13th Age - Anyone Tried It?

Atmo · Post by **Atmo** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 7:09 pm

5th level to 13th Age is 10~11th level in 4e, which says little to this issue. Actually, "issue", as no one would get so stressed with a system that gives you Background and Icons relationship to move your party HP up or down when the story/plot/dice demands.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 8:06 pm

Windjammer wrote: I had to houserule 4E so badly because healing vs. incoming damage was balanced so poorly (make that: add level to monster damage, halfing PC hp, surge values, surge numbers, reign in stacking rules on healing etc. ) before it became interesting.

But 13th Age is of a different magnitude altogether, and I'm a tad disappointed they didn't use the playtest results to prevent this.

That sucks to hear. I would figure 13A would at least fix the healing issue, since part of it's goal was supposedly to make fights faster... but apparently not.

So are you saying fights are slower in 13A than in 4E?

Windjammer · Post by **Windjammer** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 8:29 pm

I'm saying fights as written are pointless in 13A once the surge values exceed the DM's arsenal by several margins. Which begins at level 2, is very noticable at level 3 and after that simply ridiculous (hence the level 5 figures).

I don't care if escalation dice etc 'speed up' combat once the outcome is a foregone conclusion. You might as well play a metagame and for various storywank metagame reasons fiddle with the 1000 hp 'story budget'. But stop the pretense that at those levels the combat powers etc still serve their ostensive task of (contributing to) a(n overall) resolution mechanic.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 12:04 am

I presume the point is that you can't challenge the PCs. Like TOON. The GM is there to throw interesting arrays of obstacles at the party and "act surprised" as the party handily defeats them every time. Fun rolling dice, all positive outcomes, having your cake, eating it too, and being rewarded with two extra cakes.

What? You don't like cake all the time? Have you tried more cake?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 2:30 am

I have no problem with near-infinite healing between fights; if you can do it without lame wands of CLW, so much the better. The idea of having near-infinite healing within a fight sounds stupid, though.

Windjammer · Post by **Windjammer** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 2:56 pm

tussock wrote:I presume the point is that you can't challenge the PCs. Like TOON. The GM is there to throw interesting arrays of obstacles at the party and "act surprised" as the party handily defeats them every time. Fun rolling dice, all positive outcomes, having your cake, eating it too, and being rewarded with two extra cakes.

What? You don't like cake all the time? Have you tried more cake?

I presume you are correct, though why on earth a system that WANTS to cater to this style of play pretends that it's a different beast at level 1 is anyone's guess. (A recent chart in the blogosphere documented that in 4E too the threat is highest at level 1, and then gets increasingly tamer as PCs level up relative to level appropriate threats.)

That reminds me of a generic comment by Brian Gleichman on FFG's Only War, which similarly points to a disconnect between the game's ostensive tone (heroic action against overwhelming odds) vs. mechanics (cakewalk):

For the last few months we've been playing in my Son's Only War campaign, and he in turn has been playing in an online Only War campaign (that's been going on for a bit longer). The setting was marketed as deadly and dangerous, and the fluff in the rulebook repeated that claim. So I was expecting at least a few dead PCs and mountains of Comrade corpses littering the battlefields.

In actual play however it's been one of the safest and easiest games we've ever played. In both ours and the online game there's not been one PC death, and only one Comrade has died (when I was guest GMing in our campaign).

Couple of months later,

Finished up our Only War campaign, and it's rather nice to be done with it. It was fun to stomp everything that comes along, but the joy of doing that quickly passes when its too easy. My son's online Only War campaign continues, there the Guard (having gotten a hold of the better weapons like auto-cannons and Meltas) can handily curb-stomp Chaos Space Marines due to how forgiving the game system is.

We have a new player which is always fun. The whole concept behind RPGs greatly intrigued her when she heard about it, so much so that she attempted to drive into whatever game she could last week including going to one of the local D&D gatherings (multiple groups in a local hobby store) because all those books for it looked... well wonderful. She came away saying that if that had been her first experience, it would have been her last.

Afterwards I attempted to explain the state of game design and the hobby to her. Basically it comes down to the fact that today's players want to win, and win easily. If they can get loot while doing so- all the better. Both their games and their role-playing are centered on those goals, and that's the end of their needs and desires. Thus you have games like D&D and Only War. This makes up nearly the entire market now and I've given up any hope that it will change.

Sources:

http://whitehall-paraindustries.blogspo ... -safe.html

http://whitehall-paraindustries.blogspo ... paign.html

Final quote shows how what was previously a parody is now reality:

This Dungeon Scenario is custom-tailored to your specific group, and perfectly balanced so no one ever has a chance of dying. It's like being in your very own novel as the heroes! Each Scenario includes a brief introductory scene (you can role play if you want to but why bother, you can skip this) and then a Dungeon Delve to enter, with a monster encounter and some treasure, all pre-designed in the book and well-balanced. Kill the monster and move on. Just run through 5 two-page encounters and you get a level. 10 pages per level, 500 pages total, lots of content, and all of it is predictable, fun and fast!

And yes, you heard me right: that's at least a guaranteed level every night. Entitlement is the new word in role-playing, and Dungeons & Dragons delivers. Begone unfairness, imbalance and asymmetry! Everyone is rewarded at the same pace regardless of ability or effort. The reward is playing the game.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 4:50 pm

Windjammer wrote: (A recent chart in the blogosphere documented that in 4E too the threat is highest at level 1, and then gets increasingly tamer as PCs level up relative to level appropriate threats.)

That's interesting. Do you still have the source by any chance?

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:01 pm

Windjammer wrote: I presume you are correct, though why on earth a system that WANTS to cater to this style of play pretends that it's a different beast at level 1 is anyone's guess. (A recent chart in the blogosphere documented that in 4E too the threat is highest at level 1, and then gets increasingly tamer as PCs level up relative to level appropriate threats.)

I mostly equate it to bad design on the designers part.

The PCs are almost always numerically favored, so the longer the fights take, the greater the PC edge becomes and the less the chances of an upset victory. All the abilities in 4E are designed to make the battle slower. You get status effects that make you do half damage, take away actions, and give people penalties to movement or attack. Then the game saturates the party in healing powers which further extend combats.

Likely they wanted 4E to behave similar to its level 1 gameplay, but they couldn't design the game correctly to do that. It's a shame because very low level 4E is about the only time the game is actually playable.

4E badly needed high level powers that escalate the combat. Some status effect like "target takes double damage" and similar things as opposed to just slowing things down into a grind.

Windjammer · Post by **Windjammer** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:18 pm

Blicero wrote:
Windjammer wrote: (A recent chart in the blogosphere documented that in 4E too the threat is highest at level 1, and then gets increasingly tamer as PCs level up relative to level appropriate threats.)
That's interesting. Do you still have the source by any chance?

I just checked my bookmarks or even email inbox (I used to send myself websites to print off if they're useful), and sadly, can't retrieve it. It was quite good, because it recalculated DCs as well. My personal shortcut always was Richard Baker's own houserule (July 2008, upon release), which is, divide hp by 2, and every monster adds its level to damage. Meaning, yes, every level 15 monster gets +15 damage. I played paragon, and it makes a huge difference.

Cyberzombie wrote:4E badly needed high level powers that escalate the combat. Some status effect like "target takes double damage" and similar things as opposed to just slowing things down into a grind.

I think that's exactly on the right track. When MM2 came out, I thought the monster design had hit upon something important - that monsters fight differently once they're bloodied (getting extra vicious attacks). That changes the dynamics of the combat, and works well if you add the further houserule that monsters, once bloodied, suffer double damage from every hit. Again, it escalates the combat, and makes it all the more important (for the DM) to have leaders/buffs for monsters.

I honestly don't know why 13th Age gets the praise for not adjusting any of that, but simply focusing on accuracy. Seriously? Accuracy was never an issue with 4e powers - their output was.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:18 pm

hogarth wrote:I have no problem with near-infinite healing between fights; if you can do it without lame wands of CLW, so much the better. The idea of having near-infinite healing within a fight sounds stupid, though.

Yeah, I can get a lot of complaints, but complaints about healing surges providing too much healing isn't one I ever understood.

Too much access to healing abilities in combat? Sure, I can get behind that. But bullshit like "You have to deal 1000 damage to get to the REAL hit points of PCs"? That's grade-A ignorance. That's like saying that a character in 3.5 is invulnerable to all damage because at mid levels you have all of the wands of lesser vigor you ever wanted. This is blatantly not true, because you can have damage levels that are threatening enough to the party's HP in a given combat, even though after the combat all of that damage fades away after a couple of minutes.

The idea that to actually threaten the party you have to drain them of resources entirely is completely wrong. It's a relic of the past, and hasn't been a thing at gaming tables since TSR went under. Characters today don't keep pressing forward when they're stuck at half hp with no resources remaining, they do what they can to get those resources back.

Windjammer · Post by **Windjammer** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:22 pm

FOUND IT!!!!

http://dmg42.blogspot.nl/2012/02/boot-o ... rever.html

Please let me know what you think - I never used this.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:23 pm

Healing Surges aren't overpowered, they are retarded. It is literally impossible to do anyone enough damage at one time to leave them with any injury at all the next day. People don't object to the fact that characters will never have injuries carry over to the next day because they have healing wands or healing potions or whatever the fuck, but they object to the fact that it is literally impossible for there to be a situation where you get injured and don't immediately heal all wounds between scenes like a cartoon character. That offends people, and they are right to be offended. That is anti-immersive bullshit.

-Username17

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:13 pm

Seerow wrote: The idea that to actually threaten the party you have to drain them of resources entirely is completely wrong. It's a relic of the past, and hasn't been a thing at gaming tables since TSR went under. Characters today don't keep pressing forward when they're stuck at half hp with no resources remaining, they do what they can to get those resources back.

Yeah, I'm not sure why game designers are so obsessed with the attrition model of gaming. It works fine for video games where a random encounter is over in a minute and you're only allowed to rest at save points. In a tabletop game, that stuff takes far long and it's tediously boring. People want interesting encounters, not resource grind.

I think you should just be able to short rest and get your hit points back entirely. Hit points are so arbitrary anyway, you might as well classify them as fatigue. Let people who get knocked out and dying in combat suffer some kind of longer term injuries, but regular HP damage shouldn't be anything major to get rid of.

Also, combat healing is one of the worst mechanics in gaming. I'd like nothing more than to see it go away permanently. Combat healing does nothing but suck the excitement out of battles. Combats should gradually become more and more tense, and nothing is worse for that than seeing the party mage get dropped by a lucky critical and then having the cleric drop a healing word and make it so the whole thing never happened.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:13 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Healing Surges aren't overpowered, they are retarded. It is literally impossible to do anyone enough damage at one time to leave them with any injury at all the next day. People don't object to the fact that characters will never have injuries carry over to the next day because they have healing wands or healing potions or whatever the fuck, but they object to the fact that it is literally impossible for there to be a situation where you get injured and don't immediately heal all wounds between scenes like a cartoon character. That offends people, and they are right to be offended.

Not really. If you rebrand "hit point damage" as "vitality point damage/wound point damage" or "bashing damage/lethal damage" or "STUN damage/BODY damage", then suddenly no one's offended by damage that heals completely between fights and people think about action heroes rather than cartoon characters (which is appropriate for an action RPG, not surprisingly).

Of course, you could complain that 4E D&D doesn't have semi-permanent damage a la wound damage/lethal damage/BODY damage, but D&D hasn't done so (healing surges or no healing surges) since 1E's shitty "going into negative HP means you're incapacitated for days" rule.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:13 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Healing Surges aren't overpowered, they are retarded. It is literally impossible to do anyone enough damage at one time to leave them with any injury at all the next day. People don't object to the fact that characters will never have injuries carry over to the next day because they have healing wands or healing potions or whatever the fuck, but they object to the fact that it is literally impossible for there to be a situation where you get injured and don't immediately heal all wounds between scenes like a cartoon character. That offends people, and they are right to be offended. That is anti-immersive bullshit.

-Username17

It sounds a lot like you are saying that it's okay to never worry about injuries carrying over as long as you can point to a magic wand as the reason why. I mean almost all of your same arguments could apply to characters never losing limbs or taking crippling long lasting injuries, just nebulous hit point damage which heals up within a few days regardless of how badly injured they are. Real world injuries can take months to heal, and often will never fully heal. If you're already willing to sacrifice that to say "It's a game and that shit just sucks", then I don't see why it's such a huge difference to push out of the weird middle ground and just say "Fuck that noise"

I mean, if you really wanted immersiveness with healing surges, you could pretty easily get it by adjusting the recovery time of healing surges. Want a game with recovery times more similar to 3.5e? Start with fewer surges (say 4-5 or so) and recover only one healing surge per day, so a character will recover from the brink of death to full health in a little over a week.

Want something grittier? Dial it back further. Every time you spend a healing surge to regain hp, take some penalty in exchange for it, removing the penalty takes extra time on top of what is required to recover the healing surge.

Want a "Fuck you for daring to get into a fight, player" style system? Now When you recover you have an X% chance that penalty can't be removed without high level magic.

The way I see it, the core healing surge mechanic is much more flexible than raw hp ever really was. You can address basically every complaint with the system without touching the core. Except for complaints like the asinine "You need to deal 1000 damage to ever hurt the party!" (reminder: that was totally a real argument that was actually made, and what I was responding to), because those complaints are already baseless.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 2:13 am

Seerow wrote: I mean, if you really wanted immersiveness with healing surges, you could pretty easily get it by adjusting the recovery time of healing surges. Want a game with recovery times more similar to 3.5e? Start with fewer surges (say 4-5 or so) and recover only one healing surge per day, so a character will recover from the brink of death to full health in a little over a week.

I think a better thing to do would be to not use D&D hit points at all if you want immersiveness. Hit points are the least immersive system out there.

When a 15th level barbarian loses half his HP to a crit from a fire giant greatsword, two gaming groups will most likely describe that in very different ways. One group may have the barbarian roll aside to safety, using up fatigue in the process and another may have him tank the blow superman style.

All we really know about hit point injuries is that they're not significant enough to impair someone's performance at all. Which probably means we don't really have to care how easy it is to heal them.

In my houseruled 3E game, I let people recover to full HP after a 5 minute rest. Mostly just to get rid of the bookkeeping on wands of CLW.

infected slut princess · Mon Mar 17, 2014 2:49 am

Anyone who thinks of hit points as "fatigue" or whatever is a goddamn retard.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:09 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Healing Surges aren't overpowered, they are retarded. It is literally impossible to do anyone enough damage at one time to leave them with any injury at all the next day. People don't object to the fact that characters will never have injuries carry over to the next day because they have healing wands or healing potions or whatever the fuck, but they object to the fact that it is literally impossible for there to be a situation where you get injured and don't immediately heal all wounds between scenes like a cartoon character. That offends people, and they are right to be offended. That is anti-immersive bullshit.

-Username17

So what's a way to do it where you don't need potions and wands? Like how Conan, Aragorn, and any fiction that's not D&D inspired has heroes go fight stuff without rubbing themselves with healing lotion every 5 minutes.

Also, combat healing is one of the worst mechanics in gaming. I'd like nothing more than to see it go away permanently. Combat healing does nothing but suck the excitement out of battles. Combats should gradually become more and more tense, and nothing is worse for that than seeing the party mage get dropped by a lucky critical and then having the cleric drop a healing word and make it so the whole thing never happened.

Preventative abilities would be more interesting. FFXIV's intro has their white mage project a force field to deflect an attack, but in-game it's just a passive defense buff... At best I'd like to see in-combat healing as more the removal of debuffs like "This acid is burning you then the healer sooths it so you can act on your turn without penalty"

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:14 am

Conan basically had fast healing. He might get torn up in a fight, but after he had a chance to catch his breath and get a drink of wine, he might be bloody but he's very functional.

Rather like the Tome Barbarian, come to think of it.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 4:12 am

Seerow wrote: White noise...

Actually, the point is that if you have 1000 points of in-fight healing, then it takes 1000 points of in-fight damage for you to care that you are taking damage.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 4:29 am

AndreiChekov wrote:
Seerow wrote: White noise...
Actually, the point is that if you have 1000 points of in-fight healing, then it takes 1000 points of in-fight damage for you to care that you are taking damage.

You don't have 1000 points of in-fight healing though. For a standard party, you might have the ability to use 8 healing surges in an encounter. That's a lot of in-combat healing, but a long way from every healing surge the party has combined as you are claiming.

Edit: Also I have no problem with the argument of "There's too much in-combat healing in 4e, and that makes fights drag on for fucking ever", but that is not the argument that was made. And if the best way you can present it is with some bullshit that is factually incorrect, you should leave the argument to others who aren't fucking retards.

ScottS · Post by **ScottS** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 5:06 am

Windjammer wrote:FOUND IT!!!!

http://dmg42.blogspot.nl/2012/02/boot-o ... rever.html

Please let me know what you think - I never used this.

I agree with the guy's reasoning, but I never got to try that particular fix before our group's fucks ran out and the edition imploded.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 6:49 am

Is Fast Healing in D&D3.5 a better alternative to healing surges then? That's what Tome Barbarians got.

ScottS wrote:
Windjammer wrote:FOUND IT!!!!

http://dmg42.blogspot.nl/2012/02/boot-o ... rever.html

Please let me know what you think - I never used this.
I agree with the guy's reasoning, but I never got to try that particular fix before our group's fucks ran out and the edition imploded.

That's a handy chart to have for 4e heartbreaking. I'm guessing he didn't fiddle with healing surge numbers though.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 2:07 pm

AndreiChekov wrote:
Seerow wrote: White noise...
Actually, the point is that if you have 1000 points of in-fight healing, then it takes 1000 points of in-fight damage for you to care that you are taking damage.

That's... not true. You still care about the distribution of damage, both over time and over characters, and you care about how much you're paying in the action economy to access that healing.

In 3E, for example, a wand of CLW gives you an average of about 275 HP. You would get laughed out of the discussion if you said that 3E characters don't care about the first 275 points of damage because of that.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Mon Mar 17, 2014 9:20 pm

fectin wrote: That's... not true. You still care about the distribution of damage, both over time and over characters, and you care about how much you're paying in the action economy to access that healing.

In 3E, for example, a wand of CLW gives you an average of about 275 HP. You would get laughed out of the discussion if you said that 3E characters don't care about the first 275 points of damage because of that.

Yeah, the rate at which you heal in combat is all that matters. The ability to heal to full as a short rest isn't even something that matters, as the daily attrition of hit points hasn't existed since AD&D. Whether you're marking charges off a wand (3E), burning surges (4E) or chain drinking healing potions (D&DN), PCs just don't care about out of combat healing of hit points.

The big problem with 4E was combat healing.