I've posted this to a few other forums in the hope of answers, so apologies to anyone who's reading this twice.

I've been playing Anima with a couple of friends for about half a year now, and just as we were about to hit level 7, it was decided that since we'd hit an appropriate point story-wise, we'd have a Shounen-anime style timeskip, and crank the game up to level 10. Before any actual play, we had a bit of a combat test against a level 9 enemy (some kind of golem), a level 10 enemy (some kind of demon warlock thing out of the back of the book), and a level 11 enemy (an Elder Dragon). The party is a Tao (my character), a Ranger, and a Dark Paladin, in order of ascending toughness. The stats, as I roughly recall them;

Tao:

LP 185
AT3 to all areas against all types, except Energy where it's 7
Attack 275 total
Defence 210 total
10 of each of the Attack/Defence is from Asakusen, they also get a +10 variable bonus from Kung Fu.

Our Dark Pally has something like

LP 220+
AT 11 against most types to most areas
Attack of 285 (with main weapon)
Unsure of their defence.

Ranger is

LP 210 (ish)
Complete Leather (and 70 armour use)
Att 270 (with weapons)
Def 180

Which is to say, for a level 10 party, we're all fairly squishy.

In summary:

Golem seemed on the easy side of reasonable; It stressed up on its Initiative roll, meaning it managed to get to go before my Tao (who has 175 before dice), and managed to get a solid hit in on our Dark Paladin with an AoE attack, enough to cause a Critical and make him decide to fall back. The Tao and Ranger were hit, but both dodged sufficiently well to avoid taking damage, and then managed to kill it the next round between them.

The Dragon was next, and was muuuuch harder; My Tao got a round of decent hits in, but took over his total Life Points in damage from a single attack (the third one that round; which meant stacked penalties to Dodge). The Ranger and DP managed to hold out for another 3 or 4 rounds or so, but then the Ranger took a similar amount of damage to my Tao in a single hit, and then the round after the DP took all three of the Dragon's various attacks all by himself and was crippled beyond being able to put up a fight by the last one and we called it a loss there.

The last one was kind of an anticlimax; My Tao caused a critical with the first hit, but then rolled poorly for followup attacks, only for the Ranger to kill it in a single shot after that.

We'd had a similar problem beforehand; a Clockwork assassin had proved to be unexpectedly lethal, despite being built to the same level (or maybe one higher) than our party. And before that, we've had one or two fights end in a single good hit, much faster than expected. Consequently, we're all wondering if this is a fault of the system, something to just keep in mind, or something we can do something about. The damage characters output seems disproportionate to their Life Points at higher levels, and Armour and higher dodge/block scores only count for so much. So far our GM has suggested simply doubling everyone's Life Points, which would mean that what was formerly a one-hit-kill would now become a potentially crippling but not necessarily decisive critical hit instead. Has anyone else tried playing Anima at levels 8, 9, 10, or even higher? Any suggestions on what we can do? Rather, if you say "don't double the LP", please have some kind of alternative suggestion.

I've had similar experiences in this game. When characters can easily die because of a lucky roll, it gets as perilous as Warhammer. Characters need to do everything possible to leverage their capabilities. The most often ignored part of combat in Anima is combat maneuvers, which I think were designed to play a major part in Anima battles. Here are a few things that can help out:

1) Get the GMs Toolkit if you don't already have it. It contains defensive Advantages, Modules, and Maneuvers that you seriously cannot live without

2) Make sure you invest in your defensive skills. A block or dodge 50 points lower than your attack makes you a glass cannon. Shields are really useful, and make a major difference when your getting shot at with something.

3) Maneuvers are a way of changing a situation from a points contest to a real fight. It starts on page 83, you can see what conditions will add to your offensive, and what conditions you can place on your opponent that will make it really hard for them to defend agaist you. In a fight, get those conditions for yourself, and apply them onto your opponents with maneuvers. Use aimed shots, blinding, disarming, flank attacks, crush, or go on full defense for the +30 block, and soak attacks for a person who is the dedicated damage dealer (full offense mode, +30 attack), etc...

4) Having a healer or defender in the party is just as helpful as it is in MMOs. Tanks can run in and take hits for squishy characters, and healing is a major benefit - doesn't have to be a mage, any good Initiate of Rafael can heal.

5) If you do take a critical, make sure you roll your PhR test to see if you resist its effects

FWIW:

Tomod Leodsson

Dark Paladin

Life 235

Attack 290 (with +10 Battleaxe)

Defence 150 (base 160, dex +20, shield +50 (soak hits))

Damage 150/170 (one/two handed)

Armour 10 vs Physical, 6 vs Energy (between those for the other categories) +3 from Ki Technique [Heavy plate +10, Tough, Energy Armour]

Initiative +35

V.

The thing I like about Anima is that at higher levels you can choose to fight more opponents rather than just tougher ones. Anima is quasi-realistic in terms of damage output versus damage capacity; we are much better at ripping arms off with sharp things than preventing arms getting ripped off as human beings. I'm in agreement with a pervious post that Combat Maneuvers are vital in the Anima system, and turn it rapidly from dice rolls and totals to strategy and pinache fights.

What I like doing is sending waves of smaller opponents at characters as their levels increase. A high level combatant will be dangerous to fight, and fighting them each and every battle is going to leave the survivability of the characters in the hands of fate (ie: the dice). I would also suggest making "mid-boss" style characters a level or two below the characters but enhanced with minions.

My 2 cents.

The Tao has no excuse for not having some defensive ki dominion, honestly. The other two are mundane classes, but it's possible to take down some of the toughest level 15 creatures with a level 1 technician; a level 10 tao should be tearing the game apart. What, exactly, have you been spending your MK on? Because from the sound of it, you don't even have any techniques,do you?

And to put something else into perspective, at level 10 the three of you, each, have less LP than the weakest possible psychic shield.

I'm curious to see some full character sheets, but that'd take a while. Simply put, you'll not be able to deal with much using a party consisting of 2/3rds mundane classes with such bad defensive capabilities. They need better armor and shields; you need techniques.

Long story short, had I wanted to rely on Techniques, I'd have made a Technician, or worse, multiclassed and simply bought up Ki Accumulation and Ki points at level one before switching over to a Tao for the remaining 9 levels and abusing the world; I quite liked the idea of a "pure" Martial Artist, theme-wise. At lower levels, my GM convinced me to try a build that included more points spent on Accumulation/Techniques, but I didn't like how it played so he let me rebuild the character from scratch for this. Around100MK went on "Seals of the Dragon", from Dominus Exxet, and the rest has all been spent on Ki Abilities, like Energy Armour, the Damage Barrier equal to your Presence, etc. With that said, the realisation that the # of Martial Arts you can buy is based on your /final/ Att/Def totals makes a big difference, meaning that it's possible to have about 240 in both Attack and Defence, as well as 10 different Martial Arts. Ironically I am now tempted to spend the extra few MK on a cheap technique or two.

We played on Saturday.

Tomod was almost killed by a level 8 Technician - who rolled 610 for her defence and counter attacked with my damage. Taken to precisely zero hit points.

V.

My issue with your party is this, I am a level 3 Freelancer, level 3 Weaponmaster, and level 1 Tao, and I have 485 LP 235 Atk and 235 Defense with 10+ armor on all sections up to +15 for some type of defenses... admittedly I am a Weaponmaster and I am able to purchase wear armor for an extremely low price, but even if you do not have armor there is absolutely no reason to have defense less than 200 at your level and if they are complaining about getting killed or beaten so easily suggest they buy some life multiplier's to increase their hit points by their constitution modifier, or as some of the other peopel were saying purchase with MK a technique to give you a hit point shield (minimum 200?) for like 20 MK.

As a GM if the players create bad characters it is not your job to kill them, but if they are fighting types with crap defense and no Life Points it is inevitable they will die without some type of power to protect them, it seems to me they got caught up with the I can do more damage than you game. For that is the only reason they could have lost track of their defense armor and health so easily.

On another note I have a lvl 4 tao who has 180 defense, with 25 wear armor so I can wear an armored longcoat without any negatives. There are a few different martial arts that are purely defensive, not to mention you could also have selected natural armor 2 for 1 point during character creation, you could have picked any number of defensive abilities to protect themselves.

My best suggestion is to use that game also as a test as they were defeated, and have them rebuild their characters from lvl 7-10 again. Suggest they pick up some more defensive abilities, or maybe even give them a magical shield with a shield absorb technique on it that can activate off Ki points or Fatigue. At the very least that would give them a little bit more LP to play with.

My lvl 7 (Solo Campaign) character with 485 lp 235 defense and 14 cold armor got hit by a lvl 10 dragon's breath for 285 damage, I rolled a normal 78 on my defense roll and came up with a total of 313 defense, with the 14 cold armor essentially I had 453 defense for the purpose of this attack and still got hit for 285 damage, I have a magical shield I use with the shield ability built into it for 300 hp. I had it activated at the time and took no damage, the point I am trying to make here is that even though I am a defensive character with my defense and my armor, I still have items designed to help me live through those oh crap moments that happen to all of us in a game of chance decided by criticals.

This is actually a problem in the system I like to call, "realism". It was already pointed out above the problem: It is much easier to damage something than prevent damage to it. This is realistic, but not something we often want to think of in fantasy games. Add to that your party decided to go full offensive, if your attack and defense are any judge, which means killing you is easy, and you killing others is easy. Combat will almost always be quick, one way or another, and no guarantee who will win.

If you want to fight more stable battles, with a better chance of PC survival, specializing in defense helps. As noted, it is easier to kill than survive so specializing in survival means it is only slightly harder to kill but much easier to survive. Combat will last longer, but death to PC's won't happen as often.

I would have to jump on the bandwagon and say you guys built your characters shotty, don't worry it happens.

my group consists of--

a ki using, spellcasting, wall of a paladin (me): i'm spread super thin but i'm the one the GM has the hardest time incaping because my block is nice and crazy, along with a +5 shield and high armor. (just don't ask my paladin to do any skill checks)

a swiss army weapon master: with tons of hp and a decent block, he is almost never criticaled in the first several rounds of combat.

a war/men with cryo and PK: his shield is almost always in an innate, and he keeps good distance.

a smarmy theif: he uses a bow most of the time and when he isn't he does tend to get crited left and right, but he has bounced back each time so far.

we used to have a necromancer wizard who let his skeletons do all the hit taking.

we have yet to come close to a total party wipe yet, in fact i wouldn't mind some tougher baddies this week.