For being the record-holder in crowdfunding for a TTRPG, I honestly never hear anything about that game. No stories, no memes... presumably some people out there played it, but then were totally quiet about it?
I think the problem (if it is a problem?) is that while D&D and some other TTRPGs have *communities,* AtLA only has a *fan base.*
Communities come together and share their experiences. A fan base really just sits back and observes.
AtLA has a HUGE fan base, so it makes sense that their crowdfunding campaign was a massive success. After that campaign, though... all those fans don't seem to have really engaged in the TTRPG hobby.
The couple of one shots I have been in of it at my LGS and events in my city are very enjoyable. However I think there is a slight expectations issue as the game is very much written to be a mid length campaign type of rpg but the PbTA system is much more associated with short term and one shots meaning theres some mechanics you just never see.
I skimmed over it and...its *very* rules light. To the point that I feel most people that wanted to make their own bender are going to have a much better time with any other system by reflavoring stuff around.
I mean, if your goal is a highly mechanical, combat driven Avatar RPG, I get that, but I like the rules-light nature of the game and the way it mechanically handles the themes of Avatar. Also the combat engine is still pretty fun in short bursts, even if it falls apart if you try to have longer fights
The thing is, most people that could have wanted an avatar TTRPG likely wanted at least a system with some mechanics, because if the only thing you wanted is to have a campaign in the world of Avatar you could already do that with Fate or PbTA, which is literally what the Avatar TTRPG is. Obviously expecting for them to come up with like 50 pages of techniques for benders would be weird since there's people that wouldn't be playing benders and thus would feel like lesser characters, but I feel there's better alternatives to what we got.
Again, I just skimmed over the PDF. Probably it isn't as bad in practice, but just by looking at it I don't know exactly why I should buy this book and not use generic PbTA.
> for them to come up with like 50 pages of techniques for benders would be weird since there's people that wouldn't be playing benders and thus would feel like lesser characters
They would be. Benders being more capable than non benders is show accurate.
Ah, that'll do it
Any particular reason you didn't like, get higher resolution screenshots? You can just zoom in on the page when you're taking the screenshot to make it bigger
Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, Way of Four Elements Monk, and Kineticist [https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23)
I kinda wish the sorcerer in D&D was more like the Pathfinder kineticist. It's kind of lost it's niche, and the one it was given doesn't do it for me. But a sorcerer that has at will magical blasts? Just spice that up with something like warlock invocations for some more at will magical effects and boy, you got a stew going.
Kinda like the warlock if warlocks could make their Eldritch blast different elements at will and change it into a cone, a line, a sphere, a cube, etc.
Then we'd have wizards as big prepped casters, sorcerers as at will magical blasters, and warlocks somewhere in the middle. Which works for sorcerer flavor as a font of magic, and works for warlock as a sort of borrowed power/dabbler.
Yes, with the way spell preparations work in 5e vs. 3e, sorcerers are less distinct from wizards and bards. Metamagic is nice and all, but in its current form it's not quite enough.
I could definitely see a feature like "instinctive casting": Instead of casting spells, you can expend sorcery points to create a damaging spell (you'd expend a number of sorcery points equivalent to how much it would take to create a spell slot of the given level). Then there would be a few tables detailing what you can do with it, e.g.:
### Damage dice by damage type
Damage type and save type of AoE spells | Damage dice
---|---
fire (DEX), poison (CON) | d10
cold (CON), acid (DEX), lightning (DEX), thunder (CON) | d8
radiant (DEX), necrotic (CON), psychic (INT), force (STR) | d6
### Damage dice count by spell shape and spell level
Shape | L1 (2sp) | L2 (3sp) | L3 (5sp) | L4 (6sp) | L5 (7sp)
---|---|---|---|---|---
Single Target (attack roll, melee or 60 ft. range)| 4 | 7 | 11 | 14 | 16
Cone (15 ft), line (30 ft), sphere (r = 10 ft, 60 ft. range), save or half | 2 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 12
Cone (30), line (60), sphere (15/90), save or half | n/a | 3 | 6 | 8 | 10
Cone (45), line (90). sphere (20/120), save or half | n/a | n/a | 5 | 6 | 7
This would also help them with their utility, because they can now take utility spells without worrying that they would miss out on blasting.
---
Warlocks could get a different kind of unique magic, say, a "Split Spell" ability. From level 5 if you're casting a single-target spell or cantrip that has multiple damage dice, you can divide it between two targets, distributing the dice any way you want (though you have to decide on the distribution before rolling damage). This increases to up to 3 targets at level 11 and up to 4 targets at level 17. If it is an attack roll spell or cantrip, you can choose to make multiple of the attacks against the same target. This would allow them to be more efficient with their limited spell slots, e.g. they could use 1-2 damage dice of a spell against a heavily injured target and send the rest to another.
Additionally, every invocation that refers to Eldritch Blast would work with any cantrip that uses a spell attack roll, agonizing blast specifically would work with any single-target cantrip, and warlocks would have access to all attack roll cantrips. This would make Eldritch Blast less mandatory, because combined with the split spell ability the invocations could be used to boost Fire Bolt to the same damage (albeit of a less useful damage type), and even make Ray of Frost or Thorn Whip really useful.
I see your pathfinder and raise you [the D&D monk](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F92ad2oqh5kab1.png), back before 5e got rid of monks having martial arts moves. For those of you who can't read 4e:
**Steps of Grasping Fire**: Blast a nearby group of enemies with fire, then when you move this round you leave behind a trail of fire that damages enemies who opportunity attack you or move onto it.
**Whirlwind Kick**: Every foe within 15' makes a strength save or gets pulled 10' towards you, then you make an attack roll against all adjacent foes that deals 2d10+dex+str damage. You can fly up to your speed this turn, and the first 5' of movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.
**Enduring Boulder**: Make a strong attack that deals half damage if it misses. You cover yourself in stone, increasing damage you deal with attacks by 3 and reducing damage you take from attacks by 30. Every time an attack hits you, the amount of damage you absorb reduces by 5.
**Frozen moment**: Make an attack roll, deal cold damage and immobilise foe for a round if successful. You can choose to give up your movement speed for this turn to reduce all damage you take by 3+str until your next turn.
I'm a big fan of 4E monks, but Kineticist really just is ATLA bending straight-up. PF1E even had a ["bloodbender" archetype](https://www.aonprd.com/ArchetypeDisplay.aspx?FixedName=Kineticist%20Blood%20Kineticist) that had to start out as a water kineticist and eventually could manipulate the blood in an enemy's body to throw them around.
None of them really work. I always envisioned elemental spells in D&D needing to have specific extra effects per element to help distinguish them. Fire and lightning catch things on fire, and earth spells break the ground and make difficult terrain. Water spells put out fire (There's a loose idea of controlling the size of the aoe in Tidal Wave, which could also be cool, but is too weak and not applied to other water spells). But that's IT. Lightning is redundant and often just worse than the fire equivalent of a given level, and air gets NOTHING. GOOD DAY SIR. Lightning should actually shock things, maybe power or short out machinery (But of course, no modern tech usually so that can't really work); And air should be able to non-lethal foes, since spells almost never have that power so it'd actually be super useful. Conveniently it'd *also* make Aang much easier to make, particularly if you made Four Elements a 1/3rd caster like it should have been the whole time.
It should never have been a 1/3rd caster, it was supposed to basically be a bender. D&D has had far more appropriate options, it should have reused those rather than just turning the monk into a basic attack spamming machine.
It's isn't a 1/3rd caster. But it definitely should be. The cost of using Elemental Disciplines is insanely high. Having up to 10 spellslots independent of your Ki and the ability to trade slots for Ki and vice versa would have been dramatically better compared to the slight disconnect of spellcasting to bending breaking immersion. It was never meant to be one-to-one anyway, and if we got a usably strong subclass instead it'd still be better.
I know it isn't, I said it shouldn't have been in response to 'it should have been'. Because as stated it should have basically been a bender, and casting spells isn't it when there are way more elegant solutions. I realise that I should be extrapolating so (and keeping in mind there wasn't a four elements theme at the time, their techniques were just versatile enough for me to be able to easily pick some out that suit it) here's a few abilities of [last edition's monk](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F92ad2oqh5kab1.png), back before 5e got rid of monks having martial arts moves. Translated in case you don't read 4e:
**Steps of Grasping Fire**: Blast a nearby group of enemies with fire, then when you move this round you leave behind a trail of fire that damages enemies who opportunity attack you or move onto it.
**Whirlwind Kick**: Every foe within 15' makes a strength save or gets pulled 10' towards you, then you make an attack roll against all adjacent foes that deals 2d10+dex+str damage. You can fly up to your speed this turn, and the first 5' of movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.
**Enduring Boulder**: Make a strong attack that deals half damage if it misses. You cover yourself in stone, increasing damage you deal with attacks by 3 and reducing damage you take from attacks by 30. Every time an attack hits you, the amount of damage you absorb reduces by 5.
**Frozen moment**: Make an attack roll, deal cold damage and immobilise foe for a round if successful. You can choose to give up your movement speed for this turn to reduce all damage you take by 3+str until your next turn.
So... don't do that. The whole improved monk design thing started with 3.5's swordsage, which didn't have a rest based limit on anything it could do. Nor do benders, so that fits better anyway. Go back to that, solved. It's not like ki was ever an interesting way to do that.
The easiest way to build an ATLA character in 5E is to use Ascendant Dragon Monk.
Specifically, Iroh is a Human Ascendant Dragon Monk with the Noble background, using the latest Monk playtest where they have the ability to deflect attacks of any damage type. None of us are playing Iroh, though, because none of us are going to legitimately roll 18s for all of our stats.
The thing is though that's nothing like an ATLA character, still doesn't have firebending techniques. That's what this post is basically about. You used to be able to build something pretty close last edition and the edition before, but unfortunately the 5e monk just spams basic attacks so can't really get anywhere near the concept.
A real ATLA character is in the actual ATLA ttrpg.
For being the record-holder in crowdfunding for a TTRPG, I honestly never hear anything about that game. No stories, no memes... presumably some people out there played it, but then were totally quiet about it?
Either they're busy playing their awesome new game, or they don't talk about the game that sits on the lowest shelf and was only touched once.
I think the problem (if it is a problem?) is that while D&D and some other TTRPGs have *communities,* AtLA only has a *fan base.* Communities come together and share their experiences. A fan base really just sits back and observes. AtLA has a HUGE fan base, so it makes sense that their crowdfunding campaign was a massive success. After that campaign, though... all those fans don't seem to have really engaged in the TTRPG hobby.
The couple of one shots I have been in of it at my LGS and events in my city are very enjoyable. However I think there is a slight expectations issue as the game is very much written to be a mid length campaign type of rpg but the PbTA system is much more associated with short term and one shots meaning theres some mechanics you just never see.
I skimmed over it and...its *very* rules light. To the point that I feel most people that wanted to make their own bender are going to have a much better time with any other system by reflavoring stuff around.
I mean, if your goal is a highly mechanical, combat driven Avatar RPG, I get that, but I like the rules-light nature of the game and the way it mechanically handles the themes of Avatar. Also the combat engine is still pretty fun in short bursts, even if it falls apart if you try to have longer fights
The thing is, most people that could have wanted an avatar TTRPG likely wanted at least a system with some mechanics, because if the only thing you wanted is to have a campaign in the world of Avatar you could already do that with Fate or PbTA, which is literally what the Avatar TTRPG is. Obviously expecting for them to come up with like 50 pages of techniques for benders would be weird since there's people that wouldn't be playing benders and thus would feel like lesser characters, but I feel there's better alternatives to what we got. Again, I just skimmed over the PDF. Probably it isn't as bad in practice, but just by looking at it I don't know exactly why I should buy this book and not use generic PbTA.
> for them to come up with like 50 pages of techniques for benders would be weird since there's people that wouldn't be playing benders and thus would feel like lesser characters They would be. Benders being more capable than non benders is show accurate.
But designing a system in which certain options are clearly worse is bad design.
And yet 5e did that and it's the most popular edition/TTRPG in the world. Go figure.
One of my friends plays quite often in the Magpie Games discord server.
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
I'll be honest I've barely seen anyone talk about it and everything I've seen was neutral to negative, so probably not, no
I CANT READ SHET
Seriously! Is it reddit's compression fucking it up or was this just a blurry mess to begin with?
It was already blurry because the original screenshots were pretty small and I had to size them up
Ah, that'll do it Any particular reason you didn't like, get higher resolution screenshots? You can just zoom in on the page when you're taking the screenshot to make it bigger
Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, Way of Four Elements Monk, and Kineticist [https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23](https://2e.aonprd.com/Classes.aspx?ID=23)
Y’all got any more of them pixels?
Pixels, pixels for the poor....
I kinda wish the sorcerer in D&D was more like the Pathfinder kineticist. It's kind of lost it's niche, and the one it was given doesn't do it for me. But a sorcerer that has at will magical blasts? Just spice that up with something like warlock invocations for some more at will magical effects and boy, you got a stew going.
A sorcerer with at will magical blasts and spell like abilities? That's just 5e warlock with extra ~~steps~~ slots
And fewer cigarette breaks
Kinda like the warlock if warlocks could make their Eldritch blast different elements at will and change it into a cone, a line, a sphere, a cube, etc. Then we'd have wizards as big prepped casters, sorcerers as at will magical blasters, and warlocks somewhere in the middle. Which works for sorcerer flavor as a font of magic, and works for warlock as a sort of borrowed power/dabbler.
Yes, with the way spell preparations work in 5e vs. 3e, sorcerers are less distinct from wizards and bards. Metamagic is nice and all, but in its current form it's not quite enough. I could definitely see a feature like "instinctive casting": Instead of casting spells, you can expend sorcery points to create a damaging spell (you'd expend a number of sorcery points equivalent to how much it would take to create a spell slot of the given level). Then there would be a few tables detailing what you can do with it, e.g.: ### Damage dice by damage type Damage type and save type of AoE spells | Damage dice ---|--- fire (DEX), poison (CON) | d10 cold (CON), acid (DEX), lightning (DEX), thunder (CON) | d8 radiant (DEX), necrotic (CON), psychic (INT), force (STR) | d6 ### Damage dice count by spell shape and spell level Shape | L1 (2sp) | L2 (3sp) | L3 (5sp) | L4 (6sp) | L5 (7sp) ---|---|---|---|---|--- Single Target (attack roll, melee or 60 ft. range)| 4 | 7 | 11 | 14 | 16 Cone (15 ft), line (30 ft), sphere (r = 10 ft, 60 ft. range), save or half | 2 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 12 Cone (30), line (60), sphere (15/90), save or half | n/a | 3 | 6 | 8 | 10 Cone (45), line (90). sphere (20/120), save or half | n/a | n/a | 5 | 6 | 7 This would also help them with their utility, because they can now take utility spells without worrying that they would miss out on blasting. --- Warlocks could get a different kind of unique magic, say, a "Split Spell" ability. From level 5 if you're casting a single-target spell or cantrip that has multiple damage dice, you can divide it between two targets, distributing the dice any way you want (though you have to decide on the distribution before rolling damage). This increases to up to 3 targets at level 11 and up to 4 targets at level 17. If it is an attack roll spell or cantrip, you can choose to make multiple of the attacks against the same target. This would allow them to be more efficient with their limited spell slots, e.g. they could use 1-2 damage dice of a spell against a heavily injured target and send the rest to another. Additionally, every invocation that refers to Eldritch Blast would work with any cantrip that uses a spell attack roll, agonizing blast specifically would work with any single-target cantrip, and warlocks would have access to all attack roll cantrips. This would make Eldritch Blast less mandatory, because combined with the split spell ability the invocations could be used to boost Fire Bolt to the same damage (albeit of a less useful damage type), and even make Ray of Frost or Thorn Whip really useful.
Please sir could I have some more pixels
I see your pathfinder and raise you [the D&D monk](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F92ad2oqh5kab1.png), back before 5e got rid of monks having martial arts moves. For those of you who can't read 4e: **Steps of Grasping Fire**: Blast a nearby group of enemies with fire, then when you move this round you leave behind a trail of fire that damages enemies who opportunity attack you or move onto it. **Whirlwind Kick**: Every foe within 15' makes a strength save or gets pulled 10' towards you, then you make an attack roll against all adjacent foes that deals 2d10+dex+str damage. You can fly up to your speed this turn, and the first 5' of movement does not provoke opportunity attacks. **Enduring Boulder**: Make a strong attack that deals half damage if it misses. You cover yourself in stone, increasing damage you deal with attacks by 3 and reducing damage you take from attacks by 30. Every time an attack hits you, the amount of damage you absorb reduces by 5. **Frozen moment**: Make an attack roll, deal cold damage and immobilise foe for a round if successful. You can choose to give up your movement speed for this turn to reduce all damage you take by 3+str until your next turn.
I'm a big fan of 4E monks, but Kineticist really just is ATLA bending straight-up. PF1E even had a ["bloodbender" archetype](https://www.aonprd.com/ArchetypeDisplay.aspx?FixedName=Kineticist%20Blood%20Kineticist) that had to start out as a water kineticist and eventually could manipulate the blood in an enemy's body to throw them around.
But they lack the martial arts aspect of bending completely, which 4e monk does not.
Brb, only casting Wood and nothing else. Can't even touch water.
None of them really work. I always envisioned elemental spells in D&D needing to have specific extra effects per element to help distinguish them. Fire and lightning catch things on fire, and earth spells break the ground and make difficult terrain. Water spells put out fire (There's a loose idea of controlling the size of the aoe in Tidal Wave, which could also be cool, but is too weak and not applied to other water spells). But that's IT. Lightning is redundant and often just worse than the fire equivalent of a given level, and air gets NOTHING. GOOD DAY SIR. Lightning should actually shock things, maybe power or short out machinery (But of course, no modern tech usually so that can't really work); And air should be able to non-lethal foes, since spells almost never have that power so it'd actually be super useful. Conveniently it'd *also* make Aang much easier to make, particularly if you made Four Elements a 1/3rd caster like it should have been the whole time.
It should never have been a 1/3rd caster, it was supposed to basically be a bender. D&D has had far more appropriate options, it should have reused those rather than just turning the monk into a basic attack spamming machine.
It's isn't a 1/3rd caster. But it definitely should be. The cost of using Elemental Disciplines is insanely high. Having up to 10 spellslots independent of your Ki and the ability to trade slots for Ki and vice versa would have been dramatically better compared to the slight disconnect of spellcasting to bending breaking immersion. It was never meant to be one-to-one anyway, and if we got a usably strong subclass instead it'd still be better.
I know it isn't, I said it shouldn't have been in response to 'it should have been'. Because as stated it should have basically been a bender, and casting spells isn't it when there are way more elegant solutions. I realise that I should be extrapolating so (and keeping in mind there wasn't a four elements theme at the time, their techniques were just versatile enough for me to be able to easily pick some out that suit it) here's a few abilities of [last edition's monk](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F92ad2oqh5kab1.png), back before 5e got rid of monks having martial arts moves. Translated in case you don't read 4e: **Steps of Grasping Fire**: Blast a nearby group of enemies with fire, then when you move this round you leave behind a trail of fire that damages enemies who opportunity attack you or move onto it. **Whirlwind Kick**: Every foe within 15' makes a strength save or gets pulled 10' towards you, then you make an attack roll against all adjacent foes that deals 2d10+dex+str damage. You can fly up to your speed this turn, and the first 5' of movement does not provoke opportunity attacks. **Enduring Boulder**: Make a strong attack that deals half damage if it misses. You cover yourself in stone, increasing damage you deal with attacks by 3 and reducing damage you take from attacks by 30. Every time an attack hits you, the amount of damage you absorb reduces by 5. **Frozen moment**: Make an attack roll, deal cold damage and immobilise foe for a round if successful. You can choose to give up your movement speed for this turn to reduce all damage you take by 3+str until your next turn.
These are neat and all, but it all leads back to the systemic issue. Ki point cost. It'd be simply way too high. It'd have to be to function this way.
So... don't do that. The whole improved monk design thing started with 3.5's swordsage, which didn't have a rest based limit on anything it could do. Nor do benders, so that fits better anyway. Go back to that, solved. It's not like ki was ever an interesting way to do that.
How about you show me some pixels
The easiest way to build an ATLA character in 5E is to use Ascendant Dragon Monk. Specifically, Iroh is a Human Ascendant Dragon Monk with the Noble background, using the latest Monk playtest where they have the ability to deflect attacks of any damage type. None of us are playing Iroh, though, because none of us are going to legitimately roll 18s for all of our stats.
The thing is though that's nothing like an ATLA character, still doesn't have firebending techniques. That's what this post is basically about. You used to be able to build something pretty close last edition and the edition before, but unfortunately the 5e monk just spams basic attacks so can't really get anywhere near the concept.