All social disadvantages are open to all, you just can only use the points you get from them to buy social advantages.

If only you would fiddle with the build so it would follow the actual rules.

Destroy Powers spell. Especially with the Core Exxet update that changes it to daily maintenance. He makes a 120/140/180/220 MR check and if he fails he can not cast for as long as you maintain the spell.

Or hit them with The Tower invocation.

See, I have no problem with the Blind wizard or swordmaster who invests so heavily in notice and ki erudition to overcome the penalty(especially if you are also taking aptitude in notice), because you hare spending a ton of dp to overcome your disadvantage. Big deal, you gain 2 cp(really just one if you take aptitude in notice) but spent all of your development points to overcome the disadvantage while everybody else gets to learn how to hide/heal people/withstand torture/etc. If you spend 170 points in notice(so 170 skill + 15 perception+15 natural bonus) at first level.

On the subject, I just would not allow any of my players to actually take Damned 2. That is mostly because the players I have(aside from my brother) are totally unable to make an Anima character on their own(mechanics-wise).

So basically if they die due to Damned that means that either the rest of the session or the next session are just going to be helping them create a new character.

But if you stop maintaining the spell the next day, they turn back to rags. It is basically Cinderella-ing her up.

What about a party member casting wardrobe on her(or casting it herself)? She still has her own clothes, they just change into super fashionable appearance.

I think Acrobatic Warrior is one of the best choices for the gunslinger. High mk/level, high initiative and decent life points per level. They also get sleight of hand per level to lower reload times. Along with some flashy acrobatics and stuff for showy rolls and shoot stuff. Shadow can also work if the character is more of the sneaky type. Ranger could do in a pinch, but just about everything ranger does(from a combat perspective), shadow or acrobatic warrior do better. One of my character ideas was to make a character based off the male ranger or female ranger from Dungeon & Fighter, so I put some thought into it.

And Tao is the best option for hand-to-hand combat as mentioned earlier.

My main issue with Persuasion(and intimidate to a lesser extent) being used on PC's is that I can't think of a single use that isn't just blatant railroading of the worst kind.

You mean like the high level War spell which allows all allies to continue fighting for an additional 2 rounds after death, the last spell of the Death sub path allowing you to force a save or die on any creature within 6 miles as an automatic effect and maintains it for at least a day?

Or maybe allowing you to make up to 4 people per cast immune to all non-energy damage for at least a day. Maintaining portals with 50 m openings that allow travel of any distance for any number of beings/objects that is maintained on a daily basis. low level regen spells that go up in power as you level such that you can get 18 regen(the highest mere mortals can get) with a couple spell casts. Seeing everything that happened at the current location in the past 1000 years.

Low level ki techniques that allow users to just walk through walls. Ki/Nemesis abilities that allow shapeshifting, mook immunity, healing the injured, wall running, regrowing limbs as energy, slowing your own aging, going days without food or sleep and more.

Yeah 3.x wizards are good at a variety of stuff, but ki, magic, and psychic powers are not really slouches. And very rarely are characters so skill deprived as the 3.x fighter, since the limits on combat expenditures and natural bonus mean that everybody has a bit of skill in areas that aren't related to fancy ways to kill dudes.

Silliness of the gnosis method is being ignored for the moment.

I don't quite understand what you mean. Anima is already operating on a power level for martial types that D&D only wishes they had. Powerful mages can already cast weaker spells from nothing without expending any Zeon at all. Anima is a world where even a single member of Les Jaeger is able to slay hundreds of imperial soldiers in minutes without taking a scratch(almost like Terra from FFVI). Romeo and Nero were able to casually win against a battalion of Inquisitors while still in training.

The power level of Anima is already supposed to be through the roof. If everybody is enacting plans to become divine beings to thwart other people doing the same, what exactly changes about the game that turns it into D&D 3.5?

Anything with higher gnosis doesn't interfere directly with the world(Beryls, Shajads, Gaira and C'iel).

Yeah, the rules still apply, but when the dragon goes to an ancient dragon and becomes a BBW, it is 30 gnosis and can't be Controlled(unless you have a higher gnosis.

Gnosis 25 does cover a lot of creatures that are bbw or spirits, but some creatures can still be natural at that level. A natura 20 Duk'zarist for example.

Do you have a page number and quote for that for that?

Adult dragons are gnosis 25 and natural beings(presumably to stop summoners from controlling them).

The thing is techniques can be fluffed anyway you wish.

So if you have a technique that gives you 15 extra attacks(as an example), it can be your character launching into a flurry of throws or it can be fluffed as time stopping for your character while he throws a couple dozen knives at the enemy.

Sounds like how some people actually play, but a silly strawman all the same.

Persuasion is not mind control. It is not charm person, suggestion, Exalted social charms or anything like that. It is basically an attempt to make a compelling case for whatever cause you are trying to do(peace treaty, seducing the local barmaid, world domination etc).

Batman does not care that Ra's Al Ghul has a nice speech on the excesses and rot of Gotham, he still fights against the League of Shadows.

Plenty of cops all over the world find the big huge biker making trouble and waving a gun around to be a scary guy, but they still tell him to put the weapon down, step away from it and interlock his fingers behind his head, because "Damnit Jim, I have a job to do".

Particularly stubborn minded people(PC and NPC alike) may still elect not to do what the persuasion asks them to do, but most people, when persuaded something is a good idea, tend to follow the suggestion.

It is possible, if the person just asks an adventurer to deliver a chest to a city on the other side of the continent for a small fortune in gold, that the adventurer may just decide something rubs him wrong about the job and that he doesn't want to do it. The request is pretty reasonable, and the character was making the trip anyway, but the adventurer just won't take the job.

Also a difference of 660 could still probably persuade somebody that doesn't understand your language. It is better than shooting a 17 on an 18 hole golf course, after all.