13th Age questions

[bert1000]

Just got 13th Age. Took a quick read but haven't played yet. Overall looks pretty awesome with lots of nice additions. As usual, from just I read I can't get a good feel for how some things will pan out in actually play. For those of you with play experience, I had a few questions:

1) Backgrounds are a great idea and remind me a lot of FATE aspects with their flexibility. The reason I think FATE aspects work so well, however, is the link to the meta currency of fate points. In particular, the expenditure of a FATE point in order for the aspect to contribute mechanically allows for aspects of all shape and size to exist without effecting game play balance.

Since backgrounds are 'always on', it seems like it greatly benefits a character to pick big sweeping backgrounds that can be used in a ton of situations instead of a mix of backgrounds of more specific usefulness (in FATE this really doesn't matter as much). It also seems like there could be the potential for a lot of 'DM may I' type interactions. Not necessarily a bad thing but will not work for some tables. 13th Age seems to assume DMs and players are not being dcks which is pretty refreshing. At the least, backgrounds encourage table dialogue.

Do you find that when players create whatever backgrounds they want, it pretty easily shakes out to balance between "backgrounds create cool roleplaying" and "players are always stretching credibility to try and get their best backgrounds to apply"? Or do you find you have to put significant time up front in the character building for things to run smooth (e.g., frequently ask someone to rework a background, etc.)?


2) The monsters look pretty simple compared to 3e (spells, adding classes, and weird supernatural abilities) and 4e. In general, I think simple is good. But do they play dynamically enough? I guess if combats are much quicker and the monster won't be around for more than 2-3 rounds they don't need that many "tricks".


3) People have commented that 13th Age still retains a good amount of "tactical'' play. Can you give me a couple examples of this from play?

 

[Obryn]

Since backgrounds are 'always on', it seems like it greatly benefits a character to pick big sweeping backgrounds that can be used in a ton of situations instead of a mix of backgrounds of more specific usefulness (in FATE this really doesn't matter as much). It also seems like there could be the potential for a lot of 'DM may I' type interactions. Not necessarily a bad thing but will not work for some tables. 13th Age seems to assume DMs and players are not being dcks which is pretty refreshing. At the least, backgrounds encourage table dialogue.

My advice is that, yeah, the game relies on people not being jerks. If there's a background that's too broad, the GM and players need to work together to scale it back. But with that said, in general the GM is encouraged to allow anything that isn't obviously stretching.

Remember that you've already, at this point, picked One Unique Thing, which is probably even more significant over the course of the game.

I haven't run 13A yet, so I can't specifically comment on the rest, but here's my gut feelings.

(1) The monsters look pretty good to me - I like checking for odds/evens on monsters' attacks a lot more than I do on players'. Fixed damage is a great time-saver.

(2) As for tactical play, you're simply not going to get as deep a tactical experience out of it as you would with 4e. That's cool, though, because that's one reason some people play 13A instead. Combat is shorter and there's less decision paralysis, overall. But that comes at a necessary cost in tactical depth. For example, a 13A Fighter is beholden to the whims of an odd/even die roll to pull off [Cool Move]. That strikes me as distinctly less tactical than picking [Appropriate Cool Move] at the right time. Likewise, there's no tactical movement - that's a big difference, too.

This isn't to say it's free of tactics; that's clearly wrong, IMO. 13A does a whole lot of stuff really, really well - but if you're looking for tactical combat, there's other games that do it better.

 

[Evilhalfling]

1) backgrounds - it varies by player, I had one that covered physical/social/and knowledge checks with 3 sweeping backgrounds (he also took extra back grounding as a feat) at least some of the time I gave him 1/2 value for his points, or flatly told him that in one instance or another it didn't apply. Other players I encouraged to broaden their backgrounds, or at least provide more specifics with the names. I convinced one Barbarian player to trade
"Plant and animal lore" for "Trained by the druid Grimjaw" by the end of the short campaign he was burning icon rolls for the ability to transform into a bear and cast entangle (+3 with great druid, gets you a lot of success)
- to answer one of your sub questions - yes I worked with players to broaden or narrow backgrounds.


2 & 3 Tactical monsters & play examples. I added a system of quick action risky maneuvers that were basically a skill roll vs PD or MD that allowed pushing, grappling, disarms, and overruns. You could also try the same things as a standard action with no risk of an OA or negative condition.

Monsters used it to knock PCs off a wall, to disarm and to grab. PCs used it to knock monsters off walls, knock over scaling ladders, grapple and generate clouds of dust for cover. They also used it to interfere with demonic magic, and to counter command summoned monsters (the drow sorceress had 4 ranks in demon summoner)

The system (which I borrowed) was added to the 13th age page. http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=14078

Other than that I had a dragon & kobold servants. (from the bestiary) if the kobolds hit the dragon got +5 to damage that target. The PCs worked really hard to get the 'marked' PCs away from the dragons full attack. The full attack didn't trigger every time, but it was a big risk when it did.
The party set an ambush for some giant desert cats. the cats smelled it coming and hit the party sorcerer left to guard a flanking canyon wall. getting the party up the wall and before the sorc was eaten was quite the trick (he still had 6 hp above final death, after the paladin took part of an attack for him)

 

[JeffB]

I have converted over my FR kids game to 13th age, and we have run one session so far. Keep in mind, I am not using Icons and relationships for this as it was mid campaign and I thought it would mess with some things established with the characters

Backgrounds were chosen based on character backstory...former thayan slave, town militia, street thief, temple guardian etc.

The combat was 3 3rd level characters and a npc capt. Of the guard (in cahoots with the enemy) up against two ogres and two orcs. The captain ran away (pretending to be a coward).

Despite the escalation die, the combat was twice as long as I expected, simply because the pcs rolled so poorly the entire combat. They were constantly rolling 1s, 3s, etc. It was pitiful. As the orcs and ogres split up, and the ogres kept smacking the PCs back (pop free), the party fighter was running around trying to aid whomever was in the worst situation that round. The party triumphed, but they used up powers and whatnot that fizzled because of the poor rolls, or never came to fruition, like the fighters cumulative crit threat.

I found the Ogres fun to run...smacking around PCs, causing them issues tactically but suited my TotM style of play. I love the abstraction of distances.....its a good tool for my needs, so that I do not get lazy and start ignoring distances and positioning, but works so smoothly to support the combat narrative.

I am looking fwd to the second session, just to see how combat goes withsome average or good rolling on the PCs part.

 

[Blue]

Backgrounds do require players not to be jerks, lucky something I don't have to deal with. Actually, my biggest problem was players with either too narrow backgrounds or overlapping backgrounds. One had three backgrounds that were about 80% overlap, needed to understand that they were supposed to be wider than 3.5 skills.

Monsters are simple and fast. Haven't been "too simple" by a long shot, but we're still in Adventurer tier. The "nature even/odd/hit/miss/16+/etc" actually keeps things hopping more than you'd expect. "10 of the same creature for three combats in a row" would get boring. But mixing up mooks (so much cooler than minions) and various creatures it's plenty going on. Once you're past a threshold, it's too much for the players to hold all the different things going on in their heads, adding more just adds complexity for the DM without adding to the variety.

I want to pussyfoot a little around the term "tactical play". It doesn't default to a battlemap, so if that's required for the definition of tactical play, it doesn't. But I consider it does. It's got engaging/disengaging, distance, intercepting foes, movement, etc. All the hallmarks of tactical play, if you mean that the tactics of positioning and actions in combat are important.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I am currently playing in a 13th Age campaign, and in my personal experience combat is extremely untactical.

The main culprit is the strange "no map, relative range" design. Basically there are only 4 distances in combat: engaged, nearby, far away, and so-far-you-arent-in-combat. Because of this there is no maneuvering, flanking, sniping, or any other positional tactics.

It takes one move to go from one range band to another and if you give up an attack you can move twice in a round...so you can never be more than one round of movement away from a creature and still shoot it with a bow or spell. There are rule for having other party members intercept, however that requires they not be engaged with another combatant, a state that all your fighters and defenders will be in after the first round.

The secondary culprit is there are NO written combat maneuvers and options. Want to trip, disarm, blind, or do anything other than attack or a power listed on your sheet? GMs perogative. Once the argument is made "well, the GM can always house-rule you doing that" then you are basically admitting that 13th Age itself doesn't allow it.

I am currently playing a 2nd level human cleric. Every combat consists of using one or two of my 5 daily low-level buffs and then standing around toe-to-toe rolling attack rolls versus whatever opponent is threatening a party member. Thats it. Doesn't matter the terrain, the circumstances, the opponents, or anything. Wait for your turn. Roll to-hit. Do some damage.

It feels like a throwback to 2e combat days...which is not a step forward for me.

I'm not saying 13th Age is a bad game....but it IS a bad game if you like your combats to be tactical in nature.

 

[GrahamWills]

Tactical or not ...

I'm a veteran of 4e GMing, so I feel pretty confident that I've seen the most tactical of systems in action (When players are using interrupts to maneuver another player into a space for them to be able to interrupt an action ...) and I'm currently running a 13th Age combat.

13th Age is less tactical than 4e, definitely, but I would contend it is as tactical as 3.5. This is not to start an edition war, but simply to provide a base for comparison -- please take it as such.

Movement
=======

A critical rule here is the intercept rule. For general players, if one player says they are shielding another, or hiding behind another, or if the placement of minis or game script makes it obvious, then it is *not possible* to engage one combatant without the other intercepting you (p162). There are also fighter abilities that allow them to intercept as an interrupt, adding another tactical layer.

Example: In my last game, in a tomb area, the players were being attacked on both sides and the wizard was not excited about being in melee, so stated he was staying behind the fighter. On the other side though, while the first skeleton tried to attack him, but the barbarian was in the way and so intercepted him, the second skeleton was able to break free of the barbarian (using the tactical disengage rules) and get to the wizard. Later int he same area a chaotic ooze thing simply slithered over the ceiling and thus was not able to be intercepted.

Also, line-of-sight is still very important. So in a typical combat, each combatant has a state which is:

* distance -- near, far, or way-away from each other combatant. Easy to see using minis and a map or whatever. Using zones makes it simple
* enagaged -- there is a complex mesh of tactical engagement that is crucial. If you are engaged in combat, you are so more limited
* line of sight -- 13th age is less "rule-based tactics" and more "do the obvious thing" tactics. Line of sight is a good example of what you need to think about. If you do not see something,you obviously cannot shoot at it, but do you even know there is something to do?

Overall, I would say that whereas you *can* play 13th age non-tactically, the more fun way for our group is with the tactics. In the afore-mentioned encounter we had several tactical situations that were well handled by light rules and common sense:

* Bard using powers to allow disengage attempts to wizard could escape
* Fighter intercepting through an acid pool. Not good for the boots, but it worked
* Characters unaware that others were begin attacked around a corner
* Clogging corridors both on purpose to stop enemies and by accident ("there's no room to land when you try and jump the acid pool, so ....)

Monster Abilities
==========

The system of monsters begin able to do things based on their dice roll is genius. It massively reduces the GMs need to ponder each action, while making it possible to have some memorable and very scary fights. The only downside is the swinginess. Examples from my last two sessions:

Dinosaurs: Brutal huge 45 damage on a hit, 22 on an even miss (sometimes close is good enough). That can KILL my players on an even miss and a hit. Scary.

Skeleton Lord: His attacks dropped players down the initiate order. My rogue hated me as he gets bonuses to hit monsters he is faster than. He also allowed his minions to use the escalation dice, and the combat went 5 rounds ("Are we facing tougher minions? Why are these guys hitting on 10s!)

Chaos glorps: Based on the dice rolls, they could disengage and flow around enemies. Easy to run and a very chaotic combat

Mind-controller: Roll a 18+ hit and you are dominated (hard save). Very nasty if it had ever happened .....


Player Abilities
=========

There are a ton of abilities that are at heart tactical. I confess I have not looked carefully at all classes, but my players have this sort of thing ...

* Ability to vanish the first round and appear anywhere nearby next round, with a double-damage attack -- tricky decision this; average damage is the same, but is the better positing worth waiting?
* Swashbuckling and Terrain feats -- require the GM to allow a cool tactical effect. Used by my players to collapse a ceiling, lock a door to stop reinforcements, impede water movement, probably several others I've forgotten
* The Bard. All about tactics. Between granting disengages and free movement, they can really mess with a GMs ability to KILL THE ANNOYING WIZARD. Not that I'm bitter. I didn't want the skeleton lord to live. Oh no. I *planned* for him to die in that scene. Really.
* Fighter gets the intercept that allows him to interrupt movement, also either increasing his defenses or increases his damage most rounds. Just had this as a new addition to the game, but very tactical in nature.


Backgrounds
========

I use these a fair amount in combat. Examples:

* My college trained wizard pretty much always knows something about monsters with his backgrounds
* Used to see if you can notice that the fight around the corner seems to be much quieter, and not in a good way
* "I run through the pool of water .... I don't think I have any backgrounds that would help me ... so is a straight wisdom roll of 9 good enough? Oh...."
* Communicating with a savage tribe to coordinate defenses against dinosaurs.


TL;DR
====

The tactics are less codified, any require more fluidity and common sense. There is definitely less tactical "can you hit him and then shift 5 so I can step there and ...", but I am not sure there is less tactical *thought* overall, and a narration of the scene not using rule terms would likely end up sounding pretty tactical. Also, use the engage/intercept rules.

 

[alien270]

SNIP


TL;DR
====

The tactics are less codified, any require more fluidity and common sense. There is definitely less tactical "can you hit him and then shift 5 so I can step there and ...", but I am not sure there is less tactical *thought* overall, and a narration of the scene not using rule terms would likely end up sounding pretty tactical. Also, use the engage/intercept rules.

Good overview! One way to approach the issue is to think about how you define "tactical" in a tabletop RPG. Good tactics involve choosing the best options to maximize your results, and usually this gets tied pretty strongly to grids, positioning, flanking, complicated spells/maneuvers, etc. It's often thought of as the opposite of more narrative, cinematic combat. But I would argue that such a dichotomy is oversimplified.

Why should tactics rely on pre-defined actions/positions/powers (in other words, picking something from a list)? The main benefit of that is standardizing play and keeping expectations consistent, but just because your options are more free-form in a narrative system doesn't mean that they're not tactical. Indeed, some of the more free-form abilities (Swashbuckle, Terrain Stunt, VPV, Tiefling's Curse, etc.) essentially boil down to "here, have some advantage, just describe it in such a way that makes sense."

The system (which I borrowed) was added to the 13th age page. http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=14078

I'm glad you're finding the Dicey Stunts system useful (I'm the author). The ability to use such stunts are hinted at in the Rogue's Swashbuckle talent as being available for anyone to use (and reinforced by the Skill Escalation feat), and IMO one of the major oversights in the core rulebook is that more guidance on how to use free-form stunts is lacking. I think Tweet and Heinsoo expect players to improvise with their skills in combat and that GMs should reward the narration of clever tactics (there are a few APs with Heinsoo GMing that suggests this), and perhaps they just assumed it was too obvious to print. 13th Age is explicitly called out as being a system for advanced/experienced GMs (though fine for new PLAYERS), after all.

Still, most of my players come from a primarily 3.x/PF background where you're basically either looking at your spell list or full-attacking, and so they weren't really trying anything beyond what was written on their character sheets. Which was my main motivation for writing up the Dicey Stunts system. I wanted them to have an example framework that could be applied to a variety of actions, but with the described action triggering an option or ruling. Their increased use of these stunts has made the game feel more "tactical."

 

[bert1000]

I want to pussyfoot a little around the term "tactical play". It doesn't default to a battlemap, so if that's required for the definition of tactical play, it doesn't. But I consider it does. It's got engaging/disengaging, distance, intercepting foes, movement, etc. All the hallmarks of tactical play, if you mean that the tactics of positioning and actions in combat are important.

I am currently playing in a 13th Age campaign, and in my personal experience combat is extremely untactical.

I'm not saying 13th Age is a bad game....but it IS a bad game if you like your combats to be tactical in nature.

I'm a veteran of 4e GMing, so I feel pretty confident that I've seen the most tactical of systems in action (When players are using interrupts to maneuver another player into a space for them to be able to interrupt an action ...) and I'm currently running a 13th Age combat.

13th Age is less tactical than 4e, definitely, but I would contend it is as tactical as 3.5. This is not to start an edition war, but simply to provide a base for comparison -- please take it as such.

As always, there are prob. dozens of takes on what tactical is. I certainly don't need a battle map and precise movement for a game to be tactical (although this can be an element of tactics).

For me, the biggest part of a game feeling tactical is if the player often has multiple effective (and hopefully interesting) choices and needs to pick the optimal one based on circumstances or tradeoffs. Bonus points if there is often not an obvious optimal one but the player has two potentially equally effective but different choices she could make.

Should I do damage or create an effect this round? Should I move or stay put? Should I increase offense at the expense of defense? etc.

The biggest problem I see in many games is that these types of choices theoretically exist but in reality you are really better off just doing a few things.

 

[D.M.T.rpg]

I'm beginning to feel like some of the monsters are not very dramatic. What I mean is that a lot of the monster special abilities do stuff on paper, but don't really "show" on the battlefield. A bonus to damage or a bonus to hit based on odd/even/hit/miss/etc. It seems to be mostly number changes, even most of the conditions are simple number adjustments. I suppose anything can be played up with more descriptive embellishment, but it doesn't always do something "interesting".

I'm missing some of 4e's difficult terrain, push, pull, slide, knock prone, zones, shifts, stances, auras, etc. Not to say that all that cannot be house ruled in, just that I don't want to develop my own 13th age monster manual. I just don't have that kind of time/effort/design skills.

Some player options seem a little slim. As noted above, a player of mine had a fighter, but felt like he really didn't have many options.

All that said, I enjoy the game. I'm hoping 13 True Ways give a nice shot in the arm, and opens up the system at least a little.