Azoth Lapis's page

Things are taking a little longer than expected due to implementing a few requested systems.

Most NPCs have had to be rewritten to match the new rules, e.g. Elephant-in-the-Room. It's easy to build NPCs from the ground up with the rules we have in place, but it does take some time to strip pre-existing statblocks and reconfigure them.

I would rather get all of that out of the way now rather than it come up a few weeks or months down the road when the information becomes more immediately relevant. My reasoning is that it's less troublesome for people to wait on a recruitment than it is for the GM to amend rules in-game and expect people to wait on that.

Just wanting to phone in and let interested parties know what's taking so long.

As promised, I'm back from my vacation and ready to answer questions. I still have some details to finish formatting before I post recruitment, so my prediction about it being sometime near the beginning of this week hasn't changed.

This isn't the full creation guidelines, but a response to questions being asked and a few things that might be worth considering.

We're using the Sub Job rules that The Lobster so graciously dug up for me. It's what I originally intended to use about two years ago for this game. I'm willing to let people choose the VMC variant if they really want to though, since the Sub Job is not always better, again with no feat tax.

The starting level is 7th. I chose that specifically so that most mages can have access to '-ra' level spells, specifically Red Mages, and everyone else can get some of what I deem to be iconic powers.

You have the option of using traditional Limit Breaks or the Revengeance Limit Break variant upon character creation.

You have the extra HP provided under the Static Hit Points rule from the FFd20 site, but your CON modifier is applied normally instead of being skipped at first level.

Every character has an extra MP bonus equal to their casting stat bonus times their level. In the case of magicless classes, this is their highest mental score bonus times their level. Materia use MP as well and this lets magicless classes still be able to utilize them since they will be taking the place of wands and staves. Not to mention it helps mages use their main class feature more.

I originally didn't plan on using Elephant in the Room, but I'm familiar enough with it in the mother system of Pathfinder that I'm going to incorporate it. It doesn't really give huge boosts in power so much as it opens up concepts.

My original plan was to include Background Skills and that hasn't changed.

The point buy system is going to use what was once considered the golden standard for FFd20 games on one of the FFd20 Discords using Sub Jobs. That is to say that you set one ability score you determine to be your 'main score' to 18 and buy the rest with the epic array of 25 points.

The desired posting rate for both players and myself is once a day. I know things come up, so people will have one 'freebie day' a week that they don't have to give me advance warning for. I would like advance warning if a player plans to miss more than one day a week so I can take control of their character to move things along.

I don't really have requirements for backgrounds, personality, and such. All I will say about that is that I don't like bland characters whose background exists solely to explain their statblock and that I am conversely not expecting a full-length novella. I'm ultimately leaving it up to each player's discretion, which will serve as it's own litmus test to help me pick players. A friend once told me that a person's choice in what they write about and how much reveals a lot about how they approach not only the character, but the game itself.

I think that's enough interest to warrant a game. I'm going to be busy throughout the weekend, but a game should materialize the first part of next week after I get back home.

If there's anything you'd like to ask about while we wait, don't be shy.

@The Lobster: Thank you so much for finding that! Now I can run my original vision for the game with no alterations.

Dissidia does have some canon lore, but only up to Dissidia NT and you have to dig for it like you would in Dark Souls. My version of the world is about two millennia past those events, so there's a lot of homebrewed lore. And since the setting was more or less a blank slate with only suggestions about where things were going, I was free to tinker with it as I pleased.

I feel I should clarify: none of the inhabitants of Dissidia that are alive now are from another world, although most of them are from one of the reflections found in Dissidia. Even the Great Heroes- who are the imperfect clones of the characters in the Dissidia games and serve as the Elminsters, Mordenkainens, and Abrogail Thrunes of the setting- were technically "born" as natives since they sprung from the sacred crystals bestowed upon the world by the Great Will following the events of Dissidia NT. The same goes for even the twin gods Materia and Spiritus, who were formed from the essence of the deceased deities Cosmos and Chaos. So, while you might play as a magitek-wielding SOLDIER from the city of Midgar or as a sacred dancer of the tree-city of Cleyra, you aren't actually from another world.

*I suppose you could technically consider the inhabitants of the moons "from another world", since the moons are planetary bodies that exist in orbit above Dissidia. I still consider them native though since they are not from one of the Final Fantasy worlds beyond the Rift and did not come from Arruboth or Pandemonium.

Don't worry, there will be a big enough lore and setting dump come the day I release the recruitment. Most locales will get around a paragraph of a description, the history of Dissidia's world will be probably around 4-5 Word pages of information, and there will be some expository information on major figures of the setting. Those figures will include the divine entities of the world such as the Warring Triad, the twin creator gods Materia and Spiritus, the Elemental Archfiends and the Lord of Hell, the Zodiac Scions, the Great Heroes created in the image of the heroes and villains that returned to their own worlds, Shinryu the Plane-Eater, and even a few scraps of information on the Great Will, among others.

The original interest check I made for this thread was originally around four pages before I decided to pare it down and that only held about a 15% of the information I had written. So the setting does has some heft. I also have concept art from the Ultimanias that I plan on using as visual aids to show what the various locales and major NPCs look like, as well as any creatures we run across. That's one of the wonders of FFd20; you can find art for basically anything in the franchise to really spiff up your presentation for the players.

I'm very interested in this, as I've never seen this AP from the player side of the table. Would my pre-existing knowledge preclude me from selection? I can keep out-of-character knowledge separate.

@Sebecloki: Knowledge of Final Fantasy's fluff isn't required. It will definitely aid in your appreciation of the game if you have some though. Most of the information you need is going to be in the exposition and setting drop.

Final Fantasy doesn't have traditional clerical classes that require devotion apart from the Cleric. There are some with ties to sacred or profane energies- such as the White Mage, Paladin, Dark Knight, and such- but devotion to the gods is not the primary way to gain power in the Final Fantasy universe. Magic is magic in this universe and has no distinction based on the source, only what type it is. If you're familiar with Magic the Gathering, it's similarly divided into color-coded concepts here by and large.

Black Magic is destructive or debilitative in nature and ranges from elemental spells to devious tricks like poison or draining HP from enemies to restore your own.

White Magic is mostly supportive in nature and consists of healing, buffing, and the occasional debuffing, with only a select few high level holy spells being used for damage.

Blue Magic is strange in it's own way because you learn it from enemies who use it and provides a wide range of spells, many of which are only useful in specific scenarios.

Red Magic combines Black and White Magic and is sort of a generalist approach to magic, with some unique spells thrown in the mix depending on the game like spellblade effects in XIV.

Green Magic- now known as Time Magic- focuses on a variety of time and space-flavored buffs and debuffs like Haste, Slow, and Stop, plus things like Comet, Gravity Ball, Teleport, and similar spells.

Astrologian Magic blends healing spells, utility spells, some divinations, and a select few damage spells like Sunburst.

Bards don't have magic per se, but their Bard Songs function as spells in everything but name. Bards are capable of massive buffing and have a smattering of other types of spells. Not too much different than the Pathfinder Bard if you really think about it.

Dark Knights and Holy Knights are essentially Antipaladins and Paladins and have spell selections to match. Dark Knights have a great deal of shadow damage-based spells, personal buffs, and a few summon spells. Holy Knights have heals, buffs, and holy damage-based spells.

Druids and Geomancers have about what you could expect and are very close to the Pathfinder Druid with what kinds of spells they have access to. They're nature mages with a broad swathe of potential spells.

Illusionists have a spell list consisting of, well... illusions.

Necromancers specialize in spells that deal shadow damage, status effects like poison and zombify, and instant death effects. Instant death effects aren't as strong in FFd20 because most "bosses" are flat-out immune to them, just like in the video games.

Summoners are very similar to their Pathfinder iteration, focused on conjuring creatures, gear, et cetera, and have a smattering of other things like elemental and utility spells.

There are a range of other magical powers that resemble Spheres of Power spherecasting, Path of War maneuvers, and what have you, but those don't function using the MP system.

Based on your stated preferences, I'd suggest looking into the Bard, Thief, White Mage, Astrologian, Chemist, Cleric, Dark Knight, Necromancer, Time Mage, Dancer, and Ninja. There are quite a few archetypes and some are modeled on existing Pathfinder archetypes, so you will probably be able to find something that suits your tastes.

Clerics get very different spell lists and class features based on what Deific Order they belong to. Just be aware that Clerics are not as bland as they first seem because of that design choice. Link for Deific Orders.

@Storm Dragon: There are absolutely Blue Mages in the FFd20 system and I always aim to give players access to as much Blue Magic as I can. So you won't run into the normal problem of a GM being stingy with opportunities to learn new Blue Magic.

I'm holding back on revealing the full guidelines for now, but I can understand the desire to know more. So here's a sampling of character generation rules.

- Race: All races on the FFd20 SRD are legal except for the Immortal and Palico races.

- Class: All classes on the FFd20 SRD are legal. The Persona User archetype is banned for flavor reasons since it isn't native to Final Fantasy.

- Hero Points: PCs will start with an amount of hero points equal to their starting level.

- Hit Points: Static Hit Points will be used. All that basically does is make the HP you get from your first class level higher so that you can take more punishment. You treat HP acquired upon gaining a class level as if you rolled the maximum for your HD as well.

- Sub Jobs: There used to be a category for a system on the SRD that worked more or less like a weaker gestalt. Since I haven't been able to find the Sub Job section since the website's revamp, players just get a multiclass side that they must select at character creation. The various class VMC options and what they give can be found here. There's no need to exchange feats for this VMC. That's roughly the equivalent of the Sub Job system from what I recall.

The Final Fantasy franchise is something considered to be a masterpiece by millions of fan and the unofficial Pathfinder/d20 adaptation for it is much the same in my ever-so-humble opinion. With covid making face-to-face games hard to manage and the email account I made to post an FFd20 game on another site compromised by hackers, I'm desperate for a place to run an FFd20 game.

If you're familiar with FFd20- or have just glanced at the link I provided- you'll know that there is almost as much content for it as there is for first party Pathfinder 1E. The problem is that most GMs want to run a game in a pre-established Final Fantasy world, which cuts out a lot of the options due to not every world having every race or class. My solution was to find and work on a patchwork Final Fantasy world and, as providence would have it, there already was one canonically.

The concept I've labored over for quite a while now is an FFd20 game set in my own version of 'World B' from Final Fantasy Dissidia, thousands of years after Shinryu the Plane-Eater's defeat and imprisonment by the warriors under the gods Materia and Spiritus. World B- which is referred to in my iteration as Dissidia- was already a patchwork world with a map based on Final Fantasy I's 'World A' and had locales created ex nihilo by the twin overgods of the setting, drawn from the memories of the heroes and villains that were trapped in Dissidia. This means that players are free to create characters of almost any race*, belong to any class**, and come from a reflection of almost any location in Final Fantasy's extended multiverse.
*The Immortal and Palico races are banned because they are not from Final Fantasy's universe.
**The Persona User archetype is banned because it comes from Persona.

My version of Dissidia isn't just a patchwork world existing in a vacuum, it has it's own cosmology based on locales throughout the games. The twin moons that hang in the sky are practically small worlds unto themselves. The twin afterlives of Arruboth and Pandemonium are the setting's versions of Heaven and Hell respectively. It has it's own planar hierarchies too, with Elemental Archfiends, Zodiac Espers, Astrals, and the Warring Triad, among many others.

There's a lot to unpack about the setting- which I dug deep into both my own knowledge pool and the hefty Ultimania books I own to craft- and character creation rules, but I'll save those until I see whether there is any interest. My plan is to leave this up for about three days and see if there's enough people interested to allow me to run the game.