Anime d20 from BESM any good?
- Thread starter SGTScott
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Alzrius
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SGTScott said:
To the best of my knowledge, there are no pre-published BESM d20 adventures out there.
On the system itself, it has it's strengths and weaknesses.
One particular weakness that I found throughout the entire book was how the rules for movement and facing weren't set up in such a way as to be used in 5' blocks. For example, your movement speed was your Dexterity score multiplied by three. So if you had a Dex of 15, you moved 45 feet, and if you had a Dex of 16, you moved 48 feet...but how do you realy represent that difference on a map of 5' square blocks?
Everything regarding movement is like that. As near as I can tell, this comes from the fact that the original BESM didn't rely at all on the necessity of having pieces representative of characters placed on a map of some kind. However, in the d20 system, you NEED some sort of visual place-holder for characters. This should have been reinforced.
A strength the system has is that it adds a wealth of new options for combat maneuvers. I've seen d20 books come and go, from third-party sources and WotC, but this book has, by far, the most to offer an RPG that focuses on combat (which the d20 system does). There are rules for called shots, combining attacks, and so much more. The best part is that it can all be used in any other sort of d20 game to boot. Great stuff!
One last thing about the book is that, for good or for ill, it is 3.0 d20, not 3.5. That means that certain things have changed somewhat, such as the mechanics of the Jump skill, rendering certain attributes more difficult to use if your game is 3.5E. There are, however, downloads on their website for that.
Personally, I really like the system, and think you could do quite a bit worse.
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Cyrik Skylark
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Well, I don't have the book, but I d/led the SRD version a while back for a campaign I (briefly) ran, an OA game with elements of BESM d20 thrown in. The system is really flexible, lots of customization options... but it's completely unbalanced re: standard D&D. If the campaign is set entirely in the ruleset, that's one thing, but don't expect a lot of non-BESM integration without significant work (I pulled about five, six hours going through all the various Attributes, cutting and tweaking to what I thought was roughly balanced with my campaign).
That said, the rules really do do a fairly good job of giving that "anime" feel. But, as others have said, it is a pretty expensive book. I'll add my vote to the "check out the free stuff first" camp. Don't judge the actual book by the SRD, though; I've heard the writing is significantly better in the book. Not owning the book, I can't say.
That said, the rules really do do a fairly good job of giving that "anime" feel. But, as others have said, it is a pretty expensive book. I'll add my vote to the "check out the free stuff first" camp. Don't judge the actual book by the SRD, though; I've heard the writing is significantly better in the book. Not owning the book, I can't say.
Thanks Alzrius for the info, Movement aint no big deal, I can deal with that perticular in due course. My main concern is how well the system gel's with D&D and from what you said, it seems workable. So I am going to buy the book, infact gfunk was very nice to offer his copy up for sale, cant pass that up, bells n'whistles and all.
Now my FR campaign will have an anime twist to it. Also thanks to everyone who answered my post.
Scott
Now my FR campaign will have an anime twist to it. Also thanks to everyone who answered my post.
Scott
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