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Syntaxed posted:I have only played on game of 13th age Since I almost exclusively play RPGs via IRC nowadays, my main concern as far as getting bogged down is stuff like the normal condition tracking and effects as they relate to the escalation die. Both of those are more so group attention span issues and reasons to swap to something like roll20 though.
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May 17, 2013 21:35
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but that seems right. 
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Really, there's a little Chaos Shaman in all of us.
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May 24, 2013 05:56
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waderockett posted:So, Winson_Paine was all like: Holy poo poo, nice!
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Jul 25, 2013 16:34
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It doesn't negate his point that ability scores as they are are fairly obtrusive and don't add a whole lot to make up for it.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:30
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:But the wizard's only rolling Background+Dex because he described himself as tiptoeing through the trap. Had he just said, "Well I'm gonna summon up my arcane forces and try and destroying the trap" he could have rolled Background+Int. Not really? The example in question comes from a paragraph that's specifically calling out that it's A Good Thing that the GM defines what ability scores affect what (because he can make every ability score matter at some point or another).
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Aug 13, 2013 19:53
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Evil Sagan posted:I love 13th Age, but I agree that it sometimes adheres to its inspiration to a detrimental degree. I know this game is supposed to be a "love letter" to D&D, but it could still benefit from removing some of the baggage. It's nice that the defense system encourages trying to get some middle-of-the-road scores, but it feels really fiddly to me and doesn't actually add anything to the good parts of the game... it doesn't make combat faster and it would only enhance the narrative aspect if I really gave a poo poo about how my 14 Dexterity did or did not contribute to my success. The backgrounds are so much more interesting that the -2 to +4 bonus from the ability scores are meangingless to me except as mechanical contrivances that I have to beat into submission or sigh and accept. I really like the idea of the "pick the middle score" thing and it does some cool things like not penalize you horridly for dumping certain non-dex/non-con stats, it just has some warts when two of the stats affect two defenses and also do other things on top of that.
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Aug 14, 2013 19:17
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RyvenCedrylle posted:So I've got an idea. See how this grabs you (plural). RyvenCedrylle posted:OK better idea - so HP is one, AC/Init is another, PD is a third and MD is a fourth. Attack mod is best of all (for to-hit and damage), off-stat attack mod is second-best of all. Doesn't matter if the Background actually matches the stat you're using it for. It's just to keep characters near each other in terms of efficiency. Doesn't sound too bad if you're trying to eliminate them entirely (a worthy goal, DTAS and all). If you still wanted to keep ability scores but use a more even-handed approach, what you might do is: -Keep PD/MD as is(str/dex/con and int/wis/cha), take those median stats as normal -Take the 4 unused stats and take the two median stats of that bunch -Use one of those two for AC+init, the other for HP+recovery Not entirely sure how this actually pans out math-wise, this is just spitballing. 01011001 fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 19:47
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I would suspect more than a few don't, given how heavily discouraged it was in 4E and how much this draws from that tradition.
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Aug 14, 2013 22:16
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I've done rolling in most of my groups. Even then, in the games I DM I've moved to "everyone rolls but anyone can use anyone else's array" because losing the probablistic lottery and having to deal with that for several months of sessions is aggravating at best and doesn't have many advantages.
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Aug 14, 2013 22:27
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Yeah, if you make a barbarian/non-casting ranger/non-casting paladin it's relatively trivial to bang together a character.
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Oct 16, 2013 20:16
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There's also Ranger Ex Cathedral, which gives them Heal with the feat. FQE is fantastic though because you can key it off any stat and because sorcerer spells that hit multiple targets are pretty great in conjunction with the various critrange talents (first strike, favored enemy, lethal hunter) to make the daily/recharge you get even more murderous.
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Oct 17, 2013 00:06
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I guess I missed the part how fighter (and apparently paladin, though I can definitely see that one) is notably worse than other similar classes. Can one of you break down how that works out?
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Oct 18, 2013 07:39
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I saw it, yes. I agree with part of his general conclusion (the normal casters are still very much strong, their daily options are especially fantastic compared to the mundanes') but not his reasons (not gonna quote-snipe that whole thing but strength domain isn't all that and a bag of chips because clerics are usually better off casting one of those big fuckoff spells he mentions later, threatening and heal aren't really trying to do the same thing) and those don't really tell me anything about it as a whole, just compared to the admittedly-strong cleric and only very specific cherry-picked options. I'm asking for a similar analysis between more comparable classes, because fighter seems to be singled out as weak even among those.
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Oct 18, 2013 08:06
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CaptCommy posted:One extra bit of stickiness that gets overlooked is the general intercept rule. If you move past someone not engaged, they have the option to engage you and end your movement (p. 164). I don't think it's quite enough to really get the feel of the 4e fighter, but it does help any of the beefy classes tank a bit more. It does help. Part of the reason I bring this up is that I'm playing one in one game and running a party that has one in another, and neither feel particularly underpowered or anything - I guess that's partially a function of how "worse" is a very, very relative thing compared to something like 3.5 and partially that quadratic wizardry (more and better dailies, etc) will kick in much harder at later levels.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:32
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I was under the impression that the barbarian was already effective, if a tad boring? I mean I'm fairly sure the idea was to keep them swingy with poo poo like Unstoppable and Barbarian Cleave keeping you afloat instead of having a giant HP buffer, and they're not even that bad on the max HP front anyway. Some talents that have a bit more to them would be appreciated though.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:53
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I would assume druid-poaching is in, at the very least.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:22
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P.d0t posted:Playing a melee ranger in PF once, the party druid's companion was basically my character but better. For reference, it was even more of a disparity than that in 3.5.  The 13th age no-companion archer ranger strikes me as excessively boring, if only because there's like two positioning concerns tops (disengage from melee, preferably be at far range) and besides those you're basically never not leaning on "I shoot, maybe twice, and maybe I reroll". I really wish there were some options/talents/something to make it more interesting to play than poaching one daily from another class.
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Oct 23, 2013 23:03
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-Fish- posted:Except Luck of the 13. No idea what benefits are supposed to come from being able to at will nerf any roll you make. I could see it in very specific circumstances, like if you really, really want to proc an even/odd for a battle cry/maneuver/spell or something and are willing to sacrifice a definite hit for it.
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Oct 24, 2013 20:14
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The idea is that you can pop off an enemy easily and as part of your attack so that you can then intercept guys trying to engage your squishier party members. If you take the feat you can also pop them off your allies so that they don't have to disengage, and when they attempt to re-engage you can, again, intercept. The champ feat is cool too because if they're staggered it's a guaranteed daze for at least one round if you roll an even (note that it triggers on any even, hit or miss) but I'm not sure if it's worth the feat when there are so many other contenders.
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Nov 6, 2013 05:33
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This is especially true in 13th age where damage is per-class anyway so for the full martial classes you're really picking between Xd10 damage, Xd8 damage and +1AC, and Xd8 and reroll 2's (for completion, it's a pretty far-out dark horse though). For fighter it makes more difference than that because maneuvers can require/changed based on weapon sets but it's pretty easy to refluff.
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Nov 10, 2013 20:59
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PublicOpinion posted:In my experience, the escalation die reaching 6 is vanishingly rare and smite is already intended to toss out fairly often so that even if they did save it up and start tossing it out every attack in one battle per day I doubt it would unbalance anything. If you find it too powerful in play, maybe make it a d8 instead of a d6 after it succeeds once. It isn't much bonus damage, but I'd also consider taking the Path of Universal Righteous Endeavor talent at champ tier so that everything you do does holy damage and the Sun Domain will tack +2 damage onto everything you do. That said, if you're not attached to the holy synergy, Evil Bastards is a fantastic way to stretch out your smiting and is ripe for reinterpretation to strip out the alignment baggage.
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Nov 14, 2013 03:59
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Jackard posted:I haven't experienced enough of the Icon mechanic, but that sounds like it's effectively a 3+ with his home nation. Kind of. It's a question of whether it's colored as help from X vs. help against Y. I assume there's a fair bit of overlap but it's not necessarily guaranteed.
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Dec 5, 2013 05:43
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Pimpmust posted:A cursed luck stone that's also beneficial? That's easy, it increases both good AND bad luck, so now the cursed character got plenty of both. For example, double crit chance, double fumble chance. moths posted:You could have fun tying the curse to the Escalation Die. Maybe when it's odd it works for enemies? Everything from 20-esc up counts as a 20. Everything from 1+esc down counts at a 1.
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Dec 16, 2013 22:14
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Hashtag Yoloswag posted:Unless you make 1 significantly worse than 5. Yeah, this - I was building off the double crit, double fumble idea.
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Dec 17, 2013 05:58
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Your group doesn't take averages a decent amount of the time for recoveries? Huh. Maybe you can just have everyone affected roll their recovery and gain that much THP instead.
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Jan 13, 2014 06:44
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General Ironicus posted:Rob's blog has a new update for 13 True Ways: http://robheinsoo.blogspot.com/2014/01/horizon-commanders-mummies-13-true-ways.html On the one hand the necromancer multiclass idea doesn't exactly inspire a lot of hope, especially when it's specifically tailored to casters who don't need more - on the other hand, it could be implemented in a way that isn't awful. I'm pretty wary of any sort of explicit multiclassing stuff because it tends to muddy the point of a class system, but the talent system seems like it'd be ripe for slotting in more and more interesting options without bolting a new class differentiation mechanic on top. We'll see how they handle it, I guess.
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Jan 23, 2014 18:39
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Yeah, far as I can tell it's straight worse than the other miss options even at level 1 (grim intent/carve an opening for two-hander, shield bash/carve an opening for one-hander and shield, two-weapon pressure for TWF), much less later ones. Haven't seen it in play, though.
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Jan 28, 2014 09:06
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lenoon posted:What would actively fix the martial classes at this point? I've got a new player wanting to roll a barbarian. Am I better off leaving it as it is in the book, giving them the ability to inflict status conditions (weakened, stuck, etc etc) as I've jury rigged it now, or doing something more radical? It depends what you mean by fix, here.
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Feb 10, 2014 23:36
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's important to note that I'm fairly sure 13A as it stands does not have the D&D problem with casters and fighters. I haven't dived into the math because I do not do math for fun, but the only "fix" barbarian would need is going for a different yet similar (or refluffed) class because you want more varied abilities in combat, rather then any sort of inherent weakness. It kinda does in the sense that daily/recharge abilities are usually more valuable than not-daily/recharge abilities, and casters get more and better ones as levels go on so, yeah. I haven't had a major issue with it so far in the games I ran and played in (been running/playing for a party up to level 3 so far so grain of salt and whatnot) and I've seen nearly all casting and non-casting classes in action, but I can see that being a problem on the horizon when they have more slots for 'em and they're better. The primary thing I've noted that's a little iffy so far is that martial classes don't have anything the equivalent of rituals which is pretty lame because rituals are awesome and everyone should have access to them. Rhinoceraptor posted:It's what I did with my character to make playing her more interesting. It even came with a little side-plot to explain ho why she can use magic all of a sudden. As much as I like talents conceptually as a modular building block, what I would really like for the less complicated classes (ranger, paladin, barbarian) would be an optional replacement of their "signature" ability (rage, smite) with a slightly more involved ability set a la rogue powers or at the very least fighter maneuvers. I don't know how you'd swing something like that with the ranger though because for some reason rangers don't get a non-talent class feature - maybe make a talent that's exclusive with the double ___ attack ones?
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Feb 12, 2014 20:55
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Mystic Mongol posted:Overwhelming numbers of enemies with ranged attacks makes things difficult for fighters and paladins to actually defend their party. I'd reccommend going 50s scifi, with robots who have sword hands and big leathery monsters and space pirates with cutlasses to round it out? Yeah, the ranged focus was kind of a sticking point when I initially thought about it. My mental train of thought was to keep it as-is and simply introduce talents for the fighter/barbarian/paladin that allow a ranged focus (well, allow less awkwardly in the case of fighter), but I like the idea of "smaller guns are engagement range, larger are near/far range" that someone upthread thought of.
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Feb 25, 2014 19:31
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That'd probably be fine, it's not exactly a major departure. Just keep in mind that it's usually framed as a relationship with the icon's faction more so than the icon personally - therefore, it's useful to frame where those old PCs currently sit in terms of their position's particular ways to send aid.
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Mar 3, 2014 20:57
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It's a question of what kind of flight you're talking about and how limited it was. If you need a running jump to take off then you have to flap a bunch to stay aloft and you have to work at fancy poo poo in midair other than point A -> point B and it's way conspicuous then it's way less of an issue than something where you're levitating to any height and distance with perfect control.
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Mar 12, 2014 21:05
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Doublehex posted:And what have we learned from this? YOU GOTTA ADAPT YOUR COMBAT FOR MISSING PLAYERS. ...were you not before?
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Apr 18, 2014 15:17
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ProfessorCirno posted:I haven't looked at it in a long time, but the main issue with the monk I recall having was that it was a frontline fighter with low defenses and a damage specialist with eh damage, mixed in with a lot of weird side abilities that didn't mesh together or look like stuff that would often come in handy. In disclosure I've had players who've used two kinds of monks, greeting fist based and burning fortress based, and most of my impression is based off of these - they've had no trouble keeping up is the short version. It's also changed for the better since iteration 1. Defensively it looks worse than it is at first blush because the part where they gain 1-3 to AC depending on which level of form they're using that turn is buried in the forms section and not mentioned at all next to the defenses table or in the stat summary, which would be useful places to note them. So it'll have 12-14AC base as long as it's not hampered which is rogue-ranger level, and since it wants to have both dex and wis by class features and con by virtue of it being con, it's guaranteed to have a highish stat go to AC. Many of the talents also help with this by doing things like negating enemy miss damage or halving damage on ranged attacks. Damagewise the MAD thing looks bad at first for the obvious reason. That said if you're paying any sort of attention to detail you're pretty much going to take one of the non-Drunken Master deadly secrets to keep up (I love drunken master but it really, really has no place amongst those others in its current iteration whatsoever) at which point you're either turning misses into hits and gaining a noticeable defense boost, getting extra damage that's better than sneak attack and is even better with ki, getting a free attack/s at turn 3 and up, or doing damage to and inflicting vulnerable on things that hit you. This is all before any forms, many of which do half damage on a miss, attack multiple targets, and/or do extra damage. With all these and the extra +2 to a stat the damage drop from lowish str isn't crippling. They should really make picking a deadly secret a class feature rather than optional talents though, it's more necessary than they seem to grasp even with the first-among-equals billing given to those talents.
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May 11, 2014 19:32
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ProfessorCirno posted:The main thing I remembered that hurt monks damage wise was their forms; at their opening they did less damage then basically every other fightan' class, at their midway point they did slightly less, and at their finisher they did two handed weapon damage, then went back to opener, which gave them a medium damage that was less then most other fightan' classes. I mean yeah if you're comparing Xd8+low str vs Xd10+high str then it's obviously going to look worse, but even a cursory glance would tell you the extra damage and effects add up pretty fast and close the gap.
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May 11, 2014 23:37
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Wait, so you've not suffered for it from not being able to actively do your One of Class's Core Features by using your feats, which are supposed to be used to help you specialize you character and help you do better at the things you want to do, to shore up your weakness so you can use your class feature? As long as you keep wisdom at like at least 12-14 - which is not exactly an imposition buildwise and certainly not with three +2's kicking around - it's no big thing to even go without taking the extra ki feat if you wanted to focus on more base damage per attack. The difference is that you'd ideally take more abilities and forms that increase number of attacks like Flurry rather than ones that really want ki to fuel them like Greeting Fist. I can't disagree with the general sentiment that they seem to be coming at this from a strange, wrongheaded perspective of considering 3E MAD as a thing that was desired to replicate when bard, druid, and ranger have str/dex versatility built in just like that.
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May 12, 2014 03:48
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Burning fortress's main ability scales in value with the number of enemies you have - against mooks, it's incredibly destructive. Against normal enemies either they miss you or it's free damage, both of which are good outcomes. The ki power is for the opposite situation from mooks, when you have one particular enemy who will stick around longer - get in there early and if they hit you, you use it and they're vulnerable for the rest of the encounter.
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May 12, 2014 06:13
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:22 |
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Jackard posted:It was sort of a sticking point with Pathfinder friends; how are protectors supposed to fulfill their role when they are always engaged in the first place? This is the point of the fighter's Shield Bash maneuver - it's a free pop-off, and with the feat you can pop the target off all allies. That way you can intercept them if they try to get back on again, or intercept a different target if that makes more sense at the time. 50/50 shot of getting an even to proc it, granted, but that's a different complaint. I've only seen interception come up a few times outside of defense-oriented fighters because generally everyone who would be intercepting is engaged from the word go.
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May 13, 2014 18:40
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