Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 3926083" data-attributes="member: 40961">My personal preference is just to D&D-ize anime tropes, and toss them into the mix for players to pick and choose as they prefer.Players want a character with an anime-sized giant sword?  Ok... we've got feats for wielding large greatswords.Player wants a ninja that runs on rooftops and throws shuriken at people?  Ok... take the scout, give it Shuriken Proficiency for free, take away the shortbow, maybe slightly rebalance a little to account for the reduced range, and BAM!  Instant anime ninja.Player wants a wandering ronin swordsman?  Ok... now we're getting into tougher categories.  The guy needs to use a katana, not wear armor, and be a master at melee combat.  So... warblade, compromise on the "no armor" for "light armor," and focus on Iron Heart.Next player wants an Iajutsu master who draws, attacks once, and sheathes?  I had this one in actual game, before there was an iajutsu class.  Rogue with Improved Feint and Quickdraw, and a house ruling that he could re sheathe his blade as a free action with Quickdraw.Magical girl who flies and shoots energy at people?  Ok, easy one!  Warlock!  With the right choices of Invocations, she can even shoot magical light that blinds people.  The fact that she'll probably be wearing a chain shirt is acceptable compromise.  Get her a pet gerbil and call this one done.I can do this for a pretty long time.But I do get stuck once you get to mixing magic and martial prowess.  I can do that with houserules, but my preference, as above, is for minimal house ruling and mostly constructing my genre altered characters from the building blocks already available in the setting.Swordsman who mostly fights in melee combat, but who can throw down a cone of flame once in a while?  Ok... there are magic items that do that, but those don't scale right.  I could houserule them to scale, but that still misses the way that anime magic is usually internal, not gear related.  How about a training session with a grand master, followed by ritual tatoos of the wrists (expensive ink, and uses up the wrist slot) that grants the character a scalable cone of flame, matching the dragon disciple's breath weapon in strength but usable less often?  Done.I guess the point of this post is this:1: Anime is already in D&D if you want it to be, and not in D&D if you don't want it to be.2: Often an "anime" genre character is indistinguishable from a non anime genre character, in terms of game mechanics.3: Most anime genre characters can mix with the rest of the party without anyone noticing.  The differences between my swordsman with the cone of fire, and a D&D fighter with a sword that shoots a cone of fire, are rather minor.  If you just saw the character sheet, you wouldn't even know one was designed to be anime.I believe in a "big tent" sort of D&D, where the PCs are relatively unique.  So if my world doesn't feature magical girls, but I have a player who wants to play a girl who flies and shoots light at bad guys and is nice to animals and children, well, I can handle that.Can anyone think of an anime character archetype, appropriate to a fantasy universe, that can't be created in 3e if you accept a certain amount of compromise with the tropes of D&D?I say, "appropriate to a fantasy universe," because I want to disallow mecha starship captains and martial artists who fly into space and blow up planets.</blockquote>

Verification