Category: 13th Age

5e/Pathfinder/13th Age: Guide to Mini-Bosses

There’s a short story by Janni Lee Simner called Practical Villany that I particularly love. It’s from the villain’s point of view. The opening line is “The first thing I want you to know is that I drowned those kittens for a reason.” It’s a dark comedy about a villain talking to his latest kidnapee about his rebellious daughter that turned hero, betraying the family business. In the story, the author talks about how evil is a business while heroes are just one person. That is where mini-bosses come in. Mini-bosses are akin to mid-level managers. The real question is why would someone in a fantasy RPG world need them.

No matter which level-based fantasy game you play, you get more powerful by level. You are obviously more powerful at level 2 than level 1 and even still more powerful at level 3 and so on. The same is true for your main enemy. They didn’t try to take over the world at level 1. They worked to amass enough wealth and influence and easily outclass the adventurers at the start of the campaign. So why are they employing people that can’t hold their own against a plucky group of low levels?

1) Your Big Bad Has a Source of Revenue and Power that Must be Maintained

Your big bad has a source of income that still needs to be maintained, and they are busy with taking over the city/country/worlds. So the actual job of generating that income has to be in the hands of some trusted aid to oversee the operation. Whether that operation is a kobold mining company digging up gold, orc hunters that sell skins for leather armor, or an ogre timber consortium, they have to perform operations far to trivial for the big bad to do. The problem comes in when they interact with the humanoid races. Do the kobolds breech into a dwarven mine or a gnome village? Do the orcs kill the cows of a small hamlet? Are the elves upset the trees are being felled? The people doing the work need direction and someone to pay them for their work, someone that represents the big bad to the workers. That is a mini-boss. Remember, any good business has lots of moving parts to it (different managers in charge of different workers at different locations all doing the same job, different departments doing different jobs, etc.). That is a lot of different mini-bosses at a number of different difficulty levels. In this case, the employees are minions.

2) Your Big Bad Doesn’t Have Every Skill or Ability

The person at the top simply can’t have every skill or talent possible in the whole world. CEOs hire accountants and lawyers to help them navigate those arenas. Your big bad trying to take over the city/country/world needs someone to advise them on the way to the crown and how to finance it. So your mini-bosses can be advisers to the big bad in their specialty field. Other possible advisers include a cleric of an influential church and the big bad isn’t a follower of the deity or doesn’t have any divine casting ability, a public relations bard to smooth over incidents like the kobolds invading the dwarven mines, and a spiritual advisory monk.

The important thing to remember with advisers is that they should fill two roles: the official one and an unofficial one. The official one is the job for which they are known. This is their day job, how this adviser is presented in the public. The unofficial one should be the real reason that person in particular was hired by the big bad. Does the financial advisory funnel money from the crown to the big bad? Does the cleric get people (more minions) to act against their interests in the name of the religion? Is the public relations bard in charge of spreading disinformation? All of these roles a big bad needs done and these make great mini-bosses.

3) Dirty Workers

Bad guys are not known for fighting fair. Once the adventurers have been identified as disrupting some small plans, they should have someone to deal with them. Assassination attempts have been done and the players will see that coming. Instead, trying having the big bad hire the adventurers for a job they are not qualified, like killing a monster that is more powerful than they can handle. Have the public relations bard hire them, apologizing for any previous incidents involving low-level managers, and praise them for bringing such bad actors in their organization to light. The job is something like clearing out a cave where some new miners will be going soon. The adventurers aren’t told there’s a dragon in there. The dragon will be warned and compensated for it’s trouble. Naturally the dragon will have his own minions to soften you up in your way there. The idea behind this is that if the adventurers never return, no one will miss them or possibly figure they left for another problem elsewhere. As an added bonus, the public relations bard can claim they had bad information and apologize for their near deaths. By doing this, you turn what would otherwise be a single encounter into a night’s game session and they might even believe the big bad isn’t so bad.

Every mini-boss need minions and we have some excellent ones in the Book of Beasts series, available now for Pathfinder, Fifth Edition, and 13th Age. Download them now.

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13th Age: A Rogue’s Dirty Tricks

A rogue would not be a rogue if they fought fair. Dirty tricks are their stock in trade. So today we are giving you a new power for rogues called Dirty Trick. It applies a condition to an enemy you hit, making them a less lethal opponent to you and the rest of your party. Be sure to check out the vicious strike power and the magical savant talent that we showed off already. If you like these, download 13 Rogue Powers and Talents for your 13th Age game today from the JBE Shop, DriveThruRPG, and the Open Gaming Store.

Dirty Trick (3rd Level Power)

Special: Opponents wise up to dirty tricks pretty quickly—you can only use this power on each enemy once during any battle. Additionally, If you have the swashbuckle talent, you can use dirty trick in place of an attack during a stunt.
Melee attack
At-Will
Target: One enemy
Attack: Charisma + Level vs. PD
Hit: WEAPON + Charisma damage, and the targeted enemy gains your choice of one of the following conditions until the end of your next turn: dazed, hampered, or vulnerable.
Miss: Damage equal to your level.
Adventurer Feat: Once per battle, you can perform a dirty trick to inflict the confused, stuck, or weakened condition.
Champion Feat: Once per day, you can perform a dirty trick to inflict the stunned condition.
Epic Feat: Once per day, you can perform a dirty trick to inflict the helpless condition.

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13th Age: Display Superior Guile and Awesome Trickery with Your Rogue

Always Keep A Knife In Your Boot And A Trick Up Your Sleeve
Gouge your foes’ eyes and bring the pain down on them! Get the drop on your enemies before they can reach your allies! Supplement your suave with a little spellcraft! Hurl knives with deadly accuracy! Rogues are the wily utility support that every party needs, moving with grace and panache and striking when no one expects it. Now you can go beyond the core book and expand your character’s unique suite of skills to complement any adventuring style.

13 Rogue Talents and Powers is the latest in our 13 Class Options series for the 13th Age Roleplaying Game. Inside this 10-page PDF, you will find:

  • 3 New Rogue Talents for making an arcane dabbler, a purveyor of illicit magical goods, or a knife-throwing expert
  • 3 New 1st Level Powers to bolster you against groups of monsters, halt an enemy in their tracks, or hurt a foe worse than they’ve hurt you when you’re staggered
  • 2 New 3rd Level Powers for escaping pesky restraints or finding an unfair advantage in a fight
  • 2 New 5th Level Powers that add a sly flourish to your strikes or enhance your dual wielding abilities
  • 2 New 7th Level Powers to execute a defensive plan or bring the pain late in the game
  • 1 New 9th Level Power for getting an ally out of any tight spot

Sneak, Steal, and Swashbuckle To Your Heart’s Content in the 13th Age.

Download 13 Rogue Talents and Powers today at JonBrazer.com, DriveThruRPG, and the Open Gaming Store.

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13th Age: The Vicious Rogue

Some rogues simply must win, even when it costs them their own health or possibly their life. These rogues hit harder when the situation is not going their way, not caring how much it hurts them. The idea of hitting your enemy, even if it hurts you is one of the ideas behind vicious strike, the new 1st level rogue power that we are showing off today. Be sure to also check out the new rogue talent magical savant that we showed off last week.

You can find this new rogue power and more in our latest release for the 13th Age Roleplaying Game: 13 Rogue Talents and Powers. Download it at the JBE Shop, DriveThruRPG, and the Open Gaming Store.

Vicious Strike

Special: Usable only when staggered
Melee attack
At-Will
Target: One enemy
Attack: Strength + Dexterity + Level vs. AC
Hit: WEAPON + Strength + Dexterity damage, and ongoing damage equal to the escalation die value; normal save (11+) ends. However, you also suffer damage equal to your Strength modifier + the escalation die value.
Miss: Damage equal to your level + the escalation die value. However, you also suffer damage equal to the escalation die value.
Adventurer Feat: The save to end the ongoing damage is now hard (16+).
Champion Feat: You may now use vicious strike when you are not staggered, but doing so doubles the escalation die value when calculating the damage you take.
Epic Feat: Double the escalation die value to all damage dealt to enemies by vicious strike (including miss damage). When you hit with a vicious strike, enemies nearby your target must make a normal save (11+) or suffer from fear until the end of your next turn.

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13th Age: The Talented Rogue

The best way to describe a stereotypical rogue is simply not possible. Rogues always have a wide assortment of tricks up their sleeves that they area easy to mistake for a fighter or a wizard. While it is true that they get themselves out of bad situations as quick as they get themselves into them, know the best routes of escape, are aware of which guards are not paying attention, and can tell you how many coins were in that merchant’s purse, the way they go about all this is unique to the individual rogue. That is as true in 13th Age as it is in any other fantasy roleplaying game, and our latest release for 13th Age helps rogues to find their own unique style.

13 Rogue Talents and Powers gives your rogue new ways to show some flare. The rogues at Jon Brazer Enterprises managed to steal this little tidbit and are sharing it with you letting you see what is inside this bag of goodies. To see what else is inside, be sure to come back to the JBE Blog next week as we share more.

Of course, what rogue can wait? Instead, download it now at the JBE Shop, DriveThruRPG, and the Open Gaming Store.

Magical Savant

Choose a number of wizard cantrips equal to the highest of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifier; you can cast them like a wizard who lacks the Cantrip Mastery talent.
Adventurer Feat: Choose one wizard spell of your level or lower. Regardless of the spell’s usual frequency of use, it is a daily power for you. When you cast this spell, it has an effective level equal to the current escalation die, up to a maximum of your own level.
Champion Feat: If you have momentum, your Sneak Attack feature works when you cast this spell on an enemy that would normally be subjected to it, even at range.
Epic Feat: You no longer need momentum in order for your Sneak Attack feature to work with your chosen spell. Additionally, your chosen spell becomes recharge 11+ after battle rather than a daily power.

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The Big Meeting

There have been quite a good many decisions that needed to be made concerning the direction of JBE for the next few months. Yesterday, I decided that we needed a company-wide meeting to resolve them. That happened this morning. Here are the results:

  1. Focus on Fifth Edition, Traveller, and 13th Age for the next few months. This is to clear out the backlog of stuff we wanted to publish last year but didn’t because official Pathfinder support is ending. We have plans to continue supporting these games after the backlog is complete. We discussed adventures for Traveller and 5e, ships and monsters for Traveller, subclasses and more for 5e, and a PHB2-like print book for 13th Age.
  2. No final decision on Pathfinder 2e support. We are waiting to see the final rules and license before making a determination on that front.
  3. Continued support of Pathfinder 1e. That is right, JBE will continue with PFRPG 1e. We do not have anything ready to go immediately so do not expect to see anything from us before summer, but we love this game and will continue to support it and its fans. How this will interact with possible PF2 support is yet to be determined.

We are really excited about all of this and hope that you are on board as well. Tell us your thoughts and what you want to see from us in the comments below.

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State of the Enterprise 2018

Hey everyone. It is that time of year again where I look back at the year coming to a close and forward to the year ahead. 2018 was a big year for the company and for the world at large. In many ways it was the year I expected even hoped for and many others it was not the year I expected at all.

Personal Life

Incase you hadn’t heard, I moved half way across the USA this year. I use to live in New Jersey and now I live in Missouri. My wife got a job that she has been working towards for some time now. We’re thrilled about this, but it has impacted my writing schedule.

What we hoped would happen but didn’t really expect was us buying a house. So in the past 4 months, we moved twice. Even right now, I’m still moving boxes that we never had the chance to unpack after the first move. So my writing schedule has been impacted again. If you want to know why we have not produced much since GenCon, that’s the primary reason (more on other reasons in a bit).

Pathfinder

Another wrench in the schedule is the announcement of Pathfinder Second Edition. I guessed this was coming a while back, but it still took me by surprise. We were just starting to get a solid stream of high level adventures under us when the announcement came. So we made our Pathfinder adventures a priority and we got almost all of them published before the release of the 2e playtest. I’m sad for the ones we cut from the schedule but it is entirely possible they will be seen in the future, either as Pathfinder 2e adventures, Fifth Edition adventures, possibly even 13th Age, or dare I say it Pathfinder 1e adventures.

As my own recent poll revealed, PF2e is not as popular as I (and many others) expected it to be. There still may be people playing PF1e for quite some time. We will keep monitoring the situation as things develop. Frankly, I don’t expect us to make a final decision on as to whether we are going to 2e or staying 1e (or even doing both) until we see the final rules and the compatible license. However, if you had asked me about it six months ago, I would have just assumed we’re going 2e and that is that. The fact that we’re considering other options should give you an indication of the situation.

Fifth Edition

The current push we are on is to make all of our Pathfinder adventures and other supplements available for 5e. We want to have just as much if diverse library of material for 5e as we do Pathfinder.

One thing we are doing with 5e we have not done in years with Pathfinder is get our books into distribution. Deadly Delves: Temple of Luminescence will be our first adventure making it’s way into game stores for this game. Shortly thereafter will follow Along Came a Spider. The latter was first released when 5e was still young, and our experience with the game was rather low (as was everyone’s). Since then we’ve leveled up our 5e game and we have plans for 5e supplements both print and PDF well into the new year. These include conversations of existing Pathfinder material as well as brand new supplements that are never seen before.

That was what a decent amount of my time has gone to as of late. When I said above that the move was the primary eater of my time, well working through the logistics to get this set up has another major time investment. It will be well worth it when all is ready to go.

Traveller

“Look for that in 2018.” That is what we said concerning several projects for Traveller in the State of the Enterprise 2017. So it is fair to say that things have not gone according to plan this year. We released our first single ships last month… and that is all we published this year for Traveller. Needless to say that was not the plan this time last year. We still have the last two parts of the Prelude to War adventure path. We have a number of monsters and vehicles that we want to turn into their own books. And we want to publish a number of small settings that you can integrate into the Foreven Worlds, elsewhere in the Third Imperium, or somewhere in a different setting. So we have our hands full for the year ahead.

13th Age


We continued our 13 Class Options series with 13 Wizard Cantrips and Spells and 13 Cleric Domains and Spells. The still not yet named 13 Rogue Options has fallen victim to the same time crunch we’ve described above from the moves and the Pathfinder schedule reschuffeling. Plus, we want to take the time to make each one that much more awesome. When we are satisfied with it, you’ll be the first to know.

After the “core four” classes, we plan to get to the others published. Let us know which you would like us to tackle sooner than others. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

2019 and Beyond

The next few months, JBE is focusing on 5e, Traveller, and hopefully some 13th Age as well because they received so little love last year. That will be our plan for the next four-to-six months. Beyond that, we have a number of ideas but nothing concrete. One thing is for sure, 2019 is going to see some big changes from us. We have all the printing logistics worked out, and I will be working on the company full time in the new year. This means we finally have both the means and opportunity to do things we have been dreaming about for a decade. I can’t say for sure yet which way we will be going, but expect big things from us this year.

By big things, I do mean sizable books or possibly our own system or our own setting. The last time we tried something like this was with Shadowsfall back in 2012 (almost 7 years ago!). Back then, we had the means (being in game stores then as well) but really lacked the opportunity to do it at the level we wanted. Having the experience from publishing so many more rules supplements and adventures since then, we are more prepared to embark on this dramatic step.

The road ahead is exciting, and we are ready for this adventure. We hope you will join us on our epic quest.

That pretty much wraps up our look back of the year and the look ahead. So from all of us, we hope you enjoy your time with family and friends this season, and we will see you in the new year.

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What is Your Favorite Kind of Fantasy Monsters to Fight?

Today, I thought I would make a nice fun poll to end the week. What is your favorite kind of fantasy monster to fight? No matter if you play Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, 13th Age, Swords and Wizardry or some other fantasy game that we don’t support, you can still tell us your thoughts.

So what team are you on? Team Fiends? Team Sparkle Vampires? Team Venus Fly Trap? Vote in our poll and share it with your friends. We would love to hear your thoughts.

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Holidays in Gaming

Are you using holidays in your game? If you were like me when starting out as a game master, no you’re not. Yet holidays mark various places on the calendar, help recognize important persons and groups in your setting’s history, and much more. They give your game life where it otherwise feels flat, like there’s nothing going on in the world besides what the players are doing.

In the United States there are 10 major holidays and a near infinite number of lesser holidays. To break them down the major ones into more generic terms that are easier to use in your game, they are (in calendar year order):

  1. Start of the calendar year
  2. Recognizing the birth of a civil rights leader
  3. Celebrating nation’s leaders
  4. Remembering soldiers that fell on the battlefield
  5. Marking the birth of our nation
  6. Recognizing the common laborer
  7. Remembering someone that discovered this continent
  8. Remembering living soldiers
  9. Harvest
  10. Holiday for the nation’s largest religion

So how can you use these in your game? Some of these are quite obvious and able to be used without exactly as is: harvest, remembering living and fallen soldiers, start of the calendar year, etc.

How about celebrating a civil rights leader? Well considering that the most discriminated against races (uh, ancestries) of the game are half-orcs or tieflings, how about a day where their contributions to the nation’s society are recognized. Or turn it on its head. Make it human-rights day because the elven rulers are keeping the humans from having a voice in their government. Is the day marked with celebrations or protests? Are the town’s guards brought out to prevent pick pocketing or riots?

The way you name a holiday says quite a bit about the leaders. If you call Labor Day Peasants Day that shows the rulers as looking down upon their subjects. Peasants Day would have a much different feel than Labor Day.

If you want to make you location anything but generic, come up with some quirky holidays. Something like Groundhog’s Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Teacher’s Day, or Secretary’s Day. Try using something like National Health Day, a day where everyone goes down to the river and washes all the filth and grime off their bodies, which is perfect after a long winter of being inside. Or how about Hug a Gnome Day, the one day a year where gnomes are willing to sell in human markets, and the mayor wants them to come back more often so they are trying to spread good feelings among he gnomes. For the brutish types, how about Woodcutter’s Day. This day before the start of winter, all manner of trees that are unfit for being made into buildings or furniture are cut into firewood and sold to the people to help them last the winter. Naturally there would be lots of beer and other pleasures sold at such events, which can be a good cause for the reasons for the players to come together in the first place.

An important thing to remember is that while we all take the weekend (or some regular set of days off, no matter where in the week it resides) for granted today, the Five-Day Work week did not begin as a concept in the US until 1908. Europe was no better. For proof, Dame Maggie Smith in her role as the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey once asked “What is a week end?” Before that, the only days off for the average person were on holidays. This is why the holidays we now consider minor were not so minor a hundred to a thousand years ago. Not overworking your people is important so holidays were frequent.

With Halloween coming soon, why not download the Deadly Delves: Along Came a Spider adventure for Fifth Edition at the JBE Shop. You can also find it for Pathfinder right here.

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