Damn, never would have thought I'd see the creator here. Great system man, I've been collecting physical copies of the books for a while now, haven't gotten the chance to try it yet but still love the system.
I can’t wait for a translation for the latest books, a rerelease, and an updated character generator. Please, please, please. (Anima is one of my favorite systems despite not being able to play frequently. I would request a summoner-wizard combo class (I also had an idea for prestige classes that require certain prerequisites to get). Lastly, it would be cool to see a true-namer mechanic.
@@zalgogaemer that's what I meant with it being the first game I found. Spanish is my first language, but this game is too overcomplicated and I don't want to try to read it again. But I have seen the excel with its multiple layers
@@Cronirios I cannot say the contrary, without someone who knows how the system works it's near impossible to actually start playing, the only thing that I can say in favor for this system to someone that tried to play by oneself is that this system has rules for everything and that's both something good and something bad, anyway I can assure you that once you understand how one part of it works it's incredibly funny seeing how far you can stretch it and twist it
@@tygrataps I have run and played Rolemaster/Spacemaster for over 3 decades. It is NOT a newbie-friendly system, but an experienced group can mentor a new player in. Now imagine a whole group new to the system, and the Forever GM (me) having to read everything and know it well enough to teach the whole group...
I never expected to hear about this insane rule-system ever again. I played a short campaign of this with some friends years ago. From memory the things that stood out the most was: - The 3-5 different variants on "Martial class with Magic" that were impossible to tell apart. - The fact that spells and abilities that had a range used either metric or imperial measurments (with no rhyme or reason). - That casting the standard destruction attack spell cost 30 Mana for 30 damage. But overcharging it raised the damage with 30 damage per 5 Mana. So pumping 30 extra Mana into it didn't make it go from 30->60, it went from 30->180 damage. Making overcharging most spells better than casting multiple due to how the math worked. - The insanity that two spellcasters and a summoner working together could by level 2 or 3 spend a month to cast any level 100 spell through ability jank and intended mechanics.
@@Rex0142king Yeah, magic in anima is really overpowered. Thats why in the world of Gaia, which is the base world setting Anima: Beyond Fantasy takes place magic users are either scrutinized or downright hunted depending on which continent/empire they are a part of. Not to mention the organizations like the Inquisition or Tol-Rako which have multiple level 10+s, with high level artifacts, custom in game special abilities, and a hatred of a thousand suns with anything remotely touching magic.
@@Rex0142king Not really. The variants of the martial with magic are warlock, paladin, dark paladin, warrior summoner and mentalist warrior. Paladin and D paladin have a bit of magic (and honestly, I haven't seem many use them as a gish), mentalist warrior doesn't use magic, and warrior summoner is only for using the summoning mechanics, not the rest of the magic (that subsystem is VERY isolanist, if you are not one of the 2 classes that are made to use it, you have to ignore it outright). The metric/imperial system seems to be a problem of the translation or an older edition, your 3rd point is from the old magic system. In the spanish version, it's all on metric system. Magic was changed a while ago, and it no longer works like that, now you have 4 tiers of a spell, each one with a different cost and effect, instead of you tweaking the cost and power on the fly, much easier to use and more balanced. They added metamagics to give that extra customization (you modify the spell, but it increases the cost). Well... yes, you could theoretically do that, but realistically, no, you can't. Allow me to explain for those who don't know the system. Spells in anima have 2 requirements: Mana and intelligence, if you don't have any of those two, you can't use it, period. For example, an spell could need 8 int and 100 mana, if you have 7 int and 200 mana, you can't use that spell. BUT, then come the rituals, they allow you to "increase" your intelligence when casting a specific spell, while also increasing the mana cost (by a LOT, like, +1 to you int is +50% cost, and it only goes up), requiring a lot of time to make the ritual (it can take years for the most extreme of them) and having special requirements (the book doesn't give any examples, a lot of people I play with igrnore this last part, but it's in the manual). Alongise this, you have to know the spells, learning low level spells is easy, but those stupidly high level ones can take years (or even DECADES) ingame, alongisde a ton of resources (like the points you use to learn magic, and you will need a LOT if you want to learn those spells). And finally, spells with an higher level of 80 have a special requisit to use them, you can't use them normally: either you have 25 gnosis or more (posible to do as a player, but needs to use a level 80 spell with quite hight requierements and cost), or have the high magic metamagic (that requires you to be level 10 or higher, on top of needing a lot of time and resources to get), that one also doubles the cost of level 80+ spells, so alongside the higher cost of the rituals, it's also doubled again, so the costs would easuly be 10s of 1000s of mana, that's ridiculous even at high levels. And for level 90+ spells... you can't really use them as a player. They require you to have 35+ gnosis, and there's no player aviable options to get that, only stuff that is pure master fiat. Also I don't see how the summoner would help with this, care to explain? TL;DR: You *can* cast those spells at low level... but you'll need the GM to hand you everything on a silver platter and ignore a ton of rules and design intentions, so you really can't do it.
I remember starting a campaign with this game and it was... An experience. I loved the granularity of all the checks and diverse abilities. I was an artist, poet, philosopher, a novice. I was as handsome as handsome can be but I sucked at combat. Nevermind that, my party was very nice to me, and protected me, i was the face and moneymaker out of combat. This was like 14 years ago
Anima always seemed to have some really neat concepts in the setting (the race of people that everyone magically forgets interacting with, the special summoning ability that requires you fail at everything you have ever attempted in order to attain - including failing your attempt to attain it, to name two of my favorites) but it's terrifyingly dense to try to get into There was a tabletop skirmish wargame, too. I don't remember much about it, always wanted to try it out.
Between the artwork, world building and character option, I love the setting and the concepts that it plays with. That being said, it's up there in my top 5 settings to bring over to a better system.
I remember dicking around with the tactics game as a kid. It was thankfully way more intuitive, and only involved like 3 or 4 models per team, which actually made it a lot more approachable than games like 40k. I suspect that's probably why it went under as well though.
I dated a guy who had all of the books, and tactics, and even all of the minis for the game. The skirmish game was somehow WAY easier to understand than the actual RPG.
Old rules master for Anima here, yea, it's a lot lol. There's actually a lot of errata and 'fixes' from the creator you can find online if you dig, and a lot of it was necessary sadly. I printed out reference materials for players to reduce the book hunting for all the specifics, most times it just went to 'roll d100 i'll figure it out'. I'll point out some general tips that aren't clear until you play the system for a while, and how your character could be absolutely busted. The reason for archetypes was if you decided to change classes, it was easier to change to something in the same archetype, for less point penalty, so if your character wanted to eventually just become a warrior after getting all the powers they wanted, it was easier to do than becoming a summoner or other mystic they had no background in. In combat you pick how many active actions you get per turn, like moving, attacking, psychic powers, etc. Most characters only do 3 max, but that means you can be limited if you have low DEX and AGI, as there is a max action limit from your lack of mobility. If you got hit, you lose _all_ your actions that aren't passive (like dodging) for the turn, so you wanted to max out your combat ability to have the highest chance to knock someone else out of the turn first if you won initiative. That also meant you wanted a light weapon (or magic/psy powers) as that affected your initiative roll each turn, and hitting was more important than damage (most times). Heavier weapons did more 'base damage' but you were slower for it, so they often weren't used. You also only start trained in one weapon, the rest you have to buy proficiency for, or use at a steep penalty, so warrior with sword and bow was rare, unless you bought a weapon group that had both, which was usually house-ruled in. The reason you have a limit on categories like combat / psychic powers is to prevent you from spending all your points on attack / block (or for psychics, projection which is the equivalent) to do the above knocking people out. With your stats and build I'd probably max out attack, and like you did pick up the Energy discipline, but go with the power to make energy weapons, so you can summon your own weapons (that have a better damage type against armor than regular ones) that all count as being as fast as a dagger - even an energy greatsword! IIRC a character could get ~100 in attack / block with 9 in their stats, that's what you're aiming for usually at level 1. You do also get some Martial Knowledge for passive ki abilities that are useful later on, like being able to roll above the 'inhuman' value of 320, otherwise you get capped for most rolls, yes even for psychic powers. You also inadvertently found the best adventurer gear with the armored longcoat. It has the best basic stats in the game with no wear armor investment, and is cheap as dirt. There's technically a piece in the text that says it's not common, but no one cared cus otherwise almost everyone was armor less. I still love the system, but I spent nearly a decade running it and hammering out all the rough spots, and their world book is the best I've ever seen from any system, including modern ones.
I've read but never played it. IMO - it felt like they had a lot of amazing ideas which they stuffed into the same system in awkward ways. And I do like the vibe of their class system - which isn't really a class system at all. Anima is a point-buy system where the classes make some abilities cheaper or more expensive.
@@DarthRadical Yea, you basically had a lot of mini-systems (psychic powers, standard fighter, DBZ techniques, MMO wizard) that interacted with d100 rolls in various ways, most of which were intuitive, some not. Once you got to the supplement books it introduced even more powers and a few more systems but it still was 'd100 plus something vs d100 plus something'. The main issue I had with the classes is that because of the point penalty to swap and advantages that modified your point-buys, you often had 'well I wanna do this, but it's not worth changing classes rather than just paying the creation points to lower the ratio'. There were also some broken builds thanks to oversights, some of which were fixed, some not (Weaponmaster having a 1:1 dev. point to HP build, no limits, is stupid).
Ah yes, my beloved +5 armored long coat that stayed with me until level 6, good memories, ya, that was so prominent in my group that one of the GMs banned it because it's boring. In my own games, I was like, "Eh fuck it, I'll make my own armor for you guys."
@@cheesytorso My man, I feel your pain on weapon's masters having to much HP. It can be even more efficient, if you just have a higher con of like 15, then it becomes 1.5:1 DP then you add on hard to kill 3, and some other stuff and holy shit HP was at like 500+, I think that player ended up with 883 HP by level 7. That is a crazy amount of HP in anima.
My group primarily uses virtual tabletops, which for almost every system someone has automated and made it so that rolling and checking tables isn't any harder than rolling to attack in DnD and whatnot. When looking for interesting systems, I tend to look for crunchy depth in character creation and character growth more than anything. The advent of these systems being automated means that as a DM my job is basically just to make sure I have some example sheets to click rolls on, and make sure I'm invested in my player's characters, which for me is easier when their actions are unique. LANCER is a great example of this, which is a crazy crunchy system where if we had to play it IRL together it'd probably be a nightmare to keep track of all the status effects, various actions people can take, etc, but on a VTT, it's super easy, and the character/mech creation is super interesting and unique. Highly recommend it! With VTTs becoming more and more popular, stranger/crunchier systems like this I think will likely become more and more popular, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing several new systems entirely designed with VTTs in mind.
I actually ran 2 games of LANCER in person concurrently between 2 groups. In levels 1-3 it was a very fun system to run, and honestly wasn’t too much of a challenge (although I say this as an avid wargamer), however post lvl3 with tier 2 enemies it suddenly became a little too overwhelming, both for players and DM (although the 2 week gap between games may have contributed to that feeling).
20:34 -- Here you go... one replacement Tabaxi. Yep. Totally the same as a Tabaxi. You'd never know the difference. "That's just a catgirl cosplayer who you kidnapped from an anime convention." What? No... she's totally a Tabaxi. Basically the same thing.
I know, right? They couldn't just GIVE YOU a animal-person race. You can't JUST play catgirls and be done with it. You know, be properly Anime. No, no. You get to play as an _Otherkin._ A person who _cosplays_ as an animal-person. Which is just the saddest possible thing I can imagine. I don't need to play a person dressing up as a catgirl. I can do that in Real Life. I play the game because I want to pretend I'm ACTUALLY a catgirl, in the game.
@@Bluecho4 Yeah, and I don't want to pretend to be dating someone pretending to be a catgirl, I want to pretend to be dating a catgirl! ...Wait... does that track? (In case it is unclear that was supposed to be self-deprecating humor, nothing against Bluecho4)
@@Bluecho4 Back of the book has the original non-degraded races and you can play them just fine. But their benefits are much more powerful and they're not intended for the base setting. There's also several other ways to become a catgirl anyway. Spells that mutate your body, a bloodline that grants monster traits, and channeling the spirit of a legendary lion. Prob some other stuff too, I can't remember off the top of my head.
My old group had a campaign. It was fun, complicated at time, silly at other, but fun. The characters were wild. Starting of I could freeze targets to absolute 0, was blind, used heat vision to see through walls. We had a guy who was a low level goku, and a guy who could kill anything with his super axe.
The inconsistency in art style through the book is so strange. Also I thought the rules for gurps was dense and unapproachable this is a whole new level.
Anima is dense and crunchy, but has some really cool power system ideas. Supposedly they are working on a new edition, but info is kind of hard to scrape together.
It's almost all directly from the creator's twitter and discord now, and he's been doing indy kickstarter video games in the system's setting for the past several years. I also want a new edition (fix psychics please god) but not holding my breath lol.
Hey long time GM of Anima here. Love people talking about the game. In fact if you are interested in learning more, I am always willing to teach anyone and have tons of resources to share from my long time playing the game. There are quite a few mistakes that happen as a result of cursory looking over the rules and while I was going to originally go "hey here is where a mistake is made" I just decided to boil it down to these two notes I had written down rather than pick on every part: 30:40 Yeah... this is the point where most people get really confused. The game allows you to do EVERYTHING that all classes can do as any class. In dnd you chose warrior you are getting your second wind ability, if that were in anima, everyone could use second wind if they spend the DP/MK for it, its just easier for a warrior to do it. 32:24 Oh my sweet summer child...
as a anima player the best way of playing it is with all the errata's that where done to magic psionics and other things the problem people have is the power creep in the base game is insane so the extra books really help flesh out what version one made
Yeah, agreed; Being the point of *Method 3* is "you should have _at least one_ EXCEPTIONAL stat" I support the idea of NOT subbing a nine if you 'Maxed Out' and rolled a 10 for a/any stat.
The only real problem I have with this, after hearing it described, is the lack of a point buy system for stats that doesn't rely on dice at all. You always get one person with a way better character if you're rolling.
As spanish, I played Anima some years ago (is from a Spanish producer). The community created a super developed excel, because without it making a Anima characters is a horrible torture (without it, is just a torture)
That art direction when you show the PDF of the book is straight out of 3rd Edition D&D. The art itself is anima themed of course but the layout and design in the book look just like 3rd edition.
The bit right at the end reminded me of something I've seen in very few games but which I think is one of the best jump-in-aids for new players: annotated examples. The one that comes to mind is Ryuutama, which uses facing-pages in the print format to explain what each element of a class description is with arrows pointing to it on the example. But I know I've seen an annotated character sheet *somewhere* that explains what each box is in plain english. "This is your AC, it's determined by your armor (Page ###) and is rolled against when attacking. It represents armor, shields, and evasive ability."
As a DM that works dming at conventions, my like for this video was 99.99% based on "the hardest part is teaching it to other players". If Puffin ever read this and if any other forever DM read this, let me tell you: you are not alone in this particular sadness. Take heart and don't loose hope That said, wanting to play something that is not well-know is such a hassle :(
Something that isn't brought up in the video, the game is originally in (European) Spanish.The translation was.. rough. It makes the already difficult system much more opaque.
Im from Spain and even in spanish this system is too convoluted, we use a spreadsheet called Anima calculator and even with that a simple combat last for hours
I can’t believe you are talking about a system I have heard nobody else talk about. I played a year and a half campaign to completion on this system and it was awesome.
I ran like 3 different full length campaigns with the Anima system and it's setting. To the point I basically learned the damn combat table by heart. I still feel VERY nostalgic of the system and the setting. Now I made my own rules light system for narrative heavy games, but I still use the setting from time to time.
First of all, love your videos Puffin : 3 . Second, I play a lot of ANIMA with a group and is the only TTRPG they play. They kind of hate DnD since they say it's so simple, prefer that there is a defense dice instead of AC for hits, the liberty of point for character creation and (this one is stupid and nonsense) that "not everything is solved by dice roll". Context for the last: in my group they don't invest in skills like persuasion, intimidate or other social skills since that can be done by just roleplaying. Also for most things, the GM just resolves what your character does without throwing dice. Say you enter a room and the GM describes the most basic thing of what you see, but if you want to investigate you won't throw dice. You have to say the GM what you check. Which sometimes is bullshit since one time I was investigating a room and couldn't find anything. The GM wouldn't let me throw dice to search because I didn't know what I was searching for. I could only advance because I asked if the wall had the wallpaper, something that he only said to me because I asked. I just told them that it depends on how a game is played, a GM could use DnD and not be focused as in what they say ,"only enter a dungeon to kill monsters, there is no roleplay". They beliveve DnD is only fights and just that. Still though, I like ANIMA for the combat and some skill checks. But it has many mechanics that it's better for players to focus on one aspect. Focus on either Magic, Psychic, Ki or others. What I do kind of hate is that in battle You take longer to kill the enemy if they have heavy armor. For easy math, each point of armor adds a 10 to the defense dice. Characters have a +20 for base. So the math is Attack-Defense-20-armor*10. The result is the percent of DMG done. Which means that if attacker and defender had the same attack vs defense, the attack has to roll a value higher than 20+(10 for each point of armor) to deal dmg. Someone with 2 points of armor, you need to roll +50 to deal the minimum of 10% of DMG. ANIMA is not newbie friendly and it's complicated. You need to think a lot to make a strong character and not lag behind. Also mutliclassing sucks since you loose a lot when changing class. Still I do like to play it and would like to GM or play more of it. But I believe the community is really niche. Even in the discord servers there are few or no open recruitment.
oh boy, cant wait for him to figure out how to make enemy monsters. i showed my DnD GM a handfull of statblocks i made for some basic lvl 0-1 monster encounters and he nearly fainted.
"And for my first character, I'm going to make a *picks hardest class*" 😂 Usually, a hybrid fighter should take a "Projection Module" from page 58, so they can focus on just Attack and Block/Dodge (try to spend 40-45% of DP on combat primaries as a hybrid). The module is a heavy investment at low levels, but to me it's balanced by how matrices/spells are largely invisible at those levels. Also, Mind Reading (+30 to opposed actions) is really powerful. Another good hybrid build is to avoid powers that need Projection. Field effects like Area Scanning or Motion Detection. Buffs like all of Physical Increase, Psychokinetic Armour or Flight. Utilities like Telemetry, Project Senses or Mental Communication. Magic has similar options. Lastly, "v1.5" introduced the Natural Bonus and Innate Bonus when you level (including lv.1) to help round out characters. One lets you pick five secondary skills to gain a +10, but each has to be under a different category (Athletics, Creative, Perceptive, etc.) The other, you can add your characteristic bonus another time to 1 physical (Dex, Agi or Str) and 1 mental (Int, Pow, WP or Per) secondary ability each level. Anyways, basically impossible to learn the game on your own 😅 Thanks for making a video about the best TTRPG that no one is ever going to play 🎉
You're right that most classes have about the same cost for Attack, Block, and Dodge, but that's where the innate bonus comes in! The Weaponsmaster actually DOES get some of the cheapest attack and block, as he gets a +5 every level (caps at +50). Now, the fastest way to max out attack and defense is actually Tao, since martial arts can give you a bonus, but you can easily get your full +50 to each by lvl 5 instead of waiting until lvl 10. Taos are even better at maxing attack/defense if you're working out of the French translation of Dominus Exxet
please make more videos like this. making characters is my favorite part of any ttrpg and I'd absolutely love to see a whole series just going through and making characters in various game systems to get a feel for them!
There are features of old games that (personally, so for my games) I think were better left in the past, and ones that I think we should return to. Complex/crunchy systems (the quality or execution not withstanding) is definitely something I miss. The way we are going right now, seems like we are going to start getting TTRPGs where the rules are all on 10 pages baring the fluff text, with the fluff mostly just being “make up something in this general idea/archetype” said in a flowery way.
Yeah, plus, games can have substance/crunch without being a complete slog. Building a very complex system isn't a mark of brilliance, but instead someone who hasn't been doing design enough to know what not really needed.
@@InfernosReaper Eh, sort of. I figure, it's like this: complexity is something you spend to get depth, so you want to have a good complexity to depth ratio. Beyond that, the amount of crunch you spend on depth is up to which part of the audience spectrum you are aiming for/are on.
@@dragonturtle2703 I used to think that way too, but then I realized that excessive minutia is fine for a computer game where all that's done for you and no one expects to operate outside the set mechanics, but in a proper tabletop RPG most of that minutia not only bogs the game down but keeps the GM from being flexible enough. It all really comes down to figure out what's necessary and what's not. For example, take Pathfinder 1rst Ed or 3.5 D&D. A kajillion classes and variants for said classes sounds great, until you realize that most of it is basically the same stuff, but not well-balanced. That causes the problem of a bunch of trap options(like baseline Fighter) that just screw most novice to intermediate players over without adding any value to the game. While a class is great structure for helping players build characters and the class flavor helps inspire RP, too many random classes actually ends up doing the system more harm than good. Oh, and 3.5 grapple rules are another great example of complexity that diminish the game, rather than enrich it.
I feel like complexity is ok, but you definitely get diminishing returns for it. For example, PF2e has way more depth than PF1e, despite being a much simpler system, because they were very careful about how they used that complexity - instead of presenting a bajillion feats and detailed simulations rules for every little edge case, they changed the action economy to encourage players to mix and match a small pool of carefully balanced actions each turn - which added way more depth than 2 pages of grapple rules, while being 10x easier to understand. Similarly by locking down player options, they removed a lot of trap options, since the gap between visible and optimal builds is much smaller, making you feel much less punished for just picking out the options that look fun. Another element is that complexity raises your barrier to entry, so unless you're an established player in the market, nobody is going to play your perfect high crunch masterpiece as an indie - hence the rise of rules lite games people are actually willing to commit time to reading.
Everyone in the comments explaining how the system isn’t actually that complicated has convinced me the system is indeed quite complicated. (Not a bad thing it sounds like people enjoy it.)
Thank you for this video, I have been mildly interested in Anima since it came out (I own and like the related card game). This game seems to have a decent amount in common mechanically with Rolemaster Standard System. At least in the approach to character building.
I love the Shadow class. I really like combining rogue archetypes with warrior archetypes. In my first time RPing my MCU loki ripoff named Adrassil who was a middle management mercenary part of an assassin guild I made up. He had great ambitions. He became so strong, I dubbed him the mook killer as he had a huge initiative allowing him to have a huge bonus to hit almost every round and would pretty much just dodge amd counter enemies with his high quality rapier. He was an incredible dodge tank. He also was the party leader and "face" so to speak. I outwitted my GM at almost every turn as a schemer and manipulator but eventually, I did get outdone due to some magical meta nonsense. was such a fun character to play! My GM did a good job running a sandbox for us, too!
I have such fond memories of this game. I ran it for years. Eventually the math got so quick that it didn't really slow anything down. Once you grasp that armor just reduced damage by 10% per value and that the difference in attack/defend came out to be x% of weapon damage in increments of 10 the whole thing flowed easier. It was an abhorrently complicated system made more complicated by the trash translation job of FFG though.
Anima is so good. I love it, warts and all. Don't get me wrong, I understand all the critiques, I know it's janky and strange, but I can't help but love it, expeially for all said jank. The wierd world, the vibe. It's all good to me.
I can't believe i watched so much of this video. I can't believe i was still interested! As someone who is just breaking in to a side gig of game development with a family member i gota say it's fascinating to me to see systems people come up with for games.
I DMed Anima for a couple sessions. The class archetypes are for multiclassing, it is easier to multi class within your own archetype (fighter to weapons master) than between different archetypes (fighter to mage)
I really wanted to play this game at one point in time, if not for the game system, but for the interesting setting that was extremely final fantasy esque. They apparently have a second edition... but its untranslated, in spanish. Fantasy Flight dropped it at one point, but there has been dedicated fan translations. Beyond that, the original editon still has a strong fanbase and their are multiple videogames that are okay if not good.
@@ryanigoe225 Ya anime and ttrpgs are similar with fandom's where you get people, even hardcore fans who kind of manage to keep a line drawn between fantasy and reality, and reality takes priority, but you also get people who treat life like an anime or whatever weird fictional world they are projecting on to IRL stuff. Sometimes, with with both fandom's it feels like there isn't much inbetween either, its one extreme or the other. I feel like when you mix ttrpgs and anime your rolling twice on weirdness encounter table when trying to find players, if you know what I mean 😅
I do agree with your final comments on how much reading there is to this game. It takes a special kind of person to learn this game, and then to introduce/tutor other players into it. I litterally sat down and created a whole tutorail adventure, meant to introduce the mechanics of the game, just to have a shot at getting my friends to play it. However it did work and I've run two separate groups for anima, each one using the tutorial as the base adventure for the charaters, and once you're into the game it's a lot of un. In this sense it shares vibes with something like shadowrun 4th/5th edition. Inredibly satisfyingly crunchy, but it takes a LOT of investment.
Every system has their strengths and weaknesses. I've been playing anima for over a decade, so I am pretty familiar with the rules. The reason I like anima is that you can truly customize any sort of character concept and make it your own, especially if you get the supporting supplement books for the system. Yes, it is extremely crunchy; but sometimes depending on the game you wanna run; that can lend itself to the overall setting. Don't get me wrong, 5e is a great system as well, but after a while the mechanics get really "same-y".
This is why whenever I make a new character in a system I've never played, I read the book through several times. This allows me to have a clinical understanding of the system and how it works.
the anima rpg and anima tactics world has also been so fascinating to me. it seems so cool. the rpg rulebook is one i look through every now and then. the spells always seemed so much more interesting than usual dnd stuff. plus as you said, it is a very pretty book
Maybe the first part will found one person more familiar with the system to guide you. Because some rules of the core book, like the spells, have been rewriten. I play several campaign with Anima. I love the setting, I like the rule. Anima biggest problem is when you lvl, your power goes exponentially, making high lvl game play a cluster fuck.
So Anima is my favourite system. But I really don't think you'll see its strengths just from building one character. (Plus without an experienced player to help it is the worst part by far of the entire system, is the initial learning). The character construction is vast - with many options, and you can basically make any final fantasy or anime style character you could imagine. (Especially if you have access to all the books for the extra options and balancing tweaks). But what you'll really miss from only making characters - is how smooth gameplay actually is. The fight initiative order and scaling of the rolls means that combat doesn't take longer as you level up. A level 1 anima fight will take longer than a d&D 5e fight at level 1 - but the level 1 anima fight is more or less the same speed when it's level 15. Where as level 15 D&D fights are turgid and boring affairs that take hours and hours. Anima has such nice consistent rules for skills and attacks all using the same basic system (D100 + modifiers vs target number or compared to enemy roll) - it's an absolute joy to GM once you know the system - despite it's complexity you can reach the stage where you can easily ad hoc stat appropriate encounters (Or rather - stat things appropriately to feel right to the world - and let the players deal). And you're really rewarded for the complex character creation in character variety - In D&D the cleric and the wizard are pretty similar - yes the spell lists are different and the casting stat is different, but all the spellcasters are basically the same in feel. In Anima you can create a fireball throwing wizard, a fireball throwing psychic, a fireball throwing ki user, or a summoner that summons exploding fireball creatures.... + plus more I could name. And they will 'feel' different, and play different. They're not just variants of the same core thing - they're literally different in kind - one will be more defenceless but faster - another will have more ability to change the fireball. The weaknesses are different and that makes you feel different about what you can and can't afford to do depending on circumstances. And anima also has martial characters not falling behind as the game goes on (Although all builds do need to plan a way to reach "superhuman" and "Zen" - which are required to achieve higher target numbers - there are lots of different ways to do it if you plan to go to those levels of gameplay - other than those bottlenecks, you can basically make anything). It's an absolute joy to play and run. I've run multiple multi-year campaigns of this game system - and I want to run it again already. Obviously if you prefer much lighter systems - it's not for you. But it is absolutely amazing for people that want meaningful crunch - I don't believe it has any sections that are complicated without also rewarding you for that complexity with additional depth that allows the different types of game engine (Ki, Magic, Martial, Psychic - stealth bonuses ect). To really play out and feel different, while all interacting with each other in meaningful ways. Usually when I DM it, especially for new people - I suggest they tell me what they want to play and what systems they like the idea of and then I make the initial characters. Despite how complicated it looks - I've even run it successfully at conventions. (And used the system to run home brew style games as well - like one which used modern day setting horror).
Reminds me of the time when I tried making an rpg system called 'Roll Doubles and Die'. It was another 'he who rolls the highest number wins' kind of thing with a trait system, rolling 1d20 +1d8 for every positive trait and -1d6 for every negative trait that applies. At any time you can roll 1-5d20's to help with your roll but if they roll doubles your action is a crit fail regardless of what you roll. This roll was your initiative, attack and defense all in one go. If you crit failed an attack, then you were 'exposed', meaning your roll was considered 0 for the round. Example: You have a +2 Warrior trait and a +1 Swordsman trait, so you roll +3d8 to attack a giant spider, but you have a +2 phobia of spiders so you also subtract 2d6 from your roll. You take a risk and add 3d20's to your roll... you roll a 20, a 2, and another 2. So your attack fails. Pretty simple so far, right? Now add movement rules and action economy. I'm sure plenty of people can come up with something simple to use but my ADHD butt just HAS to make everything overly complicated and... well, long story short you also needed ADHD to understand how it worked XD
I agree this is too crunchy for me, and I love crunchy systems. I actually played the tabletop game for this that came out before this. the mechanics are much simpler, and im actually working on my own RPG based on the combat mechanics of the tabletop game.
🤣+5 in attack/block/dodge, oh that made me laugh. My friend Puffin Forest, I do wish you can see a legitimately run version of this game, it IS a mess, but such a beautiful mess when you start to understand it.
Quick run down. Psychic, Ki, Magic are the 3 superpowers, and all classes are slightly better with one of these, though that slightly becomes real important when you really get into the math. All 3 superpower systems have soooooo many options that it can support just about any character idea....but magic is a cheaty bastard and usually wins the game. Psychic all the way. Also i agree, the artists for that book are top notch.
Interesting to see. I remember picking up a few of the miniatures a while back and briefly looking into the rules, but not managing to gain any real understanding on such quick read. I very much know the feeling of finding systems I want to try but my players never would.
It would be a great series to make characters in different systems with new guests familiar with the system. Could make learning more guided, interactive and clear? Love the videos! ❤
I definitely like the CONCEPT of Anima, and a lot of the individual mechanics work well. But it's blending them together (and having the right group) that makes it tricky
Been GMing this for about 15 years now. It's... a mess. But it has its charm. Would benefit from the IP owner being more willing to delegate, but the community is very passionate and has their own discord server.
Love the game “review”! It’s videos like this which save me thousands of dollars in games I didn’t need to buy but purchased and will never play or even use.
I do miss this game. I use to love going and making characters in this system because it just let you do basically anything in an anime you could want. So neat.
I have been playing/dming games on this system occasionally for almost a decade and I think it might be the first time I see any channel mention it in such details. It is complicated, not gonna lie, but when you're tired of modern system not allowing a lot of personalisation outside of the planned classes and expecting the DM to eyeball most checks, that's a nice change of pace. The "burn the other person action by hitting them" actually make a lot of sense, it assumes that if you try your best to defend yourself and get hit anyway you'll be unbalanced and unable to bounce back right away. You have rules to ignore that but it does require reducing your defense, when you get used to it it makes the fast character with no armor and small weapons feel and play very differently than the heavy armor guys with shields and hevay weapons and I kinda like it
I've got every book they released for it because my players fell in love with the lore. haven't run this train wreck in almost a decade lol. makes me want to look through my stuff to see if I still have a list of all the house rules I made to streamline it. This brought back so many memories
I am going to be clear with you as an experienced 7 yo Anima Beyond Fantasy master and player: This game doesn't have the best english support. There is a highly functional and versatile excel sheet made up by the spanish comunity and although it is not translated into english I'd suggest you create your characters in said sheet because the PDF sheet is like going fishing with... string and an empty bait while the excel sheet is so godly it makes the creation effortless as it is automated and even allows you export your finished sheet into a PDF one or edit old sheets. If anyone is interested I am more than happy to send you all the sheet. Oh and also, I am not sure how you're going to cope witht he fact that the Core rulebook has... 1 aditional rulebook only for Ki itself which adds on what's already there, another for magic and psychic, etc... which expand on the content and the world lore. Also, there are actual races on the Master side of the Core rulebook which are "full versions" of the nephilims because they weren't meant to be played at first but the game itself tells you on the DM side of the book that all you read in that core book is just a suggestion, you as a master can add and remove whatever you like as it is your world. So you can make a race if you please or allow others to make one since the world is very human-heavy and they might have troubles despite their incredible habilities for obvious reasons (like inquisitiors). I hope you find a good DM for that game, it's quite enjoyable for a long campaign.
I have had the core rulebook for this game for 15 years, and never, not once, have I been able to convince 2-4 people to learn how to play it with me. And I can’t even blame them. But once you learn the game it’s actually really fun, but the learning curve is steeeeeep. One of my favorite systems to just make characters in. So so so many options
Oh man, I've been playing Anima for years now, and it's nice to see it finally get some light on publicity despite how old the game is. Some of the rulings you mentioned aren't quite right, but the general gist of it is correct. For one thing, the writer of the book wasn't exactly the most organized as sometimes you'll find rulings extremely out-of-place where they should be, but for the most part, it's just a matter of playing and getting used to. It's a lot simpler than you think. Character creation as well, can be hard and confusing at first but that's just about any game you touch upon first. It gets easier and when you've been playing the game for over a decade, you just pop out characters in seconds cus you already know the game so well. Personally, I prefer Anima so much more than any other because of the flexibility of character creation. Naturally you want to focus your build on the class's specialties, but nothing in the game prevents you from distributing your development points wherever you want for the most strange and ridiculous builds. There's so much I want to say, so much things I want to add and just explain about Anima, but for the most part good job on getting the breakdown of character creation on your first try. One thing I really want to touch on is the reason why it uses a D100 dice instead of the D20. While your argument being just as good in D20 because it already uses intervals of 5 already, the reason it uses D100 is because it has an open roll system. For the most part, Anima can potentially go as high as into the 300's and 400's depending on how you play it. That is because the game is there to make you feel extremely powerful like an anime character. Unlike DnD where rolling a 20 basically guarantees you an automatic success in most rolls, in Anima it is a lot more punishing as even if you open roll to absurdly high numbers, your opponent can do the same. Sure, you can say to use a D20 and just open roll on 19's and 20's all the time, but it's not quite the same as the system is designed to make it difficult to open roll every time you do. Starting from 90-100, the chances of open rolling decreases by 1 each time you open roll. Open rolling by the way is being able to roll the dice again and adding all the values together.
When I bought this game, I thought it was an Anime game, so I treated it as such. The artwork is also very japanese, so that didn't help. It wasn't until much later I realized it's a dark fantasy with grittyness. That is when I finally understood why combat was so deadly and the world so punishing. 😂
I remember reading ABOUT Anima and being so enthralled. And then I got my hands on the book and was suddenly much less enthralled. That book was like getting thrown into GURPS.
Hehe... As the creator and writer of the system, it's always so fun to see other points of view. It was so fun and great to see this video ^^
Thanks for the game, my best friend is my GM and we have been playing for about a Decade.
@@XtremgentleDom It is me who should thank you for your words. I am really happy to know you had fun with Anima ^^
We really enjoy the system too. Yes has a lot of Numbers to crunch but it was actually really fun. Still have all the books on my shelf.
Damn, never would have thought I'd see the creator here. Great system man, I've been collecting physical copies of the books for a while now, haven't gotten the chance to try it yet but still love the system.
I can’t wait for a translation for the latest books, a rerelease, and an updated character generator. Please, please, please. (Anima is one of my favorite systems despite not being able to play frequently. I would request a summoner-wizard combo class (I also had an idea for prestige classes that require certain prerequisites to get). Lastly, it would be cool to see a true-namer mechanic.
"And by 'old school' I mean like 3rd edition or something"
I can feel my beard grow long and grey hearing that
Maybe he said it sarcastically.... o.0
The game's lineage is really more through Rolemaster. Rolemaster also affectionately called 'Chartmaster'.
@tygrataps I'd heard it described as "Rollmaster".
Bah! You kids these days! I started with Basic D&D
@@-o-dq7nd 3e is older now than aD&D was when 3rd released. Sorry, it's old school.
"Ben makes a character in different systems to get a feel for them" is a fun idea for a little series
I agree! That's something I do often when I run into a new system.
I’d like to see more too. I have a bad habit of buying more games then I can run I should try that too.
YES! It sounds like a grate idea for a series.
On minute 0: ah, what memories this bring... I never managed to create a character, but it was the first rpg book I managed to find and read
saaaame
If you understand Spanish there is an excel that makes the whole process of making a character way more easier
@@zalgogaemer that's what I meant with it being the first game I found. Spanish is my first language, but this game is too overcomplicated and I don't want to try to read it again.
But I have seen the excel with its multiple layers
@@Cronirios I cannot say the contrary, without someone who knows how the system works it's near impossible to actually start playing, the only thing that I can say in favor for this system to someone that tried to play by oneself is that this system has rules for everything and that's both something good and something bad, anyway I can assure you that once you understand how one part of it works it's incredibly funny seeing how far you can stretch it and twist it
The fact puffin is talking about Anima is beyond fantasy
"THAC0 is too complicated"
Anima - "hold my beer"
Rolemaster- “If he could be turned, he would become a powerful ally.”
@@tygrataps I have run and played Rolemaster/Spacemaster for over 3 decades.
It is NOT a newbie-friendly system, but an experienced group can mentor a new player in.
Now imagine a whole group new to the system, and the Forever GM (me) having to read everything and know it well enough to teach the whole group...
I never expected to hear about this insane rule-system ever again. I played a short campaign of this with some friends years ago. From memory the things that stood out the most was:
- The 3-5 different variants on "Martial class with Magic" that were impossible to tell apart.
- The fact that spells and abilities that had a range used either metric or imperial measurments (with no rhyme or reason).
- That casting the standard destruction attack spell cost 30 Mana for 30 damage. But overcharging it raised the damage with 30 damage per 5 Mana. So pumping 30 extra Mana into it didn't make it go from 30->60, it went from 30->180 damage. Making overcharging most spells better than casting multiple due to how the math worked.
- The insanity that two spellcasters and a summoner working together could by level 2 or 3 spend a month to cast any level 100 spell through ability jank and intended mechanics.
@@Rex0142king Yeah, magic in anima is really overpowered. Thats why in the world of Gaia, which is the base world setting Anima: Beyond Fantasy takes place magic users are either scrutinized or downright hunted depending on which continent/empire they are a part of. Not to mention the organizations like the Inquisition or Tol-Rako which have multiple level 10+s, with high level artifacts, custom in game special abilities, and a hatred of a thousand suns with anything remotely touching magic.
@@Rex0142king Not really.
The variants of the martial with magic are warlock, paladin, dark paladin, warrior summoner and mentalist warrior. Paladin and D paladin have a bit of magic (and honestly, I haven't seem many use them as a gish), mentalist warrior doesn't use magic, and warrior summoner is only for using the summoning mechanics, not the rest of the magic (that subsystem is VERY isolanist, if you are not one of the 2 classes that are made to use it, you have to ignore it outright).
The metric/imperial system seems to be a problem of the translation or an older edition, your 3rd point is from the old magic system. In the spanish version, it's all on metric system.
Magic was changed a while ago, and it no longer works like that, now you have 4 tiers of a spell, each one with a different cost and effect, instead of you tweaking the cost and power on the fly, much easier to use and more balanced. They added metamagics to give that extra customization (you modify the spell, but it increases the cost).
Well... yes, you could theoretically do that, but realistically, no, you can't. Allow me to explain for those who don't know the system. Spells in anima have 2 requirements: Mana and intelligence, if you don't have any of those two, you can't use it, period. For example, an spell could need 8 int and 100 mana, if you have 7 int and 200 mana, you can't use that spell. BUT, then come the rituals, they allow you to "increase" your intelligence when casting a specific spell, while also increasing the mana cost (by a LOT, like, +1 to you int is +50% cost, and it only goes up), requiring a lot of time to make the ritual (it can take years for the most extreme of them) and having special requirements (the book doesn't give any examples, a lot of people I play with igrnore this last part, but it's in the manual). Alongise this, you have to know the spells, learning low level spells is easy, but those stupidly high level ones can take years (or even DECADES) ingame, alongisde a ton of resources (like the points you use to learn magic, and you will need a LOT if you want to learn those spells). And finally, spells with an higher level of 80 have a special requisit to use them, you can't use them normally: either you have 25 gnosis or more (posible to do as a player, but needs to use a level 80 spell with quite hight requierements and cost), or have the high magic metamagic (that requires you to be level 10 or higher, on top of needing a lot of time and resources to get), that one also doubles the cost of level 80+ spells, so alongside the higher cost of the rituals, it's also doubled again, so the costs would easuly be 10s of 1000s of mana, that's ridiculous even at high levels. And for level 90+ spells... you can't really use them as a player. They require you to have 35+ gnosis, and there's no player aviable options to get that, only stuff that is pure master fiat. Also I don't see how the summoner would help with this, care to explain?
TL;DR: You *can* cast those spells at low level... but you'll need the GM to hand you everything on a silver platter and ignore a ton of rules and design intentions, so you really can't do it.
I remember starting a campaign with this game and it was... An experience.
I loved the granularity of all the checks and diverse abilities.
I was an artist, poet, philosopher, a novice.
I was as handsome as handsome can be but I sucked at combat.
Nevermind that, my party was very nice to me, and protected me, i was the face and moneymaker out of combat.
This was like 14 years ago
"An... experience" is exactly how I'd put it.
Anima always seemed to have some really neat concepts in the setting (the race of people that everyone magically forgets interacting with, the special summoning ability that requires you fail at everything you have ever attempted in order to attain - including failing your attempt to attain it, to name two of my favorites) but it's terrifyingly dense to try to get into
There was a tabletop skirmish wargame, too. I don't remember much about it, always wanted to try it out.
Between the artwork, world building and character option, I love the setting and the concepts that it plays with. That being said, it's up there in my top 5 settings to bring over to a better system.
Inverse world for the win
I remember dicking around with the tactics game as a kid. It was thankfully way more intuitive, and only involved like 3 or 4 models per team, which actually made it a lot more approachable than games like 40k. I suspect that's probably why it went under as well though.
I dated a guy who had all of the books, and tactics, and even all of the minis for the game. The skirmish game was somehow WAY easier to understand than the actual RPG.
@@tygrataps have you succeed in bringing it on to other system?
Old rules master for Anima here, yea, it's a lot lol. There's actually a lot of errata and 'fixes' from the creator you can find online if you dig, and a lot of it was necessary sadly. I printed out reference materials for players to reduce the book hunting for all the specifics, most times it just went to 'roll d100 i'll figure it out'.
I'll point out some general tips that aren't clear until you play the system for a while, and how your character could be absolutely busted.
The reason for archetypes was if you decided to change classes, it was easier to change to something in the same archetype, for less point penalty, so if your character wanted to eventually just become a warrior after getting all the powers they wanted, it was easier to do than becoming a summoner or other mystic they had no background in.
In combat you pick how many active actions you get per turn, like moving, attacking, psychic powers, etc. Most characters only do 3 max, but that means you can be limited if you have low DEX and AGI, as there is a max action limit from your lack of mobility. If you got hit, you lose _all_ your actions that aren't passive (like dodging) for the turn, so you wanted to max out your combat ability to have the highest chance to knock someone else out of the turn first if you won initiative. That also meant you wanted a light weapon (or magic/psy powers) as that affected your initiative roll each turn, and hitting was more important than damage (most times). Heavier weapons did more 'base damage' but you were slower for it, so they often weren't used. You also only start trained in one weapon, the rest you have to buy proficiency for, or use at a steep penalty, so warrior with sword and bow was rare, unless you bought a weapon group that had both, which was usually house-ruled in.
The reason you have a limit on categories like combat / psychic powers is to prevent you from spending all your points on attack / block (or for psychics, projection which is the equivalent) to do the above knocking people out. With your stats and build I'd probably max out attack, and like you did pick up the Energy discipline, but go with the power to make energy weapons, so you can summon your own weapons (that have a better damage type against armor than regular ones) that all count as being as fast as a dagger - even an energy greatsword! IIRC a character could get ~100 in attack / block with 9 in their stats, that's what you're aiming for usually at level 1. You do also get some Martial Knowledge for passive ki abilities that are useful later on, like being able to roll above the 'inhuman' value of 320, otherwise you get capped for most rolls, yes even for psychic powers.
You also inadvertently found the best adventurer gear with the armored longcoat. It has the best basic stats in the game with no wear armor investment, and is cheap as dirt. There's technically a piece in the text that says it's not common, but no one cared cus otherwise almost everyone was armor less.
I still love the system, but I spent nearly a decade running it and hammering out all the rough spots, and their world book is the best I've ever seen from any system, including modern ones.
I've read but never played it. IMO - it felt like they had a lot of amazing ideas which they stuffed into the same system in awkward ways.
And I do like the vibe of their class system - which isn't really a class system at all. Anima is a point-buy system where the classes make some abilities cheaper or more expensive.
@@DarthRadical Yea, you basically had a lot of mini-systems (psychic powers, standard fighter, DBZ techniques, MMO wizard) that interacted with d100 rolls in various ways, most of which were intuitive, some not. Once you got to the supplement books it introduced even more powers and a few more systems but it still was 'd100 plus something vs d100 plus something'.
The main issue I had with the classes is that because of the point penalty to swap and advantages that modified your point-buys, you often had 'well I wanna do this, but it's not worth changing classes rather than just paying the creation points to lower the ratio'. There were also some broken builds thanks to oversights, some of which were fixed, some not (Weaponmaster having a 1:1 dev. point to HP build, no limits, is stupid).
Ah yes, my beloved +5 armored long coat that stayed with me until level 6, good memories, ya, that was so prominent in my group that one of the GMs banned it because it's boring. In my own games, I was like, "Eh fuck it, I'll make my own armor for you guys."
@@cheesytorso My man, I feel your pain on weapon's masters having to much HP. It can be even more efficient, if you just have a higher con of like 15, then it becomes 1.5:1 DP then you add on hard to kill 3, and some other stuff and holy shit HP was at like 500+, I think that player ended up with 883 HP by level 7. That is a crazy amount of HP in anima.
The worldbook is genuinely so cool.
My group primarily uses virtual tabletops, which for almost every system someone has automated and made it so that rolling and checking tables isn't any harder than rolling to attack in DnD and whatnot. When looking for interesting systems, I tend to look for crunchy depth in character creation and character growth more than anything. The advent of these systems being automated means that as a DM my job is basically just to make sure I have some example sheets to click rolls on, and make sure I'm invested in my player's characters, which for me is easier when their actions are unique.
LANCER is a great example of this, which is a crazy crunchy system where if we had to play it IRL together it'd probably be a nightmare to keep track of all the status effects, various actions people can take, etc, but on a VTT, it's super easy, and the character/mech creation is super interesting and unique. Highly recommend it!
With VTTs becoming more and more popular, stranger/crunchier systems like this I think will likely become more and more popular, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing several new systems entirely designed with VTTs in mind.
I actually ran 2 games of LANCER in person concurrently between 2 groups. In levels 1-3 it was a very fun system to run, and honestly wasn’t too much of a challenge (although I say this as an avid wargamer), however post lvl3 with tier 2 enemies it suddenly became a little too overwhelming, both for players and DM (although the 2 week gap between games may have contributed to that feeling).
20:34 -- Here you go... one replacement Tabaxi. Yep. Totally the same as a Tabaxi. You'd never know the difference.
"That's just a catgirl cosplayer who you kidnapped from an anime convention."
What? No... she's totally a Tabaxi. Basically the same thing.
I know, right? They couldn't just GIVE YOU a animal-person race. You can't JUST play catgirls and be done with it. You know, be properly Anime.
No, no. You get to play as an _Otherkin._ A person who _cosplays_ as an animal-person.
Which is just the saddest possible thing I can imagine. I don't need to play a person dressing up as a catgirl. I can do that in Real Life. I play the game because I want to pretend I'm ACTUALLY a catgirl, in the game.
@@Bluecho4 Yeah, and I don't want to pretend to be dating someone pretending to be a catgirl, I want to pretend to be dating a catgirl!
...Wait... does that track?
(In case it is unclear that was supposed to be self-deprecating humor, nothing against Bluecho4)
Cosplayer: "So... we playing Anima or what?"
Bataxi
@@Bluecho4 Back of the book has the original non-degraded races and you can play them just fine. But their benefits are much more powerful and they're not intended for the base setting.
There's also several other ways to become a catgirl anyway. Spells that mutate your body, a bloodline that grants monster traits, and channeling the spirit of a legendary lion. Prob some other stuff too, I can't remember off the top of my head.
My old group had a campaign. It was fun, complicated at time, silly at other, but fun. The characters were wild. Starting of I could freeze targets to absolute 0, was blind, used heat vision to see through walls. We had a guy who was a low level goku, and a guy who could kill anything with his super axe.
The inconsistency in art style through the book is so strange. Also I thought the rules for gurps was dense and unapproachable this is a whole new level.
Duuuude I hadn’t watched your channel in a while I’m so happy you’re still doing your thing man👍🏾
Left my friends to watch this, Puffin uploads are a national treasure
Should have watched it with your friends!
31:09 Quite possibly my favorite part of this entire game is the ranger wearing denim bootyshorts.
Anima is dense and crunchy, but has some really cool power system ideas. Supposedly they are working on a new edition, but info is kind of hard to scrape together.
It's almost all directly from the creator's twitter and discord now, and he's been doing indy kickstarter video games in the system's setting for the past several years. I also want a new edition (fix psychics please god) but not holding my breath lol.
@@cheesytorso
There's at least that obscenely massive homebrew Exxet.
@@DGrayEX Good point! I'll have to remember to scan that next time I get an itch to run Anima haha.
@@DGrayEX Where can you find it?
Hey long time GM of Anima here. Love people talking about the game. In fact if you are interested in learning more, I am always willing to teach anyone and have tons of resources to share from my long time playing the game.
There are quite a few mistakes that happen as a result of cursory looking over the rules and while I was going to originally go "hey here is where a mistake is made" I just decided to boil it down to these two notes I had written down rather than pick on every part:
30:40 Yeah... this is the point where most people get really confused. The game allows you to do EVERYTHING that all classes can do as any class. In dnd you chose warrior you are getting your second wind ability, if that were in anima, everyone could use second wind if they spend the DP/MK for it, its just easier for a warrior to do it.
32:24 Oh my sweet summer child...
as a anima player the best way of playing it is with all the errata's that where done to magic psionics and other things the problem people have is the power creep in the base game is insane so the extra books really help flesh out what version one made
A puffin forest video?! LETS GO!!!!
Yeah, agreed; Being the point of *Method 3* is "you should have _at least one_ EXCEPTIONAL stat" I support the idea of NOT subbing a nine if you 'Maxed Out' and rolled a 10 for a/any stat.
The only real problem I have with this, after hearing it described, is the lack of a point buy system for stats that doesn't rely on dice at all.
You always get one person with a way better character if you're rolling.
@@TheGrinningViking There is a point-buy system for attributes, it's just that it's in the Game Master Toolkit book
As spanish, I played Anima some years ago (is from a Spanish producer). The community created a super developed excel, because without it making a Anima characters is a horrible torture (without it, is just a torture)
I love to create char sheets. Much better than using the excel file. But yesh. It's a great tool.
He's back 🎉
13:30 He did it, he rolled a Shonen protagonist.
That art direction when you show the PDF of the book is straight out of 3rd Edition D&D. The art itself is anima themed of course but the layout and design in the book look just like 3rd edition.
i love that he's like "i was taking a poop" and that's a great reason to read a whole ttrpg rulebook in one sitting XD
The bit right at the end reminded me of something I've seen in very few games but which I think is one of the best jump-in-aids for new players: annotated examples. The one that comes to mind is Ryuutama, which uses facing-pages in the print format to explain what each element of a class description is with arrows pointing to it on the example. But I know I've seen an annotated character sheet *somewhere* that explains what each box is in plain english. "This is your AC, it's determined by your armor (Page ###) and is rolled against when attacking. It represents armor, shields, and evasive ability."
Ben is the only person I see hitting damn near 1million subs and treating it like a side quest. I respect it!
As a DM that works dming at conventions, my like for this video was 99.99% based on "the hardest part is teaching it to other players".
If Puffin ever read this and if any other forever DM read this, let me tell you: you are not alone in this particular sadness. Take heart and don't loose hope
That said, wanting to play something that is not well-know is such a hassle :(
I quietly laughed multiple times, this stuff is madness. I'm glad you took the time.
It's always a treat when you post a video Ben! Even moreso when it's a long glorious story such as this. Ty for giving us a lil something!
Something that isn't brought up in the video, the game is originally in (European) Spanish.The translation was.. rough. It makes the already difficult system much more opaque.
Im from Spain and even in spanish this system is too convoluted, we use a spreadsheet called Anima calculator and even with that a simple combat last for hours
Yeah I asked a Spanish friend amd they said it's not much clearer in Spanish
I can’t believe you are talking about a system I have heard nobody else talk about. I played a year and a half campaign to completion on this system and it was awesome.
30:54 "Let's look into what Zeon does." Mostly drop space colonies on Earth and get beaten by Gundams.
I ran like 3 different full length campaigns with the Anima system and it's setting.
To the point I basically learned the damn combat table by heart.
I still feel VERY nostalgic of the system and the setting.
Now I made my own rules light system for narrative heavy games, but I still use the setting from time to time.
Missed opportunity for Mind Ax.
First of all, love your videos Puffin : 3 . Second, I play a lot of ANIMA with a group and is the only TTRPG they play. They kind of hate DnD since they say it's so simple, prefer that there is a defense dice instead of AC for hits, the liberty of point for character creation and (this one is stupid and nonsense) that "not everything is solved by dice roll". Context for the last: in my group they don't invest in skills like persuasion, intimidate or other social skills since that can be done by just roleplaying. Also for most things, the GM just resolves what your character does without throwing dice. Say you enter a room and the GM describes the most basic thing of what you see, but if you want to investigate you won't throw dice. You have to say the GM what you check. Which sometimes is bullshit since one time I was investigating a room and couldn't find anything. The GM wouldn't let me throw dice to search because I didn't know what I was searching for. I could only advance because I asked if the wall had the wallpaper, something that he only said to me because I asked. I just told them that it depends on how a game is played, a GM could use DnD and not be focused as in what they say ,"only enter a dungeon to kill monsters, there is no roleplay". They beliveve DnD is only fights and just that.
Still though, I like ANIMA for the combat and some skill checks. But it has many mechanics that it's better for players to focus on one aspect. Focus on either Magic, Psychic, Ki or others. What I do kind of hate is that in battle You take longer to kill the enemy if they have heavy armor. For easy math, each point of armor adds a 10 to the defense dice. Characters have a +20 for base. So the math is Attack-Defense-20-armor*10. The result is the percent of DMG done. Which means that if attacker and defender had the same attack vs defense, the attack has to roll a value higher than 20+(10 for each point of armor) to deal dmg. Someone with 2 points of armor, you need to roll +50 to deal the minimum of 10% of DMG.
ANIMA is not newbie friendly and it's complicated. You need to think a lot to make a strong character and not lag behind. Also mutliclassing sucks since you loose a lot when changing class. Still I do like to play it and would like to GM or play more of it. But I believe the community is really niche. Even in the discord servers there are few or no open recruitment.
25:53 Puffin giggles at saying PP, while I have dead pan face. Puffin then says “..burn the PP”. I giggle like a 12 year old.
oh boy, cant wait for him to figure out how to make enemy monsters.
i showed my DnD GM a handfull of statblocks i made for some basic lvl 0-1 monster encounters and he nearly fainted.
"And for my first character, I'm going to make a *picks hardest class*" 😂
Usually, a hybrid fighter should take a "Projection Module" from page 58, so they can focus on just Attack and Block/Dodge (try to spend 40-45% of DP on combat primaries as a hybrid). The module is a heavy investment at low levels, but to me it's balanced by how matrices/spells are largely invisible at those levels. Also, Mind Reading (+30 to opposed actions) is really powerful.
Another good hybrid build is to avoid powers that need Projection. Field effects like Area Scanning or Motion Detection. Buffs like all of Physical Increase, Psychokinetic Armour or Flight. Utilities like Telemetry, Project Senses or Mental Communication. Magic has similar options.
Lastly, "v1.5" introduced the Natural Bonus and Innate Bonus when you level (including lv.1) to help round out characters. One lets you pick five secondary skills to gain a +10, but each has to be under a different category (Athletics, Creative, Perceptive, etc.) The other, you can add your characteristic bonus another time to 1 physical (Dex, Agi or Str) and 1 mental (Int, Pow, WP or Per) secondary ability each level.
Anyways, basically impossible to learn the game on your own 😅
Thanks for making a video about the best TTRPG that no one is ever going to play 🎉
You're right that most classes have about the same cost for Attack, Block, and Dodge, but that's where the innate bonus comes in! The Weaponsmaster actually DOES get some of the cheapest attack and block, as he gets a +5 every level (caps at +50). Now, the fastest way to max out attack and defense is actually Tao, since martial arts can give you a bonus, but you can easily get your full +50 to each by lvl 5 instead of waiting until lvl 10. Taos are even better at maxing attack/defense if you're working out of the French translation of Dominus Exxet
please make more videos like this. making characters is my favorite part of any ttrpg and I'd absolutely love to see a whole series just going through and making characters in various game systems to get a feel for them!
This was really good! I'd love to see a vid where you run through an example round of combat or things like that.
This, is my FAVOURITE RPG system
It seems alot more complicated than it is... most of the complxity and calculations are thrown onto the GM
There are features of old games that (personally, so for my games) I think were better left in the past, and ones that I think we should return to. Complex/crunchy systems (the quality or execution not withstanding) is definitely something I miss. The way we are going right now, seems like we are going to start getting TTRPGs where the rules are all on 10 pages baring the fluff text, with the fluff mostly just being “make up something in this general idea/archetype” said in a flowery way.
Yeah, plus, games can have substance/crunch without being a complete slog. Building a very complex system isn't a mark of brilliance, but instead someone who hasn't been doing design enough to know what not really needed.
@@InfernosReaper Eh, sort of. I figure, it's like this: complexity is something you spend to get depth, so you want to have a good complexity to depth ratio. Beyond that, the amount of crunch you spend on depth is up to which part of the audience spectrum you are aiming for/are on.
@@dragonturtle2703 I used to think that way too, but then I realized that excessive minutia is fine for a computer game where all that's done for you and no one expects to operate outside the set mechanics, but in a proper tabletop RPG most of that minutia not only bogs the game down but keeps the GM from being flexible enough.
It all really comes down to figure out what's necessary and what's not.
For example, take Pathfinder 1rst Ed or 3.5 D&D. A kajillion classes and variants for said classes sounds great, until you realize that most of it is basically the same stuff, but not well-balanced. That causes the problem of a bunch of trap options(like baseline Fighter) that just screw most novice to intermediate players over without adding any value to the game.
While a class is great structure for helping players build characters and the class flavor helps inspire RP, too many random classes actually ends up doing the system more harm than good.
Oh, and 3.5 grapple rules are another great example of complexity that diminish the game, rather than enrich it.
I feel like complexity is ok, but you definitely get diminishing returns for it. For example, PF2e has way more depth than PF1e, despite being a much simpler system, because they were very careful about how they used that complexity - instead of presenting a bajillion feats and detailed simulations rules for every little edge case, they changed the action economy to encourage players to mix and match a small pool of carefully balanced actions each turn - which added way more depth than 2 pages of grapple rules, while being 10x easier to understand.
Similarly by locking down player options, they removed a lot of trap options, since the gap between visible and optimal builds is much smaller, making you feel much less punished for just picking out the options that look fun.
Another element is that complexity raises your barrier to entry, so unless you're an established player in the market, nobody is going to play your perfect high crunch masterpiece as an indie - hence the rise of rules lite games people are actually willing to commit time to reading.
3rd edition was pretty straightforward. This reminds me of RIFTS. In a good way
Everyone in the comments explaining how the system isn’t actually that complicated has convinced me the system is indeed quite complicated. (Not a bad thing it sounds like people enjoy it.)
My GM and I are convinced that the art for the Thief class is just Rikku from FFX with the serial numbers scrubbed off
Thank you for this video, I have been mildly interested in Anima since it came out (I own and like the related card game). This game seems to have a decent amount in common mechanically with Rolemaster Standard System. At least in the approach to character building.
Every time you post, I get this awesome feeling of "HELL YEAH BROTHERS, Puffin uploaded again!!!" LMAO 🤣
I love the Shadow class. I really like combining rogue archetypes with warrior archetypes. In my first time RPing my MCU loki ripoff named Adrassil who was a middle management mercenary part of an assassin guild I made up. He had great ambitions. He became so strong, I dubbed him the mook killer as he had a huge initiative allowing him to have a huge bonus to hit almost every round and would pretty much just dodge amd counter enemies with his high quality rapier. He was an incredible dodge tank. He also was the party leader and "face" so to speak. I outwitted my GM at almost every turn as a schemer and manipulator but eventually, I did get outdone due to some magical meta nonsense. was such a fun character to play! My GM did a good job running a sandbox for us, too!
I have such fond memories of this game. I ran it for years. Eventually the math got so quick that it didn't really slow anything down. Once you grasp that armor just reduced damage by 10% per value and that the difference in attack/defend came out to be x% of weapon damage in increments of 10 the whole thing flowed easier. It was an abhorrently complicated system made more complicated by the trash translation job of FFG though.
Yay the prodigal son has returned
Anima is so good. I love it, warts and all.
Don't get me wrong, I understand all the critiques, I know it's janky and strange, but I can't help but love it, expeially for all said jank. The wierd world, the vibe. It's all good to me.
I can't believe i watched so much of this video.
I can't believe i was still interested!
As someone who is just breaking in to a side gig of game development with a family member i gota say it's fascinating to me to see systems people come up with for games.
@@Esperkama anima has a had a lot of time and dedication put into it. So much so that there are even videogames about the world of the system.
The artwork is so good throughout that it's almost worth owning it just for the art
I DMed Anima for a couple sessions. The class archetypes are for multiclassing, it is easier to multi class within your own archetype (fighter to weapons master) than between different archetypes (fighter to mage)
I can tell you showed a great deal of restraint when you said, "You can burn the PP," but i assure you i laughed enough for us both.
Really hope this trend of doing dives on these anime-style/niche ttrpgs continues
I really wanted to play this game at one point in time, if not for the game system, but for the interesting setting that was extremely final fantasy esque.
They apparently have a second edition... but its untranslated, in spanish. Fantasy Flight dropped it at one point, but there has been dedicated fan translations.
Beyond that, the original editon still has a strong fanbase and their are multiple videogames that are okay if not good.
Oh my... Always up for a Puffin Forest video :D
Anima seems like hell to actually play lol
Could be worse, at least it isn't F.A.T.A.L.
It is very fun to play if everyone knows not to be cringe.
@@ryanigoe225 ...which one
@@ryanigoe225 Ya anime and ttrpgs are similar with fandom's where you get people, even hardcore fans who kind of manage to keep a line drawn between fantasy and reality, and reality takes priority, but you also get people who treat life like an anime or whatever weird fictional world they are projecting on to IRL stuff. Sometimes, with with both fandom's it feels like there isn't much inbetween either, its one extreme or the other. I feel like when you mix ttrpgs and anime your rolling twice on weirdness encounter table when trying to find players, if you know what I mean 😅
You miss the most OP skill : Style 39:31
Great to see people trying more non-DnD systems!
I do agree with your final comments on how much reading there is to this game. It takes a special kind of person to learn this game, and then to introduce/tutor other players into it. I litterally sat down and created a whole tutorail adventure, meant to introduce the mechanics of the game, just to have a shot at getting my friends to play it. However it did work and I've run two separate groups for anima, each one using the tutorial as the base adventure for the charaters, and once you're into the game it's a lot of un.
In this sense it shares vibes with something like shadowrun 4th/5th edition. Inredibly satisfyingly crunchy, but it takes a LOT of investment.
Oh god I remember TRYING to make a character on this
Every system has their strengths and weaknesses. I've been playing anima for over a decade, so I am pretty familiar with the rules. The reason I like anima is that you can truly customize any sort of character concept and make it your own, especially if you get the supporting supplement books for the system. Yes, it is extremely crunchy; but sometimes depending on the game you wanna run; that can lend itself to the overall setting. Don't get me wrong, 5e is a great system as well, but after a while the mechanics get really "same-y".
This is so handsome and fits so much of my own experience. I always thought this should have an animation assistant, maybe for a VTT.
This is why whenever I make a new character in a system I've never played, I read the book through several times. This allows me to have a clinical understanding of the system and how it works.
You are back yesss , feel free to make a video about magic !! I love listen to your videoo
the anima rpg and anima tactics world has also been so fascinating to me. it seems so cool. the rpg rulebook is one i look through every now and then. the spells always seemed so much more interesting than usual dnd stuff. plus as you said, it is a very pretty book
Maybe the first part will found one person more familiar with the system to guide you. Because some rules of the core book, like the spells, have been rewriten.
I play several campaign with Anima. I love the setting, I like the rule. Anima biggest problem is when you lvl, your power goes exponentially, making high lvl game play a cluster fuck.
So Anima is my favourite system. But I really don't think you'll see its strengths just from building one character. (Plus without an experienced player to help it is the worst part by far of the entire system, is the initial learning).
The character construction is vast - with many options, and you can basically make any final fantasy or anime style character you could imagine. (Especially if you have access to all the books for the extra options and balancing tweaks).
But what you'll really miss from only making characters - is how smooth gameplay actually is. The fight initiative order and scaling of the rolls means that combat doesn't take longer as you level up. A level 1 anima fight will take longer than a d&D 5e fight at level 1 - but the level 1 anima fight is more or less the same speed when it's level 15.
Where as level 15 D&D fights are turgid and boring affairs that take hours and hours.
Anima has such nice consistent rules for skills and attacks all using the same basic system (D100 + modifiers vs target number or compared to enemy roll) - it's an absolute joy to GM once you know the system - despite it's complexity you can reach the stage where you can easily ad hoc stat appropriate encounters (Or rather - stat things appropriately to feel right to the world - and let the players deal).
And you're really rewarded for the complex character creation in character variety - In D&D the cleric and the wizard are pretty similar - yes the spell lists are different and the casting stat is different, but all the spellcasters are basically the same in feel.
In Anima you can create a fireball throwing wizard, a fireball throwing psychic, a fireball throwing ki user, or a summoner that summons exploding fireball creatures.... + plus more I could name.
And they will 'feel' different, and play different. They're not just variants of the same core thing - they're literally different in kind - one will be more defenceless but faster - another will have more ability to change the fireball. The weaknesses are different and that makes you feel different about what you can and can't afford to do depending on circumstances.
And anima also has martial characters not falling behind as the game goes on (Although all builds do need to plan a way to reach "superhuman" and "Zen" - which are required to achieve higher target numbers - there are lots of different ways to do it if you plan to go to those levels of gameplay - other than those bottlenecks, you can basically make anything).
It's an absolute joy to play and run. I've run multiple multi-year campaigns of this game system - and I want to run it again already.
Obviously if you prefer much lighter systems - it's not for you. But it is absolutely amazing for people that want meaningful crunch - I don't believe it has any sections that are complicated without also rewarding you for that complexity with additional depth that allows the different types of game engine (Ki, Magic, Martial, Psychic - stealth bonuses ect). To really play out and feel different, while all interacting with each other in meaningful ways.
Usually when I DM it, especially for new people - I suggest they tell me what they want to play and what systems they like the idea of and then I make the initial characters. Despite how complicated it looks - I've even run it successfully at conventions. (And used the system to run home brew style games as well - like one which used modern day setting horror).
I bought ANima's setting book the second volume never hit the US. gave me CIA fact book esque vibes. good to start a base line for a campaign world.
Reminds me of the time when I tried making an rpg system called 'Roll Doubles and Die'. It was another 'he who rolls the highest number wins' kind of thing with a trait system, rolling 1d20 +1d8 for every positive trait and -1d6 for every negative trait that applies. At any time you can roll 1-5d20's to help with your roll but if they roll doubles your action is a crit fail regardless of what you roll. This roll was your initiative, attack and defense all in one go. If you crit failed an attack, then you were 'exposed', meaning your roll was considered 0 for the round.
Example: You have a +2 Warrior trait and a +1 Swordsman trait, so you roll +3d8 to attack a giant spider, but you have a +2 phobia of spiders so you also subtract 2d6 from your roll. You take a risk and add 3d20's to your roll... you roll a 20, a 2, and another 2. So your attack fails.
Pretty simple so far, right?
Now add movement rules and action economy. I'm sure plenty of people can come up with something simple to use but my ADHD butt just HAS to make everything overly complicated and... well, long story short you also needed ADHD to understand how it worked XD
I agree this is too crunchy for me, and I love crunchy systems. I actually played the tabletop game for this that came out before this. the mechanics are much simpler, and im actually working on my own RPG based on the combat mechanics of the tabletop game.
Best tabletop RPG game I've played so far. Yes, a little complex at first glance, however the ambientation and mechanic options are just wonderful.
Ben it's great to see you putting another video out. As you always say, You're really really Kool. ❤
This was a wild experience. It reminds me of creating my first dnd character way back in the early 2000s.
🤣+5 in attack/block/dodge, oh that made me laugh. My friend Puffin Forest, I do wish you can see a legitimately run version of this game, it IS a mess, but such a beautiful mess when you start to understand it.
Quick run down. Psychic, Ki, Magic are the 3 superpowers, and all classes are slightly better with one of these, though that slightly becomes real important when you really get into the math. All 3 superpower systems have soooooo many options that it can support just about any character idea....but magic is a cheaty bastard and usually wins the game. Psychic all the way. Also i agree, the artists for that book are top notch.
I don't whether to be mad or impressed at the sheer insanity of this system. Glad for the video anyway
I would love to see what a commercial disguise as a video game will look like
Kingdom Hearts 3
Interesting to see. I remember picking up a few of the miniatures a while back and briefly looking into the rules, but not managing to gain any real understanding on such quick read.
I very much know the feeling of finding systems I want to try but my players never would.
It would be a great series to make characters in different systems with new guests familiar with the system. Could make learning more guided, interactive and clear? Love the videos! ❤
I definitely like the CONCEPT of Anima, and a lot of the individual mechanics work well.
But it's blending them together (and having the right group) that makes it tricky
"but I was taking a poop, and I was on my phone" is the reason for about half my Pathbuilder characters
A blade from your mind? Like a *Mind axe*?
Been GMing this for about 15 years now. It's... a mess. But it has its charm. Would benefit from the IP owner being more willing to delegate, but the community is very passionate and has their own discord server.
That combat example reminds me of Rolemaster
Love the game “review”! It’s videos like this which save me thousands of dollars in games I didn’t need to buy but purchased and will never play or even use.
2 vids within a month? The Puffin King of the Forest truly blesses us!
It is multi video channel.
I do miss this game. I use to love going and making characters in this system because it just let you do basically anything in an anime you could want. So neat.
I have been playing/dming games on this system occasionally for almost a decade and I think it might be the first time I see any channel mention it in such details.
It is complicated, not gonna lie, but when you're tired of modern system not allowing a lot of personalisation outside of the planned classes and expecting the DM to eyeball most checks, that's a nice change of pace.
The "burn the other person action by hitting them" actually make a lot of sense, it assumes that if you try your best to defend yourself and get hit anyway you'll be unbalanced and unable to bounce back right away.
You have rules to ignore that but it does require reducing your defense, when you get used to it it makes the fast character with no armor and small weapons feel and play very differently than the heavy armor guys with shields and hevay weapons and I kinda like it
I've got every book they released for it because my players fell in love with the lore. haven't run this train wreck in almost a decade lol. makes me want to look through my stuff to see if I still have a list of all the house rules I made to streamline it. This brought back so many memories
I am going to be clear with you as an experienced 7 yo Anima Beyond Fantasy master and player: This game doesn't have the best english support. There is a highly functional and versatile excel sheet made up by the spanish comunity and although it is not translated into english I'd suggest you create your characters in said sheet because the PDF sheet is like going fishing with... string and an empty bait while the excel sheet is so godly it makes the creation effortless as it is automated and even allows you export your finished sheet into a PDF one or edit old sheets.
If anyone is interested I am more than happy to send you all the sheet.
Oh and also, I am not sure how you're going to cope witht he fact that the Core rulebook has... 1 aditional rulebook only for Ki itself which adds on what's already there, another for magic and psychic, etc... which expand on the content and the world lore.
Also, there are actual races on the Master side of the Core rulebook which are "full versions" of the nephilims because they weren't meant to be played at first but the game itself tells you on the DM side of the book that all you read in that core book is just a suggestion, you as a master can add and remove whatever you like as it is your world. So you can make a race if you please or allow others to make one since the world is very human-heavy and they might have troubles despite their incredible habilities for obvious reasons (like inquisitiors).
I hope you find a good DM for that game, it's quite enjoyable for a long campaign.
I have had the core rulebook for this game for 15 years, and never, not once, have I been able to convince 2-4 people to learn how to play it with me.
And I can’t even blame them. But once you learn the game it’s actually really fun, but the learning curve is steeeeeep.
One of my favorite systems to just make characters in. So so so many options
Oh man, I've been playing Anima for years now, and it's nice to see it finally get some light on publicity despite how old the game is. Some of the rulings you mentioned aren't quite right, but the general gist of it is correct. For one thing, the writer of the book wasn't exactly the most organized as sometimes you'll find rulings extremely out-of-place where they should be, but for the most part, it's just a matter of playing and getting used to. It's a lot simpler than you think. Character creation as well, can be hard and confusing at first but that's just about any game you touch upon first. It gets easier and when you've been playing the game for over a decade, you just pop out characters in seconds cus you already know the game so well. Personally, I prefer Anima so much more than any other because of the flexibility of character creation. Naturally you want to focus your build on the class's specialties, but nothing in the game prevents you from distributing your development points wherever you want for the most strange and ridiculous builds. There's so much I want to say, so much things I want to add and just explain about Anima, but for the most part good job on getting the breakdown of character creation on your first try.
One thing I really want to touch on is the reason why it uses a D100 dice instead of the D20. While your argument being just as good in D20 because it already uses intervals of 5 already, the reason it uses D100 is because it has an open roll system. For the most part, Anima can potentially go as high as into the 300's and 400's depending on how you play it. That is because the game is there to make you feel extremely powerful like an anime character. Unlike DnD where rolling a 20 basically guarantees you an automatic success in most rolls, in Anima it is a lot more punishing as even if you open roll to absurdly high numbers, your opponent can do the same. Sure, you can say to use a D20 and just open roll on 19's and 20's all the time, but it's not quite the same as the system is designed to make it difficult to open roll every time you do. Starting from 90-100, the chances of open rolling decreases by 1 each time you open roll. Open rolling by the way is being able to roll the dice again and adding all the values together.
When I bought this game, I thought it was an Anime game, so I treated it as such. The artwork is also very japanese, so that didn't help. It wasn't until much later I realized it's a dark fantasy with grittyness. That is when I finally understood why combat was so deadly and the world so punishing. 😂
I remember reading ABOUT Anima and being so enthralled. And then I got my hands on the book and was suddenly much less enthralled. That book was like getting thrown into GURPS.
A puffin video!? Yes!