Malkioni Sorcerer

[Zac]

Has anyone given any thought as to how to represent the Malkioni Sorcerer is 13th Age Glorantha?

[radmonger]

The standard 13A wizard class works reasonably well as a baseline.

Using  hand crossbows would probably require some kind of 'friend of the dwarves' feat. No multiclassing, and maybe no weapon use, for non-Hrestoli.

Note that by the time you hit something like 7th level, you probably count as a god learner, and the universe and/or Zzabur may start conspiring to destroy you. 

[AndrewTBP]

My campaign has a straight 13th Age Wizard, Darby, using the Esrolian cultural trait, with the biography:

Quote

 

Raised on the Castle Coast, although not as an aristocrat in one of the ancient castles. Sought his fortune as a teenager with Rikard the Tigerhearted and his mercenaries and adventurers, traveling east to attempt to conquer Heortland. 

Fought against the Lunars during the invasion of New Malkonwal. After that kingdom's fall he joined Sir Narib's company alongside other New Malkonwal veterans and served in Esrolia and later, after 1614, in Argrath's service as part of the Sartar Magical Union.

 

He's working just fine, and is about to hit 7th level after the next fight. No fancy weapons, just staff & dagger, which he has never used. His One Unique Thing is:

• The God Learners were right!

and his Backgrounds (all at 2) are:

• Castle Coast Scholar
• Man-of-All
• Malkonwal Adventurer
• Sartar Magical Union

[mfbrandi]

6 hours ago, AndrewTBP said:

The God Learners were right!

Unique? Whatever happened to Jeff’s “the Mythical Synthesis Movement has already done its work. In a sense, we are all God Learners now”?

Don’t get me wrong, I think a gameworld in which only one person took to the monomyth sounds more interesting than “received Glorantha” but it also occurs to me that your player may have had something different in mind than I do. Just curious/nosy. 😉

[Darby]

Hey there, I play Darby in Andrew's 13th Age game.

My character is a Castle Coast sorcerer who came east in his youth during Rikard's campaign and fought the Lunars for a while before becoming disillusioned with the whole thing. He has a fascination with the God Learners and wanders the world searching for their lost knowledge.

I've thought about changing him from a wizard to a wizard/fighter to better reflect the fact that he's a Man-of-All, but in the end I've never bothered. By 1635 he's probably middle aged, so likely couldn't be bothered to swing his mace when instead he could just sit on his aged warhorse and cast spells.

On the topic of what he believes, it's not so much about the monomyth. For him, the Hero Wars prove that the God Learners were right that the cosmic order is innately unstable, and he thinks that given time, the GL's might have been able to use logic and enlightenment to right the cosmic ship. In 13A: Glorantha, chaos has finally begun to destroy everything. The setting feels like a genuine apocalypse. So he thinks it wrong that these petty gods like Orlanth or the Red Goddess should be squabbling and throwing armies and empires against one another. Their energies should have been 'redirected' to defeat the real enemy, chaos.

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Darby

[Zac]

Part of the problem with the Wizard class is that, as @Darby mentions, Glorantha tosses things like Men-at-all at you to complicate things 🙂

It certainly works for a person that wants to focus on just being a Wizard but the setting is filled with characters and societies where that narrow focus isn't something that people do.

It is the best path to follow just as long as the player doesn't want to do something "silly"like learn to use a sword. 🙂

Thanks for the comments

[AndrewTBP]

Today I helped a new player create a Swordmage for my 13th Age Glorantha campaign. Based on his choice of Runes, Talents, Spells I've suggested he's Aeolian.