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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6159241" data-attributes="member: 8461">I do too, and I understand where you're coming from with enjoying taking a combination of diverse mechanical elements - classes, feats, spells, items, etc. - and mix-and-matching them to get as close an approximation as you can of a favorite character. I used to do that a lot too, and it was quite fun.I eventually grew to find the process cumbersome, however. The various mechanics, spread across so many different books, was a lot to keep in mind, particularly when they kept expanding as more and more new materials came out. Even having spreadsheets and databases to index things didn't help very much.Worse, however, was that I had to keep settling for "good enough" character approximations that just didn't seem very representative of the characters I was trying to recreate. Comparing the in-character explanations for their powers and abilities with the background assumptions of a "typical" D&D world didn't (usually) show any sort of inconsistency for why most characters' powers wouldn't work as-is in a world like that...and yet the game rules didn't seem to want to let me, no matter how much I bent them.The main problem, I believe, is that the d20 System simply doesn't deal very well with supernatural abilities that aren't rigidly-structured spellcasting. If you're using magical power, it wants to tie you to a clearly-delineated system of casting "spells" that have a number of basic assumptions built into them about how that power is gained and used, and what it's parameters and limitations are. Now, you have some room to play around with this, but not that much.The sole exception to this is found in certain character classes that do have mystical abilities, but these are even more rigidly-defined than spellcasting is. You can at least select your spells there; classes like the monk have their mystic powers defined as class features, leaving no room for any but the tiniest amount of variance in what they can do, and this is always going to be an imperfect fit for a pre-existing character.Ultimately, the class-level system is simply too structured to allow for the kind of variation you're going to need when making non-spellcasting characters who have powers that are not only supernatural in nature, but are highly individualized (e.g. a lot of anime characters, comic book superheroes, etc).Far and away better for this sort of thing is a point-buy character-build system. However, those are exceptionally rare where the d20 System is concerned (I won't try and tell you to use another RPG altogether, since I don't think that's a compromise you necessarily need to make). The BESM d20/Slayers d20 rules are one such system, though I think that it's an imperfect one.Personally, I'd recommend <a href="http://www.rpgnow.com/product/51255/Eclipse-The-Codex-Persona-Shareware" target="_blank">Eclipse: The Codex Persona</a> for this sort of thing. It's incredibly flexible in the kind of characters you can build, while still being tied to the d20 System (and it's free). I've used it to make a number of characters on my blog (link in my sig, below), including <a href="https://alzrius.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/sailing-to-saturn/" target="_blank">some from anime</a>. There are a lot more great examples of what you can do with the system over on the <a href="http://ruscumag.wordpress.com/atheria-d20" target="_blank">co-author's blog</a>, too (which is good, because practical examples are the one area where the book is somewhat deficient).I know you said that you're not interested in changing the tools you're working with, but I've found that it's far easier to use one resource that has everything you need to make exceptionally-faithful translation of a character, than many books to make "creative" interpretations of the same character. Do check it out.</blockquote>

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