All right so, first of all, I need to confess. I like BESM d20 a d20 incarnation of Big Eyes Small Mouth (a game ruleset that emulates the tropes and narrative that are custom in Japanese animation). It's my.... what's the word, again? Guilty pleasure.
I like the idea of weapons and combat expertice being treated as just another set of skills that you can increase using skill points, like any other skill in 3.0 and 3.5. It's kind of made sense to me. I like the intergrated idea of multi-classing the characters from the start in the book, since most of the characters in the stories of this particular style of animation are highly versatile, survivor-savy, skillful in everything or too damn lucky. Even the dynamic magic that involved draining spell points made sense because it was part of JRPG legacy and the Mana Points. Of course, there was thing as a floating difficulty that included many variables (some spells and tasks could easily have difficulty of "40") but that was an overall problem of 3.0 and 3.5 ruleset.
What really stood out for me was a character sheet that came inside the book. And it stood so much for me that I've actually made a character sheet that would be 5-e compatible.
And this very sheet is the one that I'm using alongside "Scarlet Hero" ruleset.
Oh yeh, I mayhap forgot to mention that alongside random charts, oracles and adventure creation rules of "Scarlet Heroes" I'll use the rules of creation and engagment that can be found in 5e ruleset. You may notice that unlike the typical 5e character sheet this one has a few deviations.
Allow me to elaborate on those...
First of all the number of stats has been increased. Now as a GM, I often found myself being asked by one of the players the same question: "How 'hot' is this NPC?". More than enough times. So, soon enough, 'hotness' became one of the core stats in our D&D games under the name 'Comeliness' coresponding to the beauty of the body while 'Charisma' being all about beauty of a character and personality. And that also lead to the addition of the 7th saving throw. Speaking of which...
Well, I did mention that I've grown to appreciate the hobby during the 3.0-3.5 era, so I am used to the set of 3 saving throws: Fortitude, Reflexes and Will. But then came 5e/next ruleset and I found myself refering to Wisdom as Will save and Dexterity saving throw as Reflexes. A slip of a tongue but led to some amusement among the players. Since this is the sheet that I'll use mostly for my own games I decided to use the terms that I'm okay with and renamed the saving throws with Strength now being Might, Dexterity - the good old Reflexes, Constitution is back at being Fortitude, Intelect save - Sanity (in honor of Cthulhu), Wisdom - Will and Charisma as Resolve. While introducing the seventh stat Comeliness I also had to include the seventh saving throw "Honor" which could be rolled to protect the characters dignity and keep his face while being pressured by Morale Corruption.
You may also notice that list of skills also includes such entries as driving and piloting. Well, the reason for that is being that both militaristic and heroic versions of Mecha genre in Japanese animation tend to put kids and teeneagers with little to none experience in the cockpit of bipedal armored juggernaughts, so in terms of both narratives and game mechanics everyone can try and pilot a transport no matter how sophisticated it is with enough luck and positive enough modifier. That also includes such bizare types of transportation as jet boots, brooms and umbrellas. Same goes to the driving skills, with enough points in skill, characters may move up and down the walls and buildings using something like blade-rollers. Which, I'm not a fan of, but for the sake of fairness and for the spirit of "cool insanity"...
The most significant derivative is the Hit Die. Though I decided to use the traditional classes from 5e gameset, the 'Scarlet Heroes' rules use more vulnerable options to choose from. So, in order to compromise I decided to divide the standard Hit Points to Health and Stamina.
The Unearthed Arcana Variant Rules for 5e ruleset introduce the option of using Vitality to setermine the characters wellbeing. This suggestion was close to the idea of Wounds in Warhammer Fantasy RPG and unlike the standard Hit Points this Vitality rarely increased unless the Constitution score itself was modified in any way. Using this option, Hit Points became an abstract measure of luck, a karma meter if you like, a mental shield and pain tollerance. Something like that was used in Starfinder set of rules that had both Hit Points and Endurance Points and furthermore it was used as Gritty Healh rules in game of Red Hand of Doom by Benjamin Loomes
During the combat when my character gets hit, the Stamina will be the first to deplete and only after that the Health will be lost due to successful attacks. The grittier aspect comes in form of Stamina being restored as usual by taking the option of taking the rest (both short or long). Health can be restored only by magical or surgical means or taking a full day rest (just like in 3.0-3.5 edition of ruleset)
Furthermore, using the suggestion from the Dungeonmaster Guide Book, I will include the idea of Spell points to be used to cast spells, something that you would expect to be used in videogames. No offence to Vance and the legacy of the Vancian magic that he built, but this set of rules is not exactly what I had in mind for a setting. And besides, I do like the idea of magic-users burning their inner strength, their lifeforce to fuel the spells. And that will be the second use of Stamina. Of course with that in mind, magic users would have a bigger amount of Stamina than solely martial classes.
As for the rest of the character sheet is not that drastically different from what players used to... Well besides the additional Passive Insight and Passive Investigation alongside standard Passive Perception, but it's such a small tweak, that I don't think need a lot of explanation.
All right, that's enough for now. The post is long as it is. Next time we will talk about character creation and the setting...
P.S. Below I attach the links to the sheet on my google drive that you can have a better look at and print it if you want to
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Hq446DAWobYGARvgU2atsRGWp3uWTrBw
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QYawHlcuGYHbFy0IM9jV1UdWfrIWq3TH
As well as the look at the Variant Rules published on the official Wizards of the Coast site
https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA5_VariantRules.pdf
And the example of Benjamin Loomes' Gritty Health rules in action during The Red Hand of Doom run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ck1AJy2c0w&list=PLaweBRvpqqNAAoJmPNbMYrnwFm1yX3hN5
P.S.S. Almost slipped my mind, you may also notice the label called Discretionary Points. This is something I took straight from BESM d20 and used in Play Manga version of rules. But for the game I had in mind this label is irrelevent. As for Bloodtype and Zodiak... well every anime character must have those, right? Sadly I still didn't figure out what effect those would have on gameplay.
 |
| The hero of an hour |
I like the idea of weapons and combat expertice being treated as just another set of skills that you can increase using skill points, like any other skill in 3.0 and 3.5. It's kind of made sense to me. I like the intergrated idea of multi-classing the characters from the start in the book, since most of the characters in the stories of this particular style of animation are highly versatile, survivor-savy, skillful in everything or too damn lucky. Even the dynamic magic that involved draining spell points made sense because it was part of JRPG legacy and the Mana Points. Of course, there was thing as a floating difficulty that included many variables (some spells and tasks could easily have difficulty of "40") but that was an overall problem of 3.0 and 3.5 ruleset.
What really stood out for me was a character sheet that came inside the book. And it stood so much for me that I've actually made a character sheet that would be 5-e compatible.
And this very sheet is the one that I'm using alongside "Scarlet Hero" ruleset.
Oh yeh, I mayhap forgot to mention that alongside random charts, oracles and adventure creation rules of "Scarlet Heroes" I'll use the rules of creation and engagment that can be found in 5e ruleset. You may notice that unlike the typical 5e character sheet this one has a few deviations.
Allow me to elaborate on those...
First of all the number of stats has been increased. Now as a GM, I often found myself being asked by one of the players the same question: "How 'hot' is this NPC?". More than enough times. So, soon enough, 'hotness' became one of the core stats in our D&D games under the name 'Comeliness' coresponding to the beauty of the body while 'Charisma' being all about beauty of a character and personality. And that also lead to the addition of the 7th saving throw. Speaking of which...
Well, I did mention that I've grown to appreciate the hobby during the 3.0-3.5 era, so I am used to the set of 3 saving throws: Fortitude, Reflexes and Will. But then came 5e/next ruleset and I found myself refering to Wisdom as Will save and Dexterity saving throw as Reflexes. A slip of a tongue but led to some amusement among the players. Since this is the sheet that I'll use mostly for my own games I decided to use the terms that I'm okay with and renamed the saving throws with Strength now being Might, Dexterity - the good old Reflexes, Constitution is back at being Fortitude, Intelect save - Sanity (in honor of Cthulhu), Wisdom - Will and Charisma as Resolve. While introducing the seventh stat Comeliness I also had to include the seventh saving throw "Honor" which could be rolled to protect the characters dignity and keep his face while being pressured by Morale Corruption.
You may also notice that list of skills also includes such entries as driving and piloting. Well, the reason for that is being that both militaristic and heroic versions of Mecha genre in Japanese animation tend to put kids and teeneagers with little to none experience in the cockpit of bipedal armored juggernaughts, so in terms of both narratives and game mechanics everyone can try and pilot a transport no matter how sophisticated it is with enough luck and positive enough modifier. That also includes such bizare types of transportation as jet boots, brooms and umbrellas. Same goes to the driving skills, with enough points in skill, characters may move up and down the walls and buildings using something like blade-rollers. Which, I'm not a fan of, but for the sake of fairness and for the spirit of "cool insanity"...
The most significant derivative is the Hit Die. Though I decided to use the traditional classes from 5e gameset, the 'Scarlet Heroes' rules use more vulnerable options to choose from. So, in order to compromise I decided to divide the standard Hit Points to Health and Stamina.
The Unearthed Arcana Variant Rules for 5e ruleset introduce the option of using Vitality to setermine the characters wellbeing. This suggestion was close to the idea of Wounds in Warhammer Fantasy RPG and unlike the standard Hit Points this Vitality rarely increased unless the Constitution score itself was modified in any way. Using this option, Hit Points became an abstract measure of luck, a karma meter if you like, a mental shield and pain tollerance. Something like that was used in Starfinder set of rules that had both Hit Points and Endurance Points and furthermore it was used as Gritty Healh rules in game of Red Hand of Doom by Benjamin Loomes
During the combat when my character gets hit, the Stamina will be the first to deplete and only after that the Health will be lost due to successful attacks. The grittier aspect comes in form of Stamina being restored as usual by taking the option of taking the rest (both short or long). Health can be restored only by magical or surgical means or taking a full day rest (just like in 3.0-3.5 edition of ruleset)
Furthermore, using the suggestion from the Dungeonmaster Guide Book, I will include the idea of Spell points to be used to cast spells, something that you would expect to be used in videogames. No offence to Vance and the legacy of the Vancian magic that he built, but this set of rules is not exactly what I had in mind for a setting. And besides, I do like the idea of magic-users burning their inner strength, their lifeforce to fuel the spells. And that will be the second use of Stamina. Of course with that in mind, magic users would have a bigger amount of Stamina than solely martial classes.
As for the rest of the character sheet is not that drastically different from what players used to... Well besides the additional Passive Insight and Passive Investigation alongside standard Passive Perception, but it's such a small tweak, that I don't think need a lot of explanation.
All right, that's enough for now. The post is long as it is. Next time we will talk about character creation and the setting...
P.S. Below I attach the links to the sheet on my google drive that you can have a better look at and print it if you want to
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Hq446DAWobYGARvgU2atsRGWp3uWTrBw
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QYawHlcuGYHbFy0IM9jV1UdWfrIWq3TH
As well as the look at the Variant Rules published on the official Wizards of the Coast site
https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA5_VariantRules.pdf
And the example of Benjamin Loomes' Gritty Health rules in action during The Red Hand of Doom run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ck1AJy2c0w&list=PLaweBRvpqqNAAoJmPNbMYrnwFm1yX3hN5
P.S.S. Almost slipped my mind, you may also notice the label called Discretionary Points. This is something I took straight from BESM d20 and used in Play Manga version of rules. But for the game I had in mind this label is irrelevent. As for Bloodtype and Zodiak... well every anime character must have those, right? Sadly I still didn't figure out what effect those would have on gameplay.
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1673521-1236017945.jpeg.jpg)
