13th Age pros and cons?

[Agamon]

Is that the same in 13A? Is the dragon breath just another low-damage area of effect attack, do the spell casters just have different variations of low-damage area of effect attacks (one that deals acid damage, the other cold damage, the other fire damage; and some with a condition that can be removed easily), or do monsters or characters have access to effects that are truly dangerous, are some spells open-ended and open to interpretation, are character and monsters feats somethign beyond X damage in Y area or against one target?

Hmmm, as to your questions, spells and effects are both as closed as 4e and as open as oD&D. Rituals let you take a spell that you know and do something different with it. Color Spray can create fireworks, Fireball can light every torch in a city, Shield can be used to build a bridge or encapsulate an area, and those are of the top of my head because it's up to the caster's imagination.

Monsters are pretty balanced as they are, but there are optional abilities for many of them to make them more powerful for tougher fights. In fact, demons automatically get one random one.

And they must have some dangerous abilities, my group is stating to think I'm a killer GM, some of the fights have been viscous. But I'd suggest checking out the classes and monsters on the SRD to see what they do.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Yes, they are all powers, as I mentioned, this is a 4e-like game. But it's also a story game, and the in-game flavor of what the PCs do makes them seem pretty different to me.

What also makes a difference is that while many attacks are formalised as power-like parcels, they are surrounded by rather different mechanics:

• Classes all get unique class features (talents) from a pool - this in addition to powers/spells
• Area damage and spike damage his very rare outside of spells
• Only spells are used in the semi-Vancian way, fighters have attacks triggered by rolls, rogues need momentum for some powers and so on.

So, between the different mechanics and complexity between classes, together with class features, it's not quite as structurally similar as 4E. I think saying it's a middle ground between 4E and previous editions is a fair description for this aspect of the game.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Hmm, this sounds a lot like 4E to me.

Don't get me wrong, I love the 4E power system. It's great. A wonderful innovation (as far as i know) and a great addition to the RPG scene. It brought excellent combat options for all classes. But there was a price to pay: spells disappeared, and wizards and clerics and other "spellcaster" used powers like any other class. Consequently, spellcasters are not special anymore in 4E. Or, worded differently, wizards are as special as any other class, since they could do just about the same thing. Classes are balanced. And monsters are balanced too, no super powerful breath weapon or gaze that turns to stone or disintegrate ray.

Is that the same in 13A? Is the dragon breath just another low-damage area of effect attack, do the spell casters just have different variations of low-damage area of effect attacks (one that deals acid damage, the other cold damage, the other fire damage; and some with a condition that can be removed easily), or do monsters or characters have access to effects that are truly dangerous, are some spells open-ended and open to interpretation, are character and monsters feats somethign beyond X damage in Y area or against one target?

First of all, there are stat blocks. Some people think stat blocks mean everything inside the stat blocks must be same-y, but it's just a way of presenting things.

Secondly, only spell-casters have spell-like abilities. You won't see fighters running around with AoE encounter powers. But fighters can do a lot more than just hit people with a stick. What they do is a lot different than what a wizard does, but it is much more flexible and interesting than oD&D.

Third, the spellcasters spells are all pretty unique. Wizards do normal, spell-y things, Clerics have divine magic and Sorcerers have crazy effects that you have to roll randomly for.

Fourth, ritualized spell-casting, cantrip-mastery and others make spells as open as you want them to be. This game doesn't have 3.x's vast spell lists, because its only one book. But it does cover most of the major categories, IMHO.

So I'm curious... what exactly does "wizard spell" mean to you? B/c you seem to have something quite specific in mind and I don't quite get what it is.

 

[GrahamWills]

Combat Description; 14th Age

I've run a lot of 13th Age, 4e, 3.5 and AD&D over the decades, and 13th Age, although it has some similarities to all of them, it does feel unique enough that saying "it's an X clone" isn't strongly representative. My players include a B/X preferred, 3.5 only and a strong 4e player, and they all enjoy it strongly. So I think it really has hit a sweet spot.

One earlier question was "are all the classes similar in combat, in the 4e style?". My answer is a sample round of combat:

First, no grid. Combat map has a cave floor, a vine-covered cliff, and an upper cave area. That's it.

• Ranger and his bear move into a pincer attack on one of the guys on the ground
• Barbarian charges into combat. His belt gives him a big defense bonus the very first round of combat, so he wades in happily, doing standard swingy-sword killing stuff
• Rogue slips into the darkness and hits the mental defense of all the enemy; he can now reappear anywhere he likes next turn, so long as he could have traveled there in a round. He's effectively undetectable.
• Bard rolls really badly with a singing attack, but it's an even dice roll, so she gets to tell the barbarian to "move it!". Barbarian starts climbing the vines.
• 20 Tasloi appear out of hiding in the vines and throw spears at opponents. Much dismay in party
• Wizard misses with an acid attack

Next round:

• Ranger fails to roll successfully for his terrain effect stunt; if he succeeded he could have done some cool stunt like pulls some of the vines down. Instead concentrates on sticking the pointy end if his sword into stuff, aided by the bear. [Because the Ranger's bear had eaten a blue-dragon possessed hobgoblin the day before]. The bear's attack now does an extra bit of lightning damage this combat
• Barbarian rages and kills 4 tasloi in one attack. Foes seem worried.
• Rogue appears out of nowhere near one of the enemy and destroys him in one blow. Foes are definitely worried.
• Bard has successfully convinced a hobgoblin they should be allies (in the last fight) and sends him to get the others to stop fighting. Hobgoblin starts climbing the vines and talks to others up there
• 10 tasloi keep attacking. they concentrate on the rogue, who takes a lot of damage
• Wizard does a minor zot.

Items in red are character class abilities. Blue items were inspired by icon relationship rolls and everything else is just regular roleplaying. In the rest of the fight the barbarian will be dominated and attack a friend, the hobgoblin ally will push a coupe, of tasloi to their death, and the bear will eat well. The rogue will lie on the floor with many spears in him wondering if perhaps his 4e experience in building hyper-optimized characters might not be the best plan in 13th Age.

 

[GrahamWills]

Rolling your own enemies in 13th Age

As part of the 1e -> 13th age conversion, I had to make up stats for a spell caster and for an aboleth, based on their original descriptions in "Dwellers of the Forbidden City". Here's my takes and an idea of what monsters look like -- a bit more brutal than standard 13th age (the aboleth was very nasty)


Aboleth
Large 4th level monster [aberrant]
Initiative: +9 Fear Threshold 18
Mucus in the water; Engaged enemies take a +4 vs PD when they become engaged or when they start their turn. Mucus lodges in your throat and makes you able to breath water but NOT air for d3 hours.
4x Tentacles +9 vs PD; 4 damage, DC 10 CON or flesh-to-slime. DC 10 CHA/WIS or confused (save ends)
Confuse: (3x daily, ranged, nearby) +9 vs MD. Target is confused [natural 16+] target is enslaved
Flesh-to-slime: skin turns to a mucous membrane and must be continuously kept wet or take 4 damage every ten minutes as it dries out. Normal save every full heal-up to throw off the effects. A Hard INT check to heal by another will make this a normal check.
Enslaved: Consumed by a desire to serve the aboleth. It will not fight for it, but will follow other orders. It is a quick CHA check for an ally to trigger a normal save. If that check succeeds they become confused. If they fail to save against the confusion, they become enslaved again. A natural 20 on any save renders that character immune to enslavement by this aboleth.
AC 20 PD 18 MD 14 HP 108



Horan
Lightning missile +9 vs. AC—10 damage. Natural even hit dazed, save ends.
Guards and Wards: fog corridors, all doors arcane locked and hidden behind illusory blank walls, webs everywhere. Web requires DC15 strength to push through. Daily spell
Haste / Slow: +8 vs MD. Miss every second turn, save ends. Or get an extra non-magic attack each round with haste. Easy save or it goes away. Recharges on even escalation dice
Cone of Electricity: +8 vs MDaffects 2-5 nearby; 20 points damage and dazed, easy save.
Hideaway: +8 vs MD or forget last 5 minutes and he becomes invisible, save or it ends.
Ring of Counter-spells: When an enemy targets Horan with a spell, he can roll a save; success means the spell has no effect on the dragon. If Horan is staggered, the save target increases by +5. For players, this is recharge 16+; Horan crafted this for himself!
Bracers of armor: +2 armor (champion). Cannot be worn with any other armor.
Initiative +7 AC 21 PD 19 MD 19 HP 76

 

[GrahamWills]

Icon relationships

Icon relationships are a fun, if tricky, feature of 13th Age. At the start of each session you roll to see if any of your relationships with icons have an impact on this session. I had set the following notes for the mini-campaign:

• Archmage: Aratheas (J4) and Horan (H) both have strong ties to the Archmage.
  
• Diabolist: The Yuan Ti follow and are aligned with her
  
• Dwarf King: There is a long-lost dwarven runestone hidden here that may help him unlock the Hall of Vengeance.
  
• The Elf Queen: Like the High Druid, she is interested in the jungle areas. Aratheas (J4) has lived in the Court of Queen’s wood and serves the Queen loyally.
  
• The Emperor: A previous emperor built this city a long time ago. The mongrelmen believe him to be a god and worship him.
  
• The Great Gold Wyrm: Opposes the diabolist and strongly dislikes the Yuan Ti
  
• The High Druid: The tasloi serve her and she guards and protects the jungles
  
• Orc Lord: Loosely associated with the Bugbears. The Bullywugs fear and vaguely revere him.

Because of good icon rolls, the bard (conflicted with the Diabolist) was able to see out of Yuan-Ti statues eyes. Useful for guarding, but it occasionally caused her issues. The ranger (elf queen) nearly managed to get snuggly with Aratheas, but screwed up his charisma checks (and because he is an elf reincarnated as a dwarf). Also because of relationships (and some play) one player became a council leader for the Bugbears (the like the prince of Shadows) and was thrown out of the mongrel men village, where the rest of the party were hiding out, and where the Barbarian, with strong tie to the emporer, was seen as a natural leader. None of that was planned upfront, all happened in one session leading to prep for the next one.


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I hope those posts gave some 13th Age flavor. As with any system, good players and running is the most important element, but I find 13th age has a nice blend of system and freedom, so that players both have freeform elements with rules, and also have some rule outlines for freeform play.

 

[Skyscraper]

Ok thanks again for all the posts.

To the question: what type of spells do I have in mind? The answer is: 1E spells (or the like, DCC, etc...) that are open-ended. One of my gripes with 4E was the disappearance of magic.

I think all the above answers pretty much all of my questions. The next step would be to order the core book and read the rules. Which I'll probably do.

Peace,

Sky

 

[WhatGravitas]

I think all the above answers pretty much all of my questions. The next step would be to order the core book and read the rules. Which I'll probably do.

Note the SRD: 13th Age Wizard (it was linked before, but just in case you haven't seen it)

The actual book is written in a slightly more colloquial tone, has better layout and very insightful sidebars and developer comment. But reading the bare mechanics might still give you a good impression of how "magical" magic can be, especially the class talents "Cantrip Mastery", "Polysyllabic Verbalisations" and the Utility Spell.

Of course, if you like what you see, I strongly encourage you to buy the book, it's good and fun.

 

[NinjaPaladin]

Very late to the party, but as someone who ran a bunch of 3E, and a fair amount of d20 Modern, Grim Tales, and Mutants & Masterminds, I am really enjoying 13th Age a ton. As others have said, combat is simple and fast, but gives folks a chance to do cool things, and the martial classes, while simpler than the casters, don't feel unpowered -- scaling weapon damage is great for that.

Pros: Shared Narrative

As players get more comfortable with tossing out times they want their icon relationships to pay off ("Can I cash in this 6 Positive I have with the Diabolist to have this demon guarding the control panel be an awkward ex-boyfriend?"), the games can take more hard left turns, which at first seems scary... and is then kind of wonderful. As the GM, there's no more expectation of me making a novel that I have to cleverly trick my players into going through. I can make rough outlines for encounters and things I plan to have happen, and when they throw a wrench in the gears, it's not a jerk player move, it's FUN, and I can roll with it, and we can all have fun improvising a bit. Rewarding a player for coming up with a good use of One Unique Thing or an Icon die is just FUN.

I've found that the let's-play stuff does even more of this. Each player takes turns establishing part of a room that you want to use for a cool battle, or each player describes part of the party's progress through a dungeon (when you want to get through it quickly instead of charting each ten-foot step).

I have players that range from "Never played a pen & paper RPG before" to "played a ton of 3.5e and other games and can talk knowledgeably about systems." Everyone seems to like the system, and simple classes like the paladin and barbarian are great for new players to get comfortable with.

Pros: Simple Enemies
Enemies use much more of their own AI to determine how they act, which lets me as the GM fling down a lot more enemies at once without bogging games down. Rather than having a lot of abilities, enemies usually have just one or two, plus other effects that automatically trigger in key circumstances. I've heard people complain about this making enemies too simple, but honestly, I can always complicate 'em if I want 'em. Starting them simple lets me add complication where I want it, like the designers do in their let's play adventures (where monsters use special abilities specifically where it's plot-important).

Cons: Improv-Friendliness Required
If you aren't comfortable changing things on the fly, 13th Age could easily stress you out. If your players are shy, it can start to feel like you're pushing them to get them to talk more, and if your players are glory hounds or jerks, One Unique Things and Icon Dice give them excuses to play into those bad behaviors. This is a game that assumes that people are playing this because they are friends in real life, and are there to give each other grief but ultimately work together and have a good time. That includes players and GMs. While 3E ad 4E often felt designed to protect the players from a mean GM and the GM from powergaming players, this game pretty much says, "Here's some stuff that is inherently unbalanceable. Hope you're all mature enough to have fun with it instead of being jerks." That is definitely not for everyone.

Anyway, I hope you have fun with it!

 

[Rel]

I remember talking to a friend at GenCon last year, having only picked up my copy of 13th Age 24 hours previous, and him saying, "I'm surprised at all the buzz around that game. Isn't it just a simplified version of 4e?"

While it has a few definite similarities to 4e, the overall context of the system, with all of the other mechanics from One Unique Thing to Backgrounds to Icons and the Escalation Die, it really doesn't feel much like 4e once you are at the game table. It is it's own, beautiful, unique beast and I've come to really adore it for the fun and excitement it has injected into our fantasy games. I'm running another demo game tomorrow for people who have never played before and I think it's going to be a blast.