Fabula Ultima general thread [+]

[overgeeked]

I've not delved nearly enough into FabU yet to get a real strong sense about it, and it does feel like it leans towards a more narrative focus overall, but I'm now imagining something like an Ancient Cave-style procedural mega-dungeon campaign. ala Lufia 2, and wondering if FabU could pull that kind of thing off

There’s a thread on the purple site about the Kickstarter and the idea of dungeon crawling came up. It would work fine. You just have to give the PCs opportunities to recharge IP (inventory points).

See the second half of this post.

Fabula Ultima coming to Kickstarter | Tabletop Roleplaying Open

Prelaunch website here. https://prelaunch.fabulaultima.com/

forum.rpg.net

 

[CandyLaser]

I've not delved nearly enough into FabU yet to get a real strong sense about it, and it does feel like it leans towards a more narrative focus overall, but I'm now imagining something like an Ancient Cave-style procedural mega-dungeon campaign. ala Lufia 2, and wondering if FabU could pull that kind of thing off

The Natural Fantasy Atlas has a little bit of stuff that is relevant here, in a section on "Vertical Worlds" which is designed to adapt the normal travel and worldbuilding rules to something involving exploring a large vertical setting, e.g. descending into a deep chasm or scaling an enormous tower. It's designed to evoke the Etrian Odyssey games. I wouldn't say it's all you need, but it's a good start.

 

[Aldarc]

@Reynard, one of the fun things IMHO about Fabula Ultima is that joy of building your character. It's a bit like 3e/PF2 mulitclassing, though I would say that it's multiclassing done well. Characters have "classes," but these classes are more like thematic packages of abilities. You grab these abilities as you level, and not necessarily in a particular order. You master your class after 10 levels, and gain a heroic skill, but you can't progress any further in those classes after that point. You can have a max of three non-mastered classes.

So let's create a party of starting characters. Starting characters start at 5th level and must take 2-3 classes.

Markus, the Generic Game Hero
Guardian (2 levels): Defensive Mastery 1, Protect
Spiritist (1 level): Spiritual Magic (Spell: Soul Weapon)
Weaponmaster (2 levels): Breach, Counterattack

Ophelia, the Priestess of Light
Orator (2 levels): Encourage, My Trust in You
Spiritist (3 levels): Spiritual Magic (Spells: Cleanse, Heal, Lux)

Vera, the Gambling Gunslinger
Entropist (2 levels): Entropic Magic (Spell: Gamble), Lucky Seven
Rogue (1 level): High Speed
Sharpshooter (2 levels): Barrage, Ranged Weapon Mastery 1

Garik, the Leaping Lancer
Elementalist (2 levels): Elemental Magic (Spells: Soaring Strike, Elemental Weapon)
Guardian (1 level): Fortress
Weapon Master (2 levels): Bladestorm, Melee Weapon Mastery 1

Aldarus, the Black Mage
Elementalist (3 levels): Elemental Magic (Spells: Fulgur, Glacies, Ignis)
Entropist (1 level): Entropic Magic (Spell: Drain Spirit)
Loremaster (1 level): Insight

Notice that we definitely have overlap between characters. Several characters have levels in Spiritist, Elementalist, Guardian, Weaponmaster, and Entropist but with basically no overlap of abilities. But we have also created fairly different characters in terms of the sorts of things that they do.

Classes in Fabula Ultima

Core Rulebook (15): Arcanist (Summoner), Chimerist, Darkblade, Elementalist, Fury, Guardian, Loremaster, Orator, Rogue, Sharpshooter, Spiritist, Tinkerer, Wayfarer, Weaponmaster

High Fantasy Atlas (4): Chanter, Commander, Dancer, Symbolist

Techno Fantasy Atlas (3): Esper, Mutant, Pilot

Natural Fantasy Atlas (4): Floralist, Gourmet, Invoker, Merchant

Bonus Content (2): Ace of Cards, Necromancer

You do have to be careful about mixing content, especially across the Atlas materials, because they represent different genres and/or sub-genres.

 

[zakael19]

I have a player who continues to maintain that the 4 attribute dice resolution mechanic is his favorite system out of anything he's played so far. Roll two dice, beat a set of presented target numbers. Ez.

 

[Ashilyn]

I view the character building in FabUlt almost like Deck building, tbh. Its never an approach I've had to character building before, but the design, presentation, variety, and interactions of the classes and their abilities really got my brain stirring. Its fun choosing classes and finding new combinations of abilities that create spectacular effects, or even ones that don't work as you expected (see: me discovering that most things that effect, improve, or diminish spells don't actually interact with my Chanter chants at all because despite being magical they aren't consider spells, which is both a bane and a boon).

Playing the game has my brain working in a way for character building it doesn't normally and I love it because FabUlt makes it fun AND rarely does anything feel useless.

Unless you're a core book arcanist. That class sucks, the revamp in playtest right now is much more fun.

I also distinct disagree about mixing stuff from atlases. Go wild. My group did and it's been great.

 

[aramis erak]

The [+] is to keep things positive and prevent arguments about Fabula Ultima and more narrative-focused or video game-inspired RPGs. There are plenty of other threads to hate on games and play styles you don’t like.

There are a few people on here who play Fabula Ultima and want to talk about it without the constant negativity of the other threads, so I thought we should have a general [+] thread about the game.

Anyone play this? What did you think? Any relevant links to share?

I've played a demo.
I've bought the books in PDF.
I hope a foundary module is forthcoming.

 

[Aldarc]

I have a player who continues to maintain that the 4 attribute dice resolution mechanic is his favorite system out of anything he's played so far. Roll two dice, beat a set of presented target numbers. Ez.

I loved it when I first encountered it in Ryuutama. IMHO, it's incredibly intuitive. When I first heard that FU used a modified version of the resolution mechanic from Ryuutama, I was pretty excited.

Unless you're a core book arcanist. That class sucks, the revamp in playtest right now is much more fun.

Unfortunately, Ema has said that the new Arcanist won't be in the updated Kickstarter version of FU. They are also not including the Initiative variant either.

 

[Ashilyn]

I loved it when I first encountered it in Ryuutama. IMHO, it's incredibly intuitive. When I first heard that FU used a modified version of the resolution mechanic from Ryuutama, I was pretty excited.


Unfortunately, Ema has said that the new Arcanist won't be in the updated Kickstarter version of FU. They are also not including the Initiative variant either.

I figured it wouldn't be. Unfortunate, but not surprising. After the last round of bonus content didn't have Pulses for all the arcanum in it I figured it would stay a secondary version of the class.

Hopefully someday there'll be a book with the variant rules, I vastly prefer the variant initiative rule too.

I've played a demo.
I've bought the books in PDF.
I hope a foundary module is forthcoming.

There used to be a fan made Foundry module. I don't know if it's been abandoned or just doesn't work with the current version of Foundry, but I've been having problems with it for a bit now unfortunately. I doubt there'll ever be an official one sadly

 

[Aldarc]

Hopefully someday there'll be a book with the variant rules, I vastly prefer the variant initiative rule too.

They are apparently working on a Strategy Book filled with advice and variant rules slated for 2027.

 

[SteveC]

I hope a foundary module is forthcoming.

There is a current module, Project FU. Details about it are here, but you can load it directly from a search in the Foundry app. I have played around with it, but I've always been lucky enough to run Fabula Ultima in person. I wish I could tell you more about the module, but it looks nice, and is being worked on. I wish they would do a Foundry module, and Derik of Knights of Last Call regularly talks with the designer, and is a Foundry person who also loves the game ... so we can hope.