Hi, I have just two little questions. First, is about front cover of main rule book, I personaly think, it is really nice and well done front cover, but WHO is this girl in the first place? It looks for me like any random warrior girl, or something like that, is this character anyhow connected to the world of Gaia? I didnt read about Gaia yet, so I dont know...

And second about d100 system... I cant help it, but I just cant see any good reasons, for using this d100 system. I think, it is unnecessary to use d100, and would be better (simplest) to use for example just d10. I know I can do that and convert it, or remake it little, but my question is, WHY do you think there is this d100 system? Why the creators of this game choose to use this system in the first place? I know you are not prophet, but what do you think about creators reasons for choosing this system? Do you think it is good to handle attacks and all with d100? And why do you think so? Or have you any problems with that?

Just my curiosity... and thank you for answers in advance.

The forums at http://cipher-studios.com/AnimaBB/ are much more active and you can probably generate some interesting conversation over there with these questions. As to the questions I don't know if the person on the front is a named character in setting or not. There is a member of these forums and forum.rpg.net named Skywalker who would agree that the d100 is overly complicated. I believe he may have come up with a d10 variant. I imagine that it would work fairly well. I think partly the large numbers play into the over all feel of the setting "I rolled 400 that guy with 100 is gonna get smashed" while 40 and 10 are the same from a comparative point of view it isn't an "OMG GIANT NUMBER" would be my guess. However I'm not really positive, others may have better ideas.

Ok, thank you for answer, i will copy-paste my question on AnimaBB then.

The d% isn't a bad system for this. I normally dislike percentile systems, but overall, it works for the Anima game. Mind you, from what I can see of Anima, it is a 2nd generation roleplaying game (which makes it a bit rules heavy). I've considered how I would convert it to another dice system, but I'm not quite certain what I would use. Success-based perhaps? I don't know. Considering the scope of Anima, you'd wind up rolling buckets of dice to get things done.

Remember, skills go from 1 to over 300, and attributes go from 1 to 20. The range present is actually fairly extreme, and trying to scale everything using a success based system (which would be the normal alternative) would be difficult. For example, if we said "every 5% is 1 die), you'll see some people rolling over 60 dice at the upper end. And trying to add 'exploding dice' to the mix would be even worse.

Now you've got me thinking about this...

Well, Anima D100 system was probably chosen because the whole idea of Anima is based on Console JRPGs (Final Fantasy, Tales series and stuff like that), which tend to reach very high numbers. Unfortunately for Anima, Console JRPGs have an program calculating all dice rolls, making them instant, but when you play Anima the result is a grinding slow fighting system, which is probably Anima bad point...and I say it as an Anima-loving master, who has mastered Anima games for the last 4 years or so.

I must admit I found very useful the Mass Combat rules from "Those Who Walked Amongst Us", anyway, and choose to apply it whenever possible. Of course when you become confident with the system, you will still become faster, but don't expect big fight to be brief.

Oh, one last suggestion: 3-4 players plus the master is possibly the best number for an Anima campaign.