My 13th Age Report

waderockett said:

You can find an overview of the game, pregen characters, the 2-hour demo adventure, quick reference sheets and more on the Resources page. I can't post links yet, but if you go to Pelgrane Press' website, click 13th Age in the right sidebar, and click Resources on the sidebar, you'll see it.

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If you make just two more posts being awesome and answering folks' questions about 13th Age, you'll be able to post links to your heart's content! (I'd override it for you, but I only have a master on/off switch for the setting).

Morrus has remembered well; those tidbits are all accurate. I also agree with his impressions. I think the main bonus - worth the purchase of the book for me - are all the very good ideas that could easily work in D&D Next or be ported back to any version of D&D. Escalation die, static damage, one unique thing - all this and more can be simply copy/pasted into pretty much any other RPG, and are especially well-fit to D&D. Even if you don't end up using their setting or their icons or whatever, there are enough good ideas in the book that I believe it worth the purchase.

I like a lot of what 13th Age offers (the way skills works is a big bonus for me), but my one concern is how crunchy things are. When I look at the dwarven cleric, for instance, I'm afeared of how much number-crunching and power-tracking is going on (something that I was not fond of in 4e). Is the game overall about the same kind of level of mathiness as 4e?

B.T. said:

I like a lot of what 13th Age offers (the way skills works is a big bonus for me), but my one concern is how crunchy things are. When I look at the dwarven cleric, for instance, I'm afeared of how much number-crunching and power-tracking is going on (something that I was not fond of in 4e). Is the game overall about the same kind of level of mathiness as 4e?

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This is what concerned me too,.when I took a look at the pre gens a couple weeks back when the link was first posted. The game looks really intrguing to me as I love 4e, but the tactical bits killed it for me and my kid group as well as my old adult group. Too much BS going on from round to round, and none of us care for mins/pawns/counters and grids.


I see some really cool stuff though..far more exciting than I see with NEXT.

I can only speak from my own experience, but after quite a lot of time with 4.0 and a mini-campaign with 13th Age, I'd put 13th Age's "mathiness" at "well behind" 4.0. The complete lack of grid-based AOE, an embrace of average damage, and a general lack of "+2, +2, -1, +2, -2, ok roll" mean that round-by-round decisions are made faster and easier, and generally speaking battles tend to average closer to 20 minutes, instead of an hour+. For example, instead of adding numbers together, a fighter may use different abilities based on the number rolled on the d20 - like, an even number can do X, but if you roll 16 or higher you can do Y. It's much faster and less math-intensive to just see a number and know what to do, as opposed to adding and subtracting all your bonuses.

Certainly YMMV, and obviously depending on how many house rules or ports you bring/remove, this can go up or down. Certain classes or even specific class builds may add or subtract as well. But at least in my group, everyone commented on how much faster 13th Age ran, and I think a lack of mathiness was part of that.

B.T. said:

I like a lot of what 13th Age offers (the way skills works is a big bonus for me), but my one concern is how crunchy things are. When I look at the dwarven cleric, for instance, I'm afeared of how much number-crunching and power-tracking is going on (something that I was not fond of in 4e). Is the game overall about the same kind of level of mathiness as 4e?

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Much, much less from what I saw. I only saw 1st level, though.

I just went back to look at the downloadable pregens. I notice the Dwarven Cleric has almost no abilities/powers/stuff to do outide of combat. Everything on the sheet except for cure light wounds is used in combat.

I can understand the Fighter pregen being like that, but..

Is this normal? If so that is pretty disconcerting.

JeffB said:

I just went back to look at the downloadable pregens. I notice the Dwarven Cleric has almost no abilities/powers/stuff to do outide of combat. Everything on the sheet except for cure light wounds is used in combat.

I can understand the Fighter pregen being like that, but..

Is this normal? If so that is pretty disconcerting.

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The Cleric and the Wizard get ritual casting (though anyone can take the feat for it)... which is a kind of out-of-combat free-form magic system. The other thing is Backgrounds which are basically the skill system of 13th Age.

Imaro said:

The Cleric and the Wizard get ritual casting (though anyone can take the feat for it)... which is a kind of out-of-combat free-form magic system. The other thing is Backgrounds which are basically the skill system of 13th Age.

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Thanks.for the reply. Are there any examples you could cite of out of combat clerical or wizard "spells"? Or where I might find info?

JeffB said:

Thanks.for the reply. Are there any examples you could cite of out of combat clerical or wizard "spells"? Or where I might find info?

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Bear in mind that the pre-gens were created for use with the 2-hour demo. The first hour is spent filling in the blanks, and the second hour consists of an encounter that's based on player choices. The characters are combat-focused because combat is a significant part of the demo.

Most standard cleric spells are related to combat: they heal, do damage, or provide defense. At higher levels, clerics can do things like travel through the overworld and resurrect people, though the latter is at great cost.

As Imaro mentioned, ritual casting expands the effect of standard spells to produce free-form, non-combat effects. A cleric in my campaign dedicated to the goddess of hearth and home used ritual casting to close a demonic portal in someone's house.

The cleric domains of Love/Beauty and Knowledge/Lore provide exclusively non-combat abilities.

And last but certainly not least, you'll notice that the pregen character sheets have their backgrounds and One Unique Things left blank. This is where the non-combat stuff really comes into play. Suggestions for cleric backgrounds in the game include village healer, archivist, military chaplain, temple guard, bartender, reformed thief, abyssal survivor, wasteland prophet, dwarven hierophant, initiate of the Stellar Chorus, bishop of Foothold, multiversal pantheist, Cathedral guide, tutored by angels. And One Unique Things don't provide a mechanical benefit -- they're for story only.

Probably the best example of a wizard's non-combat capabilities is the Utility Spell slot:

Utility Spell
When you choose spells during a full heal-up, instead of taking a standard spell, you can choose to give up a spell slot to memorize the utility spell at the same level. When you take the utility spell, you gain access to a range of useful non-combat spells of the level you memorized it or below. The variety of utility spells you have to choose from increases as you give up higher-level spell slots. You cast all utility spells at the level of the spell slot you gave up for them.


Choose from among the following utility spells:

1st level	disguise self
1st level	feather fall
1st level	hold portal
3rd level	levitate
3rd level	message
3rd level	speak with item
5th level	water breathing
7th level	scrying

For example, if you memorize the utility spell slot at 3rd level, you can cast one of the following six spells at 3rd level as a standard action: disguise self, feather fall, hold portal, levitate, message, or speak with item. You don’t have to decide ahead of time which utility spell you will cast. You can also memorize the utility spell multiple times by giving up a spell slot for each use.

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