Naruto Pathfinder (1e) (P.E.A.C.H)

[DreganHiregard]

Hey all, so I made a Naruto System for Pathfinder. It's got three classes, new feats, new items, and some house rules that capture that ninja feel.

Full disclosure I've also got my own very tiny company, but this is an all free personal project. Normally I'd be happy to post it all here, but I'm trying to keep everything togather in one easy to edit place. You can check it out at https://narutopathfinder.fandom.com/wiki/Naruto-Pathfinder_Wiki

Eventually I'm hoping to get it a proper website but for now a Wiki was the best format availible. I know thats a bit weird but ya gotta roll with the punches.

Anyways please let me know what you guys think, I hope you all like it. I plan to check this thread as often as possible if anyone has any questions, and I plan to make frequent updates on the content.

[aimlessPolymath]

Assorted notes:
-someone knocked up not falling until the end of their turn can be a significant buff to attacks that put the target in the air, since you can disable melee combat for a target; consider adding a note that people can delay their action until they land.
-"everyone is special in some way" in character creation is a pretty hot take, but makes sense for PCs. Possibly suggest including a "social support network" option?
-"Catching Up" is a slightly weird feat, for what amounts to a pretty situational bonus.
-"Definite damage" is a really weird feat; on a d4 you average a +1 damage bonus, but on a d2 you average a +2 damage bonus- and for most weapons its negligible. A d3 deals 2.33 damage on average, while a d2 deals 3.5, which is really weird. How do you rule for when a weapon damage die is just 1?
If you're looking to keep it efficient for small weapons, I'd suggest moving to "when the damage die roll for your weapon is 3 or below, count it as 4 instead" or something similar (maybe referencing average damage).
-"Flawless" is a pretty awful feat almost always; suggest adding a 1/day reroll when you roll a 1.
-The "Catching up" chain looks like delayed-action cheese, and I'm not sure of the non-cheese use case.
-Nature Focus states that either element will boost the dual-element techniques, but would the bonus stack if you had the feat for each separate element?
-A feat chain for "being good at teaching" is a pretty painful feat tax for teachers; possibly suggest making it a free benefit of having high ranks in Diplomacy.
-The Protege feat seems kinda unnecessary (and fairly abusable); if you have a finite number of Mentor Points to spend, then spending them all on one person makes them your protege in effect, without getting into the massive stats and feats you can grant.

The Mentor Points table seems to be broken.

[DreganHiregard]

Thanks so much for your feedback!

The floating combat option is definitely a strong tool against melee focused characters, I considered carefully if I should change it up, but there are a host of options for dealing with it. Having the right ninja tools, feats, or jutsu can help counteract it. It creates a problem that characters have to find a solution for but it always plays out very dynamically with my group. And compared to being disarmed it's about on par depending on the circumstance.

I love the idea of a more social focused starting benefit and I'm definitely gonna work on some ideas for that!

A lot of the feats, definite damage, the catching up catching up tree, flawless and the like are all geared towards mitigating the results of bad rolls. They're kind of more of a psychological benefit than statistical in a way. I've seen a lot of players get very bummed when they make a bad roll, and having a feat that activates in that event helps keep them from getting salty. I agree in a lot of games they're not really the best. We also use the house rule where a 1 on any roll is a auto fail, which is why some of my players like the flawless feat.

I'm definitely gonna reword definite damage to just be any roll of less than 4 is a 4 for damage, including weapons that deal 1 damage. And it's very much to encourage the use of the small light ninja weapons so common in the series when really they're far from practical statistically.

I'm gonna add to catching up that it doesn't work with delayed action, good idea.

Nature focus in both elements of a kekei genkai would stack and I'm gonna change the text to reflect that.

The teaching chain was tricky to make because given the right circumstances you can potentially teach your party members, which is why I wanted to make it a chain instead of a diplomacy benefit, As a whole the mentor system is usually a very good way to influence the setting and narrative by making characters stronger through your own guidance, it's definitely a tricky system to balance. And yeah somehow the table did not copy over properly, I'll fix that, good catch!

Thanks again for the feedback it's super helpful!

[aimlessPolymath]

As long as you're building with awareness of floating combat, it's probably fine.

I agree that a lot of the effects seem to be made to mitigate feelsbad moments; one more dynamic option would be to let players "try again", but at a cost, e.g.
Overload Technique
When a character would make a successful save against one of your elemental techniques, you can take 2 points of Constitution damage in order to force any number of targets to reroll their save at a -2 penalty. If they succeed on this second save, you cannot use this ability to make them roll a third time.

I'd honestly eliminate the teaching chain wholesale, and possibly limit Teaching as a mechanic since it lets people bypass the normal techniques known limit; my specific concern is that two people could both take Natural Educator as their starting benefit, then one of them selects Protege and spends 6 mentor points to give Protege to the other person, then things spiral wildly out of control from there.
Additionally, I don't like the mechanic where any given person has a finite amount of education in them to give, but students are uncapped; it seems more natural to limit the amount of "bonus learning" a given person has beyond the cap, given that the characters can normally only learn a finite amount of techniques on their own. A large amount of abuse (ex. players looping teaching each other) is based on the uncapped learning aspect; on the flip side, teachers "running out of teaching" is a little silly, especially since they might not be able to take a feat to teach before they retire. (is retraining feats a thing in your system?)

If I had to put something together from scratch for mentorship, it would look roughly like this:

-If you're taught, you reduce the time taken to learn a technique by one step. The teacher must be present throughout the entire period.
-A student has a number of "bonus technique points" equal to their level multiplied by their Intelligence bonus (min. 1); these points can only be spent on techniques they are taught.
--Alternatively or additionally: It costs 1 less technique point to learn a technique if you're taught it, or 2 less if it's B-rank or higher. Minimum 1.)
--Alternatively or additionally: If a character is taught, they may spend technique points into debt, to a maximum of the number of points they gained at any level-up; they must buy off this debt until they can learn techniques on their own)
-The Natural Educator starting background now reduces the time taken by two steps instead of one; an E-rank technique now can be explained in just a single minute.
-There is no level requirement on teaching.
-If you have at least 9 ranks in both Diplomacy and Knowledge(Ninjutsu), you can teach up to 4 students simultaneously. If you have at least 12, you can teach up to 24.

[DreganHiregard]

Thanks so much for your advice! I'm gonna review the mentor system carefully and take your advice under consideration. I knew /my/ players wouldn't abuse it, but that's absolutely no guarantee other players wouldn't. I appreciate the feedback!

[DreganHiregard]

As an update I've got two prestige classes up and made the changes to the mentorship system turning it into the apprentice system