Hi there! Today I'm going to talk about classes. Specifically the one that started it all: Fighter. I've always said you can judge One Of These by how good their Fighter is and I think mine's pretty good.

The Original

So 13th Age Fighter is one of my favorite classes in it! I was always happy to meet it halfway and figure out how to best make one when I was originally playing one. But I'm fully willing to admit that it misses the mark. I loved the concept - Talents as encounter powers/passives, Maneuvers as actives feels good. It's why I kept coming back when I played even when it didn't always pan out the way I wanted it to. I wanted to replicate that "feels-good" quality while picking up where it left off.

The Remake

So Fighter, much like in 13th Age, is always pretty defensive - high AC, high HP, more recoveries - and good at locking down enemies. Much like 13th Age, you can skew towards defense or a few kinds of offense, with Talents and Maneuvers keying off/enhanced by certain Stances.

The Talents and Maneuvers are similar to what they were originally, but each has a twist. Each Talent that was a per-encounter Talent instead pulls from a pool called Prowess. You have 3, 4, or 5 Prowess by default depending on what Tier you're in. This evens out to about the same usage, but gives you more flexibility to pick Talents that don't match your intended offensive or defensive role.

I liked how this point pool worked so much I stole it for every class going forward, with different uses and different names.

As for Maneuvers, I ditched the Flexible Attack concept. There are eight maneuvers, each of which is an At-Will ability. You get two for every Tier (+ two more if you take the Style Master talent). They each do something different and some are intended for specific playstyles.

I used to have limits on these based on the type of weapon, back in the stone ages when I was using actual weapon types instead of Stances - like you had to have a sword/axe to use Slash, etc - but I ditched those pretty quick because they were pointless and annoying.

Some of them are a basic attack but with an extra benefit. Others have more "utility", like being more defensive, allowing pop-offs, conditions, or multiple targets. In every case, they have an even/odd or 13+ condition which, if it doesn't proc, can be forced to proc with Prowess.

So that covers At-Will and Encounter. But part of what I wanted to do here was make every class capable of Daily abilities. One trap that a lot of (non-4E) games run into is only allowing some classes to control the flow/pace of an adventuring day and I didn't want that to happen.

So Fighter gets Showstopper. Every Talent has a Showstopper entry. When Showstopper is used, you pick one of those abilities and activate it.

Showstopper is a Recharge 13+ normally. But there's a catch: if you Crit, you can roll it in addition to at a quick rest. At higher tiers, if you drop enemies you get rerolls too. Also feats make it easier if you want to lean into that.

Showstopper example: Power Attack normally adds 1d4 or 1d6 x Level damage to an attack (so 1d8+1d4 x Level or 1d10+1d6 based on stance). With Showstopper, it makes both the base and extra dice d10s or d12s (so 2d10 or 2d12). Quite a difference! And keep in mind Advantage and Relationship Dice also make it easier to Crit, or succeed at Recharges - it'll keep coming back.

So that's the general sketch of Fighter. It's been tweaked a bit to make certain playstyles more or less viable but on the whole it's stayed consistent - I never felt like it needed an overhaul. Three of my original "test run" four classes stayed consistent. (One changed a lot.) Next class I wrote was Cleric, so that's what I'll cover next.

Until next time!