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Current Humble Bundle is not bad at all, 26 Euros for Core book Bestiary 1 and 2 GM screen and Resource Book Eye of the Stone Thief (as well as the 5e version) Crown of Axis Shadows of Eldolan 13 True ways Book of Demons Book of Ages Book of Loot Loot Harder Dragon Empire map Multiple map packs, character options, treasures and monsters bundle from 13th Age Monthly 25 dollars off on print products on Pelgrane store
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Jul 22, 2021 23:28
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canepazzo posted:Current Humble Bundle is not bad at all, 26 Euros for holy poo poo
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Jul 23, 2021 00:25
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Yeah - it was worth it for me long before the $25 voucher. Pretty amazing bundle; it's only missing a few things like Shards of the Broken Sky from the whole 13th Age line. I'm stoked for the Icon "awesome adventures and maps" as well - I'm just getting into Foundry VTT and more maps will be handy. Has anyone played or run those adventures/encounters?
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Jul 23, 2021 14:57
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fosborb posted:holy poo poo I already own most of this stuff and I'm still considering it.
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Jul 23, 2021 15:32
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Rohan Kishibe posted:I already own most of this stuff and I'm still considering it. yeah same. I think the icon-specific splats are about the only thing I don't own, so definitely interested in sionak's question as well
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Jul 23, 2021 15:36
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What's a good print product on their store to spend the voucher on?
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Jul 24, 2021 13:01
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canepazzo posted:What's a good print product on their store to spend the voucher on? This is hard to answer without knowing what you already have or would be interested in. The Iconic podcast does fairly in depth reviews of the different books, if there's a couple you'd like to know more about.
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Jul 24, 2021 14:31
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Are the maps in the bundle the ones they had in those Battle Scenes supplements?
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Jul 24, 2021 14:42
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Sionak posted:This is hard to answer without knowing what you already have or would be interested in. Duh, I should have probably mentioned that. I have the corebook and nothing else in print; mostly I'm wondering if anything is missing from the bundle that might be worth getting in print, or even if any of the books in the bundle are good enough / pleasant to read / to look at that merit a print version.
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Jul 24, 2021 15:16
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canepazzo posted:What's a good print product on their store to spend the voucher on? If you play in person the DM screen is obviously never a bad idea.
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Jul 24, 2021 15:43
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canepazzo posted:Duh, I should have probably mentioned that. I have the corebook and nothing else in print; mostly I'm wondering if anything is missing from the bundle that might be worth getting in print, or even if any of the books in the bundle are good enough / pleasant to read / to look at that merit a print version. The big one that's missing I noticed is 13th Age in Glorantha - which is a great book imo
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Jul 24, 2021 16:36
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Evil Mastermind posted:Are the maps in the bundle the ones they had in those Battle Scenes supplements? So I bought the bundle and yeah, it looks like it's the content from Crown Commands, Fire and Faith and High Magic and Low Cunning. The content is sorted into different pdfs for each icon, but I compared to my print copy of HM&LC and the archmage content is the same. I've found those books pretty useful overall, whether run straight or with some reskinning. I'm happy with spending just over £20 to grab the two or three pdfs I was missing, hopefully I'll actually be able to play again soon.
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Jul 24, 2021 17:35
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Saturnine Aberrance posted:The big one that's missing I noticed is 13th Age in Glorantha - which is a great book imo It is. Unfortunately it's out of stock at Pelgrane, which means no dice for the coupon. canepazzo posted:Duh, I should have probably mentioned that. I have the corebook and nothing else in print; mostly I'm wondering if anything is missing from the bundle that might be worth getting in print, or even if any of the books in the bundle are good enough / pleasant to read / to look at that merit a print version. I really like 13 True Ways and the Bestiary; they're fun to just flip through. Some of the books missing from the bundle are the Book of the Underworld, Elven Towers, and Shards of the Broken Sky. The value depends on what you like to have in print - classes? Monsters? Whole campaigns?
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Jul 25, 2021 00:48
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What's the official first party class list at this point? Any new classes been released since Demonologist? I'd really like to see them take the mechanical concepts there and continue exploring them.
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Jul 25, 2021 00:54
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Sionak posted:It is. Unfortunately it's out of stock at Pelgrane, which means no dice for the coupon. Thanks again! I ended up getting the GM screen and the Book of the Underworld (as the order must be over 35 dollars without counting shipping). The adventures I generally am fine (or even prefer) having in PDF for ease of navigation.
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Jul 25, 2021 12:37
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unimportantguy posted:What's the official first party class list at this point? Any new classes been released since Demonologist? I'd really like to see them take the mechanical concepts there and continue exploring them. AFAIK, there have been no new first-party classes since Demonologist. Shards of the Broken Sky had some new races but no new classes.
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Jul 25, 2021 17:42
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canepazzo posted:Thanks again! I ended up getting the GM screen and the Book of the Underworld (as the order must be over 35 dollars without counting shipping). The adventures I generally am fine (or even prefer) having in PDF for ease of navigation. You're very welcome. I think those are great choices, and the GM Screen + book and map that come with it are really useful.
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Jul 26, 2021 13:07
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So, I have just finished a first "demo" session for 13th Age with my group last night (we normally play 5e together) and overall first impressions seem fairly positive. Essentially, I restructured character generation and everything that goes into it (Icons, Unique, Backgrounds etc.) and lead the others through it, since the structure of the Core rules is rather rubbish. We created characters, did a montage for travelling (which people liked, so that's cool as a mechanism already), and then had a simple "sample" fight against a bunch of Kobold Warriors and Kobold Archers, all for five level 1 characters. Nobody in this group (including me) has played 13th Age before. Two main things during combat lead to discussion while chatting and gathering feedback afterwards: 1) People got a bit confused with the nearby/far away etc. distinctions for fighting, and I agree that the rules could provide better examples for these categories or how movement really works between these distances etc. Since we play via roll20, and since people like battle maps, I essentially used a map and drew circles, one smaller one for "nearby" encompassing all of the Kobolds and most of the PCs, and a larger circle around it for "far away", but I felt that this gave too much of a defined "demarkation" between the distances, which at least one or two players seemed to struggle with. Does anybody have a any good examples/fight logs/tools which might make this a bit clearer, both for me and the other players? 2) We had a bit of a lively discussion afterwards, where two players in particular were worried about 13th Age relying on "AC tanking" for monsters, i.e. that martials initially have relatively low chances to hit enemies given their stats at the beginning of a battle, especially compared to 5e (which people are used to). The initial math seems to support this -- a level 1 martial character with 18 in their primary stat would have +5 to attack, which means they'd have to roll a 13+ in order to hit a Kobold Warrior, who has AC 18. Granted, this gets somewhat easier over time, since the Escalation Die will eventually add its own bonus, but that still means that this character initially only has a 40% chance to hit, which increases to 50% by round 3. Looking at stat blocks for monsters for the next few levels, AC seems to scale more or less linearly, essentially negating the automatic +1 to hit that PCs get for each level. The tenor from these two more (in this instance) vocal players is that missing feels lame, and that they feel like they should hit more often, especially since combat would otherwise "drag on too long". Which leads me to a few questions: - Are we all just poisoned by 5e "balancing" where people might hit more frequently, but monsters might compensate by being bigger HP sponges? - Do martials get disadvanted more disproportionally by AC tanking, since other classes might target MD or PD more frequently, which tend to be a bit lower? - Do martials ever catch up in this sense to other PCs since all PCs get the same attack bonuses from the escalation die? - Is this actually an issue, and is fights "dragging" on actually bad, or not designed as such? - Is "damage on miss" somehow able to make more frequent misses more palatable, or is the feeling entirely correct that AC seems to be too high? - Can magical weapons "smooth" this out somewhat if some players feel like this is a problem that keeps them from enjoying the game, or would a reduction in AC for monsters generally help with this feeling? A bit of background: as a group, people are generally happy about RPing even in 5e and have few qualms with additional prompts and hooks for storytelling, character development etc., so I'm not too worried about buy-in into these aspects as well as into background mechanics etc. On the other hand, the group tends towards character optimisation in 5e (though some people optimise less than others), which is likely a trait that would transfer over (one of the two players above would love to play the "Psion" third-party class, the other was looking at a multiclass Fighter/Paladin). As such, there might generally be a tendency to be more Batman rather Birdman on average (I tend to be more of a Birdman player, for example, as is one other player who is interested in the Occultist, though it's not really a big issue). However, some habits and expectations coming from 5e might be harder to shake for some, and I would like to use 13th Age perhaps more as a "gateway" to find out if the group as such (which works pretty well in terms of personalities, opinions, safety etc.) would be willing to explore (and enjoy) other, even more storytelling-focused games (e.g. some PbtA flavours like Masks, goon-written Hard Wired Islands, Blades in the Dark etc.) possibly in parallel to 5e, or as a (loose) campaign. People were generally happy with the system (and evening), and would like to play a more proper one-shot or short adventure, but I am curious if there any worthwhile adjustments I could make beforehand already to make sure people enjoy themselves." Is this something that has come up in discussions or as expectations in your groups?
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Aug 1, 2021 22:12
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Are your martials remembering to apply miss damage? 13th Age combat should be pretty brisk. Most combats end before the Escalation Die maxes out and rounds should go pretty quickly. Also, 13th Age combat is balanced around the assumption that players don't have magic item bonuses so of people are really concerned they can just buy weapon oils or quest for magic swords.
unimportantguy fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Aug 2, 2021 |
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Aug 2, 2021 03:20
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It also sounds like they're spamming their base melee attacks instead of trying interesting things.
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Aug 2, 2021 04:22
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My group also found that attacks that target AC feel somewhat underpowered in 13A. Or, at least, that there seems to be a slight mechanical blindspot of the system, where AC-target attacks have, effectively, a hidden penalty to hit compareed to MD/PD attacks because almost every monster in the game has a higher AC than it has PD or MD, while this doesn't seem to be meaningfully compensated for (i.e, the average targets-AC attack isn't more powerful or more effective to make up for the lost accuracy). In terms of real numbers, it's probably a very minor issue in terms of actual battle effectiveness, but it *feels* like a more significant issue than it actually because it a) compounds an existing problem of many AC-attacking characters being less mechanically complex and having less interesting decisions to make, and b) the psychological affect of feeling like you're missing out on the opportunity to do to your character's cool tricks is a real thing. When I was GMing, I solved it by a fairly simple method - I just manually tweaked the defences of various monsters's - keeping the total values the same, but swapping AC with PD or MD so that AC wasn't always the "best defence". Some monsters still had AC as their strong defence, of course, but I tried to have an even distribution of strong-AC, strong-PD, and strong-MD monsters. I told my players I was doing this, and the feeling of disproportionate disadvantage vanished (even though the actual disadvantage probably barely changed).
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Aug 2, 2021 06:54
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our commander self corrects all of that, to be honest. I mean the math is the math, but all is instantly forgiven when the math can be rerolled
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Aug 2, 2021 07:03
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Hollow Talk posted:1) People got a bit confused with the nearby/far away etc. distinctions for fighting, and I agree that the rules could provide better examples for these categories or how movement really works between these distances etc. Since we play via roll20, and since people like battle maps, I essentially used a map and drew circles, one smaller one for "nearby" encompassing all of the Kobolds and most of the PCs, and a larger circle around it for "far away", but I felt that this gave too much of a defined "demarkation" between the distances, which at least one or two players seemed to struggle with. Does anybody have a any good examples/fight logs/tools which might make this a bit clearer, both for me and the other players? 13th Age takes away the idea of having a set speed. This is going to throw anyone for a loop if you just try to apply "nearby" and "far away" to the distance/speed equation. The fixed circles you used are a way to do that, and you've seen it doesn't quite work as you expected. It helps to think of the map as only a very loose overview of "who is where". Gonna try and give some examples: A grid based system would go like: "we're in a field, me at X2Y3, goblins at X5Y3 and X3Y1" A distance-based system (like I assume 5e) goes like: "we're in a field, I'm here, goblin A is 20 ft. away, goblin B is 35 feet away" Now you'd think 13th Age went like we're in a field, I'm here, goblin A is nearby, goblin B is far away, but it helps to think of it more like: "I'm here in a field with two goblins." That's all. Forget specific distance. All that matters is the one rule: you can spend a move action to go into melee with a goblin. No matter what, no matter if one's slightly closer than the other, no matter if a log or a stream is inbetween you and one of them (... unless that's specifically an obstacle, rather than set dressing.) And from that point of view, try adding the idea of being far away. "I'm here in a field with two goblins... and another is at the edge of the forest over there." And now that one takes slightly more effort to get to, i.e. two move actions. Let's look at a third scenario. I'm in a field with two goblins (nearby). To my left, at the edge of the forest, another goblin (far away). To my right, by the river, yet another goblin (also far away). I spend two move actions to move to the river goblin. Now I'm at the river with a goblin (nearby, or even in melee). Behind me a field with two goblins. Further behind me the forest edge with another; here's the key point: either of those three is now far away and takes two move actions to get to, even though if you measured the distance on a map, the field would be much closer than the forest edge. But that's not how 13th Age works. Maps are cool to give you a sense of what does it look like here and who is in melee with whom, but don't lean into the idea of measurable distances too hard. There's only nearby and far away, both completely arbitrary.
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Aug 2, 2021 07:26
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to add on to that, be clear of the implications before the move is committed to and everyone should be fine
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Aug 2, 2021 07:36
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Hollow Talk posted:- Are we all just poisoned by 5e "balancing" where people might hit more frequently, but monsters might compensate by being bigger HP sponges? A hidden advantage of Martials, though it doesn't apply 100% of the time, is that spells only "scale up" when casters gain access to a new tier of spells on odd levels. This means that on even levels Martials get an edge over them. This will probably be very prominent at level 2 where they'll basically be doing twice the damage with their at-wills though it's slightly less exciting later on. There appears to be two kinds of "Damage on Miss" in 13A - "Half Damage", and "Deal Damage equal to your level." I find the former to be much more impactful though it mostly shows up on dailies, in order to prevent things from getting too swingy from flubbing your big gun of the day. The latter doesn't seem to matter much so far, but it can be situationally useful when someone is off by a few HP on a kill to clean up but you shouldn't expect to ever chip someone from full to 0 with it.
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Aug 2, 2021 12:31
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Thinking about it a bit more, the nearby/far away system really creates a kind of zone system. Your battlefield consists of a few zones (the field, the forest edge, the river) and one move action takes you anywhere you want within your zone; any creature in your zone is nearby, while creatures in other zones are far away. It takes one move action to change zones, then another move action to take you where you want in the zone. This is by default regardless of where the zones are in relation to each other; if on the map the field is between the forest and the river, and you want to change from river to forest, it's still only one move action. And it's also regardless of where creatures are in a zone; if a goblin token is right at the border of two zones, and you cross into its zone with one move, you can't use that same move to go right into melee, or if a goblin is at the far end of a zone from where you enter it you still only need one move to cross all the way over. (It's still important to note if you have to go past enemies for intercepting, so there remains in fact an element of tangible positioning.) Although, important to note that zones still probably shouldn't be drawn on a map in any concrete way, but rather be defined by their most striking feature and general group agreement, and the map should just reflect those features. And then you can start playing with it and have zones that take special effort to enter, like a skill check. Up the roof, up the palisade, in the magic circle, on the dragon's back. It would be very in the spirit of 13th Age to let players define and invent zones. You might start out in a field with no further layout described, but a player could say "I'm too squishy to risk melee, I'm gonna retreat far away, hide behind the trees" and suddenly there's always been the forest. I'm not entirely sure to what degree I'm describing how things work in practice and to what degree I'm coming up with a more detailed movement/map system I should probably codify properly
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Aug 2, 2021 15:16
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This thread is a lot more active than I expected.  Thank you for all the thoughtful replies! unimportantguy posted:Are your martials remembering to apply miss damage? 13th Age combat should be pretty brisk. Most combats end before the Escalation Die maxes out and rounds should go pretty quickly. Also, 13th Age combat is balanced around the assumption that players don't have magic item bonuses so of people are really concerned they can just buy weapon oils or quest for magic swords. fosborb posted:our commander self corrects all of that, to be honest. These are good points! We applied miss damage during the fight (even though it seems Kobold Warriors should not take damage on missed hits, since they are "Evasive", which would further compound the feeling of annoying enemies), and I suspect the fact that characters were level 1 meant that these hits just didn't feel like they had much of an impact. I can see how that might change with higher levels (or for the Barbarian with "Building Frenzy"). I will have to do a lot more reading into interactions between classes in order to get a better feeling for how classes like the Commander or Occultist might be able to help in these situations as well. moths posted:It also sounds like they're spamming their base melee attacks instead of trying interesting things. This might very well be the case, since this was the absolute first time testing/playing 13th Age as a system. Did you have anything specific "interesting things" in mind? I'm wondering for example if there are any neat things for e.g. Barbarians or Paladins -- I find frontline martial classes tricky since they are something I don't like to field as a player, so inspiration is always welcome.   My Lovely Horse posted:
My Lovely Horse posted:
Thank you, this is very helpful! The idea of zones like that helps me visualise the setup a bit better, and I think one of the things we all had a bit of trouble with was dealing with the "edges" or demarkation of these positions, probably because we are altogether still too attached to positions on the map as such. It makes a lot of sense to think about it from each character's (or enemy's) specific point of view, i.e. those people "right there" are nearby, and that one weirdo "over there" is far away. At least I did turn off the grid in roll20 and told people that there is no point in using the ruler to measure anything.  Davzz posted:I don't have as much experience in 13A as others do, only having perhaps 10 sessions in my first game ever, but from what I find battles usually don't even reach the max of ED 6, usually ending between 2-3, so if the perception of "missing feels bad" is taken out of the equation it's probably faster than 5e. I'll note that two of my party of 4 are a Monk (the original, not the Improved version) and Druid, who are known to be a bit of memes in effectiveness, so I assume an actually optimized party could probably grind enemies up even faster. I'm curious about scaling, and that's something I will look at in terms of level progression -- it's good to see that martials at least feel impactful (heh) and can "keep up" in some senses with the casters. a computing pun posted:My group also found that attacks that target AC feel somewhat underpowered in 13A. Or, at least, that there seems to be a slight mechanical blindspot of the system, where AC-target attacks have, effectively, a hidden penalty to hit compareed to MD/PD attacks because almost every monster in the game has a higher AC than it has PD or MD, while this doesn't seem to be meaningfully compensated for (i.e, the average targets-AC attack isn't more powerful or more effective to make up for the lost accuracy). In terms of real numbers, it's probably a very minor issue in terms of actual battle effectiveness, but it *feels* like a more significant issue than it actually because it a) compounds an existing problem of many AC-attacking characters being less mechanically complex and having less interesting decisions to make, and b) the psychological affect of feeling like you're missing out on the opportunity to do to your character's cool tricks is a real thing. That sounds like a good idea -- I was thinking something along the same lines, and this might still be in the cards depending on how people feel, i.e. if some of the martials still feel like ACs are too high, I might vary defences a bit more even within the same encounter and reskin them a bit to give everybody some nicer and some trickier targets. I feel like the "felt impact" is definitely more significant than the actual numbers, which is why I want to make sure that the (perhaps less complex) martials still feel like their characters can do cool or funny things with the things their character offer mechanically during a fight.
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Aug 2, 2021 23:50
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about positions
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Hollow Talk posted:Did you have anything specific "interesting things" in mind? I'm wondering for example if there are any neat things for e.g. Barbarians or Paladins -- I find frontline martial classes tricky since they are something I don't like to field as a player, so inspiration is always welcome. You need to get them to "stunt" somehow and dynamically come up with effects for it. For what it's worth, while multiclassing introduced in the expansion book 13 True Ways are kind of a mess, combining two Martial classes of similar armor types tend to make more mechanically rich characters of just the right complexity for me.
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Aug 3, 2021 04:40
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It’s been a fair while since I’ve played but I remember Rogue/Ranger was a pretty fun combo.
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Aug 3, 2021 05:52
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I played a spellcaster for most of the long campaign where I was a player, but I had an aside as a paladin for one level. Given how short combats tended to be, deciding how to deploy my smites (and the dailies from the talent that gives you cleric powers) was decent enough engagement for the time I spent with the class.
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Aug 3, 2021 06:02
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commander/paladin synergizes really really well. more AC to Fight from the Front, smite on attacks, and command points used in quicks and interrupts, everything using strength and charisma paladin side can get in 1 or 2 cleric spells too, and then things just get silly
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Aug 3, 2021 06:17
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One more thing about the positioning: don't be afraid to actually rearrange tokens mid-battle to better reflect the state of combat. It regularly happened to us that a few characters and enemies would move around and we'd say "hmm now it looks like this group would already be far away but they never spent enough move actions for that, let's move them a little closer, get this other group out of the way so they don't form one big group, and now we've got it straight again." But at the same time take care to not actually move tokens past each other because of intercepting. Honestly it's a skill you develop more than a rigid system.
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Aug 3, 2021 10:29
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You might also want to check out Martin Killmann's 3rd-party book Dark Alleys and Twisted Paths, which adds a lot of new talents for the 1st-party classes and, in some cases, reworks them to make them feel a bit more 5E-ish (e.g., he rewrites the druid to function around 5E-type "circles" instead of the mess in 13 True Ways, and adds spell school specialization for wizards). That can probably wait until you're more confident with the system, though.
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Aug 3, 2021 14:29
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Davzz posted:To be real honest, as far as I can tell, although the combat math generally works out, core rulebook only Martials outside of the Commander (and especially the two class listed) are pretty dire in terms of "what tactical decisions should I made in combat" if your players are the kind that can only perform actions that are on their character sheet. That's a good point. I feel like our combat descriptions (also in 5e) go a bit more in the direction of "I move, then hit the enemy, I guess", so I will have to see if a more cinematic, "stunty" feeling is something we can come up with somewhat organically. Selachian posted:You might also want to check out Martin Killmann's 3rd-party book Dark Alleys and Twisted Paths, which adds a lot of new talents for the 1st-party classes and, in some cases, reworks them to make them feel a bit more 5E-ish (e.g., he rewrites the druid to function around 5E-type "circles" instead of the mess in 13 True Ways, and adds spell school specialization for wizards). That can probably wait until you're more confident with the system, though. Oooh, that looks interesting! I'll keep that in mind, and it is good to know there are additional options depending on how we get along with the standard classes and their design. Bookmarked for now, perhaps to be bought later. My Lovely Horse posted:One more thing about the positioning: don't be afraid to actually rearrange tokens mid-battle to better reflect the state of combat. It regularly happened to us that a few characters and enemies would move around and we'd say "hmm now it looks like this group would already be far away but they never spent enough move actions for that, let's move them a little closer, get this other group out of the way so they don't form one big group, and now we've got it straight again." But at the same time take care to not actually move tokens past each other because of intercepting. Honestly it's a skill you develop more than a rigid system. That makes a lot of sense. I feel like the "interception" mechanic is quite elegant and easy enough to understand (and it gives front-line fighters a more dedicated job), but rearranging makes a lot of sense. I will have to get a bit more comfortable with roll20 either way and will have to figure out where maps and tokens are useful, and where they are more cumbersome.
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Aug 4, 2021 21:51
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Hollow Talk posted:it seems Kobold Warriors should not take damage on missed hits, since they are "Evasive", which would further compound the feeling of annoying enemies Ugh, yeah, I've found that the Evasive ability makes kobolds terrible monsters to throw at brand-new players with low-level characters. As you discovered, monsters are hard to hit during the early rounds of combat (before the Escalation Die really kicks in) so at that point you're relying on miss damage to give players the feeling that they're making any difference at all. Remove miss damage and it can be really frustrating. Hollow Talk posted:Did you have anything specific "interesting things" in mind? I'm wondering for example if there are any neat things for e.g. Barbarians or Paladins -- I find frontline martial classes tricky since they are something I don't like to field as a player, so inspiration is always welcome. The Combat Modifiers section on page 171 suggests giving +2 to attacks that have "advantageous circumstances" and -2 to attacks from adverse circumstances. The book also says: quote:The bonus should relate to some special circumstance of the battle, not just to something abstract or generic, such as flanking. ...It’s more interesting to get a +2 bonus to your attacks because you’re a dwarf fighting in the ancient dwarven Hall of Blood, or because you have probed your enemy’s weaknesses in its dreams than because you’re flanking it. Also, make free use of the dazed and weakened conditions. If an effect is worth worrying about, it could be worth a 4-point swing in attacks or defenses. So as the GM, you can seed your battles with opportunities for the PCs to gain a bonus, or the monsters to gain a penalty, through terrain features and thematic elements. A paladin fighting an orc might gain a +2 to an attack by saying they maneuver the orc so the sun's in their eyes, hammer the orc with blows that force them into a knee-deep marsh, or surprise (aka daze) the orc by using a move action to swing across a throne room on a convenient rope or chandelier. You could set the battle near an ancient, crumbling shrine to a god of Light—a clever paladin player might ask whether they can draw strength for their attack through proximity to a holy site, or by offering up a quick prayer to its god. If your players don't intuit on their own that they can use the terrain to do cool things, you can help them think in those terms by offering suggestions. ("Hrothgar, you've observed that whenever any creature in this battle gets too near the evil altar, a crackle of energy jolts them and weakens them for a round. If you want, I would let you take advantage of that by using a Dex or Int check to try and maneuver an enemy close to the altar without getting hit yourself. If it fails, you're both weakened. Do you want to go for it?") P.S. I've run a ton of demos and one-shots, and I love when someone picks the Barbarian. It's a total glass cannon, but when it really lands a hit, the damage can be jaw-dropping. So a battle swings from "Crap, I'm at 0 hp, someone heal me!" to "I literally just decapitated 10 goblin mooks." If a player likes playing martial classes and also likes being an agent of chaos, it can be a lot of fun.
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Aug 15, 2021 02:21
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Hollow Talk posted:Did you have anything specific "interesting things" in mind? I'm wondering for example if there are any neat things for e.g. Barbarians or Paladins -- I find frontline martial classes tricky since they are something I don't like to field as a player, so inspiration is always welcome. Oh also! The 13th Age Game Master's Resource Book has eight pages by designer Cal Moore on using terrain in battles, with specific advice for each class. In addition to attack bonuses, Cal suggests doling out +2 bonuses to AC, PC, and MD as appropriate. He also says this, which I think is awesome and am going to try and remember for later: quote:When we talk about rewarding PCs who do show curiosity about your well-thought-out terrain choices, or who try risky things using that terrain, or come up with cunning plans involving the terrain, we mean have them succeed or fail grandly. When the PCs have a creative idea for using terrain, and their rolls support it, you should reward them with more than they expected from the attempt, especially if doing so poses a risk of personal injury to them. Make a success really cool. And if the attempt is replacing one of their normal attacks for their class, make sure a success comes with at least as much damage and/or other conditions applied to the enemies affected as one of their attacks would have generated, and preferably a bit more. You want the other players to see the PC pull it off, tell the player “that was cool,” and then try to think up ways they could have a moment in the spotlight using the terrain. On the Pelgrane site: https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/13th-age-game-masters-screen-and-resource-book/ The Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/software/treasure-maps-adventures-software
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Aug 16, 2021 05:03
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Hollow Talk posted:Did you have anything specific "interesting things" in mind? I'm wondering for example if there are any neat things for e.g. Barbarians or Paladins -- I find frontline martial classes tricky since they are something I don't like to field as a player, so inspiration is always welcome. They should be using pretty much everything on a character sheet other than their basic melee or ranged attacks. The 13A martial classes have cool things going on, but players have often been conditioned to save cool things for special occasions. It might be an issue where they're new to the system and don't know what they have, but that's how you learn!
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Aug 16, 2021 19:32
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waderockett posted:Great advice from Cal Moore Wow, that's basically the exact opposite of the way our GM ran things. He barely ever included terrain effects in battles and when we tried to make them happen it was always punishing. As an example, we once had a huge brawl in a burning feast hall and when my Level 7 Commander wanted to throw a burning table to finish off the last three mooks I had to do a hard skill check, convince him that I could use strength with my "was a gang member in Drakkenhall" background, and when I succeed I was rewarded with getting to roll 4d6 for damage. I really enjoy 13th Age but my other friends dropped out since the GM was too competitive and unwilling to meet us halfway when we want to do anything cool. Apologies for the rant but today was the one month anniversary of us dropping the campaign so his shenanigans got brought back up again.
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Aug 17, 2021 03:25
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SweaterGear posted:Apologies for the rant but today was the one month anniversary of us dropping the campaign so his shenanigans got brought back up again. Oof that kills me. 3 minions left... the ending is a foregone conclusion and with nothing at stake there shouldn't even be a roll for that action unless there was still something at stake! like, the last three minions are attempting to warn others and escape by knocking down support structures as they fled into warrens previously hidden until they were uncovered during the melee at escalation die 1!!! but uh it doesn't sound like it was that kind of game
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Aug 17, 2021 03:41
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fosborb posted:Oof that kills me. 3 minions left... the ending is a foregone conclusion and with nothing at stake there shouldn't even be a roll for that action YES. If Jackie Chan's finished off the toughest guy in the room and there are three generic mooks left, they either try to run away or surrender, or Jackie Chan effortlessly mops the floor with them in some funny or badass way. The fight's effectively over.
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Aug 19, 2021 00:01
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