Hey Veeky Forums, I want to run a game based on classic Final Fantasy. What system could you recommend for it?
My current choice is 5e D&D, mostly because it's a system I've run several times in the past. But I'd like to get some other options, if possible.
Well, if you're going for 5e, here's a resource I found where they port all the job/class over to DnD:
imgur.com
Also if the realm you're working on happens to be Ivalice I have the following where he compile all the Ivalice games into a cohesive region and timeline.
geekluminati.wordpress.com
Also the wiki for the bestiary for XII, where you can get high-level render images to use as monster standees, which is currently my plan for a future Ivalice tabletop game:
finalfantasy.wikia.com
What do you mean, "based on Final Fantasy"?
If you mean dungeons and kingdoms, airships and chocobos, then that could work out for nearly any system. D&D5e should work fine, especially if you aren't terribly picky about Blue Magic or Summoning behaving exactly the same.
If you are looking for a system you can customize into using MP, Blue Magic, skills, and everything else, then you would want to be a bit pickier. And perhaps make some concessions.
for the love of god dont do it.
a buddy of mine ran a final fantasy campaign in DnD and it was god awful. the story of the classic final fantasy is garbage. if you're hell bent on doing something involved with final fantasy just change the names of creatures to franchise names. the X amount of heros set off to save the 4 gems that anchors the world is so droll and creates no necessity for character building or interaction other than "we obviously need to do X objective, or else the world will cease to exist."
i hate to rain on the parade and offer little else in constructive feedback, but i think that fact stands for how poor of an idea i think this is. it was probably the worst campaign i sat through. i didn't even make it to the end. i quit the group because the campaign went on so god damn long.
Final Fantasy D6. May require some homebrewing to prevent sheer brokenness in certain parts, but otherwise it's a good system.
My GM came up with a blue magic system for 5e where 'magicite' has a chance to drop from monstrous enemies (and, more rarely, powerful natural phenomena like volcanic eruptions) which you then attune to as if they were magic items. There are also magic weapons and accessories that can slot them so you can add blue magic features to equipment, but we haven't found/bought/had need for any yet..
It's been fun and functional so far.
'Classic' final fantasy is a misnomer because 1-6 all had wildly different gameplay systems, with only 3 and 5 sharing any strong similarities.
The most 'classic' Final Fantasy archetypical system is the Job system. No TTRPG emulates that well because it was about control and fluidity, switching between Jobs and optimizing their cross-Job abilities.
If I had to pick though, its probably either 3.PF or 4e for the level of crunch and build shenanigans you can get up to. 13th Age might be a decent fit, too.
Retro Phaze
The iron kingdoms RPG is basically a job system ain't it? Anyone ever try that one out?
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If you mean the original Final Fantasy, then AD&D.
Anything else, just use BESM.
Depends on how classic we are talking. FF1 was basically aping OD&D a lot, so you could just grab an OSR.
I quite like 4e and Strike! for the more flashy feeling later ones; if you want Sabine suplexing a ghost train and not worry about how much sense that makes, those should be right up your alley.
You might just have a really shitty friend, user.
Would you allow people to play as samurai and kill bosses with "Shut up and take my money" the command/action?
>Also if the realm you're working on happens to be Ivalice I have the following where he compile all the Ivalice games into a cohesive region and timeline.
>geekluminati.wordpress.com
Too bad he's both trying to smash the Ivalice Timeline and Ogre Battle Timeline together as well as working from a fanon Ivalice Timeline instead of the official one.
>Final Fantasy D6
For the love of god, do not use this. I tried running a campaign in it once and it literally fell apart at the first signs of stress.
The book is disorganized, the rules are either all over the place or don't exist, and it doesn't hold up well at all.
friend of mine was actually working on a legit FF TTRPG once upon a time. i'm not sure how far he got into making it, but he said it had job switching, cross-class skills and all that stuff. i'll hit him up when he wakes up, see if i can't get you a link to it.
Weren't the classic FF games littered with character stuff though? Friends becoming foes, foes becoming friends, betrayals and familial strife?
I've only played FFEXIVUS so only know the stories from reading short character backgrounds, but it seemed there was lots of development there.
>BESM
My African American Sibling.
Seriously, I know the system has problems, but why don't people use it a little more often? Any time there's a, "What system should I run XXX universe in?" BESM should be the first system that comes to mind. It's literally designed to emulate whatever univrse/genre you want. If you don't have a specific system to use, there's not a system that can do it better, or you don't want GURPS, then your go- to should be BESM.
Isn't it an imbalanced mess?
Not him, but I have the 2nd edition book and a few expansions (Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo). The system is great at being general (You get a spell! You get some flunkies who follow you around! You fight this bad guy!) but the downside is you often have to do the dirty work yourself (statting and balancing all this stuff).
Sort of. It's a lot like Mutants & Masterminds where you can accidentally break the game. It takes a a couple things to run well, like players who focus on creating a character instead of 120% power optimization and a GM who isn't afraid to say NO or change how something works. If you can get everyone on the same page as far as balance issues are concerned, it's much less of a problem.
It's not supported anymore, BESM d20 fucking destroyed the brand name, and on top of that Mutants and Masterminds is pretty much the direct spiritual successor to it.
Well, the basic concepts could work well.
You have the medieval kingdoms, ancient empires of magitech, demonic lords, rampaging elemental forces, etc.
Stuff like the Eldritch Knight martial archetype and the Artificer class seem tailor made for it.
You'd could also add a Dragon Knight/Dragoon martial archetype, and a moogle race option, to make it even more FF-like.
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I'm curious how a Dragoon archetype would work in 5e.
EK with Jump/Fly/Feather fall?
But 5e really doesn't do FF characters that well.
I have, it's not a job system the way FF is, and FF1 wasn't jobs anyway. It was DnD classes.
I've been mulling over a Final Fantasy campaign for a while now.
So far the only idea I've got is to have every player make a character... then have them make another character, because you all know that feeling of having a good idea for a cool character right after you've already made your first one.
Then have everyone make a THIRD character.
The first character they made is the one they start with. At any point during the game, they can tell me that they want to switch characters soon, and I will (in theory) come up with a reason for that character to temporarily leave the party and their next character to join.
Please tell me how stupid this idea is.
Sounds a little gratuitous and dumb. There's more than enough enough suspension of disbelief involved in necessary character swaps (when a PC dies or a new player joins the group) and no need to add unnecessary ones.
If you're trying to emulate the thing where there are six guys in the party but only three of them can participate in the fight for some reason, you'd better come up with a really good, reusable justification for it. Maybe complicate the decision of which character to use by granting PCs dual techs and triple techs that only work with a specific combination of PCs that you wouldn't otherwise want in the same party. You could also do it to reward roleplaying, like when a relationship between two specific PCs is amusing and you want to see more of it.
HERO or BESM. Or any superhero RPG where you can build the powers you want and tie them to an MP system.
So why don't people just run BESM 3e?
And how does BESM 3e stack up against hero and GURPS?
I was more thinking about FF6's storyline where characters drop in and out of the party throughout the game, with circumstances ensuring that your traveling group is never more than four characters.
>Maybe complicate the decision of which character to use by granting PCs dual techs and triple techs that only work with a specific combination of PCs that you wouldn't otherwise want in the same party.
I like this idea.
Well, I'm only an outsider when it comes to 5e things,and this is obscenely quick and lazy, but maybe something like:
Oath of the Dragon (Paladin option)
Oath Spells
03rd - Feather Fall, Jump.
05th - Aganazzar's Scorcher, Levitate.
09th - Spirit Gurdians (the spirits appear draconic), Vampiric Touch.
13th - Ice Storm, Storm Sphere.
17th - Flamestrike, Mass Cure Wounds
Channel Divinity - at 3rd level have access to Guided Strike and Sacred Weapon Channel Divinity options.
Frightful Presence - As Aura of Conquest (Oath of Conquest) but named after the dragon ability
Dragonheart - As Undying Sentinel (Oath of the Ancients)
Dragon Knight - As Avenging Angel (Oath of Vengence) but Dragonic in style.
You'd have to railroad the PCs pretty hard to make that work. But I guess it's either that or the FFX approach where the whole team is there but most of them are doing nothing.
>You'd have to railroad the PCs pretty hard to make that work.
See, it wouldn't be up to me. It would just be an easy release valve for the "I'm bored with playing this character" problem. The player would be the one to decide when they wanted their current PC to drop into the background.
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Shards of Creation is pretty good for it, since a lot of its options were inspired by old Final Fantasy classes.
Damn, this thread makes me want to make Gilgamesh as a Goliath (Samurai) Fighter.
I'm not even a 5e player.
I've never heard of this game before. Link/PDF?
ffrpg.net
try that
Final Fantasy 1 was literally just "Go kill this guy, he's evil, no go kill two other evil people, go get upgrades from this dragon, kill two more bad guys then *SLIGHT PLOT MOMENTUM* then go kill the bbeg"
From then on, with the exception of 3 which was very much the same stuff, they had quite a lot of story and character development going on.
Pretty well universally agreed that the whole "FF has amazing plot" thing started at 4, hit a climax around 6 - 9, depending on who you talk to, then started to go down, not hitting actual "bad" status until 13.
Seconded, I'm intrigued and cant find a pdf online.
As someone who has allowed PCs to swap characters, take it from me: eventually the new PCs will try to team up with the old PCs and get mad if the old PCs don't play along.
>implying 12 didn't have a bad story
Biggest issue with 12 was that you werent even an important character. You were just some cuck that tagged along for the ride
FF is kid's stuff, real hardcore players do Dragon Quest where your fucking name can determine how much stats you get when you level up.
Dragon Quest more like RNG Roulette Quest
10 kind of had that problem, too. And 9, to a degree. Final Fantasy games have a bad track record of knowing who the real main character is.
So wondering on the whole 5e, generic Final Fantasy setting...
Locations:
- A large expansionist Empire, using primitive forms of magitech.
- Mysidia, magicracy, and developers (rediscoverers?) of wizardry.
- Bahamut worshipping nation (Deist?) Home to Dragon Knights. Uses Mushussu (Guard Drakes) as others use dogs. Also home to Wind Drakes/Wyverns.
- Mount Gulug, a volcano inhabited by Salamanders and their Maralith queen.
- Feymarch, the otherworldly realm of the summoned monsters.
- Floating Islands, originally home to a great magitech empire, now drifting empty husks.
>10 kind of had that problem, too.
During the second quarter of the game, this is true. But, the last half of this game is a story of two people. It's still the protagonist's story, it's just shared.
In fairness, while FF1 didn't have much in the way of character interaction or development, the final twist was pretty neat for its time.
Also, you're forgetting the fair amount of minor quests. Fighting pirates to obtain a ship, saving the elf prince, returning Matoya's eye, getting water breathing from the fairy, getting a canoe to access the volcano, getting a cipher to learn the ancient magitech language, getting TNT to open up a canal... it's not a deep story by any means, but it's a pretty decent romp of a D&D campaign.
To be honest, I don't really see the problem with playing as a "secondary character" once in a while. Not in every game, of course, but it can be an interesting perspective. You still get the story, but the "main character" has more room to pull their own surprises.