What's the Final Fantasy d6 tabletop system like?

What's the Final Fantasy d6 tabletop system like?
>Final Fantasy
I mean describe the core mechanics, please.

The d6 system is ok, if a bit generic. I prefer the Zodiac game.

i'm also interested in this

I'm currently running a game of it for an old-school original Final Fantasy setting. It's pretty fast, and fairly intuitive; a group of players who are mostly D&D-heads had no trouble adapting to the rules.

It has some balance problems. Gamblers are an active detriment to any party as long as their fuck-ups (which happen far too often) hit anyone other than themselves. Machinists are bad, and Entertainers are depressingly binary - they have an Inherent that's amazing and other abilities that are...meh. The Skills system should be straight-up thrown out. Some of the numbers are a bit low.

My group has a shitload of house rules to solve this, first and foremost being the replacement of all the Skills with Skills from FATE, and second the adjustment of all the numbers. I can get you those houserules if you want.

From the GM perspective, I really like the NPC/monster creation, and I think it flows very well and offers lots of tactical options. I think the game is also at its best if you don't stranglehold people into their Job abilities but instead let them pick more or less freely for stuff that isn't their Inherent.

Magic is going to seem extremely powerful, but it's actually remarkably easy to circumvent.

Limit Abilities swing the gamut between "astoundingly powerful" and "access to a single spell", and I cut them out of the game entirely, instead leaning on the Limit Break system they have.

I can't speak to Summons, my party doesn't have any.

The nice thing is that the game doesn't break down instantly just because you houserule it a bit, and the flow of combat is VERY fast - my party got through like five combats and a substantial chunk of talky-time in under three hours. Five combats, by the way, means all four random encounters with multiple enemies, and the boss encounter with minions.

So I'd say it's pretty smooth.

Continued.

Some of the classes just need a little help to get by - Monk in particular needs either the ability to wear extra Accessories that give them Weapon abilities, or some other form of equipment-related buff since they get NO armor or weapons and a VERY big part of the game comes from armor and weapon abilities - but aside from the three I mentioned, none of them are anemically bad.

Ban Dual Wielding. Immediately. Even the designer said it was outstandingly broken. Use the Paired Weapon trait or something if you want someone who fights with two swords, else you get assholes dual-wielding Excalibur or shit like that for massive stacking equipment boosts and just completely blowing the game curve apart.

I recommend the Tactics houserules in the back of the book - the movement grid opens up a lot of tactical options and is REALLY simple.

The materia system is amazing, and could do with more expansion. I've built a Guardian Force version of the same thing on the off chance I ever lose my mind and want to run an FF8 game.

I'm currently working on a Persona adaptation of the system using the concept of Inherents/Role Abilities and its stat layout, while making "jobs" based on your social role (like 'being a drifter' or 'being a star student') and your spell/ability list based on your Tarot.

>I'm currently working on a Persona adaptation of the system using the concept of Inherents/Role Abilities and its stat layout, while making "jobs" based on your social role (like 'being a drifter' or 'being a star student') and your spell/ability list based on your Tarot.
Wow. That actually sounds really fucking cool. How far along are you?

>The materia system is amazing, and could do with more expansion. I've built a Guardian Force version of the same thing on the off chance I ever lose my mind and want to run an FF8 game.

POST IT.

I'm interested, do you happen to have links please?

Not very. I've done the Skills system and I'm working on the Roles system right now. I haven't even touched Tarots or any of the Spells, but I have a solid method for how this is gonna work.


Guardian Forces work like a mixture between Jobs and Materia. Instead of being a single ability and stat boosts, a Guardian Force is a collection of Job Abilities and Spells, not necessarily linked together by class but by thematics for the Guardian Force. The Guardian Force CANNOT be summoned as normal - it costs the usual Destiny as an Individual Summon, but acts as a Slow action, does not stick around, and casts its Astral Flow immediately.

Any character who has a Guardian Force equipped can spend XP into the Guardian Force to level it up like a Job. They pick Abilities and Spells from the Guardian Force's list, which then become accessible to anyone who equips the Guardian Force.

I recommend the characters still pick a Job for Innate abiliites and HP calculation, and each time they spend XP, give them their next level's HP, MP, and Stats as if they were a member of that Job.


So here's an example GF, just quickly off the top of my head:

Chocobo
Rank 1 GF

Wildfire (Gambler)
Passive Fist (Monk)
Pure Soul (Paladin)
Survivalist (Ranger)
Chimera's Blood: Wind (Blue Mage)
Bloodline: Beast (Blue Mage)

Spells:
Chobo Ball
Aero
Sleep
Quick


As you can see, Chocobo is a weird little hodgepodge, and not all that good. It's understandable; it's a low-level Guardian Force, meant to be traded around to tank Wind. You get a hodgepodge of abilities, some of them great, some of them meh, based around the concept of "Chocobo" (stretched a bit, but in general).

Anyone who equips Chocobo gets these abilities, so it's not a waste of levels even if you get a better Guardian Force later - you can STILL use Chocobo for situations like fighting a Wind-aspected boss, or getting access to Quick, a potent spell.

I'll assemble a PDF real quick.

Apparently, no I won't, Google Drive doesn't want to cooperate. I'll post them directly, starting with my next post.

HOUSERULES

~Battle System~
26 Attribute points (Note the +1)

Every even level, get +4 stats to distribute
Every odd level, get +2 stats to distribute

At 1, 4, 8, 12 gain a Shared Ability
At every odd level, gain a Job Ability

Minor Tweaks:
Let's see how adding Half (Higher of Finesse or Force) works out to player avoid, arm, and marm

~Skill System~
1 +4 skills
2 +3 Skills
3 +2 SKills
4 +1 Skills

1 "Refresh"

~Mixed System~

A Quote
High Concept - and a life goal
Trouble
3 Aspects - and a goal related to them
Any ability that gives a permanent stat boost instead only lasts until the end of the session. Destiny costs for such abilities are reduced from 3 to 1 to represent the fading nature.

Dual Wield is extremely broken. If you fight with two swords or two weapons we can design your single weapons to be "paired" or something. I don't want to deal with Dual Wield's ridiculousness.

Tiny gives +2 Dex and +1 Finesse (where applicable)
Huge gives +2 Str or Resolve, and +1 Force (Where applicable)

Cross-classed abilities are fair game so long as you ask first and have good justification. Don't go overboard and don't be silly with this. Having Third Eye or a Break Art because you are a member of one of the Zodiac Clans and thus received Samurai training makes sense and is cool; having Observer and obviating the entire Blue Mage class is not.

You get one additional ability that must be drawn from the Shared Abilities pool to account for a background trait. You may not take Limit Breaker with this.

SKILLS REVAMP

We will be using the Skill Rules from FATE Core instead of the FFd6 Skills in order to avoid some really silly problems that crop up later in the game.

Ignore skill points and listed skills. A skills revamp will occur shortly.

Select one Skill at Great, two at Good, three at Fair, four at Average, and all others are Mediocre.


PHYSICAL:
Athletics
Physique
Cunning
Stealth

SOCIAL:
Charisma
Deceit
Contacts
Perform
Language

MENTAL:
Magic
Tactics
Religion
History
Medicine

INTERACTION:
Awareness
Investigate
Survival
Technology
As such, the Skill Focus item property is depreciated. Replace it with:

[Skill] Focus (T2/T7) (Weapon, Armor, Accessory, Consumable)

A T2 Skill Focus shifts the Skill it gives a bonus for one step up the pyramid. A T7 Skill Focus shifts the skill two steps up the pyramid. A consumable doubles the tier bonus for a single roll.

Credit where credit is due - many of these (especially the numerical ones) were written up by one of my players, who is extremely gifted with numbers and systems. They're still in the testing phase, but so far I haven't seen any imbalances. Monsters are flexible enough that I can still very easily threaten them even with just mooks, and a couple wolves almost killed the entire party.

The cross-class stuff, the "background trait" ability, and Dual Wield are from me.

Utterly broken (so's zodiac though in different ways).

Balance is all over the place; Red Mages can become completely single-stat, making them incredibly powerful, and destiny-using abilities range from "permanent +2 to a stat for everyone every time" to "as above but it's whenever I kill something, but it's just for me" to "uh, you do an attack that deals okay damage but nothing spectacular"

Some classes are pathetic, and their abilities not much help, while others are better than everyone at everything.

Blue mages are hard-fucked; their spells are available too late to be anything but obsolete damage/healing-wise. Geomancers are like an attack action you can't control but guaranteed to be whatever element the local things absorb and less reliable somehow.

Have you tried FFRPG4e? It's not too bad so far.

Charismagic is basically necessary for a Red Mage because Black Magic works off one stat and White Magic works off another. This actually isn't as powerful as you think it is, unless you come from D&D; every Spellcasting class has ways to add huge damage multipliers to their spells that far outstrip Charismagic. Every martial class has some pretty interesting abilities that keep them roughly competitive, although unlike 3.5, there's no "massive utility spells" - spells are spells, skills are skills, and martials either have spells or have cool things that do other stuff (the Paradigm System in Warrior is absolutely amazing).

Blue Mages and Geomancers are based entirely around the GM's whimsy but every Geomancer ability is pretty OK as long as your GM isn't a complete asshole and Blue Mages can get some pretty solid tricks to keep them competitive.

Limit Abilities are bad and as I said earlier, don't use them.

The problem isn't when a redmage uses it.
It's when you class-change out for a different caster...

Which I never saw not be done.

I cut class-change out entirely because it's gamist as fuck. It's more fun to just let people pick more or less freely from the lists with justification. One of my players is a White Mage with Charismagic and I've told her that if this gets broken she's gonna be changing it out for a different ability.

Class Change is kind of stupid anyway because Destiny shatters the game over its knee instead of being a fun addition. I really only use Destiny for Limit Breaks (which /I/ design and hand out, rather than using Limit Abilities) and Summons.

I have a PDF of a playtest for the Final Fantasy d20, I think it's third edition. I got it a long time ago. Has level 1-99 class progression, every class and every race that has appeared up to final fantasy 12.

Needless to say it's an utter fucking mess. Makes Pathfinder look like rules-lite.

Class change is half the draw of fft

Class Change isn't in the FFT section. It's in the core rules section, and it's a very bad mechanic.

I'm not sure how you can say something like "Class Change is the main draw of X" and then complain that the system is broken because of that ability. It's a bad rule. Cut it out, and the game runs fine.

What do you get with Class Change that you don't accomplish by just letting players pick from all the abilities on level-up? Some floating, more complex HP pools?

Is a game better if the rules are identical to the inspiration, or if the rules emulate the feel of the inspiration while sacrificing the cumbersome parts?

Is that the one that was ~900 god damn pages?

I was thinking about running a FF game using Fate Core if anyone has suggestions or time to see my disjointed, rambling notes/ideas?

If you really want.

Maybe I'll post my world guide, too, and get opinions and thoughts.

Yeah.

Honestly I'd just use Ryuutama.

A fundamental- the number six will be a huge, constant theme in my story. Six crystals, six elements, six races, six everywhere- if the players see five things they'll be wondering where the other one is.
For magic I think I'll just use the Storm Callers from the Toolkit to represent Black Mages and the Storm Summoners for Summoners. Since my story revolves around two other, lost, crystals it's tempting to include Callers for Holy and Darkness but not sure how that would work mechanically. Would a White Mage just be a Holy Storm Caller? It doesn't seem right somehow, a bit too offensive instead of healing/defensive.

It's tempting to try and emulate the game series by preventing mages from using swords for example, maybe with a stunt, but would that be adding an unnecessary layer of complexity to hinder players?

I found someone had an idea for a White Mage but I think I may have altered it slightly and included the stunt ideas.

Extra: White Mage
White Mages can channel powerful healing magic and ease the physical and spiritual wounds of the world. They can also create spiritual shields to protect themselves and others.

To become a White Mage:
-Reduce your Refresh by one
-Take an Aspect that reflects your profession (e.g. White Chalice Pilgrim, Quiet White Wizard Girl, etc).
-Take the White Magic skill

White Magic Aspect
Passive Effect: The healer is immune to most mild, natural diseases and illness--the common cold, stomach flu, etc.
Invoke to: Nurture - Any action involving healing or caring for the sick, injured, or cursed.
Compel to: Pity - When people are in need, the Healer can be compelled to lend put aside her priorities and lend aid.

New Skill: White Magic
This is the skill used to channel healing and protective magic.

Overcome: Use White Magic to remove aspects relating to illness, curses, or poison. You can also use it to give treatment to a person suffering physical consequences to start the recovery process.

Additionally, once per conflict, you can try and remove all physical stress from an individual. The difficulty is equal to the highest level of physical stress they currently have.

Create an Advantage: Use Healing to stick aspects to allies relating to physical well-being, spiritual strength, putting aspects on demons or the undead or to create temporary barriers.

Attack: Use White Magic to attack undead, devils, and other evil creatures.

Defend: Use White Magic to defend against attacks from undead, devils, and other evil creatures.

Stunts
*Cure- Once per session, you can attempt to reduce a physical consequence by a degree. Spend a Fate Point and roll to Overcome with a difficulty equal to the stress level of the Consequence. This does not work on extreme consequences.

*Holy Symbol +2 to repel undead or evil creatures.

My race notes:
Hume: The most common of the races. Humes can be found just about anywhere and be of any Job or Profession
Use this Aspect: When willpower matters more than strength, to adapt to new circumstances.

Viera: Often called the People of the Wood, the rabbit-eared Viera are a lithe and swift race. Like humes, they can fill a great variety of roles.
Use this Aspect: For feats of agility, when superior hearing is a factor. Sensitive to Mist.

Moogle: Recognized by the small wings, usually pink or white fur, and a pom-pom hanging from their heads. Moogles are mild-tempered and enjoy eating vines and Kupo Nuts.
Use this Aspect: When being small is a factor, to float easily to the ground, to understand a strange device or stay calm

Mandragora: A small, incredibly varied race of plant-like beings. The ones that can travel are the youth of their kind.
Use this Aspect: For survival in the wilderness, when being part plant is relevent.

Garif: Large, strong and furry. The Garif wear masks at all times, never willingly removing them for any reason. They worship magicite and live in harmony with the natural world.
Use this Aspect: To know something about magicite, resist the cold or exert physical strength.

Burmecian: Martial ratfolk. Once famous for their dragonriders they have now adapted a military of Dragon Knights.
Use this Aspect: For jumping great heights, to recognise a scent, when dealing with dragons, if pride or honour is on the line.

I suppose the hard thing to do is decide how FF-like you want to get, if you try and replicate each and every little thing or keep it simple. Red Mages, for example, could be a pain to try and work out.

Yeah. Red Mages, sages, a decent (but limited) Summoning system, etc. Will you want an old summon style where they appear, do their thing and leave, or the newer style where the summon hangs around, can be controlled, but the caster may or may not be present or able to act while it is?

Or perhaps like FF9 and FF10, where summoning was an aspect of White-Mage based classes. The healers had the capacity to use summons and only the healers.

Sorry, I was the guy you were responding to before. Just felt like mentioning that as I was reading since that was my primary interest in checking this out. To me as a final fantasy fan, class changes and classes themselves are absolutely needed for me to feel like I'm really the final fantasy guy. I love that shit in the games. I played fft ffta and fft2 entirely for class shit. Fucking eat up bravely default. This pick from whatever, while might be the better system really doesn't seem very final fantasy to me. But to be fair I've also not played this system only just now skimmed the rules due to this thread. I'm sure you're absolutely right as far as mechanics go and that's honestly a real shame

I know what you mean. I played FFTA and FFTA2 for the same reason. I loved being able to make a Paladin/Ninja or a Dragoon/Templar and just rock everybody's faces off.

But that basically encourages rampant powergaming in a multi-person tabletop. I think FFd6 does a pretty good job emulating the classic Final Fantasies - not the BEST job, but an acceptable one, and better than a LOT of the alternatives.

I think sacrificing Class Change is an unfortunate necessity, or at least reworking it to not be perilously bullshit powergamer-rewarding. How, I'm not sure. I haven't put any thought into it.

Rewarding bullshit power gaming almost seems correct for this sort of thing. I mean, the issue is less about the min or the max, but rather the range between the two.
Plus id like to imagine the ideal ff RPG would work similar to the games(some of them) in the sense that even if you fuck up a build you can always just level up a new class.

Like, as an extreme example: all classes have three levels and the third level of all class are roughly the same amount of power give or take, and progression is just restarting on a new class with something kept from your masteries. So that end game characters might be numerically similar to absolute newbies but with waaay more tricks. That way even if you build like a moron you can just level more and fix that trivially with like deeep end game ending with everyone with the same options but ideally you don't actually hit that kinda level without playing for years

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