Final Fantasy d20 conversion

[Tom.Claridge]

Greetings one and all. I'm new here, so let me start by introducing myself. My names Tom Clardge Jr, and I run the SaGa Horizon production company. We're a meager private 'indie' development group stationed in Bayonne, New Jersey.

What we do is design RPG's in all shapes and sizes. Pencil/Paper, videogame whatever, but ALL RPG.

At any rate, one summer some two years ago I was sitting at my laptop trying to find a good Final Fantasy conversion for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and was sorely disappointed at the shear lack of results I encountered. I DID however manage to find a half assed Final Fantasy Tactics thing that was missing 50% of the required information to even make it playable...

Disheartened, I left my laptop to sulk. Some time later, I returned to my search and was then SHOCKED that STILL no one had come up with anything worth ANYTHING as far as my query was concerned...

I had all that I could take at that point and busted open my MS office '07 and began brain storming.

The end result is the SHPC's (SaGa Horizon Production Companies) own Final Fantasy d20 conversion for D&D 3.5! Now, I've been sitting on the core rules 1 and 2 documents for quite some time and I'll be honest; I have absolutely NO community at our website...

Alas, so sad. But thats hardly the point. The reason why I'm here is because after I was done with core rules 1 and 2, I was on a mission to find a place to share my system with other like minded gamers. After SEVERAL failures to find a place worth my time, I stumbled across here, enworld.org.

So without further ado. I present to you the Final Fantasy d20 conversion I put together. you can find it Here

All I ask from anyone who decides to get it and thumb through it, is tell me what you think about it. Feed back is the only thing that will help me refine it and make it better! I've play tested it with my buddies and we seem to like it but, we're also not you! So please, feel free to share your thoughts!

A little on the system

The FF d20 conversion is based primarily on Final Fantasy 11's class and ability system. We had to, however; create custom monsters to combat that fit our system better than the classics found in the Monster Manual. This was both an aesthetic and calculated decision based on the fact that our custom monsters fit the Final Fantasy universe, but also have altered stats to fit the general buffing of characters that goes on here.

This bestiary hasn't been made yet to the public and is just sitting in a note book currently. I've been waiting for some feed back on the core rules first before I move onto releasing more content for the system which is why your feedback is crucial!

Anyways, thank you all for your time in reading this and I hope you all enjoy!

Happy Gaming!

Tom~
http://sagahorizon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/FFd20.zip

 

[Tom.Claridge]

It has been several days since I've posted this, and although I've gotten many views, I havent gotten any response. SO either no one cares, or everyone hates the system...

haha, well either way, I thought I'd try a last ditched effort and see if I can drum up any kind of response.

If you even take a look at it, I'd like to know, just so I can gauge the interest level.

I'd appreciate anyone taking their time to look over my work here, and remember, feedback is MOST appreciated!

 

[Diamond Cross]

Isn't the actual title of FF XI Final Fantasy X - 2?

 

[JustKim]

I have no interest in Final Fantasy and I consider myself done with the 3.5 system after a good run of nearly a decade, so I don't think I'm your target audience. But I'll see if I can give some constructive criticism on the mechanics.

I'm looking at the Warrior class since I assume it's the most straightforward. The magic system seems to take up most of the page count, so I'm not going to touch that.

The Warrior's job ability is to make all of his hits into criticals for a limited time. It doesn't say how often you can use it. Under Job Abilities, it says they can be used once a day but also that some can be used "once every 6 rounds, with a wait period of 2 rounds in-between them," which I don't understand- is this actually 8 rounds? In any case, I assume that the crit thing is once a day but it's a little unclear.

I decided to make my Warrior a Hume and noticed you used an apostrophe to pluralize the name of the race. I had a flip forward to kind of estimate what the bonus feat amounts to, and found only one feat that builds off the system. Humes seem like they could benefit from something more.

The Warrior's 2nd level ability, Provoke, takes a full-round action to use. It targets one enemy but there's no range listed. For an exclusive action, it seems pretty weak. I see also under the Enmity system that +10 Enmity is roughly equal to doing more damage, and while the Warrior's damage will scale up the bonus doesn't. Pretty soon, if not immediately at 2nd level, it's going to be more effective to spend that whole round doing damage instead of doing effectively nothing for greater Enmity later.
The whole Enmity system seems too much for me. I'm imagining a party of 5 characters up against 7 enemies, and having to track 35 Enmity scores in addition to everything. It could certainly slow down the combat to do all this by hand.
Strangely, the errata document lists Provoke as generating 30 Enmity, and I don't know what this means. Does Provoke now generate an initial 30 and +10 later? Is the +10 bonus gone?

Confusing language under War Cry, "The bonus to damage is equal to the level of the Warrior and can never exceed that." How would it exceed that? I don't understand. I think that last part might be superfluous. Also, "The area of effect is equal to 30ft in either direction from the Warrior." Unless you're specifically trying to avoid them, I would put this in terms of a burst or emanation, terms already defined for you in the 3.5 system.
What kind of action does it take to use War Cry?

Under Aggressor, "The bonus and loss are equal to the DEX modifier," which technically means that a Warrior with a Dex penalty improves his touch AC by using this ability, since a penalty would make the equation move in the opposite direction. I would change the language to "Dex bonus".

The document seems to need some editing, some reading by people who were not involved in the design process, and a lot of playtesting by the same sort of oblivious outsiders. But it's an ambitious project.

 

[Tom.Claridge]

Isn't the actual title of FF XI Final Fantasy X - 2?

Final Fantasy XI (or eleven) was the first MMORPG for final fantasy. where as X-2 (or Ten Two) was a horrible sequel to 10.
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[MENTION=5478]JustKim[/MENTION]: Yes, this is exactly the kind of feed back I'm looking for. And now that you mention those things, I've been looking back and realizing the mistakes. I appreciate what you've done here, thank you.

The only thing I can answer assuredly at the moment is that Provoke's Enmity generation had changed and the Errata was my means of fixing that. What I plan to do though is get a full list of errors, fix them all in the main document and just cut the Errata out.

Also; primary job abilities are once a day, all others after the level 1 job ability have their own respective cool downs. If none are listed then they are to be considered under the the 6 round, 2 in-between (yea 8....should have just simplified that ;p) rule. But now that I'm reading all of this, I may make a complete change on that.

Anyway, thank you for your review here, once again I appreciate any and all feed back.