Terrific 13th Age Character: Unique Trait

Step 1: Choose a Race
Step 2: Choose a Class
Step 3: Generate Ability Scores
Step 4: Fill in Combat Stats
Step 5: Choose a Unique Trait
Step 6: Icon Relationships

I know you’re special. So you should have a special character! How you do that is by giving your hero something unique that allows them to stand apart from other heroes. This could be something as innocuous as my neck is unusually long all the way to an exceptional deed like being the only person who has been able to beat the Archmage in a game of chess.

The goal here is not to create a superpower for yourself, but rather to hint at a story hook that the game master (GM) can use to build the world, create a story, or connect you to the world. 13th Age aims for collaborative storytelling so this is your chance to help build the world out more!

Get creative! If you can’t think of anything, maybe ask the GM to either wait and see what develops or if they have any suggestions. Maybe you’ll get talking and figure out the perfect thing.

 

Terrific 13th Age Character: Combat Stats

Step 1: Choose a Race
Step 2: Choose a Class
Step 3: Generate Ability Scores
Step 4: Fill in Combat Stats
Step 5: Choose a Unique Trait
Step 6: Icon Relationships

Depending on your game master’s (GM’s) play style, the combat statistics could be the most important part of your character sheet. Alternatively, they could also be the least important statistics on your character sheet. To completely fill out your character sheet, you’ll need to know a little bit about how it works.

Initiative

Your initiative determines you turn in a round. The highest initiative goes first. Your initiative modifier is the sum of your Dexterity modifier + your level. This is added to a twenty-sided die roll (d20) and compared to all participants in a list.

Attack Bonus

Whenever you make an attack, you roll a d20 add the relevant ability bonus per your class and your level (+ magic bonus, if any). This is compared against the target’s defence. If the number meets or beats the defence, the attack hits! The type of attack determines what happens on a hit or a miss. The most common of these is damage.

Damage

Damage is a number that is subtracted from the target’s hit points (HP). Even if you make multiple attacks, you still only roll damage once. At higher levels, you can double (5th level) and triple (8th level) your ability score modifier before adding it to the weapon.

It’s important to note that negative modifiers are also doubled.

Spells have a specific amount of damage and weapon attacks work differently.

Weapon Damage

Weapon damage does 1 die of damage per character level plus the ability modifier (notated as WEAPON + [Ability])

Other Types of Damage

Other types of damage include:

• Acid
• Cold
• Fire
• Force
• Holy
• Lightning
• Negative energy
• Poison
• Psychic
• Thunder (sonic energy)

Defences

There are three types of defences you’ll need to know: Armour Class (AC), Physical Defence (PD), and Mental Defence (MD). Depending on the type of attack, it will say how which defence is used.3

Armour Class (AC) is protection from weapon attacks. To calculate, it is the middle value among Constitution, Dexterity, and Wisdom.

Physical Defence (PD) is protection from physical attacks. It is equal to the middle value among Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity (the physical statistics).

Mental Defence (MD) is protection from mental attacks. It is equal to the middle value among Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma (the mental statistics).

Speed

How fast you move is important to imagine whom is closer to whom and how fast they can close the distance. Speed is determined by either common sense or stats and skills checks.