Skywalker said:

I would hardly call it vitriol. If I was feeling particularly vitriolic, I wouldn't have pre-ordered their product.

Also, Second Contact contained absolutely no relevant information. It was their proverbial hype machine. It spoke nothing of how the game plays.

Swordwraith said:

I didn't claim that Second Contact contained any mechanical information. At Gencon and in the very first email contact last year, the Eoris guys said that Second Contact would provide a view of the setting and Third Contact would provide a view of the mechanics including an adventure.

Setting is an important aspect of an RPG and how the RPG is intended to be played. As such, Second Contact was a useful preview in its own right.

Skywalker said:

This forum needs a fork thread option.

Really, this forum needs to be completely gutted and re-done, because its nothing more than a bad copy of Edge Entertainment's....

And it really wasn't a useful preview. It certainly wasn't 20 pages of setting information. In fact, we still know comparatively little.

What should have been released early on was Third Contact. Second Contact was just more "ooo, ahh'. They had a character sheet on their website at one point, but quickly pulled it.

But, seeing as this an Anima forum, I suppose we should get back on topic. Then again, I'm not sure what else there is to discuss: You don't want to speak to the flaws, and its clear you are finished with the system, so what exactly do accomplish by posting here? I'm certain it is not merely to shill for Eoris.

Swordwraith said:

I still don't see how releasing Third Contact almost 2 months before release date is not early enough. Again, it still seems to me that they are doing more to provide official prerelease information athn most RPGs out there.

Swordwraith said:

I agree that the Eoris topic is best elsewhere.

My reason for posting was to respond to the OP. I am not finished with Anima. I bought the book and spent hours on it. There is much I like about it and I may still continue with it should another options not pan out.

However, my experience with Anima has if anything cemented my opinion that there are serious mechanical design flaws with Anima's system. Anima's system is salvageable. To what extent it is salvagable will depend on each person. However, if you go into Anima with concerns about the mechanics then IMO those concerns may well prove founded if you buy it. As such, seeing the OP had such concerns, I wanted to relate to him my own experiences.

Salvaged from its myriad unspeakable flaws.

It's certainly not for everybody. It's as complex as D20 but makes considerably more sense, and is largely intuitive after you've read through it. However, it's definitely a game where the players and especially the GM need to have read the book, and people into more "rules light" games like Sorcerer or Fudge will probably want to go someplace else.

In most cases, the system requires one roll for success - a single roll + ability (contested rolls naturally require a second roll). There's no considerable difficulty to the core mechanic, really.

Incidentally, if you want to "fix" the hundreds (I actually like the hundreds, but it's your mojo), I suggest d20 rather than d10. D20 gives you multiples of 5, which much of the game system defaults to. If it isn't a character or monster statistic, it's probably in multiples of 5 rather than multiples of 10.

Pneumonica said:

I agree with this for the most part. Anima at its heart is actually closer to BESM with some built in structure for differentiating different types of abilities. This underlying goal was what sold me on Anima.

Pneumonica said:

For the most part I agree. In fact, it is the elegance of Anima's heart (which I liked a lot) that makes the need for numerous pesky book referencing for specific and seemingly arbitrary mini-rules even more annoying. Anima could been a fantasic RPG, but IMO the rules need a serious comb through to get rid of such knots.

Pneumonica said:

I agree. I actually stuck with D100 to preserve the increments of 5. The type of dice used isn't really a big deal in the big picture. Its mostly a cosmetic thing.

I don't think that the rules of Anima are too difficult per se, rather that they are spread out through out the rulebook too much. An appendix with the main tables used in game play would have been an excellent idea. The thing I like about Anima is that it is highly versatile and has the rules/mechanics to back it up. First edition storyteller tried to do this but really fell down on the rules backup. Having played truely incomprehensable games like Chivalry and Sorcery, Mythus and especially the wargame AIr War, Anima is not that hard. Those who have played ICE's Rolemaster will agree that there is much less table lookups in Anima.

In short if you want the versatility that Anima provides you have to put up with a higher level of rules.

This game really issn't overcomplex, But it does require you to read the entire rulebook, probbly more than once, which I don't really see as a terrible thing. Calculating Damage feels like a chore and i'm sure when I run my first campign of this I just know at least on PC is going to forget to take something important like "the Gift" Advantage for there Magic user or something but that feels like the worst of the problems I'm going to have with this game.

Having read thru most of the book I like what I've seen so far, but a few things are sort of disjointed in my mind. I hope you are still checking the forums Ysalaine, Skywalker, and Swordwraith, as I've read your posts and find your information informative and well thought up from multiple perspectives. I was hoping one of you three (or someone with experience on rule basis) can explain to me the ranged combat die roles. For some reason the book was stating that the power of the arrow is more important than the placement of it, and therefore after all modifiers the max final attack was capped at 280. I don't understand why a bow attack would differ from a sword swing, and the power and precision is important. For bows, I would think that the precision would be more important.

The other thing is the "secondary" attack feature of ranged attacks. Book was stating that even after you successfully exceed the targets defense check that you need to exceed a difficulty (using the same number from you attack role) based on the range. So in essence you could hit the target, and still miss. I sort of understand this, but in my mind it just means that the farther the target the higher the number to hit him, but if the target fails his defense then you will most likely score a higher damage due to a larger difference between attack & defense. In essence, at longer range you are more likely to hit, but when you do hit you are more likely to score a devastating hit vs a grazing hit. Sort of confused, hoping for some different informative opinions from people that have had a chance to actually play with the system in live scenarios.

Malvarus said:

No idea. Just another arbitrary exception IMO. Perhaps it has something to do with aerodynamics and terminal velocity

Malvarus said:

I imagine this is to allow range to act as a penalty to hit but not reduce damage. It does take out lower damage but they probably saw that as less of an issue than taking out higher damage.

So what orderdoes it activate with ranged attacks.

is it Defense roll + range modifier = to hit number or Range modifire + defense rolle = to hit number or is it To hit roll + modifires-Range penalty = to hit number VS Defense roll + modifier -penelties

Luced said:

I don't have my book in front of me, but Malvarus quote said:

"Book was stating that even after you successfully exceed the targets defense check that you need to exceed a difficulty (using the same number from you attack role) based on the range."

That seems pretty straightforward to me. The range penalty acts as a minimum Margin of Succcess for the attack.

Skywalker said:

Anima was my answer to Exalted and Eoris Essence will (if it's ever released!) take Anima's place. I've wanted to try Anima, but it seems like it's busted from the gate (when I ask about starting it I get a LOT of house-rule advice) and the amount of bookkeeping and the like gives me the same gut-feeling Exalted did (of course, the Anima crowd is MUCH cooler! Save Skywalker; he's wicked-cool no matter the game) and makes me put the book back on the shelf. Making characters was a pain in the ass and the entire Ki recovery bit made our mathematics professor cringe, so he scrapped his martial artist. There's also no good reference to how you're going to stand-up, so you spend hours making a character, slog through the system and find out, "Hey! My guy sucks!".

I agree that Anima doesn't feel cinematic at all. It's seems very slow and overly-crunchy. is this the place to voice this? Perhaps not, but if my fears are known, then maybe I can be turned into the solid fan I'd like to be.

Yeah the rules are not that hard to trim down. Iv streamlined combat myself so that i dont need the table.

I have ignored open rolls, and fumbles, because if you roll a 5, your probally going to get smacked in the face pretty hard ANYWAY, without the extra -15. Also open rolls can get a bit retarted some times, (as cool as it is to roll a 500....).

Just take the final attack roll minus the defense roll and then if the final number is positive, thats the % that you multiply base damage by. then subtract 5 pts per point of armor, for final damage. If your final roll is negetive thats the raw bouns your defender gets to counter attack.