Is 13th 2e good? What noteworthy changes have they made from the first edition?
Wait for our resident anime autist to chime in with their analysis
13th age in general is quite good. Many of the shiny bits of 1e are still hidden in modules, manuals and magazines. A big thing that changed between 1e and 2e is Icon Relationships. This is a layer that exists on top of an invisible version of the original alignment grid. and binds your characters to 13 Iconic NPCs/Factions in the world. The original printed rules offered several options and said in a side bar that they expect someone will figure out better rules in the community. They would get more relationship dice from going up to champion and epic tier. Dms were encouraged to improv the results of these dice into a session. in second edition due to bad GMs not being able to utilize the original rules, think for themselves or improv the icon relationships no longer scale and instead the players can use them to narrate like the GM once per session. old icon relationships are like a wandering monster system for plot threads. The world and the player characters randomly get attacked by PC backstories lol. They devote alot more space to icons in 2e , trying to give a hardline system to appease the reddtoids. They also cut down from 13 icons to 12, killing off the Orc Lord and leaving a space for every DM to introduce their own 13th icon.
13a 2e is still very much you have to rebuild yourself though. 2e changed the way some combat math works , refining the already solid math from release likely mostly to account for the reasonable third/second party power creep that comes with having a set of options beyond the PHB. They have changed the way higher level spells display their math, often ignoring dice and just listing flat damage - it would have been nice if they listed both for every level. That shit looks legitimately lazy.The combat in this game is my favorite in TTRPGs. Its extremely quick and leans into the classic cordellion action economy. Standard/movement/quick(bonus,minor, whatever) . I prefer running interrupt actions like in 4e as opposed to how the PHB prints it. The intercept universal combat option sort of replaces the classic first round charge attack with a universal tank mechanic, and the game features standard oppertunity attacks alongside a few classes like commander, occultist swordmage, hell mother and trickster that primarily do their big funky class thing as an interrupt action. Even some of the smaller classes in terms of total content in this game are still giving you like 23 buttons to push by end game. You start with a very fleshed out character between class features, spells/abilities/maneuverswhatever and building your custom kit with the talent system. The other core parts of combat of note are linear damage scaling. ( A thief with a knife at level 4 rolls 4d6, at level 8 rolls 8d6) and the escalation dice. Monsters in this game are very dodgy until the escalation dice rises to 2ish or beyond. This encourages players to spend more time jockeying for position , buffing, crowd controlling, supporting each other during early rounds of combat and saving the big abilities for later in the fight. When the DM has a good handle on building battles and his party the escalation dice encourages tactical depth in a way I have not seen in another fantasy game.
Combat is pretty dicey in general though, a side effect of high monster dodge rates and big dice pools. Alot of fights are not just defined by waiting for the escalation dice and enemy reinforcements but also by waiting for one player to get off a really devastating attack. I frequently see melee combatants, especially tanks run out of recoveries and end up deep into injuries by encounter 3 or 4 . This is not an easy game to be a tank in but having one can feel very helpful. This is a great game to be a damage dealer or a support.
Did they overhaul the rogue class in 2e like I heard they did with other classes like fighter and bard? I always thought the rogue was underwhelming both in terms of lacking the level of good options the other classes have and lacking a real class identity/niche beyond its sneak attack feature.
>>96695540Does Edna like 13th age? It's like the exact opposite of their usual autistic hyper fixation.I might snag it, I always wanted to try the first edition and it seems like a viable alternative to 5e.
Class changes between editions: on a meta level spell casters generally lost their ability score to damage and are often hitting for about 10% less due to targeting mental defense and physical defense being mildly undervalued last edition ( It often felt like save or die spells could mostly ignore escalation with smart targeting) but spells scale every level now, as opposed to in 1e where spells scaled at odd levels (capping at 9th level spells) and melee at every level. The scaling every level is a good change, I am unsure how I feel about removing ability scoresa number of non combat talents ( the things you build your custom subclass out of ) have been made into feats, which improves game balance and reduces trap options. The bard got a pretty substantial rework where its talents now represent different preformance types and each talent comes with 4 features including a healing spell and a melee attack. They no longer have a full suite of flexable melee attacks like in 1e. Songs still have an opening verse, a sustain effect you roll for to keep the song going, and a crescendo or closing effect, so you get songs spells and strikes still but the class is much more weighted towards songs now. The fighter got a large rework too. Flexable attacks have been demoted to being a subsystem behind a talent, and reworked on top of that to vary in scale of effect alongside your roll more than to populate a dice-deck There were several supplemental classes that worked off of flexable attacks before like the abomination, haunted one , soulknife and druid but it belonged to the fighter first. Now fighters get manuvers, a mixture of at will daily and encounter powers - so in some ways they play more like the 4e fighter. Power attack is buffed to be a damage spiker once per battle, which is a huge buff. Fighters also got a new universal mechanic called momentum that upgrades some of their abilities if they have not been attacked since last turn.Fighter is fkin cracked now
Ranger is probobly the next most changed class, with classes now contributing to warrior, archer and caster spheres within the class and unlocking a hunter's quarry damage bonus or the ability to go skirmisher mode and do a janky action surge. Very powerful class now. Still pretty simple. Barbarian got rage nerfed in exchange for much more rage access and not much else. Play one of the 5 variants of this class instead. Wizard - Mostly the same, evocation got nerfed Sorcerer- Mostly the same , some minor reworks to gather power Cleric - mostly the same, minor nerfs to strenght domain, several new spells to help light compete with third party domains and for the majority of classes having more access to at will healing than the cleric in 1e paladin - lay on hands is baseline now, not much else has changed. they tried to buff talents here and they did but the class still needs a pretty heavy rework. play the 1e paladin with SRD content or some fusion of the two instead imoRogue- Momentum is now a fighter mechanic so rogues get bravado now instead. This class is reliant on the shadow walk talent but shadow walk is super fucking strong. Third party content adds a shit load to this class too, I do not think this is a bad class I think this is the strongest thief in tabletop during battles - we could note that the skill system does not benefit rogues much compared to any other game before it though. AoE, Poisons, tons of anti CC/dodgy stuff, this class has a huge kit and is an easy S tier in my game for real.
>>96695674I've never been a fan of the Icon Relationships. Nice for tying character creation to the world, but actually using them for the game is a pain in the ass. Shifting the responsibility of improv to the players makes more sense than having the GM have to deal with all the rolls, but still not a fan. For how intrinsically tied Icons are to the game's worldbuilding, it sure feels like a lazy mechanic.On a side note, I think it's an odd, almost conflict-avoidant, choice to remove the Orc Lord Icon.
I hope we get another wave of releases with 2e. There are several abilities called 'zenith' abilities that can only be taken by an incremental advance beyond 10th level ( you can earn part of a level up in this game, one of my favorite features ) This is new to 2e so it would be nice if they would print offical rules for levels 11, 12 and 13 - zenith levels or iconic levels, whatever they want to call them. 13th age has gamist and narrative elements. Its fun and light hearted. Big piles of dice, epic loot, a loose world that is meant to be played in. Its dnd with a focus on collaboration instead of anything pretensionsus. Its an unfinished mess but its playable, what does exist is quite well thought out and addresses many common problems of the game. Its got some charm - like hackmaster. It truly understands how to be DnD and how to lean into it. I think 1e was more confidently written than 2e but I like the new class changes and everything is very compatible with the old content
notable books: The Book of Ages: Collaborative world design for a new table, build the prior 12 ages together with your party.Eyes of the Stone Thief: A fantastic megadungeon that constantly shuffles itself around. Big living worm made of dungeon that you will have to flee out of super metroid style when it decides to submerge itself into the earth13th age amythst: completely different campaign setting, 8 new scifi classes, rules for guns, magical technology interference 13th age glorantha: 10? more classes , ton of new monsters, heroquests and heroquest blessings (which can replace loot) , runes and narrating them ( which can replace icon relationships)Book of Loot 1/2: Tons of new magic items, organized by core setting icon by chapter and then by chakra ( i think these are just called slots now in 2e) Book of Monsters 1/2: Much better than core monsters, more fancy mechanics Dark Pacts and Ancient Secrets: One of these books is six new classes ( the author has another 2 or 4 classes floating around on the vault or srd), and the other is a substantial expansion to all the first party dragon empire classes. domain clerics, sorcerer metamagic and bloodlines, extra druid circles, paladin rework to unlock variant smites with each talent , seeker spheres for ranger - just a ton of stuff in this book
>>96695924I have been a tarot reader for a long time, getting your party's icon relationship results in and having to interpret them is alot like trying to read a tarot spread. Idk if u can call it a lazy rule when it requires more of the GM. I think icons were a huge part of why this game was sold as ' for any players and expert GMs' The old rule was underwritten but its also a modular rule. You can do more with the system or less. One of the really easy hacks was to have players roll them at the end of each session instead of at the beginning, so you had time to prep them. You can also set up a few encounters in advance and be ready to drop them into the game when the icons get rolled. Weather you are running a wilderness hexcrawl sandbox or a dungeon railroad there is always ' what the DM prepped' and ' what the party says they are gonna do' and 'what the party actually does' . With the original system there is this whole extra axis of 'what the icons doing why is this guy here right now' that i really enjoyed and found addictive. common houserules for 1e icons also included:- adding complications to rolling a 1 - if a player rolled all null then roll for a random icon and they get a bond with that- rolling a single dice when it is relevant to the plot ( IE coming upon a statue of bahumet in the dungeon you roll 1 bahumet dice )- rolling them with each full heal up/ark instead of each game session and then how you used them was sort of up to each table too. in 2e they say dont use them to reward loot but most of the example tables all have loot as a result lolIcons , Escalation Dice , Class identity, Incremental Advance are some of my favorite features of this game. I think One Unique Things are pretty overrated and I rarely use them.
another change in 2e is how feats work. Feats in 13th age are 1 per level and they improve something you already have, or grant you a non combat thing. Your talent, spell or class feature might list a feat that enhances it. in 2e you no longer need to take lower tier feats to unlock higher tier feats.
The final draft of 13th Age 2e actually addressed most, if not all, of my balance criticisms, and then some. It is a "balance patch" that actually works, and that I like very much.Last year, I playtested the 13th Age 2e gamma: https://docs.google.com/document/d/176GRa7xitZAmNqfW49mp7qu_M-g6a5WllBzdO4ZuCr0/editIt was very rough. It was trivial to snap apart the combat metagame by building characters towards the optimization ceiling and going all-in on offense. The worst offenders were paladins with Evil Way, rangers with Twin Arrows, clerics with the Strength domain adventurer feat (at 1st and 2nd level specifically), wizards with Evocation and VPV (at 3rd level and above), and clerics with the Turn Undead type expansion feats. Lethal was the single best kin power for its reroll, and there were so, so many magic items that helped the party go nova and instantly explode enemies.At the same time, some character options were simply bad. Rogues were the single worst class around, and barbarians and melee fighters were shabby, too.All this has changed in the final draft. They actually took the time to rebalance the game, and that is incredible. I very much appreciate the writers' and editors' efforts.Evil Way has been significantly curtailed (and possibly overcorrected, since it requires a rather stringent condition), Twin Arrows no longer works with Lethal Hunter and seems to have been downgraded (though I cannot be sure, since the wording is ambiguous; do both d20s apply to a single target?), the Strength domain adventurer feat is escalation-die-gated, wizard spell damage has been significantly toned down, Evocation and VPV have been rewritten, and Turn Undead has been overhauled. Lethal is ED-gated, and magic items for raw accuracy and offense have been revamped (e.g. ED-gating), replaced, or removed outright.
>>96696939Paladins have been rebalanced in general. They lost their adventurer-tier feat for +4 attack on smites and can no longer pick up cleric at-will spells, but can now determine AC using the middle of Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma modifiers. Meanwhile, rogues, barbarians, and fighters have all been given considerable upgrades. Battle Drill is not what it used to be, but all fighters are melee fighters, and pushed towards more of a defender role ("hit me specifically, or my accuracy goes up"). I am uncertain as to whether or not rogues, barbarians, and fighters can keep up with paladins and rangers, now, but I am grateful for the writers' commitment to trying to make it work.These are just a few examples of the "balance patching." I like it a lot. It shows that the writers earnestly care about improving their game.I highly recommend taking a look at 13th Age 2e when it comes out, and I think it is definitely worth a purchase. There are still facets that I think are lacking (e.g. there are still no subsystems for complex, multi-step noncombat challenges), and I still do not agree with many of the monster design decisions, but the fact that the writers are actually willing to refine their game impresses me so much.On the whole, I am very satisfied by how 13th Age 2e turned out, and I am thankful that the writers actually rectified many of the balance issues I pointed out. (Or maybe they did not listen to me, specifically, and what I was pointing out was simply being pointed out by many other playtesters as well. Either way, it is the same end result: the final game is more balanced.)>>96695759It has been overhauled. Whether or not it has been overhauled enough to bring it to a satisfactory power level is hard to say.
>>96696939I haven't read 2e, but if you're right, I'm glad that they deviated a lot from the gamma playtest. That shit was rough and I genuinely was expecting them to not really change anything as that was the last playtest iirc. A pleasant surprise.
Does it have dungeon crawling now? I remember 1e touting living dungeons but having nothing substantial about dungeons in its core book at all.
>>96698126read eyes of the stone thief
>>96697137Yes, I am very much surprised as well. The writers have my respect for putting in the effort to balance the game and clamp down on "I now explode the encounter on my first turn."
>>96704252>party explodes the combat before the escalation dice is on the table I have not had this happen in over 100 combats. I've seen the players get exploded like twice
Does Johnathon Tweet chime up to claim responsibilty for every dumb decision like he did in 1E?
>>96706821In the 2e gamma alone, I saw it happen with Evocation/VPV wizards, and with Evil Way paladins. Fortunately, these alpha-striking builds, along with many of the magic items that directly supported them, have been significantly overhauled.
