First, few notes.
These are ‘armchair critic’ opinions - I haven’t got a chance to playtest 13th Age yet.
I will compare everything to D&D 4e - partially because this is what I’m playing and DMing at the moment, partially because it is the system 13th Age is most similar to.
13th Age gets one very important thing right - it separates combat and non-combat aspects of PC. One of the worst mistakes tactical/gamist RPG can do, in my opinion, is to force you to choose between being good in combat and being cool and/or resourceful outside combat. I think about 3 aspects here - combat stats, ‘fluff’ rpg layer and non-combat mechanics. 4e got a proper separation between them - you were almost never required to sacrifice ‘coolness’ for combat stats. Unfortunately, useful non-combat mechanics are almost non-existing. Skills are somewhere in the middle - but they are still presented mostly as combat-related stats. Unfortunately, skill challenges are not really hitting the spot for me.
In 13th age, we have Icons system, where you can relate to one of world superpowers - but it comes with big of narrativist mechanics, where you can use relations to influence campaign. Same goes for backgrounds - they are very clearly detached from combat or clearly defined challenges and provide some rules for extending non-combat gameplay. One Unique Thing is nice concept, but it is purely ‘fluff’.
And here comes the main point of this review - all above things, which I find quite interesting, are separate game in itself. This is a right thing to do (to avoid choices between being good in combat and non-combat stats), but this also means that they can be very easily transplanted on top of any other system - for example D&D 4e. Same goes for the world (which is very much tied to proposed Icons system). So for me, real question is - if I import the world, icons, backgrounds and One Unique Thing into my 4e D&D rules, what is the _real_ difference between 13th Age and 4e D&D, which makes it a separate system, rather than collection of few Dragon articles with optional extensions to 4e?
Combat. Monsters. Equipment. Classes. Balance.
There are few other superficial differences, like races, but you have to look really closely to find differences from 4e, so this part can be safely ignored.
Single biggest difference of all is lack of grid for combat. While using miniatures is suggested to help to indicate who is close to whom and possibly relations to terrain, there is no real forced movement, exact distances, formations etc. This allows for more free-form roleplay of combat, more creativity on player’s part, but comes with own set of problems. Potentially there can be a lot of discussions who is safe, who is protecting/blocking whom etc - but to estimate these I will need to wait for playtest. Currently, biggest issue I see is reduction on tactical/boardgame aspect of the game. There are less possibilities for mechanical effects of powers, given lack of real forced movement. Flanking is gone. Speed differences/effects are gone. This is a good chunk of variety from 4e gone because of that.
Second biggest difference for combat is escalation die, which was already describe in this thread multiple times. It is interesting concept, especially in the way few monsters interact with it on meta level, but I’m a bit scared about the possible effect of slowing down PCs for first few rounds, to not ‘waste’ big abilities without having big to-hit bonus. Playtest will show.
And finally there are mooks, different solution for minions, which are possible because of the lack of the grid. I like the idea and will make sure that there are plenty of them for players to kill in cinematic ways
Rest of combat is very similar to 4e - nothing really worth mentioning.
Monsters - are very uneven at the moment. This is pre-prerelease, so things might change, but:
- there are few instances where monster abilities are very interesting and I immediately feel the urge to put this monster in game
- many monsters are not really inspiring - feel like 3e monsters, where after first two rounds people were just throwing d20 over and over trying to go through pool of hps
- not many of them; I’m afraid this might stay this way, given the fact it is single book combining content of PHB, DMG, MM and world book.
- pictures; missing in current version, but will they as good as MM ones ?
- fluff text - not much of it atm, kind of 4e without tactics and lore sections (basically 2 sentences in most cases); again, maybe it will change
Equipment - very different approach to magic items. I like the idea of non-compulsory items, but this can be possibly fixed with intrinsic bonuses in 4e. Magic items feel more ‘epic’, but small part of me is going to miss the christmas tree approach of 4e... Unfortunately, choice of magic items is very limited at the moment, but this can be easily fixed either for release or in some kind of expansion/web enhancement.
Non-magic equipment on the other hand is a clear win in my opinion - just very broad weapon and armor types, with exact types of weapons left into ‘fluff’ domain, allowing players to look exactly how they want, without making tradeoffs for combat effectiveness.. While it reduces combat options variety slightly (no high crit, no reach, no brutal etc), I don’t think I will miss that.
Classes - there was considerable effort put into making sure that they are different from each other. I don’t necessarily like the gradation of classes from not complex to very complex - I’m sure that there are few people who would like to barbarian-style character with some more options thrown in. Still things look interesting, I like idea of feats being class specific, more like ‘upgrade points’ for abilities rather than all-encompassing abilities from 4e. Are classes more interesting that 4e ? Bit different yes and if you compare the set given in 13th Age versus set from PHB1, 13th Age wins for sure, but you have to compare against current state of 4e... In current form, I find 13 Age a bit lacking, but let’s wait for final release.
And I come to the final point - balance. Numbers are just wild. Everything is based on d20. 1st level character will deal 1d8+3 with long sword, epic level (8th) person will swing for 8d8+12 or so. You will start with 24 hp, but reach 160 or so around epic. Big differences - but at the same time, you can expect to have +4 to hit on first level and +11 to hit on epic level - difference of just +7, which is similar to effect of escalation die (+1 to +6). I cannot pinpoint exact issues here, for sure not without extensive playtesting, but
- I’m not sure if you can balance such game properly given limited resources for playtesting and corrections
- I’m not sure if this game math can be balanced at all (by balance I mostly mean PC versus monster balance, I can forgive some PC versus PC imbalances in combat effectiveness).
After this lengthy introduction, the core of the question: Does it make sense to throw away your 4e and start playing 13th Age, or is it better to fish some ideas out of it (including possibly entire campaign world with Icons etc) and leave the rest with 4e?
I think that deciding factor for me will be mostly grid combat. 13th Age is not really using grid, 4e cannot be played in proper way without grid. I would certainly chose 13th age over any of 3e variations, because of all the things I love in 4e - so if you were waiting with jumping on 4e wagon because you hate boardgames in your rpg, 13th Age is the answer.
Second factor might be monsters. Monster Manual series are really good in my opinions - interesting abilities, great pictures, big variety. I hope 13th Age will get proper pictures, or we will have to carry along 4e MM to show how monster looks like
