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I've definitely seen rogues not take improved sneak. It's really not that much more damage (7 average at highest tier when a lot of games aren't going to get there) and rogue does have enough interesting ones that it doesn't feel like a no-brainer. What I'd like would be a prescribed balance of combat and noncombat talents - like every class has like 3 combat, 1 noncombat they can take and a pool for each.
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Jun 18, 2016 22:49
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I ran the adventure today, and it went really well! We had a guy who maybe played D&D once in the 70s, a younger relative of his, a woman who was watching and possibly related, and another guy who is a regular RPG player. The older guy asked if it was like Malifaux, and I explained how I'd be describing situations and then you'd narrate what your heroes do - I was a bit apprehensive but everyone seemed to catch on quickly. I'm sure some rules were done wrong, (the most experienced guy was actually damaging himself on a miss!) but really I think 13A has a lower learning curve than people assume. The hardest part for new players seems to be breaking bad habits they've acquired from other games, and if they're coming in fresh and new-to-RPGs they don't have to unlearn anything. The montage sequences were actually a kind of fun, refreshing thing - Someone fed a riding llama to a giant eagle, and that's not a thing most games are going to let you do. Interestingly, one player's OUT was that he reminds everyone of their dad. Wow that came in handy for the final encounter.
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Jun 18, 2016 22:59
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So I have a custom list of Icons I'm going to be using for my coming campaign and my players, perhaps rationally, are pretty resistant to reading stuff before a campaign. Do you think it'd work to have them do Icon relationships as we play over the first few sessions? Every time we hear about a new Icon or encounter an NPC affiliated with one, I'll ask them if any of them have a history with that Icon, and, if so, what kind and how extensive? They'll assign their three Icon dice as we go. Might even try to do the same with backgrounds and OUT since I know my players tend not to want to think too much about backstory before they even start playing. On a related topic: has anyone seen any particularly interesting custom Icon lists? Mine is pretty well set, but I'd love to read up on some nonstandard uses of the system (factions, gods, fuckin' zodiac signs or something). moths posted:Interestingly, one player's OUT was that he reminds everyone of their dad. Wow that came in handy for the final encounter. That's the best OUT I've ever read. Harrow fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 23:04
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01011001 posted:I've definitely seen rogues not take improved sneak. It's really not that much more damage (7 average at highest tier when a lot of games aren't going to get there) and rogue does have enough interesting ones that it doesn't feel like a no-brainer. OR you can just design your optional noncombat abilities to have a cool combat hook on top of the noncombat ability, thus removing the need to make the players choose between the really fun ability and the really mechanically good ability. Buuuut if we're getting real here abilities like Swashbuckle should be a Class Feature instead of a Class Talent.
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Jun 19, 2016 01:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:Evocation is the worst thing in the book; do not allow it. I've never actually had a wizard using Evocation in one of my games before. The player was using a pre-gen that had Evocation also, so I didn't want to pre-emptively make them change the character. Still, at least they weren't using the pre-gen wizard from the adventure, which has Evocation and Force Salvo, with the by the book Adventurer Tier feat.
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Jun 19, 2016 02:10
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Improved Sneak Attack is a terrible talent because it's horrifically boring, adds not a ton of damage (but enough to be noteworthy), and adds the damage in boring ways. At least murderous is exciting. More crits means more moments where a player is suddenly really awesome. But when all is said and done, giving the player the option to be literally just +Maths better at a thing they can already do is boring as sin. And should be seen AS a sin. Talents should give new options or open up new ways of using previous options.
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Jun 19, 2016 13:20
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What 13th Age does well, it does really well. What 13th Age does poorly, it still does better than D&D, with the exception that I actually prefer the 5e monk over the 13TW monk. But you have to play 5e for that monk, so it's sort of a wash.
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Jun 19, 2016 18:48
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Captain Walker posted:What 13th Age does well, it does really well. I get that the 13a monk has problems but...the 5e monk?
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Jun 19, 2016 21:57
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ProfessorCirno posted:I get that the 13a monk has problems but...the 5e monk? I actually agree with that; 5e monk is less obtuse and more effective.
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Jun 20, 2016 00:42
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ProfessorCirno posted:Improved Sneak Attack is a terrible talent because it's horrifically boring, adds not a ton of damage (but enough to be noteworthy), and adds the damage in boring ways. Agreed. Murderous also encourages you to go after staggered targets specifically which is at least a slight alteration in play style compared to stuff like ISA and Two-Weapon Mastery which are solely passive and non-prescriptive. -Fish- posted:OR you can just design your optional noncombat abilities to have a cool combat hook on top of the noncombat ability, thus removing the need to make the players choose between the really fun ability and the really mechanically good ability. In that case you're still deciding between noncombat + some slight combat thing (a la Tracker) vs. a full combat talent, in which case you've improved the situation but not solved the problem. Either that or if the noncombat ability's combat hook is on the same level as the combat-only talent then it's the clear choice most of the time. I'd also accept "put a noncombat hook on every combat talent and vice versa" as a solution though.
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Jun 20, 2016 18:26
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01011001 posted:In that case you're still deciding between noncombat + some slight combat thing (a la Tracker) vs. a full combat talent, in which case you've improved the situation but not solved the problem. Either that or if the noncombat ability's combat hook is on the same level as the combat-only talent then it's the clear choice most of the time. I think my problem with that is I'd rather you split things into taking three social, exploration, combat talents, because there's been times in games where I really liked a bit of it, but not the other bits. Edit: And now I realized I just described Tavern Tales.
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Jun 20, 2016 22:34
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One of the core problems for 13A is that the rules are extremely light everywhere but combat, so naturally combat feels like where you should be putting the bulk of your character's mechanical complexity. At the same time, the authors don't seem to have fully grasped that themselves, so there are a lot of 'spend this thing for either a combat or a non-combat resource' choices in PC building.
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Jun 20, 2016 22:36
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13th age combat also doesn't really know what it wants to be and is just at-odds with itself in a lot of places, and doesn't really do anything new or interesting compared to its predecessors except for the escalation die (and stuff that interacts with it, which is few and far-between) which is dead simple to port to a better combat system.
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Jun 20, 2016 23:02
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So I'm making a Druid for a game and I'm wondering if there are any recommended homebrew fixes? I've read that it suffers from being very lackluster; having to spend all its talent points just to do what other classes do even before talents. Any Druid advice in general, really. I'm probably going to be making a Shifter.
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Jun 20, 2016 23:35
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Rhjamiz posted:So I'm making a Druid for a game and I'm wondering if there are any recommended homebrew fixes? I've read that it suffers from being very lackluster; having to spend all its talent points just to do what other classes do even before talents. Give it extra class talents at the same level the Ranger would normally get them.
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Jun 20, 2016 23:46
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djw175 posted:I think my problem with that is I'd rather you split things into taking three social, exploration, combat talents, because there's been times in games where I really liked a bit of it, but not the other bits. Night10194 posted:One of the core problems for 13A is that the rules are extremely light everywhere but combat, so naturally combat feels like where you should be putting the bulk of your character's mechanical complexity. At the same time, the authors don't seem to have fully grasped that themselves, so there are a lot of 'spend this thing for either a combat or a non-combat resource' choices in PC building. Yeah, both of these are reasonable.
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Jun 21, 2016 00:16
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One of the things keeping me from using something like 4e is the giant pile of feats that I'll have to sift through on my players' behalf (only one of them would ever do it on his own). 13th Age gives me that semi-crunchy combat without a pile of complex feats, paragon classes, and epic destinies, not to mention dozens of powers per class, to deal with along the way. I'll take its flaws as a trade-off. I really haven't found much better for a relatively lightweight fantasy RPG system that supports miniature-based combat, which I suppose is kind of a shame because 13th Age never quite goes beyond good into great. There's also Strike, but my characters really love them some upward progression and I'm not sure they'd like the "your numbers don't really move all that much" aspect. Harrow fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 03:23
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If anyone is interested in playing a demo of VHS Fansub, the classic Anime-inspired as-of-yet-not-officially-13th-Age-compatible game I've been working on with Ryven Cedrylle, I'm open to running demos tonight and Thursday night. Game will be played over Roll20 and you'll need a working mic. The classes are still in beta so expect the occasional hiccup or on the fly patch. There'll be 7 demo sheets available. Shounen - Inspired by DBZ and other punchmans anime. Damage dealer capable of acting as a tank if needed. Shoujo (Artifact Master) - Inspired by Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura. Ranged spellcaster that uses flexible ranged attacks, balances damage output and healing. Shoujo (Card Master) - Inspired by Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura. Ranged spellcaster that changes Drive States to alter their ranged basic attack, can use cards from its Deck of Destiny to add new effects to battle off-turn with improved effects based on current Drive State. Heavy empasis on healing and buffing. Animist (Dreadnought) - Inspired by Final Fantasy. Gish warrior with an emphasis on dark magic and constant spirit summoning. Animist (Conjurer) - Inspired by Final Fantasy. Gish warrior with an emphasis on dark magic and calling powerful Final Fantasy-style summon, meaning the summon shows up does its thing and disappears. Raider - Inspired by Link, Mega Man, and others. Highly mobile gadgeteer with an emphasis on battlefield control with the ability to dish out a fair amount of damage. Trainer - Inspired by Pokémon and Digimon. Customizable tank with occasional bursts of mobility. If you're interested in playing either tonight or Thursday, Sign Up Here If you can't make it this week don't worry, more demos will be going soon. Edit: Tonight's demo cancelled due to lack of response. Figured it'd be a long shot since it was last-minute but wanted to see what I could round up since I had the unexpected opportunity to run. Still recruiting for Thursday. -Fish- fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 19:12
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^^^ well this makes the week more interesting. I've been waiting to see how this turns out.
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Jun 22, 2016 02:44
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We've got two additional classes in development, the Flower Duelist and the Demon Hunter, but the rest of the player content is ready to test so we can make sure it all plays nice together.
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Jun 22, 2016 02:57
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Does anyone have a simple fix for monk? One of my players wants to make a barbarian/monk multiclass luchador character. I'm cool with that, but I don't want him to end up with a weak and incoherent mess.
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Jun 22, 2016 03:36
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-Fish- posted:If anyone is interested in playing a demo of VHS Fansub, the classic Anime-inspired as-of-yet-not-officially-13th-Age-compatible game I've been working on with Ryven Cedrylle, I'm open to running demos tonight and Thursday night. I'll join! Never played 13th age but I have read the book more than once.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:01
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Ragnar34 posted:Does anyone have a simple fix for monk? One of my players wants to make a barbarian/monk multiclass luchador character. I'm cool with that, but I don't want him to end up with a weak and incoherent mess. I've heard good things about the Improved Monk over at Vault of the 13th Age, though I haven't gotten a chance to use it/see it used myself. Covok put it together. I know it reduces the MAD issue that the Monk has, but I'm not sure what else is different.
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Jun 22, 2016 04:30
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Ragnar34 posted:Does anyone have a simple fix for monk? One of my players wants to make a barbarian/monk multiclass luchador character. I'm cool with that, but I don't want him to end up with a weak and incoherent mess. The Improved Monk that Harrow linked does a good job of making the Monk a bit better than it is in 13TW, but I think your player would be better served using the stalwart class as a luchador instead of multiclassing barbarian/monk. The stalwart has grabs and is based around the idea of being a larger-than-life fighter, which imo better embodies the spirit of masked wrestling. The barbarian/monk meanwhile, will need to decide whether to do monk forms (which need three turns to build up to their maximum effectiveness) or rage and use basic attacks. Your player could use monk forms while raging at the cost of an adventurer-tier feat, but they lose the primary benefit of raging (rolling 2d20 for attacks). I'd suggest showing them the stalwart and seeing what they think, but if they're really attached to the barbarian/monk multiclass then the improved monk certainly wouldn't hurt.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:33
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I emailed both of those to him. I hope he chooses one of those, because they're both cool and good. In fact I think someone in this thread said the stalwart is overpowered, not that I would mind all that much. If he trivializes too many encounters in an unfun way then I can find ways around it.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:18
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dbzfandiego posted:I'll join! Never played 13th age but I have read the book more than once. Cool! Go here and add your name and preferred class.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:20
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Barbarian/Monk MC is kind of bad, absolutely requiring you to invest in 4 stats and having no synergy. Monk really doesn't MC well at all because it needs a specific stat spread and with the way its forms go through, you really don't want to miss any steps. It also drops your damage die because why not poo poo on the monk more?
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Jun 22, 2016 06:24
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Harrow posted:I've heard good things about the Improved Monk over at Vault of the 13th Age, though I haven't gotten a chance to use it/see it used myself. Covok put it together. I know it reduces the MAD issue that the Monk has, but I'm not sure what else is different. Funny you ask that. See, I forgot to make a changelog. But, basically, it restores some useful talents from the playtest (such as Drunken Fighting), it has 100s of rebalances throughout (such as removing an attack hitting the attacker on a miss), and makes the Monk a skillful class so it's damage dice doesn't drop if it MCs with another skillful class. Still, Stalwart may be better as Monk doesn't MC well.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:26
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RE: earlier discussion about 13th Age's strength and weaknesses, I think the best niche I've found for it is as a gateway game - in the same way that games like Carcasonne or Ticket to Ride work really well to draw people into the idea of weightier boardgaming than Monopoly or Cluedo, 13th Age servers as a good bridge between Dungeons & Dragons (which is far better than Monopoly or Cluedo - even 5e - but you see where I'm going with this) and other roleplaying systems. A group of my friends have, over the last year, gotten into PnP rpgs from the continued gentle encouragement of myself and another friend - all that we could initially sell them on though was D&D - and they naturally seemed to gravitate to 5e because it was the newest and hey, that was what roleplaying was, right, Dungeons and Dragons? And it took off really well, I'm not playing in the campaign they're running but they've all gotten pretty solidly into it, and one or two of them are even coming up with their own stuff to GM which is fantastic to see. But the idea of a system that isn't D&D is extremely intimidating to them to begin with, and anything storygame didn't tend to track well with them - it's just too different to their expectations at this point in time. What 13th Age does well is integrating some story based mechanics into a pretty D&D-esque frame - the same players who would freeze up playing something like Dungeon World seem to do really well with the mix provided by 13th Age and as they keep getting more and more comfortable they become more and more open to the idea of lighter mechanics/more story focused stuff.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:38
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Completely forgot that Google Docs wouldn't track this for me, but if you signed up for the VHS Fansub demo I've updated the signup sheet with a field for email addresses. If you signed up, please add yours so I can contact you directly and send you the game invite when it's ready. Edit: My schedule just opened up for Saturday so a demo for Saturday has been added too. -Fish- fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 16:05
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-Fish- posted:Completely forgot that Google Docs wouldn't track this for me, but if you signed up for the VHS Fansub demo I've updated the signup sheet with a field for email addresses. If you signed up, please add yours so I can contact you directly and send you the game invite when it's ready. Signed up for Saturday. I gave you my Roll20 email so just send the invite whenever. Thank you!
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Jun 22, 2016 19:20
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-Fish- posted:Completely forgot that Google Docs wouldn't track this for me, but if you signed up for the VHS Fansub demo I've updated the signup sheet with a field for email addresses. If you signed up, please add yours so I can contact you directly and send you the game invite when it's ready. If it's cool I'm jumping to Saturday. I just realized I had a conflict.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:22
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Signed up for Thursday and it seems I'll have my choice of Shoujo. Woo-hoo!
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Jun 22, 2016 20:33
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Razorwired posted:If it's cool I'm jumping to Saturday. I just realized I had a conflict. Not a problem at all 
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Jun 23, 2016 00:22
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Harrow posted:I've heard good things about the Improved Monk over at Vault of the 13th Age, though I haven't gotten a chance to use it/see it used myself. Covok put it together. I know it reduces the MAD issue that the Monk has, but I'm not sure what else is different. I helped Covok with it and there's a bunch of tiny changes to almost everything. Design philosophy was to go through the monk line by line and ask ourselves, "is this for balance? For flavor? For fun? Or because someone hates the monk with a passion?" Turns out huge chunks of the class seem to be because somebody really, really, hated monks. So we changed anything that resembled spite into something fun that was less mechanically powerful than a bard and called it good.
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Jun 23, 2016 21:52
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Fish, are you still planning to run the Saturday game? I'm down to play with two people total, but I understand if you aren't interested in running a 2-person test game.
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Jun 25, 2016 04:09
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I'm seeing right now if I can get anybody else in the game. Chances are good I can get 1-2 other people in by tonight. Edit: Okay yeah, gonna have to cancel. My GM skills are a bit too rusty to run for just 2 people. Good news: There will be PLENTY more demos in future. -Fish- fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jun 25, 2016 |
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Jun 25, 2016 04:44
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I could jump in and I think I could get another player with me.
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Jun 25, 2016 14:50
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If I can get 2 more by 8pm EST then it's on like Donkey Kong Edit: Okay that happened fast. Let's shoot for 8pm. -Fish- fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jun 25, 2016 |
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Jun 25, 2016 15:21
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What would a list of classes arranged by ease of play that included 13 True Ways and the Glorantha classes look like? Thoughts?
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Jun 25, 2016 17:54
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