New Abilities

[TheGreyReversed]

Thanks for the feedback, sorry it seems so ad-hoc and hard to understand. Like I said I pretty much got struck by a lot of inspiration at once and rushed inside to post them all before I forgot them so none of those were really fleshed out too well. I'm also a big fan of peanut brittle so I find I over complicate things once in awhile.... . I added all those to increase the overall level of dynanicism [yes I made that up ] of my campiagn, because while the rules availible are meaty I wanted some more to work with.

[TheBouncyPherret]

...
Animal Friend
Animals like you! You find it easy to befriend and train animals, and can even soothe an angry grizzly bear when you have to! In general, an animal must be calm before it can be befriended (so if it's scared or hostile, you'll have to calm it first). . This Ability takes time - quickly making friends with a guard dog won't usually be long-lasting, but it can get you in and out of the villain's compound. Taking several days to build a trusting relationship can allow you to teach it tricks, as well, at the same difficulty as befriending it. ("tricks" can cover all kinds of commands and actions, like allowing you to saddle a formerly-wild horse, or persuading a bear to pull a plow...)

DN - You can...
2 - Get a domesticated animal to perform its tricks
4 - Calm or befriend a domesticated animal
6 - Calm or befriend a stray, or an animal trained for hostility (like a guard dog)
8 - Calm a wild animal
10 - Befriend a wild animal
12 - Befriend or join a pack/herd/flock of wild animals
15 - Become the leader of a pack/herd/flock of wild animals

the difficulty levels are sort of off the top of my head, so if anyone has suggestions for tweaking them, i'm all ears (or 'all eyes,' i guess). OFten enough, an animal being encountered will have been statted by the GM as an adversary, or is already someone's Animal Companion; in either case, an opposed roll can supercede this difficulty guideline. The guide is just a tool for the GM to use or discard as desired.

I like this one. It flows well with other such Abilities. You don't by chance play BESM, do you? It seems very similar to the Animal Friendship Attribute....

TBP

[Bhikku]

I've played a little Tri-Stat dx, but not BESM proper. I don't remember if the dx book has Animal Friend; it probably has somethign like it. But this was just something that seemed appropriate for the character i wanted, and i realized there are probably plenty of other characters who would work with it too.

Not to venture too far off-topic here, but i've been wanting to comment on the differences between OVA and Tri-Stat (since i can't really comment on BESM proper). TriStat's Attributes always seemed very point-intensive - building a character was a really involved process with a lot of extra decisisions and tweaking. (as i understand it, BESM's first two editions are milder, but 3rd, if it ever releases, is angling more in that direction.) I also found that the system really really depends on knowing exactly what you want your character to do before you make it - the attributes list isn't very good as a menu from which to pick and choose, but if there's a character you want to recreate, then by God you can do it!

OVA has shown, in my experiments, to be similarly useful in recreating characters from other games, from movies, books, and comics; in fact, since OVA doesn't bog into details, it can be much kinder. I don't have to figure out how far So-and-so can extend such-and-such an ability, just whether it's pretty good or friggin' awesome or somewhere in between. Nice. Also, the Abilities list -does- work decently well as a way to just pick up attributes as you thumb through until you have a vague outline of a character (though any characters i've built this way usually needed two or three attempts before they really became coherent. Still, it works!)

So anyway, that's a thing. not that I dislike Tri-stat, i just found it required more effort than I wanted to expend when developing npcs and thugs and monsters. I suspect if we want to get to to comparing the two or whatever, we should start a new thread rather than hijacking this one.

So to get back on topic, are there any other abilities from BESM/Tri-Stat that are just begging to appear in OVA?

[Clay]

Martial Arts Perks and Flaws out the wazoo

Whoa, nelly! That's quite a list you have. ^^ I love reading this kind of stuff. It's kind of got a Final Fantasy Tactics/Tactics Ogre bent to it, too, which is always fun.

As TheBouncyPherret pointed out, most of these are not really new. By taking the right combination of Perks, Flaws, and Weaknesses, most of these effects can be recreated.

In general, all of the "roll twice or more" things should be changed. Nothing else in OVA works in this fashion. You should model them after entangle/knockback instead. (Since, if you're doubling their defense roll, you're PROBABLY knocking them back anyway). They also seem more like Power Moves, anyway. After all, if they were simply perks, you'd end up with a Martial Artist with a chance to disable, disarm, addle, and cripple in every single attack. These look like moves a Martial Artist would have to INTENTIONALLY try to do as opposed to taking a moment of opportunity.

I was going to go through each one, but that seemed redundant with TBP's thorough post. I pretty much agree with all his suggestions.

I do like Diminishing Returns though. Very interesting and fairly anime-ish. I suppose you can achieve something similar by making it cost a lot of Endurance (and thus, draining your Endurance enough to incur a -1 penalty.)

Animal Friends and Tristat

Interesting Ability. If I were to try to do it with the current rules though, I'd simply take Charisma with the Focus or Trigger (Charisma only works with animals) weakness. The difficulty list is nice to have, though.

I also appreciate your observations about OVA and Tri-Stat. While Tristat slowly tries to become a Champions clone (not necessarily a bad thing), I really want to keep OVA an accessible and easy to use game. It's nice to hear that people think I've succeeded in that regard. ^_^

As for BESM stuff that needs to be in OVA...you'd have to ask someone else. I haven't touched BESM since the Tenchi Muyo RPG (which predated, but incorporated many of the ideas of the 2nd Edition).

[TheBouncyPherret]

I was going to go through each one, but that seemed redundant with TBP's thorough post. I pretty much agree with all his suggestions.

Well, at least I'm not totally off my rocker!! I'm glad that I can contribute appropriately!!

go me!! ^_^

[tokyosteve]

Just wanted to contribute some abilities that I am going to be putting into my game to share/get comments.

Both come from the Tales of the Otori Books featuring ninja-like-characters of the Tribe.

New Ability: Cast Shadow – You can project a semi-solid illusion of yourself to decieve others, and to appear that you are in two places at once. You set the actions of the shadow, such actions cannot be too complicated, but can include things like running away, or being in a doorway they are not, or climbing up a wall. It is opposed by a perceptive or similar to determine if it is real. During combat you can spend 10 endurance plus 5 per round thereafter to cast a shadow. Opponents must make a perception test or similar to determine which one is the real one. If they fail, their attack instead hits the shadow (which causes it to disappear). Like other similar abilities, while not in combat casting a shadow does not use any endurance. Oppents can of course choose to take two actions that turn if they can't figure out which one is real, attacking both, or use of certain perks to attack two targets at once (such area of effect or similar).

Alternate Rules You can cast a shadow as above for non combat purposes. For combat you can spend 10 endurance to activate, plus 5/round. You get a bonus to your defense equal to your cast shadow ability as it is distracting and harder for your opponent to figure out which is the real one.

New Weakness - Foppish / Dandy / Frivolous - You have a reputation as being frivolous and not taking things seriously. Whether it is true or not, because of your reputation, people are more likely to dimiss what you say if it is of a serious nature (that's nice dear, why don't you go take a stroll around the garden and let us serious people discuss how we are going to save the family fortune).

New Perk - Sleep +20 endurance, in addition to doing damage, if your attack hits, the target falls asleep. Any loud noises (such as combat or similar) will wake the target up. Just as a clarification, while asleep your target cannot defend, but will wake up if you attack. If your attack is particullary noisy, the GM may allow the target a roll to quickly wake up.

Designer's Notes
Both come directly from the tales of the Otori and the tribe. They are shown to have the ability to make people fall asleep by staring at them (frequent in many myths), and being able to spilt apart. I would be interesting in getting different opinions from people on them.

The +20 endurance is to encourage people to take heavy flaws of less damage and penetration. But I didn't want to take out damage altogether, as I could also see someone with a Sleep Arrow or similar that did damage and knocked them out. Like the rest of OVA I didn't want it to be to number crunchy. Sleep is something that I think depends on the situtation, for example it might not be useful in the middle of a raging battle, but might be useful if trying to sneak past guards.

For the weakness, it works like Ageism I guess, and may be redudant, except in many genres it wouldn't be just Ageism. For example a sauve swordsman may have a reptuation of being good with his sword, but useless at anything that requries serious attention. It is not the same as airhead or naive, because the person may actually have something smart to say on the matter, but other folks won't listen to him. I would have used Bad Reputation (Dandy) but that desricption is pretty specific, as is Ageism. So essientially it is Ageism for vain and foppish people. In some societies such as Victorian England or Modern Japan it may even apply to groups that as a society were not taken seriously such as Women by the movers and shakers of that society. For OVA anime, I would only apply to people that exmplify the trait, rather than everyone. I struggled a long time before making a new weakness looking at all the others, but I couldn't make 'em fit, it was putting a square peg in a round hole, you could force it, but it wasn't elegant. Let me know if you think I missed something.

[BM15]

Duplicate (Name borrowed from BESM)
You have the mystical (and very annoying) ability to replicate yourself. For a ammount of Endurance (listed below) you can create a copy of youself that is under your dirrect control. You don't see what they see or hear what they hear, but you are aware of where they are and have an idea of what they are feeling. Each copy of you has 10 Health and 10 Endurance (modified by 3 for each of your ranks of Tough, Vitaility, Langorous and Frail; If you have Tough 2 and Langorous 1 for example, your copies will have 16 Health and 7 Endurance). Furthermore, each copy of you has all the abilities you possess, but is limited to the rank of your Duplicate ability (so if you have Defense 3, but only have Duplicate 2, the copies will only have Defense 2). During combat, your copies each get an action, but take a penalty to all actions equal to the number of copies you have at the moment due to the stress of trying to control so many of yourself at once (so if you have 3 copies, they take -3 to all actions; You take no penalties). Copies may not take extra actions and in combat last for a number of rounds equal to your rank of Duplicate x2. Out of combat, they can run wild if you so desire. When dispiated (by your own will or by damage) the copy disapears however you like (puff of smoke, pop like a balloon, etc).

(Same table as Time Freeze)
Rank 1: 30 Endurance
Rank 2: 20 Endurance
Rank 3: 10 Endurance
Rank 4: 5 Endurance
Rank 5: 2 Endurance

One thing I noticed was the abscence of this ability, something sorely missing if you wanted to RP Naruto (Kage Bunshin is fundamental to Naruto himself for instance). I know my description is lengthy, but I tried to cover everything.

[Clay]

Never seen Naruto, (blasphemous I know) but it does seem like a worthy Ability. It does seem to have a lot of stipulations though, which is something I wanted to avoid when I could in OVA.

Would it not be easier to simply use the Flunkies Ability? It doesn't cover some of the territory you do (like strain from controlling them) but those in turn can be handled as Weaknesses for the Flunkies or the Character itself.

[BM15]

Wow, I never even thought of Flunkies being used like that. Rock on. Just put a defect on it saying your flunkies must be 'created' with an action and that they can only have Abilities that you have and not at a higher rank.

I never even thought of that, and it is a lot simpler. Thanks Clay.

BTW, the 'stress' penalty is there to keep one person with a high rank of Duplicate from overrunning a much stronger opponent via the one controlled variable in combat: Number of actions (if each copy got an attack action with all the ranks the origional had, I think you get the idea).

[TheBouncyPherret]

Wow, I never even thought of Flunkies being used like that. Rock on. Just put a defect on it saying your flunkies must be 'created' with an action and that they can only have Abilities that you have and not at a higher rank.

Even easier...

Use Magic (or a Special Weakness: Requires End to function)!! You require End to keep 'em out, so that limits it to your End. Also, Build 'em with your Abilities (minus Magic, of course) up to where you want them to be. Also, don't forget to "supercharge" your flunkies. This lets you have them more on-par with you, but limits the total you can have at once.

Or, if you want one uber-replica....Animal Companion. Humans are animals, right? So why not?

TBP

[Keenath]

New Ability: Cast Shadow

Too complicated. It would be better to create an "Illusion" ability, similar to Psychic, and make this one use of Illusion.

Alternatively, if you want the Shadow to be able to make SOME actions, make it a flunky or servant.

[FrankJScott]

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[FrankJScott]

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