next »

[Noble Pigeon]

So I've just recently gotten into Anima and I'm stirring up interest for it at my college. I've read the core rulebook a bit so I know the bare basics of the rules thus far. And despite what I've been told often, I have yet to run into serious grammatical or spelling errors, although it's often a bit wordy in places where more simpler words could be used. Plus having the GM's Toolkit really helps.

With all that being said I had a few questions I'm hoping you guys would be able to answer 

1) I keep on hearing Anima being compared to a game called Exalted, but neither myself nor my players have ever even heard of it. All of us are only familiar with various D&D incarnations (4e, 3.5, and Pathfinder), and a bit of various other RPGs like Shadowrun and GURPS. If you're familiar with any of these, just how difficult is the Anima system compared to these as a whole?

2) I've yet to play a tabletop RPG without miniatures and a battlemat, and it seems like from what I've heard not as many people play Anima using miniatures as people do in D&D. How well can Anima be played with miniatures, and what adjustments should I need to make, if any?

3)I feel like I've missed out a lot of fluff, because on these forums there are references to things like the Church of Abel being a fabrication of Imperium (ie Abel himself was a god) and other such stuff. Then again, I only recently got the core rulebook, and I had actually gotten the Gaia sourcebook BEFORE the core rulebook. But anyway, is there fluff I'm missing, perhaps from the miniature or card games?

4) Any word on Core Exxet being translated into English?

Any other advice or what home brewed rules should be implemented is more than welcome, thanks a bunch in advance!

[ilovecheese1]

Hello sir and welcome to the forums!

1) There will be lots of comparisons made to alot of different systems, but the most common thing i hear (and know from a few sessions of it) when comparing Anima to Exalted is that they can both feel very high power (punching mountains in half at level 1). Other than that, the independence from magic items to progress as a character and the flexibility of class/point spending interactions make's anima a unique system (plus all the other things i could mention but won't for time).

2) Anima can definitely be played using a mat and some mini's, but there isn't a whole lot in the book to help you along with it. If i had to pick i'd chose a hex mat, since it makes area attacks and surrounding someone much less nitpicky. However, i recommend not using a mat if you have characters in the very high movement categories, or like sprawling battles not confined to a specific area, for drawing reasons.

3) no clue, gaia is my only resource. I do suspect the tactics game has a lot of lore (especially about the major characters in each organization, since that's what the game is based around i hear).

4) uhh..... im still waiting on arcana (soon FFG cmon!) but if all goes as expected (about 1 book per year) we will see it around this time next year... then all the hatred about varying nuances between books can begin.

Hope that wasn't too long and you'll get the hang of it.

PS: Houserules that make your first game smoother should include just about every limiting rule in the GM toolkit.
(1/2 path levels at start, 1/2 mk at start, no level 3 psychic powers)

Additionally, the buying MK and Path level rules from their respective exxet books are pretty good. (5DP for 5MK from combat limit, 5DP for 5Path levels from magic limit)

I also and finally recommend from Arcana Exxet that familiars to wizards and summoners be a CP worthy advantage (2cp for same level, 3 for +1 level) from personal experience.

[Lizbeth]

1) Anima is very simple. Exalteds are terrible as the deepest layer of Hell itself. White Wolf Studio cannot in to math.

2) Easily, no adjustments on base levels. this is going to be difficult on bigger levels as some characters have move speed compared to a good sports car.

3) No. All the fluff is there.

4) No word.

[vytzka]

1) Exalted seems to be suggested as an "anime" game by many people but after playing and running it after a while I decided it wasn't particularly good at emulating anything other than Exalted itself. Compared to D&D of the various stripes I'd say Anima is more difficult to start with but doesn't have the overwhelming glut of options that break your brain so once you understand how the core works you're good to go. (This is not to say it doesn't have options but they're presented in a, well, more concise manner).

2) I don't really use minis though I like having some vague representation of characters and the adversaries (at least so that I can use candy to represent enemies which motivates the players better for defeating them). It's probably possible to play on a hex grid but you'll have to work out compressing the longer distances somehow.

3) I think all the core background information is in the main rulebook. Although the Anima Tactics rulebook presents a lot of great descriptions and artwork of prominent characters, it's more of a really nice extra rather than something mandatory.

4) I have no idea but they seemed to speed up the release cycle a little lately so hopefully before the end of 2013?

[Noble Pigeon]

Phew, that's a relief to know it's not difficult to use miniatures in Anima. While I'm certainly willing to try it without miniatures, I'm a very visual person, and my narrating skills aren't quite up there (yet) to keep things interesting without some sort of visual representation.

[Dynaes]

Re: Minis

One thing to watch out for is the flanking/behind attack rules.  As a GM running Anima with minis for a party used to D&D, your players may be upset that they don't get flanking bonuses when they physically flank someone.  Using hexes helped alleviate that somewhat, but that's one thing to be prepared for.  You could also add in something like a small +5/+10 bonus to attack for flanking in the D&D style, and I don't think it would break the game.  Just be careful because your party may be outnumbered more often than they outnumber, and the system can be lethal to new players who aren't prepared.  As a GM, you will need to keep a close eye on that.  I have killed one player repeatedly, and wiped the entire party once.  The one player is his fault for building a really fragile character and constantly getting into fights against multiple opponents before having Ki activated, the TPK is mostly my bad for an early level save or die combined with really, really unlucky dice in my players hands.  I don't say this to scare you, just to recommend erring on the side of easy combats until you and your players get used to the difference between this and D&D.  Also, teach your players that surrender and escape are totally viable.  I don't think every fight being to the death works as well in this system.  Good luck, and remember, YMMV!

[The Dread Polack]

1) I think vytzka explained the similarities pretty well. Overall, I wouldn't compare them, but there are some specific things that are comparable.

2) I like to play with miniatures to some degree, mostly for visual reference. The Anima rules don't have any guidelines for using minis, but if you want to, I recommend having 1" or 1 hex (my preference), or 1 square = 5 feet. I also collect & paint the minis, as does one of the other players, so we like to use them for that reason as well.

3) I'm constantly being blown away by the more esoteric discussion going on here as well, and I've been on board since it was released in English. There's a lot of fluff to dig into, but luckily it's written in a very open form, so it's easy to ignore what you want, and you don't need to worry much about contradicting cannon. Read as much or as little as you want to get ideas.

4) I don't think there's actually any plan to. As I understand it, there will be some notes in Arcane Exxet on the rules changes, but I doubt they're going to print a new version of the core rules in English- there are still plenty of copies of the original floating around.

Other advice: I don't particularly like the Anima rules. I am running it using the Savage Worlds system. Anima works just fine, but everyone at the table needs to know the rules, and it is a lot of work for the GM to stat out anything on his own. Once you know the rules fairly well, you can eyeball the numbers, but Savage Worlds is one of the easiest games to prep for, and I'm too busy to run Anima as written. I recommend using the sample characters from the core rules and from Gaia and at least familiarizing yourself with all the magic, summoning, psychic, and ki rules. You'll still be looking up a lot of things for wizard, psychic, sommoner, and technician NPCs, but at least you'll know where to look.

[Noble Pigeon]

Thanks guys for the replies! I did have another question:

So as a Technician I'd like to increase my Ki using MK. Says the development cost is 1. So does that mean for every Ki point I want to raise I spend 10 DP? So say I wanted to raise my Dex Ki from 10 to 20, I'd need to spend 100 MK to do this?

[Lizbeth]

First, you spend DP pool on your Dominion pool and accumulation. Second, 10 is accumulation cost. Pool cost is simply "Ki" on the page.

So you may spend 10 DP to gain +1 to stat accumulation or +10 to your pool.

Btw, I advise you to use Pool Unification rule.

[Noble Pigeon]

First, you spend DP pool on your Dominion pool and accumulation. Second, 10 is accumulation cost. Pool cost is simply "Ki" on the page.

By Dominion pool you mean the combined amount of Ki points I have, right? So basically what you're saying is, if I spent 14 DP to put Ki into the pool I would get 14 Ki? I was under the impression you spent DP on a consistent value of ONLY 5 or 10.

Wait...

So you may spend 10 DP to gain +1 to stat accumulation or +10 to your pool.

...Does it have to be exactly 10 DP or can it be any other value?

Btw, I advise you to use Pool Unification rule.

Yeah, I just got the Dominus Exxet book and saw that as a Godsend 

[FearlessElbow]

No, you can spend DP in whatever multiples suit you.  If you want to buy 3 Ki and spend two DP to increase your Acrobatics by 1 point, feel free.

The only real restrictions are:
1) No more than your max (either 50% or 60%) on any one type of Primary (Combat/Magic/Psychic).
2) No more than 50% on Attack and Defend (part of your combat primaries).
3) If you're going to invest in a Secondary Ability, you must put at least 5 points into it (so either 5, 10, or 15 DP depending on the cost of that skill for your character).  Any less than 5 and you're unskilled.

Other than that, it's pretty flexible.

[Lizbeth]

No, you can spend DP in whatever multiples suit you.  If you want to buy 3 Ki and spend two DP to increase your Acrobatics by 1 point, feel free.

IIRC only multiples of 5 are allowed.

By Dominion pool you mean the combined amount of Ki points I have, right?

Yes.

...Does it have to be exactly 10 DP or can it be any other value?

In case of accumulation it can be any multiple of 10. 10, 20, 100, etc.
In case of pool I'm not sure but I think it is multiples of five.

[Noble Pigeon]

No, you can spend DP in whatever multiples suit you.  If you want to buy 3 Ki and spend two DP to increase your Acrobatics by 1 point, feel free.

IIRC only multiples of 5 are allowed.

By Dominion pool you mean the combined amount of Ki points I have, right?

Yes.

...Does it have to be exactly 10 DP or can it be any other value?

In case of accumulation it can be any multiple of 10. 10, 20, 100, etc.
In case of pool I'm not sure but I think it is multiples of five.

Hmmm, so then if I wanted to buy 10 Ki for the pool I would only spent 50 DP?

[FearlessElbow]

No, if you're a Technician, 10 Ki would cost 10 DP.

What Lizbeth was saying (and I personally don't agree, but... you know,.. houserules), is that you can only spend DP in multiples of 5.  So you can't have Acrobatics 17, for example.  You have to have 15 or 20.

My view is that you can't have (not including modifiers, like characteristic modifiers - so let's assume this is with an Agility characteristic of 5) Acrobatics 3, because you need to have at least 5 in any skill, but you could have Acrobatics 8, if you wanted it.

[ilovecheese1]

What Lizbeth was saying (and I personally don't agree, but... you know,.. houserules), is that you can only spend DP in multiples of 5.  So you can't have Acrobatics 17, for example.  You have to have 15 or 20.

That houserule makes everyone's life easier. It eliminates a lot of new player spending mistakes and allows me to do mental math quickly as a GM. However, to each his own.

The way the spending would work into that would be that you could buy 5 ki, or 10 ki, or 15 ki etc. (for the respective amounts of DP), but you couldn't buy 9 or 6. This might be the only one I allow people to do whatever on since it really sucks as a technician to overspend in Ki when every DP saved can get you closer to more ki accumulation.

Hopefully adding to discussion  .