Thoughts on 13th Age? I've heard good things, particularly that the monk is crazy awesome to play

It's great.

Nobody plays it because it's better than Pathfinder and they're bitter about that.

From the GM side, how do the monsters play with their special abilities being tied to the D20 roll? I found that pretty cool while reading.

13th Age has some fairly major problems with class scaling.

Most of the classes are fairly balanced with one another (except for absolute messes of classes like the barbarian)... at levels 1 to 2. From that point, character classes diverge wildly in how well they scale. The paladin is a prime example of this, given its absolutely terrible scaling, whereas the bard becomes terrifyingly strong and versatile as the levels go on.

I explain and address some of these issues in this archived thread:
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47197158

This is an insidious issue because it is nearly invisible at levels 1-2, then grows more and more pronounced. A level 10 paladin is completely and utterly laughable in the face of a level 10 bard, in the most extreme of cases.

Apart from this, other issues you might have to watch out for are:

• The barbarian being a completely worthless class even from level 1: archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47197304

• The druid also being rather awful from level 1, even if it does scale better than the barbarian, the paladin, and the ranger: archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47197639

• The AC, PD, and MD subsystem being a wholly contrived and nonsensical mess that muddles up character balance and forces all characters to have two dump scores: archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47198933

• The wizard's Evocation talent being overpowered: archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47211978

There are a number of minor issues I did not cover in that thread, such as spellcasters being inexplicably allowed to retrain all of their powers at the start of each day while non-spellcasters are left in the dust (why does it even work this way?), the necromancer class being saddled with a Constitution-based penalty despite the class being perfectly fine otherwise (which makes the class weak compared to other spellcasters), the icon relationship system being clunky in many cases, and host of other minor to moderate grievances.

Fortunately, the 13th Age in Glorantha book seems to be trying to solve some of these issues: archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47201802

13th Age in Glorantha is still somewhat hit-or-miss. Well-scaling classes like the Humakti sit alongside abortions like the trickster ( archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47201872 ) and the awful, awful barbarian clones.

An older thread in which I go over my issues with 13th Age can be found here:
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/43530325/#43533070

I do not think I was able to articulate myself as well as I did in this more recent thread, however:
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47197158

Tiers in 13th Age are probably less "tier 1 to tier 6" and more "tier 3 to tier 5," to borrow 3.X/Pathfinder parlance, but that is still a non-negligible disparity.

Thanks for the in-depth stuff, will give it a look--through.

Can you cover how the monk actually works? Having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Just like Incarnum was impossible to figure out...

>and host of other minor to moderate grievances.

What are the moderate ones?

Interesting how this seems to have more scaling issues than 4E did at launch.

The monk is somewhat decent in mechanical concept, but the designers mucked up the execution by deliberately making it MAD out of tradition.

I would look into the monk fix here:
13thage.org/index.php/classes/495-the-improved-monk
docs.google.com/document/d/1gLEEupBLrzBKvclyFbEXxJvvHd7uOhfVqPZJ_fdoreE/edit?usp=sharing

The martial artist may also interest you:
docs.google.com/file/d/0B5k1Bo0pV5ilVThjNzZNUzRZTUk/edit

For that matter, there is a decent fighter fix here as well:
13thage.org/index.php/classes/428-the-improved-fighter
docs.google.com/document/d/1xW7S4C_U_CvEPhUWmufF6DdX2J6vrw3kDe0ZqntFJ0M/edit?usp=sharing

The barbarian and the ranger will need more thorough rewriting, though I imagine you could just use some of the Glorantha classes. I am a great fan of the Humakti.

Ability scores and the AC/PD/MD are a complete mechanical abomination, for one. I would suggest using this house rule:
13thage.org/index.php/house-rules/497-death-to-ability-scores-variant

I also greatly dislike how the ritual subsystem is nothing but loosey-goosey "mother may I?" based on nothing but the names of powers. No, seriously, the basis is what the powers are called.
Ritual casting is hard to avoid too, since the cleric and the wizard have built-in ritual casting, and the ritual subsystem emphasizes its importance in solving major problems.
I once encountered a semi-viable fix for rituals online, but I can no longer find it.

13th Age's core math scaling is actually quite solid, if not better than 4e's ( archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47191606/#47199956 ). Where 13th Age blunders up is in class design past level 2, wherein some classes scale much better than others.

Can you explain the concept? I just can't figure out how the three-combo is supposed to work or what the point of it is, for one thing

>Martials are also back to being boring essentials style stuff and generally less powerful/versatile than casters.
>generally less powerful/versatile than casters
>generally less powerful

What

Why would I want to play this then, I could just play DnD

Is there a druid fix?

I love the concept behind the 13th age druid

Also I think the solution to the necromancer is to buff other aspects of the necromancer rather than removing one of the most thematically appropriate class features it has

You use any opening attack, then any flow attack, then any finishing attack.

It is mostly a scaling problem past levels 1-2. The classes are roughly equal to one another before then... for the most part. (The barbarian is still dreck from the beginning.)

I have yet to find any good druid fixes that actually address the entirety of the class's problems.

I imagine that significantly improving the druid's numerical chassis would be a good start.

>You use any opening attack, then any flow attack, then any finishing attack.

I was looking at it more, trying to figure out what I needed you to explain, and then all of a sudden it clicked, so...thanks?

What's wrong with the druid?

>Exalted poster in 13th Age thread
lel

The druid pays all of its talents to be a much weaker version of other classes.

Compare a dedicated caster druid to a bard, cleric, or wizard, for example. The druid has a worse spellcasting progression, a worse chassis, and no talents for actual class upgrades.

Now without actually knowing anything about the Druid, I would guess it does so because it's so flexible. Is that the case?

A dedicated caster druid is less flexible than a bard, a cleric, or a wizard.

A mixed melee/caster druid has their focus so horribly spread-out that they can hardly do anything well, and they will likely be quite fragile.

I think a raw numerical improvement on the baseline chassis is pretty much all the druid needs

Better defenses, better HP. Make it so that a dedicated caster druid still has more HP and better defenses than a bard, cleric or wizard. So they get something in exchange for the loss of spellpower and flexibility

This still leaves the matter of buffing warrior druids up to scratch though.

Alternatively, the druid could use actual class talents, the same kind that a bard, a cleric, or a wizard would receive.

I have no idea how people can stand the concept of Icons. Unassailable, unreachable, and super important NPCs suck. The game's been out for several years and afaik there's still no Icon stats so you can kill them.

Ironically, the core book hammers into the reader that 13th Age's setting is Way Better™ than other settings, because it focuses on mortal icons, not gods!

Page 92: "Many fantasy worlds and games define themselves, at least in part, by their gods and religions and pantheons. By contrast, 13th Age focuses on the icons as the great and immanent powers of the world, while the gods are distant."

Page 196: "Commonly, a campaign is defined by its gods, but a 13th Age campaign is defined by its icons. Like gods, the icons wield world-shaping power and define moral perspectives. We center on icons, however, because they are mortal. They are in the world with the PCs, and the PCs can affect them. The campaign is about the characters, so we prefer it when the most powerful entities in the campaign are in scale with the PCs. In other words, the world of 13th Age does have gods, but unlike the icons, the gods don’t define the campaign.
"You could certainly change the focus in your campaign. If you make the gods immanent beings walking the land, they might function something like icons and PCs could have icon-style relations with such gods. But that’s not the game as we’ve phrased it."

And yet, for all intents and purposes, the icons are gods, given that they are utterly untouchable by PCs short of homebrew. Many pieces of lore in the setting chapter and the bestiary entries establish the icons as performing vast and epic feats of reality-reshaping, again, much like gods.

Only if you attach those class talents to the talents the druid already has

We don't want to destroy what makes the druid interesting.

Alternatively

They're fantastic, except for the lack of stats

Although I suppose the emperor doesn't need stats because he's not a combatant.

Still, it sucks that there's no stats for the lich king, or for the prince of shadows, or the orc lord. ESPECIALLY the orc lord.

it's a mish mash of all the good bits and pieces of many rpgs while still being between light and heavy rules wise.

it's very flexible too.

I've used 13th Age a lot when DM-ing 4e

Mostly using escalation die combined with a slight buff to monster defenses to make alpha-striking less overpowering in 4e, and the way you get one stat boost from your class and one from your race to allow for more interesting race/class combos. Although I do make it so that humans only get the class stat bonus, because humans in 4e do not need a buff

Can you please leave every thread.

He's been more helpful than anyone else in here

Interested in the One Unique Thing. As a very simulationist style of GM it seems like a pain, but I'm trying to break out of my rut, so I kinda want to give it a shot.

You're not supposed to fight the Icons directly. Icons have minions. Some of them are you.

What don't you understand about this?

>It is mostly a scaling problem past levels 1-2

Does 13th Age go from 1 to 20 like other D&D clones?

If so "the game is balanced for about 10% of it's leveling experience" is like a huge point against it.

Then Icons are no better than gods. I want my players to be able to change the setting. This means every NPC can be killed and that eventually, if they work for it, the party will be the most important people in the world.

Everything about Icons discourages this.

I loved it then 5e came out and I no longer had any reason to run it.

>Then Icons are no better than gods.
Ok.

>I want my players to be able to change the setting.
This literally ends the game in 13th Age, user. Have you even read the game's rules?

>Everything about Icons discourages this.
That's not precisely true, although it does end the game.

Because it's the fucking orc lord, Players should, at really high levels, be able to fight the orc lord to stop his rampage before he destroys the civilized world

If we can't, the orc lord is just Gruumsh under a different name, and Gruumsh is fine, but isn't the whole point of icons rather than gods that players can influence them through their actions?

If they can not be fought, then they are gods, simple as that. They are unassailable and unreachable, nothing the players do can hinder them personally, only their minions or schemes

>Players should, at really high levels, be able to fight the orc lord
This is one of those bad lessons D&D teaches. The game is far more interesting because you can't just go right for the source of the trouble. You have to defeat their machinations the hard way.

>the orc lord is just Gruumsh under a different name
That's a bad way to look at it.

>If they can not be fought, then they are gods, simple as that.
That's another bad D&D lesson. There are plenty of things that can't be fought. We had an entire campaign arc where the players had to defend their reputations. Nothing to go out and murder to resolve the problem. They had to use their wits.

You are very right but also very wrong

Just because they don't HAVE TO is no reason why they CAN'T.

In 13th Age, you literally can't fight any of the icons, which is silly, even most campaigns shouldn't end with an icon being fought at the climax, doesn't mean that NONE of them should.

Again, I bring up the orc lord, a climactic battle with the orc lord, aided by his finest generals, against level 10 heroes, is a fantastic epic climax to a story, but is impossible. I can understand some of the icons being impossible to fight like the Emperor (non-combatant), the great Gold Wyrm or The Red (too big), or the prince of shadows (too elusive), but never being allowed to face the crusader or the orc lord, when they're explicitly warriors who solve problems with violence and would welcome a grand battle, just strikes me as short-sighted on behalf of the developers

>That's a bad way to look at it.
It's a bad way to look at it... Why? That's literally how it is. It seems like you're only saying it's wrongthink because it shows clearly how Icons are literally "Gods but totally not gods guys you just can't touch them, change them, or have a chance of fighting them because they're Gods oops I mean Icons".

>they're explicitly warriors who solve problems with violence
What gave you this impression?

The Crusader is embroiled in an eternal battle with the demons who want to the enter the world. He's explicitly not solving the problem through combat, which is why he would (and does) enlist adventurers to aid him with other avenues of problem solving.

The Orc Lord defeated the Lich King in a past age, but there's no explanation of what happened. In fact, nobody knows much of anything about past ages. That's the nature of the setting.

Powerful agents don't engage in direct violence. That's one of the things I find so frustrating about D&D. The most you should end up fighting directly are the lowest lieutenant's lieutenants.

>It seems like you're only saying it's wrongthink
No I'm saying it's a bad way to view it because gods are finite beings who can be defeated, whereas Icons are literally that. Ideas manifest form; they survive ages because the being inhabiting the role doesn't have to be the same one.

Monk may be MAD, but they also get to pull an additional +2 stats out of their ass for it.

No one is talking about killing the concept behind an Icon. No one. Except you, I guess! We're talking about ending the threat temporarily by killing the CURRENT Orc Lord, or the CURRENT Crusader. The CURRENT Lich got dead, why can't they?

Furthermore, for your argument of how an Icon can be untouchable, and the Icons would NEVER fight, so how DID the Lich buy the farm? Did minions do it, or did the Orc Lord themself do it? Either way, your argument falls apart, and one of them has to be true. So your argument is false, AND invalid. Great job, that takes some great natural talent at sucking.

You want to shift the goalposts again?

>The CURRENT Lich got dead, why can't they?
The Lich King being killed ended the previous Age. Are you fucking retarded or are you simply illiterate?

You haven't even done the requisite reading to debate this.

If you want to have this in your campaign, why don't you build the stat blocks yourself?
Even if it isn't accounted for in the "official" setting, what is stopping you from changing it for your game?
Do you think players never had campaigns we're they beat up gods in systems that don't have stats for them?

Old school dnd literally had the fiend folio specifically for this purpose.

I remember clearly the stat block for the goddess Lolth and how it needed to be buffed. Good times.

He's trapped in D&D and he can't get out.

Johnathan Tweet is such an annoying fedoralord I'm embarrassed I love this game like I do. Heinsoo seems pretty cool tho'.

Goes to 10, so like 20% of its time, but even their best module only goes to level 8.

So why do casters scale better than the martials?

What's wrong with Tweet specifically?

Also Heinsoo is a cuck who signed a bunch of anti-trump "letters from the gaming industry" or something. I don't care about trump but who gives a fuck what Heinsoo thinks about politics? The game is still good, so who really cares? Only time it matters in when a creator's loopiness directly impacts the game.

It has nothing to do with D&D, defeating the bad guy is one of the staples of fantasy. No, not every campaign has to end with a direct climatic battle against the BBEG, but having a system in which you by definition CAN'T ever defeat the bad guy, just set back his plans or defeat his minions to get pats in the back from your own Icon is quite frankly pathetic.

Sure, I guess I could stat them by myself but that sort of defeats the purpose.

>he has no imagination and is GM
I pity your players.