mkill
2014-09-22, 10:54 AM
I heard you guys like the Tome of Battle... It was a milestone for D&D.
Two generations later, we now have a little game called 13th Age (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?cat=248), with two high profile D&D names attached to it. There are many things I love about this game, and even though it has great designs for the Rogue and Fighter, there was no Desert Wind Swordsage.
But why stop there, why not convert it all? Fire up the homebrew machine.
http://13thage.org/index.php/classes/467-master-of-nine
The conversion process was quite eye-opening when it comes to the path that D&D has travelled in the last 10 years. Tome of Battle came out at the peak of 3.5, when there was a new splatbook every month and the WotC team was trying out new concepts to expand the d20 engine left and right.
After playing 13th Age almost exclusively for the last 2 years, I was amazed just how many subsystems and little mechanic cogs third edition has, where 13th Age did away with almost all of them.
Suddenly, I had to deal with the following missing game terms. There were almost a dozen maneuvers that referenced charges, and another dozen that made opponents prone. Without rules for those two, none of these maneuvers would have made sense.
- full-round action (ignore)
- full attack (2nd attack on natural even)
- charge (new special attack type)
- disarm (descriptive)
- sunder (kinda ignore)
- overrun (triggered attack on intercept)
- prone (new condition)
- 5-foot steps (fiddle with engage/pop free)
- flat-footed (... that one's a b***)
- touch attack (attack PD)
- Dexterity and Constitution damage (weakened condition... kinda)
- negative levels (new condition)
- constrict (FML, there aren't even grapple rules)
- reach (ignore, kinda)
- difficult terrain (penalty to disengage saves)
- critical confirmation (add critical threat range instead)
- damage reduction (use resist all or resist physical)
- fortitude and reflex saves (both are PD now... kinda)
- evasion / mettle (immune to miss effects)
- flank (engage the same enemy)
- uncanny dodge (ignore)
Now my next challenge is to balance the whole thing properly. If anyone has constructive advice on that, I am very happy to hear it.
My general yardstick is that 13th Age Striker DPR is roughly balanced to kill one mook every round (on average, without the escalation die).
So the level progression for target DPR is... 7-9-11-14-18-23-27-36-45-54
So given a 50% hit/miss split, damage with a maneuver that doesn't do anything else should be twice the above.
Still lots to do then.
Two generations later, we now have a little game called 13th Age (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?cat=248), with two high profile D&D names attached to it. There are many things I love about this game, and even though it has great designs for the Rogue and Fighter, there was no Desert Wind Swordsage.
But why stop there, why not convert it all? Fire up the homebrew machine.
http://13thage.org/index.php/classes/467-master-of-nine
The conversion process was quite eye-opening when it comes to the path that D&D has travelled in the last 10 years. Tome of Battle came out at the peak of 3.5, when there was a new splatbook every month and the WotC team was trying out new concepts to expand the d20 engine left and right.
After playing 13th Age almost exclusively for the last 2 years, I was amazed just how many subsystems and little mechanic cogs third edition has, where 13th Age did away with almost all of them.
Suddenly, I had to deal with the following missing game terms. There were almost a dozen maneuvers that referenced charges, and another dozen that made opponents prone. Without rules for those two, none of these maneuvers would have made sense.
- full-round action (ignore)
- full attack (2nd attack on natural even)
- charge (new special attack type)
- disarm (descriptive)
- sunder (kinda ignore)
- overrun (triggered attack on intercept)
- prone (new condition)
- 5-foot steps (fiddle with engage/pop free)
- flat-footed (... that one's a b***)
- touch attack (attack PD)
- Dexterity and Constitution damage (weakened condition... kinda)
- negative levels (new condition)
- constrict (FML, there aren't even grapple rules)
- reach (ignore, kinda)
- difficult terrain (penalty to disengage saves)
- critical confirmation (add critical threat range instead)
- damage reduction (use resist all or resist physical)
- fortitude and reflex saves (both are PD now... kinda)
- evasion / mettle (immune to miss effects)
- flank (engage the same enemy)
- uncanny dodge (ignore)
Now my next challenge is to balance the whole thing properly. If anyone has constructive advice on that, I am very happy to hear it.
My general yardstick is that 13th Age Striker DPR is roughly balanced to kill one mook every round (on average, without the escalation die).
So the level progression for target DPR is... 7-9-11-14-18-23-27-36-45-54
So given a 50% hit/miss split, damage with a maneuver that doesn't do anything else should be twice the above.
Still lots to do then.