Some questions about this rules set

[Bercilak]

Hi folks,
I'm considering running a 13th Age game on FG in the next couple of months. I have a couple of questions for those of you who have used/developed it.

1. Is there a screenshot of a character sheet somewhere?
2. How automated is this rules set? My only previous experience was a 5e game I ran on FG for the last year. Compared to 5e, how much automation is there?
3. Does it handle all of the weirdness of 13th Age's rolls? Things like damage on miss, even/odd effects, etc.?

Thanks for any information y'all can share.

--Berc

[vegaserik]

Hi folks,
I'm considering running a 13th Age game on FG in the next couple of months. I have a couple of questions for those of you who have used/developed it.

1. Is there a screenshot of a character sheet somewhere?
2. How automated is this rules set? My only previous experience was a 5e game I ran on FG for the last year. Compared to 5e, how much automation is there?
3. Does it handle all of the weirdness of 13th Age's rolls? Things like damage on miss, even/odd effects, etc.?

Thanks for any information y'all can share.

--Berc

Attachment 45215

There's the Character Sheet. The other big official rulesets have plenty of automation, but 5e is pretty much the top of the hill in my experiences with the various mod's and ext's for 5e. I have not been lucky enough to play this game so hopefully someone else can help with how it plays.

[Bercilak]

Thanks, Vegaserik. That helps a lot.

[Bercilak]

Thinking about this some more. For those who have developed or used this rules set:
* How does the set handle mooks, particularly in relation to shared hit points, but separate conditions?
* How does the set handle the Escalation die?
* How does the set deal with skill rolls? (Since "skill" rolls are based on attributes, you could wind up with a Strength + Sailor roll, or a Wisdom + Sailor roll. Is there a mechanic to choose which attribute/skill paring is used?

Thanks again for any help.
--Berc

[kronovan]

I'm quite new to 13A and the FG 13A ruleset, but I've run a few 1-shot adventures and I'm currently creating a custom module in FGU to allow it to support the Midgard World setting. So that's had me doing a fair amount of exploring and testing. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. For those I don't know the answer, hopefully a more experienced GM or developer will answer.

* How does the set handle mooks, particularly in relation to shared hit points, but separate conditions?

TBH I'm not even sure how shared HPs work for mooks in the CRB, so afraid I couldn't answer how it works for the 13A FG ruleset. All the conditions are present as buttons on the Effects form. Any NPC will take on any condition that's clicked, while their NPC is the currently selected character in the combat tracker. So they can be manually applied individually that way. And of course like most other FG rulesets, you can remove them from a PC or NPC entry on the combat tracker.

* How does the set handle the Escalation die?

There's an Escalation Die input box on the Combat Tracker and whatever value is currently entered in it will be used.

* How does the set deal with skill rolls? (Since "skill" rolls are based on attributes, you could wind up with a Strength + Sailor roll, or a Wisdom + Sailor roll. Is there a mechanic to choose which attribute/skill paring is used?

Are you perhaps meaning Backgrounds there? I'm not aware of skills for 13A, but on the Background page of the Character sheet there's an Ability Modifier drop-down at the top. The drop-down list contains all 6 of the abilities. Any background roll will use the bonus for whatever ability is currently selected. So yes you could change what attribute bonus is used for any Background roll.

[Bercilak]

Thanks, kronovan, for these answers.
* I did mean backgrounds.
* If I understand correctly, mooks act individually and can be affected by conditions individually, but they have collective hit points. So if there are 10 mooks, they might collectively have 40 HP, and every multiple of 4 damage would kill one. So if you hit a mook for 12 damage, you'd kill that one and two of his buddies. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to just do the math myself, but I was curious what FG did.
* I asked a question earlier about how the system handles things like even/odd flexible attacks or feats that activate on 16+ attack rolls, and maybe you can answer it. Is any of that automated, or do we have to pay attention to the natural roll of every attack in the chat box? I'm particularly curious about fighter attacks that let you roll first and then decide on the ability you use.

Thanks, again.
--Berc

[kronovan]

* If I understand correctly, mooks act individually and can be affected by conditions individually, but they have collective hit points. So if there are 10 mooks, they might collectively have 40 HP, and every multiple of 4 damage would kill one. So if you hit a mook for 12 damage, you'd kill that one and two of his buddies. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to just do the math myself, but I was curious what FG did.

Well TBH Monks are a bit sticky, as I own both the FG 13 Age ruleset with its included NPCs and the the 13A Bestiary and the Monk isn't in either - so nothing to drill into for details. Copy & pasting in the NPCs from the Midgard bestiary is my next project, so I've been looking at how to build NPCs. Something I've noticed by perusing exiting NPCs is that there's a "mook" role; levels and roles are entered in the same NPC field with syntax like "4th level mook." I'm not sure of the significance of having that mook role listed, but once I build one I could include a few in an encounter and see how they take damage, and more importantly if it's distributed like you mentioned.

* I asked a question earlier about how the system handles things like even/odd flexible attacks or feats that activate on 16+ attack rolls, and maybe you can answer it. Is any of that automated, or do we have to pay attention to the natural roll of every attack in the chat box? I'm particularly curious about fighter attacks that let you roll first and then decide on the ability you use.

Well you can definitely enter "Natural Even Hit:" and "Natural Odd Hit:" in the Description field for a Standard action - what attacks are categorized under. For me, the most confusing thing about the ruleset in comparison to others, is that when you want to add a weapon attack for a NPC you start by adding a power, but there's a button at the very left, that when clicked cycles through the different types of attacks and changes to an icon that graphically represents that; i.e. Melee, Basic Melee, Ranged, Basic Ranged, Close, etc. You then have to type in "Standard" in the action field in order for it to get grouped under the Standard Action listing. The actual attack and damage gets listed in the Description field using the syntax Attack type Atk: +# vs AC, # damage; it could of course also be vs PD or vs MD. Aside from those pieces being a bit clunky, there seems to be a lot of effects that can be entered in the description section. So I wouldn't be surprised if 16+ is one of them.

Anyhow, hope that helps answer at least some of it.

[Edit] I came across the Human Rabble NPC from the Bestiary and they're listed with a role of "2nd level mook." I've noticed that they have a Mook listing under traits and it only has descriptive text of: "Kill one human rabble mook for every 9 damage you deal to the mob." Traits also have Recharge, Action, Keywords and Range fields, but all of those are blank for the Mook trait. So based upon that, I doubt it's automated and a GM would have to be consistent in making sure one's removed from the combat tracker every time 9 HP damage is taken.
That said, there's an extra entry field for each NPC type on the encounter pages which I don't recognize from other FG rulesets, so maybe...

[kronovan]

I managed to to do some tests over the long weekend and determined that the "Natural Even Hit:", "Natural Odd Hit:" and "Natural 16+:" entries aren't automated - just there as cues for further action required by the GM or player. The only things I've found that're automated are the Attacks, Damage and Conditions. I found a post in this forum where the developer of the ruleset comments that there were too many variables in core 13 Age to automate much of it, which I can appreciate. I'm personally not too bothered by it, as my players and I initially were using at best half of the automation available for the other rulesets I run, yet managed well enough. That said, for GMs or players that have become accustomed to the high degree of automation in other FG rulesets and wouldn't enjoy playing without it, this probably isn't the best ruleset for them.

[Bercilak]

Thanks for investigating further. My group came from playing 5e on FG, so they were used to a lot of automation,but they've had a chance to play some less automated games recently on Roll20 and Foundry, so maybe this would be just the right amount. It doesn't look like there are any other officially supported option for 13th Age elsewhere, so might not have much choice!
Thanks again for your help.
--Berc

[kronovan]

To me, combat encounters look to be where 13A is at its highest crunch - especially with FGU combat, where they'll be a good amount of manual dice rolling. So with that in mind, it's no doubt important to ensure there's a healthy number of exploration and social encounters present in a campaign. That suits my Midgard campaign well, as I have Wayfaring and Safe Haven rules (inspired by Adventures in Middle Earth's adventuring and sanctuary rules) which tends to produce those types of encounters. So my plan is to lean more on adventures that emphasize narrative and to avoid getting bogged down by too many combat encounters. It worries me a bit though, as I have a player or 2 that only really come alive for combat encounters. I'm just going to have to be clear about the nature of my campaign form the get go.