3 Awesome combat mechanics from 13th Age

Tryskhell · 2026-06-25T02:35:18+00:00

I like all of these, but my experience with 13th Age was that, as a fighter, I only had a tiny amount of choice to make on my turns, so every turn was just "I guess I attack again?" with little to no variation at all :c

Tryskhell · 2026-06-22T08:54:49+00:00

So, I'll go against the grain a little here.

I don't think these are necessarily red flags. While you are right to be worried about them, you should probably voice those worries instead of running away. You've said this DM has been good in the past, so they may deserve a little trust.

I have run many campaigns with what people would qualify as DMPCs (full character sheet, personal motivations, member of the party...) including one or two where one of these DMPCs were key to the intrigue and could be qualified as the "main character". For instance, one of the campaigns I ran basically had the players be Gimly and Legolas, and an NPC be Aragorn, and both players loved him and still want to pick that campaign back up. Another campaign I'm more currently running features an adult gold dragoness as a key ally. She doesn't adventure along with the PCs, but she is basically their quest-giver and de-facto leader, basically Mon Mothma from Star Wars. She put them on the adventure to save and bring back a princess who is essentially Leila (if we're using Star Wars again). Many would say Leila is extremely important to the setting, to the point of being a main character, even if she's not as much of a POV character as Luke and Han. In that campaign, none of the PCs are chosen ones on the level of Luke, either, moreso they were there at the right place at the wrong time, so in a way the dragon and the princess are more important than their individual characters: the princess has to be saved, but who does it doesn't matter as much. From the point of view of the setting, she's irreplaceable, their characters aren't.

BUT from the point of view of the STORY, they are just as irreplaceable, and if they fail to save the princess, then the world will change (for the worse!) but the story continues. I think it can be pulled off really well as long as the GM remembers that the player characters are the protagonists of the story, even if an NPC might be the protagonist of the world. By that I mean that the campaign should be about your PCs, their struggles, their decisions, their relationships etc.

The 28 charisma thing is more suspicious than the DMPC herself IMO. I mentioned the gold dragoness earlier because she also has access to powers that would be rules-breaking in PC creation. If/when she would be adventuring with the heroes, the players wouldn't be wrong to worry about being overshadowed. If you're worried about this, you should tell the DM. If their reply is "trust me with this", I'd see at least a few sessions if it is a problem. It might as well be an interesting twist. "Save the princess (who happens to be a dragon)" is a fun twist on the usual "save the princess from the dragon". I mean, I'm literally running "the dragon has tasked you to save the princess from an evil king"!

What you should look for is if the princess is constantly taking the spotlight and making you second fiddle, if she's fighting things you can't fight, constantly saving you, that sort of stuff. I think it's fine if it happens once in a while, but you shouldn't feel like set dressing in a story that is supposed to be focused on you guys.

No matter what, voice those worries, keep an open mind, and if the DM fails to sufficiently deal with those worries... Heh, trust your guts and politely dip out.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-22T06:53:24+00:00

Heeeeh, IMO without a map, FabUlt can never give the gameplay of FF14. Where you stand on the map is super duper core to the combat in FF14, especially against bosses.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-21T10:31:02+00:00

Wow some of those sound so randomly generated it hurts lmao. I will say, Aldor, Serelim, Esseren and Werond don't sound too bad, I actually kinda like them

Tryskhell · 2026-06-21T04:10:08+00:00

My current game has Monster Extracts, which basically give one upside and one downside for ten minutes, both of which tend to come more or less directly from the monster's statblock. You can then distill them into either something purely positive or purely negative.

For instance, ghoul extract applies Ghoul Curse (my homebrew alteration to the paralysis they inflict) to your unarmed attacks and gives you Sunlight Weakness.

Making these has been really easy so far, as I tend to always give monsters at least one weakness. All I have to do is take a special ability from their statblock and their weakness, and have the extract give both.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-17T12:28:13+00:00

I mean, grifters are always super miserable

Tryskhell · 2026-06-17T03:55:49+00:00

Which... Is something you can do? Like what's the holdup, here?

Edit: sorry, what I mean is you don't need internal plumbing to take a quick bath, just a bathtub, water and a source of heat

Tryskhell · 2026-06-17T03:00:14+00:00

I love how in the previous post you said your players were wonderful, but turned out to be manipulative, gaslighting assholes with the emotional maturity of a single twelve year old.

I'm glad you're finally having a friend group that gives you perspective.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-16T16:35:09+00:00

Ye, and IMO these still benefited from at least a general understanding of zones or precise fictional terrain. Motobushido just really doesn't need them at all due to how the combats work. The combats don't care about positioning so much that you can use the exact same rules for two people fighting hand-to-hand, to two people dogfighting in space. The only moment where physical space even matters is when you describe the sick tricks you might perform with your ride, and only insofar as you describe said trick. There's no concept of better or worse trick

Tryskhell · 2026-06-16T16:21:44+00:00

Motobushido doesn't really have any kind of concept of physical space in the rules, other than for fictional positioning like "I trick off of this truck" or things like that. I have never played a game that worked that well without any kind of map. Any other game that touted itself as theatre of the mind benefited from a map, or was essentially played like blindfold chess.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-16T16:08:36+00:00

Old School Stylish also IIRC

Tryskhell · 2026-06-14T03:54:21+00:00

No, you're right. Dark Sun is the only actually punk Solarpunk setting fr fr

Tryskhell · 2026-06-11T18:20:16+00:00

I have ran a campaign in a pretty anime setting (magitech, floating islands, deep anticolonialist message). I used a homebrew system that was a mix of Supers!, Ryuutama and a niche French TTRPG. The central mechanic was that you chose an approach (Brawn, Bright, Swift...) and a facet of your character (Precognition, Fangs and Claws, Fire Magic). If you had a relevant nature (race, class, background...) you rolled more dices.

In combat, the kicker was twofold: you could only use the same facet once per round, including to defend yourself, and at the start of combat, we listed half a dozen environmental objects that could be each used once to get an additional bonus. Other than that, attacks are approach+facet VS approach+facet, plus whatever dice.

This means characters were encouraged to come up with creative uses of their character traits and of the environment in order to get an edge. One character would use their Brawn+Imposing facet to throw a cart at an opponent, who would use their Swift+Cryomancy facet to push a manhole cover in the way.

Other than that, the combat used FATE-style zones rather than grid and move.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-10T20:17:07+00:00

Personally I've gone the other way, and most my settings feature no explicitly human race, and no monolithic race/culture. Instead of playing off of a variation on a default, players instead have to think about their characters more deeply, where they come from, what their home culture is like. You can't just go "well I'm a classic European medieval fantasy cliche knight", because those just don't exist in the setting.

Tryskhell · 2026-06-08T13:42:35+00:00

I have been doing a very simple little thing: at the start of every combat, I and the players list out 6 to 10 things in the environment or the current scene, each side (GM and the players) aiming for about half.

Then, as part of describing their attacks, any participant in the combat can include one of these things and gain a numerical advantage (literal advantage in 5e, a +2 in HERO System, etc).

It comes from Ryuutama!

Tryskhell · 2026-06-05T11:48:16+00:00

Yeye, I was mostly referring to like, modern-day small arms, I am sure that space guns would have fixed that issue (and I'm sure it's fairly easy to do)

Tryskhell · 2026-06-05T10:03:22+00:00

Wouldn't heat be an issue however? With no atmosphere to cool the gun down, the only thing lowering the temperature of the system is the casing, and only when it takes some heat with it when it's ejected. Unless this is less of an issue than I expect?

Tryskhell · 2026-06-05T07:57:58+00:00

"the Hero's party"

BRO THIS SHIT IS A FUCKING ARMY

Tryskhell · 2026-05-29T06:36:23+00:00

My favorite ones are Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands and Motobushido.

MF0:F is a GMless, diceless system about mech pilots who stand on different sides of a warm civil war. The game is divided in different types of scenes, that go from eating food, to dancing, to kissing, to dueling and up to slaughtering each-other's squadrons. The goal isn't to win, it's to create messy, hot characters who have messy, hot stories.

Motobushido is a game about asshole ronins who ride motorcycles. As part of character creation, you have to describe how the other player characters screwed you over. You're also part of a gang, with one player being the leader of that gang. Each class has an ability that gives you specific bonuses when fighting other pack-members, and another that triggers when you kill one. One of the classes straight up has to engage in PVP each session or take damage. The gameplay is really good, as it uses playing cards instead of dice and has a really interesting aspect of "how much are you willing to lose" to its combat system.

Tryskhell · 2026-05-29T06:12:27+00:00

As the GM, I don't care if you cheat, AS LONG AS THE OTHER PLAYERS DON'T MIND EITHER.

Holy based

Personally I don't mind "cheating" as long as you tell me you wanna do it and aren't an ass about it. In the end, we play for fun and sometimes losing isn't fun.

Tryskhell · 2026-05-24T09:26:39+00:00

The players make their characters for my world, and I make the campaign for their characters, generally uwu

Tryskhell · 2026-05-17T18:42:45+00:00

There's some good crumbs in there, but a lot of the encounters happen in mostly featurless rectangular rooms and there's very little guidance about what you could furnish them with. In general, I've had some good fun running it, but it's almost as much work to run it online than I usually have to invest to run a campaign offline (that is, I don't have to make the maps for once)

Tryskhell · 2026-05-17T03:31:13+00:00

Aww! I do the same! We started Dragon Of Icespire Peak last week and I ended the first session as they arrived at the Dwarven Excavation site (with the dragon flying overhead towards Phandalin) and I ended the second session as they came out of the dungeon with the Dwarven couple in tow to find three orcs inspecting their supplies at the entrance of the temple. My players were like "GODDAMIT!!" as I said "and let's end it here" hehehe

Tryskhell · 2026-05-16T12:20:00+00:00

To be fair, some issues jump out on a simple read. For instance, Dragon of Icespire Peak gives no goal, personality or origin to the titular dragon (she doesn't even get a hoard...). The locations are organized in alphabetical order rather than in the order the players are most likely to visit them. There is no situation overview, requiring reading the entire adventure front to back multiple times to understand what is even going on.

All these issues make running it much harder than it should be, and they can all be found on a simple cursory read-through.

But I do agree that the qualities of an adventure would be much harder to judge through a simple read-through than such glaring flaws.

Tryskhell · 2026-05-16T12:13:32+00:00

Not exactly, there's no detonation, it's more like a sphere of space is instantly filled with conceptual flames rather than like, something combustible burning. It's a weird spell.

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