How to Play the 13th Age TTRPG: Mechanics Overview
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- čas přidán 30. 01. 2024
- 13th Age by Pelgrane Press is our game of the month! Come hang out we go over the core mechanics of the 13th Age system!
Check out our VOD of the 13th age system! czcams.com/users/live0z3FqvJGkr0?...
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Not a core mechanic, but a fun note: The Heal Spell along with many other buffs for the Cleric is a Quick action. This means that they can attack or cast along with Healing an ally.
Much love for showing off 13th age! It's my favorite system
I love the way mosters are designed in 13th Age. Specifically how their abilities trigger, the fact that the natural attack roll can manage so much of what the monsters do with just 1 roll is very nice.
And triggering conditions for abilities can be pretty varied abilites that trigger on an odd or even roll are most common 50/50 chance abilities but you also got abilities that trigger on a natrual odd or even that depend on if it hit or missed. Abilities that trigger if the natural roll was 12+ or 16+, etc. Some really exotic abilities trigger if the natural roll exceed the targets abilty score in a certain stat. ("I rolled a natural 16 on the atack roll what's your Con score? 14? Something bad is gonna happen then") I forget which type off the top of my head but there is a kind of Dragon that recharges it's breath weapon depending on if you roll a natural 5, 10, 15, or 20 on the natural roll for it's basic attack, much better to me then needing to remember to do an extra roll at the start of the turn to see if it recharges.
I also love how they do resistance in 13th Age, creature is resistant but if you roll a 12+ or 14+, 16+ (depending on how resistant) on the natural attack roll with that damage type you can overpower it and do full damage. I also like that basically nothing in 13th Age is flat out immune to any element (even the strongest Red Dragons have resistance 18+ but not full immunity) so you can specialize in a damage type and you will never run into a group of enemies you can't damage at all and be completely useless.
Got this sitting on the shelf, and all the ebooks from Bundle of Holding. The escalation dice is something I've adapted since reading about it, and it works extremely well, imo. The only modification I've made is after 1 round at "full strength", the dice starts to drop back down - sort of like the ebb and flow of adrenaline.
I got my pdfs from bundle of holding too, definitely a great deal!
Players should always try to game the system. This isn't bad. Its good. It gives you the opportunity to say, "Okay, Barbarian. You claim the background 'Savage wanderer of the Dead Wastes' should be applied while searching for a arcane text in this magical library? Please, tell us a tale of how this came to be." The player then gets to have some character growth, as they recount bits of their life and explain how they learned to read from ancient rotten texts found in an abandoned library lost to the wastes. Don't punish players trying to stretch the background system, embrace it. It says in the core rule book that a background not applying to a roll is rare. Players should always be trying to stretch those backgrounds and in turn create their characters history and lore as they play the game.
The more specific the background the better for you, the player, and the game. if a player has "diplomat" as their background you will find it will broadly apply to every social interaction but will be a really hard sell(and a boring sell) to have it stretched in creative ways. This means that they will lose out on character depth, lose out on their connection to the world, and lose out on getting the mechanical benefit they should be getting. But look what happens when you change that to "Emperor's ambassador to the orcish hordes", or "Mediator between the blue and black". Those ooze with potential stories. They bring a character to life, and they bring the character to the world. You can stretch those in a million different creative ways.
Early on in the corebook, one of the writers suggests that 13th Age is NOT recommended for novice GMs. What’s your opinion?
That's a good but hard questions lol. It sits right in the middle of narrative and mechanical systems, which does make it difficult for new GMs since you have to balance both. Personally I think it may be a good system for new GMs since they'll have to learn with balancing both but it does make for a steeper learning curve.
Just curious on where in the core book it says that?