily because I've been focused on other projects, and because the work I had been doing on Iron Halberd hasn't been in a polished enough state for me to want to show off. But here we are with some real news!
So far I've been pretty happy with Iron Halberd's character customization. While it's technically classless, I tend to think of it as more having just a very flexible multiclassing system between three extremes: Fill your inventory with big weapons and heavy armor for a Fighter; with tools, rope, caltrops, lockpicks, and such for a Thief; and with spellbooks and potions for a Wizard.
Out of the four classic D&D archetypes, that leaves only the Cleric missing.
Clerics are tricky, because having a cleric means having healing magic. I have complicated feelings on healing magic. Iron Halberd uses relatively slow natural healing; though even that healing rate is much more generous than old-school D&D (or at least B/X which I'm familiar with) which had you restore only 1d3 hit points every rest. This is something I actually really like; healing so slowly gives a real weight to the damage you take. Being stabbed with a sword feels dangerous, and taking damage isn't just a today problem.
Healing magic can throw a wrench into that whole dynamic. Iron Halberd's spells work on a per-day basis; you spend Spirit to cast them, can cast them in a worse form for no resource cost, and you get back half your Spirit every day. If I just throw in a "Cure Wounds" spell that restores a d6 hit points (or more or less since IH's magic is the roll-on-tables kind) then the whole balance of that slower healing is thrown off. Worse, it means every party needs a healbot because the difference between a healer-less party and a healer-having one is just way too many hit points.
So, divine magic can't just be another magic tradition like arcane spells or necromancy. What I ended up going with instead was more interesting.
Being a cleric is kind of outside that whole system the other three archetypes use - it's only tangentially related to your item slots and your Spirit resource (both of which you can use to be a better Cleric, but you don't need either of them). You become a cleric by getting the attention of a god enough that they extend the offer to you. So any player can become a cleric midway through a campaign; it's more a condition than a class in the traditional sense. It's a reward for what you do in the world, the same way gold and magic items and followers are.
The relationship with your god is deliberately front-and-center in the cleric's mechanics. All cleric powers are fueled by it. Upon becoming a cleric, you get a resource called Divine Favor which starts at a pretty low number. Usually 3. That's the max amount of favor you can have at once. How do you increase your favor? By impressing your god, doing great deeds in their name, and furthering their goals. Your maximum favor goes up by 1 to 3 (depending on the significance of your deed) when you do something big for your god.
As long as you have any favor, you can cast miracles. Similar to regular spellcasting, divine magic is a gamble, but in a different way; for regular spells, you always pay the same cost, but the outcome of the spell is random. For miracles, the outcome is usually exactly what you want if successful, but the cost is a die roll. You tell the GM what you want to ask your god for, and the GM tells you what die you roll to see how much favor it'll cost, with a bigger die for bigger miracles. Gods are fickle and unreliable.
Of course, the book provides examples. I think any system this vague and open-ended needs pretty clear examples to not feel like the GM is being asked to do the designer's work for them.
Hoping to get more Iron Halberd news out soon as well, particularly for the new update's Stronghold system.
