Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

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StarRaven
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Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by StarRaven »

All I wanna do is see you turn into...
Fusion effects see plenty of use in anime (and... other shows...), but there's no formal Ability for it in OVA and it gets asked about (particularly in the context of giant mecha) a little bit, so I got to thinking. Here's how I'd run it.

A new Ability, Fusion! You may design your Fusion Ability out of any Abilities and Weaknesses your character already possesses, up to a total of your level in Fusion. When one or more characters want to fuse, all players should roll their Fusion dice and try to beat a DN equal to their combined level in Fusion. The characters fuse if all of them roll successfully. Otherwise, the fusion fails.

Fusion Cuisine
Some possible modifiers include --
  • If the character is able to perform a full-round "Fusion Dance" without interruption.* +4
  • If a fusion partner is the character's Love Interest. (A bonus equal to their level in Love Interest.)
  • If a fusion partner is the character's Rival. (A penalty equal to their level in Rival.)
  • If the characters have attempted fusion previously in the same combat, even if the fusion was successful. (-1 for each Fusion attempt.)
*(Accurate x4, Concentration.)

Amalgam
If the characters fuse successfully, the new Fusion Character has all the combined Abilities and Weaknesses from the component characters' Fusion Abilities. This way, each player gets to pick what is important about their character (or Vehicle!) to add. Fusion Characters can use any attack techniques from any character that contributed Attack, and players can collaborate to design attacks that are unique to their Fusion Character if they want to. (In between game sessions, please!) A Fusion Character gets a number of combat actions equal to the number of their component characters, and each of those turn's actions is controlled by a player who contributed a character to the Fusion. A Fusion Character has 40 base Health and Endurance, just like any other Heroic-level character. If the Fusion Character takes damage, that damage is equally divided among all component characters when they unfuse.

Yikes. They are really bad for each other.
If players can't compromise on opposing actions for a Fusion Character, they can roll opposing willpower rolls and the winner controls all of the Fusion Character's actions that turn. At the end of the turn, all players must make Fusion rolls again. If they fail, the Fusion Character unfuses and the component characters are Stunned for the next round.

Edit: Examples here.
Last edited by StarRaven on Mon Sep 04, 2017 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Blobathehutt
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by Blobathehutt »

There you go giving me stuff I did not know I needed lol
You are who you chose to be.

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Malancthon
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by Malancthon »

Pretty nice. Is the Fusion Ability required for all participating members, or just for at least 1 character to have the Ability?

So, do Vegeta and Goku count as Love Interests or Rivals? IIRC, their rivalry was part of what made their Fusion more powerful.

I'd probably clarify that the Fusion Character has a number of Abilities and Weaknesses total up the level of the Ability, drawn from the contributing Fusing Characters. I had to reread that a couple of times to make sure that's how it was meant.

If multiple characters have the Fusion Ability, does that stack? Including being able to have a Total more than +5?
StarRaven
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by StarRaven »

Malancthon wrote:Pretty nice. Is the Fusion Ability required for all participating members, or just for at least 1 character to have the Ability?
Yes, in this example, the Fusion Ability would be required for all characters who have the ability to fuse at all. If it's going to be an inherent ability in the game world, the characters should definitely get a number of points in it on character creation.
Malancthon wrote:So, do Vegeta and Goku count as Love Interests or Rivals? IIRC, their rivalry was part of what made their Fusion more powerful.
Haha! In this case, it would only make the fusion more difficult, not less powerful. If that's important, maybe give each fusion a straight bonus to all rolls (like the Passion Ability) according to the intensity of the contributing characters' feelings?
Malancthon wrote:I'd probably clarify that the Fusion Character has a number of Abilities and Weaknesses total up the level of the Ability, drawn from the contributing Fusing Characters. I had to reread that a couple of times to make sure that's how it was meant.
That's not how it's meant, though, I think. I did have trouble phrasing it. An example is probably better.

Imagine that Raine and Shou learned the secret art of fusion during their years working for Clan Cave Fox!
  • Raine has +3 Fusion (+3 Attack, +2 Beautiful, +2 Combat Expert, +1 Evasive, -1 Airhead, -2 Code of Conduct, -1 Guardian, -1 Sensitivity)
  • Shou has +3 Fusion (+2 Agile, +2 Art of Invisibility, +2 Attack, +2 Quick, +2 Teleport, -1 Easily Distracted, -2 Quirk, -2 Overconfidant, -2 Vulnerability)
Together, they make a Fusion Character with

Code: Select all

SHRAINE*
ABILITIES                  WEAKNESSES
+2 Agile                   -1 Airhead
+2 Art of Invisibility     -2 Code of Conduct (Honorable Combat)
+5 Attack (Kaze Ninjutsu)  -1 Easily Distracted
+2 Beautiful               -1 Guardian (Those in Need)
+2 Combat Expert           -2 Overconfidant
+1 Evasive                 -1 Sensitivity (Beauty)
+2 Quick                   -2 Quirk (Playful)
+2 Teleport                -2 Vulnerability (Light)
*LOL

Having met Karis during the course of the game, they began to teach it to her. She has +1 Fusion (+1 Agile, +1 Attack, +2 Companion, +1 Cute!, +2 Quick, -1 Bizarre Appearance, -1 Impulsive, -2 Obsession, -1 Sensitivity, -1 Short-Tempered.) When the fight with Shadowman rolls around, Karis and Raine pull off a Fusion!

Code: Select all

KARAINE
ABILITIES                  WEAKNESSES
+1 Agile                   -1 Airhead
+4 Attack (Swordarang)     -1 Bizarre Appearance (Ears)
+2 Beautiful               -2 Code of Conduct (Honorable Combat)
+2 Combat Expert           -1 Guardian
+2 Companion (Arasuni)     -1 Impulsive
+1 Cute!                   -2 Obsession (Shadowman)
+1 Evasive                 -2 Sensitivity (e v e r y t h i n g)*
+2 Quick                   -1 Short-Tempered
*At some point in the combat, Shou makes a flippant remark that Karis's boobs are even smaller than they used to be but at least she's almost as pretty as Raine now. While they kick the crap out of him, Shadowman makes his escape.

Fusion Abilities are all chosen during character creation (not during the actual Fusion event) in order to streamline the process, prevent minmaxing to some degree, and allow players to choose the aspects of their characters they believe to be the most iconic or important to carry over. Raine and Shou are both complex characters with lots of combat-centric Abilities and so the Fusion Abilities I made for them reflect that. To continue to streamline it, you could easily rule that characters can't have any more attached Abilities than their level in Fusion. (So a character with +3 Fusion wouldn't be able to have more than 3 attached Abilities, no matter what level they're at.) If Fusion only happens during combat, you can also rule that Abilities and Weaknesses that don't matter during combat can't be chosen.
Malancthon wrote:If multiple characters have the Fusion Ability, does that stack? Including being able to have a Total more than +5?
Yep. The Ability was designed with the intention of making Fusion Characters notably stronger than normal characters, but if balance is a concern then maybe they need to spend Endurance in combat for every round they spend fused -- perhaps equal to their combined Fusion Abilities?
Malancthon
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by Malancthon »

So, a character creates a list of Abilities and Weaknesses for a potential Fusion Character with a difference equal to their level of Fusion, and then they apply this list to their half of a potential Fusion Character?

Wouldn't it be easier to just choose to apply whatever Abilities and Weaknesses the character already has, up to the difference total of their level of Fusion? That way the Fused Character is built from parts of each base character. If just built from a list selected at the time of the Ability, then you could create a Fused Character that has nothing to do with the Base Characters...

What about having more than two Fusion characters? What if four members, all with the Fusion Ability, decide to combine into a single Fused Character? DB Fusions (actually a great DB game for the 3DS) had the Ultra Fusion, where all five teammates combined into a super fusion character for Massive Damage. Also, Goku did a God Fusion where he combined with an entire arena.
StarRaven
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by StarRaven »

Malancthon wrote:So, a character creates a list of Abilities and Weaknesses for a potential Fusion Character with a difference equal to their level of Fusion, and then they apply this list to their half of a potential Fusion Character?
Correct.
Malancthon wrote:Wouldn't it be easier to just choose to apply whatever Abilities and Weaknesses the character already has, up to the difference total of their level of Fusion? That way the Fused Character is built from parts of each base character. If just built from a list selected at the time of the Ability, then you could create a Fused Character that has nothing to do with the Base Characters...
StarRaven wrote:You may design your Fusion Ability out of any Abilities and Weaknesses your character already possesses, up to a total of your level in Fusion.
(I also probably wouldn't allow characters to have Abilities/Weaknesses within their Fusion Ability that are higher than their native Ability -- a character with +1 Attack shouldn't be able to give their Fusion Ability +3 Attack, right?) However it might be fun to have characters with Abilities that are only unlocked during Fusion.

If you build every Fusion Character at the time the characters fuse, fusion is probably going to take a while as players decide what Abilities to take, not to mention that a Fusion Character could end up being different every time the component characters fuse. If that's the way you want it to go, sure! But I erred on the side of streamlining the game.
Malancthon wrote:What about having more than two Fusion characters? What if four members, all with the Fusion Ability, decide to combine into a single Fused Character? DB Fusions (actually a great DB game for the 3DS) had the Ultra Fusion, where all five teammates combined into a super fusion character for Massive Damage. Also, Goku did a God Fusion where he combined with an entire arena.
I thought about fusion with more than two characters when I wrote the original post, which is why the post specifies things like "the number of component characters" rather than just "two" -- I think it scales just fine. If you're fusing a large number of characters* probably enough of them will have levels of Tough and Vigorous that the resulting Fusion Character will have enough of a bigger Health/Endurance pool for me. (They'll also have so many actions in a turn that it probably won't matter, haha.)

*Something like the God Fusion with an entire arena is probably not within the scale of the rules anyway. At that point it's probably just worth creating an entirely new character rather than trying to stat up an arena worth of Fusion Abilities, heh. This Ability is definitely geared toward more personal fusions.
Clay
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by Clay »

Nice! I really like how the characters' relationship factors into the Fusion.

It's not nearly as robustly thought out as what you have here, but for completeness's sake I dug up my thoughts on the matter from an old thread (though it's more Voltron and less Dragonball):
Clay wrote:I’m pretty sure I’ve touched on “Combined Form” before, but the long and short of it is that it’s difficult to do in a way that satisfies everybody at the table. By definition, you’re taking away everyone’s ability to contribute to the battle and putting it solely into the hands of one entity. Who decides what the combined mecha does? Who gets to roll the dice?

When I discussed it before, I think the final idea I settled on is continuing to let everyone have a turn, and letting each part still have its focus. Maybe arm-guy’s turn is the only turn you can use the SUPER PUNCH attack. Maybe leg guy has higher Defense Rolls. And so on.

In this way, you pretty much still have 4-5 distinct characters, only now they share a common Health total.

As for how to handle this, it’s probably best to create a new Ability “Combined Form” that grants double the points of EVERYBODY’S Level in that Ability. So if arm guy has +3 combined form, head guy +4, and torso guy +2, you could spend 18 points on the super mecha. This also opens up the ability of weaker incomplete transformations, which seems to happen now and again in sentai shows.
StarRaven
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Re: Fusion - an Ability for combining characters

Post by StarRaven »

I definitely had that reply in mind when I came up with this.

One of the games I ran had a big group of characters but also sometimes had big space battles. While one or two of the characters had giant mechs or little ships of their own, most of them stayed in the spaceship (a la Eureka 7.) So every character on the ship had a different responsibility for the ship's fighting abilities -- most of them manned guns of various sorts, the pilot rolled defenses and moved the ship, the engineer kept up the shields and such, etc. It was actually quite fun.
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