Editing 13th Age (section)

===Divergences from D&D===
*The level progression is slashed to '''ten levels''' rather than the typical 20 or 4E's 30-level slog. To compensate for this shorter development, feats are given at each level.
**That said however, the power-level tiering from 4E still exists in a sense. Level 1-4 is Adventurer, Level 5-7 is Champion, and Level 8-10 is Epic. The big significance is really which feats are available and how powerful attacks are.
**Feats are also considerably gutted. Rather than the familiar obscene sprawl, now all feats directly influence a specific ability the PC has, from spells to class talents and racial abilities. The only non-class feats are a small list of Adventurer-tier ones, and none of them are really any powerful.
**Another deviation of note, a player can earn part of their level up before the level up, which means that a DM can reward players with new toys fairly often for a game that at first brush, only covers 10 levels. 
*In a way to diverge from the mandatory and oftentimes silly bloated list of skills, all skills are instead abolished. Instead, all PCs gain Background Points which they can invest into a job that would pertain to the character's history. Then, whenever a certain task would fit within a certain background's purview (like a blacksmith making weapons, a debater chatting with folks, or a spy sneaking around), the test is instead d20 + Background Ranks + Whatever relevant stat applies.
*[[Non Armor Defenses|NADs]] are kept as a holdover from 4E, though remarkably changed. Now there's only Physical and Mental Defenses, with each being keyed off the middle stat between the physical and mental stats. This demands that all characters to need to keep an eye on around 4 stats.
**Similarly, AC is made to key off the middle stat between Con, Wis, and Dex.
*Ranges are done away with. In order to be more narrativist, all abilities are now set between generalized ranges, from adjacent/engaged to close to far. At the very least, it does away with forcing everyone to grab their goddamn ruler so they can measure exact feet or meters. This also makes combat run much faster while sacrificing little depth. Minis and battle maps are still recommended, and 5 foot steps are easy to port into the system if you desire. 
*Combat also has a resource called an Escalation Die to track. On each turn after the first, the die goes up by 1, and the PC's gain a boost to all attack rolls. While meant to show the dramatic pitch of ongoing combat, it's clear that this is here to prevent long drawn-out battles, and it also prevents players from Novaing down encounters so easily.
*Like 4E, all HP is set at a static value that's only modified by Con. There are also Recoveries, which restore HP via a healing surge-styled dice-roll (a feature that would later be the basis of [[5e]]'s recovery dice).
*There's a big focus on what you roll, with certain abilities only triggering on natural rolls, whether it's an actual number or picking between odds or evens.
*The inventory is also remarkably watered down, with the main differences in gear being the price-points and classes. This is because each class actually tells what the starting AC is for characters wearing specific armor types while also telling how much damage each weapon deals.
**Similarly, magic items are nowhere near as cut and dry aside from giving a specific bonus per tier (Weapons to attack/damage, armor to defenses, etc.), with cursed items giving not only penalties, but also some curious quirk.