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DementedFellow
2010-09-19, 04:08 PM
Has anyone actually played this system?

It seems kinda convoluted. I have the book and while I love somethings, others are confusing.

If you have played this, how did you handle spell casters? Did they know all the spells for the level or just one? How did you handle wealthy by level gold amounts?

When you make a character do you create it like a regular class and then add on the bonus goodies or put them in piecemeal when you go through the character sheet? Is it me or is character creation really involved? How long should character creation take, background aside?

Is BESM d20 even easier to break than 3.5? It seems like it should be, but I am not really superior at optimizing like others in this board.

ninja_penguin
2010-09-19, 04:13 PM
Avoid BESM d20, it's a giant smashup of overpoweredness, and trying to combine the d20 system with the point buy system of BESM.

Do take a look at BESM 3rd edition if it looks like something that interests you. It's a bit of an obscure system, and some people think that M&M does everything better, but I'm rather fond of it. the GM needs to watch character creation with an iron fist to avoid overpowered characters.

realbombchu
2010-09-19, 07:03 PM
I really liked BESM 3rd edition also. I think it's much better than what I saw of BESM d20. Certain attributes are too powerful to use with a novice GM (Dynamic Powers, for example), but it's really a great game (even though it's out of print, sadly).

Volos
2010-09-19, 07:55 PM
BESM d20 is fine as long as you make sure that your players build characters who are ballanced between offense and defense. Or you could have them all build characters that work well in a team, like any normal D20 group.

It is only overpowered if you look at it from the wrong angle. Your monsters and NPCs should have the same level of power. I agree that BESM 3E is easier to use, but it shouldn't be that hard to work with d20 BESM.

senrath
2010-09-19, 07:56 PM
I've played in both and I have to agree. Avoid BESM d20. It takes all of the problems of standard d20 and all of the problems of triStat and puts them together to form a giant ball of yuck.

DMfromTheAbyss
2010-09-20, 12:22 AM
I've run a game of BESM d20. It went ok, people had fun, but it did take a lot of creativity on my part to construct appropriate enemies. Just be careful in character creation to keep all the characters about at the same power level and it's playable.. at least potentially with the right group:smallbiggrin:.

If you want to try some pretty bizarre campaign ideas, the system is flexible enough to do just about anything "anime" themed.

My two coppers.

Yora
2010-09-20, 09:13 AM
Having recently begun to get into BESM 3rd Ed., but not yet played it, BESM d20 seems like a really stupid idea to begin with. The charm about the game is, that it does not have classes or levels and you can custom design your characters abilities just as you want. On the other hand, d20 is all about classes, levels, and pre-defined feats.
Without having seen the rules of BESM d20, it seems like an attempt to combine two fundamentaly different systems into one. Something that really can't work out well.

dsmiles
2010-09-20, 09:20 AM
I ran the BESM The Slayers d20, but I think that The Slayers was a little off the beaten path for BESM. It was funny and action packed, and seemed pretty 'balanced' for what it was supposed to be. I also use the magic system from The Slayers d20 in my regular 3.5 houserules instead of MoI and Vancian magic. It's way more fun(ny), IMO.

true_shinken
2010-09-20, 09:22 AM
BESM D20 sucks. I hate it.

UglyPanda
2010-09-20, 11:16 AM
Take a cracker and wrap it in two pieces of gum. That's about the consistency of the mechanics in BESM. It's a framework of hard numbers that you're supposed to use directly surrounded by fluffy mechanics that's wide open to interpretation. It's not good, you're better off playing the next edition after it.

About power level, if you're trying to break it, it will be broken. It's one of those games that you don't run unless you absolutely trust that your players won't do anything stupid.

Of course, you could always have fun with it - in about the same way as anyone could have fun with anything. Fun is subjective. But I really suggest you play something less convoluted.

Bulwer
2010-09-20, 11:24 AM
I've played it. It was fun, but the fun had nothing to do with the system being any good.