What are some non-Veeky Forums related fictional works with a power or magic system that would work really well for an...

What are some non-Veeky Forums related fictional works with a power or magic system that would work really well for an RPG?

The show was hot garbage but superpowered factions in a booming metropolis sounds like a fun time, and the concepts for the powers and clans and kings weren't all that bad.

Nasuverse.

>non-Veeky Forums related
The Mistborn series has a tabletop system.
Also pictured related exists but nobody plays it.

Nasuverse would work terribly for an RPG, because it would be near impossible to balance. Any time we get told how magic works, it's because someone is defying the known laws of magic. It's a system that has more exceptions than rules.

Naruto's.

Chakra is created when two other forms of energy, known collectively as one's "stamina", are moulded together. Physical energyis collected from each and every one of the body's cells and can be increased through training, stimulants, and exercise. Spiritual energy is derived from the mind's consciousness and can be increased through studying, meditation, and experience. These two energies becoming more powerful will in turn make the created chakra more powerful. Therefore, practising a technique repeatedly will build up experience, increasing one's spiritual energy, and thus allowing more chakra to be created. As a result, the ninja is able to do that same technique with more power. This same cycle applies for physical energy, except the ninja needs to increase their endurance instead. Some unique individuals have substantial potential that enable them to exponentially increase their chakra reserves in a relatively short amount of time.

Chakra can also be used for general performance enhancement. By moulding the chakra into key points of the body, usually the hands or feet, it will greatly augment their physical prowess. Certain shinobi are able rely on this skill to improve natural endurance, improve general awareness and perception, and even perform superhuman strength.
When creating a ninjutsu, the two methods of manipulating chakra are referred to as shape transformation and nature transformation:
Shape transformation deals with controlling the form, movement, and potency of chakra.
Nature transformation deals with changing the physical properties of chakra into an element. There is also the nature transformation of Yin and Yang, which deals with changing the ratio of spiritual and physical energies within chakra.
These two methods can be implemented separately or together in order to create a technique, though ninja who can use both simultaneously are said to be rare.

To bad it never really explained anything in depth enough to build off of.

I have stolen this image for my shitty naturo ripoff setting.

Noone will ever know.

The nasuverse magic just sounds like it would work in an RPG because of the terms it uses. It's not really consistent enough to be suited for actual rules that players could follow

I'd like to think that magic's got so many different facets that people are regularly finding workarounds and loopholes that are actually legit, just outside Mage Association understanding.

No basis in canon, though, just a thought.

They probably will since it's from Hunter X Hunter, and even though Naruto fans are the bottom of the barrel even among shonen fans I imagine a fair amount of them have also seen HxH in some form

I couldn't even imagine playing a game with several radically different competing magic systems.

Lots of people know Hunter x Hunter, man. Also, Naruto already rips it off.

>Naruto fans are the bottom of the barrel even among shonen fans
That's Fairy Tail fans.

>because of the terms it uses
What terms are you talking about?

>No basis in canon
I don't know, multiple characters chain abilities together like a min/maxing 3.5e grognard to generate infinite amounts of mana.

fuck I thought it was from some old japanese philosophy shit

It is, It's just a rebranded Wu Xing.

Naruto d20 is already a thing, and a very interesting thing at that.

Five Nations is better, though Naruto d20 has very interesting training rules.

There's a pattern in Nasu stuff that basically goes like this: "This is an X. X can do Z things, but never Y. Oh my god. His X can do Y" Every term like Noble Phantasm, Magic Circuit, Magic Crest, Esper (or whatever Shiki was), Heroic Spirit, Prana, etc has some sort of set up like this. If you only take the first step of "This is an X" at face value it might seem like you have various points to create a setting out of, but since every single rule breaks down over the course of the story it's inconsistent with actually telling a Nasuverse-style story to actually enforce those rules. I really liked Tsukihime and Fate, but I don't think they're suited to an RPG at all

That's way too vague. I don't really know what you're driving at.

Nasuverse works set up rules and then break them too often despite the definitions and lengths they go to to explain and detail them and their parameters.

I'm sorry, what?
What do the six types of Nen have to do with the Five Elements?
I mean, except for being represented with a geometrical shape and using Chinese symbols, I suppose?

The way that the "specialization" point works it's basically outside of the others, which would probably make that sound more valid. I don't really care enough to compare them otherwise though

>Specialization (unique effect)
Wow that's vague as fuck. It's like the author set out to define rules and categories of Nen so it would seem internally consistent, but then decided that "whatever the hell I want" is a category.

It doesn't even explain them half the time either, why is women magus' hair such a potent tool yet utilized only once? why is Magecraft only effective in its country of origin, if so why the fuck is Anglo magic so powerful in Japan, same with runes and Taiji/Houjutsu so rare? Necromancy makes no fucking sense in the established metaphysics.

Nasu is a westaboo and it creates plot holes out the ass.

Well that's his complaint, I'm the guy you replied to but not the one saying it in the first place.
Probably because that kind of inconsistency doesn't lend itself well to a game where players are usually starting on the same level? I dunno man.
Yeah pretty much, it at least lets Chrollo's 'book that steals and uses other people's nen' and Kurapika's 'master of all nen types at once' ability have a place to go.
>magecraft only effective in its country of origin
Is that so? I know that Servants are stronger if they're summoned where they're more well known, at least.
Otherwise it seems like some kind of specialization. I'm not too familiar with runes besides Cu Chulainn as a caster, and in that case he's using Norse runes so to me that suggests a certain amount of divinity involved in his ability to do so, like how Odin had to do some crazy shit for his mastery.

This is such a bizarre point that I don't even know how to argue against it.

So because certain people in the setting, somewhere, some time ago, in some stories, broke some established rules of magecraft (or whatever other thing) through an incredible string of unlikely coincidences, the magic system wouldn't work in a tabletop environment because breaking the rules of magecraft is somehow now an integral thing of magecraft as a whole, and it also happens frequently enough to warrant accounting for in a ruleset?

What fucking inconsistency? Why are you taking exceptions as the baseline?

It's more like "anything else goes here".

Be better off making it a largely unknown mysterious one instead of just 'everything else' desu.

Use it for the same shit, without looking like quite as much of a hack.

Again, not that guy, so I'll just go with 'perceived inconsistency.'
And while he doesn't make any specific points, I could probably figure that Sasaki Kojiro being summoned as an assassin in the FS/N HGW, though there was still an explanation for the oddity.

The Vlad Taltos novels would be nice, a setting where magic is insanely commonplace and you assassinate people basically as a stern warning since they'll get resurrected anyway.

>The way that the "specialization" point works it's basically outside of the others
Except it's not really, because Specialization still factors into potential for non-Specialists. A Conjurer has 60% in Manipulation, not 80%.
Also, there is no kind of cycle, generation or destruction aspect to the Nen system.
These two have nothing to do with each other, except for presentation if you squint really hard.

Do you only know the Nasuverse from Grand Order or Fate/Zero?

no

But it is a largely unknown mysterious one. It just has a place in the system.

Then it's completely baffling how you could miss the pattern they're talking about.

Reply to me when you have an argument.

Pretending to not understand every argument is what got us here. At this point I don't think you have read the VN and you're just playing dumb

It's only been used 8 times out of dozens of characters. Here's what they are in name, skill type, skill effect order. Spoilered for people who are into that sort of thing.

Kurapika, Nen Mastery: Can use techniques from every other category at maximum effectiveness while Emperor Time is active. Emperor Time shortens his life by one hour for each second of use.

Chrollo, Skill Theft: Can steal techniques from other Nen users if he can see the ability used, get the user to answer a qustion about the ability, and get the user to place their hand on a certain book within an hour.

Meruem, Nen Absorption: Meruem assimilates the Nen types and abilities of Nen users that he eats.

Neferpitou, Puppeteering: A combination of Manipulation and Emission that allows him to summon spectral puppets with various effects.

Paknoda, Psychometry: Can read thoughts of people that she touches and can share her memories with other people.

Neon, Fortunetelling: Can provide accurate but vague fortunes for people.

Omokage, Soul Doll: Can make a duplicate of a person that the target is fixated on, and control them.

Meleoron, Invisibility: Works as named, but only while he holds his breath.

Leol, Skill Rental: Can borrow Nen abilities if he knows their name, does the original user a favor, and gets them to admit that they owe Leol a debt.

Binolt, Psychometry: He can learn about the target's biology (physique, age, etc) by eating their hair.

You can't even follow simple instructions.

>Can make a duplicate of a person that the target is fixated on, and control them
Isn't that just conjuration + manipulation?

>invisibility
Really? I would have figured it was emission.

Yes, and it's a Specialist skill because Conjuration and Manipulation aren't adjacent. Nen types that aren't adjacent to each other on the chart in the OP are less effective and harder to learn together. Basically, if you're one type you can learn the adjacent types with difficulty, you'd probably never be able to use the further two with any degree of effectiveness, and the opposite type would be in the realm of impossibility.

Here's a more detailed explanation.

While holding his breath, Meleoron can use an advanced form of his invisibility, becoming not only invisible, but also becoming completely undetectable by scent, contact, or En. According to him, this completely hides his presence to the point where others would simply overlook him in proximity without being consciously aware of it. By using his normal invisibility, Meleoron can lure others into believing he can be detected by non-visual means, and is therefore only a minor threat. Under battle conditions, Meleoron is able to hold his breath for approximately one minute.

Oh right, I forgot about the God's Loophole stuff since it's been so long.

A running theme in the Nasuverse is that Magus are actually weak as fuck compared to anybody with even a moderate amount of combat experience, nearly any member of the "Demon Hunter Organization" would curb stomp even the best magus.

>Yes, and it's a Specialist skill because Conjuration and Manipulation aren't adjacent.
That's not true. Kastro (the poor sod Hisoka slaughters in Heaven's Arena) uses Enhancement, Conjuration and Manipulation together without being a Specialist.
What puts Omokage's Nen ability into Specialization is that it goes beyond the capabilities of both Conjuration and Manipulation, creating autonomous dolls that copy almost everything of the originals, including their Nen abilities regardless of category.

Magus aren't fighters to begin with. It's all about the Root. Some just coincidentally get powers that can be used in combat.

Thanks for clearing that up. The specifics are hazy to me because of the manga's crazy release schedule.

The main problem is that magi are born with a set number of magic circuits and that's it. The lack of character progression options is pretty bad

The Eragon series is garbage but the way magic works is fantastic.

I once had an idea for a power system that basically worked like this:

People who expressed a desire to live or survive while surrounded by a particular element could become an embodiment or controller of that element. These people are called Elementals and they come in 6 varieties.

Fire Elementals, who embody forms of energy and chemical reactions (fire, lightning, kinetic force, cold/freezing)

Earth Elementals, who embody solid materials or compositions (gold, wood, granite, steel, etc)

Water Elementals, who embody liquid materials or compositions (blood, sea water, swamp water, lava)

Air Elementals, Who embody gaseous materials or composisions (helium, fog, etc)

Wood Elementals, who embody a type of natural plant or animal (ducks, cows, redwood trees, vines, etc)

Metal Elementals, who embody objects or inanimate creations (tables, swords, figurines, spears, arrows)

and finally Void Elementals, who embody emotions, concepts, ideas or things of a metephysical nature (love, hope, nothingness, sorrow, etc)

In addition to this power type there was also a super alien who came to the world but had his body ripped apart and since he was a super organism each part of him has its own sentience and they make symbionts, etc

Basically: I kinda wanted to make my own shonen anime when I was a shitty weeb teen.

>respecting your "instructions"

>Void Elementals
Wouldn't these people be almost exclusively astronauts? Is so, that would be pretty cool

The eragon series is perfectly fine for introducing 10 year olds to the standards of fantasy. It's a kids book for kids and it's fine at that.

Magic is suppossed to become stronger the closer you are to your foundation, but I don't think it stops working.
I mean, in the end of the day you are just using prana to replicate something on Gaia's memory (or someshit). Whatever it is filtered through (and manifests it self as) animal intestines, burning rare woods or writting runes shouldn't be that important.

If you remove fate/whatever a Nasu RPG becomes more possible I think. As long as you don't try to be 100% canon compliant.

Well, the Clocktower is suppossed to be on a deadlock with the Vampires and the Church, so they can't be that bad. A single mage might not be very powerful (they are academics, not warriors), but they can do big stuff in groups.

Nooo as outlined they embody concepts and ideas.

They're the rarest and arguably the most powerful kind of elemental too.

I get that. But how would a person become a void elemental on Earth? The main place where you can find a void is space.

>they come in 6 varieties
Are we just going to let that slide?

>*unzips void element*
>a seventh element!? b-bakana!

Not "void" in the LITERAL SENSE but in more of the figurative sense. They'd need to be exposed to either all elements in solid equilibrium (tricky but possible) or simply exposed to the idea/emotion so rigorously that they simply embody it.

For instance: one of the characters in a story in this setting I wrote had just done something really bad and pissed off the wrong people and so he was realizing he was probably gonna die and just felt this vast feeling of emptiness in the middle of a bustling city, wished he could disappear, and he became a Void Elemental of Nothingness.

That is to say: unless he wills himself into existence he ceases to be and nobody even knows or remembers him, leading to our protagonist (his brother) to get out of a lot of situations he find himself in but never really recalling how or why he gets out until he just remembers "Oh yea I have a brother" as he materializes in front of his cell.

woops I accidentally hit the wrong number. My bad.

>If you remove fate/whatever
Why would anyone play Nasu if it isn't fate?

>simply exposed to the idea/emotion so rigorously that they simply embody it.
>love, hope, nothingness, sorrow, etc
Sounds like there'd be literally hundreds of void elementals if this is the case, and it sounds a lot less interesting than void in a literal sense, which actually has a great reason to be super rare and epic as you want it to be.

I dunno maybe they like Tsukihime or Notes or would like Fate more if it weren't about this dumb highlander shit

agreed, that was its one good bit

Well nobody really knows why or how elementals are made.

I mean by "logic" the world should be full of them since you can find shit like the ground or the air everywhere but people just wind up with them cause luck of the draw.

Also space is not void. Like... the metaphysical concept of void is not space. Space is space.

There's already a confirmed alien monster in the setting that grants people superpowers so there's no reason to limit the bizarre world bending powers to a group of astronaughts.

To play Mahoyo.

Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere really needs its own list of splats that could be used together like nWod. I'd love to play a Skybreaker or Windrunner, anything really jumping between worlds as Seventeenth Shards.

Mistborn, Mistings, Feruchemists, Ferrings, Twinborn, Kandra, Hemalurgists, Twinborn
Surgebinders, Voidbinders, Honor Blade holders, Listener Forms, Shardbearers, Aimians, Old Magic Accursed
Awakeners, Returned, Sentient Inorganics
AonDor, ChayShan, Dhakor, Seon Bound, Skaze Bound, Soul Forgers, Resealers, Rememberers, Blood Sealers
Sand Mastery
Aviar Bonded

Am I missing anything?

A game that's specifically a holy grail war would be a poor fit due to the nature of the role with the most PC potential being 7 people pitted against each other and different power levels, but the setting itself doesn't really change all that radically otherwise. At that point it's just weeaboo world of darkness unless you're going into the far future stuff though

I'm partial to the various intersecting 'magical' systems of Bleach.

I think the idea is to play a Nasuverse game but with the normal setting rules intact and ignoring the canon plot.

It's like how you could use the setting mechanics of Homestuck to make a workable game without delving into nine or ten layers of plot shenanigans that make up the actual storyline.

Yeah but look at what it got Kastro for doing that. Sure, if people were generally unaware and he was able to keep it secret like he did up until his fight with hisoka he'd have a powerful advantage but this is true of just about any nen ability. Hisoka is the sort of guy who's on a level where he doesn'thave to try hard but he clearly shows that one's knowledge of nen is a powerful combat tool as much as his fist were and the fact he let himself get hurt is just because he's a sick bastard.

Similarly, Cheeto's ability could probably be a specialist ability as well but because of how poorly cheeto designed the ability Morel was able to easily defeat the ability.

Holy balls, everything after the "zanpakuto" being created just became an errant clusterfuck.

I miss early Bleach, when it was about a kid becoming a soul samurai who hunted down Hollows with a soul sword.

Bleach was a mistake. IT should have ended either after the Soul Society arc, or at the very least after the Aizen arc. Kubo needs to go back to short stories, or at the very least hire a writer so he can focus purely on making cool art and designs

>the author literally did the same exact arc twice but changed the color of the damsel in distress

He should hire Nick Simmons to write for him.

Who wouldn't want to be a Mistborn/Coinshot/Skybreaker/Windrunner/Sand Master flying about through the air?

Has anyone done a Hunter x Hunter system or tried to run a Campaign in the setting? Curious because I've contemplated how you would do it.

You guys know there's a Mistborn rpg right?

Bleach is a case study in DM's not allowing you to stack racial templates.

Yup, still missing about two dozen magic systems that exist within the universe.

I barely finished the first Mistborn book before dropping the series, but wasn't there a special snowflake class of metalbender that had the powers from all the others? How do you make that balanced for a game?

Well, in the published RPG you still get the same number of build points as everyone else so you just end up broad while they end up deeply specialized. A team of four specialists is generally better than four generalists.
But it's still not very well balanced so you should probably only plaubthe game at two different tiers:
Mistborn and Feruchemists and Kandra
Mistings, Ferrings, and Nobles

Yes but their isnt one for...
Hell just put things like Shadows for Silence in the Forest of Hell & the one with the magic birds all into one side splat for little characters. The kinda stuff nWoD calls a "half template"

Then make a splat for each Shard World, with each distinctive power set Surgebinders/Elantrians/Mistborn/Ferruchemists. Some splats would have their own half templates like Mistings/Ferrings/Soulcasters/Shardbearers. So you could play at a slihtly lower tier of play.

Make everyone involved either living in the world of the particular splat or take the gloves off & have everyone be a Seventeenth Shard with a full template & let it get crazy.

I really want to see an Elantrian, Mistborn Feruchemist Surgebinder Returned with BioChroma... possibly wielding Nightblood... yeah thats probably way too weeabo but it would be awesome

Materia is still good. Every character has X number of slots and links permanently/based on equipment. How you configure them determines the magic you can cast and how they affect your physical abilities.

Some weapon types are more suited to casting magic because these materia are fuckhuge, unwieldy, and not durable enough to be used as weapons themselves.

What turned you off if i may ask?

The pointlessly overtly cinematic fights. Also, I didn't care for most of the characters.

The problem with Nasu is having a system where Arcueid, Akiha, Ryougi and Rin walk side by side without the system snapping in half over the sheer range of powerlevels. You would need some granularity too.
Also, the system should be high-lethality given how a lot of Nasu's stuff is people dying horrbly

By his own admission Sanderson is awful at writing characters.

I think some turn out better than others, like his Way of Kings characters. But other people hate those characters too and praise his Mistborn cast that I think are all awful shallow cliches so who fucking knows.

At least he's better at characters than Robert Jordan
I'm stuck in the middle of A Crown of Swords. Please help!

It totally did. And it wouldn't take much work to fill in the blanks.

So basically a generic freeform magic system that isn't complete shit like Mage?

>how do we make a system of [setting where every other character has a unique power that can't be quantified with numbers]??

You don't, unless you make huge compromises that ruin the feel and point of the setting or just wing it with a largely diceless DM-based game. Stop making these fucking threads.

Huh, i really like most of his characters, Wayne, & Kaladin are my favorite. Shallan is a chore to read but I love his world building & the fights are cool. Its okay to not like it i guess. I would recommend reading some of his other stuff as the tone changes a lot between some books. Warbreaker has almost zero fights & is mostly just two characters getting to know each other.

It's like you've never played gurps.

Or hell, even Mutants and Masterminds can probably handle most of these Shonen characters with weird narrative powers.

One thing to note is that Sanderson's writing is very visual. He likes describing things cinematically, his backdrops are grand-scale images, skylines, cityscapes, and vistas with extreme weather, and characters are always given a clear visual quirk (hawkish nose, branded forehead, not meeting eyes, gestures, etc). He definitely writes things the way he pictures them in his head like he was watching a movie. Even the way he truncated paragraphs at dramatic moments to leave an image at the end of each chapter.

Not good or bad. Just a writing style.