Alright Veeky Forums, redpill me on 13th Age. Is it worth playing? Why should I use it instead of D&D?

Steal the Icons system for other games and then play FATE or Dungeon World instead.

>Is it worth playing?
Only if you enjoy playing a game by yourself.

>It's skill system is as loose as fuck and based on"background" or AKA how much your DM lets you get away with.
The real solution is to take a background that's in the DMs field. Have a DM that does some house shit related with his job, take a builder background and you'll be able to pick locks, climb, set up camp, appraise things, all the good shit. Unlike that herbalist who can only tell if wild plants are poisonous to eat and that's it. Now if the DM was a botionist and you took herbalist you could make poisons, make healing salves, make alchemcial like mixtures that nearly do anything and the builder guy could build a hut in some 3 weeks.

Huh. When 5e hadn't come out yet, I used to struggle trying to describe 13th Age in terms of 3.5 and 4e.
But now, "What 5e could have been if WotC had tried to make it good" fits the bill perfectly.

I don't allow anything so general for a background when I run 13th Age. Backgrounds are supposed to be evocative, one part of a larger story of a significant event in your character's life. So while I'll never let a player jot down a 5 point Soldier background, they can absolutely have "Most Confirmed Kills as a Bannerman in the Empire" because that has a narrower but much more interesting focus.

Oh it's fascinating looking at how the 13th Age devs and WotC came up with different solutions to problems they both identified with 4e and 3.x

Well, WotC had an extra problem: "Don't split the market."
Of course, they completely missed that that train had left the station a couple years ago.

I would really love an unbiased biography about the design process of 5e. I'm happy with the game we eventually got out of it, I'm disappointed in the many things they promised and never tried delivering on, but overall it just seems like it would be a really interesting read.

How is not being a fan of movie references PC?

Also, this game is a redux of 4th edition. not third or fifth.

>Living. F'ing. Dungeons.
No really, you should have seen one of my players' face when I told him a living dungeon had burrowed its way out of the ground outside of town. He was nigh orgasmic.
>Practically atheistic
There is no presented pantheon. Thus it is actually atheistic, rather than practically. Not sure why that's a selling point.
>Feats are per class and not some long list
There are non-class-specific ones as well. And while it's not 3.5 with "trap feats," feats are easily the most confusing part of character creation.
>Fighters are more than, "I hit it with my sword...again" as opposed to 5e.
This has nothing to do with the system of choice, but how players play.

How has that not come out yet? They announced it 2 years ago.

I think you missed the point. Use the right weapons or suck is just a D&D thing; the difference here is that instead of a huge table of weapon stats you have to look through, equipment stats are the class section. If a DM allows, you can just reskin the weapon. Magic weapons also just do whatever the GM says they do.

The "Icons system?" Do you mean the relationship dice (which do not bother if playing another system, it barely adds to this one), or the "Pantheon that isn't a Pantheon cause they are right over there" concept?

Anyway OP, it's a good, lighter version of D&D with a kick ass setting (Basically, is it a fantasy thing? you want it? it's somewhere.) and interesting ways of handling some abilities. Try it out.

>Also, this game is a redux of 4th edition. not third or fifth.

Yeah and it failed at that. a 4e successor needs good crunchy grid-based combat and no dead classes. 13th Age has a few cool mechanics but it felt a lot like boring 3.5 style D&D to me.

There are no dead classes.

Crunchy, grid-based combat is for wargames, not roleplaying games.

There are absolutely dead classes in 13th Age. The majority of barbarians, paladins, and rangers (the three worst-scaling classes in the system), gain literally nothing but extra damage at levels 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10... which every other weapon-wielding class receives anyway.

The tier disparity in 13th Age is nowhere as bad as in 3.X, but there are definitely high tier 3, low tier 3, and tier 4 classes. Barbarians, paladins, and rangers fall squarely into tier 4.

>How is not being a fan of movie references PC?
The term red pill is associated with several alt-right communities, ranging from neo-nazis to men's rights activists. Presumably he assumed you were angered by the mere mention of the term because that's what the SJW bogeyman in his head would do.

>Crunchy, grid-based combat is for wargames, not roleplaying games.

That's very much an opinion, not a fact.

>gain literally nothing but extra damage at levels 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10.
Are you fucking kidding me? Barbarians get to summon the souls of their ancestor to fight beside them.

Rangers have beast companion.

I remember Paladins being a little lackluster, but dead is an overstatement.

I wasn't the guy he was responding to, but thanks for the explanation.

So is the opinion that the game needs it.

13th Age is nowhere near a redux 4e. It's some bits of 3e and 4e put together in a configuration that mostly works.
It's not as well-designed as 4e but it's also lighter and easier to get into.

So basically, yes, it's what 5e would be if 5e was actually good instead of aggressively mediocre.

'roleplaying game' and 'has grid combat' are orthogonal concepts. One has no relation to the other, and you can have as much of a mix as you want.

The past three (at least) editions of DnD have been crunchy grid combat, and they have also been RPGs.

>Barbarians get to summon the souls of their ancestor to fight beside them.
And what do they gain at levels 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10? Nothing.

The barbarian is a complete mess of a class, a low tier 4 that is arguably a borderline tier 5. The barbarian is expected to be a frontliner with 13 base AC and 7 base hit points, which is virtually suicidal. The barbarian's rage mechanic all but assures that the barbarian will spend most battles non-raging.

"Recharge 16+: After a battle in which you rage, roll a d20 and add your Constitution modifier; on a 16+, you can use Barbarian Rage again later in the day."

The rules for recharge powers are murky and inconsistent between the combat chapter and the glossary because Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet simply cannot agree, but the barbarian class entry makes how it works for rage clear: you have one shot at recharging rage.

Assuming Constitution 18 (and thus Constitution modifier +4) and a standard four-battle adventuring "day," if a barbarian rages during the first battle and tries to rage as often as possible during subsequent battles, they have a 55% chance of being able to rage for only one battle, a 24.75% chance of raging for two battles, an 11.1375% chance of raging for three battles, 9.1125% chance of raging for all four battles, for an average of (0.55 * 1) + (0.2475 * 2) + (0.111375 * 3) + (0.091125 * 4) = 1.743625 rages per day, which is really rather pathetic considering that this is the barbarian's only class feature apart from talents, and considering that this assumes the barbarian is trying to rage as often as possible (without any regard for conserving it).

Thus, we are looking at an astoundingly frail, non-skirmishing frontliner whose only class feature apart from talents works for less than half of the day's battles on average. Even when it *does* work, they are still metaphorically wrought of paper and will be shredded apart by enemies' focused fire.

There is no good mechanical reason to play a barbarian in 13th Age. For those interested in the mechanics of a "savage strongman," the fan-made stalwart class from the Pelgrane Press website is far more viable: pelgranepress.com/index.php/13th-age-class-stalwart/ (the author clarifies in the forum the base hit points are supposed to be 7, not 8)

>Rangers have beast companion.
A ranger with Animal Companion Adept and a double attack talent has literally no other class features. The animal companion scales with level, but that is not actual improvement; it is just allowing the animal to keep up with the character.

Levels 4, 6, and 10 are dead levels for such a ranger. They gain absolutely no genuine improvements at such levels aside from the usual numerical boosts that every other character receives.

>I remember Paladins being a little lackluster, but dead is an overstatement.
The paladin is quite good at level 1, but gradually becomes more and more obsolete as the levels go by because Smite Evil scales *terribly*.

Smite Evil starts at +1d12 damage at level 1 (average enemy hit points: 27), which is great, but it takes three feats to bring it up to +4d12 damage at level 10 (average enemey hit points: 432), which is such dreadful scaling that Smite Evil becomes *more useful on a miss than a hit* by that point.

The barbarian, the ranger, and the paladin are all deplorably bad classes. The druid is another weak and awful class, but for entirely different reasons.

>
There is no good mechanical reason to play a barbarian in 13th Age. For those interested in the mechanics of a "savage strongman," the fan-made stalwart class from the Pelgrane Press website is far more viable: pelgranepress.com/index.php/13th-age-class-stalwart/ (the author clarifies in the forum the base hit points are supposed to be 7, not 8)

Fuck yeah stalwart

The Vanguard is also a cool 'nonmagical' class with interesting combat mechanics.

13th Age does suffer from some "caster edition"-style disparity in that spell lists simply scale much better than martial maneuver and martial power lists, and all spellcasters can completely retrain all of their spells at the start of each adventuring day.

Compare the bard's progression and the fighter's progression and you can see the difference, really.

However, the overall gap in effectiveness is not *especially* bad in 13th Age. Bards, clerics, wizards, and the like are high tier 3, while fighters, rogues, commanders, and such as low tier 3.

Then we have the transcendentally awful wrecks that are the barbarian, the paladin, and the ranger, all of which resulted from "What if we made these classes 'simple' to play?" The druid is also a catastrophe, but for a different reason.

Absolutely agreed, it sucks that the designers made that decision.

At least outside of the barb/paladin/ranger the classes are mostly cool, and there's enough fan classes to make up for it. Vanguard is cool, Stalwart is cool, Dilettante is cool, Elementalist is cool.

>I think you missed the point. Use the right weapons or suck is just a D&D thing; the difference here is that instead of a huge table of weapon stats you have to look through, equipment stats are the class section. If a DM allows, you can just reskin the weapon. Magic weapons also just do whatever the GM says they do.

It's still highly limiting unless you go out of your way to get the GMs approval to change it.

That's not really good game design.

Yes but that wasn't the point. The point being made is that it can't really call itself a successor to 4e if it's tossing out one of the primary things that made 4e...4e.

>he druid is also a catastrophe, but for a different reason.
May I ask what that reason is?

The druid is a "build-your-own class." You have three talent slots, and each talent you take gives you a diverse array of options. Unfortunately, the druid has literally no other class features (strike one), and its chassis is horrifically poor: 6 base hit points and 10 base AC (strike two).

Furthermore, some talents are much worse than others, and some are much better (strike three). Wild Healer has the worst party healing mechanic in the entire system, whereas Terrain Caster is blatantly the best druid talent due to how it confers plenty of spells which are all cast at your full level.

The best way to showcase the druid's lack of effiacy is to compare a dedicated melee druid (Shifter initiate and Warrior Druid adept, or Shifter adept and Warrior Druid initiate) to a fighter, and a dedicated caster druid (Elemental Caster initiate and Terrain Caster adept, or Elemental Caster adept and Terrain Caster initiate) to a wizard. Both are completely feeble compared to their counterparts.

Ey, THF, good to see you

You recommend any other homebrew replacements, then?

13thage.org/index.php/classes/88-the-elementalist

The Elementalist is both a good 'simple caster' in the vein of a fighter, and a cool nature/primordial themed class.

This. Learn to do research and think for yourself, OP.

Have you considered that this might be part of his research on the game?

I would not recommend the elementalist at all.

Here are my suggestions to you when seeking out 13th Age homebrew:

1. Avoid any class whose progression is limited to an extra talent at levels 5 and 8 and nothing else at every other level, because they will inevitably fall into the same design trap as the barbarian, paladin, and ranger.

2. Stay away from anything by Martin Killmann, who has a grievously shoddy sense of balance and is far more concerned with immense quantity of homebrew rather than quality.

3. Disregard the eldritch knight on the Pelgrane Press website, which has issues with provoking opportunity attacks and too few spells.

4. Set aside the elementalist from the Pelgrane Press website, which is too frail, has too few powers, and has no reason not to rely mostly on Stormblade from levels 1 to 10.

5. Ignore the vanguard from the Pelgrane Press website, which scales poorly due to receiving too little resolve (what extra resolve it does receive provides starkly diminishing returns) and no higher-level techniques.

6. Summarily execute the witch from the Pelgrane Press website, which has an at-will daze from level 1.

7. Turn away from the truespeaker from 13thage.org, which is woefully incomplete and unrevised as of March 9.

With this in mind, I would propose the following roster of classes for use in any 13th Age game:

13th Age core rulebook:
• Bard: Unchanged
• Cleric: Unchanged
• Rogue: Unchanged, though note that the effectiveness of this class relies on either a full Dexterity/Constitution build or a Shadow Walk spam build
• Sorcerer: Unchanged, but with these new options: site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/sorcerous-options/
• Wizard: Ban Evocation completely

13 True Ways:
• Chaos Mage: Unchanged.
• Commander: Unchanged.
• Necromancer: Delete the Wasting Away class feature. It is wholly unnecessary, and the rest of the class is on par with any other dedicated spellcaster.
• Occultist: Unchanged.

Homebrew:
• Avenger: 13thage.org/index.php/classes/274-avenger
• Binder: 13thage.org/index.php/classes/303-binder
• Dilettante: drive.google.com/file/d/0B5k1Bo0pV5ilLTlyQUVaSlduZVk/edit , but change the duration of Dazzle and Fracture "the end of YOUR next turn"
• Elementalist: site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/13th-age-character-class-the-elementalist/ , but give this two extra powers known to compensate for its shortage of powers and its great frailty
• Improved Fighter: docs.google.com/document/d/1xW7S4C_U_CvEPhUWmufF6DdX2J6vrw3kDe0ZqntFJ0M/
• Improved Monk: docs.google.com/document/d/1gLEEupBLrzBKvclyFbEXxJvvHd7uOhfVqPZJ_fdoreE/
• Seeker (magical archer): docs.google.com/document/d/1qkF-NADPPk0TwhFWdNV_xv77jiqNm4srJRCTSnoCwpI/edit
• Stalwart: site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/13th-age-class-stalwart/ , although base hit points should be 7
• Thief: chaosinferred.com/personal/13thage/resources/classes/the-thief/

There may be other good classes on 13thage.org, like the fury or the summoner, but I have not had the time to fully study them.

I will expound further on why the elementalist is a poor choice in a bit.

First of all, the elementalist has frailty issues. 11 base PD and MD are fine, but 12 base AC is anemic for a character with few skirmishing options, unlike the rogue. (The rogue also has the luxury of either tanking attacks with a Dexterity/Constitution build, or avoiding them altogether with a Shadow Walk build.)

Secondly, the majority of the class's talents are worthless. Absorption only triggers when you are hit with a certain damage type. Aspect of the Elements works only when the battle is essentially over. Body of Stone mitigates critical hits... which are not that bad from monsters in 13th Age. Ice Armor makes you take a penalty to attack roll. Stoneroot Stride makes you sticky... while you are quite a fragile class. Weapon of Fire gives you no numerical advantage at all. Wind Rider makes you spend both your standard action and your move action just to fly.

The only elementalist talents that are worthwhile are Eyes of Flame, Ice Armor, World Step, and perhaps World's Breath.

Thirdly, two powers to start with and a new power every even-numbered level is simply too little, considering that each of these powers is supposedly equivalent in value to an equal-level spell.
A level 1 elementalist has 2 powers. A level 10 elementalist has 7 powers.
A level 1 bard has 2 battle cries and 2 spells of 1st-level. A level 10 bard has 6 battle cries and 7 spells of 9th-level.

Why not play 5e?

Because

Thought you were a dick at first but your assertions have all been backed up by math and an understanding of the design structure of 13th Age-- and moreover, you offer solutions after your criticisms.

So keep doing God's work, faggot, I'm listening.

>an understanding of the design structure of 13th Age
I do not think too highly of 13th Age's design structure, mostly because many of its decisions seem to have been motivated by pure whim or "it seems right."

Take the retraining of spells vs. martial powers:
>Spells: You can change the spells you can cast after each full heal-up. We don’t see much reason to penalize or favor some spellcasters over others on this count. If your PC is a spellcaster and you want to choose different spells that are legal for your character, go ahead.

>Powers: Non-spell powers are a bit harder to swap around than spells, but not that much harder. You can reselect your power choices when you gain a level.

How come spellcasters can change around their spell selection at the start of each day, while martials must wait a level? There does not seem to be a clear answer at all, particularly considering that "one appropriately-leveled spell is as valuable as one appropriately-leveled power" seems to be consistent across class talents.

Likewise, I do not think the defense system was well-thought out in the slightest. It is a blight on the game. Consider this:
AC is based on the median of your Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom modifiers.
PD is based on the median of your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution modifiers.
MD is based on the median of your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma modifiers.

Why? What does this accomplish? All it does is force, say, fighters under the standard 28-point buy to have an ability score array like:
Str 16+2, Dex 8, Con 14+2, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 8
End result: AC +2, PD +3, MD +2, initiative -1, HP mod +3

And paladins under 28-point buy to veer towards:
Str 16+2, Dex 8, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 16+2
End result: AC +2, PD +2, MD +2, initiative -1, HP mod +2

Whereas rogues can afford to have an array like:
Str 8, Dex 16+2, Con 16+2, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 8
End result: AC +4, PD +4, MD +1, initiative +4, HP mod +4

Something is not right here.

>Why? What does this accomplish?

It obfuscates the mechanics and makes it harder to optimise your build. Presumably this is the intended effect.

But it feels so good when you finally work out the right distribution of points!

Now, the solution to this is to implement "death to ability scores" as can be seen here:
13thage.org/index.php/house-rules/497-death-to-ability-scores-variant

However, this benefits some classes much more than others. The ones who gain the most from it are those classes who would have had to invest in Strength, the icky, red-headed stepchild of ability scores. The ones who gain the least are any class that would have aimed for a Dexterity/Constitution build (e.g. rogue) or a Constitution/Wisdom build (e.g. cleric). The latter is an acceptable loss, but the former means that the only particularly effective rogue build left is the Shadow Walk spammer; all other rogues can go home.

Fortunately, those who wish to play non-Shadow-Walking scoundrels can settle for the homebrew thief class:
chaosinferred.com/personal/13thage/resources/classes/the-thief/

Oh yes, but dont dare ask your peers as part of your research.

Thanks Touhou. Any other homebrew stuff you enjoy and want to share?

What is especially puzzling about 13th Age is that *every* character built under point-buy should absolutely have two dump scores. Compare this to, say, 4e, where a typical level 1 character would have an array of 16+2, 16+2, 12, 12, 10, 8.

I would not, but I have a reasonably complete collection of 13th Age books, including 13th Age monthly issues. Are there any PDFs you are missing?

I am on limited bandwidth and would prefer to upload only what I absolutely must.

> Are there any PDFs you are missing?
Not him, but do you have (or have a link to) bookmarked Core Book?

It's annoying, but I can't seem to find one.

The only 13th Age core rulebook PDF I have been able to locate lacks bookmarks, unfortunately.

Nah, I'm good. I don't actually play 13th Age but I find the design decisions for the game very interesting. Flawed, but interesting. Combat distance seems like a good piece of design, while the Hit Point and expected damage progression seems pretty terrible. Backgrounds are simultaneously very interesting and extremely easy to finagle and wheedle about to your GM.

What do you most like and dislike about the system? I really appreciated your analysis of 5E's math a few months ago, I'd love to hear how you feel about 13th Age's mechanics.

I've got 3 versions.

- 14,064,404 bytes
- 28,505,966 bytes
- 26,286,535 bytes

All without bookmarks.

You know, there's a way to ask for information without also being a fag.

I agree, that's why I've houseruled every class to have their own median of three stats that decides their AC, instead of it always being the median of dex, con and wis

This way you don't end up with bards and rogues being the tankiest characters

>Hit Point and expected damage progression

They aresomewhat reasonable provided that characters receive direct bonus-granting magic items as pages 191-192 of the core rulebook prescribe.

Consider a level 1 fighter with a greatsword and a Strength modifier of +4. They have an attack bonus of +5, deal 1d10+4 damage (average 9.5) on a hit, deal 2d10+8 damage (average 19) on a critical hit, and inflict 1 damage on a miss.

Level 1 PCs are expected to face level 1 normal monsters, which have AC 17 and HP 27.
At escalation die 0, each swing from the fighter deals (0.45 * 9.5) + (0.05 * 19) + (0.55 * 1) = 5.775 damage on average, or ~21.388889% of the monster's hit points.

At level 10, the fighter has a greatsword +3 and a Strength modifier of +5. They have an attack bonus of +18, deal 10d10+18 (average 73) damage on a critical hit, deal 20d10+36 (average 146) damage on a critical hit, and 13 damage on a miss.

Level 10 PCs are supposed to engage level 12 normal monsters, which have AC 28 and HP 360. At escalation die 0, each swing from the fighter deals 53.3 damage on average, which is... 14.805556% of the monster's hit points.

While the fighter has clearly lost some raw damage output from their melee basic attack, the maneuvers they have gained since then make up for it. (Maybe. There is a reason why one of the classes I had linked above was an "improved fighter" fix.) That is far better than the HP/damage scaling of some other games, up to and including D&D 4e.

>most like
The icon system is an effective way to give PCs an immediate buy-in into the setting, grounding them in the world and giving them relationships. They is not particularly entrenched in 13th Age's mechanics; they could reasonably be ported into any other game.

13th Age's numerical scaling across the levels is actually well-done (barring certain classes...), especially considering that level 10 characters have approximately ~45.254834 times as much combat power as level 1 characters.

>most dislike
The class design of 13th Age is astonishingly hit or miss. Some classes (spellcasters, mostly) are perfectly fine, and the occultist is a well-designed masterpiece. The authors drop the metaphorical ball for every other class, however. We have already covered the downfalls of the barbarian, paladin, ranger, and druid; but other classes have their arbitrary frailties as well, from the fighter's mediocre talents and maneuvers (solution: use the "improved fighter"), to the monk's MAD and questionable talents and forms (solution: use the "improved monk"), to the necromancer being screwed over by the unnecessary Wasting Away class feature, to the rogue being useful only for gimmicky Dexterity/Constitution builds and Shadow Walk spam builds.

There is also, of course, the matter of spellcasters getting to retrain all of their spells at the start of each adventuring day, giving them a distinct edge against martials.

Backgrounds are another sticking point for me, but that is more endemic to "write in your own broad skills" RPGs than 13th Age specifically.

Oh, yes, the Dexterity/Constitution bard is a rather... unique and unintended "feature" of 13th Age.

For those in the audience, by level 3, it is fully possible for a bard to avoid any and all battle cries, spells, and songs that call for Charisma. This allows a bard to have an ability score spread of Strength 8, Dexterity 16+2, Constitution 16+2, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 12, Charisma 8 and avail of fairly sturdy AC and hit points.

13th Age's "median"-based defense mechanics produce the strangest of results as written. Perhaps another reason to use the "death to ability scores" variant linked above.

Also, I may have expressed myself poorly regarding the elementalist here.

The elementalist is, out-of-the-box, a somewhat weak class, but giving it two extra powers should improve it to a degree. An elementalist player will have to accept that Eyes of Flame, Ice Armor, World Step, and World's Breath are the only good elementalist talents.

Using the "death to ability" score variant also helps melee elementalists considerably.

>I agree, that's why I've houseruled every class to have their own median of three stats that decides their AC, instead of it always being the median of dex, con and wis

Wouldn't at that point just giving everyone the same AC scaling achieve the same effect and save you some math?

The improved monk kind of bothers me

I've no problem with removing MAD, but it's also removed the possibility of strong monks, and I prefer my monks to be like Zangeif rather than Chun li

Yes and no

It kind of does, but this way, going all-in on one stat still costs you AC

Hey, touhou guy, what's your opinion of the 13th Age in Glorantha classes? There's a few retools of the Barbarian in it, along with two varieties of Berserker and a Paladin-like class called a Humakti.

That theoretical Rogue stat-line discounts the fact that the Rogue might be incentivized to have high Charisma via talents like the very good Shadow Walk and Smooth Talk, as well as just wanting to play a charismatic Rogue. Also, that low MD that Rogue has is not going to do him any favors as usually the most catastrophic effects in the game to have laid upon you, such as Confused, target MD.

I'm surprised at your answers. Personally I find the hit point and damage scaling to be much too high, and monsters tend to basically just be piles of hit points and damage because of that. I prefer games where enemies get tougher by having more complex requirements to fight them, or to defend against their attacks, where higher level characters excel not just by doing more damage and being tougher, but by being able to approach combat and challenges in new ways. Basically, I prize lateral advancement over vertical.

I don't like Icons but I can see how that comes down to personal taste.

Backgrounds are terrible, they could be called Skill Points and replaced with a list of 12 or so Skills with no trouble. You could even increase the total Skill points to 15 instead of 8 Background points since specific skills would likely be narrower than most Backgrounds.

Use the "death to ability scores" variant and take a background related to sheer physical might.

Moving along, over in 13thage.org are a few classes that *seem* to scale reasonably well, but I have not had time to study them more in-depth. If anyone else would like to experiment with them or analyze them, feel free:

• Fury: 13thage.org/index.php/classes/278-fury
• Summoner: 13thage.org/index.php/classes/167-summoner
• Thaumineer (variant wizard): 13thage.org/index.php/classes/329-the-thaumineer
• Warlock by Jonathan Roberts: docs.google.com/document/d/1oMxnvuvSuQjImfKgGF0NZAh5YIR-2brWRskh_AblZlM/

This interests me very much. I will have to study this as soon as possible.

That is precisely why I have been mentioning the "Shadow Walk spam" rogue build elsewhere in this thread, as an alternative to the Dexterity/Charisma rogue build.

One does not want to be hit in MD, but MD-targeting attacks are uncommon compared to PD-targeting attacks in the core bestiary and the 13th Age bestiary. Furthermore, a Shadow Walk spammer needs as much Charisma as they can get, since they will be facing off against the highest MD amongst the enemies. A Shadow Walk spammer will probably have Strength 8, Dexterity 16+2, Constitution 14, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 10, Charisma 16+2, which gives only a meager AC +2, PD +2, MD +0, far worse than the Dexterity/Constitution rogue's defenses.

Speaking of which, Smooth Talk is an absolutely shameful piece of design that should be burned with prejudice.

>Smooth Talk
>Once per day, convince your GM with an amazing line of patter while you are using social skills to speak or interact with NPCs associated with a particular icon. If the GM is convinced by your patter, roll a normal save (11+). If you succeed, for the rest of the day you can function as if you have a 2-point positive relationship with the icon who seems to be in play. Thanks to your amazing gift of gab, for a short time, it’s more or less true. (Note that these points replace any points you normally have with the icon rather than adding to them.)
>Failure on the Smooth Talk save generally arouses suspicions.

You have two failure points here:
1. Your attempt to convince the GM.
2. Your 1d20 roll, which has a 50% chance of failure.

If you fail, you arouse suspicions and are worse off. If you succeed, you earn a 2-point positive relationship! Which... as written, only matters when relationship dice are rolled.

Compare this to the bard's Loremaster and Mythkenner talents, which can grant a direct +1 relationship point as well as +2 background points.

Characters in 13th Age do gain more lateral options as the levels go along, but it is admittedly much less than in, say, 4e.

If you are a fan of both lateral advancement *and* grid-based combat, I would suggest looking into the combat system (the combat system alone; the noncombat rules are a mess, aside from perhaps the "team conflict" rules for highly abstracted noncombat challenges) of the Strike! RPG.

Its combat is very much a retroclone of D&D 4e's.

No, I still do not make any money at all from that game.

It's a shame that noncombat is so weird, I like the idea of icons and relationships with icons influencing the game

>PC start as big damn heroes so no wasting time on whomping rats like the first 3 levels of 5e.

This is easily solved by starting above first level, you fucking idiot.

Well, certainly one can say that the GM book is not filled with tons of MD-attacking enemies, so if one were to just pick and choose a monster at random out of the books more often than not they'd get a PD/AC attacker than an MD attacker. However, I can't really see that as a viable argument, as the DM is not likely to just pick enemies out of a hat, but to choose enemies relevant to the campaign. Not to mention the fact that the DM can just homebrew up enemies that target MD if he notices that the party is steamrolling anything that targets physical attributes.

However, I do agree that the Smooth Talk talent is busted, and that its replacements in the Rebel class for 13th Age in Glorantha, Kennings & Killings (which gives access to bard spells and gives you feats that reward you for being a poet) and Kinda Lucky (can reroll a number of natural even d20 rolls equal to your Charisma modifier per day), are much better.

Addendum: I would only really suggest a Shadow Walk rogue at levels 1-4. By level 5+, the lack of an enhancement bonus to Shadow Walk makes it rather unreliable, and by level 8+, its accuracy is shoddy.

>that's easily solved by not doing what the game tells you to do

Yeah, that isn't a point in it's favour

Anything good in the vein of a Paladin or 5E Warlock available?

I wish the sorcerer class had more spells avilable to it

Not because I want more flexibility within one character, but rather because I want a sorcerer who can specialise more in a single damage type, like in 4e

The game literally tells you you can start above first level. I'm pretty sure it's even in the main section for the players book in 5e, but I could be wrong. Either way, nothing is stopping this from happening, and the rules literally say its okay.

Heard you talking shit, like I wouldn't hear

This is a very thick PDF. I have been skimming through it at the very most, and I can only spare several more minutes. I

I like what I see with most of the classes: good progression and scaling for most of them and interesting mechanics. I will be skipping most of the classes in my comments.

The Humakti needs to be revised to gain a new power at every even-numbered level as opposed to every odd-numbered level, bringing it in line with every other class of its format. I am leery of Sever Spirit; at level 3, with Constitution modifier +3, that instantly kills an enemy with 55 HP or less, such as a level 4 normal monster.

The monk has not changed much, and is still MAD.

The Orlanthi warrior took a step forward for the barbarian by giving it 8 base hit points, but a base AC of 11 is another step back. Inspired Battler is not that much of an upgrade from the regular rage, especially with the non-engagement stipulation on Inspired Strike. Since this class still fails to scale well, I would consider it just as poor as the barbarian, save for the very tiny saving grace of Excellence.

The rebel is mostly a sidegrade to the rogue. However, more powers for both the rebel and the rogue certainly are an upgrade.

The storm voice gives sorcerers what they needed: more spell choices. That plus the new sorcerer spells from the website ( site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/sorcerous-options/ ) should be good news for them.

honestly, MAD in 13th age is not as bad as MAD in other D&D-like games

you get three stats up when your stats go up, which helps, and monks get +2 to three stats instead of two.

The problem is that they need strength, and strength in 13th age is a useless stat, dsue to dex and con not only attributing to PD and AC, but also having their own uses beyond that (health and initiative)

Solution: monks get AC based off of dex, wis and strength instead of dex, wis and con, and have a higher base HP to account for their invariable low con

The Humakti from this 13th Age in Glorantha PDF can be reasonably paladin-like, and I am sure at least one of the spellcasters here can be akin to a warlock.

The 13th Age in Glorantha PDF contains more sorcerer spells, and there are more here:
site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/sorcerous-options/
The trickster is a mess. First of all:

>And another thing. . . . The trickster doesn’t follow the same power arc as most other characters. In order to be a bad luck magnet and a scapegoat and a general boggle-farter, the class is front-loaded with features and abilities at 1 st level. But when all the other characters are hitting champion-tier and epic-tier and becoming awesome, you’re still going to be the trickster. Your abilities are never going to curve up toward Hero-dom, unless you count the very likely possibility that you’re going to be the first player character to try out the Heroic Return rules.

This is a deplorable design goal. Why is a certain class *supposed* to be stronger than the others, but only at the lower levels? So that someone can feel a rush of power, only to discard the character later on?

However, the trickster actually fails at this design goal by being *weak from level 1*. With 6 base hit points, a base AC of 9, and decent (but not incredible) powers, the trickster is on the much weaker end of the power scale. The trickster also scales poorly, having dead levels at every even-numbered level, so it only grows worse. This is awful.

I think the Berserkers, especially the Zorak Zorani, at least fill the barbarian hero niche very well compared to the Barbarian.

The troll warrior manages to be even *worse* than the 13th Age core rulebook barbarian. Base AC 11 and an average of 7.5 base hit points make this a frustratingly frail front-liner. Troll Frenzy is a sidegrade to the regular barbarian rage. Thus, we have a wreck of a class.

The table, the text, and the talents all disagree on whether a wind lord receives two or three exploits at level 1. Overall, however, the wind lord scales much better than the core rulebook fighter, and I appreciate that.

That is as much time as I can spare.

I took absolutely no issue with either of the berserkers, although I am sure there is an issue or two I had missed in my quick skim.

>le bogeymeme
It's as annoying as cuck at this point

Yup.

The badly dressed cartoon character makes a good point - all those people ARE annoying.

Says the people disrupting a thread to whine about politics.

Hoping to try 13th Age at GenCon. Suggestions?

If you're still here Touhou Man, what were your opinions on 5e?

>Dungeon World

>13th Age thread
>5e

...

I've actually been running a 13th age campaign for about a year now, it's a really fun system.
My party ranger isn't useless, he can fire 4 arrows a turn when he is lucky, and because that usually happens after a few rounds of combat, the escalation die is high enough that he rarely misses.
The wizard does a ton of damage, evoking force salvo is broken right in half, 6 never missing bolts that do 70 damage each? At least it only happens once a full heal up.
Lucky my players aren't entirely min/maxers.

But yeah 13th age is great.

I do not remember giving an analysis of 5e "a few months ago." That aside, here is the crux of my stance on 5e.

It is a very, *very* well-polished and outstanding system for a specific subgenre of fantasy: "low/mid-powered fantasy wherein the heroes improve their combat capacities only modestly as they grow in power and experience, sharpen their noncombat skills only marginally. At their absolute strongest, the PCs still face down-to-earth monsters that can be felled by dozens of peasant archers, and the PCs themselves are reality-grounded heroes who can likewise be taken down by dozens of peasant archers. In other words, 3.X-style E6 stretched out across 20 levels, except with less improvement of noncombat skills."

Bounded accuracy single-handedly makes 5e a much lower-powered form of fantasy compared to 3.X, 4e, and even 13th Age, all of which were "zero to superhero" in their progression. PCs improve their combat capabilities at each level by pittances compared to those other systems, and dozens of low-level monsters can tear through even level 20 PCs (especially using the mob rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide, which ignore advantage/disadvantage). When the difference in skill proficiency between level 1 and 20 is a mere ±4, it is hard to say that most characters get much better at their noncombat skills throughout their careers.

If you are a fan of 3.X-style E6, except want it stretched out over 20 levels, then 5e is absolutely the system for you. I am not saying this disparagingly; this is actually what 5e is good for. If you would prefer "zero to superhero," then keep to 3.X, 4e, or 13th Age.

It is also worth noting that players are much more at the mercy of the GM in 5e than in 3.X and 4e. Consider that many monsters halve damage from nonmagical weapons... yet magic weapon distribution is solely in the GM's hands. Likewise, most PCs never improve four out of six of their saving throws, yet monsters' save DCs steadily increase..

That said, 5e does have a major issue in its presentation. It tries to fool the player into thinking that it is yet another "zero to superhero" D&D game, with lines like:

>Levels 5-10: The fate of a region might depend on the adventures that characters of levels 5 to 10 undertake.

>Levels 11-16: The fate of a nation or even the world depends on momentous quests that such characters undertake.

>Levels 17-20: Adventures at these levels have far-reaching consequences, possibly determining the fate of millions in the Material Plane and even places beyond.

5e also presents monsters like high and mighty balors, pit fiends, solars, titans, ancient dragons, and, as of Out of the Abyss, demon lords as if they almighty overlords who could make worlds tremble in fear, only for them to actually be down-to-earth monsters not much more threatening than dozens of peasant archers and not *that* much more skilled than a petty human noble.

Rather than try to uphold the trappings of "zero to superhero" 3.X and 4e with such lofty expectations of high-level heroes and near-divine monsters, 5e would have done well to embrace its niche as "E6 stretched out over 20 levels" and present its expectations for high-level PCs and monsters accordingly.

My party is a dragon girl mage, a possessed suit of armor using the warforged rules, a paladin of the sun who looks like a less-gay french knight, and our elf bard fukboi who min-maxed to boost cha and int but has 8 wis, str, and con on his first tabletop character ever. He even has a shitty little lyre.

>My party ranger isn't useless, he can fire 4 arrows a turn when he is lucky
Double Ranged Attack does not work that way. It specifically stipulates "first attack" and "second attack," rather than allowing itself to chain into several extra attacks. Remember that the damage die reduction applies to both attacks.

>because that usually happens after a few rounds of combat, the escalation die is high enough that he rarely misses
Archer rangers are no more accurate than any other kind of PC (and in fact, spellcaster PCs are the most accurate due to targeting PD or MD, which are 4 lower than AC on average), unless they have the Archery talent, which does nothing but grant a single ranged attack reroll per combat.

Remember that the ranger has gained literally nothing but extra damage and the standard number increases at levels 2, 3, and 4, which every other character would have received anyway. Compare this to, say, a bard, who starts out at level 1 with two level 1 battle cries and two level 1 spells/songs, and then by level 4, has four level 3 battle cries and four level 3 spells/songs.

>evoking force salvo is broken right in half
There is a reason why I say in that Evocation should be banned entirely. It is irredeemably broken, whether used with Force Salvo at level 3 (or level 2 with an incremental advance) or Fireball at level 5 (or level 4 with an incremental advance), since it doles out an incredible amount of damage to a large number of enemies. This has been officially acknowledged even by the developers:
site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/13th-sage-too-forceful-a-salvo/

I actually really like how 5e does dragons

It explain s quite well why dragons hide in lairs and use cowed minions like kobolds to do their bidding. Because for all their great power, an army of determined peasants could kill a dragon. Unless said peasants have to traverse the dragon's lair first