Anima ; Beyond Fantasy Character Concept

[ArlEammon]

A Shattered god, user of mystically inclined *divine* magic. These beings have immense potential for powers. (They start at level 4 instead of 1, hopefully Anima's "epic" rules will come out soon.)Shattered gods are known for their self-reflective natures, and their unimaginable emotional strength. They are typically mentally unstable and narrow minded or simply side tracked for their own selfish reasons.

Shattered gods were once the gods themselves. They were beings of incredible power beyond that of Gaia's knowledge. The Shattered gods some how died or perished in a great war. Shattered, their spirits were split into thousands of beings, like shards from a broken wine vessel. The Shattered gods fight with eachother in order to continue their war, or else to consume their other selves.

The Shattered gods currently war over eachother in order to fill their spirits until they are whole again. Whispers from mortals and immortals both say that the Shattered gods will never regain their former power. But the Shattered gods will always fight.

So, I'm thinking that the Shattered gods are characters that could be useful to explore levels beyond 12. I didn't really realize that levels 11-12 were the limit, although I know they are pretty powerful stuff. So, what I want to know is, the honest, critical, but gentle evaluation of my character design premise.

Shattered gods would begin with a Gnosis of 3 levels higher than usual. . . So 13-23, even for humans. I plan, once I get to know the system, which may take a while, to develop Shattered Gods to level 22. Ouch. It hurts just typing that, because I have just read that level 12 characters are WMDS.

Shattered gods are for breaking out of a Fantasy planet enslaved by Technology. What do you think?

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Interesting concept, that´s for sure. It doesn´t conflict all that much with the existing fluff, and with that kind of power, plot-hooks will launch themselves at the characters. I´d imagine that just about every high-power organization and entities will want to either enslave or destroy these Shattered gods.

Black Sun and the Wissencraft wants them as guinea pigs, the Inquisition and Imperium will want to destroy them, Tol Rauko will want to lock them up, Samael and other non-human societies will probably seek their help. Keeping a low profile is hard at those levels when any character can handily destroy a city without much trouble.

Basically at those levels the whole world is going to pretty much revolve around the characters. Take a look at this:


-Level 0: An average person. You, me, 90% of the population.
-Level 1: "Young promise" or a normal person with training.. An advanced pupil, a city guard, etc. They are a slight cut above the crowd.
-Level 2: An expert. Well trained soldiers, experienced university professors.
-Level 3-4: Serious competition to be the best in the real world. Olimpic medalists, Einstein, Bruce Lee in RL.
-Level 5-6: Most fictional heroes. People who can do the impossible. Aragorn, Legolas, CSI´s Grissom, Trinity, Bruce Lee in the movies. People who get a disbelieving laugh from RL experts
-Level 7-9: There is nothing like this in the real world. Powerful archmages and warlords who can cut down an army in minutes without breaking a sweat. Gandalf the White, Ninja from MSG4, Kratos in the first God of War game, etc.
-Level 10-11: We start getting exponential power increases. True beasts who, if fighting someone of their own power, will devastate anything around them. Dante from Devil May Cry in his most badass and powerful moments, Cloud from FFVII.... and your average Jürgand agent
-Level 12-14: Semi-divine entities. If allowed, they could conquer or destroy entire continents without much trouble, even if nuked. Sefiroth of FFVII, the oldest vampires from Vampire: the Masquerade, and other stupidly powerful stuff.
-Niveles 15+: At this point, entire worlds will fall to the being´s control within minutes. Some of HP Lovecrafts ancient evils and other entities of similar cosmic power... Kisidan (accounting for his level adjustments), Nérelas (likewise), Imperium´s greatest agents... and Lucanor Giovanni.
At this point it´s rather pointless to keep going up on the table. After level 20 you are talking about true Gods, who can remake reality at their whim

It is worth noting that such high levels are not always so destructive. A level 15 orator would rally millions of people to his cause with his bare prescence, even before he starts speaking. And a level 15 scientist (like Lucanor:smallamused:) would have unravelled most of the universes mysteries. And then discarded them for being uninteresting.

Note: This was translated from Spanish, so pardon any glaring gramatical errors. Sometimes I let my Spanish slip into my English and vice-versa. :smallbiggrin:

On the same thread on the Spanish A:BF forums Anima Studio noted that Dragonball GT (if, y´know, such a thing had ever existed:smalltongue:) , at it´s highest peak of power, would be around level 20.



The hardest thing is perhaps to come up with a good reason Imperium doesn´t just fire up their big machines and rewrite reality without them. Maybe it just doesn´t work. Or maybe Ciel and Gaira veto that option for... uh, their own inscrutable reasons? Not too sure.

So yeah, cool idea, almost certainly hard to play, probably very fun. I have to caution, however, that without a solid knowledge of the system this will be hard, both for players and for the DM. Developing challenging fights at those levels is tricky, (from what I hear, I have never played Anima at those levels) and designing a functional character at that level is equally tricky.

Edit: Oh, and you probably want to PM a mod and see if they can move this thread to the Roleplaying Games forum. I´m fairly certain more people will see it there, and it seems like the proper place for the thread´s subject.

[Cubey]

Edit: Oh, and you probably want to PM a mod and see if they can move this thread to the Roleplaying Games forum. I´m fairly certain more people will see it there, and it seems like the proper place for the thread´s subject.

Exactly. Don't let DnD elbow you out of the correct subforum - if it's tabletop, it belongs to Roleplaying Games.

Now, anyone willing to provide some details on this system? It looks interesting.

[ArlEammon]

Interesting concept, that´s for sure. It doesn´t conflict all that much with the existing fluff, and with that kind of power, plot-hooks will launch themselves at the characters. I´d imagine that just about every high-power organization and entities will want to either enslave or destroy these Shattered gods.

Black Sun and the Wissencraft wants them as guinea pigs, the Inquisition and Imperium will want to destroy them, Tol Rauko will want to lock them up, Samael and other non-human societies will probably seek their help. Keeping a low profile is hard at those levels when any character can handily destroy a city without much trouble.

Basically at those levels the whole world is going to pretty much revolve around the characters. Take a look at this:



On the same thread on the Spanish A:BF forums Anima Studio noted that Dragonball GT (if, y´know, such a thing had ever existed:smalltongue:) , at it´s highest peak of power, would be around level 20.



The hardest thing is perhaps to come up with a good reason Imperium doesn´t just fire up their big machines and rewrite reality without them. Maybe it just doesn´t work. Or maybe Ciel and Gaira veto that option for... uh, their own inscrutable reasons? Not too sure.

So yeah, cool idea, almost certainly hard to play, probably very fun. I have to caution, however, that without a solid knowledge of the system this will be hard, both for players and for the DM. Developing challenging fights at those levels is tricky, (from what I hear, I have never played Anima at those levels) and designing a functional character at that level is equally tricky.

Edit: Oh, and you probably want to PM a mod and see if they can move this thread to the Roleplaying Games forum. I´m fairly certain more people will see it there, and it seems like the proper place for the thread´s subject.

*Can a Mod Please move this to the role playing games section*

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Now, anyone willing to provide some details on this system? It looks interesting.

I´m willing to do it, but I´m afraid it may will turn into a fanboyish mega-post wall o´ text :smallredface:

Small disclaimer: I´ve only played the game in Spain, so I have no idea how any of the game´s terms have been translated. I have probably got a lot of them wrong.

Anima: Beyond Fantasy is a high-powered (just look at the level breakdown in my other post:smallbiggrin:) fantasy, with fairly realistic combat system. Anima uses HP, but getting hurt imposes negative modifiers on all actions, for instance. Also getting hit for a % of your remaing HP makes Bad Things happen, so once someone takes a few hits, they go down quick. Combat is by opposed rolls of attack skill vs any of 2 defenses, and go check a bigass table. Armour acts as a damage reduction of sorts. Anima uses a pretty cool counter-attack mechanic that gives you bonuses to attack an opponent that you succesfully defend against and allows you to ignore the initiative order.

It uses a d100 for most things. Rolling high enough makes the dice explode, allowing for some ridiculous stunts even at low levels.

Character creation is a sort of hybrid classes-and-point-buy system. Your class determines how many points a given skill costs, and how many can be invested, but otherwise you are free to spend as you like. Each class also get some per-level bonuses to certain skills, but there isn´t anything like D&D´s class features. A fighter can spend points to use magic, and a wizard can learn psionics if she chooses to.

Skills are very 3.5E DnDish, you just put points in them intsead of ranks. One skill I simply love, and is rather characteristic of the system, is the Style skill. Another name for it would be the Badassitude skill. A higher score makes you cooler, plain and simple. A really high score will make sure that you always have a dramatic thunderstorm when fighting an important battle, and if you get punched in the face, you get a stylish trickle of blood from the corner of your mouth intead of a swollen eye :smallbiggrin: ( and depending on the DM, you may be able to fast-talk him or her into giving you all sorts of bonuses and RP perks through this).

There are 4 "magic" systems:
-Regular magic with 10 schools (4 classic elements, light/dark, essence/illusion and creation/destruction). Magic uses mana Zeon and powerful spells usually have to be "charged up". Beyond a slowish mana recovery system, magic is consequence-free.
-A ritualistic conjuring system, for good old-fashioned spirit-summoning and striking deals with a host of entities. Very dangerous (as in, you rolled... poorly. You are now dead), but very powerful if you do it right and don´t get unlucky when in matters.
-Psionics that uses a smallish list of powers, that tend to have fairly broad application and are all-day-long, no cost. Unless you get a bad roll or two and fall unconcious for a few days. :smalltongue:
-Finally a ki themed system for the martially inclined. IMHO the most interesting, as you can design and fluff your own techniques using a fairly detailed bunch of rules (and a small army of tables). One of my characters, a ninja-type fellow had a power that created a non-damaging 20 foot explosion of smoke that blinded any victims, and then teleported him 60 feet in any direction. Another one allowed him to boost his initiative, speed and attack ability as long as he concentrated. By far the most complex "magic" system, and would take way too long to go into.

*looks at what he´s typed*

...

I knew that would happen, and I haven´t even got to the campaign world :smallsigh:

I´ll try cover it later, but meanwhile I´ll sum it up like this: They took everything awesome and cool ever from both western and eastern sources, put it through a blender, and then cranked all the dials to eleven.

And yes, I admit that that description is not really objective or informative in any way. I still stand by it :smalltongue:

[Drascin]

Also, to add to Ferrus... Cubey, now, don't let me discourage you, but I really wouldn't recommend Anima. I bought the manual because it looked cool, and it really does... but in my experience, in that is much like a Grand Daiklaive for a non-Exalted - looks cool, feels awesome, is unwieldy as hell. For the campaign to even work, we had to simplify half the system, because having to roll 2 d100, calculate their totals, substract them, and then use this for comparison with a full page percentile damage table and an armor table, for each hit, was really cumbersome. Ki techniques that allowed multiple attacks were looked upon with more fear by their users than by their enemies, because they were the ones who would have to do all the math :smalltongue:.

A pity, really, because as I said, the thing is cool. The summons and the moddable ki techs are particularly nice.

Anyway, as for the concept... the idea doesn't sound too bad, actually, but... thing is, I'm no expert, but it looks to me from a cursory examination that there is a level where Anima just breaks. Ferrus's tables mention it - around level 12 we're already talking First Age Exalted, and at 14-16, the thing just seems likely to fall apart much like D&D's Epic levels and there's no real point to continuing the actual game.

[Closet_Skeleton]

All I know about Anima is that the miniatures look pretentious and not quite cool enough to justify the cost for miniatures that aren't in perfect scale with most of my other miniatures.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Also, to add to Ferrus... Cubey, now, don't let me discourage you, but I really wouldn't recommend Anima. I bought the manual because it looked cool, and it really does... but in my experience, in that is much like a Grand Daiklaive for a non-Exalted - looks cool, feels awesome, is unwieldy as hell. For the campaign to even work, we had to simplify half the system, because having to roll 2 d100, calculate their totals, substract them, and then use this for comparison with a full page percentile damage table and an armor table, for each hit, was really cumbersome. Ki techniques that allowed multiple attacks were looked upon with more fear by their users than by their enemies, because they were the ones who would have to do all the math :smalltongue:.


This is quite true. As much as I like Anima, combat is clunky for every person new to the system, and stays that way for many (even most). Some folks get used to it and get to know the damage-and-armour table well enough to not need it most of the time, and get good enough with a calculator (or adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers in their heads:smalleek:) that combat is reasonably swift, but the truth of the matter is that combat in Anima is the greatest point against it, and enough to discourage a lot of folks from the game. Which saddens me to no end, because everything else is like... uh... a Grand Daiklaive for an Exalted?

In my case, my very first RPing experience was DM-ing Middle Earth Role-Playing (based off Rolemaster), so a single percentile table hardly puts me off my lunch, even if I do tend to gravitate towards easier systems. :smalltongue:

Oh, I´ll try give a complete and yet somehow brief summary of the default campaign setting sometime tomorow. Dunno how I´m gonna go about that...

[Mordokai]

We're talking about this, yes?

http://www.e-minis.net/images/edge/beyondfantasy.jpg

I have it. And from what I've seen, it looks cool. Very cool, in fact. But from what I've seen... there are just too many tables and numbers. I'm a great fan of Anima card game and I would love to learn Anima RPG. But I'll be damned if this game isn't hard to learn and understand.

[ArlEammon]

Yes Mordekai, thats the one. I really want to homebrew from it.