Anima: Beyond Fantasy Thread

Hey Veeky Forums, I'm about to run an Anima campaign for a bunch of my friends, is there anything I should watch out for and do any of you have any experience with running Anima?

Try not to accidentally TPK the party. Also make sure you keep an eye on magic and psy users and the rules around them; they are incredibly OP.

What? IIRC Ki is generally considered the most powerful thing in the game, it's magic that's actually on the weaker end, with psychics somewhere in the middle.

>Laughing technicians and ki users
Yeah, this guy got it right, specially Psys, damn, I hope they nerf them and buff us, ki users, we need help.

I haven't looked at the system in a long time, I'll have to reread the Ki section again.

Oh yeah forgot to mention.

The party consists of a Warrior, a Tao, a Warrior Mentalist, a Shadow, a Wizard and one guy who hasn't decided but is choosing between a Paladin type or a Ranger.

mmmm magic is pretty strong thanks to arcana exxet, I remember making a warlock who could spam crazy dangerous fireballs 24/7 in the same way a psy was casting immolation, but without fearing having an aneurism

From what I understand it's not that magic is super weak, but that in an inversion of the D&D issue, mages scale linearly while Ki users scale quadratically.

Except for Creation mages, cause fuck creation mages

If you are capable of reading tacotongue, read through all the exxet and the untranslated books, and try to stick to the spanish books. There are some small changes in rules due to mistranslations that are retarded.
Try to build most boss encounter with two "phases" so you are sure your players aren't retarding their way through combat and you end up putting a monster way too big for them.
Use this animaunico.helechaloscuro.net/ for chargen, since it gets a bit hard to track down all the little boni. Also, remember the rules on supernatural Knowledge: mages and Ki users can't spend their whole Martal Knowledge/Path levels from the get go, they need to do it in-character. The books have rules on how much of this they can spend given the powerlevel and how supernatural you want your game to be.

Really important question. Are you playing the version where magic uses the Int*(10 to 50) zeon, or the one where spells are just divided into 4 categories?

Creation mage here, just reminding everyone that Chimera is a fucking trap.
Rest of our spells are awesome, though.
Especially Perfect Shield, Increase Resistances, Create Homunculus, and Fuse.
Oh, and free temporary levels the spell.

What about Chimera is a trap? Doesn't it make you fucking amazing, permanently, for no actual cost?

Chimera turns you into a "In Between" creature permanently, not a Natural creature.
One of them can be summoned, controlled, binded and banished. The other can't be.

I mean, that's a weakness, but you get a shitton of benefits alongside that, and it's something you can work around. It's not a spell to use thoughtlessly, but I don't think it's accurate to call it a trap, either.

Kinda glad I spotted this topic, need help still:

Got invited to play an Anima: Beyond Fantasy "Boss Monster" game with extra 100 DP for monstrous traits (10 need to spent on unnatural size) and 65 point buy. May or may not involve monstergirls.

I...really need help trying to figure out what the hell is going on with this book. So far thinking about making a giant slug/snail monster that carries an arsenal on its back or something. Or maybe a sphinx.

Currently there's a brusier, a psychic and a summoner, so anything that would fall out of those categories I'd be up for looking at.

The benefits don't really outweigh the penalties. A casual paladin/dark paladin with some investment in their class skill can just wreck you or worse, you can find any type of conjuring class and they can just use you as a new shiny toy.
Also, while this might fall a tad under RAI, in the Spanish version it's a bit more implied that you become a monstrosity, as in you look less and less human the more things you get with Chimera. IIRC, Anima Studio even said it themselves, but after 4 forum purges so far I'd rather take that with a grain of salt.

But those are all things you can resist, and if you set yourself to do so it's not really more of a vulnerability than any of the other ways you can be attacked.

What kind of fun things can you do with a psychic, and what should be avoided/isn't too good?
What kind of stuff should be taken in general - are there any traps that need to be avoided in this system?
I just know I need to put my willpower at Yes so far.

What kind of bruiser is the bruiser? You can try to build a character around the Ophiucos Impossible Weapon, or build up to it, since you wanna carry multiple weapons. The game is more about playing a specific concept rather than just trying to fit in the party.

It's a matter of perspective. At the type of level you should be getting access to lvl 80 magic, you might have way too many targets on your back. Making even more by turning into HERESY, and giving a portion of the world the chance to take control of a new pet sounds too risky for the gain.

Psychic is all around good, but you might just fall off later. You get all the big juice early and then it start to slow down so make sure you pick up the cool stuff you wanna do first, then you slowly make it better with time. There are very few trap options, with psychics the qualities Psychic Consumption (Anytime you miss a psychic roll, you take damage equal by the amount you failed) and Only One Power might be a bit too painful to take early on.
The game works better with getting an idea and then polishing it, rather than simply min/maxing. Make sure you have a couple of things you bring up to the table, if you are gonna be a pure brain power, just make sure to at least get the disciplines that are good outside combat.

I once built a psychic with Power Consumption, and then abused it by taking shitloads of innate slots and the ability increase powers, basically giving me a godlike statline to make use of with combat tricks and Ki techniques. It was weird and a little janky, but kinda fun.