Ability Damage in 13th Age?

[plancktum]

Hi,

as I'm converting the Rise of the Runelords AP to 13th Age I've now encountered a problem. How do you handle attribute damage in 13th Age? Just cut it out? Replace it with normal damage? Or do you apply this temporary damage until the next full heal-up?

I'm open for your ideas

best regards

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

There's no ability damage in 13th Age or 4e, and there really shouldn't be. (In 3e/PF, ability damage could only be fixed by specific spells or lots of rest.)

Instead of ability damage, you should use an effect that matches the power. So if it's poison that does Con damage, it should deal ongoing damage instead. If it's shadow Strength drain, the target should be "weakened" (not an effect in 13th Age, I think) for a period of time. (Not too long, you don't want PCs that will huddle for the next 3 hours until they get their Strength back.) If it's Wisdom damage, they should instead suffer a penalty to Mental Defense for some time, and so on.

 

[plancktum]

That makes sense. But how would you treat diseases which have an incubation time?
I like such things from an roleplaying aspect. Maybe reducing the PD after the incubation time until the PC gets some kind of treatment?

 

[alien270]

That makes sense. But how would you treat diseases which have an incubation time?
I like such things from an roleplaying aspect. Maybe reducing the PD after the incubation time until the PC gets some kind of treatment?

The 13th Age Midgard Bestiary does disease tracks pretty much the same as 4E. The disease has 3 "stages," and at each full heal up you roll a Con check with a failure moving you one step along the disease track, and a success moving you down. The one disease that I checked (White Ghost Shivers, from the Bone Crab) starts you at stage 2 when you first contract it.

 

[Evenglare]

To be fair if you want ability damage in the game go ahead and put it in there. I am working on a game of my own using the archmage system and I have changed a LOT of stuff to suite my vision. Usually when I tell anyone about it they say something akin to "NO IT DOESNT NEED THAT, KEEP IT SIMPLE!" or something along those lines. This is quite humorous to me because the creators of the game flat out say they WANT people to change the system, they don't expect any 2 games of 13th age to play the same. But for some reason a large chunk of the community is very "anti change". One time I suggested people look into "ultimate campaign" from pathfinder because it has a lot of cool subsystems that can easily be dropped in the game, but again many many people said it would go against the foundation of why the system was created and it doesn't need it, it's just too much.

.... screw that.... make the game YOU want to play!

 

[D'karr]

.... screw that.... make the game YOU want to play!

This is very true of 13th Age. Then again I've done this with 4e, 3.x , SWSE, and Shadowrun. So it has become second nature for my group that there will always be tweaks to the base game system.

 

[Jhaelen]

There's no ability damage in 13th Age or 4e, and there really shouldn't be. (In 3e/PF, ability damage could only be fixed by specific spells or lots of rest.)

Instead of ability damage, you should use an effect that matches the power. So if it's poison that does Con damage, it should deal ongoing damage instead. If it's shadow Strength drain, the target should be "weakened" (not an effect in 13th Age, I think) for a period of time. (Not too long, you don't want PCs that will huddle for the next 3 hours until they get their Strength back.) If it's Wisdom damage, they should instead suffer a penalty to Mental Defense for some time, and so on.

Yup, that's my take, as well.
The problem with ability damage is that it requires you to recalculate all kinds of bonuses. That's annoying. Instead, I'd just apply a fitting condition or simply a negative modifier to some actions, rolls, or defenses.

All of this should go away after a short rest (or maybe even after being the target of any kind of magic healing).
For ability drain you could decide it goes away after a full rest, level-up, or after a healing ritual has been used.
It could also be a great way to make use of a beneficial icon relationship roll, I guess.