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13th Age Encounter – Manifestations of Will


As we’ve mentioned on the podcast, Jon and I co-GM for each other. We spend a ton of time talking to each other about our respective games, spitballing ideas and proofreading the other GM’s session notes. This has been a huge help for me as a newbie GM especially where I struggle the most: building encounters. Luckily, not only is Jon  is great at designing encounters, but 13th Age is a fantastic system to learn how to make encounters interesting and challenging.

One of the encounters that’s worked out the best so far was a challenge set up by the Priestess icon in the game I run. In my game, the Priestess is more than a little unhinged; she’s less with the benevolent divine wisdom and more of a quietly an insane zealot. When my players approached her for help, she was pleasant and kind, offering them advice as well as tea and cookies. When they requested a specific magical item in her possession, she told them they needed to prove themselves true and faithful. This led to her locking them in a mirrored chamber, where their twisted and wrapped reflections stepped out of the mirrors to try their very best to murder the life out of the party.

I built a fight with evil, twisted versions of my players’ characters and Jon helped me expand the idea by designing a series of “Affirmations of Faith” that could be rolled for at the start of each round, allowing characters to manifest their wills to effect the mechanics and narrative of the combat. The fight went so well that Jon ended up building an evil version of his group and setting up his own version of the encounter.

trial of faith (1)The fights worked out so well because the manifestations made what could have been a very simple, swingy fight into a deceptively nuanced encounter that encouraged our players to use their imaginations and get creative. It went from a simple ‘we’ve gotta hit those guys!’ combat to something cinematic and epic that left a lasting impression on both groups.

The mechanic causing the manifestations can be skinned any number of ways. In my version of this fight, the PCs were affirming their faith in themselves to not become evil, in Jon’s game they were rolling to disbelieve that these evil versions of themselves were their true futures. The main thrust of the encounter should be that a successful manifestation roll effects the mechanics and the narrative. Get your players involved, they should narrate how their manifestations appear and what happens when they do. For example, an Incredible Manifestation that increases the escalation die by one could be described via the narrative as nature itself reclaiming the nightmarescape in which the the group has become trapped.

Manifestations of Will (aka Affirmations of Faith, Roll to Disbelieve):

If the escalation die is 1 or higher, players starting their turn make a WIS, INT or CHA check to attempt to manifest their will. Liberally apply any background that feels applicable. Depending on the roll, the players can choose one of the following benefits. Players can always choose from a lower tier.

Minor Manifestation 10+
  • Gain 10 temporary hit points.
  • Gain +2 to attack rolls this turn.
  • Save against one condition.
Major Manifestation 15+
  • Make one enemy dazed and stuck until the end of your next turn.
  • You gain an extra move action to spend this turn.
  • Spend a recovery.
Incredible Manifestation 20+
  • Increase the escalation die by 1.
  • You gain an extra standard action to spend this turn.
  • Make one enemy stunned until the end of your next turn.

GM Sidebar: We recommend making sure the above chart is visible to players at all times (try writing it on a whiteboard, hanging it from your GM screen or using a pop-up stand).

Next Week:

Creating evil versions of your party is one of the most fun parts of designing this encounter! Customize your monsters to represent favored aspects of your players’ characters –  for instance, the wizard in my game is a fledgling necromancer. His possible-future evil-self is the Necromantic Wizard, whose spells are DEATH CORRUPTED versions of the character’s current spells. Though I really recommend you design your own monsters for a truly memorable encounter, next week I’ll be posting some of the monsters Jon and I used as evil versions of our groups, as well as a few bonus classes just for Dorkadia.


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