Hi guys!

It's been a while since I last posted here, but I just recently bought the Dominus Exxet supplement and me and my players have gotten really excited about Anima again now that we've discovered the endless possibilities the combat offers. However, therein lies a problem.

Let's face it, combat is a really, really big part of the whole Anima thing; there's five different ways to kick your opponent's ass, and that's not even counting in stuff like the Ars Magnum, powers from Shajads and Beryls etc. And it's absolutely wonderful: I have never played a game this diverse in all it's aspects. I myself am a very story-focused and narrative GM, so I like to narrate the battles and my players do too. Anima is very rules-heavy, though, so often times the combat becomes very slow and splintered, because first you have to calculate the rolls and the accuracies and the spells and the ki and the whatever, and once all that is done, THEN you can narrate. It gets a little tiresome after a few rounds. If you want a comparison, take Dark Heresy for an example.

Anyone got solutions to this one?

-Zaphkiel

And by the way, any clue about when will Arcana Exxet come out...?

Zaphkiel said:

First I would advise having your players calculate most of that themselves. If you can trust them not to cheat there shouldn't be a problem. Spend time making ability charts so the players have all their information written down and never have to consult the book, that way the only time the book will be needed is if you need to make sure the player read the ability right.

Have any players with Ki abilities calculate how many turns each ability takes both with normal, and 1/2 normal accumulation. Make sure they know the limits and specifics of what their abilities do.

Have Psychics copy down the tables explaining their powers, and if you can, get two different colors of dice so they can roll their projection and potential at the same time. While their at that they might as well copy the table explaining how far their abilities can project.

Have mages make spellbooks including: What the spell does, Zeon cost, what each +10 zeon does, rather it's passive or active, the maintenance cost, and any other information on the spell that is needed. Also have them copy the table explaining how far they can project their spells.

Have Summoners copy down the cost, difficulty, attack, defense, active/passiveness, the effect and duration of invocations they have, and the tables explaining how time effects summoning. Then give them a copy of any creature they can summon, and have them write down the summon/control/bind/banish they have to get to summon/etc. that creature, also have the table of what bonuses you gain for pacts.

If they all have copies of everything they will use for combat in front of them combat goes alot faster. and if they know what they are going to do when their turn comes around I find a turn can be completed in some 30seconds, including all rolls, it takes considerably longer if they need to look up anything whatsoever. Then if they ever have to look something up in the book have them write it down. That way they never have to look it up again.

Anyway that's what I would do. As per Arcana Exxet, Those Who Walk Amound Us comes out this year (Hopefully), if they translate the Character Dairy and Character Folders (don't know what those are but they are on wikipedia) then they have those three and the Core Exxet before Arcane Exxet. So anywhere between 1 year (If they continue to translate 2/year and skip right to core/arcana exxet) or 5 years (if it takes 1 year for everything above). I would suspect 2-3 years before it is out, but that is just a guess.

As Lia stated, calculate everything beforehand.

Use the Game Director screen (if you have it, or just use copies of the tables) and _order_ (in a friendly but firm way) to your players to pre calculate every % of their damage, the various effect they can apply and how those modify their final abilities and such,

If a character is going to use a skill/tech/power to add effects to an attack/defense, then it makes sense said character has a line on the sheet for that specific action. Should be a must.

After that all the GD needs to do is declare penalties (or keep that info for himself, when needed) and ask for _final results_ .

Starting with "100% damage with my sword, but I'm using it 2 handed, so 10x2+..." is going to kill every single session. But that would happen in any game.

In a few session my group went from checking tables and making numbers every turns to just declare final results, already calculated.

Any secret modifier would be applied last, by the GD.

After all, supernatural powers are really not that cool if you just roll some dices. Most people saying this game requires a lot of numers crunching actually played very few sessions, or never played at all.

We spent more time narrating and describing how we were doing stuff (flashy description for flashy powers, else it's really pointless ), than actually rolling dices and maths

My game took an interesting idea, and ran with it and it has been popular. We roll the combat, no narration, just numbers to numbers. Everyone takes down each rounds results for their character, and their opponent. Then afterwards, we group narrate. It's really cool. Seeing at the results of the combat are known, we can make some choices in description that wouldn't be there if we left it mid-combat. It's still really edgy and dramatic, but the descriptions are so colorful. though a bit of narration always manages to slip in during the "Finishing Moves"

...

like the Technician's "Pillar of Asura" Technique

...or the Wizard Mentalist's "Eternal Fire" Spell/Power combo [Fire Mage/Pyrokinetic]

...or the Warrior's "Giga Slam"

...or whenever the Tao uses his Ars Magnas [Existensial Seperation or something]

Yeah, the big guns.

Yes, I make the Wizard Mentalist name his Spell/Power Combos.