Why did they scrap Orcus?

[Reg06]

Darth Vader fights named characters on camera in every movie. Hell, he is beaten in spaceship fighter battles in the very first movie. He is not an unbeatable, unstatted character. So he's not an Icon. He has stats. He can go directly against the PCs and lose, and he does.

He pilots a TIE Advanced X-1 during the battle of Yavin and he loses. Therefore he has stats and is capable of losing and the Icon horseshit does not model him well.

-Username17

I don't even know if you're trying to be a troll, or if you're just missing the point.
An Icon is not defined by a lack of stats. Icons merely happen to lack stats. What happens the first time the PCs fight Darth Vader is he nearly kills the main protagonist, and then the DM steps in and says Han's lucky crit on the minion causes Vader's X-1 to go careening off into space, allowing the PCs to win. Did you notice at no point did the PCs directly effect Vader? Did you notice despite being taken out of the fight (and somehow surviving a collision in space) he was completely unharmed? He seems to be unstatted at that point.
Later on in the plot Luke's player starts leveling and it turns out the story is going to involve killing Vader, so the DM writes up some stats.

Vader is absolutely an Icon. He's a monolithic entity whose very name is the essence of dread. He walks with complete authority (even without having it), and acts with impunity. He's an unstoppable killing machine who is only defeated by the Chosen One.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Alternatively, we can use Legend of Korra, where most of the Aang Gang could be used as Icons in the new series.

Uh... every member of the original Team Avatar is dead, except Katara. And she is an old lady who doesn't participate in adventures or politics at all anymore because she is extremely retired. That is the opposite of an "Icon" - those characters existed, but for one reason or another now don't do anything to anyone.

-Username17

Wait, I thought Zuko was alive too.

[OgreBattle]

This seems like a good example of how the Icon system works


Sephiroth personally knows Cloud.
Cloud begins the game at low level
Story fleshes out their relationship as you go on
Cloud in the course of the game pursues Sephiroth, fights his 'minions'
The game's climax is Sephiroth and Cloud's 1 on 1 duel.

[FatR]

This seems like a good example of how the Icon system works


Sephiroth personally knows Cloud.
Cloud begins the game at low level
Story fleshes out their relationship as you go on
Cloud in the course of the game pursues Sephiroth, fights his 'minions'
The game's climax is Sephiroth and Cloud's 1 on 1 duel.

But Sephiroth doesn't care about Cloud in the slightest until Cloud get's his hands on a McGuffin critically important to him and only develops a personal enmity after Cloud actually manages to stop his master plan in the endgame.

[ModelCitizen]

This seems like a good example of how the Icon system works

Sephiroth personally knows Cloud.
Cloud begins the game at low level
Story fleshes out their relationship as you go on
Cloud in the course of the game pursues Sephiroth, fights his 'minions'
The game's climax is Sephiroth and Cloud's 1 on 1 duel.

You missed a step.

[Simon Rogers]

I'm not speaking for Rob, but yes, of course you can kill Icons in 13th Age. I imagine it would the climax of a campaign. Icons do not have "plot immunity" and are there to serve the campaign needs of the GM and players. An entire campaign based around taking down a villianous Icon would be epic - you could even run the optional 10 session up one per level to do this. If I am running a game and the PCs aren't the protagonists, I'd be doing it wrong. Your PCs relationships are a limited resource on which you can call.

"To be clear, our games almost always treat the icons as off-stage characters, and we usually bring them in directly only at epic level. If you, as GM, want to bring an icon to center stage, make sure that NPC doesn’t steal the spotlight from the player characters."

I'll publish an excerpt in the next Page XX to show how you can use Icons in your campaign.

[Username17]

An Icon is not defined by a lack of stats. Icons merely happen to lack stats.

Go fuck yourself.

If something has stats, it can be beaten. If something doesn't have stats, it cannot be beaten. If you see an NPC get beaten in a direct confrontation with the PCs, that means he fucking has stats.

Yes, A New Hope is not an RPG. It's a piece of fiction with an author where absolutely no events in it had any chance of not occurring and nothing had fixed dimensions until fans went over it later and tried to get some continuity into it. However, if you were to translate those events and characters to a role playing game, then events would be determined by die rolls and comparisons of stats rather than the girlish whims of George Lucas. And thus, any character who ever loses or even receives a single setback in a direct confrontation with the PCs has fucking stats, you fucking twat.

That being said, Icons of 13th Age differ in only two ways from the generic high level NPCs available in every campaign world ever:

• They care about the PCs individually from the start of the game.
  and
• They don't have stats.

Seriously, that's it. The Elf Queen could be replaced with Ellesime or Galadriel or Yolande and it wouldn't matter, except those characters don't give a shit about your character at level 1 and have stats.

This isn't a new model of NPCs, it's just a very insulting model of NPCs. Harlequin in Shadowrun is exactly the same. And it's very insulting. Some people like it, I very much don't. So stop being a twat spewing your twat apologetics about it. If you like characters like Harlequin, go right ahead and enjoy them to your heart's content. But stop trying to feed me your twat leakage about how it isn't fucked up in exactly the way I've said it was - because it fucking is. You twat.

-Username17

[Simon Rogers]

Hi, Frank,

You seem rather exercised by this issue, so as a GM and the publisher, I'll offer you a little feedback on our thoughts.

You say "If something has stats, it can be beaten. If something doesn't have stats, it cannot be beaten." Now, in the case of Trail of Cthulhu the nature of the background means exactly that. The mythos gods cannot be defeated by normal means, if it all, so we don't give them stats.

To be absolutely crystal clear, in 13th Age, the lack of stats does not mean that at all. Icons are NPCs, not gods. An epic campaign could feature the defeat of an icon. If an icon might appear in a scene, and there is a chance that PCs attack, you'll need stats.

So, perhaps it's remiss of us not to give you Icon stats in the core book, but that isn't because they have plot immunity or cannot be defeated. We'd like every campaign to have unique icons, and statting up your own icons, if that's the way you choose to go, is absolutely something you should do. Who knows, in later supplements we might even suggest stats for them. Personally, I wouldn't bother statting up the main campaign villain when the PCs are first level, myself. Motivations and minions, yes. I wouldn't stat up every important named NPC either until they get close. You are of course welcome to do it your own way.

Secondly you say "they care about the PCs individually." Well, that's certainly an option, but that's all it is. When characters are low level, it's unlikely that the Icons will relate to the PCs directly at all. That's the option I'd chose. As a GM, you'd get to decide whether they are presonal or not. I suggest you go with "not."

So, in short, it's your campaign. If you chose to make icons immune and insist on relationships being direct, then that would be your choice. I wouldn't recommend it for you, though. In short, when you tell the doctor "it hurts when I do this," the doctor's response in this case would be "don't do that."

Incidentally, which version of the 13th Age are you getting the idea of unkillable icons with obligatory personal relationships from?

[OgreBattle]

it really came

[Simon Rogers]

it really came

Power slide?

[Username17]

Incidentally, which version of the 13th Age are you getting the idea of unkillable icons with obligatory personal relationships from?

I'm getting that out of the playtest docs that have been released after the NDA expired. The ones where "The Diabolist hates you personally and periodically shows up and fucks with you because of her personal grudge against you personally, like she has been doing since before you were even a 1st level character" is right there front and center.

To be honest, I totally believe you that writing up a game that was being pissed on by 13 Harlequins (well, 15, because of "The Three") was not your intention. It's also relatively easily fixed. Bringing the Icons from "Unstatted" to "Unstatted Yet" would be fine. Just write "The Icons are between Levels X and Y, and make good antagonists for characters of level N and above" somewhere and be done with it. The thing where several of the sample characters have "Icon X totally cares about your character personally and your character only lives to see tomorrow because that Icon thinks it is hella funny" has to go.

I can't see what you guys are writing now, only what you guys wrote in the past. Because I'm not part of the playtest, so I only see stuff after a round of playtesting is over and people put it on google docs. And maybe you were being deliberately hyperbolic and overly gonzo with your "unique things" and Icon relationships for the playtest. But I can say without exaggeration or fear of contradiction: those were significantly too far over the top. Not just from the standpoint of the characters having Mary Sueitis to the point where I wanted to hurl - but actually to the point that the degree of plot intrusion of the characters' backgrounds is destructive to cooperative storytelling by having the destinies and vendettas of individual characters feature too large in the face of party goals.

---

That being said: I can tell that I'm not the intended audience for this work. This work is aimed at people who really liked 4th edition D&D, and I'm not one of those people. I thought 4th edition was terrible. And before you could ever get me on board with a game that was like 4th edition, you'd have to address a number of problems with it.

• First of all: Durations. It is not acceptable for there to be two or more functionally distinct amounts of time that an ability can last that are essentially "one round". Having abilities and effects that end at the beginning, middle, and end of your round based on subtleties of grammar in the description is not OK. That is a level of fiddliness that is a straight deal breaker. It really doesn't matter how many cool ideas you have: if your turn by turn accounting is that confusing I am not going to play.
  
  Secondly: Padded Sumo. I reckon you've heard this one before, but 4th edition D&D combats go on too long. Monsters get hundreds of hit points and players take forever to grind them down.
  
  Thirdly: Interesting Abilities. In 4th edition, people basically just do damage with or without small effect riders. They don't have abilities that do things. That's not OK.

Now of those, 13th Age clearly isn't coming through on any of them, except possibly the Padded Sumo issue. But even then, the Padded Sumo issue is only being addressed by the Escalation Die. And to my mind, that's basically admitting failure. The combats don't end in a reasonable amount of time, so the timer just shuffles them off the board on its own.

There are playtest abilities on the same character sheet that last one round but end at different parts of the turn. That is extremely not OK. And the Fighter's abilities are... all just accounting shuffling about how much damage gets dealt. The Fighter doesn't have any abilities.

So clearly what you have is not for me. I don't know who it is for, but it definitely isn't me.

-Username17

[Simon Rogers]

Incidentally, which version of the 13th Age are you getting the idea of unkillable icons with obligatory personal relationships from?

I'm getting that out of the playtest docs that have been released after the NDA expired. The ones where "The Diabolist hates you personally and periodically shows up and fucks with you because of her personal grudge against you personally, like she has been doing since before you were even a 1st level character" is right there front and center.

You mean the characters that the playtesters publicly playtested? They are characters made up by playtesters. They do like personal relationships with icons, and so did their GM. You do not have to - see my previous post. As an analogy, there is nothing in 3.5e to stop your character running round wearing only a skirt made of cucumbers. We shouldn't have to say that in the rules, though. It's up to the GM - it's a traditional game in that sense.

So clearly what you have is not for me. I don't know who it is for, but it definitely isn't me.
-Username17

I suspect you are right, but you are basing your dislike on second or third hand sources. "One Unique Thing" and Icon relationships are tools in the hands of the GM and players and need to be understood in that context. It's for them to decide the nature of the relationship. If you run Icons as Mary Sue characters, that would be your choice as a GM, not an issue with the game. I wouldn't recommend it, and nor do the rules. I suspect you just don't like what you might describe as story game elements, but that's fine.

But, rather than arguing matters of taste - de gustibus non est disputandum and all that - I'll leave it here.

[Username17]

Oh dear.

So your position is that the playtesters who posted what they claimed were sample characters were actually trolling you by posting low brow humor masquerading as character sheets? That sounds totally legit - and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that. Sounds like you have a fair amount of PR disaster to deal with and I will leave you to it. Because those character sheet pranks have gotten a fairly wide distribution, and more than one person has been instantly put off by them.

However, you are holding firm on having completely, pointlessly obtuse turn accounting, right? You pointedly did not disavow the "beginning of your turn/end of your turn/during your turn" duration expiration deal. And that's still a deal breaker for a lot of people. It's seriously one of the worst things about 4e, and unlike many of its other problems there is actually no structural impediment to removing it. You could just standardize durations and that problem would disappear instantly.

-Username17

[Korgan0]

No. I might not like the lethality of Shadowrun because I don't like running games in which those mechanics because it involves telling stories that I don't like telling. That's one thing. On the other hand, having overlapping durations, Padded Sumo, and a lack of interesting abilities for the Fighter have nothing to do with preference; they are bad design practices, and are bad irrespective of whether or not you like the style of play that 13th Age is trying to create.

[FatR]

It is not only intricacies turn accounting. My interest took severe blow the instant I saw a wide variety of 1-turn small effects. Sure, when in 3.X players suddenly decided to form Voltron and cast so many buffs that their charsheets now look completely different, it slowed the game down and caused frequent math mistakes when someone forgot that he had one effect or another. And long-ass pre-adventure planning sessions about the best ways to form Voltron slowed the game even further. But having to manage even half as many separate effects on turn-by-turn basis is alot worse. I'm not going to do that.

[Mask_De_H]

Oh dear.

So your position is that the playtesters who posted what they claimed were sample characters were actually trolling you by posting low brow humor masquerading as character sheets? That sounds totally legit - and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that. Sounds like you have a fair amount of PR disaster to deal with and I will leave you to it. Because those character sheet pranks have gotten a fairly wide distribution, and more than one person has been instantly put off by them.

However, you are holding firm on having completely, pointlessly obtuse turn accounting, right? You pointedly did not disavow the "beginning of your turn/end of your turn/during your turn" duration expiration deal. And that's still a deal breaker for a lot of people. It's seriously one of the worst things about 4e, and unlike many of its other problems there is actually no structural impediment to removing it. You could just standardize durations and that problem would disappear instantly.

-Username17

They weren't trolling, it was just dudes from Something Awful being dudes from Something Awful. TURBODRACULA was probably a troll, though.

Standardized durations are important and that did bug me about playing a Cleric.

[Kele The Bird]

TURBODRACULA was a mean mean. He was building his character to see if he could make a rogue as a vampiric style thing, and was happy with his results! The 13th age chargen is pretty robust that way. He was as serious a character as anyone else, a robot that stalked the nights drinking blood.

Later he killed my character.

I played the bird elf!

None of us were trolling. It's mean to say so! We were all having a good time, although since we were playtest characters we turned our icon relationships all the way up to 11. Other people did similar things in their playtests. I know one guy who did indeed kill the Crusader, one of the meaner icons, using the rules in the playtest rtf. He got a reply from the people running the playtest! Rob or something. Lotta people tried a lotta things! Personally, my Icons would be policical leaders like Obama! Important and influential without being hardened killers themselves! But that is a question that can only be answered by individual DMs! It is their game after all, and the DM has to decide what icons mean in their game instead of reading someone else and the draft of the playtest document used for the playtest (and the current one) sure says that a lot. It must think people are bad at reading and will get into arguments about what role icons play in every setting at the same time! Or that they will look at a character sheet and say that sheet is the same thing as the rules for play.

I don't understand why you're so angry with start of turn/end of turn effects! Personally I think they are better than a flat number of rounds, because then everyone argues about if it ends at the start, or the end, or in the middle. Still they are monkeying around with the cleric powers still, and they've changed some of the ones that showed up in the playtest so maybe your issues have been addressed! The wonders of playtesting, am I right!

[DSMatticus]

Okay, I'll try to chime in here with a little less of the heated discussion of the past seven pages.

Durations
The 13th age duration system is terrible. There's really no debate here. The utility you add to the game by having abilities which end on the start of your enemy's turn, end of your enemy's turn, start of your next turn, end of your next turn, or whenever else, is just not a lot. It's fairly worthless. But what you have done is created a bunch of different 'maintenance' phases that people have to remember, and then they have to remember which of their many abilities expire in which. It's really, really bad. That is a big priority on streamlining combat. This is a mistake 4e made that can be learned from, and there's no excuse to repeat it with 4e right over there, having clunky terrible combat accounting to point and laugh at.

Pick one. One. Combat will go much faster and be much easier on your players. There should be only one maintenance phase of that sort.

Icons
If the Lich King is supposed to be epic level, and you are the one prophesied to kill him, and that prophecy is credible, you are dead. Even if the lich king doesn't do it himself, the lich king has lackeys who have lackeys who have lackeys who can blink and kill you. It's on the to-do list and it gets done. This is a leveled game. If you aren't big enough to make the lich king angry and survive, then you don't, end of story.

Starting at level 1 as a confirmed and recognized chosen one is not appropriate. It immediately breaks any verisimilitude your setting could possibly have, exactly as if you wrote down "once stuck Hextor's hand in a bowl of warm water at a divine slumber party" and expected that to fly with Hextor shaking his fist angrily and impotently at you.

Much more appropriate is writing down on your character sheet "one of the many wanted level 1 nobodies of the Lich King's organizations, and therefore is occasionally recognized by local ghoul posses and attacked. Will eventually be a name on the Lich King's list of people who have caused him problems, and may eventually reach the top of it when it is level appropriate for him to do so."

The interest a high-level character has in you has to be proportional to your power relative to that character, or else your story is "I was doing stuff, then I died like a mook." Going back to Final Fantasy VII is a perfect example of this. Cloud doesn't have "Sephiroth wants me dead" on his character sheet. To Sephiroth, he's just that rookie he knew before he went destroy-the-world who keeps showing up in coincidental places and not really bothering him at all until the absolute end.

Statlessness
I don't know the actual rules here, but in general having statless antagonists is bad. Explicitly saying that certain antagonists should not be statted up in the rules is worse. And yes, if the rules say "do not stat up icons" and statless icons are okay because you can just stat them up that is the oberoni fallacy!

More appropriate would be rules for determining the specific class and level of icons, and then letting the DM stat them up as they become challenges. So the Lich King is a level 18 necromancer or whatever who doesn't have stats when you're a level 1 nobody, and as you hit level 15-16 and show on the Lich King's personal radar the DM stats him up.

[Reg06]

Again, you are only the Chosen One if you want to be. Absolutely *nothing*, not one damnable thing, in the rule book says a PC must be the Chosen One. If you think it's dumb, don't play a Chosen One. It's not a part of the game, but people who like that idea will go ahead and add it anyways.

[fectin]

Stuff

The thing is, you're basically railing against a strawman here. Statless NPCs are bad, sure. It really doesn't matter though, because non of the playtest stuff we've seen is primary source, and everyone who has seen it says that the Icons just haven't been statted yet (which is different from statless), are eminently killable, and that the book proper encourages you to interact with their organizations instead of directly with them.

As to "is destined to kill the lich king," that's only even a problem if the lich king knows about it and cares. Prophecies are seriously a dime a dozen, if nothing else. You're essentially complaining that people can put ridiculous things in their backstory, which is true in every RPG ever. Every complaint about "I once pantsed the lich king" works in 13th age applies equally well to 3.5.

The duration thing seems annoying to me too, but so did all of 4E. Even so, "Here are the changes you must make to appease me, but I won't buy your product anyway" isn't exactly a persuasive argument.

[violence in the media]

If someone in my party is playing a Chosen One, can I get a reward for turning them in to the Icon that wants them dead?

What happens if I kill someone's patron Icon (for whatever reason)?

[DSMatticus]

Again, you are only the Chosen One if you want to be. Absolutely *nothing*, not one damnable thing, in the rule book says a PC must be the Chosen One. If you think it's dumb, don't play a Chosen One. It's not a part of the game, but people who like that idea will go ahead and add it anyways.

That's not an answer to the problem. You can't fucking say, "it's okay because it's optional." I'm not trying to be dickish about it, but that's not a solution and your insistence that it is is just not very well thought out.

No one has to play a wizard in 3.5, but wizards are still broken and should be changed.

No one has to play a two-weapon fighting enchanter/smither in Skyrim, but it's broken and should be changed.

These are flaws in the rules that they allow you to do these things, and when people choose to do these things they damage the game. The fact that when people choose not to use the rules that damage the game, the game does not end up damaged does not salvage those rules. It is actually how you would empirically prove that they are in fact shitty. And that is basically the case; anytime you catch yourself saying "the rules are okay because you don't have to use them," you haven't defended the rules at all. You have admitted that they have problems.

As to "is destined to kill the lich king," that's only even a problem if the lich king knows about it and cares. Prophecies are seriously a dime a dozen, if nothing else.

Dude, read.

If the Lich King is supposed to be epic level, and you are the one prophesied to kill him, and that prophecy is credible (emphasis added), you are dead.
...
Starting at level 1 as a confirmed and recognized (emphasis present in original!) chosen one is not appropriate.

And the same goes for your first paragraph. I made my assumptions very clear. If the actual 13th age playtest rules don't fulfill my assumptions, then my criticisms do not apply to them. This is what the word "if" means, and it's why my post contains the word "if" at key places to denote its conditional relevance to those clauses being fulfilled, amongst other things.

But also; of the character sheets originally linked here, some of them do fulfill my assumptions and my complaints against them are relevant. So if those characters are valid by the playtest, then my complaints are not only valid from their assumptions, but relevant to 13th age.

The duration thing seems annoying to me too, but so did all of 4E. Even so, "Here are the changes you must make to appease me, but I won't buy your product anyway" isn't exactly a persuasive argument.

I probably won't end up buying it either way. I'm not making this argument for the sake of personal gain; I am saying it because it will make a better game and it is something they should just do. People can't keep track of four different breakpoints for when different effects ends. If you want smooth combat, you just don't do that. And smooth combat is something I think we can agree has universal appeal.

It's pretty much the least contentious thing being discussed in this thread.

[erik]

I don't understand why you're so angry with start of turn/end of turn effects!

Sooo... it sounds like some playtesters are focusing more on upon fluff rather than mechanics. Inevitable I suppose. I hope that at least some of them are intentionally testing mechanical boundaries rather than fluff boundaries.

Sounds like you have a fair amount of PR disaster to deal with and I will leave you to it. Because those character sheet pranks have gotten a fairly wide distribution, and more than one person has been instantly put off by them.

You pointedly did not disavow ...

I dunno, I have since been calmed after being immediately put off. I think potential disaster is more apt. *shrug*

I certainly don't fault him for not disavowing mechanics because once you start doing so then people can keep tugging saying "you disavowed that, but not this, AHA!" and that way leads to madness. Here's hoping that whatever unsolicited game advice that is solid will help their endeavor, or that their work is more promising than those sample characters indicated.

[Reg06]

You can't fucking say, "it's okay because it's optional." I'm not trying to be dickish about it, but that's not a solution and your insistence that it is is just not very well thought out.

These are flaws in the rules that they allow you to do these things, and when people choose to do these things they damage the game. The fact that when people choose not to use the rules that damage the game, the game does not end up damaged does not salvage those rules. It is actually how you would empirically prove that they are in fact shitty. And that is basically the case; anytime you catch yourself saying "the rules are okay because you don't have to use them," you haven't defended the rules at all. You have admitted that they have problems.

You're making up arguments. At no point have I defended the rules, or the rightness of the Icon system. I have only ever attempted to clarify misunderstandings.
Being the Chosen One is not a rule of 13th Age. It's not even an optional rule. It's a story element than the DM has to allow, just like any other edition of D&D. Stop making up my argument, and stop misreading posts about the game. There are, what, 4 people who have posted in this thread who have actually read the text? 6 pages of bullshit based on fan made characters and people losing their shit over things the game doesn't support.

For the record, this is not my favorite RPG. It's not even my favorite version of D&D. I'm not concerned with defending the mechanics of the game (because the playtest versions I've seen did have issues), but I am concerned with correcting misconceptions.

[Kele The Bird]

I don't understand why you're so angry with start of turn/end of turn effects!

Sooo... it sounds like some playtesters are focusing more on upon fluff rather than mechanics. Inevitable I suppose. I hope that at least some of them are intentionally testing mechanical boundaries rather than fluff boundaries.

How unfriendly! I don't understand why having clearly delineated effects that end at specific points is bad, but that doesn't mean I'm uninterested in the mechanics! I'm sorry having different things work differently is so hard for you. Maybe you would like something simpler!

It wasn't all hugs, though. For example, the Bird Ranger Elf Bird (me!) had so few powers because having an animal companion (and violating conservation of actions) is a tremendously powerful feature that costs as much as two normal features--a little extra damage, nearly doubling the amount of damage he soaked up, and access to the top shelf is huge. But combined with a fairly passive third ability, twin strike (which also violates action economy!) and often there just wasn't much for the Ranger to do.

Also I had 60 ongoing damage a round once. That's a lot of damage! I suspect that is not, "working as intended," as they say! It is pretty funny because the rules had a smug little note how, unlike OTHER d20 games, ongoing damage could stack freely without breaking the system. Ha ha wrong! I hope they fix that before release.

The 13th age duration system is terrible. There's really no debate here. The utility you add to the game by having abilities which end on the start of your enemy's turn, end of your enemy's turn, start of your next turn, end of your next turn, or whenever else, is just not a lot. It's fairly worthless. But what you have done is created a bunch of different 'maintenance' phases that people have to remember, and then they have to remember which of their many abilities expire in which. It's really, really bad. That is a big priority on streamlining combat. This is a mistake 4e made that can be learned from, and there's no excuse to repeat it with 4e right over there, having clunky terrible combat accounting to point and laugh at.

Anyway I am confused why powers ending at start or end of turn is so hard. Do people really find that confusing? It says right there in the power what it does! 4e had more powers and more reaction abilities and more keywords, 13th age doesn't even have a grid, so they're not very similar at all. I mean, they both use d20s, but everything else is pretty different! I don't think anyone got confused as to when their powers ended, even the people who never saw the rules and were just playing off of their sheet!