Hi there! This time, I’m talking about Druid and Necromancer! Two weird 13 True Ways classes that I did weird things to. Both are (in my opinion) way more interesting than their initial incarnations.

The Original Druid

The original druid is almost certainly the least functional class in 13th Age. It’s hard to summarize the ways in which it’s a mess, but in short: tons of spells, separated spell lists/progressions, no class features/default spell list but it used two-tier Talents. I liked the general thrust of each set of Talents - it really did its best to try to pull together the million different things Druids are associated with in fantasy games - but the end result was deeply incoherent and you could easily make a useless character.

The Remade Druid

Step 1 was redefining what core capabilities even are for Druids. Given that they’re kind of/sort of in the Divine mold, my instinct was to modify Cleric default abilities. So they, similarly, have two spells built in: Regeneration, borrowed from the Wild Healer talent from the original Druid, and Geomancy, inspired by the Terrain Caster talent from the original Druid. The first gives healing over time, the second does damage with a type and rider depending on your current terrain. Druid also has a few noncombat things built in: Augury gives a divination ability, and Naturalism lets you try to communicate with plants and animals. This gives it more of a fundamental “what can every Druid do” that the original lacked.

Step 2 was reconsidering Talents. I liked the approach of Talents defining what parts of Druidhood your character is into, just not the multiple-tier approach. So I went with a bunch of individual, standalone talents and a 3-4-5 talent progression. Of the original talents, I used all of them in some way. For almost all of them, they had a pretty 1:1 comparison. For Elemental Caster, though, I split it into four Talents because it was way too broad. (Also I added Plant Tamer because there wasn’t a plant one and why not?) Most of the Talents add some feature to Naturalism and let you use it for different things - for instance, the elemental ones allow manipulation of that element. This makes Druids feel pretty different in practice depending on what they picked.

You can see the final Druid here!

The Original Necromancer

The original was the 13 True Ways class I changed the least, because it was largely effective as-is. It had a few gimmicks, such as having true Summons and Wasting Away - having Constitution was a detriment, and having negative Constitution was a benefit.

The Remade Necromancer

Despite the fundamentals being mostly good (I had to adjust their base HP values to make Wasting Away work but that was fairly minor), I made some significant changes, the biggest one being the addition of Blasphemy.

The idea behind Blasphemy came from the original Necromancer’s Unholy Blast: you could reduce escalation to gain a better effect. Escalation is the representation of momentum, and the typical Necromancer in my mind is someone where you’re not sure which side they’re on. Blasphemy, in this sense, represents the fact that they’re going a little too far: they’re doing things that are upsetting, shocking, or heretical. When they go a little too far, it ruins the vibe - some of that forward momentum gets halted or reversed. So I leaned into that and made it a core class feature. Many Necromancies have Blaspheme X+ on them. This is a special kind of standard roll (like Saves, Sustains, etc): if you roll less than or equal to X, you either reduce escalation by 1 or lose a recovery. This isn’t for everyone, and as such there’s a way around it: any of them can take Redeemer to remove this from Summon spells and later reduce the damage dice of other spells to remove it from those. If you want to lean in, though, Lust for Power and Souldrinker allow you to.

As for their Necromancies, I kept Summon spells the way they were, unlike similar Companion/Summon spells in Ranger/Druid - they’re independent units you control at the end of your turn. This made them feel a little more distinct and expendable. Necromancers now have a little more in the way of support abilities too. Positive-Vitality Necromancer is now more of a thing in the way that it wasn’t for the original.

You can see the final Necromancer here!

Alchemist, the only class I wrote from nearly-nothing, is next! I’m also going to talk about why I’m not including Chaos Mage or Occultist. And that’ll wrap up classes.

Until next time!