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View Full Version : Pathfinder Adjusting rules to emulate anime



Roxxy
2014-09-06, 04:23 AM
Personally, I happen to enjoy anime. I'd like to make some adjustments to the Pathfinder system to bring in some elements I particularly like. Something I've been going on about for a while is encouraging a greater degree of mobility for martial characters. I was thinking of borrowing the iterative attack system from Trailblazer and making vital strike, shot on the run, and spring attack normal parts of the combat system rather than feats. This is something I've been planning for, like, three years now. By the time I'm done, I'll basically have a system that's halfway between being Pathfinder and being it's own D20 based system, in that Pathfinder is the chassis of the system, but enough is different that it can't really be referred to as Pathfinder with house rules.

Explanation aside, I got back into anime recently, and I've been seeing some things that I totally want in my system. I actually like the way a lot of anime martial characters have ridiculous jumping abilities. Like, 20 feet up into the air? No problem. Leap almost all the way across a chapel? Sure. Jump on top of buildings during a chase? Okay. I also like it when people get shoved back absurd distances, or a really big enemy flings people through walls. Want martials to be able to do this. Granted, it's all ridiculous, but dragons can fly without casting spells, so it's not like the laws of physics are being strictly adhered to.

I suspect that, rules wise, the big things that have to be done is to drastically drop jump DCs so that a lot of massive jumps don;t actually require a check at all, dropping strength checks for breaking walls and doors, and (this is the hard one) figuring out a way to incorporate chucking people around into the combat maneuver rules and into certain spells. Damage for falls and impacts with the environment needs to be even less of a threat, as well. Any ideas as to what a good sweet spot for check DCs might be here? Exactly how I could incorporate the rag doll effects? What effect does this all have on caster/martial disparity? And, most importantly, what character options/spells will changes like this conflict with or make obsolete? Which classes get more powerful, and which get their abilities overshadowed? I'm looking, but I don't have everything memorized, and I'm still absorbing the Advanced Class Guide materiel.

Edit:

Some things that were decided over at the Paizo forums were that dodging so fast you look like you never moved for a couple seconds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHeoREYkEgk&feature=youtu.be&t=1m36s) should be a per day ability some martials can learn, non-spellcasters should be able to get bladed dash (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/bladed-dash), maybe as a class ability or feat.

Debating whether to make dodge bonuses more common, and whether to allow shield bonuses to AC to apply to ray spells and make the AC bonus from defense actions a shield bonus if it is not already, because it would be cool and thematically appropriate if martials could slap incoming rays aside with a sword.

Also, for flavor reasons I didn't really want heavy armor to be a thing in my campaign setting (plate just doesn't work with the image I have in my head for my world). Should I scale armor AC bonuses upwards to compensate (perhaps shuffling around armor categories, so that the system has heavy armor, but it is stuff like chainmail and breastplate, and medium armor is some of the heavier light armors), with the end effect that the AC bonus for wearing the best armor is the same, the armors are just lighter, or do something else?

I do think unarmored Fighters should have some way of being practical. Very common anime trope, the unarmored sword expert is.