Hi there!

Last time, I wrapped up the original 13th Age core classes. Now I’ll be talking about my Commander and Monk refreshes. Both of them had seeds of the Power dynamic I took to other classes, but both were changed drastically!

The Original Commander

The original Commander is interesting. It’s very clearly 13th Age’s answer to Warlord, which is cool because Warlord was cool and it’s an idea worth exploring. It has command points, which operates similarly to the standard Power that I gave everything in the sense that it powers Commands. You can gain Command through Fight from the Front (attack, if it hits gain) or Weigh the Odds (no-roll gain). It shares that Commands list with Tactics, though, which are (mostly quick/interrupt action) Daily/Recharge abilities. So most of the Commanders I ever saw were actually multiclasses with classes that rarely used their quick action, like offense Paladins. Oops.

As a tangent, I’m not including multiclassing. It’s pretty janky in 13th Age and I don’t terribly like the concept in general, it cheapens classes. I feel like most multiclass concepts can be represented by more classes with a proper array of class options.

Its talents really weren’t much to speak of either, mostly being able to fight better or various little bonuses.

The Remade Commander, version 1

I figured this was a good candidate to draw everything into Talents and make it a 5-Talent class, where the Talents grant Commands. The first remake was just that. Command is a sub-Power like Momentum, only it’s only gained through Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front. Each Talent granted an ability that cost a certain number of Command or Prowess (an Order). Daily abilities were in Talent feats. Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front were similar to before. The big difference is that Commander would now have fighting capabilities (and to a lesser extent, defenses) similar to a Paladin by default. This means that you don’t have to spend Talents making the latter good. It wasn’t the best, though, and I realized that it really needed more to it. Cleric was already a simple support class, I didn’t yet have a more technical support class. So I went back to the drawing board and pulled from Druid (which we haven’t talked about yet. Soon).

The Remade Commander, current version

Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front received a little more backing: Fight from the Front gains 1 Command on any Natural 9+, hit/miss, while Weigh the Odds gains 2 Command, allows for Interrupt Orders, and gives a discount on the next Order.

The advantage of actually moving the ball forward on damage far outweighs getting more reliable Command, especially since Commanders have decent Volition and good damage, so Weigh the Odds needed something drastic.

Each Talent gives three abilities. One is the base “Spend X Command/Prowess” ability that the Talent is named after: Strike Now, Hit Harder, Press the Advantage, etc. It also has two other abilities that are expanded versions of the first. One kind is Daily, and these are always Standard action expansions on the theme. The last kind is unique to Commander: it involves spending all of your remaining Prowess and Command, and gains a rider if the amount you spend outstrips your typical maximum Prowess.

This kind of Order creates another distinction between Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front: Commanders who lean on the former will likely have that high amount of Prowess + Command to spend to gain the rider, while frontline commanders probably won’t.

It’s got a lot more going for it now, and easily stands toe to toe with other support classes while being its own thing.

You can see it in its final form here!

The Original Monk

Now, onto Monk. The original Monk had a lot going on. Multi-Ability Dependency, for one, which is obviously not a problem for 36th Way. But it also had a lot worth looking at. Ki by default could be used to raise or lower a natural result. Monk also defined JAB, PUNCH, and KICK as light/medium/heavy attacks, because 13th Age still cared about weapons in particular. It had Barbarian-like tiered talents, of which Adventurer/Champion all came with a Ki power - something you could spend 1 Ki to do. It also had Seven Deadly Secret talents, which were exclusive to use in a fight - I was thinking of these too for Paladin Oath Talents.

Monk also came with Forms, which made up the bulk of their abilities. Each Form had three attacks: an Opener, a Flow, and a Finishing Attack. They had increasing amounts of power in that order and could only be used in that order. This is a neat idea but it caused problems because most of their damage curve only makes sense every third turn. Also it restricts actions even more than a lot of at-will focused classes and makes “can’t move/act” style conditions even more crippling.

The Remade Monk

My first move on the redesign was to give them a custom Power - Ki, as before. This acts as kind of the combination of all three of Prowess, Guile, and Focus - it can be used to prevent attacks against any defense - and it can be used to alter a roll’s natural result. You can also spend a Standard to regain Ki.

This was because Monk has a LOT of Ki abilities and the basic ability needed to have that going on to compete. It also went well with Augmentations once I redesigned that system, but that was a happy accident. Whatever works though!

Next was flattening down a lot of the class’s hairier features. No more tiered talents (let Barbarian keep those) but Secret Talents still stayed (although, instead of making them fight-exclusive, I just made them exclusive, because that makes way more sense). I also added more Secret Talents: Drunken Master, which was inspired by a beta ability that got cut, and Forbidden Flame, inspired by an uninspiring “grab a spell” talent that Monk already had. And Temple Blade got an overhaul. (Most of the others aren’t too different.)

Forms were flattened down too. Each Form now grants an At-Will ability and either a Daily ability, a Ki ability, or a passive ability (similar to Bard Performances). This means that a Monk can swing their Daily ability pool up or down at their leisure. The non-Daily abilities are pretty good, all in all, so it’s a decent trade-off (unlike most of these kinds of things).

And that’s all of Monk! It’s got a lot of the same cool flavor but its abilities match way better with the reality of play.

You can see it in its final form here!

Next time! Druid and Necromancer! The last of the 13 True Ways classes I’m including. (I’ll have a brief diversion about the ones I’m not including at some point too). Then Alchemist, then classes are over!

Until next time!