13th Age Second Edition | Storytelling Action Fantasy Game

Last 3 days! Don't miss the Late Bloomer Discounts!
7 months ago – Mon, Jun 03, 2024 at 04:44:33 AM

Salutations Adventurers!

We are entering the last 3 days of our kickstarter. As I promised, surprises are not over.

Our latest surprise is a chance for all our backers to catch a discount! Late Bloomer pledges are slightly less discounted versions of the Early Bird pledges. Catch those discounts before they expire, because they are Kickstarter Exclusive!

Also, any existing backer that did not pledge to the Early Birds can switch to those as well. So, don't worry if you did get the Player's Handbook or both core books previously, it's a click away.

Let's take a look at the Late Bloomers:

Missed out earlier? No worries! The Ghoul pledge tier is your last chance to get the 13th Age 2E Player's Handbook at a discounted rate. Available only for the final 2 days, this late bloomer tier offers a great deal on the core rules. Don’t miss your opportunity to join this epic RPG adventure!

Seize the moment with the Wyvern pledge tier! Available only for the final 2 days, this late bloomer tier offers both the 13th Age 2E Player's Handbook and the Gamemaster's Guide at a special discounted rate. Join the adventure and get all the essential tools before time runs out!

Edit: It shows up as "Copy of Bulette" because of apparently an error occured and it did not save the name when I created the tier by duplicating the Bulette tier. I can't change it now that it has backers, please imagine it as Wyvern :P

Good luck in your heroic path!

Sneak Peek of the Art Book!
7 months ago – Fri, May 31, 2024 at 01:47:38 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

I bring good news. You remember that we were promising a good addition to the Iron Golem Limited Edition Pledge Tier and above.

This will be available as a stretch goal right after the ones currently revealed (Signed bookplates and Updated SRD). Here it is:

13th Age Art Book!

Enhance your 13th Age experience with our exclusive 10"x10" glossy full-color hardback artbook. Featuring the best artwork from the 13th Age books and previously-unseen work-in-progress illustrations, this artbook provides a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process. Enjoy insightful commentary by Lee Moyer. Iron Golem+ backers will automatically receive this beautiful addition to their pledge. For all other backers, this must-have artbook is available as an add-on to your pledge. Don’t miss out on this limited edition collectible!

Let us know what do you think of it! If you'd like to get one for yourself, consider pledging for the Iron Golem and other Limited Tiers for everything exclusive!

Have a fun day, but keep in mind that surprises are not over yet!

Shipping estimates and another art piece reveal!
7 months ago – Mon, May 27, 2024 at 02:05:09 PM

Hey all! I'm delighted to see we've unlocked the Foundry development stretch goal - roll on those limited edition bookplates! We'll be announcing the next stretch goal - which our Iron Golems will get as part of their pledge level - v e r y   s o o n, so watch this space.

I've pulled together some rough estimates for shipping. These aren't included in the pledge tiers, and updated shipping prices will be charged through the pledge manager at the point of fulfilment. However, they should give you a guideline on what shipping will cost.

I'm in discussions with our shippers and Canadian drop-shippers to see if we can reduce these costs, and if there large numbers of backers in certain other areas (e.g. Australia and New Zealand), we may be able to work out some kind of drop-shipping arragneemt which reduces the cost there, too.

And finally, a sneak peek at one of my favourite of the 2e illustrations, a dwarven sorcerer gathering power. BOOM!

Art by Aaron McConnell & Lee Moyer.

Till next time,

~Cat

Let's Take a Look at the Character Sheet Draft & New Stretch Goals!
7 months ago – Wed, May 22, 2024 at 09:27:13 AM

Greetings Heroes of Dragon Empire,

I have news for you: We have a draft character sheet! It is a revamped version of the 1E sheet, so it might look entirely different by the time when book is ready, but for your ease of play, we wanted to provide you with something we prepared quickly. Please click the link below to download it:

CHARACTER SHEET LINK!

Thanks to the community members Archwillow, Earth Seraph Edna and The Original Daniel for their contribution to the character sheet.

In other news, we have new stretch goals revealed (you might have seen them when I set them up yesterday). Let's take a look at them:

Our next stretch goal for the 13th Age 2E is signed bookplate stickers by Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet, Lee Moyer, and Aaron McConnell! Backers in limited tiers will automatically receive these stickers. These stickers are perfect for personalizing your books—or keep them as collectible memorabilia.

Unlock the full potential of 13th Age 2E with our stretch goal to level up the SRD to 2nd Edition! Get equipped with the latest rules and mechanics to ensure your adventures reach legendary status!

For those new to the term SRD: It's the freely available, open-to-public-use core of a game, outlining its rules and mechanics. While it provides essential game content, it's more limited in scope compared to the core books.

Goodbye for now, until I come back with more good news!

Paint & Song: an Annotated Playtest Write-up
7 months ago – Mon, May 20, 2024 at 03:08:02 PM

This long update is an annotated Beta Packet playtest session write-up. The beginning is mostly story. The end contains notes on things we considered or fixed during or just-after play, including a revision of one of the bard’s combat riffs.

Teachers from the Court: Our recent in-house 2E playtesting has mostly been in our friend Paul’s Teachers from the Court campaign. The campaign is named after the cover story the PCs adopted to put off agents of an infernal Archmage: “We’re not weird adventurers, we’re Teachers sent by the Court of Stars to help the children of Yellowrock learn how to read music, and elvish, and . . .um. . . swing a battleaxe.”

Last week, celebrating the day the Second Edition Kickstarter launched, our heroes experienced a tier-shift. When we went into the factory, it was adventurer-tier, like us. But the factory bumped up each scene, and at the start of this session, the GM was flat-out telling us that we were trapped in a champion-tier environment that was gonna kill us. The immediate cause-of-death seemed likely to be a giant arcanomech that had broken into the gallery of magical paintings where we had fought off a wave of lesser constructs.

We needed to escape. While the rest of the heroes fought the Arcanomech, my half-elf cleric, Esh, tried to engineer an escape through a painting of Santa Cora via an impromptu ritual [note 1]. That sounds silly, but Esh’s unique origin is that she stepped out of a painting created once by the Priestess and again by the Elf Queen. Esh had already simply walked into a magical painting earlier in the campaign (and missed out on a session I couldn’t attend). With an icon connection to help, Esh planned to use a painting of Santa Cora hanging in the Archmage’s gallery to bring the entire group with her as we teleported to Santa Cora.

 “Fighting the Arcanomech” turned out to be taking hits and dealing almost no damage in return. It was too tough, even the barbarian started thinking about survival options [note 2].

The variables for Esh’s ritual turned out to be a) will you close the door behind you so you’re not followed? b) will you land roughly where you want to travel, because there are many confusing layers of paint on this palimpsest? And c) will you encounter resistance on the way?

Every round Esh worked on the ritual tentatively answered one of those questions. But every round put her comrades through a brutal pounding they obviously couldn’t survive for long, especially not while the cleric, the healer, was busy performing ritual magic in front of a painting of Santa Cora. Esh’s comrades endured heroically. Esh could only watch. Thrilling? Yes. But thrilling like a horror movie, and eventually heroes started dropping and the Arcanomech attacked Esh. The attack was a critical hit with an overpowered attack. Esh was going down.  

I sat there looking at my character sheet and thought, “I waited too long. What have I got? Anything?” And then I remembered that the  champion-tier magic armor that the GM had given Esh (a gift from the Elf Queen) had a power that I’d never needed to use. Something about Physical Defense? It was from Book of Loot, not our core book. Perfect guard, reduce the damage of an attack against PD by half! Saved! Damaged but conscious, Esh completed the ritual with a quick toss of red powder over herself and the other heroes, and she teleported the group out of there . . .

. . . .and into a weird two-dimensional journey through multiple layers of oil on multiple paintings until progress was halted by  a troll, a demon-touched ranger, an orc berserker, and a wight.

So yeah, the answer to the third question was “Yes, you will meet resistance.” The GM modeled the oddity of fighting as 2D creatures by placing our minis in a single line. That’s the conga line of doom pictured below.

It was a close-run thing, with two of us (Esh and the bard) dropping all the way to four Skulls, one more Skull and we’d be dead [note 3]. Luckily the troll stopped succeeding with its regeneration save just about the time our bard [note 4] realized that casting color spray inside a painting might be more effective than usual! We lucked out in what seemed guaranteed to be the last round of combat, one way or another, and lived to tumble out of an elderly painter’s harbor watercolor on the Santa Cora docks.

(Note 1) Impromptu rituals: We’ll probably add some text in the Running the Game chapter about performing quicker rituals in dramatic situations. It happens often enough. It’s fun. You want to fail forward. That’s coming!

(Note 2) Survival options or aiding others: We haven't been interested in options like F20’s ‘defensive fighting,’ but given that we allow fighting in spirit, we’re going to add an option to use your standard action to give an ally a +2 bonus during combat on any defense or attack that seems plausible. That fits our general rule that a +2 bonus is the way to treat unusual situations. It might have been useful while facing the deliberately overpowered Arcanomech.

(Note 3) One more skull: This was the first time that Jonathan and I saw multiple heroes one hit away from death thanks to the new Five-Skulls-and-You’re-Out. We both liked it. No more popping up from zero after the next hit, the next hit would have taken us all the way down. And since you only carry one Skull into the next battle, taking 4 Skulls or 5 Skulls in a single fight means you got seriously messed up and probably failed death saves while your allies were solving problems of their own.

(Note 4) About the Bard: The wonderful bard illustration at the top of this update captures something that’s important about the bard in this edition: they don’t have to play their instruments during combat. Thanks to bardic magic the instruments play themselves!

The bard in the Teachers game focuses on Dance, Drums, and Voice. I’m running another bard whose talents are Strings, Flutes, and Voice, so it’s Brass I need to play again soon.

During this session, I saw the problem with the bard’s beatdown combat riff. As some typo-collectors had noted, it had nonsensical feats. So let’s end these notes with the revised beatdown that will be in the next version of the packet.

Beatdown (Drums Combat Riff)

Close-quarters spell * Quick action after hitting with a basic melee attack * Once per battle

Effect: Deal thunder damage equal to your Charisma modifier to 1d3 enemies engaged with you or at least one of your allies (5th level: double your Charisma modifier; 8th level: quadruple your Charisma modifier).

Adventurer feat: Beatdown now targets up to 1d4 + 1 enemies.

Champion feat: After using beatdown once in a battle, you can use it again once later that battle when you've hit with a natural even melee attack roll.

Epic feat: Each enemy damaged by beatdown must roll an easy save (6+). If the save fails, the enemy is dazed until the end of your next turn.

Keep the Beat!