Implementing Limit Breaks and Trance in a Campaign - Any Suggestions?

[Lazaryus]

For those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy 7 and 9:

Limit Breaks are special, single-use techniques that are stronger than the equivalent that the combatants can normally use, which replaces the attack option, featured in Final Fantasy 7, and Trance is a short-term (2-5 turns) state of intense emotion, marked by a change in appearance and clothing and a surge in power, with new and more powerful abilities replacing their mundane counterpart, featured in Final Fantasy 9. In the games, Limit Breaks are charged (and Trance is activated) by sustaining a certain amount of damage.

While I don't know what to do for Limit Break, I was thinking about Trance becoming available after a major personal event at some point in someone's career, granting extra class from one MCA that has their class (I don't allow normal multiclassing, but I do allow alternate multiclassing, retraining, and gestalt) as the primary class, chosen after the event, at which point the MCA choice and the class that the MCA is based off of cannot be changed, even through retraining.

Any ideas?

[avr]

MCA? What's that an acronym of?

A limit break might be an action you can only do when reduced to half HP or below, or zero HP or below, or only when you've expended a lot of power (from the Exalted RPG, which I'm vaguely familiar with unlike FF). A lot of power might mean all your highest level abilities perhaps for spellcasters.

[Lazaryus]

MCA stands for MultiClass Archetypes.

How about a Limit/Trance pool that fills as they take damage, up to the equivalent of half their HP (healing doesn't drain the pool), and resets to zero whenever they rest for 8 hours and when they use their Limit Break or Trance. When the pool is filled, they may use their Limit Break or Trance.

An example Limit Break might be something like a Monk's Flurry of Blows, but can be used with any weapon.

[Lazaryus]

Any suggestions?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

What about temporary access to mythic feats?

[avr]

Mythic feats sound good. Combat stamina options on ordinary feats are less impressive but might give ideas.

Also I'd suggest that they have something in common - impressive auras. Call it a bonus to intimidate at least.

A quick google suggests that limit breaks work differently to the way I remembered, which might be an edition change. Details here if you're interested.

[Artificial 20]

Limit breaks and trances can be broken into two elements, cause (how you get them) and effect (what happens when you use one).

For cause, FFVII and FFIX both use a damage taken-based gauge, because this is a reasonably reliable event and indicator of challenge in their random encounter-based gameplay, which can't react with human intelligence to what the player is doing. If you want to recreate this closely, I would do something like award characters a limit/trance point every time they take damage equal to or greater than their level (with a minimum like 3 or 5 perhaps). When a character earns the maximum number of points they can store, 5 or 10 perhaps, after that point they can choose to expend them to do a limit break/enter a trance.

If you're not aiming to reproduce this exact charging mechanic, as another option I might suggest hero points. I'm not sure if you know these optional rules well, but characters start with 1 hero point, can have a maximum of 3, and gain 1 each time they level up. The GM can also award a hero point for significant acts, with some examples given being completing plot arcs, heroic acts, and returning from the dead.

Hero points are already fully-formed, so you could add limit break/trance to the existing uses, or throw them out and make it a limit break/trance system. This gives the GM more control over the flow of this resource, with a base rate of "1 per level up" making each use pretty significant.

Hero points are intended to be limited to PCs and maybe a few of their most significant allies/enemies, so this also matches well with limit breaks in 7 and trances in 9, which are almost player party-exclusive.

You could also use something based on the mythic rules' surge mechanic. Here the characters start the day with a set pool of points, much like ki or rage, and spend them when they deem it appropriate. This produces a more reliable mechanic where the characters will always have access to their abilities each fresh day.

I think the most important question to ask for cause is, about how often do you want the players to be using limit breaks/trances (roughly once per encounter, once per day, once per level etc.)?

As for effect, limit breaks and trances are both extremely personalised powers with unique forms and effects for each person. While trance is a singular state, you're either in it or not, limit breaks have levels (4 in FFVII). The game doesn't allow you to switch between levels during a fight, but that's a technical limitation rather than an explained rule, so you can either grant characters a single limit break that progresses with them, or give new limit break techniques and levels at appropriate points, kind of like spells, with higher level techniques using up more limit points or what have you. You could have a load of fun creating an entire array of powers for each character, if you want to do that much.

At a base level, limit breaks are usually powerful instantaneous effects that do a thing and end, most commonly damage. A few grant buffs or even a transformed state, but while the former may work, you probably want to group the latter as a trance just to create some distinction, since each game only had one mechanic and had to fit all its ideas underneath that.

If you want limit breaks to mix with characters' other abilities, you'll probably have at least 2 varieties: martial attack and spellcaster. To give a generic template, a martial being able to perform a full attack as a standard action, with no -5/-10/-15 penalties on their iteratives, would be one way to model a burst of offence that doesn't completely disregard their stats and modifiers. If you've played 7 or 9 to a higher level than needed to beat the final boss, you'll probably know confusion is a really annoying condition. One reason is that it can cause your characters to attack each other, and the HP/damage mechanics along with the stats progression of player characters results in high level play where party members do enough damage to one-shot themselves against monsters that have 5 times their HP, but do a 1/4th their damage. This is because FF games run parties and monsters on barely-related paths of progression, while in Pathfinder it's a little more unified, but the system is still prone to rocket tag at high levels as it is. You want to be careful about handing out the Omnislash unless you're consciously choosing to allow one PC to one-round a CR+4 encounter for the party.

For spellcasters, letting them either pick an existing blaster spell, such as fireball or chain lightning, and cast it empowered or maximised for free would be one nuke option. Alternatively you can let them expend an existing spell but use the limit break to slap on a free empower, maximise, quicken etc. (maybe each at different limit break levels). If you want a healing, buffing or other form of limit break besides jumbo damage, you can probably find a spell that does what you want or is at least a good starting point to build your own from.

For trances, you probably want to decide how long the trance lasts. You can do this a number of ways, but to err on the simpler side, a fixed duration is the easiest, I'd suggest 3-5 rounds as a decent value to last roughly "one fight" (if your own games have a different average combat length, you can adjust to this). You could go for something like "1/2 level rounds", but while I again don't know your home games, most games don't see the average round-duration of combat increase as the levels rise unless an intentional effort is being made to cause this. If you want to give some love to a sometimes neglected/dumped stat, I think it would make perfect narrative sense to have each trance last CHA mod rounds, but this would favour classes that already use CHA, especially if the mechanic is being introduced/explained post-character creation.

Trances generally have two types: you do the same things but stronger, and you do fancy new things. If you want same but stronger, I would suggest giving the character the advanced template for the duration of the trance. You could also give the benefits of a spell, such as Heroism/Greater Heroism, but this becomes tricky if a character knows or later learns the spell you choose, and it's hard to find a spell that feels comparably-beneficial to different types of character. If you want a one-size-fits-all option or starting point, I think the advanced template is the easiest to grab option that gives benefits everyone will appreciate.

For new fancy things, you could use variant multiclassing. The upside is this allows the trance abilities to progress as the characters do, with no real effect until level 3, which gives you time to have that major personal event (not that you can't defer it to later), and every 4-level milestone on the trance will gain further potency, maxing out at level 19. You could allow the characters to pick their VMC options for each milestone they reach, but only use them while in trance. The downside is that the VMC options aren't all well-balanced against each other, and were designed to be permanent features, so some options might feel like duds under this (I can't wait to add my character level as a competence bonus on all Craft (alchemy) checks and use Craft (alchemy) to identify potions for 5 rounds!).

Opening up some flexibility, one thing everyone loves having is feats, so instead of giving the VMC options that usually replace feats, you could instead simply give 5 feats at the same progression that only "turn on" when a character is in trance. I think this approach has more potential, as it would allow a character to e.g. select an exotic feat normally gated behind an impractically long chain, such as Whirlwind Attack or the Vital Strike feats, and work towards then acquire its use during trance. You also mentioned allowing retraining, which could be used to let a character gain a feat early through their trance, then later pick it as a normal feat upon gaining a level, representing them "mastering" the feat and going from using it only at the peak of their power/focus to employing it at-will. You could let them retrain the feat in their trance path, and as long as you don't allow the trance feats to act as prerequisites for anything but other trance feats, I think book-keeping won't become a major issue.

That's all I can think of right now. What you go for should probably be judged against your group's comfort with the standard rules and their capacity for new mechanics. I hope you have fun whatever you do :).

[Lazaryus]

How about I adapt the Honor rules to something to reflect the level of anger, from 0 being perfectly unflustered to 100 being blood-boiling disgust. Those who are able to use Limit Breaks and Trance have their own list of situations that, if they witness such occuring, adds points as they are irritated or subtract points as they find some catharsis. Trance will probably cost 20 points per round. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

As for Trance, I might give them either a temporary gestalt (HP stays the same) or mythic status.

[Seth Phoenix]

Lazaryus wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

While I don't know what to do for Limit Break, I was thinking about Trance becoming available after a major personal event at some point in someone's career, granting extra class from one MCA that has their class (I don't allow normal multiclassing, but I do allow alternate multiclassing, retraining, and gestalt) as the primary class, chosen after the event, at which point the MCA choice and the class that the MCA is based off of cannot be changed, even through retraining.

Any ideas?

If you're gonna implement anything like Trance, you should make it so you either don't have to take as long to get there OR that it doesn't go off the moment you meet the requirements. I loved Final Fantasy IX. I daresay it is my favorite FF title, but the Trance system just left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Tacticslion]

Dot

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Or you could just pick up this handy 3rd Party Product.

Feats of Legend Limit Break

[Daw]

For the Casters, perhaps they can have their spells be metamagiced, and/or upgraded to Mythic forms.

As to charging, I should think rounds of combat with chosen enemies will work for some. Damage taken for some, and even healed for others. I would think that the cause and effect should be individualized for each character.

Remember that your are going to need to seriously tweak things to allow "Party Combat Endurence" to last long enough for these limit breaks to build up in before dissipating at the rest sessions.

[Lazaryus]

I decided that I'll use the Honor rules from Ultimate Campaign to make an Anger system since both games describe charging Limit and Trance as the characters becoming angrier.

[Canadian Bakka]

I did a similar thing but I changed the concept of Limit Breaks to using the martial manouevres from the 3.5 Book of Nine Swords, which the players could purchase for their pcs by spending prestige points with the local adventurers' guild to obtain the feats that granted one use of a selected martial manouevre per encounter. Player would gain prestige points whenever they completed a (job) quest (this is for my Kingmaker campaign, where I changed the majority of the kingdom quests to be job requests from the guild).

This set-up allowed me to let the players have an additional bit of fun and firepower (on par with spellcasters of their respective levels since I did not allow any spellcasting class with 9th level spells) through completing side quests that helped them explore more of their kingdom and learn more about the setting. It is easily tracked and manageable in that they could not accumulate a lot martial manouevres quickly. Plus, it is a finite resource in that they could only learn martial manouevres of a given level and that they could also only learn a maximum number of martial manouevres, regardless of their character levels.

I hope that gave you some additional food for thought.

CB

[Lazaryus]

Anger System (retooling Honor for a starting point):

-goes from 0 to 100 (0 is complete absence of anger, 100 is blood-boiling disgust)
-Characters with 0 Anger become rather complacent (I've yet to think of a penalty for this)
-Anger is mostly reactionary (someone who hates dwarves would gain Anger if they spot a dwarf, and lose Anger if they kill a dwarf or sees a dwarf suffer misfortune)
-Trance cost 20 Anger per round (more Anger rewards to come)
-Trying to spend Anger on a reward you don't have enough for (i.e. trying to get one round of Trance when you only have 15 Anger) results in the character venting their anger without any other effect

Any suggestions?

[Lazaryus]

I'm split between short-term gestalt and temporary mythic status for Trance. Which option should I go with?

[Athaleon]

Gestalt and Mythic both add tons of complexity, not good for temp. abilities. It might be better to simply make up the effects from scratch, or just pick a few of the Mythic abilities and say "while in Trance, you get to use these". For example, an arcane spellcaster might get the ability to use Wild Arcana and Eldritch Breach (at-will, no expenditure of Mythic Power) during the Trance.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Temporary access to the mythic version of a feat, and perhaps the base mythic ability of a class is I think reasonable and doesn't require a lot of complex math. Characters might gain 1 temporary mythic point per round while in a trance state.

[Lazaryus]

How about an extra class feature (like the Rogue's Sneak Attack, the powers part of a chosen Sorcerer's Bloodline, or the Cleric's Channel Energy) that they can only use when in Trance?

[Talonhawke]

I didn't see it suggested so Final Fantasy D20

It has limit breaks built into the classes, most of which are reworked PF classes so they should be somewhat compatible.

[Canadian Bakka]

Talonhawke wrote:

I didn't see it suggested so Final Fantasy D20

It has limit breaks built into the classes, most of which are reworked PF classes so they should be somewhat compatible.

The work done by the individual responsible for that is impressive and seems to be balanced for the FF setting. I liked what was done with the Materia so I am implementing that into my campaign with some adjustments.

Not sure about the limit breaks (how viable they are with the restrictions they have) - the mechanics remind me more the Legend of the Dragoon, a Playstation 1 game waaay back.

CB

[Coquelicot Dragon]

Well, there are always the classics, like Armin van Buuren, Tiesto, Paul van Dyk and Above & Beyond. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going the safe route, especially when you're introducing it for the first time. But, I'd definitely make room for some lesser-known names, like Jason Ross, Nifra and MaRLo, so you don't end up with the same mix as everyone else.

[Doomed Hero]

I'd use Mythic stuff.

Just give your characters a 3x5 card with some mythic abilities and adjustments to their characters that are only available to them when they reach their "limit break" condition.

Limit Break conditions should be unique to each character, and some kind of cumulative, trackable achievement. Dealing damage, taking damage, or healing damage are the obvious choices, but it might be fun to do something like "when you reach a cumulative number of spells cast equal to 10x your character level in spell levels." or "every 20 favored enemies killed"