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In regards to the Paladin having STR 16, in 13th Age maxing your attack ability is not optimal because of the escalation die and the way defenses are calculated. It's better to have two or three good stats rather than one great stat. Not that I think it's anyone's business if your character is optimized or not.
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May 7, 2015 05:58
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HomegrownHydra posted:In regards to the Paladin having STR 16, in 13th Age maxing your attack ability is not optimal because of the escalation die and the way defenses are calculated. It's better to have two or three good stats rather than one great stat. Not that I think it's anyone's business if your character is optimized or not. That said, if you're optimizing and soreading out points for defensive benefits rather than maxing your Attack stat... Charisma is not the place to put those saved points.
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May 7, 2015 06:03
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CaptainPsyko posted:That said, if you're optimizing and soreading out points for defensive benefits rather than maxing your Attack stat... Charisma is not the place to put those saved points. Sure, but high Charisma boosts the number of Smites so it's not a bad tradeoff.
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May 7, 2015 06:07
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My solution was honestly to take all the constitution only benefits and make it Str-Con-Cha, choose the middle, same as defenses work. Of course nobody in my game went on to benefit from this BUT THE THEORY IS SOUND!
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May 7, 2015 08:15
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CaptainPsyko posted:The easy way to make VPV easier on your GM is for you to do the improvising about bonus effects, and then let the GM rule on whether they succeed. Tell him he's free to force a background roll or extra saving throw or whatever if your improvised additional effect is too strong or whatever, and tell him also that he is free to overrule whatever you came up with whenever the inspiration strikes him. This is a very good suggestion. Thank you for it. I must ask, however: as a very rough guideline, just how powerful do you think the extra effects of Vance's Polysyllabic Verbalizations should be? The GM is new to the system and does not feel particularly confident about judging how strong extra mechanical effects should be, and so it is up to me to decide on that. The four examples in the core rulebook give rough sketches, but nothing quite mechanical, save for perhaps attaching weakened (a fairly debilitating status effect) to the victims of a Sleep spell. Would it be reasonable to say that, for instance, Shield renamed into Undeviating Starlight Escutcheon could forgo the original effect for a +4 bonus to AC against a single attack as an immediate interrupt, and that Acid Arrow renamed into Ravaging Astral Rainstorm could eschew the base spell to instead replicate a Force Salvo?
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May 7, 2015 09:22
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Colette posted:I appreciate the advice so far and am taking it into account. I prefer games with good grid rules, myself, but this is one that's really got great, built-in support in its mechanics for not having one. As such, if you add a grid, keep reminding everyone when something is weird that the weirdness is only a result of the back-alley surgery you had to perform to add the grid system. Colette posted:I see a standard action close-quarters spell that ...hampered... The main issue with it is: what counts as a "basic attack" for a monster? What counts as "frills"? There's no such nomenclature on monster stat blocks as "basic attack" and even some player information is lacking. It's the worst supported keyword in recent gaming memory. I highly suggest you (and everyone else) ditch it, unless there's some patch or fix I've not heard of from Pelgrane.
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May 7, 2015 15:48
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Don't strength-based druids use d10s for their recovery dice? And isn't one of the features of the Warrior Druid talent give you more HP than other Druids and make you better at using armor? I don't think they're quite as squishy as they first appear.
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May 7, 2015 16:55
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Colette posted:The four examples in the core rulebook give rough sketches, but nothing quite mechanical, save for perhaps attaching weakened (a fairly debilitating status effect) to the victims of a Sleep spell. quote:Would it be reasonable to say that, for instance, Shield renamed into Undeviating Starlight Escutcheon could forgo the original effect for a +4 bonus to AC against a single attack as an immediate interrupt, and that Acid Arrow renamed into Ravaging Astral Rainstorm could eschew the base spell to instead replicate a Force Salvo? I would never count on a flat +4 to AC when forcing an enemy reroll is on the table, and I certainly wouldn't recommend making it a quick action to cast a 1st level spell as a more powerful 3rd level spell. You guys are cool for wanting to try out this game but it seems like thr mechanics and the naturalistic rules language are a bad match for your play style. E: I know the goonpinions on 5e are dismal but I played one session and enjoyed it, and I was a fighter. It might be more your speed. In a perfect world everyone would like 13th Age, but we live in this one, where the RPG Pundit exists, and so not everyone will. Captain Walker fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 17:24
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I don't think it's spelled out anywhere, but from the way monster statblocks are I run it assuming that the first attack listed counts as their basic attack. Hampered is still kind of annoying but I liked throwing it in occasionally because of how it screws over casters. It's not clear to me if it means that basic attacks are the only attacks you can make and non-attacks can still be done as normal or if moving and basic attacking was all you could do, but we went with the lighter one.
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May 7, 2015 18:33
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Captain Walker posted:One of my problems with this game is it encourages improvisation in a lot of the talents. You and your GM will have to collaborate to decide what's fun and balanced. Frankly, if you guys aren't up to that, the classes like wizard (and arguably the game as a whole) might not be for you. Is there some way we can better improvise with the talents and make ourselves more in line with the game? Captain Walker posted:I would never count on a flat +4 to AC when forcing an enemy reroll is on the table, I would think this to be very useful when +4 AC as an immediate interrupt easily allows a character to block off an attack that they know is hitting them by only 4 or less. Meanwhile, a reroll is most likely going to result in the low-AC wizard being hit yet again, and possibly critted. Captain Walker posted:and I certainly wouldn't recommend making it a quick action to cast a 1st level spell as a more powerful 3rd level spell. I do not understand why it is fine for Evocation to maximize a 3rd-level Force Salvo into 40 damage against 4 to 6 enemies, a 3rd-level Lightning Bolt into 56 damage against 1d3+1 enemies, or a 5th-level Fireball into 100 damage against 2d3 enemies, but it is not fine for VPV to upgrade an Acid Arrow into a Force Salvo. Captain Walker posted:You guys are cool for wanting to try out this game but it seems like thr mechanics and the naturalistic rules language are a bad match for your play style. What can we do to make ourselves more compatible with 13th Age's playstyle? The GM is simply very worried about their ability to improvise new benefits and extra effects on the fly.
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May 7, 2015 19:03
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Colette posted:What can we do to make ourselves more compatible with 13th Age's playstyle? The GM is simply very worried about their ability to improvise new benefits and extra effects on the fly. From my experience? Let 'em. It's fun for the players and generally not that big a deal.
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May 7, 2015 19:20
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Verbalizations isn't really about concrete mechanical benefits and bonuses and trying to negotiate for a better spell. It's the feat you take when you and your DM enjoy hamming it up and engaging in banter and bouncing ideas off each other in the context of elf stories. It's not balanced against Evocation or other talents in the sense that a wizard who has one can do as much as one who has the other. They just do very different things and some players enjoy one thing more and some the other. Frankly if the DM is worried about their capacity for improvisation, you shouldn't take that particular talent. There are a few elements that rely on cooperation like that in 13th Age.
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May 7, 2015 20:01
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Just straight up upgrading a spell to a different one seems kinda unimaginative to me, I haven't played a wizard but with my necromancer I like to use cackling soliloquist to give myself a bonus that is pretty minor on the whole, but one that is really useful for the moment. I don't think you want to balance stuff against evocated wizard spells either, blowing up an entire encounter in one action may get you on some kind of power high but the rest of the party will probably feel a bit left out.
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May 7, 2015 21:12
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From experience, evocated wizard spells can really derail games. It's a pretty powerful talent that can, with the right spell choice like Force Salvo, end an encounter which can be a disappointment for players and GMs. It's one of those little design oversights that makes the wizard a bit too stronk in an otherwise decently balanced game. Honestly, even though this thread has never discussed it, should be something put on a ban list for the sake of game balance.
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May 7, 2015 21:19
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What if you couldn't evoke a spell of your highest level? Would that make it reasonable?
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May 7, 2015 22:46
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it would make it literally unusable on even levels. Honestly, I would just change it from "An attack that targets PD" to "An attack where you roll for number of targets." That seems to fit the intention of the talent much better, since announcing it before rolls are made it becomes a bit more of a gamble, like "what if I evoke this spell and roll a 1" and gets rid of the "I just don't want to deal with this encounter" buttons that are Force Salvo or Acid Arrow
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May 7, 2015 23:42
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Raenir K. Artemi posted:it would make it literally unusable on even levels. Honestly, I would just change it from "An attack that targets PD" to "An attack where you roll for number of targets." That seems to fit the intention of the talent much better, since announcing it before rolls are made it becomes a bit more of a gamble, like "what if I evoke this spell and roll a 1" and gets rid of the "I just don't want to deal with this encounter" buttons that are Force Salvo or Acid Arrow Honestly I don't even like this. Now you're just putting how much it fucks over the encounter into a d4. Making it only used on single target spells would probably be better because then it only fucks over one man and no one else. Honestly, it's just hard to do things with it because its basically a guaranteed crit on anything it hits. Which can itself crit. Not even to mention how MCed sorcerer breaks it even more. Ask me about one shotting the boss of a short campaign.
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May 7, 2015 23:46
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ProfessorCirno posted:My solution was honestly to take all the constitution only benefits and make it Str-Con-Cha, choose the middle, same as defenses work. Dex/Int/Wis for AC, Str/Con/Cha+1 for HP/recoveries, is what I roll with.
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May 8, 2015 14:49
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The idea is that it makes your spells manifest differently or in a more specialized way - not strictly better. If you're thinking about how to game it for an advantage, that's probably a good sign it's not a good fit for your play style.
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May 8, 2015 15:39
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If it's not strictly better in some way then it's a waste of 1/3 talents you get when compared to nearly everything else you could be getting. It doesn't have to be anything too crazy though.
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May 9, 2015 02:20
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01011001 posted:If it's not strictly better in some way then it's a waste of 1/3 talents you get when compared to nearly everything else you could be getting. It doesn't have to be anything too crazy though. Right. The main thing is that the benefit is supposed to be something that is improvised when you cast a spell, rather than a fixed bonus you decide upon ahead of time and then always use. It's basically the equivalent of the stunt talents the ranger, rogue and monk have, except that it's GM that's supposed to come up with the special effect rather than the player.
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May 9, 2015 06:01
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For VPV I'd think more along the lines of "what's a cool, specific thing I want my spell to accomplish in this situation". So, perhaps you want Feather Fall to slow your vertical movement, but do nothing to your horizontal movement, so you can jump really far (Goliath's Effortless Stride). Or perhaps it should cancel the effects of gravity on you for a bit, so next time you get hit in melee, you automatically disengage as you're flung backwards (Mondo's Painful Richochet). The Escalation Die is going to help you keep up mechanically, so VPV is where you get to throw in some personal style. For example: I reskinned my wizard to an artificer, so all of my spells were gadgets. I had a lot of fun pulling out increasingly more elaborate technobabble each time. With that in mind, here are some questions you (or your DM) can ask to help you improvise effects: - What does my character really need right now? - Can I use one of my backgrounds to give me an edge? - Did my character notice something in the environment I can take advantage of? - Does one of my enemies have a convenient weakness I just spotted? - Has my One Unique Thing come into play somehow? - Did one of my enemies try something clever on me that I can turn against them? As others have said - this is an improv talent so it's value lies in it granting you some narrative control, rather than mechanical power. It's up to you how much you value that, and how much you and your GM are willing to engage with it.
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May 9, 2015 15:41
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Being able to rework your spells every time you cast them to do something slightly different is a pretty amazing advantage in itself - the modified spells don't need to also be better when you have a spell for every purpose.
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May 9, 2015 22:39
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DBZ has been on my mind a lot lately. I've been thinking of making some classes for 13th Age based off fighting styles from Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. These would be for a setting that takes place several generations after the end of DBZ and would draw a lot from the setting of Dragon Ball Online. The way I'm thinking right now, classes would consist of styles like New Turtle School, New Crane School, Saiyan Royal School, Kikoukenjutsu Sword School, and so forth. The classes would follow a build similar to the Paladin, picking up new class talents as they level. In addition to that, at predetermined levels (for example; levels 4, 6, and 8) all classes get to pick up an ability from a list of skills/powers shared between all classes. At the last instance of this one school could even pick up a signature ability from another school, similar to how Tienshinhan once used the Kamehameha attack despite not being a student of the Turtle School.
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May 10, 2015 02:06
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Thank you for the advice on how to better present Vance's Polysyllabic Verbalizations to the GM, everyone. One of the players in my group would like to play a class with a combat playstyle very loosely based on Ursa from DotA 2 (I have no experience at all with that game) with their own personal touches. They want to be able to rush up to an enemy in melee, debuff that enemy (and possibly other nearby enemies), and lay into that enemy with a gradually increasing damage bonus (possibly scaling with the escalation die). They want to have different kinds of debuffs for different situations, and they also want to be able to do so in a way that is actually effective compared to other melee classes. Is there any class in 13th Age, homebrew or otherwise, that can support such a playstyle? The fury by Acrozatarim seems somewhat close, although it lacks the varied debuffing, and I am worried that the scaling damage bonus quickly drops off in the face of ever-increasing monster hit points. The nemesis by Paul Fanning is fitting, but I am concerned about how front-loaded the class is. It is arguably even more front-loaded than, say, the ranger. The class only improves by gaining a new escalation power at levels 5 and 8; at level 1, a nemesis is most likely going to aim straight for Escalating Lethality and Augmented Escalating Might, and everything else from there is simply going to be minor improvements at best. Furthermore, the nemesis is awful for the first three rounds of combat, swinging only a 1d8 damage melee two-handed weapon at best, and toting around only AC 12 and no bonuses to PD or MD. Also, my group's GM would like to give all classes cantrips and Cantrip Mastery in order to support a more high-magic party where everyone has access to at-will out-of-combat magic and can use it just as effectively as a Cantrip Master wizard. The actual wizard would receive a bonus talent in exchange, or perhaps the champion feat for Ritual Casting for free. Would there be any ill ramifications to applying such a house rule? Colette fucked around with this message at 19:12 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 17:54
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Ooo! I play Dota 2 all the loving time, so I can actually describe what Ursa is so that you may have an idea of just what your friend is looking for. Ursa is a motherfucking monster...to a single target. Ursa's first ability is fury swipes, where for a few seconds he attacks like a machine gun. You will get hit like 10 times in about 1 second. His second ability is a little debuff he puts on anyone he hits. They receive bonus damage to Ursa's next attack. The thing is though, this stacks. So you can get like 300 damage per hit if you stack 10 of these - and that is not hard at all. These two abilities are why Ursa is so dangerous. He can go on a target and quite literally rip right through them. That is also how Ursa can take on a boss called Roshan at level 4 all by himself - many characters can't even contemplate that with an entire team, let alone by themselves. His third ability is a very basic area of effect slow. His final ability lets him take 80% less damage and multiples his swipes for a few seconds. Now, Ursa is a scary guy. But his weakness is that he is easily kitable. He is a melee attacker, and gains very few agility every level. That means that while his fury swipes are off cooldown, he cannot hit fast. So ranged characters can stun him, slow him, and move away from him very easily. However, Ursa does have a pretty nice Strength bonus every level, despite the fact that Agility is his primary attribute (as in, for every point of agility he gains a point in damage). So he is a little bit tanky - but most Ursa players avoid tanky items until late game when they can afford Heart of Terrasque (which gives like 1k extra health and 3% health regen every second unless you got recently harmed by an enemy hero). Thats because they want mobilty items to maximize on Ursa's capability to kill an enemy in seconds. ...that may have been too much info. Sorry. I kinda love Dota 2 way more than I should.
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May 12, 2015 02:20
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Fluffwise that sounds to me like you could take a Barbarian and soup him up a little, which apparently he could use anyway.
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May 12, 2015 21:06
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Just DMed my first ever game of 13th Age and I love how well I can improvise with only the core book. Played in Dark Souls' Lordran with custom icons, and the group took to the system with ease. So simple, so effective. Anybody else try running this game in other settings while still using icon rules?
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May 16, 2015 21:30
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I don't think I've run in the stock setting or with the stock icons as-is yet.
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May 16, 2015 21:58
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Jade Mage posted:Just DMed my first ever game of 13th Age and I love how well I can improvise with only the core book. Played in Dark Souls' Lordran with custom icons, and the group took to the system with ease. So simple, so effective. Anybody else try running this game in other settings while still using icon rules? Yes, though the Icons are mostly large organizations in Europe, like the Church or invading Angels or Demons. It works fine.
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May 17, 2015 04:51
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I wrote a new class to go along with the DBZ races I wrote. The Shounen(link removed, class is being reworked for publication) Also here's a link to the updated 13th Age Z folder, which contains both the class and the races. -Fish- fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 15:40
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-Fish- posted:I wrote a new class to go along with the DBZ races I wrote. Very cool! More fighting stuff! The core of the class seems a little underpowered, with the 6 hp (and I assume a d8 recovery die, I didn't see it listed) and Charge Up as the only class feature (I assume "Resist 12" means it grants resist 12+ to all damage). If roughly speaking monsters hit most characters on around an 11 , while using Charge Up you will infrequently be taking half damage-- plus it's interruptible, plus you aren't doing much else that round. I might bump the resist to 16+ and grant some THP or something. Don't be afraid to make the class awesome-- without being overpowered. Looks like you have a promising start to what will be a fun class when it's fleshed out. I look forward to seeing the completed Shounen! Earthorn fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 21:24
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Earthorn posted:Very cool! More fighting stuff! Took your advice and made some changes to the Charge Up. Raised the resistance and baked the Adventurer Feat into it , the new Adventurer Feat grants temporary hit points. The class is a little shy of options for feats at the moment, but another class feature or two will fix that, not to mention adding feats to some of the Ki Techniques. The biggest problem I'm running into is coming up with a bigger variety of Ki Techniques. There's a huge variety of ki powers in DBZ and the limited selection of other Shounen anime I've seen, but they all really boil down to "throw lots of energy at somebody to hurt them bad" or "punch somebody, but HARDER". There's a lot of variety of how they work move and whatnot, but as a mechanical expression in an RPG it doesn't lend itself to much variety. Edit: Hope you don't mind if I borrow a bit from the Stalwart as far as mechanical representation of "you're strong as hell", it's something of a necessity for the genre and there's only so many ways to represent that mechanically. -Fish- fucked around with this message at 22:51 on May 17, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 22:48
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-Fish- posted:
Not a problem! I reuse stuff between the classes I make a lot. I am finding that divorcing character elements I make from the Dragon Empire/default 13A assumptions has opened me up creatively-- if I don't have to worry about what the Archmage thinks about this class or if this other class steps on the Fighter's toes, I feel more free to create the building blocks for characters I'd like to see in the game, and then build a setting around them. What I'm saying is I'd like to see your take on DBZ icons, and also on other setting-specific classes to fill in the rest of the Shounen's party. Or just a Shounen that can be a glass-cannon or a support character, if such a thing exists in the lore.
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May 17, 2015 23:53
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Earthorn posted:Not a problem! I reuse stuff between the classes I make a lot. Doing a very light setting writeup and a short sample adventure is actually something that I've been thinking about doing. Dragon Ball and DBZ have a variety of beings and organizations that could be used as icons, and it's already a fairly good "Points of Light"-style setting. Plus it's got a fairly unique and well-defined cosmology. Just watched through Dragon Ball Z Kai with my girlfriend and now she's insisting we also watch Dragon Ball so I've been fairly inundated with the series, much to my delight. I'll probably work out bits and pieces of it in my head over the week and do a short writeup next weekend.
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May 18, 2015 00:06
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a game around finding the Dragon Balls works quite well for a macguffin hunt
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May 20, 2015 14:45
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The Shounen(link removed, class is being reworked for publication) has a new class feature called Power Break and a few more feats. I'm finally satisfied with the variety of feats available to the class. I feel like it should have one or two more Ki Techniques but as-is I'd be comfortable calling it complete.
-Fish- fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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May 21, 2015 01:01
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I think I need help understanding how incremental advances work with spell slots. One of my players is playing a Sorcerer. He's level 2 and taking an incremental advance to pick up a 3rd-level spell. What does this do to his spell slots? Does he have the normal 2nd-level number of Sorcerer spell slots (5 first-level spells) and can just pluck a phantom 3rd-level slot out of the air to cast his incremental advance spell once per day? Or does he advance to level 3 for the sake of spell slots (3 first-level, 3 third-level)? If so, can he now cast his 1st-level spells using 3rd-level slots and cast their 3rd-level versions (like 7d6 Lightning Fork instead of 3d6 if he uses a third-level slot to cast it)?
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May 25, 2015 22:51
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He advances one and only one spell slot to the third level version. So one of his level 1 spell slots jumps to a level 3 one.
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May 25, 2015 23:08
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Harrow posted:I think I need help understanding how incremental advances work with spell slots. His character sheet looks exactly like it did before, except now he has one 3rd level slot which can (IIRC) be used for a 3rd level version of a 1st level spell, or for a 3rd level spell.
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May 25, 2015 23:16
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