13th Age Everything you ever wanted to know about 13th Age and Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard

[Thomas Shey]

I've am definitely struggling with this. When we play with a map, there's a lot of interceptions. Without, there is not.

Well, I'm fortunate that I can't really run a combat in any system that cares at all about position without a map, so I never tried to do that. I just didn't use a grid.

 

[zakael19]

Does 13th age have a bounded enough modifier system to do a well controlled Skill Challenge framework? One of the best things about 4e is how you know at each level what an easy/medium/hard level appropriate DC is, but so many other rulesets break the math so that it doesn’t work. 13th age otherwise sounds so much like what I think I want - 4e’s strengths without all the intricate grids and stacking modifiers.

 

[bsss]

Does 13th age have a bounded enough modifier system to do a well controlled Skill Challenge framework? One of the best things about 4e is how you know at each level what an easy/medium/hard level appropriate DC is, but so many other rulesets break the math so that it doesn’t work. 13th age otherwise sounds so much like what I think I want - 4e’s strengths without all the intricate grids and stacking modifiers.

13A has an explicit Normal/Hard/Ridiculously Hard for each tier. (Party level 1-4 is adventurer tier, 5-7 champion, and 8-10 epic.) Generally the GM decides what tier the overall environment is (it doesn't have to match the party level) and uses the standard DCs. The math is pretty in line with how PCs advance, notably here that PCs add their level to checks and get a few ability score increases as they advance, but background points don't normally increase.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Its not particularly bounded, but there's not really much in the way of modifiers, either; as @bsss above says, the GM sets one of a limited set of target numbers, and then you're adding a D20 roll, the Background value (which is normally going to be maybe a +6) the attribute bonus (maybe +5 at most) and the level (between +1 and +10). There's not a lot of ways to manipulate that number at the PC end.

 

[bsss]

4. Short Campaigns and Fast Leveling​

• The default is that adventures take one session, and characters level after each session. So campaigns last less than a dozen sessions.
• But you can go longer. My campaign lasted 50 sessions. IMHO the sweet spot is 20-40 sessions.

Interesting chance to compare games here.

13A also does a form of milestone leveling as well, but with no hard recommendation on the pace. However, as of 2E, they recommend an "incremental advance" every arc* or so, which are like partial steps towards the next big level, and 3-4 arcs between level ups. If you take an arc to be approximately a session, you aren't far off from your sweet spot. There's no hard link between session and adventure, but they do offer up a 10-session campaign variant rule.

*: arcs ("days" in 1E) are probably worth their own look, as they are a bigger break from D&D tradition in terms of rest and the "adventuring day".

 

[zakael19]

13A has an explicit Normal/Hard/Ridiculously Hard for each tier. (Party level 1-4 is adventurer tier, 5-7 champion, and 8-10 epic.) Generally the GM decides what tier the overall environment is (it doesn't have to match the party level) and uses the standard DCs. The math is pretty in line with how PCs advance, notably here that PCs add their level to checks and get a few ability score increases as they advance, but background points don't normally increase.

Neat, maybe I'll check 2e out. I wish there was a free way to peek the rules (is there?).

 

[bsss]

Its not particularly bounded, but there's not really much in the way of modifiers, either; as @bsss above says, the GM sets one of a limited set of target numbers, and then you're adding a D20 roll, the Background value (which is normally going to be maybe a +6) the attribute bonus (maybe +5 at most) and the level (between +1 and +10). There's not a lot of ways to manipulate that number at the PC end.

There's a fun little kind of micro-bounding on the DC side, actually, that I appreciate. The adventurer tier Hard task, let's say persuading a bandit lord, remains the same DC for four levels, so it becomes easier at the end of the tier due to character advancement, but you're also going to be moving into the next tier, where the Hard task --- now at a higher DC in the champion tier environment --- isn't a bandit lord anymore, it's a djinn or something, and the "hard becoming a bit easier" cycle repeats.

 

[bsss]

Neat, maybe I'll check 2e out. I wish there was a free way to peek the rules (is there?).

Not yet, they are still working on the 2E SRD. You can get probably 90% of the idea of the game from the existing 1E SRD though, the major changes were icon connection rules and revisiting a lot of class options and some of the math (mostly at the epic tier). People have made a hyperlinked version, e.g. Running the Game – 13th Age SRD

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not yet, they are still working on the 2E SRD. You can get probably 90% of the idea of the game from the existing 1E SRD though, the major changes were icon connection rules and revisiting a lot of class options and some of the math (mostly at the epic tier). People have made a hyperlinked version, e.g. Running the Game – 13th Age SRD

There's also considerable changes in the monster design at the upper end. A lot of Epic and some Champion tier monsters were, to be charitable, overtuned.

 

[bsss]

There's also considerable changes in the monster design at the upper end. A lot of Epic and some Champion tier monsters were, to be charitable, overtuned.

In my experience they'd ironed a lot of that out in the bestiaries, but to be fair, I haven't run 2E at champion or epic tier yet. I would definitely not use the 1E vanilla core book monsters unmodified, though, if that's what you're thinking of.