Necrohazard
First Post
Thinking about getting this system, but would like to know more about it if anyone could help.....those that have played the game or at least has the book, thanks.
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Anima: Beyond Fantasy "RPG"
- Thread starter Necrohazard
- Start date
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
I hear that it's very similar to Rolemaster in many ways and, for a long while, I had a lot of interest in it for this reason. . . but after all of the delays and the relative obscurity of the rule book post-release. . . ICE finally gave me a great excuse to buy a RMSS hardcover value pack with the holiday specials that they're running, so I order that instead 
Dragonhelm
Knight of Solamnia
How's the fluff?
Jack of Shadows
First Post
Well,
I found it very mechanically ackward. When I read through it I had the feeling that the designers had a mechanic they really liked but when it wouldn't work they started bolting things onto it. Then bolting things on to the things they had bolted on. It's a very pretty book to look at but I don't think I would ever want to try running it.
JoS.
P.S. For the record I'm a big fan of RMSS.
I found it very mechanically ackward. When I read through it I had the feeling that the designers had a mechanic they really liked but when it wouldn't work they started bolting things onto it. Then bolting things on to the things they had bolted on. It's a very pretty book to look at but I don't think I would ever want to try running it.
JoS.
P.S. For the record I'm a big fan of RMSS.
RefinedBean
First Post
A friend of mine described it to me. Apparently you have a 1-100 rating in a skill/stat or whatever, and then you use d% as your standard roll and add it to the relevant thinger.
Which makes no sense to me. It's like taking the Unknown Armies base mechanic and making it more complex. Awkward.
Of course, I haven't seen it in play. Adding double digit numbers on the fly for the entire game might be less annoying than it sounds.
Which makes no sense to me. It's like taking the Unknown Armies base mechanic and making it more complex. Awkward.
Of course, I haven't seen it in play. Adding double digit numbers on the fly for the entire game might be less annoying than it sounds.
I've played quite a bit of it since GenCon when I picked up the book (a purchase I'd been waiting on for several years) and I'm enjoying it greatly. The character customization is fantastic: The 'classes' aren't so much classes as purchasing frameworks for how you spend your DP (Development Points). Some classes can advance certain skills easier (or gain bonuses to the skill per level), like the ability to Wear Armor, Stealth, History etc. etc.
All powers are available to all classes, they're just priced cheaper or more expensive accordingly. There's Ki (Think 4E Exploits gone even more over to the side of Wuxia/anime: Running on water, firing bolts of energy from one's weapon, teleporting slashes, etc.) Psionics, Magic (Which runs off a Path system: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Creation, Destruction, Illusion, etc.) and Summoning (Which has two facets: The banishing, controlling and binding of creatures and Invocations, which are basically Summon-spells in the vein of old Final Fantasy: Big one shot effects that are meant to be your 'ohcrap' buttons, since Summoning in combat is difficult. The presumption with summoners if that they'll have their creatures prepared beforehand, either following them around or bound in objects).
Base mechanic is Skill + 1d100 roll, with 90+ exploding and giving you an extra roll. (Although each explosion, called an 'Open Roll', reduces the chance of another Open Roll occurring by 1....Essentially, after the first, you'd need a 91 to explode again, 92 after that... Its one of the stranger quirks, but you could probably houserule it away.
Characteristic checks, on the other hand, use a d10, wherein low is good and high is bad. They are the worst part of the system, IMO, as they are completely incongruous with the rest of the rules.
As far as combat goes, there is a 'combat chart' to determine hit and damage. However, the formula behind this chart is very simple to understand, and once you know it, you do not need to glance at this chart AT all to calculate. Degree by which you succeed at hitting your opponent directly effects damage: You can get by just as well by being a precise, accurate fighter as a 'I slap you with a sword the size of Missouri' fighter, the difference being the former relies on vastly surpassing your defense roll, the other relies on connecting. Combat can be fast and fairly deadly. Vastly moreso than 4E. Getting hit in Anima means you LOSE YOUR ACTION FOR THE COMBAT ROUND if you havent gone already. You can avoid this by choosing to 'absorb the hit' rather than actively dodge, which means you only get half your defense to your roll, but you don't lose your action. This is how heavily armored, slow fighters avoid being microperforated by extremely fast characters.
Overall, I'd rate the system as more complex than 4E, and on par with say Shadowrun 3rd edition/WFRP/Dark Heresy. Its slightly complicated by a few layout/organizational issues in the corebook, and the fact that FFG's translators did a very inconsistent job at some points. My Spanish is far from fluent, but with 4 years of AP Spanish that wasn't really used until this year when I started teaching in an urban high school, I'm confident I could have done a better job. I think the translators weren't aware that they were working on an RPG, and that certain key mechanics and terms needed to be clearly and consistently defined.
I don't want to overtalk the subject, but feel free to PM me if you want more information. Also, the game has perhaps the friendliest official forum (- Index) community I've seen for any RPG, and the games developers regularly (And by regularly, I mean several times a week) post there in answer to questions/clarifications. Likewise, the playerbase (particularly, the international community, where the game has been available longer) have also shown themselves to be incredibly willing to help.
You can have over 100 in skills/attack/defense.
I don't see how this is awkward or complex, other than the fact that its big numbers. I'm not a big fan of math (And abhor anything past Algebra II, hah) but I can do pretty much all of the math in Anima in my head. I wouldn't let yourself get too worried.
All powers are available to all classes, they're just priced cheaper or more expensive accordingly. There's Ki (Think 4E Exploits gone even more over to the side of Wuxia/anime: Running on water, firing bolts of energy from one's weapon, teleporting slashes, etc.) Psionics, Magic (Which runs off a Path system: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Creation, Destruction, Illusion, etc.) and Summoning (Which has two facets: The banishing, controlling and binding of creatures and Invocations, which are basically Summon-spells in the vein of old Final Fantasy: Big one shot effects that are meant to be your 'ohcrap' buttons, since Summoning in combat is difficult. The presumption with summoners if that they'll have their creatures prepared beforehand, either following them around or bound in objects).
Base mechanic is Skill + 1d100 roll, with 90+ exploding and giving you an extra roll. (Although each explosion, called an 'Open Roll', reduces the chance of another Open Roll occurring by 1....Essentially, after the first, you'd need a 91 to explode again, 92 after that... Its one of the stranger quirks, but you could probably houserule it away.
Characteristic checks, on the other hand, use a d10, wherein low is good and high is bad. They are the worst part of the system, IMO, as they are completely incongruous with the rest of the rules.
As far as combat goes, there is a 'combat chart' to determine hit and damage. However, the formula behind this chart is very simple to understand, and once you know it, you do not need to glance at this chart AT all to calculate. Degree by which you succeed at hitting your opponent directly effects damage: You can get by just as well by being a precise, accurate fighter as a 'I slap you with a sword the size of Missouri' fighter, the difference being the former relies on vastly surpassing your defense roll, the other relies on connecting. Combat can be fast and fairly deadly. Vastly moreso than 4E. Getting hit in Anima means you LOSE YOUR ACTION FOR THE COMBAT ROUND if you havent gone already. You can avoid this by choosing to 'absorb the hit' rather than actively dodge, which means you only get half your defense to your roll, but you don't lose your action. This is how heavily armored, slow fighters avoid being microperforated by extremely fast characters.
Overall, I'd rate the system as more complex than 4E, and on par with say Shadowrun 3rd edition/WFRP/Dark Heresy. Its slightly complicated by a few layout/organizational issues in the corebook, and the fact that FFG's translators did a very inconsistent job at some points. My Spanish is far from fluent, but with 4 years of AP Spanish that wasn't really used until this year when I started teaching in an urban high school, I'm confident I could have done a better job. I think the translators weren't aware that they were working on an RPG, and that certain key mechanics and terms needed to be clearly and consistently defined.
I don't want to overtalk the subject, but feel free to PM me if you want more information. Also, the game has perhaps the friendliest official forum (- Index) community I've seen for any RPG, and the games developers regularly (And by regularly, I mean several times a week) post there in answer to questions/clarifications. Likewise, the playerbase (particularly, the international community, where the game has been available longer) have also shown themselves to be incredibly willing to help.
A friend of mine described it to me. Apparently you have a 1-100 rating in a skill/stat or whatever, and then you use d% as your standard roll and add it to the relevant thinger.
Which makes no sense to me. It's like taking the Unknown Armies base mechanic and making it more complex. Awkward.
Of course, I haven't seen it in play. Adding double digit numbers on the fly for the entire game might be less annoying than it sounds.
You can have over 100 in skills/attack/defense.
I don't see how this is awkward or complex, other than the fact that its big numbers. I'm not a big fan of math (And abhor anything past Algebra II, hah) but I can do pretty much all of the math in Anima in my head. I wouldn't let yourself get too worried.
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sounds cool.
I don't normally complain about cost, but its like $60, is it a 1 book purchase to play the game or do i need to but the "DMG and Monster Manuel" as well. I got the money, but I don't like it when I feel like someone is overcharging me.
It sounds like I could run a Naruto campaign fairly easily with it.
I don't normally complain about cost, but its like $60, is it a 1 book purchase to play the game or do i need to but the "DMG and Monster Manuel" as well. I got the money, but I don't like it when I feel like someone is overcharging me.
It sounds like I could run a Naruto campaign fairly easily with it.
You can run the whole thing out of the corebook. Anima's bestiary isn't published in Spaiin yet, let alone America, but the monster creation rules in the back of the book are very comprehensive, and are nearly identical to building a PC (Save you can also spend points on purchasing abilities). There are spreadsheets that do a lot of the heavy math lifting on the Anima forum already, and though they dont' include monster abilities as of yet, they can take care of all the other aspects.
It would excel at mimicking both Naruto and Bleach for those people interested in the current fighting anime de'jour. The default setting of Anima, however, is a fantasy world with renaissance level technology (with smatterings of ancient technology/science left behind by empires long past). It has a vibe very similar to Final Fantasy 6 minus the steampunk.
The take on nonhuman races is very interesting. Essentially, most 'supernatural' humanoids have been witch hunted into near extinction, and dwell now hidden from the eyes of the world. However, their souls have begun to reincarnate in human bodies, and these 'Nephilim', humans who possess the soul of another race (and as a result, some of its abilities) make up the playable nonhuman races of the world.
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That kind of tech kind of reminds me of naruto. Fantasy story, fantasy level tech for many things, and then they have cameras, power lines, and outboard motors, though sail boats are the norm.
Oh and hey $37 on Amazon. Prefer to buy things at Gator games my local store, but that cost difference I can not pass up.
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