Foundry 13th Age System Update 1.25.0

Update 2023-03-07:

Ellen Abolt from Pelgrane Press released a blog post announcing the official partnership with the developers of the community Foundry VTT system!

Update 1.25.0 for the Foundry 13th Age system was just released, fresh out of the Archmage’s spell forges!

Among the changes in this huge update are better Resources and automation options for custom resources and powers, more support for embedded macros, token improvements, more configurable sheets and other UI features, further work on the 2e integration, improved Active Effects, localization support and even more stability, thanks to dozens of fixes!

Read a summary of the most important changes below, head to Foundry for the update (remember to always make backups before updating your system!)—or read the full changelog here if you care about all the arcane details.

But First: An Official Announcement

Before getting into the exciting improvements, we’re proud to announce that as of this update, the community developed Toolkit13 system is becoming the official system for 13th Age. You can expect more news on this soon!

For now, this is what system developer @Asacolips had to say:

The system is — and always will be — freely available and open source under the MIT license. We’re still going to drive the development of the system as a community effort where we strive to make the best system to run your 13th Age game in Foundry VTT, but now we’ll have the opportunity to improve the system officially with assistance from Pelgrane Press. We also have more coming down the pipe related to this, so stay tuned!

Now, let’s dig into the update…

Terrain Type Display

This one is for you, Terrain Caster druids! Scenes can now have terrain types, which get shown in a nifty new display next to the Escalation Die if enabled.

Koru Behemoth and Ruins as an example. Those ruins are probably the behemoth's fault.

Improved Tokens: Temporary HP Bars, Oh My!

Tokens now display things like temporary HP correctly on their bars. This was ~~yoinked~~ taken with love from the 5E system.

A default token showing off the new temporary HP health bar.

Automation: Resources and Embedded Macros

Resources

Resources (like Ki, Momentum but also custom created ones) were reworked and are now more powerful:

Powers can automatically manipulate resources with a new syntax (see this Gitlab MR for details) to increase, decrease, set or unset them.
They support handling multiple (comma-separated) resources in the resource field.
They support inline rolls in the resource field.
They support recoveries as a resource.
They support the new Combat Rhythm resource (for 2e).
System powers were updated to reflect these (use them for inspiration!), existing legacy powers should have their Cost field migrated automatically.

Note that the former Cost field for referencing resources in powers is now named Resources.

Embedded Macros

In step with the above changes around better automation, the recently added support for embedded macros got even further improved:

Embedded Macros are now supported for traits, equipment (magic items) and nastier specials.
Embedded Macros can now alter most outcomes from item usage.
New system-provided embedded macros were added (like for Whirlwind) and issues with existing ones fixed.

Improved Night Mode

This is a small (but nice!) one. Night Mode (dark mode) is now a per-client system setting, so it needs to be set in Foundry’s settings and is global for all sheets. Previously, it was a per-sheet setting, meaning you’d need to manually enable it for each sheet. (Fine for a player, but fun if you got lots of summons or are a GM, and need to enable it for each monster!)

We also improved Night Mode styling a bit and added it in a few previously missed places.

Player Sheets

Tooltips: Rules and Tips at Your Fingertips

The player sheet now has optional tooltips you can turn on in the system settings, containing relevant SRD rules, explanations and tips for each sheet element. These also include Foundry-specific hints where appriopriate (for example, explaining what is automatically handled by the Quick Rest button, or how multiclassing works with the class name input).

We anticipate these will likely be more useful for new players when first learning the system or creating a character, as they take up quite a bit of screen space. Or maybe for GMs, who only look at PC sheets for reference anyway, and having the relevant rules referenced may be useful! For this reason, these are a per-client setting and off by default.

Kin tooltip for 2e. Helpful, right? This is one of the shorter ones though. Please don't look at the tooltips for Death Saves or HP.

Customize and Hide Parts of the Sheets You Don’t Use

The sheet settings now allow you to hide parts of the sheet. Your group doesn’t care to count different coins, uses another currency system or none at all? No problem, check the option and the currency part of the inventory is hidden! Don’t use Incremental Advances or One Unique Things? (Heretic!) Tick the setting and they vanish from the sheet, no longer taking up that space.

Also comes with an option to hide empty power sections in the Powers tab. So if the character doesn’t have any Flexible Attacks, that section is hidden. This one is probably worth considering for everyone.

Screenshot showing off the new sheet settings.

Lock Sheet Settings and Import Powers

As you may have noticed in the image above, you can now hide the Import Powers button sheet settings tab for players. Whether you’ve got new and inexperienced (or young!) players, ones that tend to fiddle and break stuff, or play with people you just don’t know that well or for whatever other reason: You can now lock sheets down a bit. Use this responsibly, trusting players and granting them freedom over their sheets is usually a good idea, there is a reason these new settings are off by default!

More Player Sheet Improvements and Fixes

The Roll Mode selection in sheet roll dialogs (like for Skill Checks) now actually works (and defaults to whichever roll mode is selected in the box above chat).
If you remove all icons or backgrounds from a sheet, that whole section now gets hidden, instead of the title remaining behind like a weirdo.
Small improvements to colors, gradients, contrast and styling hopefully mean a more pleasant experience playing and using these sheets.
Sheets no longer break when set to invalid levels; that’s now correctly clamped to 1-10.

NPC Sheets

NPC sheets got a bit of love too:

The order of HP and Defenses on NPC sheets now matches Player sheets for consistency. Sorry if it takes you a bit to get used to!
All items are now displayed on NPC sheets, regardless of type, so you can now see all the pieces of loot you dropped on NPC actors by accident. Which means you can also use this to track related equipment and loot on NPCs now, without them ending up ~~in the hands of the Diabolist~~ in the invisible ether.
As mentioned, Night Mode is now a global per-client setting, so you can now feasibly use that with NPCs.

Localization and Translation Support

Everything besides the compendiums and Import Power menu is now fully translation-aware and ready for localization. The interface, the PC, NPC, effect and item sheets, all the roll dialogs, even the trigger parsing! This means that for the first time, it’s now possible to translate the full system and play in whatever language you want. A full german translation is in the works and should release soon after this release, and other community members are working on further translations!

Translation support for the SRD compendiums and the Import Powers menu is slated for the next major release.

Some Other Goodies

Work on 2e support continues, quite a few small changes made it in for that!
Active Effects got a few improvements and fixes, supporting descriptions, Crit Range modifiers and bonuses and some other bits and bobs now.
The chat roll context menu has a shiny new Apply as Half Healing option.
That same context menu also got its styling fixed and has proper hover effects. And roll results look a tiny bit nicer in chat as well!
The system now correctly waits for 3D dice rolls (if enabled) to finish before updating any sheet UI and spoiling the results.
Players are now correctly set to Unconscious at 0 HP, instead of Dead. This also confers the Helpless penalties to them, as it should.
Death Saves and Last Gasp Saves got a few fixes.
The Show Players button for Item sheets now works correctly.
Text trigger evaluation was improved and trigger detection should now behave more consistently.
Sequencer support now handles a few targeting edge cases correctly.
Most chat card title images/icons are now hidden if empty. No more Mystery Man! Or at least, less Mystery Man!
Trying to roll initiative without an encounter in the Combat Tracker now results in a helpful message instead of silently doing nothing (and laughing at you).
A few useful things were moved around and made accessible for modules and macros.

Enjoy—See You Next Update!

We hope you enjoy this new update and all the work that went into it, brought to you by @Asacolips, @cswendrowski, @LegoFed3, @manoelmozzer and @mhilbrunner!

As mentioned, the changelog lists the full details of the update. Let’s hope it becomes one for the Ages! Remember to backup your game before updating the system and let us know if you run into any issues or bugs—either on the 13th Age Community Discord or by opening an issue on Gitlab.

With the system becoming official, even more exciting times lie ahead.

Enjoy!

– Max, sentient construct of the 13 Vaults. (…and the rest of the team!)

Continue the discussion on GitHub!

GitHub Discussions: https://github.com/13vaults/13vaults.com/discussions/
Mastodon: @13vaults@dice.camp
The 13th Age Community Discord
Email: admin@13vaults.com