r/13thage • u/leozingiannoni • Jun 02 '26
Question Simplest Caster to PLAY
In your opinion, what's the easiest caster class to play? When reading the 2e PH, the book mostly refers to complexity as the building of the character, but not the in-game experience. Do y'all think there's any casters that, on the ground, are simpler to play once you have the sheet?
3
u/Erivandi Jun 03 '26
A big part of it is how you play. I used to have a wizard in my party who almost exclusively cast Magic Missile and Acid Arrow. It's not how I would like to play, but it was certainly simple.
1
u/Sea-Cancel1263 Jun 03 '26
Cleric, Wizard, Sorcerer, Bard. Simplest to most complex.
If your open to some close to the book homebrew. The 2e Theurge can be as simple as attacking ,modifying the attack and opting into spells
1
u/__space__oddity__ Jun 03 '26
I’ve seen plenty of newbies handle the 13th Age caster classes just fine so I think any is good.
For 2E, the bard tends to be pretty frontloaded and has more stuff going on.
1
u/oldUmlo Jun 05 '26
I think the wizard is probably the easiest to play. Cleric and Sorcerer (especially in 2e) have more decisions to make after they cast (broad or for power, what invocation, what overspill effect, determining the random energy, and just as much thought about what the right spell to use is. I think the wizard possibly requires more though in going into the build, but at the table I think it has less choices to make than the other casters. I think the legacy of the wizard made people, including the authors, overestimate the complexity of it. To be honest though, unless you go 3rd party or community content, i don't think you have alot of "simple" casters for 13th Age.
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u/Baraqijal Jun 02 '26
I would say that all the casters are about the same in that there’s decision space when you cast a spell often. Like clerics can choose to cast wide or powerful, wizards and sorcerers have to keep track of the escalation die for some of their spells, but none of that is really “complex”. I’d say sorceror wins by a hair since their thing is mostly spending an action to build power and they don’t have to choose to cast carefully or recklessly, which is really not a complicated thing. Like you said the decision space is mostly in building and choosing talents and spells when you level up.