Thoughts on 13th Age?

The really fucked up thing is that the playtest monk wasn't MAD at all, but then they went "Hur hur hur, monk gotta be MAD because tradition!" in the final release.

Fuck me. Go look at that archived thread linked up there. Like, half of the published classes have massive fucking glaring design problems, holy shit.

Personally, I like strong monks. I would hardly say that Ryu or Guile are using dexterity for damage

I just wish that instead of being MAD, we were given a choice of two stats to focus on among strength, wisdom and dexterity, with different bonuses for each

Also I think your AC should be based on your second highest stat regardless of what it is, instead of being limited to second highest of dexterity, constitution and wisdom. Poor strength classes really get the shaft thanks to this

Honestly, I can't stand the system. They based it out of 3.5, didn't meaningfully fix most of the parent system's problems, then took away everything that made the original fun. It inherited a dumb core and then went on to be bland and uninspired. It's pretty much the nadir of game design. I would play nearly any other system before touching this again. The only thing I thought was actually cool was the fairly freeform skill system. That has potential.

It's not skills, it's backgrounds, and they're poorly designed for two reasons. First, a 3-point Background in Chef and Thief each cost the same despite Thief applying to significantly more situations, and those situations being far more impactful on the success of your average quest. Sure, Chef might help if you're cooking something to impress an NPC, or to check your food for poison, but it hardly compares to being able to move stealthily, pick pockets, open locks, find and disarm traps, and perform all kinds of acrobatics related to second-story work. They cost the same but they're not equal, not unless your GM decides to run a Toriko campaign.

Second, it encourages players to bullshit their GM into letting them add their Background bonus to skill checks. "Of course setting traps is a Thief thing, we did it all the time back in my hometown! And obviously I'd add Thief to notice anyone sneaking up on me, or anyone trying to lie to me, or whenever I'm trying to lie to someone else, or try to haggle with them. I mean, I'm a Thief, and Thieves are good at that stuff!" Compare this to 3E or 4E admittedly broken skill system, where at least it defined what you could use your Skills for, where they applied, and where they didn't.

I come from a significantly more respectful group than you seem to. We never had any problems with that. We did often abuse the system, but usually to comedic effect and with full knowledge that the GM was going to kick our asses for it later.

the sneak peeks were interesting, and then chargen showed up.

It's not about respect, it's about how defined or abstract your rules are. It's strange when the combat system is extremely specific about the effects of your attacks and maneuvers, down to the +/- 1 modifier, but the non-combat system is basically just "Roll a d20, add the stat and/or background you feel make the most sense, match or exceed an abstract DC based on the tier of the environment and general complexity to succeed, but even if you fail you might get a partial success if the GM feels like it."

So nobody likes this game because it basically takes elements of the two editions nobody likes and combined them together, but like it's still operable even with the weird stat baselines, and I like their new renditions on Rogues where its just "Yes, you're Dio Brando, it's probably Magic, we don't care".

Here's how much I really wanted this game to take off more than it did: I have the monthly pdf subscription, where they give some more options to pre-existing classes but the only ones that have a lot of merit are either "Giving the Magic classes the ability to Summon instead of just Necromancers and Druids" or "Here's more info on those races that aren't part of the main seven" and some other interesting filler stuff...oh and also adventure hooks that ALL FUCKING GO BACK TO EYES OF THE STONE THIEF- Like honestly, getting kind of sick of that shit.

It's not a TERRIBLE game but it's like...incredibly pointless to get into now because of 5th edition which is way easier to fucking homebrew.

The only people I ever got to play this game with me and think it's okay is my brother- who ultimately didn't have fun because he has become such a machine at optimizing in non D&D games and 3.PF that he finds the lack of options kind of bothersome (Which is also why he doesn't like 5e so that goes to show how full of shit he might be I dunno'), my IRL group's GM but he has certain...accuratly propotionate difficulty scaling issues, and my sometimes online game DM who thinks it's fine because fuck 3.PF but even he's like "Although 5e exists now so it's like eh".

I really wish I could play it on the regular, I tried DMing once but it didn't go great. I kinda' feel like a loser.

Ardenfell's a pretty alright recorded roll20 series

Shows off 13th age pretty well

I will readily admit considering that you can play a Muscle Priest Cleric with just Wisdom because all their abilities use it as their main stat, I don't know why a Monk doesn't use Dex for damage.

Sure the assumed idea is you'd be using your forms literally all the time that way you can maximize your damage per turn but it still would nice if I could just you know...do a basic attack and do more than 7 max roll non crit damage I guess (because even with MAD requirements I would never give a monk enough strength to get a +2).

I've always liked slop in skill systems like that, though. I find the idea of skills being pass/fail to be ridiculous. I don't mind that system at all. What I do mind is the rest of the mechanics. I agree that the skill system doesn't fit, but I see at least some merit in the skill system. I hate the combat system and the rest of character generation. It's boring, lacks options, and somehow manages to make a lack of options complicated. I honestly cannot think of a single other thing I like about the system.

Well it is a D&D like, everything in that ballpark genre kinda builds the same.

Somewhere out there is a version of 'rolling a d20 while having fantasy adventures' that is right for everyone.
This version is not it for me. But it is for a lot of people.
It's basically one of the dudes from 3e and one of the dudes from 4e coming together to create a game. They done goofed on worldbuilding in my opinion, creating a world that is both too generic (the Icons are blank slates that your supposed to put personality into) and too fucking gonzo (living dungeons and shit); either would be okay on its own, but together it just rubs me the wrong way. Even if the living dungeons are neat.

True it can become easy to game checks with vague backgrounds but at the same time, you're making an excuse for a break where there isn't one because you're trying to use your background for Class Talents that exist, that the GM wouldn't let you do unless they were just shit.

A Thief background letting you pick locks, pickpocket, and give a bonus to insight is one thing. But straight up finding and disabling traps and doing high level acrobatics? No, not a chance, sport. You want to play a Rogue you play a Rogue.

Backgrounds are meant to be a way to cover in a vague sense any skill checks you might need, even in imaginative ways- like say a Chef background might give you a bonus to swimming cause you caught fish with your own bare hands. It provides good narrative chances rather than just being specialized dice rolls.

>I find the idea of skills being pass/fail to be ridiculous.

A character tries to jump across a deep chasm. The DC is set at 20. If they roll a 20 or higher, they succeed. If they roll a 19 or less, they fail. That is EXACTLY how 13th Age works. The only difference between 13th Age and D&D 3E is that in 3E the consequences for failure are explicit, whereas in 13th Age they're arbitrary due to the Fail Forward philosophy.

In 3E, if you fail by less than 5 you can make a reflex save to grab the edge of the chasm, and if you fail by 5 or more you don't make it. Better have a ring of feather fall or hope you have enough hit points. Failure actually means something in that system.

In 13th Age, if you fail by any amount the GM gets to decide what happens, and there's no rules in the book for how to handle that based on the context of the action. In fact, literally every single example given in the 13th Age core rulebook (page 43 if you're interested) has the GM make a narrativist-style intrusion into the game world in order to penalize the player. Fail to befriend a guy? Turns out he's a recreational cannibal. Fail at predicting a sporting event? Turns out you were right, but it cost some gamblers money and now they want to beat it out of you. Fail at climbing? Turns out you dislodged some rocks, they fell on an werebear, and now he's trying to kill you.

All of those examples are ones where the GM has changed the world in order to punish the players. Those obstacles weren't present before, but they are now, because bad rolls result in the warping of the fabric of reality to screw over the protagonists.

In 13th Age, if you tried to make that jump and failed, I bet you'd just succeed but the GM would describe how you landed on a rat and now there's a thousand more of them pouring out of the walls intent on devouring you alive. Oh, those rats weren't there before, they don't add anything to the adventure, but they're there now because fuck you.

Because it's a Narrative based game, and not a Crunch based game.
That's right on the tin.
And by the sign of them intruding to make everything awful as if you got a Crit Fail and everyone's apparently an asshole, they can also throw you a bone because the difference of a point like that is absurd to just fuck someone over for.

What I would do as a GM there, if you failed by literally one point (which btw I wouldn't even make the check that high unless for some reason you didn't bring a grappling hook which everyone does for some reason anyways) I'd say you hit the wall of the chasm but managed to grab onto something so you can pull yourself up.

Also that kind of "No you failed fuck you" thing doesn't exist only in 13th Age just because it's a Narrative game without solid numbers, an asshole DM, like the hypothetical one you described, could also just ignore the numbers in 3.5 because the mechanics break the immersion and just say you fall down the hole without a reflex save.

Your argument is so extreme in the negative that it's boggling.

>It's not a TERRIBLE game but it's like...incredibly pointless to get into now because of 5th edition which is way easier to fucking homebrew.

See, and I've seen people say that 13th Age is what 5e would be if it was good. I mean, I think everyone agrees that the "simple" classes are shit and they fucked up Monks and Druids something awful, but it seems like at least some people think 13th Age is better than 5e overall--though I don't know about the homebrew.

>you mean the game's most MAD class?
You mean the one they gave an extra ability score bonus to to make up for how MAD it is? 13th Age Monks are pretty good, though I'd love for them to release the Drunken Monk talent already

>First, a 3-point Background in Chef and Thief each cost the same despite Thief applying to significantly more situations, and those situations being far more impactful on the success of your average quest.
Except neither of those are acceptable choices as a Background. They literally tell you to go for descriptive statements that can be embellished on as part of an ongoing story, not a single word.

>Second, it encourages players to bullshit their GM into letting them add their Background bonus to skill checks.
Oh no, a mechanic encourages players to describe their character's backstory to explain why they'd be good at things. There is no room for this much roleplaying in a tabletop game!

I like the basic idea of 13th age monks, the different attack forms between opener, flow and finisher is cool and very thematic. I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with them at all, except the system itself plays against them, you want to go str/dex/wis, but constitution is just too important in this system to pass up

If hp in 13th age worked more like it did in 4e, monks would be fine

Honestly, I don't have any real problem with a more "narrative" handling of skill checks. Then again, I also don't really care much about the "quantum bears" problem--what you're referring to when you talk about "now there's a thousand rats that weren't there before." So what if a new threat didn't exist before the roll? The players have no way of knowing that--maybe I'm bringing a threat from later in the dungeon in earlier because they made noise and alerted it, maybe I was already planning an ambush, how would they know?--and even if they did, I'd argue that, as long as the new threat makes the adventure/story more interesting, it's a net gain.

"Fail forward" really just means that the net result of a roll should never be "nothing happens." The result of every roll should be something interesting, or at least move the players towards something interesting.

I know there's an improved monk floating around somewhere, but I'm not sure how successfully it improves on the monk because nobody in my games has played monk yet.

It looks like it tries to maintain the basic structure of the monk but make it work a little better overall: 13thage.org/index.php/classes/495-the-improved-monk

It removes strength from the monk

Although, I've recently just homebrewed a really simply solution to a bunch of problems with 13th age that I'm planning on trying out soon

strength and constitution are now the same stat, fortitude. With dexterity being used for all attack rolls and damage rolls for weapon attacks, and PD being decided by the lower of your dexterity and fortitude

>Because it's a Narrative based game, and not a Crunch based game. That's right on the tin.
Then why is the combat extremely crunchy? You've got specific outcomes for hits, misses, natural odd/even rolls, crit successes and failures, but nothing close to resembling that level of detail with skill checks. For a game genre typically built like a metaphorical tripod on the three 'legs' of Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction, it's poor for a game to be very precise and have hundreds of pages covering one 'leg' and maybe five or six pages loosely defining the other two.

Pic related. You are objectively wrong.

>So what if a new threat didn't exist before the roll? The players have no way of knowing that.
So what if every piece of clothing or equipment the characters own was actually a Mimic the whole time? The players have no way of knowing that.

This guy plays too many MMORPGs

Check out this fucking noob who can't handle being thrown a curve ball. Do you not let players deviate from an adventure path because the book doesn't say what's in a particular closet? Do you sit down at 4e as a pyromancer, look at a rickety wooden bridge that has an army of goblins running along it intent on raping you and being utterly unable to bring yourself to burn the bridge down because "muh powurz dunt let me do dat id says it has to be an ememy"?

Yes you do, and your autistic ranting proves it. Hand in all of your books, dice, and miniatures to the nearest FLGS so they can be used by someone who knows what a role playing game is.

>So what if every piece of clothing or equipment the characters own was actually a Mimic the whole time? The players have no way of knowing that.

Because when you have narrative mechanics like this, part of using them well means that what you do with them has to:
- fit the fiction
- make sense dramatically

That's why there's a difference between, say, the players setting off an impromptu alarm trap and alerting some enemies that make sense being in the dungeon, and the player failing a roll and the GM going "lol your underwear was a mimic and it eats your dick." One uses the environment and makes sense from within the fiction, the other is just the GM being an idiot.

Narrative mechanics require a respect for the fiction from both the GM and the players.

>Then why is the combat extremely crunchy?

Because crunchy combat appeals to a different player audience than other crunchy mechanics do. It's also worth noting that the combat is crunchy, yes, but it doesn't try to be *realistic* about it. It's crunchy for the sake of giving players a *game* to play with combat. Magic items and combat abilities often have very narrative effects, too, that don't much care for the "physics" of the fight.

The out-of-combat stuff is less crunchy because this is a game about being dungeon-crawling, monster-slaying adventurers--the other stuff doesn't *need* the crunch. It needs enough to facilitate a story, not to model the physics of a world.

Offering examples of consequences for failing skill checks, especially outlining commonly performed actions like acrobatics, social interaction, and 'knowledge' checks, is strictly better than saying "Eh, just go with whatever if they fail." You don't need specific rules for every situation in the universe, but covering a variety of commonly performed actions is never a bad thing. Honestly the 13th Age background/skill system just feels lazy and incomplete.

Players using spells and abilities creatively is completely different from the GM turning a normal, friendly NPC into a sociopathic cannibal because of a failed skill check. Players work within the confines of the world, exerting influence based on the tools at their disposal. GM likewise should prepare the world of the adventure in advance, and have the world and its inhabitants react to the players' actions according to how they were designed.

Don't get me wrong, GMs can and should adjudicate in instances where the players take actions they didn't expect - that fireball lobbed at a wooden bridge is very clever, and should be rewarded. Likewise, if the players go off the beaten trail, a GM should be capable of making off-the-cuff calls. But there's a world of difference between 'writing in' the parts of the world that are unexplored, and erasing and re-writing the existing world just to punish players for poor dice-rolls.

The thing with the setting is that it isn't really a setting. It's pretty clear that what happened is, they were just going for the classic "implied setting" that D&D generally has. Not a specific setting, but just the generic fantasyland implied by the rules. But, then they decided they needed to provide example icons to show how they work. And since icons are there to represent parts of the setting they decided to include a bit more of a setting. and then I think they decided to throw in some details that they just thought were cool, like the living dungeons and such-like.

I think the problem is they intended to only do an implied setting and then they drifted away from that. The example icons are emphasised way too much, they are just meant to be archetypal examples but they get so much attention that they seem like more than that.

So yeah, there is both too much setting and not enough.

I think that the "fail-forward" narrative approach to adjudicating failures is a good one, but that cannibal example is a terrible one, because it's too big of a narrative shift to hinge on a single failed roll. It isn't because it's dissociated from what the player was rolling for--though I think it's also too much of a stretch from that--just that it seems unnecessarily arbitrary and a huge swing in the narrative of what's going on.

The concept it's trying to illustrate is a good one, but it's a horrible example.

Wow, I'm finally not alone with this.

Con is worst stat.

I wonder if it could be reduced even further--like down to three stats. One for physical strength and skill (something like "Prowess"), one for intelligence and charisma ("Wit"), and one for overall physical and mental resilience ("Resolve"). Doing that would require changing what attributes each class uses--combining them in that way makes some stats need two, others need one, and I think it'd be best if each class always had one primary and one secondary attribute--but it might be a fun system.

>So yeah, there is both too much setting and not enough.
I can see that. It would be cool if they added more to it because what details they did come up with are pretty great. Like the ocean having a grudge against the Empire and constantly throwing storms and monstrosities against the coast. It's a cool concept and they do a good job of incorporating multiple Icons into it. The ocean is angry because The Archmage pacified the Midland Sea. The Emperor had to build a wall along the coast to keep the kaiju out, but he can't spare the resources to keep it properly guarded, so the High Druid has been sending natural guardians to man the wall.

Physical, Mental, Social.

>You mean the one they gave an extra ability score bonus to to make up for how MAD it is?

A SINGLE +2 bonus!

Three +2 bonuses. More than any other class.

Compared to every other class that gets two +2 bonuses?

Yeah, that's not enough to make up for the MAD. Not even close.

They need one more ability score to be high than most classes. They get one extra +2 to ability scores. It works out fine.

None of the examples are related to what they're trying to do, not directly. They are all exceedingly terrible and should be replaced in the next edition if it ever comes out.

I use Might (physical strength and endurance), Agility (physical speed and reflexes), Intellect (wits, knowledge, and perception) and Will (determination, force of personality, and strength of the soul).

Literally not enough, dumbass.

Yeah, four might make more sense than three, and that's a good spread. I'm gearing up to do a 13th Age game now, maybe I'll see how much tweaking the classes need to work with that.

I know they have some semi-official "Death to Ability Scores" rules but I like reduced/better ability scores over that myself.

I've run a good bit of it. The main thing I've noticed is that Fighters could use a few more Flexible Maneuver options. It's easy to end up Carving an Opening all the time.

Fighters having dick for PD and MD is retarded too.

And it's not like their AC is THAT good because of the lolololol AC/PD/MD bullshit.

Death to ability scores indeed.

It's actually offensive this game is more popular than fantasy craft

As a person who plays both, I agree that FC is by far the better system and game overall.

FC's company though fails at project management/marketing/competence. The basically left FC to rot in the favor of the company owner's love project and they don't know how to finish Spellbound.

If anything I hate how FC set the bar far too high for me, and now I have trouble stomaching anything else.

13th Age is what 5e would be if 5e was good. It beats 5e at its own game. Anything 'good' about 5e is already in 13th Age.

However, it's still only 'good', not great.

Out of curiosity, what's a system you'd categorize as great? Mostly because I can never read enough good RPG systems.

Unlike 13th Age, 5e is actually good

Apocalypse World, and similar GOOD hacks (Monsterhearts, World Wide Wrestling). Avoid Dungeon World, Tremulus and Monster of the Week, they're alright but they don't demonstrate anything special.

DnD4e with the math fixes.

Polaris (not the French one, the one by Ben Lehman).

Basically you just need to look at the game and think:
1. What was the designer's concept when they made the game?
2. Did they succeed?
3. Are there a lot of useless addons that could be removed, or is the design consistent?

5e rubs me wrong because it brings back the "if you want to be useful at things that aren't reducing enemy HP, you have to be a caster" thing that 4e solved pretty successfully. 13th Age falls down pretty hard on class design a few times--the Paladin and Ranger are just insulting--but it dodges that sort of caster narrative dominance that 5e embraces.

(If I'm misinterpreting 5e here or something, I'm open to being told I'm wrong--I really *want* to like 5e, but it just seems too wedded to old, bad habits from what I've read/played.)

Is there a really good fantasy hack of Apocalypse World out there?

I enjoy Dungeon World, but it's very much held back by the insistence on emulating what the designers remember old school D&D "feels like." I think some of its design choices make sense, like having more granular combat--makes sense for a dungeon-crawling game--but a lot of it, you're right, is nothing special.

Playing using third-party classes like the ones from Inverse World (and others by that game's designer) makes it a lot more fun, but it's still never quite as brilliant as Apocalypse World.

Speaking of Inverse World, the guy who wrote it went on to make a full-on hack called Fellowship that's about capturing the mood/themes of Lord of the Rings (just in a new, player-generated setting). It seems pretty neat, though definitely for a very specific kind of game.

Speaking of 4e's math fixes, is there a software character creator floating around now? I'd like to play/run 4e again sometime.

There is, but its a bitch to run. I had to get mine off the PirateBay due to how hard it is to find, and a few Dragon Magazines with better feats are still out there.

I'd also kill for a 4e game. 4e was during a time in my life where online maps were shit, I had a lot of family issues and university, but what I played I really did like. Then when I wanted to look for game... almost everyone was saying it was shit and 5e was all the rage.

>full-on hack called Fellowship that's about capturing the mood/themes of Lord of the Rings (just in a new, player-generated setting).

Whoops, yeah, Fellowship is great, I forgot about that one! It's not just LOTR - as long as you're OK with generating your own playbooks, you can also use it both for Avatar the Last Airbender, and Mass Effect - anything about different peoples coming together to overthrow an evil overlord.

rogue-elements.obsidianportal.com/wikis/offline-character-builder
Here's the best one I've found that has all the fixes in it. Follow the instructions on the page. You might find a better one elsewhere, I dunno.

The first game I ever ran was 4e Dark Sun. Man I wish I could go back to that group and that game, it was a blast.

mega:///#F!Z5V12TAC!4agCR0niwAiECeriIYo2WA

Oh man, I'd love to play an Avatar the Last Airbender game in Fellowship, that would work so well!

Is this updated with Dragon magazines past 372?

>Monsterhearts
>Good

Choice one.

If you want games about being an angsty teen and playing out Teen Wolf and Jennifer's Body and Vampire Diaries, ain't no better game.

Its the worst game "teenage angst" ever.

Download link's dead there. Good to know there's something out there floating around, though.

as already posted, use mega.nz/#F!Z5V12TAC!4agCR0niwAiECeriIYo2WA

> All this talk about Abilities Scores

13thage.org/index.php/house-rules/497-death-to-ability-scores-variant

How easy is it to convert 13th age's monsters and npc over to 5E?

Why not just play 13th Age? The monsters and classes are more balanced than in 5e anyway.

True, but its DnD. You know, a game system people actually play.

I find the monsters in 13th age to be the most interesting part of the system to be honest, because they seem more flexible and adaptable than in in 5E though i'd give 13th age a go if the classes weren't as unbalanced as people say.

They're more balanced than 5e,so you're in the clear. Everyone's able to 'keep up' numerically, some are just more boring, like in DnD5e.

>the Paladin and Ranger are just insulting

What about the barbarian? That one has just as bad scaling and it's terrible FROM THE START.

Why do people insist on sticking to completely shit games?

Because 13th Age has a bunch of good ideas put together poorly

Do they? You'd have to pay me to ever touch 3.5 again, but I can't call it a completely shit system without that being serious hyperbole. Actually shit systems like FATAL and MYFAROG don't actually have many people playing them.

In its defense most of 13th Age's problems are fixed by third-party classes.

I would defend DnD5e on the same basis except most of them that I find are STILL shitty. I'm still yet to fight an 'interesting fighter' - someone's tried porting some of the Tome of Battle but missed the point entirely making it a points-based DAILY resource.

Is Myfarog actually shitty? My understanding was that it was made by a shitty person, but in terms of a game, is just another totally uninteresting fantasy heartbreaker.

Was your favorite part of Middle Earth Roleplaying the excessive charts? Then MYFAROG might be the system for you!

I do four stats: Str, Dex, Int, Cha. Roll Con into Str, roll Wis into Cha, and you have one stat for each of the classic archetypes, warrior, rogue, mage, and priest.

Str for the fighters, barbarians, pallies, rangers, monks.
Dex for the thieves and assassins.
Int for the arcane magic-users, psioncists, artificers.
Cha for clerics, druids, and bards.

This guy gets it.

Autistic shitsim that manages to be worse than 4e and 5e but above Pathfinder.

I like the look of 13th Age, it seems like it'd be a good game.. but when I read the objective crunch and try to calculate DPR and whatnot, quite a few classes seem imbalanced and oddly skewed.
I like the Icon system, the Background system, but I really hate the AC/PD/MD shit. Almost all of the classes need some serious balancing fixes. Kinda find myself wanting to like the game but the half-assed attempt to "fix" issues with 3.5/4e really hold it back. While "theater of the mind" is a stupid thing, I am glad 13A has a decent gridless system.
Other than the half-assed excuses the devs wrote out for fucking over some of the classes.. I think it's an alright game.

It's like someone took DND fourth addition and removed all the tactical stuff. Which isn't bad thing in my opinion. It's retains a lot of the design ethos without the high emphasis on combo.

Introduced a lot of it's own problems though. Not sold on the escalation dice gimmick at all, and this is coming from a man who loves escalation gimmicks.

>Background in Chef and Thief each cost the same despite Thief applying to significantly more situations, and those situations being far more impactful on the success of your average quest. Sure, Chef might help if you're cooking something to impress an NPC, or to check your food for poison, but it hardly compares to being able to move stealthily, pick pockets, open locks, find and disarm traps, and perform all kinds of acrobatics related to second-story work.

The background system is terrible. It tries to fix what wasn't broken and just boils down to how far you can push things with the GM.

Honestly most playgroup would play their luck a lot further. Of course my chracter can disarm a trap in pitch black, Who was part of the breakfast shift and made poached eggs!

Just come up with a skill package for each background and agree to stick to it.

I actually really like the 13th Age setting, simplistic and open-ended as it is

The icons are also cool, I also like the idea of codifying the reason why PCs are PCs with the "one unique thing". 13th Age is the only DnD-like system where I enjoy building the fluff of a character more fun than building the crunch

That said the classes are unbalanced, horribly so, especially for poor rangers and barbarians, and class features are really, really limited for the most part, it feels like it's just missing an entire book of nothing but talents, powers, spells and abilities

>especially for poor rangers and barbarians

Let's not forget paladins and their shit-scaling smite.