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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6675262" data-attributes="member: 996">To be fair, 13A doesn't talk up being a continuation of 4e, just that one of it's two design partners was the guy behind 4e, it also draws heavily from 3e, and from Classic D&D, much like 5e did.  5e does go farther in the direction of "narrative" or story-telling style than 4e did.  Characters get a lot of 'ribbons,' like "One Unique Thing," choice of weapon & armor, and re-skinning and whatnot, that do contribute to defining the character, but have little or no mechanical impact.  Tactical combat is not absent, it's just more abstract, as a result of the game actually being designed for TotM (unlike 5e which just tells you to use TotM).But it does abandon some of the best things 4e did.  The common class structure is gone in favor of resource-varied classes with balance imposed by arbitrary day length.  While balance is (somewhat, if heavy-handedly) maintained, the classes end up being a lot less developed, individually, while still presenting a higher bar to learning more than one class or just 'getting' the system, in general.  Similarly, it keeps a surge-like mechanic, but abandons some of the coolest uses for it, (though the Commander class does trigger 'rallies' which isn't terrible).Ultimately, 13A isn't remotely a Pathfinder-like 'clone' of 4e - it's really a lot more like 5e in what it tries to do (and succeeds in doing), just with somewhat less D&D baggage, and a lot more indie innovation (and much better support for TotM, of course). "AEDU" was really more a short-hand for saying that 4e classes had a common structure (which made them so much easier to balance), than that it had 3 different kinds of resource-recovery. 13A uses different resource-recharge mixes among the classes, and balances them with a large hammer called a 'full-heal up,' that is DM mediated.  It works - better than anything done to balance 5e, 3e, or classic D&D, certainly - but it it's clumsy, arbitrary, and just blatantly obvious.  For people who don't like 'seeing the strings,' I suspect, it has to be a deal-breaker.OTOH, 13A monsters and encounters seem to work pretty well, and show clear 4e, as well as indie, influence.</blockquote>

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