Hi there! Here to talk about two more classes, Sorcerer and Bard. This’ll round out the original 13th Age core classes (I think).

The Original Sorcerer

13th Age Sorcerer has a few interesting things going on. Breath Weapon/Chain are types of spells, and class feature-wise the main thing that isn’t just a type of spell is Gather Power, which lets you waste an action this turn to double damage the next turn (which lets you stretch out dailies). Most of its talents tie back to the heritage idea. Ultimately, though, it’s a fairly standard casting class.

The Remade Sorcerer, version 1

One goal of this system was to get rid of the complicated caster/simple non-caster trope. This requires complicated non-casters and simple casters, and Sorcerer seemed like a good candidate for the latter.

I took the design pattern from Ranger/Paladin/Cleric/Rogue of “some active at-wills baked in” and ran with it. In addition to Gather Power (which now gave 2 Advantage instead of the previous bonus), each Sorcerer had two spells: Sorcerous Ray, a single-target attack, and Sorcerous Burst, an area attack, of which both had a spend 1 Focus ability. Their source of daily abilities was Talents: most of them presented a daily ability that allowed for an improvement of one of those two base spells. (I included a few Talents that suggest backgrounds, like Blood Ties and Arcane Mentor, but most are generic so you can imply your own heritage.)

The Remade Sorcerer, current version

This was mechanically balanced but basically every Sorcerer felt the same. So when I was redoing Paladin and Ranger, I redid Sorcerer in a similar way. You have two Manifestations at Adventurer Tier, +1 per Tier. Sorcerous Ray turned into Directed Fury and Sorcerous Burst turned into Outburst, and I added a few less direct ones (condition-adding Manifestations in addition to more support-focused Manifestations - Sorcerer can go a lot of different directions now).

I brought the Breath Weapon concept back as Resounding Manifestation. (It was a Talent in version 1, but that didn’t make much sense.) As a Daily ability, you can designate one Manifestation as Resounding, which means every turn afterwards you can make an 11+ save to repeat it (including with any Daily spend abilities, or as a quick action if it has none).

Each Talent still does what they do, but all except Arcane Mentor now grant a daily ability or extra Relationship die (and Arcane Mentor has a strong passive ability). So it’s got a reasonable complement of abilities, and Gather Power helps stretch each daily.

You can see it in its final form here!

The Original Bard

The original bard is probably one of the most powerful classes in original 13th Age. It’s got Battle Cries (which are at-will flexible-attack abilities), Songs, and Spells (and separate tracks for numbers of Battle Cries and Songs/Spells), and it can steal extra Spells from other classes. It’s honestly kind of a mess.

The Remade Bard, version 1

When remaking the Bard, I wanted to make it more distinct and its own thing. (Usually the original one would end up just being an offensive caster.) Of the three of those things, Spells are the least interesting, so they went away. I renamed Battle Cries to Flourishes, but they largely worked the same, and lumped them and Songs under Performances. (A few of the staples, like Song of Courage, were originally baked in but eventually I pulled them out and put them in the standard Performance pool.)

This ran into a major problem that the original also had: focusing on Flourishes is neither very good nor very interesting. So I remade Bard with that in mind.

The Remade Bard, current version

In the current version, all Flourishes are quick-action abilities with a Style rider. The base ability is what it is, but the Style rider kicks in in one of three cases: if it’s used with an ability that creates Flourishes (all bards get one, Stylish Strike, and can get others from Performances), if the Flourish is used as a standard action, or if the bard spends 1 Guile. This means that in most cases, the bard will be able to make an attack, use a Flourish, and either start/sustain a song or use another Flourish.

Performances got reconcepted. One of the major flaws I noticed is that there was a “correct” ratio of Flourishes to Songs because you want to maximize daily abilities while still having enough Flourishes. So I used a format where each Performance is a combination of one daily/recharge and one at-will ability.

This is the same tech I used for the Ranger rewrite, and I’ve used it for a few classes we haven’t talked about yet as well.

Most of the daily/recharge abilities are Bardsongs, but some are Flourishes; most of the at-will abilities are Flourishes, but some are Spells that are alternatives to Stylish Strike. This gives a little more flexibility for focusing on one or the other or using both.

You can see it in its final form here!

That’s all for now! Next up, the first two 13 True Ways classes I added: Commander and Monk.

Until next time!