Next time, please ask if you would like me to clarify something I said instead of posting in a reactionary fashion and I will do my best to oblige.
If you think 2+2 = 3, and have no reason to believe otherwise, would you pick up a calculator?
I wasn't confused about your point, I believed that it was clearly what you were saying. I was wrong - and that happens. But it's silly to think a person will ask for clarification on a point he's sure about. That would lead to some very long conversations indeed!
I'd like to point out that I NEVER said IH is a ripoff of anything else.
I stand by my statement that your choice of words reflected that believe, whether you said it outright or not. Whether it was a bad interpretation on my part, or a bad choice of wording on your part. The implication was there, in my eyes.
"It so wants to be Conan.. but isn't?"
Now, let me clarify my comment (which I believe I did if you read through the whole thread on EN World but whatever).
No, I didn't read the thread at EN World. I believe that if you want to make a point on a message board that might need clarification or to be expounded upon - it should be done in the forum and thread you commented in. I honestly don't like being bounced around to other forums just to figure out what someone is saying.
Nothing against you - and I am a member of ENWorld. Just a pet peeve of mine.
As I mentioned quite a bit in the EN World thread, I felt (and still feel) that IH were rules without a home. They elude to some kind of play style or campaign setting but I wasn't exactly sure what. It doesn't surprise me that Conan and IH play very differently at all - the power-level in IH is much higher right off the bat. But to me, the rules felt like they were trying to achieve something Conan-esque.
This is where the contention is, I think. And I'd say we simply disagree. But I can see where you're coming from on this point.
I don't, however, see Iron Heroes as 'rules without a home' as you put it. I think the rules are firmly grounded in cinematic action, -not- gritty action. Both could be considered sword & sorcery -- but there are obvious differences.
Conan characters, for example, don't have much in the way of guaranteed safety. In a gritty world, you very well could end up dead from one wrong move.
Iron Heroes has characters with pumped up Hit Points and lots of defensive abilities that are there to keep you alive.
What I'm getting at is that while Conan is based on, obviously, Conan -- Iron Heroes is based on a much wider variety of themes and settings, Conan probably being one of only many, many styles.
When looking at Iron Heroes, you have to consider the context. The way the book is set up makes it pretty obvious that while it's a low-magic, gore-ific ruleset, it is NOT a -gritty- ruleset, like Conan. The two systems serve very different functions, and concepts.
I'm sure Mr. Mearls had the stories of Conan in mind while he wrote Iron Heroes, but I don't think he ever intended the setting to adequately function for that type of world.
Contrarily, I think the Iron Heroes rules work really well for a low magic world that is -not- gritty, where death is certain. Iron Heroes seems to fit the mold for swashbuckler films and things like that.
Cinematic action versus gritty action.
But that's just how I see it.