Hello, I'm new to Anima and have started a campaign for a few friends who are equally new. I would just like to ask about a couple things I've been very hard pressed to find around the internet or the books.

A Sheele's soul form allows a player to create a monster basically, but there's a lot of things they don't specify about players making monsters.

1. Is the player supposed to choose the class of the soul form?

2. Are the stats of the soul form purchased with DP like any other monster? or do they use the sheele's original?

3. Can a soul form spend the MK it gets from its class? there are monsters in "those who walked among us" that use ki abilities so there should be a way somehow? and if one is using the MK learning time from Dominus Exxet, how would that work?

4. Can a soul form learn Ars Magnus and impossible weapons? how would they go about having a normal weapon in the first place? or are they restricted to natural weapons?

5. Anything else you could help out with would be greatly appreciated, I like sheeles but they're just so vague sometimes about their nature.

1. Is the player supposed to choose the class of the soul form?

I would honestly say yes since the player is the one creating the soul form he would be the one to make that decision.

2. Are the stats of the soul form purchased with DP like any other monster? or do they use the sheele's original?

This can honestly work either way, again the player is creating it and thus is allowed to purchase whatever abilities he sees fit from the list of choices. For instance if I had a Shadow with a Sheele of Darkness it's soul form could just be a slightly modified buffed version of the base Sheele. On the other hand if the same shadow had a Sheele of Light it's soul form powers might be very different from its base stats.

3. Can a soul form spend the MK it gets from its class? there are monsters in "those who walked among us" that use ki abilities so there should be a way somehow? and if one is using the MK learning time from Dominus Exxet, how would that work?

I'm not entirely sure how to answer this one. Using Ki requires a soul, and while a Sheele doesn't have a soul of its own it does have a part of your soul. I could honestly see this going many ways depending on how you look at it. I will give it some thought and ask the other GMs in my group. I definitely see it being acceptable I'm just not sure what, if any restrictions I would put on it.

4. Can a soul form learn Ars Magnus and impossible weapons? how would they go about having a normal weapon in the first place? or are they restricted to natural weapons?

Once again I'm not quite sure how to go about this since I honestly never considered that before. An easier way to go about it might be to simply give it natural weapons and then give it's attacks various special abilities from the monster creation section.

5. Anything else you could help out with would be greatly appreciated, I like sheeles but they're just so vague sometimes about their nature.

The best advise I can give you is don't let yourself get bogged down in the rules, they are important to be sure but in the end the only reason we have them is to keep some order in sessions and keep things running smoothly. If you think a Sheele's Soul Form should be able to use Ki then so be it, just make sure you think about how it may unbalance things and be ready to find a solution if it does unbalance something.

A good example is the Ki ability Mass Movement, I had two players who developed this ability and wanted to know if they could use it to throw enemies around or hold them in place so as to hinder their movement. In the end my mentor and I decided the answer would be yes, however the target would be entitled to a physical resist chance and made the base resistance really low, we also decided that by pumping more ki into the ability you could try harder and thus increase the needed resistance. The end result is that moving a low level character costs a moderate amount of Ki but moving a high level character can burn all of a characters ki reserves in a matter of seconds. Now my players are happy since they know it's possible but they aren't willing to use it on every low level character and burn through all their ki. And I am happy knowing that while throwing a fleeing lvl 1 pickpocket into a cart of manure is possible for my players trying to move a creature such as an ancient dragon against its will simply won't work.

Thank you, Nathaniel, your answers make a lot of sense and are helpful. I see that Anima does sort of run on a "rule of cool" by each different GMs standards quite a bit. My group and I are very used to RPGs that cover just about everything in the rules (D&D, Pathfinder, etc), so when we come across things like this, my players want the best possible reasoning for the decisions made in place of the lack of rules.

I suppose a way to look at it could be since Ki and Ki abilities are obtained through "Martial Knowledge", a sheele must use abilities it's master knows or maybe just spends the masters own MK. Since "it can never have a higher rank in a knowledge-related ability than its master has". I know that this is taking about secondary abilities, but I feel like it could apply to martial knowledge as well? This still feels arguable and I'd love for some more input on the topic.

I personally wouldn't have it spend its master's MK I would be more likely to limit it to only Ki abilities that its master knows or something along those lines.

Also Anima does have something for just about everything in its rules. But as they admit many times in the various books it is 100% impossible to think of every possibility which as with all role play games is why the GM needs to be able to think on his feet.

Also as you get going you will find plenty of things to base your decisions off of. For instance when my mentor and I worked out how to balance mass movement incombat we loosely based the costs of boosting the PhR required off of the rules for Ki destruction being used on players.

1. Is the player supposed to choose the class of the soul form?
I would say yes

2. Are the stats of the soul form purchased with DP like any other monster? or do they use the sheele's original?

Im pretty sure it says build them like a creature so I would say purchased with DP

3. Can a soul form spend the MK it gets from its class? there are monsters in "those who walked among us" that use ki abilities so there should be a way somehow? and if one is using the MK learning time from Dominus Exxet, how would that work?
I would say yes, and I would grant all of its MK when made.

4. Can a soul form learn Ars Magnus and impossible weapons? how would they go about having a normal weapon in the first place? or are they restricted to natural weapons?

I would say they can learn these things, but they dont gain them by transforming so if they werent holding them already or you didnt have the weapon for them they would have to get weapons themselves.

5. Anything else you could help out with would be greatly appreciated, I like sheeles but they're just so vague sometimes about their nature.

The first guy said they dont have souls but he is incorrect, basicly other then undead freewill = soul. Also Im pretty sure anything without a soul in this game is outright said not to have one like the create creature spells. Soul form cost a lot to use so unless you are built for nothing but using it you are only going to have a few rounds with it so I am happy to let players have their 3 rounds of pure power.

Also on the whole house ruling mass movent I would just let the players do it, there would be no check for the one being lifted and the cost would be the same as in the book(as in not counting levels). One of the big things in this game and one of the biggest reasons you want a party in this game is you can build a really crazy powerful sheet but there is a few things that will out right counter you. Sure every normal fighter those 2 meet get lifted up and most likely screwed but that time they try it on a mage or psychic and they fry them anyway because they dont Need to move to kill them. Everyone plays with their own style and everything so whatever works for your group I just really like the raw rules in almost all cases.

The first guy said they dont have souls but he is incorrect,

Just to clarify I never meant that they were soulless, however in the Arcana under the section "Death of a Sheele or its master" It states that if the Sheele dies the player has lost part of his soul and thus does not regain the point of POW he spent in its creation. Thus I believe I was correct in stating that a Sheele does not have its own soul but a piece of yours. Though as far as game mechanics it really doesn't make any difference so long as it has a soul.

And as far as why I put a restriction on Mass Movement it was because players were abusing it horribly to the point where they were getting incredibly arrogant and were also getting bored. Also seeing as a player can resist Ki Destruction, Combat Aura as well as any Dominion Technique that has the supernatural States ability, I figured it made sense that they could resist this as well. Also it's not as if I made it useless I just made it so that throwing a lvl 5 warrior would cost more than throwing a lvl 1 guard or lvl 0 farmer, so they can still use it almost whenever they want they just don't see it as something that makes them unstoppable.