Anima Thread

What is Veeky Forums's general opinion on Anima? I've played quite a few campaigns of it with my group and opinions varied from a few players who loved it to one who downright despised it.

I don't know the general opinion of it, how this site views it.

Personal opinion, combat is slow as fuck, it needs to be sped up, too much math and shit for things (if you like shadowrun, this is your game), the character creation is magnificent, i love point buys especially anima, i love the class system not restricting you in any way.

i hate the translations, the books are poorly translated and it leads to lots of errors, LOTS. and lastly i wish they would go into more detail in things like the traps/poison section.

the only thing keeping me playing? character creation lets you play nearly anything

>the others, the only way to sacrifice them would be through some kind of homebrew i believe, but i like the idea of that, ima steal it. if i had to guess i would say make those recover 10 a day too.
Mjolnir the legendary hammer artifact makes the user sacrifice each of life point, zeon points, ki points, and psychic points so thats why I asked. But 10 a day looks fine to me.

>as for the scythe, see through objects with shadows? so anything that has a shadow he can see through?
See through what is "Covered" in shadows, so not exactly what you though (Or did I wrote that wrong...)

>however why is it dark? your weapons it seems is a bright/light weapon that destroys shadow? is that what I'm getting?
It's weird but yes, it looks dang bright even at night time except it doesnt emit light, I've been planning on adding an ability that let the weapon hide itself in the shadow of it's bearer but only for concealement purpose.

As for "Dark", well even if it's bright af you can clearly see it's a dark weapon from how it's used. I like the contrast that a "bright" looking weapon is actually filled with darkness.

Do you think the power level 2+ is appropriate tho, I have no idea how to calculate that.

I personnaly am an adept of roleplaying so to me there is nothing more important than character developpement and story build up. I find combat to be most of the time an obstruction to the story, as if you were driving on an highway and suddently you had to wait for a Merchandise train to pass before you can continue. The combat mechanics are extremely dull and repeating if you are either low-level or dont use any of Psychic, Ki or Magic and even in some case, all of theses can be boring. Thats what I think as a player.

As a DM, my party feels rather comfortable with combat and actually builded for it to happen. So I try to make gimmickly related combats so that the players dont just say
>"I attack him"
>*rolls*
>*calculate damage*
>next turn
>repeat
I'm quite the storyteller if you asked me. I got multiple critics from my players where they said "This is the best anima game I've ever played. It truly feels like Anima." I really enjoy storytelling and building up characters to give them a worthy fight where they hate the boss to death and stuff.

So far, Anima is one of my favorite Tabletop RP amoung each of: Anima, Vampire, Exalted, Pathfinder, DnD.

TL;DR: Combat is shit unless you give options to the players, the universe is awesome. My favorite tabletop RP.

ahh it seems i could use your help (not OP) I'm a GM who frequently gimmicks battles to make them better, and I've been getting better reviews from my players, they're liking this when its less of a grind (which we all agree anima combat is grindy as fuck). what do you do for your encounters? i have just been adding creatures who you have to watch them and wait until they reveal an opening, meanwhile you dark souls style study their moves in order to work around it.

Ahh right, i didnt read that mjolnir did that, i don't use the books pre made artifacts, i like to make my players feel special so i make them custom ones.

no you wrote that right, so can you only see through the part that has a shadow on it? like if half a truck is in the shade can i see through that half?

power level, two ways to calculate that. 1. eyeball it, just guess depending on what you think it would be, most level 1 are pretty weak, 2. is semi unique, 3. is your unique special stuff with a story, 4-5 McGuffin level stuff

option 2. you could dissed the cost of each power and put it into power points, then determine how many power points it comes out to, depending on the amount of points determines the artifact power level (this is flawed however, for many reasons even in the book)

I am OP lol.
I did 3 fights in my whole campaign up to now.

First one was a resistance-type Magitech creature. It stood still in the middle of a large room and had 4 arms trusted in generator at each corners of the room. Both the "frame" which would be its central part and its "arms" had extremely high HP and AT which means its pointless to attack them directly. Instead, the player had to focus on the Generator pillars at each corners to cut off power to the Frame. The thing is each time one of thoses generators got destroyed, an Arm break free and begins to attack the players. 2 gen down, 2 arms to attack, then 3 and once its at 4, the frame itself use its Core to generate power but it overheats so it has to open up its frame to let the core cool down which grants the ability to players to hit the core directly which is extremely weak compared to the rest of the machine.

fight was divided in 2 phase, first where the machine tried to Trap it's enemies foes using his arms and the fatigue electric discharge to wear them off. Each time a generator got destroyed, an arm added to the fight as well as some smaller units which are totaly worthless but can heal the frame or an arm by sacrificing themselves.

Once all generators got destroyed, the boss entered phase 2 revealing its core completely open but his 4 arms did AoE Impact attacks at every foes that threathened the core.

Add to that, the room was in complete darkness and had for only source of light that every part of the creature itself was covering in "TRON"-like lines of orange lights.

This fight took 1 whole game from the beginning to the end (about 4 hours), take note my players were lvl 6 and could have died on phase 2 if they didnt killed the core on 1st turn. I rated that an Almost Impossible fight for them.

K so it's pretty much by my eyes that I calculate power level then.

They way I saw it, the entierety of the object had to be in shadows for the wearer to see through. So that half a truck in shade would still be opaque because half of it isnt in shade.

OP again.

From my personnal experience, I recommend staying away of damage resistance creatures. Thoses make absurdly long and boring fights unless you make some kind of gimmick like my ST-Hydra-XX.

Then it depends of you. I have prepared a fight that hasnt taken place yet where the human they fight is excessively skilled. He has 170 attack and 230 def. BUT, if you counter attack him his defense decrease to 110 which assures a hit. Then again, this is a lvl 7 fight but you get the idea.

Another gimmick like that, I've made a strong character whose defensive stats decrease when they are making a particular attack, rendering them vulnerable. In some ways this wouldn't be possible in damage resistance fight unless the creature unveilled a weak spot while charging an attack for example.

It's just like creating a video game boss really. You gotta think of a pattern and how to do it in Anima.

Hope that helps.

meant for

Anybody know who are Tiamat and Griever the knights of seventh heaven? They are mentionned in the core but havent seen any developpement about them.

How well-known is anima compared to others RP systems?

I quite enjoy running it, and my players seem to enjoy it as well. At least, the two who didn't get distracted or booted from the store for being shitstains.
Sacrificed Life/Ki/Zeon is 10/day. Characteristics are permanently gone if sacrificed.
Also Fire path has two Zeon sac spells.
DR creatures can be good when your players min/max for attack and damage, though. having a 150 damage Psychic Railgun before rolling doesn't mean much against a dragon, or a Black Sun Proto-Hunter.
There's a site for the Anima Tactics game that has some good info on these characters.
>atoracle.wikidot.com/en-tiamat
>"Unique" is the best way to describe Tiamat, the youngest of the four 7th Heaven Knights that serves Elisabetta Bardados. A lazy womanizer, but with a god like talent for fighting is also another way. Making him sit up and take things seriously is the last thing his enemies would ever want.
>atoracle.wikidot.com/en-griever
>Griever, The Destroyer of the Eternal Flames, is a living myth. Personal guardian of the Empress, this unstoppable man is no mere normal being; he is an ideal made flesh. Son of Baphomet, the last praetorian that guarded the Giovanni dynasty, Griever was trained to be the final weapon of humanity, a man that can face both gods or devils with his own hands.
Hit or miss. Usually people either haven't heard of it, or they dismiss it as "overcomplicated weebshit the RPG."
Which is kinda unfair. I mean, yeah it's a bit on the front-heavy side, and the translation and first few sessions for newbies can be clunky, but it's very flexible and deep for creating whatever the fuck you want. Especially since you can get by on just the core book for 90% of the major stuff.

So combat. our group recently switched up the combat in order to speed things up.

if you score higher attack you just deal your full damage, then subtract it by 10 for each point of AT, its made combat slightly faster

While I find this a good idea, I also find it not agood idea, because Anima's combat system allows someone to deal more than his final damage when the roll is sufficiently high enough, which generaly leads to crits and crits can end the fight right away. It's just an opinion though, I might try that suggestion.

This PDF has the calculated point values of artifact levels.
You can easily use it to determine the level of your own artifacts.

Neat.

It's too crunchy, but somehow all of it's varied Magic, and special ability systems are balanced in a way.

The monster creation rules are likewise top notch, hell you can even use them to create magic items.

Effect and cost overall is something well done in all of its systems considering how many different systems there are.

It's slow and clunky as fuck however, buy you can virtually create any character concept.

>>From my personnal experience, I recommend staying away of damage resistance creatures

You can use Damage Resistance creatures as Horde Creatures however.

My players HATE the Nezuacuatil(Cockroach Swarm of murder and hate), because it's one of the few things that's been known to give zero fucks about their damaging it while it tries to murder one of them. And I've only used it twice...

For anyone else who has run an Anima game, do you run in the actual anima setting?
I have a poor tendency to use the broad strokes of the culture, but in an original landmass.

Low level characters should be shitting their pants at everything.

Every goddamn fight with undead, especially with the big ones, was a fight to the very last breath in a very literal sense.

Everyone would get their asses knocked out while wearing away at this Nemesis like creature, using the very last of our Fatigue to take it out, and then pass out from exhaustion.

I love low level Anima. Bowmen scare the shit out of me.

The fun thing is seeing the expression from players taking their first look at the world map, and knowing on a gut level it's wrong.

Then they begin reading the higher level spells, and it clicks in their head why the world is wrong.

Yes, actually.
My players are running in a rough triangle of Helennia->Alberria->Lucrecio atm. Though they do have to head over to Baho soon, as they've been told of a MacGuffin in the Temple of the Storms that might help them to stop Prince Nerelas Ul Del Sylvanus from using the Filisnogos to wipe humanity(or distract humanity long enough for him to activate THE MACHINE).

So far, I have a long-standing campaign on pause that is set in Gaia. I'm currently in the process of rebooting it, so the answer is still yes.

However, I've personally used Anima to run a Fairy Tail game, which has worked out pretty good for the two years I've been running it. As a player I've been in a Fate game and an Akame ga Kill game that used it, and they worked out pretty well. It can be quite flexible in that regard.

Yeah I hear ya. You can still put a scare into them up till level 7 ish with the critters in Those Who Walked, like the alternate Hunter(180 damage on a Damage resist creature is brutal), the Raziels(Again, High Damage, High attack), and the Necrogolems.
My players are heartily sick of Hunters, have seen a Raziel murder some Type-005s without difficulty, and have seen a re-killed Necrogolem.
And if they get REALLY cocky, there's always Ancient dragons, Ciels and Gairas.

I made Ki-powered Mami character using ki constructed +10 cannons with unlimited ammo, and shadow clones to man her ki-cannons for volley fire.

I never played it, was too disgusted with how brutal it was.

More a concept character to see how far I could stretch Anima's butthole, and volley fire is the method where damage sky rockets into insanity.

An unlimited number of cannons just popping right out of her ass.

I had a similar idea, only instead of Mami, I was going to try to mimic the Captain from Hellsing. I was going to combo Gunhell with Blood of the Great Beasts and Transformation Ars Magnus, see how long the GM went before catching on.
But that particular GM can't even wing something for a story, and so he gets all depressed about not being able to come up with something, even for two players, and he either gives up, or hands the reins over to me.
So now I'm basically ForeverGM as far as Anima is concerned.
Not a bad thing, as I enjoy it, but I wish I could play the characters I have rattling around in my noggin as more than just incidentals, ya know?
/rant

I have played as a fem!Shirou character before.
It was actually really easy to do, using psionics.

Reminder gates of memories is due the 3rd of next month!

Also for lion info that isn't show there
>Lilith (the girl)
Huge canon slut, teases Kisidan
>Kisidan
Fatherfigure for Elizabet, broken-as-fuck, strongest lion, ex(?) Imperium agent
>Tiamat
Weakest lion, got his ass blasted in a tourney by the winner (1 rounded too), takes the empress into adventures much to Kisidan's butthurt
>Griever
Huge Kisidan fan, loyal, very generic stern soldierman.

Question: Why would they feel it's wrong? Too similar to our actual map?

Or because they realize it's 1/3 of Gaia as a whole?

Hype as fuck!
>Lilith teases Kisidan(
Only because he won't sack the fuck up and tell her how he feels about her.
Also pic related(1/1)
>Kisidan is ex(?) Imperium
Former(?) Jurgand member, no less! Barnabas(Leader of Imperium) stopped talking to him after he saved Elisabetta from her dad, thus stymieing a few Barney's plans. That's also why he won't get closer to Lilith: he's worried the second he lets his guard down *WHAM* Jurgand agents all up in his shit.
>Tiamat got his ass 1shot by the winner.
Well, when it's Kisidan who won that, is it that surprising? the man can go from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD to the Empress' side in a nanosecond if he needs to. Does explain why he's complicit in most of Elisabetta's shenanigans, though.

Not him, but maybe it's because of the size of the continent itself? that and the fact that some higher level spells just SHIT ON REALITY.
(2/2)

>Well, when it's Kisidan who won that
It wasn't, there was a tao-dan-whatever that happened in barcelona in a manga con, the winner was a PC named "Magnus Stormfire/StormFist" who was minmaxed hard (before exxet) he deleted everyone and asked to duel Tiamat (spanish community has a beef with him) whom he deleted.

Rough.
But that's what happens when minmaxers are involved.
Still pissed that Kali is more or less hosed against anyone of her level, even though she's supposed to be Selene's top executioner.
>cipher-studios.com/AnimaBB/index.php?topic=5127.0

Anima official sheets are un-minmaxed, think of anima as upside down DND, the game asumes you do not minmax at all. Ever.

Apparently that also marks the start of FFG getting around to translating Gaia 2 and Core Exxet.

This may also finally result in new Spanish books as well.

We can only hope.

Maybe Acrobat Pro will be done OCRing the Gaia 2 pdf by then.

im planning on working my own universe and make it happen with Anima's system.

I am running a game in Archangel city right now where the players investigate on a serial murderer taking on the church.

Spaniard here:
New books incoming after GoM are confirmed and rumored to be called "Between light and shadows" or something along those lines, it's about the powers in the shadows and also a summoning rework has been rumored, psy rework maybe too.

Now all we have to do is hope GoM isn't a total and utter flop (which it might be).

Sounds neat.

Hey, do you know if there's an OEF Gaia 2 pdf, or am I stuck with my Adobe-OCR'd scanned version?

No idea, haven't searched after I got the bad scan version, idk if there exist a PDF version even.

Ayyy speed 20 lmao

Too much landmass, scale of landmass, and the location of climes in the southern end of the continent is unbalanced if this is supposedly the entire planet.

Gaia isn't that much of landmass user.

However Gaia (The planet) is FUBAR'd beyond all recognition, specially if you lift the barrier thanks to the interkingdoms and worse, fucking khaalis.

Too much landmass and not enough diversity in it's ecosystems is a minor flag to me, that made me think it was some amateur who made the map for the game.

Then I read the magic system and I realized I wasn't looking at the entire map.

Also terraformation of gaia is more than just confirmed, if we have in account that Khaalis was nuked/AIDS'd/gassed into oblivion