Sunday, December 30, 2012

More 13th age

I read a couple more review comments that indicated 13th Age also has the extreme amounts of damage escalation and increased to-hit for all classes every level.

It is beginning to sound like designers are on a massive dice kick lately. If I wanted to play a game designed around massive numbers of dice for damage it would be Champions, which I had great fun with years ago for a couple of superhero campaigns.

Time to seek out reviews for Dungeon World and see what it does that might be useful.

2 comments:

Wade Rockett said...

13th Age presents alternatives to rolling massive numbers of dice. From "Dice Rolling Conventions", pg. 187:

Obviously rolling huge handfuls of dice as you rise in level can become a pain. Some players love that pain, but their friends and GMs are less keen on waiting for them to finish adding up six d12s and four d6s. Up to 4th or 5th level, we’re happy rolling all the dice. But after that, we like to speed play by asking each player to choose one of the following dice conventions. Of course, if you or one of your players has another suggestion that provides average results, go for it.

No roll, just average them all:
Some of our players don’t want to roll damage dice at high levels. They’re happier just taking average damage and hoping for crits to give them a boost.
Average most dice, roll two or three of them:
Rolling two or three dice for varied results preserves the experience of rolling damage. Roll between two and four dice, average the rest.

Average the normal stuff, roll the specials:
Players with characters who have power attacks and sneak attacks frequently opt to average their normal damage rolls and roll the cool bonus damage that isn’t always applicable.

Roll if it’s cool to rule:
If the drama of the situation calls for a full roll that everyone will pay attention to, go for it.

Epic level multipliers:
You’ll notice that some of the spells and attacks at epic levels deal damage that’s expressed by a couple dice multiplied by 10. If you’d rather use a different damage convention that hits the same average, do so.

OSRbaron said...

Wade,
Thanks for the information. I guess I should have been clearer on my meaning. It isn't so much the dice rolling as it is the enourmous amount of damage output that bothers me.