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d20 BESM: Everstone Companion

I'm looking for the Everstone Companion which was released for free on their website. Their website is long gone, and Wayback Machine doesn't have it. The Yahoo group doesn't seem to have it, and RPGNet was of no help either.

Any help would be much appreciated.
 

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mhd

Adventurer
So, is the companion worth it? We're not talking about the "Lannith Companion" you can find online, right?

Based on your glowing praise in the BESM:ptolus thread, I instantly ordered the base book (it was on sale). And it's really a great rule set, although the classes are a bit too specialized for the setting. Wonder whether it's better to convert the core classes, or unify the "powers" and go completely class-less...
 

No, I actually did buy the Lannith Companion and to be honest it's mostly adventure stuff. It does include the "mundane fighter" class, but the Everstone Companion has the "Warrior" class which is almost identical. The difference being that limited to rank 2 on one attribute, and being allowed to go to rank 3 on another.

The classes do initially seem to be a bit specialized to the setting, but if you sit down and start looking at them, you can find a fair amount of flexibility really. Probably the biggest limiter in them is simply how magic is really built into all of the classes. It's not insurmountable, but it does mean that it's likely not going to appeal to the folks that like grim-n-gritty.

However, even if that's the case....

You can _still_ use the system they present in Everstone, and simply do away with the classes if that's the problem. You can go and download the Anime SRD for free, and it contains all the BESMd20 rules. Including their approach to the cost of the standard d20 classes.

So if you wanted, you could use the Anime SRD classes and the Everstone rules and have yourself a nice little modifiable d20 game, that's still much closer to "base" than the Everstone version. Here's a link to it: http://www.guardiansorder.com/games/d20/srd/
Don't bother trying to convert the classes yourself, just start tweaking what they already did if you don't like it. :D

Personally, I really like what Everstone did with the classes. As an extra bit of cool, they do explicitly mention that it's possible for members of one class to learn the spells of another class. Which means that the character tweaking possible goes up even more, without really introducing any additional complexity. So you could get a Sun Magi that has the Teleport spell for example.

If you'd like the companion let me know an email addy I can ship it to, and I'll pass it along to you.

The companion has 8 additional classes in it including: Barbarian, Healer, Thief, Hedge Wizard, and Warrior. Which means that right there you've got your classic roles filled out. The healer is a healer, since they don't really have Undead in Everstone, but that's really not hard to rework the healer back into a Cleric if you want. The Hedge Wizard really does look much more like the traditional sort of D&D type caster.

Another important distinction is what spells are appropriate for the Everstone setting. They list the no-no spells, and basically anything over 5th level. Which I think goes a long ways towards helping keep things from spiraling out of control. You've got the potential for a really broad allowance of magic and 5th level spells seem like there's still some pain to be issued, but it is capped.

I say that even if things like the Sun/Moon/Shadow Magi don't quite work for you, at least consider trying out the Everstone version of the other classes.

Edit: Heck I like the Everstone setup so much, I'm even trying my hand to making an SRD of it. Using the Anime SRD as the base, and ditching the Everstone specific names.
 
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mhd

Adventurer
Sounds neat. I've got the BESM D20 book when it came out -- some nice ideas, but the balance between its BESM roots and the D20 add-ons wasn't quite worked out. Too many approaches to achieve the same goal (BAB, combat skills _and_ powers to increase your chance to hit is just an example). I also didn't care at all for the anime trappings.
Everstone took that system and made some basic decisions what to use and what not. Ditching feats and making everything else class-specific streamlined things a lot, yet it retains some inner logic and reproductability that its competitor in that area, Lone Wolf, is missing (i.e. its way easier to add another class).

With the techn nature of the setting I think it could be easily adapted for the Iron Kingdoms setting. For a more standard setting, I'd add various caster classes -- specialists are more fun than the generic clerics/wizards, IMHO.

Email address would be michael_dingler at yahoo.com...
 

Nuclear Platypus

First Post
Ooo. I was considering using the points to tweak in the extra nifty stuff that characters get instead of handing out magic trinkets for spiffy abilities. For example when Naruto decides to make a bazillion clones of himself, that'd be difficult to do via magic items but in the source material that's pretty much what he's best out. Likewise when someone wants to be a Streetfighter clone, they can get the "Howareyouken?" projectile instead of chucking a spell or whatever. But that'd be something I'd have to examine a lot closer.

Email addy is a yahoo one but no space (nuclearplatypus).
 

Sorry Nuclear Platypus, but I'm not quite sure what you're looking for.

If it's the Everstone Companion, I actually uploaded it to the Everstone group. You can find it here: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Everstone/

If you're just looking for the BESMd20 SRD (called the Anime SRD), you can still get it from the Guardians of Order website: http://www.guardiansorder.com/downloads/

Everstone itself doesn't specifically have an SRD.

If you're just thinking of using the Anime SRD to hand out stuff to D&D characters, I'd be a bit careful. The assumptions behind BESMd20 and D&D are different, and you might windup with something incompatible. Generally D&D is much stricter in trying to determine the level of various things. If you're just looking at adding in special powers/abilities, you might find something like Four Color to Fantasy a better approach.
 


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