I have the book and am currently in the process of translation when I went back to the announcment and saw that it said stuff about altering reality with your character's will or something like that, does anyone know which chapter that is, or if it was cut like the Artifact creation rules were?

Ejud said:

Its probably been cut, so that the game design team can perpetuate a hopeless no-win scenario for characters to struggle in. Seriously, the most you can hope for as a player is for your character to become a slightly useful pawn in the godlike lives of the feature characters, Powers in the Shadow, and various Organizations. I realize this is dark fantasy, but.. as a GM I've moved off Gaia and am building out Lunaris for my own use, in a way that seems more sanely balanced for fantasy RP campaigns.

hellgeist said:

Wow, some over the top drama in this post. Are you saying that every campaign you have ever played in your characters have shaped the world to their will, completely dominating every established Organization/Major NPC/gods within the setting?

I don't get why people hate on the established powers in Gaia, similar entities exist in almost every "official" setting I have read for any RPG.

Zeru said:

That is true, but in Anima characters are not expected to become as powerful as in other things. It is possible for a level 5 in this game to lose to a level 1 who gets the drop on them (due to the power growth in this game being 100 points per level, with a base of 600 pts. Thus level 1 to 2 gains 17% more power, lvl 2 to 3 14%, 3-4 13%, 4-5 11%, etc. each level being less of a power bonus) This means a lvl 7 (1200pts) is only twice as strong as a lvl 1(600), and you have to get to lvl 19(2400) to double your power again. The +1 stat bonus every 2 levels does change this (I have not played long enough to figure out exactly what the effects are, but I theorize lvl 1 is half as strong as approximately lvl 6, which is half as strong as lvl 14~16, but I digress). Most games have geometric progression, as the stats in this game, but I don't really see that here. Plus with almost no pre-made magic items, all that exists are +5-25 swords and hammers for the characters to get, +25 being legendary, whereas the secret organizations seem to have full electronic bio-body armor with fully automatic guns. The difference in power is much greater here, just from the gear, unless you can kill an agent and the armor isn't bio-locked or some such. Further the secret organizations in this game are much further reaching and more active than in most other settings, so you actually have a good chance of having to deal with them.

I personally like the games progression, the fact that you will never become unto gods. However some people want to make decisions, become powerful super beings. We do enough being controlled by our bosses/ the government/ obligations in real life, why do that in a game? Though this would require more than a modified game setting, in my opinion.

Lia Valenth said:

Well, Sort of. I can say without a doubt that while numerically it seems right, in Anima, those hundred point boosts can mean a lot more, especially to one of the dedicated classes. They can by level five do some fairly world shaking acts, and can easily become forces to be reckoned with by all but the PitS, who are basically made of GM Fiat anyway, I mean they basically only exist to be a finger wag to the players for attempting to destroy the world. I have myself produced a level 9 Character, mentalist, who basically could have walked into the Templar's very home and watched at they pathetically failed to attempt to hurt him.

Only Romero would have given him trouble. I mean, your power growth is just much more choice heavy in Anima. If you choose to concentrate your power, you will be stronger than a more spread out character...(In you chosen sphere.) Its much less rigid in power scale than another game.

On another note, a +10 quality weapon is already a masterpiece worthy of many legends...and a +25 weapon would be an artifact of unspeakable power, capable of killing almost anything it encounters, is nigh-unbreakable, and Myths and legends are only the start of such a monstrous weapon's history. We are talking about Excaliber +. Its basically a weapon of immense power, turned up to eleven. In the hands of a master...

*shiver*

Well thanks for sorta answering my question, i'll just adapt the rules from like Mage which has a similar idea with its Magic system and I do have to agree with Killercloud, dedicated characters can get very powerful my group has so far been surviving on the assistance of our Light path Wizard who has nuked everything with Light beam.

Sorry about that Ejud, I was responding to what the conversation became and have no idea about the original question, I have to wait for the official enlish releases because I don't know any spanish.

Having said that the "god like powers", in my opinion, are only the illuminati, Technocracy, and Imperium. The other secret organizations are just like the organizations in other RPG's. At high levels you can challenge them, you will lose without a plan but they won't win outright. The Tol Rauko are definently the strongest of the lesser organizations because they are the ones that seek out and keep the +25 long sword that can shoot fireballs, instead of destroying it, and they have a hoard of such items (mostly weaker, but you get the point.)

The imperium, however, is basically untouchable even though it is not controlled by gods (thus they don't have as many rules and restrictions). They are too strong to have the activity they seem to have. If your characters become strong enough to attract their attention then, most likely, you will become their pawn, or at least watched. However, as you pointed out, that is the decision of the GM.

Also, a +25 weapon (assuming that is it's only power) gives +25 atk/def (2 levels), +50 damage (Theoretically a noteable amount...), -5 enemy AT (~50% more damage), and it is really hard to break. However if someone is fighting a person with a +25 weapon they will have at least +10 weapon, or be completely outmatched in the first place (a character of a level high enough to fight someone with a mythic blade will probably have a legendary one). If they have a +10 weapon that only grants the +25 weapon on effective +15atk/def, 30dmg, and 3 AT (~15% better chance to hit or block, everything else can only be guessed at depending on combatants strength, and base weapon.) Legendary weapons in this game just are not as earth shattering as I am used to. If this is a Mythical weapon...well normally mythical weapons cleave mountains in half, not cut an extra 5 feet in, in fantasy.

But that is also a good thing. A weapon does not define you, it's the characters ability that matters. I actually prefer the weaker atmosphere, where only gods can destroy half the planet in a swing of their sword. But, if you switch from light fantasy like D&D or Exhaulted I can see why not being able to throw mountains to blow up the moon would be annoying.

Ejud said:

*sigh* Despite the "discussion" that is being had here. They are talking about the magic spells and psychic matrices (namely the matrices.) I believe there was additional psychic spells?

Lia Valenth said:

The literature is clear that the Powers in the Shadow (Imperium, Technocracy, Illuminati) used their god like powers to overcome Rah's force (the united army of the Supernatural). They were able to 'cheat' basically, using insane powers the game designers thought up for them, and which also happened to coincide with the final act of the Gods (C'iel and Gaira), which was to clean up the mess before being disposed of themselves. This makes it clear to me that in Anima, mortals with small minds and powerful technology have replaced the divine element that would (traditionally) govern a fantasy universe.

The PitS are beyond any conventional super-power that might possess unlimited resources/magic/knowledge because they are entire, globe-spanning organizations with unheard of abilities to monitor and control the world which are not explained in any of the books. This adds Omnipresence to the list, which completes the attributes of God. When you are omniscient (possessing all knowledge), and omnipotent (possessing all resources and power), the only thing between you and 'God Almighty' is omnipresence (to be present at or 'in' everything), which the Powers in the Shadow can do. For example, their manifestation in Zhorne Giovanni - his impossible rise to power and success, and the impossible materialization of a Duk'zarist inside the Machine's impenetrable defenses.

IMO, this is a case of a game designer making an intentionally imbalanced world because the higher beings, namely C'iel and Gaira, have not been allowed to perform their function, which is to restore and maintain a level of balance that mortals are incapable of. This has a lot to do with the nature of magic, consciousness, and reality, but that discussion is a bit too involved to get into here. But perhaps this deicide is what generates the dark fantasy element and its intentionally that way as a plot device(?).

Eiother way, Gaia as a world/scenario seemed to me like a world where the type of person that can understand and use magic responsibly could not exist. Therefore the game designer must reduce the world to a human level - a place where magic must be forbidden because it will always be abused by fallable men. That is the same type of idea appearing in many other forms of fiction lately, it seems to come from a trend of authorship that is simply uninterested in the spiritual dimension of existence.

Don't get me wrong, I really like this game, and I realize that among fans this may sound like very harsh criticism. But I just want to assure you that its just my opinion, and its the reason behind my decision to build what I feel is a balanced milieu on a parallel world to Gaia. I prefer to game in a fantasy world that is not necessarily governed by anthropolatry or technology.

Then you can make a story which players must defeat the Imperium, after all: if a human can have that power, ANOTHER human (or Duck'Zarist) can do the same!

Specially with little help of Lords of Darkness...

To answer the original question:

Arcana Exxet contains the following stuff:

FOR GUYS WITH THE GIFT:

A detailed system (I'm not using) about the time you spend for Magic Learning (spending your ML).

The possibility of buying Magic Level with DPs. You can spend up to 1/10 of your DPs on Magic Level and this lot of DPs is subtracted from DPs allocated to Supernatural Abilities.

New sub-paths that spellcasters may use instead of free spells.

The Arcana Sephira: a number of magic abilities (very nice) spellcasters may buy paying in Magic Level. They're put on a very complex skill tree that comprises 4 branches that are linked to each other. Developing abilites from that tree is definitely better (on my opinion) than buying several Paths as they really help you out.

4 alternative ways of casting spells called Theoremas. Each new "school" of magic casting gives some bonus but also has some hindrance. But they're ALWAYS interesting alternatives.

New Advantages:

Uncomplete Gift 1CP - Gives The Gift but before casting each spell the mage has to make an intelligence check against 10+(SpellMagicLevel/10). Remember that characteristics checks in 2nd ed. are Stat+D10 and must beat the set difficulty. This is very useful when you want to create sheets for Sylvain or Daimah of completely non-mystical classes, since it allows you to spend 1 less DP.

Gradual Magic Learning 2CP - +5ML per Level.

Metamagic Ambivalence 1CP - You may buy abilities from the Arcana Sephira starting from two points instead of one.

Natural Born Mage 1CP - Increases 1 level your ability in Magic Learning (the aforementioned stuff...I didn't give it a second look, by the way).

FOR SUMMONERS:

A system for making mass summons, calling more people alltogether!

The opportunity to buy Magic Regeneration Multiples instead of Magic Accumulation Multiples for half the price of Magic Accumulation. Hence a Summoner and a Warrior Summoner may buy Magic Regeneration for only 30DP. This is VERY useful for all summoners out there.

The opportunity to "Specialize" the Summoner in an Invoker. An Invoker cannot use Summon to summon creatures, but only to make Invocations, BUT he spends only half the required Zeon cost for Invocations. He can control/bind/banish as normal.

The book explains that Undead cannot be summoned except from other undeads.

Tons of new Invocations available...A lot of Great Beasts and Powers a summoner can call upon to unleash the most disparate effects.

The Incarnations. They are sort of Invocations that require a certain level and make the summoner shapeshift into some important figure of the past for a certain time, granting powers, combat prowness and even high secondaries. Very nice stuff, indeed, I can tell you.

The Shelee. They're Fairies produced from the Inner Magic of anyone. They have to be summoned from within someone and share a life bond with their master. They are particularly powerful as familiars. They have amazing powers and grow with their master, since they're part of him, but really they cost too much zeon and require their master to have very high Magic Regeneration to mantain them. I actually cut in half the price in Zeon of all their abilities. Otherwise on my opinion there's no way of playing them.

New advantages:

Familiar 2/3CP - Well, actually this can be taken from anyone. Anyway. If you spend 2CP your Familiar is same level as you. If you pay 3CP your Familiar is one level higher.

Shelee Essence 1CP - If you have a Shelee (or once you have one) you may buy it two additional powers from their list.

Mass Summoner 1/2/3CP - For each CP spent you're considered 1Level higher when trying to make Mass Summoning (since it's based on difference in levels between summoner and summoned creatures).

FOR PSYCHICS: (the line referring to altering realty with will might refer to this)

Mental Patrons: Mind Sets that allow you to improve yourself in one kind of powers but makes you worse on another kind. Mst of them have an incompatible oppsite, but otherwise you may have more than one. Pretty interesting, you may spend DP both to learn them AND to discard them! For example, if you're extroverse, you have bonus to psychic projection when using powers on others and penalty when using powers on themselves. Introverse are the opposite.

New Psychic Disciplines. A few...and they're interesting.

FOR ANYONE:

Grimories containing knowledge about magics and summons alike as well as other stuff sometimes.

Rituals: they're sort of Level0 spells that people without the Gift may perform. Most of them are almost useless but they're a nice idea anyway and you can always decide to create more. Some of them require long time and/or the efforts of more people to work.

A few general rules for Magic Nodes and Psychic Nodes, Magic Infections, Sancta Sanctorum, Supernatural Ambients.

TO GET TO THE SUB TOPIC:

I believe most organizations are even-matched. Inquisition itself has at its disposal tons of "sacred" stuff which is actually powerful magic artifacts and can field stuff like Romeo Exxet, Alexeiel, Marchosias, Elienai, which are all 11+ level guys...Hence monstrosities. Not to speak about Wissenshaft which makes abundant use of Solomon-derived technology. Actually Wissenshaft is that with most potential for the simple reason that it's led by the smartest man on Gaia (possibly ever), which is Lucanor Giovanni. That alone gives it a edge over the others, on my opinion, because when strength is comparable, what makes the difference is organization and intelligence.

As for the Powers in the Shadow, certainly defying the Imperium is no easy task, but consider that Level 11+ characters with decent equipment and powers (well, and battle oriented, of course) can actually take one-on-one on the average Jurgand. The matter is Imperium has at its disposal a number of Jurgands, so best thing for high level guys is NOT summoning the interests of Imperium. As far as I interpret the fluff, Imperium will possibly contact you once you gain level 11 or soon later, if you're pretty powerful. The Imperium will ask you to join its ranks and, if you refuse, your memory of their encounter with them will be erased. For a small period of time the Imperium will probably keep watching over you just to make sure that everything went well with the memory erasement stuff. After that the Imperium will simply ignore you unless:

a) You somehow travel beyond the Barrier and get to one of the two other continents. Then you become a threat to their secret. Again, Imperium prefers erasing memories where possible instead of sending-out jurgands and godslayers.

b) You begin some evil plan (or are involved in some) that may endanger humanity as a whole. Then they send military force to stop you.

c) You become aware of Imperium and manifestely make a plan to attack them. Again, once they discover this, they won't hesitate to use military strength against you. Actually Lucanor is probably planning something against Imperium, but he's far too smart to take any action without proper information about the enemy and sufficient strength to challenge it, so he's probably made so that Imperium doesn't even know that he knows of their existence. After all, he's Lev16, so he's probably on par with most high officers. Besides Imperium cannot directly attack him because of the pacts with the Berils and Shajads.

Anyway, the Imperium is secretly aiming to destroy both Shajads and Berils, so if you find some proof of it, both The Ladies of Light and the Lords of Darkness might be interested to help fighting them.

One last thing. A Level5 warrior is WAY beyond the reach of a Level1. Actually, Level7-8 characters can go single against small armies and Lev10+ are capable of mass destruction. If there's a system with immense power growth, than it's Anima. As for Artifacts, a +25 weapon will usually also be fitted with other immense abilities. Just to have an idea what we're talking about, download the first Web Supplement for Anima and see the rules of the Lawgivers. They're Bastard Swords+10, each dealing double damage to dark/evil stuff AND with 1-2 abilities chosen out of 5. And they're standard weaponry for Inquisitors and few other imperial officers...

Calculating what a +25 sword might have as "side powers" is pretty hard, but it should have BIG additional powers.

On the original question thanks Elric for that summary of the Arcana Exett book, now I know what to translate, it saddens me that they cut the artifact and reshaping reality magic, but ah well.

And onto the stuff you said about lawgivers, where are the web supplements for Anima, are they only in Spanish or have they been released in english?

About the web supplements, they're free to download in Spanish from the Edge Entertainment site, if you're subscribed to it. As for the content:

Web Supplement 1:

Errata about the 1st Edition Rulebook.

Faqs.

1 new Cryokinesis Lev2 Psychic Power.

Example of a couple Magic Items (Lawgivers and Eru Pelegri, stones that work like walkie-talkies).

Three Techniques Schools (The Chains, Sirius, Basis). Since they're pre-Dominus Exxet, they require a bit of "fixing"...besides I discovered that almost ALL school techniques described in the Core Rulebook and EVEN IN DOMINUS EXXET require fixing of costs/effects...

Monster Compendium: Ghoul, Karridor, Harekawa, Gandalphon, Gaira's Dragon.

Updated Market prices (includes elms).

Spells Index.

Web Supplement 2:

Errata, Corrections and Alterations to the 2nd edition rulebook.

Web Supplement 3:

More errata on the 2nd edition rulebook, Arcana Exxet, Dominus Exxet and Los Que Caminaron con Nosotros. A user friendly description of most changes in the 2nd edition rulebook, compared to the first edition.

A few rules to adapt content of Dominus Exxet and Los Que Caminaron con Nosotros to the 2nd Edition.

A few rules to adapt the content of Arcana Exxet to the 1st Edition.

Price and weight of weapons and armors found in Dominus Exxet.

Elric of Melniboné said:

I just finished translating those over the weekend. I actually didn't need a lot of the errata, as they are corrections that were rolled into the English edition. Aside from that, they are going to come in very handy.

Did I already mention that bonus to Regeneration for Duk'Zarist (fullbreed, not Nephilim) is +5 and not +3?

For me, Spanish is very difficult to understand.
I hope someone passes the translation to FFG.