I'm working on a spreadsheet but I'm not quite done. It also won't work with characters with more than one class.

And I have it now too. The screen is thick and sturdy with a canvas-like texture that I find very pleasing. It also has the tables that you're most likely to need on the GM's side. On the players' side it has a gaudy painting of god-knows-what that's about as campy as a velvet elvis (although it does admittedly look more appropriate to the game's subject matter). Still, I'd rather have had a map of Gaïa and some of the tables that the players may wish to look at.
I'm happy that the booklet contains a number of pre-gens to give an idea of power levels. Especially as it allows me to infer at least a little about what you should be able to get with the artifact advantage:
Faust Orbatos has a +5 bastard sword and no artifact advantage, so even a 1 pt artifact should presumably be something better than a +5 weapon.
Vladimir Nux is the only character with an artifact. No point value is listed but in order for his ads and disads to add up, it must be a 1 pt artifact. It's a +5 weapon that also gives a +5 ability to a supernatural primary ability and +20 to a secondary ability and enables him to do a minor unusual thing (peek around corners).
It's still not much to work with but it's a whole lot more than nothing.

How many pages in the booklet?

Sweet! Pictures, please.

I'll happily attest that you are indeed not alone in wanting new books.
And I'd be thrilled to get them before what remains of my hair starts to turn gray...

Oh, I completely agree. 100%. The other problem with mages with this level of ability (well, actually with mages period) is that it becomes tough to tailor challenges to the group. Let's say you plan for three fights. If the mage player overestimates the toughness of the first two and blows all his zeon, he'll be nearly helpless for quite a while and the group might well be slaughtered in the third fight as their mighty mage can do nothing except hide behind the others and cower.
(Not unique to Anima, I know, but taken to an extreme since the most powerful magic in Anima is more impressive than in most other games but mages take longer to fully recover all their mojo)

Get Elan 80 with Uriel and you can get Gnosis of 30. It's in the book. And I certainly see no reason to restrict the PCs from ever getting it up high enough to cast the best spells. They're the most important characters in your game after all - that's why they're the main characters.

I think you should let them get their Gnosis scores up to whatever level you feel comfortable granting them. There's certain nothing in the rules that says you can't. Not that they shouldn't have to work for it, of course. Make them go to Hell and back (literally) for it.

Think about it, which of these two options creates a cool adventure:
Player: "Can I raise my Gnosis beyond 30?"
GM: "Nope."
Or
Player: "Can I raise my Gnosis beyond 30?"
GM: "Only by learning forbidden secrets to be found only in a forbidden temple in Hell!"

Cheers and good gaming.

Suh-weeet!

I've been thinking about learning spanish anyway, maybe I should do it now. On the other hand, I'd really rather learn portuguese. But I've heard spanish is supposed to be pretty easy to learn. Hmm... It would enable me to communicate with the venezuelan lunchlady at work. :p

I'd personally just rule that having any characteristic at an inhuman level automatically grants inhumanity with regards to checks based on that ability. Since IIRC the book merely says the GM may wish to restrict the benefits of characteristics at the inhuman level, this suggests to me that the GM may also choose not to do so. In which case it's perfectly by the book.

To answer the original question, it would be a bit silly for somebody to be utterly unable to inflict damage with an attack so, though it's not in the rules, I'd probably set the minimum damage to 5 and perhaps, then, give them a penalty to their attack equal to the difference between their calculated minimum damage and 5.


Yet, it doesn't produce average humans. On average, it produces sub-average humans.

I suspect somebody goofed up with this method since, on average, it also produces sub-average characters rather than hero-material. That is, the average on 7d10 is 37.5. Divided over 8 stats, that becomes about 4.7 in each stat. When 5 is supposedly average. I suspect it was supposed to be 7d10+10 or some such.

It sounds pretty permanent to me.

I'd happily let someone summon an ancient dragon.

I base that on the idea that somebody not being able to summon such a beast is less fun than someone succesfully summoning a ultra-powerful, highly intelligent, extremely willful being that's almost certainly not going to be very pleased about it. Better succeed in that control roll real fast and pray the dragon will have a sense of humor about it afterwards, so it won't seek you out and kill you in some singularly horrifying way.

I mean, just picture it: You're the dragon now. A majestic, proud being of immense power and you're perhaps flying about the countryside pondering your own significance or something when POOF, you're suddenly transported to god-knows-where and some pathetic little gnat is somehow coercing you to do his bidding as if he mattered more than you.

Once you're banihed back, what will be on your mind? Yeah, finding the little turd and making him pay in the worst way possible - y'know, just to make an example.

I was thinking it would be useful to create a few generic creatures (say, a water, earth, air and fire elemental) in a spreadsheet where the summoner player could simply input the level of creature he wanted and the sheet would then calculate all of the creature's abilities.

Because first spending a couple of hours on creating the summoner himself and then a couple of hours on each of a half dozen or so creatures for him to summon is just a little more time than I'd be ready to put into it.