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

Zaukrie · Mar 28, 2026

I think 13th age looks really fun, but imo, it suffers from layout issues just like draw steel. Both look very complicated on the PC side. Just lean into 4e presentation more....

Thomas Shey · Mar 29, 2026

bsss said:
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.

Mostly, but you had things like the Shadow Thieves with the Shadow Dragon (don't remember which Bestiary that was with) that had problems too because of chained die riders. The standout was the 1e and 2e Huge Green Dragons, though, which were corebook monsters. Some of the giants weren't great either though.

Nightfly · Mar 29, 2026

THEMNGMNT said:
Monster design: Monster abilities and tactics trigger off die rolls. This means GMs spend less time deciding what a monster does on their turn. It works great.

By far my favorite thing about 13a. Having cool monster abilities that trigger on certain rolls, such as a natural even roll or a natural 15+, leads to monsters that are more colorful and surprising but also easier to run as DM. The best of both worlds.

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 29, 2026

THEMNGMNT said:
Note the first draft of this post was written by AI, then revised by me.

Mod Note:

ENWorld has a policy against posting most AI-generated content. The notice is at the top of the page. By this quoted admission, you’re running afoul of this rule; I could justifiably close or even delete this thread.

But because it’s a new policy, I can’t tell how much editing you’ve done, and this conversation seems to be going well, I’m giving you (and only you) a pass…THIS TIME.

Don’t repeat this mistake; don’t anyone else duplicate it. It’s one time only, period. I’m not handling out other passes.

Thomas Shey · Mar 29, 2026

Nightfly said:
By far my favorite thing about 13a. Having cool monster abilities that trigger on certain rolls, such as a natural even roll or a natural 15+, leads to monsters that are more colorful and surprising but also easier to run as DM. The best of both worlds.

The big problem they had in 1e is that they sometimes got carried away with additional attacks chained off that. That was the big problem with the original Huge Green Dragon. If the die rolls came up wrong, you could do a pretty ridiculous amount of damage, and that was assuming no crits. There was a very small incidence chance of its action coming up and, well, everyone dies. Without much they could do about it since it would take place all in its action.

Not a surprise that one got reworked in 2e...

Arilyn · Mar 29, 2026

My favourite in 1st edition 13th Age were the Redcaps, that would reappear when players said "the word" chosen by GM during their first encounter.

Nightfly · Mar 29, 2026

Arilyn said:
My favourite in 1st edition 13th Age were the Redcaps, that would reappear when players said "the word" chosen by GM during their first encounter.

I just read the entry for Redcap in 13th Age Bestiary, and yeah...that entire write-up is money, top to bottom. Their powers, the description, the background, the plot hooks, and even their relationships with the Icons. Just awesome, inspiring stuff. It reminds me of Monster Overhaul, which is high praise indeed.

mamba · Mar 30, 2026

zakael19 said:
Neat, maybe I'll check 2e out. I wish there was a free way to peek the rules (is there?).

there is a preview and eventually there should be an updated SRD

13th Age Preview PDF

pelgranepress.com

Arilyn · Mar 30, 2026

Nightfly said:
I just read the entry for Redcap in 13th Age Bestiary, and yeah...that entire write-up is money, top to bottom. Their powers, the description, the background, the plot hooks, and even their relationships with the Icons. Just awesome, inspiring stuff. It reminds me of Monster Overhaul, which is high praise indeed.

I don't usually read monster books straight through, as I just flip through for what I might need. 13th Age was the exception.

Monster Overhaul too.

bsss · Mar 31, 2026

bsss said:
*: 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".

I would be interested in hearing if Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard does anything differently than the traditional D&D approach with...

Resting/The Adventuring Loop - 13th Age

13th Age has the concept of arcs (simply called "days" in 1E, but you'll see why they changed the name in a moment) that are the point in time between extended rests (in the D&D 4e sense). The "full heal-up" in 13th Age is as in 4e as well, you get back all of your hp, your "daily" powers, all your recoveries, and other such limited things, but the interesting part is where the reasoning comes into play in moving away from "daily" or "extended rest" language. In 2E they switched to arcs because they had no intent to tie the idea to a day --- the time between full heal-ups could be multiple days or mere hours, so it was confusing to call all the features that didn't refresh when you slept "daily" powers.

What I think is a striking break from tradition is why to do any of this at all and upend a normal D&D approach, which they explain in the 2E book simply --- their take on heroic fantasy is that "fighting as heroes" pushes the action forward and can even incentivize plowing ahead rather than taking a narrative loss*, and that they're not interested in simulating as a game rule when and how characters sleep for the night. (Though you could, of course, choose to pay attention to that as a precursor to an encounter, it just doesn't interact with recovery.)

*: a narrative loss (formerly a "campaign loss") is the idea that if the party takes their foot off the gas and chooses to get a full heal-up without pushing themselves to the normal ~4 battles per arc, that they get the full heal-up, but their goals are stymied as they have lost the heroic momentum, basically. Another neat concept and maybe worth another exploration of its own later on.

Anyway, I was wondering if, while we're comparing things, anything interesting was going on here in SotDL/WW. I think the core D&D treatment is fine, if a bit frustrating to deal with, so I'm keen to hear if there's yet another take out there.