So now that the dust has settled, has anyone done anything interesting with this system?
Base book for those new
mediafire.com
And the pastebins to what is currently translated of the expansions. Originally there were only 3, but now there's some translated from 4 and 5, as well as core errata
So, what stories do people have? what insane anime bullshit have you managed anons?
Gonna include the PDF itself in case people don't wanna trust the mediafire link.
Anyways, my story as a player is probably not interesting, but here goes.
First, i was going to GM a campaign of this. I'd been in the threads since the first one, but was waiting for more stuff to be finalized. However, a friend of mine beat me to it. Apparently, he was also there for kamigakari anons birthday.
So i settled for being a player. In that first game, there were 3 players, all of us physical based. Because we're dumb and can't communicate well. I was also pulled in last second.
First, there was a heroic spirit. Basically a straight rip off of the fate universe as a class. Pretty simple, overall. Powerful weapons, and a reality marble type thing that let him summon a castle.
Second, and this is the weirdest one, was pablo. What amounts to a stand user with a mexican mustache and sombrero. This guy basically played as comic relief.
And then there was me. I was the epitome of a kamen rider from kamen rider fourze. constantly talking about justice, and things like that. My main mode of attack was punching the shit outta things.
Cont.
I should mention, parts of this were taken from the pre-made scenario's, to my knowledge. out of respect i didn't look into it to far.
So our first adventure started with me and random classmate A (because i was the only person sensible enough to be a regular student), getting attacked. I transform, her panties get soaked, and the other two show up.
I'm not really sure about everyone else's sheets, but my set up was scion, with dragon carrier B and arc slayer A. At this point, i realized i could basically fluff up scions 99 regalia to be something like star platinum, kenshiro, jonathan joestar, or whatever other crazy punchy man you can think of. I'm aware that in a super optimized setting armor is near useless and that spear is OP as shit, but thats no fun.
So i rolled with it, and i rolled with it hard. we go around, investigating, etc etc. eventually find out that classmate A's dog is a possessed animal turned into an aramitama. I sunlight yellow overdrive the shit out of its distortion, mending it, and we go in to deal with the big boss.
Inside the spirit barrier, me, pablo, and spirit man find a big dog thing. Super big, really, and its shooting fire and ice at us. It shot fire, i took it to the face and kept my pose. Everyone else started dishing out damage. Heroic spirit guy managed a crit and dealt a really large blow to the creature. So i went in, and started overdriving on its face, with 99 regalia. It shot more fire, i still tanked it. I was saying something about justice the whole time. This went on for a couple more turns, and eventually whatever was possessing doggo died or bitched off. my memories a bit fuzzy on that one. Afterwards, heroic spirit man takes his servant girl and goes back to his castle, i got two bitches fighting over the dick, and pablo just sorta... left.
And that was the first game we'd had. Unfortunately, its not a very good story because this was a while back, and most of the details currently elude me.
Honestly my story from character creation is way better, more for the sheer uncanniness of it.
The character i made was the aforementioned dragon carrier scion. I knew i wanted to punch things and protect people as a kamen rider of justice. But for things like crest and such, I rolled randomly. In the craziest case of coincidence I'd seen in a while, i first rolled for crest location. It ended up on my right arm. Then i rolled on the dragon carrier table, and managed to get gauntlets as the symbol. After that on the goal table, i rolled "Because its my job" and on the bonds table got cordelia blackeagle, who happens to head up an arms company. On the relationship table, i got protector.
So my character's backstory ended up perfectly depicting what i was going for, a kamen rider of justice that views protecting others and dishing out justice as his job (on top of being on the lady's protection detail). Despite it being rolled randomly on the tables. Everyone else chose their shit specifically. My background chose me. It was a case of some really freaky coincidences, but i was grinning from ear to ear.
Well, thats the end of my walls of text for the moment. Has anyone else managed to do anything interesting themselves? Perhaps found an interesting combination of skills in the system? done something in a cool fashion?
Lets hear the stories, anons.
Haven't played it (or even heard of it until now, actually), but I'll be looking into it sometime soon just for your thread title.
It was a recently translated thing, honestly. If memory serves, it just got translated from japanese back in january or early february.
As for the thread title, the game allows for just about any anime bullshit you could think of, from magical girls and kamen riders to mages And knights.
Its also pretty loose with the fluff. So long as the crunch is the same and within the bounds of common sense, you can fluff things like armor, equipment, and abilities to be described however you like.
Oh, shit. Maybe it would help if i posted the character sheets and record sheet. Shit, shoulda thought of that first.
I'll post these here in a minute. If people want versions of just the left or right half, i've got those too.
While i'm posting sheets, i guess i'll go over some neat things about the system.
>Spirit Crest
These are basically a fate point equivalent. You burn a portion of your soul to do something potentially amazing. You have 22 of it, and the crazier the thing you plan to do is, the more D6's you roll to determine how much you burn. There is usually some sort of drawback to this, which gets worse the more you burn.
>Spirit barrier
All in one "No collateral damage and bag of holding" ability. You basically carry around a pocket dimension, and can extend it so the regular world doesn't get fucked up by your anime shenanigans. Its also used to store your equipment, and can be used as a sort of equipment handling system if you are savvy enough
some more neat things
For the most part, most rolls are made using 2d6 plus a modifier, if any. This can change, but requires specific circumstances, talents, or style's.
>Damage rank
These are seperated into 3 types. physical, magic, and non-typed. What ranks do (as you'll see on this record sheet) is increase the damage based on the highest number of the two you roll to attack. If both are 6's, its a crit. Generally, you will hit at rank 1, doing 2,3,4,5, or 6 damage. For each rank you go up, through use of skills, items, or what have you, The damage you deal goes up as well.
The reason 1 says 0 for damage is because if you rolled 2 1's, you probably missed anyways. Its the same as a fumble roll, basically. Keep in mind, your rank and your modifier are two separate numbers. The rank determines the base damage, and the modifier is added on after this.
>Spirit dice
At the start of the game, you roll 4d6. These numbers are a set of dice you can change out with on rolls to improve your chances of succeeding, or using special abilities. When you roll, you may choose to "Influence" and replace one of your rolls for one of these stocked numbers.
These dice are also used to activate special abilities. At the end of a round and the start of a new one, any used up dice are re-rolled and added back to the pool.
One thing interesting about this game, it doesn't try to go to hard into hard numbers on things like distance or weight. Instead, it describes things in squares.
Depending on the encounter, this can be 5 feet, 50, or even larger.
>engagements
Engagements are basically any group of beings that are all touching by a side on the grid, and at least 2 of which are opposed to eachother. It doesn't really matter what shape it takes, so long as the group has sides touching. If something has a corner touching, but no sides, it isn't in the engagement. Some specific abilities target engagements, so this is something to pay attention to.
If anyone wants them, i've also got the sheets for the sample characters in the books.
making a character can be a bit daunting in this system, because not all the information is where you would think it is.
Thanks for posting this, OP. Don't have the time to go through it right now, but it looks interesting.
I'm just tryin to spread the fun.
Kamigakari user put a lot of work into getting this up, and he's likely still at it. it would be a crying shame for that effort to just drop off the face of the planet.
If anyones got questions about the system, i'll do my best to answer them.
And i forgot to add the map of the city earlier, so here's that as well.
Well, this is a quiet time of night. For now i'll just post the sample characters, intermittently.
One thing the book doesn't do well of explaining is the symbols on talents.
The one with the X and dots are automatically gained from a race or style.
The ones with nothing have no requirements, but that you have that race or style.
Ones with a Solid dot Are ones you cannot take on creation (for all intents and purposes, at level 1). These either are more powerful than the earlier ones, or are upgraded versions.
And the ones with two circles are Style Ultimates. You can't obtain these until level 10+, as you need to take a high talent to obtain them.
High talents are special talents gained at levels 5, 10, and 15. Level 5+ has its own list, and level 10+ expands on it.
If you are making a character that is not level 1, make them starting from level 1, and level it up from there, as if you had actually played it. Otherwise, the process gets a bit weird.
421 pages uff
What's the combat flow like here?
I tried playing another extremely anime game, Double Cross, but combat for that system is ass: you only have one maybe two attacks, and the positioning rules are super loose, so you only ever move to choose whether you're in melee or not. Boring.
The worst part is that with the quantity of abilities available the game hints that you can build characters with, well, many abilities, but realistically you only build a single attack 'combo' made out of 2-3 powers and sink all of your XP on ranking up those and your base stats. You can sacrifice some XP to add rider effects to this attack or get an item/power to deal or deal with debuffs but the game further commits the sin of battles being a damage efficiency race, so optimal play is to deal as much damage as fast as possible with as little resources committed as you can (because your attack resource is also used to defend).
From what i've experienced, the combat flow is actually pretty solid, for the most part.
Combat is grid based, and many abilities have ranges of X squares, some of which move you with them (those that say charge X squares).
Combat is pretty fluid and depends heavily on whats in your spirit pool at the time. You can fluff your attacks however you so wish within the confines of what your character is capable of.
Earlier i explained engagements Most things are based on 2d6's, and most modifiers are easy to figure out. Extra dice can be added with specific talents, as can extra attacks and such.
Damage is decided on by ranks, as i explained here . There's also a table for it on the sheets.
One thing i forgot to mention is that physical damage can be avoided entirely by your evasion roll, and magic can only be halved in most situations by your resistance roll.
Also, one entire section of that, and a meaty chunk of it, is DMing guide stuff. you can ignore that entirely and parse it down to like, 2/3rds of that.
Probably around 250-300 pages.
I see.
So character advancement is basically gaining a new ability every level, some of which are new combat actions, some modifiers to existing actions, and others always-on passives - all taken from your particular combination of race and 2 styles?
Seems a nice at a glance. What about items?
Tianxia, Feng Shui and Anima are each better than this shit, even if two of them are made for wuxia games.
To amend what you said slightly, thats not technically true. Every level you get a talent, and stats. you get 2 points to put into main stats, but you can't put both into a single stat.
At level 5, you can use your talent to get another style if you so wish, or use it to improve other area's. This is on top of gaining your regular talent, stats, and in addition another racial talent. I also forgot to mention this earlier, but there are some general talents you can get that don't require a style or race. Most of these aren't worth the talent, but in specific builds some are worth consideration.
So far as items go, there's a pretty diverse range. Regular items (consumables) are used to increase your characters stats and abilities in a ton of ways. There's a pretty good list of different effects they can give.
Armor and accessories act more or less as outright stat modifiers. There isn't a whole lot to say here. Different armors give bonus's to stats, but some take away from your initiative stat.
So far as weapons go, this is an interesting portion. On creation, your first weapon can get one of the upgrades with a diamond for free. From here, each weapon type has a good list of upgrades that can increase its outright damage, stats, or even give new functionality.
Hammers for example can get the ability to create obstacles, or conversely to destroy them.
And? I like this system, so i'll continue to try and spread the love.
Looks neat so far, will show it to my other DM friends and see if we can get something going. Thanks for showing user.
There's no stories because this is an obscure-ass recently translated system. Just because you liked it and jumped on it fast doesn't mean anyone else did. I've never even heard of it before this thread.
This whole thread was you, and then one other guy talking about being interested.
There was actually a span of about 2 weeks back when kamigakari user first translated this that there was almost always a thread.
Just because you didn't pay attention doesn't mean they didn't exist.
No problem dude. Hope you have fun.
When was this 2 weeks anyway?Recently?
Mind you, that is NOT a very long time for this board to talk about something. Maybe two months.
Back in late January and early February.
And anyways, whats your issue? i'm just tryin to spark interest. God forbid i try and get anyone that might have used the system to join in.
It's not about "and". It's a simple statement. The game is so-so. It's fun to use, don't get me wrong, but it only shines for one-shot games. Running it for actual campaigns is just meh.
So fun for experiments and "break" one-shots, but subpar for anything else.
Well, as its designed to be episodic, thats sort of the point.
Okay, i went and looked it up. Kamigakari anons first post was on the 15th of january, and his last one as kamigakari user was on the 30th, being exactly 2 weeks.
Now that i think on it some, if you had a DM that was good with more free form or rules-light systems, they could easily use this for a legit campaign. Some of the superfluous systems could be dropped in favor of expounding on a story session by session.
As a combat system its pretty good, so i could see a DM using it for that, and then free-forming the story itself.
DESU I pretty much freeformed most of the story when I ran it I only vaguely followed the story outlining the game expects you to do.
Oh hey. Good to see interest here! If anyone has any questions, let me know.
I just recently finished translating all of the player options from the first three expansion books, and have been adding stuff sporadically to the fourth and fifth books. I've been caught up in work, so I haven't really been able to do everything I wanted to, but the next goal is to go through the core PDF and correct errors. Following that, actually translate GM options because I'm sure those of you who want to GM would like more Mononoke/Boss Talents and also the finishing stuff to Sanctums.
Hmm... I ran the first episode of my private campaign already, so I guess I could storytime that! Give me a bit to type it up.
When trying to make my own homebrew threats for non-boss monsters are there any guides or should I just make shit up?
I guess they needed a way to make a reason for people to buy new products/also needed to have material for Role & Roll Magazine so they don't tell you how to build your own Mononoke, alas. You'll just need to eyeball it using enemies from the same level (also why I want to put out more Mononoke, so there's more references).
My players are the following:
Human, Dragon Carrier A / God Hand B. Magical girl who protects the people, peace, and happiness of Hisashiro.
Magus, Time Wizard A / Time Wizard B. The scion (lowercase) of a fallen Magus family who is searching for her father.
Cyborg, Legion A / Legion B. A cyborg who works for B.E.G. under Cordelia and serves as a tester for their (Cordelia's, really) products.
Hanyou, Legacy User A / Elemental Adept B. A member of one of the Demon Hunter Society's branch families, but decided to join up with SpecProv instead.
Divine Soul, Elder Mage B / Divine Talker B. Formerly a tengu who was made into a familiar for the Kamiyas, then became a Divine Soul when she sacrificed herself for them.
The setup I gave the players was that I wanted to do a high school theme for maximum anime. We kind of fucked up initially because I had given everyone a PC Connection for their #2 Bond, but we didn't talk about them at all and everyone forgot who I had originally said was their connection. Whoops.
But I made up a lot of NPC students for everyone to grow attached to. Like the earnest student council president, a lazy girl who only comes to school for the gardening club, a womanizing violinist, his eyepatch-wearing yandere stalker, and the cool bishounen student council vice president and kendo club captain. I added a few characters that weren't Innocent but didn't have Shards either. The PCs' homeroom teacher is a Demon Eyed who oversees the PC's attempts to interact with Innocents and manage living in the Innocent world. Then there's a Magus from the Ashiya family (from the Demon Hunter Society), where I made up that Ashiya's magic only works if the practitioner is female, and of course this Magus is a boy in a skirt.
Then I murdered them all.
I wanted to follow the format of the system for running the game. Scenes, appearance checks, the works. So we started with the episode introductions. The Divine Soul went first. Her scene involved me introducing Shigeko, the Divine Soul of the old sakura tree out behind Nanamori High. Worship of the tree has fallen off over the year, and Shigeko was in actual danger of "dying" due to that lack of worship. I asked the Divine Soul PC what story they spread to help with that worship, and they said they spread the classic story of, if you confess your love under the branches of the old sakura tree, your love will last forever!
It wasn't enough. Shigeko was quiet that day, not talking to our Divine Soul at all. Then, softer than a whisper, she said, "I'm sorry." The sky turned red streaked with golden cracks, the world's symmetry was reversed, and a sense of dread clotted the air. Someone had drawn the entire school into a spirit barrier, and Shigeko wasn't responding to anything the PC Divine Soul said. Then she felt a spirit pulse from the school's gymnasium, the feeling of someone using spirit energy, and ran to investigate.
Meanwhile, the Hanyou was cleaning a classroom with one of her Innocent classmates, when she noticed the writing on the chalkboard reversed. She turned to look at the classmate, who had made a weird noise, and saw the blood literally draining out of her body. As in literally being evacuated. I had her roll an Identify check, and she realized her classmate was being attacked by a bloodsucker locust. A quick strike, and she killed it, saving the classmate, but then more locusts came swarming. Hanyou had to grab the classmate and run for the gym, where the spirit pulse was coming from.
Our Magus was missing for introductions, so I went to the magical girl, who was in cheerleading practice in the gym, overseen by the Demon Eyed homeroom teacher. As the spirit barrier went up, the gym was attacked by maneater plants. Magical girl and homeroom teacher fought against the plants, except then the plants overwhelmed the homeroom teacher and one caught her arm in its maw, and began snacking. If the magical girl didn't succeed at a high difficulty Accuracy check, the teacher's arm was going to be ripped off. (She Spirit Burned and made it.)
Finally, the cyborg was on the roof for a reason I can't remember at the moment. She saw the spirit barrier go up, and as soon as it did, she felt a strange presence behind her. Turning, she found a man in old-style Japanese clothes and a feathered cloak, wearing an owl mask and a katana that literally dripped frost. She said something snappy to him, and he responded by fast-drawing his blade and slinging icicles at her. She made a high evasion roll, avoiding damage, then brought up her guns... to empty air. The guy was gone, a few feathers fluttering in his place. Then she went to investigate the spirit pulse in the gym (which was, of course, the magical girl fighting the plants).
That ended the introduction. Magus, who conveniently had a Cover of Delinquent showed up later. In fact, just a scene later, after a battle in the gym where all the other PCs converged and fought off plants and locusts. Magus came to school super late, found everyone missing with a spirit barrier in effect, and she forced her way in from the inside, but then was trapped with the rest of them after.
Gonna take a break to get groceries before I finish the rest of the story. Back in a few!
Someone please zip up all those pdfs later so I don't have to download them all one by one and rename them.
>The sky turned red streaked with golden cracks, the world's symmetry was reversed, and a sense of dread clotted the air.
That got heavy really fast
Shit like that is always fun in games. I remember a time, a long way back by this point, when I had my players freaking the fuck out after they accidentally put a crack in the sun.
Good times.
All right! So, after fighting off a wave of locusts and plants, the PCs come together. Sanshio-sensei, the Demon Eyed homeroom teacher, sums up what they know about the situation, which right then involves a Mark of Offering appearing on everyone's neck. So they're deadly certain an Aramitama is responsible, but not sure where it is. Sanshio-sensei is a little concerned about this being so brazen and open of an attack, so her first priority is getting everyone safe, and uses her cool eye magic to identify where stragglers are. Relaying that to the PCs, she asks them to gather everyone in the gym, focusing on limiting the amount of souls the Aramitama can harvest. Sanshio's arm is fucked up but healing, so she says she'll protect the gym... but well, it's not a good situation anyway. They need to split up to get this done fast.
Three locations: the music club room, the student union/cafeteria, and the front courtyard. Hanyou decides the music club room, being inside the building, only needs one person, so she splits off from the other four. Magus and Divine Soul go for the student union. Cyborg and magical girl team up for the courtyard.
Hanyou tears into the the club room, and there's the womanizing violinist and his yandere stalker. The room is FILLED with locusts, and they are tearing the guy up. Hanyou has only a moment to react. She needs to race in and grab them both and haul them out, or kill a lot of bugs all at once (works out to an Acrobatics or an Intuition check of mid difficulty). If she fails, I tell her, violinist boy is dead and the boss gets an extra boss talent. She wins, however, and hauls both violinist and stalker out of the room, heading back for the gym.
The student union has the cafeteria in it, as well as some other miscellaneous things. Magus and Divine Soul have to head outside, and when they get to the building they see it's surrounded by maneating plants. The student council president and the gardener girl are doing their best to block windows, but there's more students inside, just kind of lethargically slumped over due to the spirit barrier. It's pretty clear that even though they're moving, the two girls are sluggish and won't be able to hold out forever. I tell Magus and Divine Soul that they can do whatever they think would work, but in case they can't, they can either roll Concealment (to sneak the students out somehow) or Command (to force the students to evacuate). They try to think of something, but in the end go with the Command. I tell them they both need to succeed at the check, but set the difficulty low, at 10.
The Magus succeeds. The Divine Soul fumbles.
As they're leading the students out, they get overwhelmed. The lazy gardener girl is snapped up and eaten, and I get a little edgy describing the crunch of bones and her pained shrieks that mercifully don't last very long. Some other students are also torn apart, and all in all, out of 20 students, they come back with 13.
For the front courtyard, Cyborg and Magical Girl find Ko, the boy Magus in a skirt, and Tamao, a Dragon Lord, fighting against a mixture of plants and locusts. They tell the PCs that they think the Mononoke are literally endless, and it's pointless to fight them--they need to go on ahead and find the source of this shit. Magical Girl is a Magical Girl however, so she tries to convince them to drop back to the gym to help Sanshio-sensei. It's a high difficulty Negotiation check, but I start to open up a bit more and suggest if they can justify it, and pay for it, I'll let them use Talents to help boost their rolls.
Magical Girl suggests she could use Moment of Hope in a way that is inspiring. Cyborg doesn't help, per se--only one of them needs to pass the check, and Cyborg's Will is shit--but she offers to use Focused Fire to give Magical Girl time to talk by shooting enemies. I accept both, Magical Girl gets a +4 bonus (+2 for each Talent), and she passes the check, barely. Ko and Tamao agree to pull back.
No good deed goes unpunished however, as I tell them they both need to succeed at Tracking rolls to find where the Mononoke are coming from, and since Ko and Tamao aren't distracting anyone any more, their difficulty goes from 16 to 18. Furthermore, while they can retry their checks, each time they fail they take 10 physical damage. I forget the exact way it went down, but Magical Girl uses one of her attack talents to clear a path (Spinning Tornado maybe?) and Cyborg backs her up with Focused Assault. Cyborg fails, takes damage (from Mononoke clawing at them), then, running out of Spirit, she digs deep and uses Cyberdive to track movement patterns and analyze where they're coming from (I ignore the original benefit of Cyberdive and just give her +2 to the roll). She makes it this time.
Boom, they find the Den of Monsters Distortion in front of Shigeko, the old sakura tree. They run back to the gym to regroup and tell everyone what they found.
The group hits the Distortion and figures out they want to try and Mend it. Unfortunately, it checks on Intellect and no one has an Intellect Hunter Set. So they just need to go for it. Since all of them need to succeed or it blows up, I stress using Spirit Burn, but I don't think anyone does. One by one, they succeed... then it comes down to the Hanyou. She rolls and... fails. ...Then she uses Invite Opportunity! ...She fails that, too.
The Distortion blows up, they take damage and penalties and I throw more Mononoke into what's about to happen, as per the rules (which, by the way, I forgot to mention--the Magus and Divine Soul failing their test meant all the minion Mononoke, including these new comers, got +10 max HP. They were well fed). But whatever, the Distortion is gone, and now they can leave cleaning up the remaining Mononoke to Sanshio-sensei, Ko, and Tamao... because suddenly, Shigeko freaks out!
She says she just wants to make people happy. She doesn't want to die. If she dies, who would make people happy? Divine Soul is sad about this, understanding how Divine Souls work. She can't condemn the emotion, but she already knows it's too late--the Marks of Offering already gave it away. So a lion-headed dude with a comically oversized upper body (think Mr. Huge from Buttlord GT) shows up. Never mentioned this guy before. Players are confused, don't I mean the owl mask guy? Nope! Lion-head guffaws, and mocks the PCs for daring to get in the way of this noble, gentle soul's wish.
And then the PCs feel another spirit pulse, again from the gym. The Aramitama smiles (which, it's a lion head, it looks creepy). Ah, that'd be their friend, finishing the job and getting the souls they need...
The final battle is HARD. I didn't even intend for it to be, but the bloodsucker locusts provide damage mitigation and the plants can eat the locusts for healing, and the Aramitama (possessing Shigeko) can revive the locusts. By the end of it, no one has Crest, the Magical Girl is in negatives, and the Divine Soul went down once. But it was fun, because I impressed on everyone the usefulness of spending Crest (the Cyborg was happy whipping out a 100+ damage spray of bullets).
The Aramitama, who they identified as Buer, falls to the ground. Everything goes still. The spirit barrier is still in effect. Whose is it?
The owl mask guy appears above the tree. His katana is dripping cold blood that turns into blood crystals from the frost effect, raining down on the PCs. He's obviously killed literally everyone in the gym.
Then, behind him, the sky finishes cracking, a roar of shattering glass heralding the arrival of pure, unending blackness beyond the "sky" of the spirit barrier. Like an eye opening, a red moon appears, staring balefully down at the PCs. And then Owl Mask speaks:
"The last of the sacred trees has fallen. The end draws near, though the wish is fulfilled. Enjoy your peace while it lasts, little ones."
Smash to black. Like, literally, everything goes out. Session ends. Bad end.
And yes, this was episode one of my ~campaign~, we're picking up episode two hopefully soonish.
Hopefully I wasn't too long-winded, but I rather liked how it went down, and I hope my examples of running the game will help someone!
Hey man, good to see ya. Glad i could be of help.
I went to take a nap, but i'll be honest. I wasn't expecting this thread to be here, let alone you. Color me impressed on both accounts.
Anyways, i hope i explained things adequately earlier.
Yeah, you did just fine! I'm glad people are enjoying this.
Can I go full magical girl in this game or are there better options for that?
You have my interest anyway, but I want to know that.
Oh easily. This system easily supports magical girl shenanigans.
Dragon carrier isn't just for Kamen rider shenanigans. its pretty loose on what its transformations actually look like. So if you want it to be a frilly combat dress, thats all on you. From there, how you fight would be based on your secondary style. For example, if you wanted elemental things, you'd go elemental adept, if you want more general use magic, elder mage, that kinda thing.
Keep in mind that only your main style's stats are added to yours. On top of this, choosing which type of the race you want to go is also really important. Martial utility and arcane all have pretty big differences between stats. The only race that isn't really recommended unless you are doing something specific is hanyou, because its highest stat is luck, which isn't a terribly useful stat most of the time. You are more likely to get more mileage out of the other 4 stats.
>then i murdered them all
Thats what the original mediafire link is for. I posted the PDF's individually in the off chance someone wanted most of them. It has all of this shit already rounded up, minus the pictures i've been using. I went and got those from the original kamigakari thread.
What said. I'll even go one better! There's this thing in one of the replays.
■ Magical Stick
Restrict : Dragon Carrier
Mode : Two Hands
CNJ : None
MD : +7
INIT : -3
Cost : 3,000G
[Magical Attack / Range: 6 Sq. / Target: 1# / Resist: Cancel / Element: None / Rank: 2]. A stick-type Artificial Regalia with a cute-looking form. While [Equipped], when the user uses either «Crystal Transformation» or «Crystal Install», they gain +2 [Armor] and [Barrier] (this effect does not stack with itself, even if both «Crystal Transformation» and «Crystal Install» is used).
Between the two types, Dragon Carrier B is more magical-aligned and focused on "protecting others" so that one probably works a bit better. You could also pair it with Elemental Adept (Light) and shoot beams/sparkles.
To be fair, Dragon carrier A could easily be a nanoha type magical girl. You'd just want something a bit more defensive to go along with it. Like arc slayer B for example.
Actually, that would probably make for a good Fate testarossa build, now that i think on it.
Yup! I mean the magical girl in my own campaign is a Dragon Carrier A / God Hand B. I sold her on the concept by showing the clip in Symphogear where Hibiki suplexes a space shuttle.
thats a good time. I mean, just showing anything hibiki does woulda worked, honestly.
Like i said earlier, my character is currently A dragon carrier B, arc slayer A, god hand B, and i'm the most punchy and justicy of kamen rider.
The neat thing about the abilities is that they all give an effect, but leave the deeper fluff entirely to you. It leaves that shit intentionally vague to allow you to say you did whatever anime bullshit you want.
Just realized i forgot to post the last of the sample characters. My bad
I have played Kamigakari for only several sessions, and I can say with confidence that the three major combat-breakers are Contractor B's Bound Primal mechanics (especially with items to upgrade it), multiattacks in general, and multitarget attacks in general. Woe betide the enemies if you can stack multiattacks and multitarget attacks through one of the supplements' weapons.
These outclass "regular" combat methods by such a large degree that they are absurd.
I have no idea why countless RPG designers fall into the trap of allowing multiattacks to exist unrestricted, and and letting summoned creatures have their own action economies.
Hm? What do you mean by multiattacks? I only really can think of Focused Assault or whatever I named Legion A's starter Talent as an actual multiattack.
Unless you mean "literally any way to get more than one attack per round" which, yeah, Kami has a lot of those.
I do remember golems being fairly OP way back a few months ago.
If i remember correctly, spears were rather too powerful as well.
Generally speaking, anything that targets multiple enemies should have lower damage per hit than an attack designed for singular enemies.
so far as extra attacks go though, you need to purposely spec into those kinds of things.
So far as more attacks per round in general though, you sort of need them at some point because the health on aramitama can get pretty damn high, and your damage can only go up to a certain point, with a LOT of stacking and talents.
One of the players in question was a God Hand A/Divine Talker A using Continuous Words of Power with a nunchaku. They could reliably multiattack twice on their turn, targeting two enemies each time... with rather respectable range thanks to the cyborg's Retractable Armament.
Getting to slam enemies with all of your PD bonuses multiple times in one turn is outclassed only by the sheer action economy distortion that is the Bound Primal rules. I do not think anything is stopping you from summoning more than one given the relatively low Crest cost.
You do need to purposefully specialize in milking multitarget attacks and multiattacks for all they are worth, and yes, they do become "necessary" at some point.
This begs the question: why bother with anything else? (Aside from Bound Primals, that is.)
To put it simply as to "Why bother with anything else"
if you throw one attack that deals 30 damage, and 30 attacks that deal one damage, what is the difference?
One goes through defense and miss chances multiple times.
Generally its better to do it evenly than it is to all in on one or the other.
Back when the first threads were up, people were complaining about mitigation being near useless, but having played a dragon carrier up to level 5 and focusing on defense, i must say that isn't true either, especially with multi-attacks.
Honestly, the numbers just need slightly tweaked on most of this. Spears for example should do slightly less damage per hit. The only thing i don't really know how it could be fixed with a simple house ruling is bound primals, as you say.
>having played a dragon carrier up to level 5 and focusing on defense
Defense investments are lest cost-effective than raw offense investments; yes, you can get very high Armor and Barrier, especially as a Dragon Carrier B, but the same investments could have gone towards making your character a force of destruction with only moderately less durability.
It does not help that Kamigakari's options for actually defending allies are few and far between, and such options are what really count for a defender-type. (What is the point of high durability if enemies can ignore you?)
It also does not help that a critical hit ignores Armor and Barrier. There is no reason for this rule other than to screw over people like Dragon Carrier Bs.
In any case, I do not see your point here. You can easily accumulate enough PD to rip through the Armor of even the highest-Armored enemies of your level range, so being soaked down to negligible damage amounts simply is not going to happen if you are properly optimizing your multiattacks.
Well, remember when I gave out the link to the pastebin, I said that stuff isn't fully edited or rechecked? Take some of these rules with a grain of salt.~
For example, I just looked again and Contract Summon is missing the following from its description: "once per scene only" as in, you can only perform the summoning once.
As for the option itself, consider that you still don't know the GM options, primarily Boss Talents. I'll give an example of something.
«Dangerous Blow»
Timing: Constant
Range: User
Target: User
Cost: None
Effect: Passive Effect. The target gains +1 to the result of the [Active Check], and +5 to the [Damage Calculation] of [Weapon Attacks]. If the target of the [Weapon Attack] is a [Mononoke], gain an additional bonus at [Damage Calculation] equal to [LVx5] (Max 30).
Er... I think you're mistaken there on a few fronts. Dragon Carrier B has a guard ability. Legacy User B has a guard ability. Time Wizard A can make resistance checks for others (and also takes damage if they fail), and Arc Slayer B can do the same for Evasion. Also there are a few abilities scattered around like God Hand B's ability to change an area target to a single target, or God Hand A's ability to nullify a combat zone target ability. Defensive abilities like that are not especially rare.
Critical hits do not ignore Armor/Barrier. If defense fumbles however, yes, they do ignore armor/barrier in that case.
I'm not so sure about that. With 1 spent talent i have a +8 to my armor/barrier, and with a high talent i can get another 10 to one or the other, just with dragon carrier B. Then there's the dragon carrier specific armors, which can increase it a good deal and not completely fuck your initiative. The Variable metal specifically is a massive increase to your armor/barrier, and only nets you a -3 init. Using arm guards gets you a +2 to armor and its just outright better than the regular guard in most cases, not even counting the upgrades, which one of the first ones is another +2. If you plan on getting multiple styles and have a free talent, multi-defender is +2 to both per automatically acquired style talent you have, minimum 4.
Barrier specifically is important on sheer fact that most magic can only be halved.
Right now i have 25 and 18 when in crystal install, and 17-10 without, and i can still deal a fair amount of damage, and i only have weak ass consecrated clothes.
and as points out, most classes focusing on defense can also take the hit for another character. Thinking of it solely in a vacuum is fine, but there will be a point where your squishy mage friend thanks you for taking that hit for him. One time, i even used the guard/dash guard ability to catch a falling girl that didn't even need the help, technically speaking.
Having only one Bound Primal out per scene *still* breaks the action economy, especially if you have a Summon Card for 1000G and an Ashura Record for another 1000G, giving you +1 level for your Bound Primals and +1d6 to their damage calculations.
Being able to summon those all-powerful level 5 mononoke at level 4 is wholly insane.
I do not see what Dangerous Blow has to do with PCs using multiattacks and/or multitarget attacks, and the talents in the core rulebook certainly do not have anything to stave off such tactics in general.
I said "few and far between," not "nonexistent."
Talents like Dragon Carrier B's Guard and Arc Slayer B's Protective Teachings help defend, but Guard has an inconvenient cost of [5] and does not let you reliably move out of an engagement, and Protective Teachings only lets you defend allies in your own engagement.
What Kamigakari's defense-oriented styles could use are more proactive, D&D 4e-style "mark an enemy and near-unconditionally dissuade them from attacking your allies under any circumstances."
>Critical hits do not ignore Armor/Barrier. If defense fumbles however, yes, they do ignore armor/barrier in that case.
Yes, I was misremembering. *Those* are what I find completely arbitrary and unnecessary.
I think his point was that bosses can have a talent to legit increase their damage against summoned creatures.
as for the armor/barrier, if you are so worried about it, add dice to the evasion rolls. Every time you do, the chances of rolling a fumble dramatically decrease.
As for guard, you can upgrade that to get it [E] and reliably ignore engagements. If you want to focus solely on defending your teammates, there is a plethora of ways to make it viable.
>With 1 spent talent i have a +8 to my armor/barrier
This is not particularly spectacular by ◎ talent standards. Offense-oriented ◎ talents include the likes of Divine Talker A's The Soul of Words, which allows you to multiattack with your strongest talents with terrifying efficiency.
>with a high talent i can get another 10 to one or the other
High talents are the domain of talents such as Continuous Action, which gives you another Timing: Attack. That, right there, is distortion of the action economy heavily in your favor.
>Then there's the dragon carrier specific armors, which can increase it a good deal and not completely fuck your initiative.
As far as I have seen from the various supplements, there is considerable power creep going on with the armor and the accessories (the latter, much more so), and the deals from the Dragon Carrier-specific items are not much better than things like a Regalia Sheath for +1 to active checks for 1000G.
>Right now i have 25 and 18 when in crystal install, and 17-10 without
The equivalent direct offense upgrades could take you to far greater places.
>Thinking of it solely in a vacuum is fine, but there will be a point where your squishy mage friend thanks you for taking that hit for him. One time, i even used the guard/dash guard ability to catch a falling girl that didn't even need the help, technically speaking.
If we are talking anecdotal evidence, I have yet to be in a situation where I have thought, "I sure wish I could have traded in my overwhelming, fight-ending offense in favor of more durability," and I have been the "squishy mage" with a Bound Primal in this case. (I was not even using more than one Bound Primal at a time.)
>I think his point was that bosses can have a talent to legit increase their damage against summoned creatures.
I do not think you can count on every boss conveniently having a single specific boss talent.
>As for guard, you can upgrade that to get it [E] and reliably ignore engagements. If you want to focus solely on defending your teammates, there is a plethora of ways to make it viable.
I do not doubt you can upgrade such abilities to make them feasible. What I do doubt is how these stack up to direct offense upgrades, because this game is heavily slanted towards relatively cheap, brutally effective offense upgrades and multiattacks.
>This is not particularly spectacular by ◎ talent standards.
>High talents are the domain of talents such as Continuous Action, which gives you another Timing: Attack. That, right there, is distortion of the action economy heavily in your favor.
You realize those are ultimates right? the ones with the ◎? that you need the high talent to get? the one you automatically have to get at level 10? or get another style? or add a dice to your spirit pool? those three? the ones with the symbol on them on the 10+ pool?
>The equivalent direct offense upgrades could take you to far greater places
And? my party members are all damage dealing fuccboi's. Why should i care?
>If we are talking anecdotal evidence, I have yet to be in a situation where I have thought, "I sure wish I could have traded in my overwhelming, fight-ending offense in favor of more durability," and I have been the "squishy mage" with a Bound Primal in this case. (I was not even using more than one Bound Primal at a time.)
Well then congratulations, you are a powergaming offense player. Not everyone wants to or likes to play that way.
You don't need a High Talent to obtain ◎ Talents. You can select them freely at level 3, but only from your Main.
The High Talents you're talking about allow you to get a ◎ from a /non/-Main Style, which is pretty strong.
>You realize those are ultimates right?
◎ talents can be gained at level 3. "A very strong Talent that can be acquired from a PC’s [Main] [Style]. They cannot be acquired until a PC is [World Influence LV: 3] or higher, and only if that [Style] is the PC’s [Main]."
>And? my party members are all damage dealing fuccboi's. Why should i care?
I care, because I am not a fan of it when an RPG's mechanics strongly encourage a party of nothing but high-offense strikers that overload enemies with raw damage. Even D&D 4e and Strike! fall into this trap.
I was about to say that. Still, Considering for your main style its only a regular talent, 2 for 18 to armor or barrier baseline isn't bad at all, without even accounting for armor and equipment. Considering the absurd amount of talents you can get, thats not a bad investment.
Get a better GM that knows how to use the rules to punish that stupid shit then. If everyone is a squishy fuck, a GM should be punishing that.
Oh, I agree! Dragon Carrier B is cool.
Wait, if i'm using martial stats, can i still get styles with arcane as the main thing?
As in, Martial from your race? Yeah, totally.
So theoretically i could get Dragon carrier B as the main, and say, elder mage B as a style?
Because if so, i think i might have the cheekiest tank build ever in mind.
Yup, Dragon Carrier B / Elder Mage B is totally legit. The only reason you "might not want to do it" is because it's hard to really balance your stats... though that depends on what you have in mind!
I don't need to balance my stats. I just need one talent from the tree at all.
High Cure.
Actually, make that 2. High cure and spirit flux
If you're building a magical Dragon Carrier, that sounds cool actually!
I've yet to look at the rules, but keep reading the threads solely because that pictures is cute.
Not so much a magical dragon carrier, but a cheeky super tanky one that heals themselves when they get hurt.
The way i see it, with 3 talents, you are full tanky with crystal install, meaning 23 extra armor/barrier (though one would be 13), and get an additional 10 health to boot. then you add armor and equipment and you are tanking a good amount of damage per hit. Then, with just having elder mage B, you have high cure which does rank 3 magic healing, so healing an average of 9-12+MD.
And this is baseline with only 3 talents spent. From there, Spirit flux can increase how often you heal, Crystal guard can temporarily increase the amount of damage you resist, and the myriad of talents that key off of it make you tanky as heck.
From there, just pump STR, AGI, and WIL for some extra resist.
If you are too worried about damage, you can easily dip into enhanced combat prowess, which is an outright +2 to rank or continuous action which is another attack entirely, using your level 5 high talent.
I think i'm actually gonna make a sheet for this. Could be a fun char to play.
>3 talents spent
That's like more than half your build.
I never said this hypothetical was a level 1 character. Or that the max was 5. Also, at level 5 you get a high talent, regular talent AND racial talent, so you gain a good bit of leeway there.
Not to mention to start with, you get 2 racial talents and 2 regular talents, which you can use as you please. To even get this build going, you'd need to be level 4 at the earliest, so you have the style ultimates for Dragon carrier B.
then you get one for each level. so by level 4, you'd likely have all of the crystal install boosts and spirit flux with one talent left over, probably used on dash or crystal guard, depending on your preference.
How accessible is this in comparison to something like BESM? I've recently gotten myself and some players to get their characters into that and we've hit a snag with multiclassing. Can people that want to put out huge numbers do so while not completely overshadowing those who want to go about doing things less...power gamey, for lack of a better term? I'd look at the book now but I'm trying to see if I can solve my current issue.
You don't get a regular talent at level 5. You get only two talents: your normal one, and a freebie racial. The normal one "can be used on" a High Talent at the 5's, but doesn't have to be. Still, you don't get an extra third Talent.
Refer to the character sheet. The right page explicitly lines out what Talents you get. (10 and 20 are the exceptions, where you get three: your racial, a normal pick, and then an auto acquire).
I dunno what BESM is, so sorry on that, but so far as huge numbers, any character can easily output giant numbers, comparatively. Most of the offensive classes are pretty capable, and even the defensive ones can with a talent or two. Its all just a matter of how you want to do that damage. There's a lot of different ways to get giant numbers, and even then, how its fluffed is entirely up to you. Dragon carriers, as an example, could be Kamen rider as fuck, or cute ass magical girls, and mechanically it wouldn't make much difference.
Woops, i read that wrong. My bad.
Depends on how power game-y they want to be, I suppose! Touhouanon has exposed a couple of "flaws" in the system which I'm not convinced are actually problems, particularly considering what you give up to get it that way.
As for how easy it is to get into... hm. I would say it's somewhat complex, though not extremely so. The movement system takes some getting used to. Engagements and breakaways and such aren't highly intuitive, though they're not archaic and make some sense after you get the hang of play.
I'd say it's more difficult to get into than BESM, unfortunately, but also not terribly much more so.
It makes me want to rewrite the whole book, aaaah...! But I'm still learning Japanese. This project has helped me immensely not only in vocabulary and grammar practice, but also just in considering how to put things effectively into English.
Nah, the translation is fine, i'm just retarded. I assumed special advancement meant you get it on top of what you already get.
Big Eyes Small Mouth, an anime themed game that I thought would be a good idea at first but the way the classes and skills work some find it restricting. Everyone being able to keep up with each other sounds great on top of being able to fluff it up. There's several swordspeople in the group and it sounds like they'd be able to make them unique enough to not be so samey.
As far as I know just chunking things with big numbers while still being about to add a little flair to the character's quirks like being a charming yet manipulative character or being a computer nerd.
>movement system takes some getting used to
I think we've dealt with some weird stuff like Shinobigami so it shouldn't be too bad.
oh, totally. Arc slayer A and almost any other style (you get 2 to start with) and from the start they are doing things entirely differently. There are even different paths to take within any one style.
Honestly, if you are going swordsman, even arc slayer isn't the only thing to use. Most martial classes short of god-hand could do it.
>Bound Primals aren't a flaw
I'll skim through the classes and see if I can get something going when I get time. From what I see it's nice that every race gets the option of going strength, magic or whatever utility tries to do.
They might be badly designed, I just don't think they're as OP as people seem to think.
Keep in mind, you start with 2 style's, and you can add up to 3 (i think) more, assuming you use all of your high talents, which you get at every 5th level.
Also, all style's have 2 versions, an A version and a B version. Each version is thematically similar, but mechanically different. For example, arc slayer A is offensively focused, primarily increasing damage. Arc slayer B is Focused on defense and dodging.
You can have both an A and a B of a style, but you have to take them individually.