I'll start off with some of the easier ones:

The Beryl Azrael has an ability at 40 elan called Sacred Spirit. What does it do, exactly? Beyond a benign aura being sensed when supernatural detection is being used. Is it more of a RP ability?

What exactly does leadership do? Our group sort of took it as persuasion for a crowd. Could I use it for combat bonuses? I'm aware that the GM toolkit has a new skill called tactics. I was thinking about combat bonuses on a more micro level.

I'm an old DnD player. My friend has a caster, but he still wants to contribute to a fight when magic isn't feasible (like in the middle of town, since he'd be hanged if he was lucky, or torn apart by an angry mob if he wasn't) or isn't able to. So in the proud tradition of DnD I told him to get a crossbow. The thing, is, though, he has absolutely no attack. And thanks to firing difficulty chart 45 on page 88, he has to roll a natural 80+ to hit a target farther than 5 feet away from me. Now I don't expect an untrained person to be hitting a dime on the moon from a galloping horse in a hurricane, but hitting a man sized target with a crossbow from 15 feet away isn't that terribly hard.

That was one of the main points of crossbows, after all, an untrained peasant could fire one after a 10 minute intro on how they worked.

Another question on the crossbow issue, even if the crossbow falls short, is the target considered to have been attacked for the purposes of multiple attack penalties? My own thoughts on the subject is that if the difficulty is one short of actually hitting (only rolling high enough to get difficult on a very difficult check, for example) the person would still react to it. Anything worse and the shot probably didn't even looked like it was trying to hit him.

I'm having problems with my character. At level 3 he has somewhere around 290 persuasion and I'll be picking up the ki inhumanity ability in a level. Probably zen by level 5. People are tripping over to do answer my questions and do my general bidding.

It's rough. Any sort of human equivalent intellect bends to my will. I suppose the GM could pit us against soulless automatons all day or monsters too stupid or unable to understand me.

Or Shajad minions brain washed even beyond my abilities (Jedah, anyone?) Any other thoughts? Or the Anima equivalent of charm person? (For you non-DnD heathens, that's a mind control ability that allows you to control a person.)

Im going to assume that you took the CP that allows you to get 1 skill point for 1 DP for persuade. so 290 DP into persuade? lol.

1: when it comes to the crossbow, all I can say is your buddy should have made a warlock, so that he could have both attack and magic abilities.

The classes in anima are vast, and should give you the options that DND could never manage. It was not until 3rd party suppliments that we got to see spellswords, and what not. (and even then a spellsword is just a pale substitute for a warlock).

The wizard class in anima represents someone that has whole heartedly put there energies into learning and developing there magic. This would be some what equal to an office worker in modern times.

I propose the comparision of your buddies wizard fireing a crossbow untrained to that of an office worker fireing a gun. Sure guns are a lot easier to use than a knife or a sword. We can all shoot them and swing bladed weapons, but when actually using it with killing intent, I doubt that I could fire a gun accuratly and percisly on a consistant basis without some type of training. The same goes for your wizard. He may be a hero, however he has not ever held a crossbow before in his life, and now you are expecting to him to be able to fire it with any kind of accuracy. Anima is not DND. DND was derived off of table top action hack and slash games, and Anima is a system created from the ground up to be a more in depth experience.

(Also I can point to more things that you can do in anima that you cant do in DND, so ill take my wizards not being able to shoot crossbows any day).

2: im my experience of GMing several short anima games the players are pretty OP, and will generally run though most of the simple stuff until the GM puts together real npcs or creatures.

I'm a paladin. So it only costs me one. And, no, it's 290 total skill. I've only put in about 230.

I'm not making any sort of comparisons between whether DnD or Anima is the superior gaming medium.

I'm still meh about overcoming a difficulty check to see if you can shoot far enough. After all, isn't effective range and strength used for?

Leadership is leadership. Its game effects are not as concrete as you are likely to find in find in D&D. It is how good you are at getting people to follow you. For the most part it is how well you deal with people over whom you have authority. It is not just how loyal the troops you have under you are, it can also be how you keep them from slacking, and how well you orginize them to accomplish goals.

One great game effect would be commanding a battle. If your character was ever in command of a large scale military engagement, how well you did, would deffinatly be a leadership check.

I have to say it is one of my all time favorite skills, but it can be completely usless if all you do is go an D&D style adventures and dungeon crawls.

Like you said, D&d is a very different type of game. When things are as different as D&D and Anima you can never really compare and say one is better than the other.

Magic in town depending on how hard core you play the restrictions against magic can make for some very interesting situations. But it is important to remember that magic itself is invisible to people who don't have the gift. I am pretty sure that the fire ball you summon with your magic and hurl at your enemies is not invisible, but it is worth checking on. However Anima has so many other interesting spells that can do all sorts of cool things. A Magic only build wizard might have difficulty engaging in combat dirrectly, but he should be able to do other interesting things.

Persuasion is not charm. That being said when you are approaching inhuman difficulties with it, it can get pretty close. But then again you invested 230 points into it. I would have recomended that you spread those points out a little bit for the sake of having a more round character. But if you really want your character to be the one of the most persuasive people who walks Gia then he is.
A GM can take other precautions against your persuasion than sending mindless gouls and the like. the Mast villan could have the minions he sent after you stop of their ears because he has waned them about you lying and silver tongue.

Your character will be very potent in non-combat situations. He might get all his inn rooms half price or even for free, but that shouldn't break the game.

The mage can improve his attack for 30 DP, it's not much, but it is better than nothing and he can aim.

But I think that in Anima the crossbows are weapons for true warriors, bow are for non expert users.