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Hello. I'm a big fan of 13th Age, provided playtest feedback, am backing the Kickstarter, etc. I love the game so far, and I really love that the designers are taking feedback from the customers. I actually just created this SA forum account to make a radical suggestion about the 13th Age core rulebook in a place where doing so might be effective. OK, here's my radical suggestion: take the introductory adventures out of the core rulebook, put them up for free on the Pelgrane Press website when the book releases, and use the newly free page-count for additional monsters. Why do I say this? I love introductory adventures, and I totally understand the value of them. That is why I'd like to see them available on the website. However, if they are used at all by any particular group, intro adventures are typically used once and then never again. Ever after, the pages devoted to the adventures in the rulebook are dead space. All of the other sections in the book will be referred to for rules or world content, but the intro adventures MIGHT be used once. After that, they are just wasted space. Monsters, on the other hand, are at the center of every D&D edition/revision/re-imagining. 13th Age seems to be a little on the slight side in the monster department thus far. High monster diversity minimizes the number of unique creatures that GMs will need to create to populate their adventures. The time not spent making new monsters will be spent developing fun and interesting plots. Furthermore, all of the powers and abilities that each monster has can be pillaged in the creation of unique creatures. Pages devoted to monster abilities serve double-duty as pre-built antagonists and collections of "monster powers" that can be given to other monsters to mix things up. In short, pages devoted to introductory adventures are usually used once and then never again. Pages devoted to monsters are useful forever. And, in my opinion, the core rulebook could REALLY use a larger selection of monsters. It looks like 13 pages are currently devoted to introductory adventures in the 13th Age core rulebook. An average monster page has one or two monsters on it. Let's call it 1.5. If the pages with the introductory adventures were instead used for more monsters, the book could deliver an additional 19 or 20 monsters. That's huge. Thanks for hearing me out on that! Does anyone else feel similarly?
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Sep 10, 2012 22:27
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:36 |
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I guess I should clarify that, while I'd prefer to see the intro adventures given away for free on the website, that is actually a secondary issue for me. My main wish is to see the page-count in the rulebook currently taken up by adventures to be given over to more monsters. If adding more monsters has to mean that the adventures go away completely, I'm totally OK with that.
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Sep 10, 2012 23:02
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Two questions after skimming the recent Escalation Edition version: 1) Can you please put some HP limits on the cleric spell "Commandment"? I love that 13th Age makes parties beat on big monsters for awhile to get their hit points down before they can start getting hit with Sleep and Confusion type spells. Commandment, for some reason, doesn't have that kind of limitation. That, combined with its potentially obscene damage, makes it pretty broken. Add some HP limits like there are in every other control spell in the game and it will be fine. 2) It seems a little odd that the rules assume that 9th level characters will mostly be fighting 11th level monsters, and 10th level characters will mostly be fighting 12th level monsters, but the highest level monsters in the book are 10th level. Are there plans to add some big guys in before release? I don't mean to sound too critical. Overall, I'm really liking what I am seeing.
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Sep 13, 2012 20:07
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I'm with Bedlamdan, I really want to see Horizon win this. Magitech city of weird wizardry? Why yes, don't mind if I do. Also, nobody should vote for Santa Cora. If it gets the fewest votes, then there will be a section in 13 True Ways devoted to talking poo poo about the holiest city in the Empire, and that just needs to happen.
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Sep 20, 2012 20:27
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Horizon and Drakkenhall. Definitely in that order. Everybody vote for Horizon, for weird magical shenanigans. Nobody vote for Santa Cora, so they'll take the piss out of the holy city. EDIT: Also, I have an unrelated question for those in the know. Is there any idea when the Escalation Edition folks will see the finished wizard, cleric and sorcerer spells and monster chapter? I can't wait! Dionysos510 fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Sep 26, 2012 |
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Sep 26, 2012 14:49
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As someone who has been a big proponent of lots of monsters in the core rulebook, the 113 statblocks in this version make me very happy. That was my big worry, and now I just can't wait for this to come out. (Though if there could be some hp limits on the cleric spell Commandment, I'd love that as well. Can you tell I usually GM rather than play?)
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Oct 16, 2012 22:22
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A question about the (excellent) latest Escalation Edition: Is all the white space in the monster chapter going to be filled with art, filled with even more monsters (!) or just going to be eliminated in layout?
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Oct 21, 2012 21:59
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#1: Horizon #2: Drakkenhall I Hate this Town: Santa Cora "City of Weird Magic" and "City of Monsters" are concepts with tons of possibilities. So is "City of Heavenly Goodness", but it is ten times funnier if it is presented in a relentlessly negative manner.
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Nov 3, 2012 04:20
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I was hoping for Horizon, but Drakkenhall was my second choice so I'm not that disappointed. And Horizon was a close second. Let's push it over the top on the next one!
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Nov 10, 2012 10:51
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Any ideas as to when we'll find out which city won Paint The Town 2?
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Dec 2, 2012 22:21
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Horizon, Archmage, whatever, the weird wizardry won! Yay! With Horizon and Drakkenhall as the Paint The Towns, I have got 2/3rds of my wish list. Now, everyone vote Santa Cora for I Hate This Town. Ignore the naysayers, it will be an awesome addition to the book.
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Dec 3, 2012 04:51
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PublicOpinion posted:I'm not sure if one of Pelgrane's online articles addressed this already, but I found it odd that there's no specifically Crusader-aligned monsters in the book. On the one hand that makes sense, because the Crusader is rad so why would you ever fight him, but it seemed like a weird gap. So to fill that and to get a feel for 13A monster creation, I took a swing at writing up some Crusader enemies. This is awesome, thanks for posting it. I feel like the game needs a selection of Icon minion enemies (who aren't necessarily monsters, exactly) who can be dropped in the game on the fly when the relationship dice and the story come together to indicate that, for example, some of the Archmage's henchmen show up and cause trouble. I've been meaning to stat up a bunch of these things for various Icons, but I'm in grad school and also running a different system, so I haven't made that happen yet. Would you have any interest in putting together more of these for some other Icons? I'd love to see more.
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May 12, 2013 17:58
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Question about the 13th Age Gencon panel: did they say if there would be something like an Escalation Edition, or new playtest doc or anything like that for Bestiary preorders?
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Aug 19, 2013 01:37
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Thanks. I haven't preordered anything from Pelgrane aside from 13th Age, so I wasn't sure if that was usual for them. Awesome!
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Aug 19, 2013 07:06
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I'm another True Ways backer who doesn't mind preorders being able to preview stuff. I don't see how I benefit by having fans of the game that I like shut out of playtesting.
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Aug 20, 2013 01:05
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Any chance we can get an update on when we will see the druid class in playtesting? I like the commander and everything, but druid is a class that is often referred to in the setting and it has a lot of history in D&D as well. It also has traditionally been one of the harder classes to balance, so getting it to the community for testing sooner rather than later could be pretty beneficial. The fact that it was cut from the core rulebook is another reason to prioritize getting this class out there. Any info on this?
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Feb 7, 2014 22:49
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This druid confuses me. With Elemental Caster and Terrain Caster plus a feat or two for at-will spells, you are a really good combat caster. Not quite as good as a wizard or sorcerer, but not terribly far off. And you have better AC and hit points on top of that. THEN you get a third talent, so you can choose if you want an animal companion or pretty good healing or good melee attacks to really lay it on thick. I hope the power level comes down on this. Otherwise, it looks like 3.5 super druids are entering the 13th Age. I'd say I'd playtest this, but I'm not sure that I want to bring this class into my campaign as it currently stands. I think the fighting, shapeshifting and even healing is more or less ok. But the power of the attack spells needs to be brought down if this class is going to be anything resembling balanced.
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Feb 20, 2014 05:29
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:So to those that have access to the new playtest packet: What do you think about the Druid class? I'm kind of flip-flopping if I really like it or can't stand it. I'm in a similar position, with a slight lean toward "can't stand it". All of the talents are pretty much fine in isolation, but certain combinations are abusive. A Druid with elemental caster, terrain caster and animal companion has about as many spells per day as a sorcerer with at-wills not needing to come out of the daily spells allottment (sorcerers would LOVE to be able to buy at-wills with feats, as it means more of their spell slots can go to the big booms. Druids just have this as a default). On top of that, he has better AC and hit points AND has an animal companion out half the time. The damage gets pretty ridiculous. On the other hand, the other three talents are fine and a Druid that has just one of the two caster talents doesn't feel like he is a better mage than a sorcerer. So, I'd say that you can build an abusive Druid with the talents as presented but you can build perfectly balanced ones too. The class has potential but needs a lot of work. On an aesthetic level, it has so much more poo poo going on than any other class that it doesn't feel like it belongs in 13th Age. And they are talking about adding cantrips to this class too? They need to be cutting material, not adding more.
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Mar 1, 2014 19:06
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:36 |
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Captain Walker posted:Just specify that you only get one caster talent as a druid, problem solved! Yeah, restricting druids to just one of the two caster talents would help a lot. I think I forgot to suggest that in my playtest feedback, I should probably send that in.
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Mar 1, 2014 19:29
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