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fosborb posted:A grid isn't used, but maps are: you're either nearby, engaged in melee, or need more than 1 move to reach someone.
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Mar 20, 2012 18:19
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Also 
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Mar 27, 2012 20:51
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Transient People posted:No, the powers being much less interesting than 4e
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Apr 16, 2012 13:47
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Oh hell yes. I'll definitely be online for this. Goes without saying I'd love a player spot too, who would I have to blow?
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May 31, 2012 20:55
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frankenfreak posted:I on the other hand was pleasantly surprised that you're able to ship from the UK, meaning I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for shipping alone. I also wonder if there are translations planned, and if it would be too forward to discreetly point towards myself and clear my throat a lot.
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Jun 13, 2012 17:53
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Stairs in your house You gain a +5 bonus to all defenses
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Jun 13, 2012 20:28
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Oh wow I haven't kept up with 13th Age in a very long time. Quick question: do I still get a pdf with the most recent version of the rules when I preorder now? My group's campaign is ending soon, we want to start a new game afterwards, and we want to look at a few more systems than just D&D all the time. Getting the book in April would work but having something to look at right now would be ideal. Or failing that, is there a current sample set of rules or something? My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 09:13
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My own 4E players have in fact made their own indie game but "loose" is not the first word I would use to describe it, it's gonna be a hard sell 
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Mar 4, 2013 19:10
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I'm trying to sell my gaming group on 13th Age. I already told them about streamlined mechanics, backgrounds, One Unique Thing, Icons, gridless combat, and made sure to mention all the stuff they specifically and very frequently point out not liking in 4E, and how 13th Age doesn't have them. At least as far as I know. Their main issues seem to be that 4E has "too much fiddly poo poo", character sheets are too large, and they can't seem to shake the notion that game rules equals world rules (I remember musings along the lines of "if I can be an Arcane Wayfarer, then surely so can other people, maybe I can find one and learn a thing or two" and a very well thought out and utterly out of place statistics breakdown of how many magic items there probably were in the world extrapolated from the Enchant Magic Item ritual description). What else can I tell them?
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Mar 14, 2013 22:18
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I'll have to ask them about the two hour demo, thing is we can only meet up once a month and I can only hope they're receptive to the idea of making one of those meetups the game system test. And I do remember playing 3e with them. It was this really weird mix of fast-paced and often hilarious improvisation, getting bogged down by rules limitations and flat out searching every nook and cranny for specific material components so you could finally cast Good Spell X, as in "the book says I need onyx, I guess I'll be an onyx hunter". Thinking back on it though, the parts farthest removed from the rules were always the most fun. I really think they'd take to 13th Age.
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Mar 14, 2013 22:37
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Alright, I think I got my group to at least give this a try. I don't know if that was the harder part, or if not loving this up is going to be.  I could use some pointers. I haven't familiarized myself with the rules all that thoroughly yet so this might actually all be in there, in which case, just tell me "page 237, you idiot" and I'll be on my way. Pointer 1: we're doing a pirate thing set very roughly in the Victorian age, with magic but also sophisticated difference engines and oil rigs (the difference engines and oil rigs may run on magic I haven't thought about it yet). If I know my players, if they get a ship, they will want cannons. What's a good way to let them have cannons and yet have combat still basically be six dudes vs. a few other dudes? Pointer 2: there are six dudes, am I setting myself up for failure already with that group size? Pointer 3: one dude wants to play a zombie-making necromancer and while he hasn't yet mentioned wanting to send them into battle en masse it's almost certainly going to come up, are there provisions for that sort of thing? Really would like to make this work for my guys. The backgrounds/one unique thing ideas have already won two of them over and their backstories basically wrote themselves, a few others have yet to be convinced.
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Mar 30, 2013 20:07
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Those sound very sensible. More to the point I'm more confident attempting either of those in 13th Age than I would be in our old system. 4E is great fun but I'd be making GBS threads myself attempting to houserule stuff like this out of fear I'd unknowingly screw something up three rule interactions removed, whereas in 13th Age I get more of a feeling of "a guy wants zombies, give him zombies, it'll be alright." And plus, one zombie/level and treating them as mooks was actually my very first idea as well. I think I'm on to something here.
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Mar 31, 2013 18:15
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Sure. I figure the icons can be other pirate captains, heads of state, heads of corporations, that sort of thing. The Dwarf King probably owns the majority of the oil business, for example - details and specifics aside, it's still unearthing treasure in the end. e: the Lich King I can see as a mythical figure who travels the ocean in a ship manned by the dead that you don't want to encounter if you can help it. Sort of the Flying Dutchman of the setting. The necromancer is probably going to be heavily involved with him, obviously.
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Mar 31, 2013 19:41
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I was kicking around the idea of making a random location table for my pirate thing. In case my players went far away from what I'd prepared and just wanted to "see what they could see", I wanted to be able to at least say, okay, you come across a (roll) medium (roll) island that seems to be (roll) sparsely populated, they're (roll) flying the flag of the Emperor. And improvise from there. Then I thought, hold on, that's a whole lot of effort when I can just make a list of all icons and simply roll once on that. Like, okay, in the distance you spot... (rolled the Prince of Shadows, let's see...) ... what looks like an oil rig that someone converted into a casino. And then I realized that most of the time I could simply use the icon rolls from the beginning of the session for that sort of thing and there wasn't any need for cumbersome additional tables or anything. This game. 
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Apr 12, 2013 18:56
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I've been talking to my player who wants to play a necromancer as I've mentioned before, and it turns out he's coming at this from more of a Diablo angle, imagining debilitating curses, an undead companion and the ability to raise slain enemies as zombies or skeletons for a brief time as the key components of combat with this guy. So here's what I'm thinking: Curses: existing wizard spells are probably fine for this, Color Spray can be Grave Stench, Shield can be Bad Luck, and level 3 brings stuff like Confusion or Rebuke, that should hold us over for a good while. Permanent Undead Minion: Familiar or Animal Companion For Wizards, depending on whether he wants a manservant or a bodyguard. Raising the fallen: I'm thinking about adding an additional spell to his list that allows him to zombify a freshly slain creature and have it move and attack immediately. Either only once (i.e. it can do one attack or it sticks around for 1 round), or until it takes any damage. With "until damaged" I'd also consider giving the fresh zombie a defense penalty or something. Probably a cyclical spell so it can be used a few times in a fight. This one's the aspect I'm least sure about, or rather, that has a few options that spring to mind rather than just one. Being more experienced, what do you all think?
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Apr 22, 2013 15:56
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waderockett posted:I put this question to the Pelgrane forums -- you might be interested in what they proposed.
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May 2, 2013 12:26
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My first session went pretty good! My ragtag pirate crew included such characters as a machinery-incompatible half-orc enforcer, a wood elf with gills, and Nicodemus, the dark elf warrior who can cook exactly slightly better than anyone else in the same room. Their first task - still ongoing - is to find a piece of buried treasure on a far off island, but first there was the more pressing matter of fencing a hold full of maneki-nekos. I do believe we managed to set the right tone for this game. Did have a slightly unpleasant issue with a player who liked neither the fail forward concept nor the idea of icons, as a whole, but that's a more general issue than with 13th Age and will likely find its way into the GM advice thread one of these days. For my part, I like the system a lot - preparation took maybe 10% of the time it would have taken me for D&D, and at no point did I feel I was in over my head for it (save maybe for one point, where through my lack of preparing an NPC name list, the zombie-bitten fighter had to visit local physician Dr. Martens). In fact, we only got through half of what I did have prepared. Icon relationship rolls worked better for me than expected; I'm not good at improvisation but I managed to weave every 5 and 6 into the narrative somehow, even though the number of 5s and 6s rolled was, statistically speaking, very improbably high. Didn't get much fighting done, though, so I can't comment on that yet, nor on how well our necromancer houserule ended up working. Next time.
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May 5, 2013 17:26
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After mulling over the results of my first session some more I think I'd like to ask for some feedback on how I handled the icon rolls at the beginning of the session. After all, I'm new to this sort of game element and still a bit unsure if the stuff I came up with to weave the results in was, for lack of a better word, "right." Many sixes and fives were rolled so I had ample opportunity to come up with stuff. The general plot of the session was: the party gather info from an underworld contact, use the info to find an imperial ship that disappeared a few days ago, strip it of all valuables and found a hint towards buried treasure, but before setting out to dig that up, they fence a hold full of cargo to another underworld boss. Sixes rolled: Barbarian for Prince of Shadows, positive relationship: she was the one to identify the secret signals the first underworld contact had up to signal he had lucrative info. Wizard for Lich King, positive, two sixes: he could determine the imperial ship was full of undead from afar. Okay, to be honest: I'd planned that anyway. But I did slip him a note saying this was most likely a test. Might come up again in the long term. Barbarian for Orc Lord, positive: after looting the ship, the question came up what to do with it: sink it, burn it, sell it, or pull it back to an imperial harbor and try to claim a salvage reward ("it was stripped when we found it. drat pirates, eh"). I ruled she could tap into the Orc Lord's mindset of total destruction and sink the ship in a way that guaranteed it wouldn't be found again. Ranger, High Druid, conflicted: came into play towards the end of the session when they transported their cargo from the local Smugglers' Beach to town, and the ranger was able to pick a perfect path through the bushes. Not the most inspired of ideas but it was late and I was very tired. Fives rolled: Ranger, Dwarf King, conflicted: the imperial ship was floating in Dwarven waters. Luckily, no Dwarven ship was to be seen as they went looking for it, and they remained undisturbed - unluckily, that was because the Dwarves were busy salvaging one of their ships that the ranger had run aground, and now they know he survived and would really like a chat. Fighter, Priestess, conflicted: he got bitten by a zombie dog while on the ship, and I ruled it would be a really good idea for him to go to church and have a priest bless the wound to avoid any nasty side effects. I probably dropped the ball here as I forgot to actually attach an outright positive effect. They did get into a scuffle with some muggers on the way to church and used that later to leverage their way into the local underworld, but I think there should be more, so I'll try to figure out a way to send a magic item his way and have it somehow be associated with that event.
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May 12, 2013 20:11
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Mystic Mongol posted:You can fix this retroactively by having the bite reappear a few times in the presence of the undead. Use this to get an investigation into covert undead activity rolling, but each time it happens the necrosis spreads. They better find a cure... and soon! (dun dun dun) I think their next destination is simply going to feature a dying old holy man who is in tune with the spiritual world just enough to identify a man who has been blessed by an agent of the Priestess. But not enough in tune with the material world to ask why before he bequeathes the Holy Breastplate of St. Sebastian unto him.
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May 16, 2013 13:26
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There are a few things different, although I couldn't tell you what exactly off-hand. When we prepared our first session I used the full pdf and my players the finished chapters, and we had to sort out a few issues first. Nothing major or hard to interpret though.
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May 18, 2013 08:18
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Pyradox posted:Basically there was an optional rule where every class got 8 background points instead of either 6, 8 or 12 and that was swapped to be the default.
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May 18, 2013 14:41
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I've come close to using the Fight in Spirit rule.  But then that whole player discussion I mentioned (much earlier) started and we cancelled that encounter.
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May 29, 2013 07:41
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Had my second session the other week and it went a lot more smoothly, albeit a bit more combat heavy. But at least now we know enough about the combat system to make informed decisions about sticking with the system long term. A particular highlight was the cagefighter barbarian turning the final battle against the kobolds and their tame riding scorpions into a free-for-all brawl including theme music and spotlights. I also transferred DM duties to someone else so I get to see this game from the other side finally. Making a voodoo guy [cleric] who came back from the dead and is now ferrying around Baron Samedi and his merry bunch of spirits in his head, solving two problems simultaneously (we have no healer in an adventuring party and no voodoo in a pirate setting).
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Jul 1, 2013 07:41
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Got my book last Saturday but only got to pick it up from the post office today. Looks great!
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Aug 3, 2013 09:24
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I finally sat down and worked out how to best adapt the icons to a roughly Victorian maritime setting. Most of them I left more or less as-is (if anything feels right for that period it's empires and occult secret societies) but a few needed a more thorough approach. The Dwarf King is now Thorgrimmaer & Bathrandir Industries, makers of sophisticated petroleum engines as well as essentially the only oil drilling company worth mentioning. The High Druid is an organization called the Circle of Druids which basically works out to mid-80s Greenpeace complete with inflatable boats. On the more legendary side of things we have the Lich King who you don't even have to squint very much to recognize as the Flying Dutchman, and I'm particularly proud of the Three, which are now the trinity of the Leviathan, the Kraken and the fearsome Narwhal (who, as only very few people know, is actually a sophisticated submarine staffed by separationist wizards under the leadership of one Captain Outis). Bathrandir sounds really really elfish, doesn't it. Back to the name generator!
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Aug 3, 2013 18:29
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Right now the orcs are proud luddites who rely on their own strength rather than machines, but I like that more specific idea. And looking at who the luddites were in history, it actually works really well, too. The Orcites. Definitely going to bring something like the Hellfire Club into the mix. Just the other day one of my players ran a short adventure where a naval captain turned demon cultist and sacrificed half his crew. That fits.
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Aug 4, 2013 08:06
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I am but we're just reskinning crossbows. Actually all but one of the party are melee fighters or wizards and that one is in melee half the time too, so it hasn't really come up yet to such an extent that we'd have needed more specific rules. e: but if we did want to distinguish them from regular weapons mechanically I could imagine something like making them a special item that gives you an attack you can use when the escalation die is even, like a wizard's cyclical spells, to somewhat simulate reloading time. Although that would sort of imply that there are only one-shot frontloaders. e2: the more I think about the orc luddite idea the better I like it. It's like, even just a few years back the orcs were known as the best workers the empire had. You had a ship to row around, you'd hire orcs, you had a ship to unload, a crowd of orcs was at the ready, and they were proud of what they did. Then the dwarves put engines on the ships and cranes at the docks and suddenly 90% of orcs are out of a job and mad enough about it that they're making plans to overthrow this newfangled "civilization." My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Aug 4, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 08:23
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The Archmage is functionally the same as by default but yes I did make him into an occult society whose highest circles are in the employ of the empire. Not yet sure if the head of that or the head of the Diablo Club makes for a better Aleister Crowley analogue. I'm liking that idea for the Gold Wyrm. I think I'll steal that. Keeping the sea safe from monsters fits incredibly well with the reflavoured Three. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 07:09
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Mystic Mongol posted:Why not make both the same person?
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Aug 5, 2013 21:36
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Practically the speed of light. Regular, i.e. non-special enemies, fights tend to be over within three to four rounds in my game, and a round goes by very quickly largely thanks to the abstract positioning. We can get through three decent fights in a six hour session and have ample time left for exploration, roleplaying, plotting etc., and that's with six characters and half of the players forgetting about miss damage and figuring out their attack bonuses and flexible attack options on the fly.
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Aug 9, 2013 21:33
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djw175 posted:My current DM, PublicOpinion manages to make fights hard without making them last forever. Maybe ask for tips on how to do that. Because being hard doesn't equal taking forever. PixelScum posted:Yeah I'm just trying to not have the die stalled at 6 because as it stands I usually get 4-5 rounds of just 6 right now.
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Aug 12, 2013 19:02
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Nope. His main gimmick is Skilled Intercept. Once per round, you roll a d20 against a DC 11 check when an enemy moves to attack one of your allies. Make that, and you can take the attack instead, and at half damage. Only, since encounters are based on 4e, you're going to have four or more monsters on the field, and the ability fails 50% of the time already.
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Aug 13, 2013 13:17
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If the two orcs one wizard thing was happening on a grid you could absolutely move so you were in melee with both orcs very easily. Outside of that, well, a lot of 13th Age is player/DM collaboration. If a player wanted to engage two enemies at once I'd certainly allow it as long as they were reasonably close together and neither was obviously much farther away from the PC. Possibly involving a background roll of some sort if it turns out the rules frown upon that sort of thing.
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Aug 13, 2013 15:03
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Mystic Mongol posted:If you just want to say you're a big strong golem man, say you're a big strong golem man and have str 9 on your sheet. Who cares.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:28
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Jackard posted:I got the impression the book just tosses coins at you and doesn't provide anything interesting to spend them on.
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Sep 17, 2013 10:49
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You guys are making me very sad that my group is all about "no things that aren't 100% positive for the characters are allowed to happen, ever." With an unhealthy dose of "if they do the DM is bad."
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Oct 10, 2013 12:52
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I always just figure those "you do an exciting thing" powers are really just a roundabout way of saying "you don't have to roll for this exciting thing right now."
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Oct 26, 2013 16:54
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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.
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Nov 14, 2013 08:28
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I'm making a Christmas adventure for my regular group. First character entered is a christmas elf wearing power armor with backgrounds: Santa's Chief Toy Designer and Versatile Power Armor. Think I'm on the right track here.
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Nov 16, 2013 20:57
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I think it's just too abstract a combat/movement system to have a cover mechanic. But actually, "by description" is how a lot of 13th Age stuff runs, and it certainly wouldn't be amiss to call for a background check as part of a move action to go into cover and give the usual D&D +2 AC/PD for it, or to have terrain features specifically designed to provide cover as long as they're between you and the enemy, with "between" defined much in the same way as you would to determine whether someone can intercept. Purely theoretical, as I haven't actually tried it or considered it for all existing powers or monsters, but I've sometimes thought you could just use the nearby/far away mechanics for it. Say your sorcerer is standing behind a chest-high wall and is nearby to all enemies - they can hit each other normally. Now the sorcerer wants to go into cover, so he takes a move action to drop below the wall and is now considered far away. If an enemy wants to get nearby with him again he needs to move, maybe he circles around the wall and flanks him. I'm sure it doesn't work for every situation or monster though.
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Nov 26, 2013 17:22
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