SAO Campaign Questions

[HereBeMonsters]

Ok so me and most (All but 1) of my players are big fans of Sword Art Online or SAO. So we decided we might wanna play in a game set in that world, the same world as the game not the RL version of that world. To play as if we were players in the game (Have you gone cross eyed yet?)

Now in SAO they don't allow magic, just potions and other special items such as weapon and so forth. The Sword Arts in the title indicate special techniques and attacks that a player can learn and use.

So we were thinking ToB fits our needs perfectly with the maneuvers fitting the Sword Art requirement nicely,

However the lack of magic might be painful as its seriously restricts healing to almost entirely rest or potion based. No wands of healing as no one has use magic device (Since magic does not exist in the normal terms.)

Sure a sword might cause fire damage because its got the flaming enhancement but thats not the same magic that uses UMD.

So how best to deal with healing and other magic related needs?

[lunar2]

in the anime they had healing crystals and teleport crystals. use the rules for a potion, but be heal spells and word of recall spells, instead. additionally, have a "campsite" wondrous item that can be set up (about 10 minutes), and gives anyone resting within 20 feet of it fast healing 1, and heals one point of ability damage per hour, 1 point of ability drain per day.

the healing crystal takes care of most of your status ailments, and the campsite takes care of your out of combat healing and ability scores maintenance.

[HereBeMonsters]

Those are very nice suggestions.

I always thought having healers would have made it make more sense, turning the healers or those with the healing skills into priceless treasures. But a low magic mart universe is kind of nice. Would the adept class be to much for a healer magic class?
I dont mind adding a little bit of magic (Mix of SAO and ALO kind of)

[lunar2]

you don't need a healing class. short of heal and mass heal, in combat healing is usually a waste of actions. stick with TOB, and maybe include some of the homebrew ranged disciplines, since i remember a few archers in the anime.

don't forget to allow people to take magic item creation feats, and to be able to craft the items without the spell prerequisites. you may want to limit exactly what items are available, but stat boosters and magic weapons/armor should be included at the very minimum.

you could also brew special snowflake disciplines for sword and board and TWF, if you want to include that particular mechanic. character with the highest dex gets access to the TWF discipline, and character with the highest con gets the S&B discipline.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I suggest you to check out DSP's Path of War, which is ToB updated to Pathfinder, it has 3 (or four I can't recall if the Harbringer is ready or not) new classes, tons of new disciplines, etc.

Also I made a Kirito build (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17503269&postcount=187), that might interest you[/shameless self-plug :smalltongue:]

Edit: There were no Archers in SAO, the only ranged combat option were throwing skills (daggers and picks mostly IIRC), on the other hand ALO did have ranged combat.

[lunar2]

still, in the anime (haven't read the light novel), one of the selling points of SAO was that the skill system allowed you to do nearly anything, except magic. just because we didn't see any archers, doesn't mean there weren't any. similarly, anyone could have dual wielded swords, kirito was just the only one with specific sword skills for dual wielding. and as we see later, he's good enough to duplicate them even without the help of the computer.