In this edition of Critical Failure: Your Character has Died, I’ll be creating an Anima: Beyond Fantasy character. I usually find it easier to create a character if I have a picture for inspiration, so I searched around http://www.CGHub.com until I found a concept image that I thought could work. The character art I’ve chosen was created by Tim Von Rueden of Concept Cookie. http://www.cgcookie.com
While the image doesn’t really convey a whole hell of a lot of classic fantasy tropes, it’ll actually work really well for Anima, as more often then not, neither do the characters of Gaïa, as made blatantly clear by this example of official Wen-m art.
Some of the fashion in Anima makes me feel like I’m looking at some sort of Final Fantasy art-book, but there are worse things I suppose, and it’s a nice break from the typical bearded dwarves and lithe elves.
So to continue on, I believe I mentioned the other day that Anima has a lot of classes, and for better or worse, that number is 20. I won’t go into any unnecessary detail about each and every class, but instead I’ll list the Archetypes and name the different classes that fall under each group.
Domine, which are individuals who specialize in the unlocking and use of their spiritual abilities. There are 2 Domine classes Tao and Technician.
Fighter, this archetype specializes in the use of weapons and unarmed combat. There are 11 Classes that fall under Fighter. The classes are Acrobatic Warrior, Dark Paladin, Paladin, Ranger, Shadow, Tao, Warlock, Warrior, Warrior Mentalist, Warrior Summoner, and Weaponmaster
Mystic, Mystics all deal with the Supernatural realm. They can summon creatures or bend reality with spells. The 6 Mystic classes are Illusionist, Summoner, Warlock, Warrior Summoner, Wizard, and Wizard Mentalist
Prowler, Prowlers are individuals that use subterfuge and wit to accomplish their goals, preferring to avoid confrontation. The 5 prowler classes are Assassin, Illusionist, Ranger, Shadow, and Thief.
Psychic, Psychics are gifted with psychic powers. The 3 psychic classes are Mentalist, Warrior Mentalist, and Wizard Mentalist.
Novel, this is a large group of people that don’t specialize into anything specifically, but take up abilities as they need them during their career. Most NPCs are Novel Characters, The only Novel class is Freelancer.
You can read a much more detailed description of each class here: www.animarpgbeyondfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Class
Back to character creation, I guess the best way to continue would be to give her a name, naming conventions are all over the place in Anima, so I guess let’s just call her Sydney. I’m going to pick Technician for her class since I envision her as using her mysterious rectangular object (artist’s own words) as a sort of artifact weapon, and Technician gives me the freedom to create techniques based around that idea.
As with most RPGs the next step will be generating Characteristics, those being Strength (STR) which defines a character’s musculature and energy, Dexterity (DEX) which represents a character’s physical skill and coordination, Agility (AGI) which represents a character’s speed of movement and balance, Constitution (CON) which defines the stamina and vitality of a character, Intelligence (INT) which covers reasoning, learning, and memory, Power (POW) which represents the state of mind and spiritual power of a character, Willpower (WP) which measures the mental strength of an individual and his coolness and tenacity, and lastly Perception (PER) which represents both the acuity of a character’s senses and his distinctiveness.
There are 4 methods of generating Characteristics, but I’ll be using the method of rolling two 10-sided dice eight times and keeping the highest. My rolls were as follows 9, 7, 4, 7, 10, 8, 4, 8. Five represents the characteristics of the every-man, so Sydney will be slightly lacking in two areas.
I’m going to give Sydney STR 7, DEX 9, AGI 10, CON 7, INT 4, POW 8, WP 4, PER 8. So she’ll be pretty strong, with amazing Dexterity and Agility (10 is the max for a normal human), although she isn’t without her limitations, since she has a slightly lower intelligence and willpower, which I’m going to interpret as her being slow to catch on to things and she loses her shit more easily under stressful situations.
Next I’m going to choose Advantages and Disadvantages, which give in-game bonuses and penalties to the character. Each character starts with 3 Creation Points to spend on Advantages and may also get up to an additional 3 creation points by taking disadvantages. There’s a rather exhaustive list, but another blogger has actually already posted it here: http://dhyanima.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/advantages-disadvantages/, so I’m not going to go into any descriptions beyond what I picked for Sydney.
I chose disadvantages first which were Bad Luck, which causes her to “fumble” (critically fail) rolls slightly easier. Powerful Enemy: Black Sun (An influential mega-corporation that searches out powerful objects from ancient times, like her Mysterious Artifact), for my third disadvantage I chose Exclusive Weapon: Mysterious Artifact which gives Sydney a -30 penalty to all combat abilities with any weapon besides her Mysterious Artifact.
For advantages I then chose Martial Mastery (3) which gives her points to spend on Ki Abilities, See Supernatural (1), and Artifact (2) which imbues Sydney’s Mysterious Artifact a +10 bonus to attack, and it glows sometimes I guess.
As I said, it’s an involved process, which is why I’m going to be splitting this into more than one post. In the next installment, I’ll be discussing Development Points, Core Ki Abilities, and Dominion Techniques. I’ll probably draw my own version of Sydney in between now and then as well, but I’m not going to promise anything just yet.
Weltschmerz 