Pathfinder's Weapon Problem

I have a love/hate relationship with weapon lists. I think that's obvious from me moaning about the one in Mecha and Manga. I fucking love big lists of cool weapons. I love making a character who uses a strange weapon. I prefer being able to build a name around a single weapon anyway, so having to enchant it myself isn't that big a deal for me. Do you know what I hate, though? I hate it when a book is bloated up with weapons you'd never use in a million years, or systems that want to put an obvious tax on being unique or cool. Everyone uses longsword, greatsword, rapier anyway, and refusing to let anything horn in on those few basic weapons is pointless.

Not every weapon needs to be useful. That's not what I'm saying. There's always going to be people using sub-optimal weapons or armor for a million different reasons. The book has to include things like greatclubs because there's always going to be someone using them, some hill giant, backwoods hermit or ogre. On top of that...the idea of simple, martial, and exotic weapon proficiency means reasonably fair choices have to be presented at each level.

But 3.X had a few places where a designer lost his fucking mind, like the spiked chain and the scourge. Pathfinder happens to have more of those, and I collected enough commentary on weapons fill a whole post. I have something to say about a few overpowered weapons, but most of these are going to be on the other end of the scale as that. Far...far on the other end of the scale.

I'm also cutting a little slack for racial weapons. Many of them are very stupid, but racial weapon proficiency traits means they can almost always be useful to someone. Who would ever use a Dwarven pellet bow? A Dwarven monk, for one. Many other options are the same, like the Drow razor. It's more okay for them to be...not so good if someone is getting the proficiency for free or for cheap. If that's the role they fill, that's okay by me.

Here we go.


Brass Knife. Pirates of the Inner Sea was released like a year after Ultimate Combat. UC has rules for brass as a special material. Why didn't you refer to those rules? Why didn't you just use those rules? This is why I hate the splats, this right here.

Lantern Staff. What's that, there's a character in League of Legends who uses a lamp post as a weapon? You don't say. Anyway, here's my completely original idea...

Stingchuck. What lunatic created this? Why is this in weapons and not alchemical items? Who thinks a bag full of scorpions is an actual weapon? I want a show of hands. Who thinks an actual bag full of live scorpions belongs on the weapons list? This doesn't even have a listed cost, I'm so angry.

Boarding Axe. Listen, I know it's not much better than a handaxe. But it's noticeably better than a handaxe at the exact same cost. Do you splat writers not open the other books? Can't just...slap another gold piece onto its cost?

Dogslicer and Horsechopper. Do these need to exist? A short sword and a halberd with the fragile trait? These aren't even racial weapons. The descriptor of Dogslicer says "Goblins display unusual cunning by cutting holes in the blade to reduce weight". A short sword is two pounds, dogslicer is one pound. Was one whole pound of weight really that valuable to them? Why can't they have some kind of minor advantage? There could easily just be a short section on goblinoid races and weapons instead of idiocy like this. It's not like anyone was worried about how many pages Ultimate Equipment ended up being.

Sea Knife. Ooh, it's a slashing weapon designed only for use underwater. Quick, nobody look up what happens to slashing weapons underwater! Also, nobody question why an aquatic race would create a slashing weapon in the first place. Also, not marked as a racial weapon.

War Razor. So stop me if you've heard this one. It's a 1d4 weapon, with a 19-20 crit range, which gives you a +2 to sleight of hand checks to conceal it. Only this one is more expensive, a martial weapon, and can't be thrown. Holy shit, guys, the dagger is a core book weapon. What the hell is so hard about saying your particular whatever the fuck army, group or organization uses razors that function as daggers? Do the Inner Sea developers even have access to the other books? Are you making them work purely from memory?

Cutlass. This exists solely so people don't have to write "Scimitar" on their pirate's character sheet. Whatever. What the fuck ever, matey, you've got a "cutlass". This reminds me of how basic items need to be renamed or made "more manly" before some men will use them. Like "tactical" messenger bags or Hungry Man frozen dinners.

Gandasa. So this is a real Punjabi weapon, and its description is even pretty faithful. Neat. I just regret we have a whole "pan-Asian" weapon section unto its own and other cultures have to be squeezed into the corners of splat books.

Sword Cane. The weapon so irritating that it made me want to do this whole post. This is a prime example of missing the forest for the trees. Who is this for? Its concealed nature is a static DC. Regular guards have a reasonable chance to notice it, and that'll only get worse for you as your game progresses. You can just conceal a short sword with Sleight of Hand and have better luck. Probably even at level 1. Hell, you can probably conceal a weapon on someone else at a penalty, that sounds like a fair use of the skill. You can't even say this is a weapon just for style: It's worse than a shortsword and much worse than a rapier. Both weapons you have the proficiency for if you've got this one. This is truly a weapon with no point.

Syringe Spear. So, this is a Martial weapon, to the short spear's Simple. That sounds fine at first glance, but...can you explain to me how a spear with an automatic poison reservoir is harder to use than a spear that doesn't have one? Say someone picks this up and has no idea it's a syringe spear. He just...randomly takes a -4 non-proficiency penalty and has no idea why? Do you make a Wile-E-Coyote rule that he doesn't take the penalty until you tell him it's a syringe spear?

Hurlbat.

"Hey, Hunga Munga, can I copy your homework?"

"Sure, just change it a little so nobody notices."

Pilum and Gladius. Listen, I know we all love ancient Rome, but giving them slightly better versions of regular weapons is probably not the best play. I mean, if I resurrected an ancient Roman citizen, and showed him a picture of a Gladius next to a picture of a short sword, he'd go "Why are you showing me two pictures of the same fucking thing?" I can't shake the idea that there's some level of colonialism here at work, too.

Bleeding Arrow. At 360 gold each, this thing seriously makes me think of the old 3.0 Stronghold Builder's Guide, which had ridiculously inflated prices to drain money out of high level adventurers. Also I'll use this entry to say this about all of the special arrows: Ya'll really, really like Green Arrow. I can tell.

Barbazu Beard. Not sure I'm okay with a weapon that lets you use two weapon fighting along with a two handed weapon. Even if it provokes an attack of opportunity to use.

Gnome Pincher. Did you seriously, actually try to turn one of those extending claw toys into a viable weapon? You know, I keep seeing Melee Tactics Toolbox pop up as the source of the dumber stuff on this list, what the hell is up with that book?

Dwarven Maulaxe. As a minor note, this "two headed" light weapon includes a section on how using a striking head doesn't activate the "wrong" type of enchant, like if it's got Vorpal, only the axe head can activate that. Fine. I guess you needed to say that, I just always thought the type-locked enchants were nitpicking anyway. I guess that's a discussion for another time, though.

Falcata. A 19-20/X3 crit weapon? One of two weapons in the whole game that breaks the rule that you get either an expanded crit range or a higher multiplier? This thing makes me want to punch whoever came up with it. It's one of the few weapons in the game too good to ignore, and every fighter who wants to use one handed weapons should be looking at this thing. Bad fucking idea.

Butchering Axe and Orcish Hornbow. I mean, you get why it's maybe not a good idea to present an exotic weapon whose sole benefit is an extra D6 of damage, right?

Gnome Battle-Ladder. Someone call Jackie Chan.

Bladed Scarf. This is exactly what I meant by Cool Tax. This weapon is just an all-around worse Heavy Flail with nothing to show for it. The book doesn't even say it's somehow concealable. No, everyone can see those blades. It's no better than just carrying around a heavy flail, but it's still an exotic weapon.

Switchscythe. This little guy almost got away from me. I skipped it in my first draft. It's mildly inoffensive, honestly. My issue is that it's exotic: It's just a regular scythe that lets you collapse the head. Actually, while we're on the subject, what exactly is the benefit to doing that anyway? It's still going to be a curvy piece of wood with handles on it. Some guard's going to see that and immediately go "Where'd you put the head for that scythe?". It counts as a hidden weapon, so it would be a two handed weapon that can be used for things like Underhanded which require a hidden weapon. That doesn't even sound niche-y, it sounds overly gimmicky. Unintended.

Thorn Bow. It's an exotic weapon completely identical to a short bow that tells you to count it as a short bow. Actually, it's worse in range increment. Anybody but me see a problem? Anyone questioning why this exists at all? No, huh? Maybe we should just move on.

Hand Crossbow. I know. I know. It technically has a use. I just really hate this thing. It serves virtually no purpose, and it's only here because it's hanging around from the 1e days where Drow all carried hand crossbows loaded with sleepy time poison. There were thin-to-no rules on poisoning so you could just say you had poisoned crossbow bolts and your GM didn't question that the poison didn't dry up, and so the hand crossbow served to budget out your doses.

Launching Crossbow and Flask Thrower. Why would you put a worse but otherwise identical weapon in a book that's intended as a sequel? Launching Crossbow is in Adventurer's Armory and gives splash weapons a 30 foot range increment. Great. Flask Thrower is from Adventurer's Armory 2 and gives them a 20 foot range increment. Guys, the teams have to talk to each other better. Or at least read the other books. This is the exact kind of thing I mean when I say the weapons list is clogged up with stuff you'd never use.

Shuriken. The description actually states that Shuriken can't be used as a melee weapon. Yeah, no shit, they're teeny weeny. But here's the thing: They're classed as a ranged weapon, not a melee weapon with a range increment. None of the ranged weapons can be used as a melee weapon. That's why they're called Ranged Weapons.

Sling Glove. Is...is this just...are you just putting a glove on and throwing sling bullets at people? I don't have the book, someone please confirm Pathfinder's splats aren't that stupid.

Stitched Sling. I like the idea of this, but this being an exotic weapon really kills it. Counting it as an improvised weapon would probably be better for it.


Exotic weapons need to have a reason you're willing to take the feat for. They need to have a mechanics reason for it. This is important. A weapon being "cool" is not, and will never be a valid reason for making someone give up a feat or class ability to use it. It's awful that some people think that it is, when it's just restriction of creativity. D20 has a narrow list of optimal weapons, and expanding that list is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I tried not to pick on everything. There's a lot of exotic weapons that may not be worth taking the feat for, but we'd have to get into the value of the various weapon traits like trip and performance. That's pretty far outside the purview of this post. As it stands, I do think there's value in taking a feat or sacrificing some damage to get a trait, especially at lower levels. A +2 to trip can be a big difference below level 10, and it still makes an impact as you move into higher levels thanks to how few places you can get bonuses to CMBs from.

I'll explain why I only went over the core weapons list. First, Firearms are getting their own post, and while we're at it, we have to talk about modernization in Pathfinder too. The Eastern weapons, however? They're mostly okay. Honestly. They were obviously designed all at once by a single person or team, and there's no severe outliers like I saw with the (relatively disastrous) core list.

As an extra, I decided to flex the weapon creation rules to make a thing or two. I focused on niches that don't exist. The weapon creation rules seem a little tiny bit out of line, but they're good enough, I feel.


Clown Hammer; Two Handed Martial Melee Weapon
DMG(M): 2d6; Critical x2; Type B; Price 8gp
Special: Nonlethal

Always colorfully decorated, these oversized two-handed wooden mallets provide a +2 bonus to any Profession(Comedy) or any performance involving feats of strength.

~~

Juggling Balls, Weighted; One Handed Simple Ranged Weapon
DMG(M): 1d6; Critical x2; Range 10ft; Type B; Price 4gp
Special: Nonlethal

Weighted juggling balls are indistinguishable from regular juggling balls unless physically inspected. Someone can also notice that they're heavier than normal by watching you juggle: they can make a perception check opposed by your performance check.

Coming Up With An Origin Story

I liked my last post. I thought it was full of some pretty good information. It even got a comment! I never get comments. It mentioned how it can actually be pretty hard to come up with the bullet points of your background, the actual events of your character's backstory that I took for granted that you'd be showing up with.

God Dammit, Dareon. Right as always.

Right after, someone new to roleplaying was asking me about that very subject too. So I thought I'd see if I had any advice for putting a backstory together and not just what to write. Forty Questions quizzes and personality tests can help you form a character's personality, but I realized absolutely nothing helps you put together a backstory.


We'll start with what Dareon said in his comment, because he's absolutely right. Every character  background needs the following things.

A. What they were doing before they started adventuring

B. How they obtained the skills they've got at the start of the game

C. Why they started adventuring


Please substitute "Adventuring" for Shadowrunning, superhero-ing, or whatever sort of action your game has. It's got something, so Item C is always going to be relevant in some way. Right now I want to point out that if you have some really simple answers to those three items, that's okay. Like I said last post, it's your prerogative, it's your character, and it's all about what you want to do. You need something for all three, but it can be as simple as this:


A. They were a farmer.

B. They joined the local militia.

C. Their village was ransacked by ogres.


Classic First Edition Dungeons and Dragons stuff right there. This is the kind of thing you see for a low level character, because plot points in your history are always going to be informed by what you're capable of. Nobody's going to believe you single-handedly killed a dragon if your character is level three at the start of the game. Non-leveled systems are always better for this kind of thing, and if you're making a character in a World of Darkness game or an edition of Shadowrun, you can probably ignore this part. In general, though, try to think of what your character is able to accomplish when you're including things they did accomplish.

Before we go over the individual items above, let's touch on setting. You do have to fit what you're writing to the setting, but I wanted to mention this is also a really good source of ideas. If you're really blank, reading or talking about the setting, and seeing what goes on in it can be a wealth of creativity. Plenty of my ideas have been inspired by something as simple as reading lore bits in Vampire: The Masquerade or thumbing through regional descriptions in Forgotten Realms.

But you do have to try and fit your story to the world. As you go forward, make sure everything that you write can actually happen in your world. Keep details straight, and make sure everything is explained well enough. Involving organizations can be an easy way to add flavor. If something happens that's "out of character" for a group, be sure to explain it. Being persecuted by the church of Lathander sounds like a stretch...but being persecuted by a corrupt chaplain who still works inside the church of Lathander doesn't.


But that's a bit too heady for us right now. Let's go over the basics. Item A is "What they were doing before they started adventuring". This can be as simple as a profession, or it can be a timeline of incidents. It all depends on what you want to include. If you're stumped for ideas, take what you know of your character(Class, Clan, Race, or even just personality) and ask what their life would be like if they were in various situations or professions. You can easily cast about like this until you find one you like. Better yet, one of those might spawn the idea for some sort of incident or relation to their skills. That's good.

It can also be a lot of fun to play against type here. A lot of people feel that class, or clan, or auspice or whatever sort of details exist in a game logically inform a character's backstory. Wizards learn in academies. Monks come from monasteries. Brujah listen to The Sex Pistols and wear leather. No. No, there's that "Logically" word again, and it's just as unwelcome here as it is anywhere else on my blog. A class is just a set of skills. A race, vampire clan, or werewolf tribe is just something you are. There's no need for it to fit "logically". Your backstory should make sense, but you're under no obligation to fill someone else's expectations.

I've long used Porthos here as an example of a Barbarian who doesn't fit a typical mold. Along with him I can point out that Batman could be a Rogue. Ellen Ripley could be a Ranger. The brothers from Boondock Saints would probably be Paladins. So if you take anything at all from today's discussion, let it be that you're under no obligation to be a stereotype.

Item B might be pretty easy if you're following along and already filled out A. They don't always connect, though. You could have filled Item A with details of their life, and their profession is just a footnote. That's perfectly fine. Marrying two different concepts here might also be the key to a really neat background. A former Marine or other type of soldier might pick up a wide number of professions after they come home, as a quick example. Plenty of former military go into health care, but some open up pizza shops. Some work in machine shops or garages. I promise you that, at least once, a former Marine has become a birthday clown.

I do have a footnote before we continue, though. Be wary of anyone telling you that your background doesn't "Make sense" or accusing you of being a "munchkin" over your backstory. Usually, this is just people trying to use the L word against you without saying it. Accusing someone of having a "muchkin" background can often mean they just think it's boring and want their criticism to hold more weight than that. People lead weird, wild lives in the real world, and I've seen dozens of examples of people's real lives that would be called "unreasonable" as a character backstory. Fuck'em. On top of that, I could easily come up with a perfectly reasonable backstory for a monstrously overpowered character. I've done so many backgrounds, it wouldn't even be hard. A background has nothing to do with how "powerful" your character is. Don't let people pick at your decisions like that. In fact, don't let people pick at you for anything.

Ahem. Glad we had that talk. Item A does in fact inform Item B a lot, and it's okay if you want to just go with that. Remember what we said about interesting vs. "boring" bullet points last time and don't stress that your background doesn't sound "cool". They don't all have to be cool. Ripley has a boring backstory, and she's a great character.

Item C is also called an inciting incident, or The Call to Action. It's the event or situation that moves the hero forward and gets them adventuring. Your first impulse is probably gonna be tragedy. It's an easy inciting incident to write, to be sure. Before I give you alternatives, lemme just go over a few different types of tragedy that you can use. There's the obvious sympathetic tragedy. People who lost a loved one, got booted unfairly out of school, got put into a strange place against their will. Easy stuff. There's also tragedy that your character arguably deserves. This can be a super useful tool. If I want my character to be taken as a little shady, I can include jail time, or being run out of town for practicing strange experiments or magic. If I want to play someone who's repentant or a former villain, here's where his turning point goes. It can easily be a misfortune that turns him around.

But you totally don't need to involve a tragedy here. At its core, something needs to change in this person's life to make them move forward. It could be realizing they have a higher calling, feeling like they're wasting their life, or even some sort of social situation. All you need to do is tie an event to this concept and you're good to go. The fledgling paladin meets a homeless kid. The apprentice wizard meets a librarian who makes him fear that his own future is filled with dull nothingness if he doesn't go out and live, or a slave owner dies and his slaves are all unceremoniously dumped onto the street.

You're just trying to avoid an answer that sounds like a shrug goes alongside it. "One day he quit his job" isn't really a reason, it's just what happened. People don't always make decisions for big reasons, but you still need to put something here. Talk about the feelings that led up to their decision, if nothing else.  Virtually every movie has a Call to Action somewhere in it, and even non-fantasy movies can be a wealth of ideas.

You need a bit more than a movie character to go on. A character in a movie can be thrust into a situation, but once it's over, they just go back to doing whatever they were doing before that, a lot of the time. You need a reason your character wants to move forward. Still, you can use them as a decent tool: Watch a movie that's outside of the genre of your game, and think about how it would go if it were adapted to your game's genre.

There's also the idea that your character might want to accomplish a goal. Wanting to grow stronger is a little boring, but it's there. It's better to take that in a more specific direction. You could even take it in a direction that's not along their primary skill set: Wanting to become the world's best alchemist is one thing, but the same character with the same stats could want to become the world's best baker and still have a reason to adventure.

Villain origin stories are filled with goal-focused origins. Mr. Freeze wants to bring his wife back. D-Fens wants to give his daughter her present. Thanos wants Death to love him. Dr. Doom wants his country to thrive. Magneto wants mutants to thrive. If you're thinking you want to include a goal as motivation, I'd look to villains for examples. You don't have to be evil...they just tend to have goals.


Fuck me I hope this helped. It's incredibly hard to explain how to be creative to someone. I tried to put together a structure for you and give some common jumping-off points. If you take anything at all away from this post, let it be that your background is your creation. Learn when people are giving honest constructive criticism, and when they're just dumping on you. Take the first gracefully, and don't take any shit from people doing the second.

Writing an Origin Story

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."


I like to think I'm good at writing character intros, backgrounds and fluff pieces. Honestly, one of the things I've had to put serious work into was writing character-relevant things that anyone can read. I'd often have a problem of being pretty proud of something but then being totally unable to show people without explaining context.

But I slowly started to realize other people have a more basic problem with this. I mean, nobody has to write an origin story or character intro. I do it because I like it. But I started to find that a lot of people want to but don't know how. They don't know how to start or what to write down, and putting down a dry account of someone's life or background doesn't always appeal. So today I'm going to outline the methods I use, why I use them, and offer plenty of examples. Those examples are going to be pastebin links to things I've written, so I apologize if this week's offering is way more reading than some.


The absolute first thing you need to do is to decide the relevant portions of the character's background. Just put them down in bullet points, step by step life events. Don't be fancy or lump things together. Grew up in military household. Went to Boot Camp. Drummed out for bad attitude. Put together what made this person who they are when the game begins. Some characters don't have many of these...or even any. You see that a lot in low level Dungeons and Dragons characters. That's okay. We're going to handle that later. With this basic info, we're going to decide the structure of what you're going to write.

There's two main ways to express a character. We can do a typical timeline-style background, or we can write prose, a fluff piece. I'll explain fluff in detail later. In general, it's an extremely useful tool to get people to understand what your character is like when their background isn't long enough for a timeline. Or, even if you don't want to write a timeline.

Look at your bullet points. We're judging them on two things: The number of them you have, and how exciting they are. Please note I'm not asking you to write exciting backgrounds. It's not necessary. We're just judging the background on how likely it is someone will want to read it. It's fine to play a farmboy(or girl) who picked up a sword to defend their homestead from goblins. It's a great background, but that's a one-line description. Try as you might, you won't expand that into a traditional timeline style story. If you have a ton of little bullet points, and some wild, interesting events in their lives, however...a timeline might even be for the best. Here, let's look at an example of a typical, "describe the life" background.


Shivani Sedana, Shadowrun 3rd Edition


Before we start, you'll notice the description section. This is just something I find goes hand in hand with timeline style stories. Prose sometimes needs them, but often not. Including this is quite important if your character has a strange or exotic look, but even someone who looks far more normal than Shivani has plenty of details to write down. Strongly consider doing a written description, someone's appearance or style of dress can say a lot about them.

A lot of shit happened in Shivani's life. That's obvious. It's also a lot of stuff that shapes who she is, I wouldn't feel right not expressing all the details. I could have written a story surrounding her feelings of cyberpsychosis and loss of identity. Something set in her time at the mental hospital. I could still do that, but it would be long. Including everything I feel is important would take up a lot of length in the story, in flashbacks or dialogue. It might feel shoehorned in to put in every detail I think is important. Her basic timeline is pretty interesting by itself, though, due to how many interesting things happen to her.

The notes on her mental state section is simply the fastest way to get the details of her mental state across. What I should do there is expand that into some sort of prose piece that explains how it feels better. That's what they're good at: expressing feeling.


You also see this style a lot in genres where the events in someone's life are far more important to the character, like a superhero game or Vampire: The Masquerade. Hell, most World of Darkness games. It's okay to write these. It's not lazy, and it's not a failure. You should write everything you want to write, even doing huge stories with your character if you want. However, if your primary concern is introducing your character like I said today, you should probably stick to a certain length. I wish I had something to tell you here about how long it should be, but it's also a question of pacing that's impossible to answer. Generally, everyone playing with you will want to read it. They'll get discouraged if it's very long. Remember, they're probably reading everyone's origin stories.

So I asked you to look at your plot points earlier. Say you don't really have any, or better: You have one really exciting one and a few boring ones. You can always express your character through a story. You can invent a situation that could have happened in their background and write it out like a story. Come up with friends, enemies or other people to bounce ideas and concepts off. A little encapsulated story can tell someone a lot about how someone is, maybe even more than just writing their background out. Here's our second example.


Natalie Cable, Shadowrun


So it's probably not a surprise that the main character is actually the driver in this story, Nat Cable. I have a few "boring" plot points I work into the story: She's the daughter of a famous, stunt driving Shadowrunner. She's a physad, and not a typical rigger. I also worked a ton of her personality into this post: She drives a hearse. She likes retro style. She likes Halloween iconography. She's casual, deadpan and calm. She likes insane stunts and making wild plans like the coffin. You learn a lot about Cable by reading this. This is all without Cable really having a single bullet point: Her background is completely uninteresting, so I invented a small story to convey her personality and other traits to the reader.

Rollo, Davis and Nova are just Shadowrunners I invented for this story. Basic Payday 2 style bank robbers. A story doesn't always need more people than just your character, but it can really help. It gives someone to have a reaction(like Rollo does when he sees the Hearse) to lampshade that something about your character isn't supposed to be taken very seriously. Or even when it's the opposite and something is meant to be very serious. It gives you someone to have dialogue with, either about your character or with them. Both are very useful tools, because you're looking for ways to include information or feeling in your story without repeating yourself a lot, using the same method over and over. A conversation about your character, for example, can be a really useful tool. However: the longer it goes, the more tired a reader is going to feel.

There's also the idea that a GM might actually really appreciate having NPCs they can call on and use in the game. They're characterized a bit in the story, to make them feel like real people, but that also means they're ready-made for a GM to use if he wants. If your GM would never in a million years do that? Then they're very ignore-able. Silver lining.


It doesn't have to be a story, though. What we're trying to do is convey who your character is, and the supposed medium of that can even be a trait in of itself. You can write up a police report, a corporate work profile, diary pages, anything that sounds like it's thematic to your character will help get that theme across. Our final example.


Icke, Pathfinder


The idea here is that Icke is a goblin who used some doomed explorer's journals to teach himself how to read. This is mostly meant to be amusing to get across that he's not a very serious character, but even with this silly little thing you learn a lot: He's pragmatic, he's interested in knowledge, he's not one for agonizing over what he feels are useless details. It also gets across the extremely thin background concept of Icke: He left home in search of adventure. An incredibly common background.

Also, remember what I said about NPCs? Lord Schtolteheim Reinbach the Third did, in fact, show up in the game. He made it home in one piece after all.


A final note would be to think about the feeling you want to convey. A timeline generally conveys far less emotion than a story does, and this is something you can use to your benefit. Shivani's had a shitty life, but I don't want people feeling sorry for her. Writing her story out as a timeline can really help with that. If I were to write a story, you'd see her suffering and empathize. Of course, that could always be what you wanted in the first place.

I hope this helped someone. You should write for your characters for two reasons. The first is that it can really help you get into their headspace, and even make the other players feel like they're ready for this person. The other is that the only way to get better at writing is to do it. If it's bad...well, it's just a character origin. There will be others!

Appearances are Everything

"I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one."



Hi today I'm going to bitch about an old alternate rule in D&D as a gateway to discussing the broader concept that inspired it. This one goes out to all the Nosferatu out there. Ready? Count me down, Joey.

ONE TWO THREE FOUR


Comeliness is the seventh stat, much like Ophiuchus is the pointless 13th zodiac. It's the appearance stat, in most cases split off from Charisma governing anything related to beauty and physical appearance. It first shows up in 3rd party supplements, but Gygax eventually legitimizes it in Unearthed Arcana, a collection of alternate rules and helpful advice. It had a whole host of really stupid effects, probably because Charisma already basically did fuckall in first edition. Skills weren't the same in 1e and 2e, and because of it, rolling to seduce people or convince others happened a lot less. 1e wasn't the same kind of game as we play now, and Charisma's primary use was just what people thought of you when they met you, called Reaction Check.

It survived into 2e thanks to magazines and it did even less. An adjustment to those reaction checks. Whoopy, now we can twink out reaction bonus for virtually no benefit except annoying the GM. Finally, it crawls its slimy hide into 3e thanks to the Book of Erotic Fantasy.


Cripes, this book. If you're into alcohol, go pour yourself a little drink before we continue.


Full disclosure, I own this book. It was purchased by a friend's overzealous Significant Other and, when they broke up, it got left here. That's the truth, it's here by virtue of nobody else wanting it. I think everyone knows me well enough. I wouldn't pass up this chance for a self depreciating joke, if nothing else. This book is the better of the two 3.X "sex" books I've seen, which should have you recoiling in horror wondering what the other one has in it. Look up Spoony's videos on these books if you have a strong stomach, but here's a sampler: A CR20 giant purple dinosaur in a Hawaiian shirt called Colossal Gay Al, and...fluid...oozes. Like the kind of...fluid...that you'd see in a brothel.

Ahem. Let's get back to the subject. Book of Erotic Fantasy includes new rules for an Appearance stat, and splits its duty down the middle with Charisma, with Disguise going whole-cloth toward Appearance and other social skills getting a wimpy, milquetoast "roll whichever stat is appropriate" rule.

First off, no. Disguising yourself has nothing to do with how pretty you look. There's no way to spin that to make any sense at all. Second, Charisma in D20 games is notoriously thin, to the point of often being a dump stat. It usually requires certain classes(Noble, Sorcerer, Charismatic Hero) to be useful, or the large host of social-positive feats Pathfinder included. Otherwise, it's just not something you put points into. It's not something more than one, maybe two people in the group need to worry about.

The book also adds a class, a spellcaster named Imagist. It's...fine. It's not very special. It's definitely one of those times where if they had made something really cheesy or weird, I'd have less of a problem. It's pretty bland as it is, aside from being tied to Appearance as its prime requisite. Sorcerer being tied to Charisma is already kind of silly, and anyone gaining spellcasting power from being totes cute is too absurd for me to consider. It makes the relatively down-to-earth explanation and class fantasy stick out like a sore thumb.

So this rule takes the thinnest, least useful stat and carves it in two. What's the point? Well, some people want their fantasies validated by a number. I can definitely understand that. You want to be a big strong dude, and it feels good that the system validates that with your 30 Strength. You want to be a powerful wizard, and you're validated again thanks to your INT bonus as well as your levels and feat choices.

Physical appearance is another really common fantasy, so if I were to guess? That must be where this incredibly misguided house rule came from. I am the fair maiden, my 26 Appearance says so. I have a pretty big problem with putting a number to appearance, though. Yes, that means tying it to Charisma as well. As a small aside, this is another one of those places I say the book is just plain wrong. Several books mention Charisma is partly your appearance, often just being a single word added to the description and nothing else. If I were you, I'd forget that it ever did that. That goes doubly true for if you ever had an argument over this.

Anyway, I have quite a few problems with "Appearance" being quantified inside a system. Simple merits like "Good Looking and Knows It" are okay, but I still frown at those pretty hard, if I'm being honest. Let's go over why, saving the biggest part for last.


Stats in a game should be a thing you're able to accomplish or perform. Often, they're something that's genuinely measurable. You're X strong because you can lift Y weight over your head, and so on. This isn't always true(measuring Intelligence and Wisdom is pretty hard), but it's all things you're able to accomplish. To Do. Try as you might, you can't do a pretty at someone.

I hear you arguing over there. That it could be your ability to present yourself instead of a value of your raw appearance. I would say that's what you already do with Charisma. In fact, it's so close that it makes it seem even dumber to split the two stats down the middle.


That leads into my next point. Something like Strength or even Intelligence is objectively true. I'm this strong, my mind is this fast, I know these things. There are qualities such as symmetry that humans find objectively pleasing, but the nature of attraction and appearance is too subjective to put a number on. At some point, even your high-appearance character is going to turn someone off. You're going to describe them and someone will make a face: they'll have too much or too little muscle, they'll be too tall or too short, too many tattoos or hell, not enough. To say that these moments are because you "failed a roll" are ludicrous. Most checks allow you to retry at some point, so what happened to that person's opinion once you succeed later? Imagine telling someone that no, my pretty says it's a 30 so you have to be attracted.

And if you're trying to tell me again that Appearance is how you carry yourself, that just sounds like Charisma with extra steps again.


Having a 7th stat throws everything off, too. Assuming it's not something baked into the system already(like Storyteller) you have to alter character generation rules to fit it in. Most people these days don't feel that a fully random set of stats is a good idea, and that means opening up a can of worms. It would mean you're giving out a disproportionate amount of free stat points by providing a second dump stat. It's already bad enough that Charisma isn't very useful and Appearance would make it worse. I promise you that you will meet a TON of people who don't care if their character is ugly, or will even prefer that.

You'll move the goalposts and have the Nosferatu Intimidate Argument. In Storyteller, as in the Pen and Paper game, a Nosferatu can't win any appearance tests. They can still roll Charisma or Manipulation, so the horrifyingly ugly Nosferatu can still intimidate or scare people as much as they want. Great. In the LARP system, Mind's Eye Theater, there are only three stats. Their ugliness is represented by traits the people they're testing against can "call out" to make a test harder on the Nosferatu in question.

So what happens is that "horrifying" now means you also look stupid, foolish, and not intimidating or dangerous in the slightest. There's no way to justify this, but people tried. I promise you that the day you include Appearance in your game, you'll have that Barbarian in your party rocking a 6 in Charisma and a 6 in Appearance. You'll want to justify it being a bad stat. Maybe you won't remember this discussion we had here and start a stupid argument about what exactly a low Appearance means. It won't be solved because it's a bad idea for a stat with no quantifiable value.


Listen. Appearance is really subjective. Some people are picky about what their character looks like. Not everyone is. At the end of the day, it's just not a good idea to encroach upon someone else's idea and tell them what to do. I've seen this before in loads of different ways, and you know what? It never ends well. Forcing your ideas onto someone else's character will always end in someone being upset, especially if it's something as personal as what their character looks like.

People want to look cool. They might even want to look hot. People want what they don't have in real life. It's not a GM's place to "Bring them back down to reality", because this isn't reality. It's the GM's job to tell a story and make sure everyone is having a good time. Try as I might, I can't imagine a story that's going to be enriched by the GM acting like the Hotness Police, and that's aside from all the other problems we discussed. What someone looks like just plain isn't likely to come up and matter enough to justify a stat. All those years playing Vampire and I can probably count the number of times on one hand.

Can it come up? Sure. Anything can come up, that's the beauty of all this flavor we build into our characters. Not everything is dice rolls, feats and class abilities. Someone being pretty(or ugly or exotic) could absolutely come up. But so could them being the child of a famous painter, or the odd tattoo they don't remember getting. Or the beautiful pocketwatch they stole, or the monastery they're from.

That's gaming. That's what we do. We weave scenes around anything that sounds interesting or might make for a really cool story. Not everything has to be numbers and stats, and something as personal as what their character looks like is a prime example of something that definitely shouldn't.

DM Screens

"You won't die.

But you'll wish you could."

There are a lot of physical items related to our hobby. Like, sure there's dice, pencils and mountain dew, but a lot of people go the extra mile. Charts and maps on the wall, minis for combat, dice towers for fair rolling, and I've even seen people put a felt tray in the middle of the table so there's absolutely no cheating. Kind of a yikes from me, but it's not my group. 

There's also GM screens. Huge privacy screens either preprinted by the game company and filled with charts, or hand crafted with info pinned to them. Man, those wood ones are nice, it almost makes me not hate the whole concept. Almost. Today we're gonna talk about why I can't stand DM screens.

So the primary use of DM screens is providing secrecy. When you're behind the screen, you have plenty of space for notes and even dice rolls that nobody can peek at. You can have your module book open to the right page, you can have your notebook full of plans open, and you can keep all of your dice rolls a secret.

As an aside, I do want to note that there is some merit in secret dice rolls. I don't always make it a big deal, since it speeds up the game to just tell people DCs they're rolling against constantly. Analysis of information is definitely part of the game though, and secret dice rolls make the group rely on your verbal descriptions and their skill checks. Just make sure those verbal descriptions are good. There's also the undeniable fact that you might have to fudge the dice. I think you should steer clear of doing so to make a fight more challenging, but either way, it just needs to happen sometimes.

The other thing GM screens are for is information. While the outside is usually covered in art, the inside will have a ton of charts or other helpful reminders, like having the grapple flowchart from back when grapple was confusing. Maybe some rules on Attack of Opportunity, for back when we were stupid and thought those were confusing. Generally thinks which will be useful to have on hand.

Except...

There's a difference between what we think we need and what's actually useful to know. A lot of people who play World of Warcraft, or any other MMO, will have their user interface customized and cluttered with information. It seems like the more difficult the content is, the more crap they slap onto their interface. Wordup is one of WoW's theorycrafters and guide-writers. A while ago I saw him say that most people overload themselves with information and track a lot of stuff that's ultimately not very useful to know. At worst, they'll distract themselves. It got me looking at UIs with more than just a sickened expression and kind of inspired this post.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

I can probably think of a few charts in any pen and paper game I've played that you need to look at constantly. The Time and Value Progression Chart in Mutants and Masterminds. Condition modifiers in Pathfinder, if you're anything like me and forget what the difference is constantly. I definitely can't think of more than a few of them for a single game. Probably not more than five, and definitely not enough to fill a giant fold-out screen. If "All those charts" is why you like GM screens then I'm sorry but you're misguided.

I guarantee you've gone dozens of sessions not using any of those precious charts jammed onto the screen, and frankly they're only there to create a perceived sense of value so you don't feel bad paying ten fucking dollars for printed cardboard. Even if I was completely wrong, it doesn't justify the screen's existence, let alone its position propped up in front of you. You probably have plenty of space on a table, a side table, or a wall for some helpful charts.

Speaking of its position in front of you, I did go a little backwards on purpose. My main issue with these things is what they do to how you interact with your group. If someone really, really wanted those charts and just kept the thing stapled to his wall or in his lap, fine. I think it's a waste of money in a world where we have free photoshop programs, but fine. It wouldn't be that bad.

If you've been here with me since the beginning you know I don't like the idea that the GM is the Lord and Master. It's an inherently combative and antagonistic outlook that will eventually harm the shit out of your game. It's not even true: The only true metric of success we have in this hobby is if everyone had fun or not. Acting like a King, pushing people around and being overly strict with your rules is only fun for you: and if you really, seriously only care about your own fun...get another hobby. We'll all be happier.

Ahem. Not that DM screens do all that on their own. They're more like a tool the toxic GM uses which sometimes falls into the hands of regular, well meaning GMs. Putting something in front of yourself which virtually prevents two average height people from clearly seeing each other creates a psychological divide. Everyone will start thinking in different terms whether they want to or not. The GM and the players might even start "Othering" each other.

That's a lot of doom and gloom, but it does affect you. Maybe not that bad, but it will. In addition to that, it's a physical nuisance. It'll get knocked over. It'll get in the way. It'll make it harder for you to see the map, assuming you're using one. It might even get in the way when you're moving minis around or trying to plan monster actions.

You probably don't need that privacy as much as you think you do. It can be useful, but there's other ways to get it. Most people can shield a die roll with their hands if the other players are super close. Especially nosy people should be talked to regardless of your privacy solution, or else they're going to do something childish like try to peek your notes while you're in the bathroom. A really clever solution I've seen was to set the screen up on a side table and put your notes behind that. I still think screens are waste of money, but that's clever nonetheless.

If you're married to the idea, I want you follow the example of Matt Mercer. Look up footage of Critical Role of google what their table setup looks like. Matt is never obscured by his screen, and at all times the other players can easily see most of his body. His custom screen is positively tiny compared to traditional ones and never feels like a barrier. Ironically, I don't think he even really needs a GM screen due to his position when filming...but the cool wooden one he's got is at least a little bit of branding. A custom screen, one with clips on the inside, can be used in conjunction with note cards for keeping info like initiative or short-form monster stats visible. This is basically the only reasonable use for one of these things. I still think they're pointless, but Matt's custom screen is at least clearly inoffensive.


I feel like I've made my point. Don't feel called out, but every time I've seen a GM trot one of these out, I've gotten the distinct impression that they just liked feeling like King Dungeon Master and the screen was their badge of office. It's a deliberate effort to "Other" your group, and that's not a good idea. My groups are all older now, though. We're less disruptive. More cohesive and trusting. And nobody's brought up a GM screen in years. Maybe that's a coincidence. But I don't think so.

Savage Barbarian: Archetype Rework

"All the gods, they cannot sever us. If I were dead and you were still fighting for life, I'd come back from the darkness. Back from the pit of Hell to fight at your side."



I never do this. I hate doing this. You know I can't stand armchair game balancing and lazy "experts" coming up with endless house rules.

But.

The Savage Barbarian archetype genuinely pisses me off. At low levels you're massively under the AC values of a non-archetyped Barbarian or even a regular party, but at higher levels you're six or more points over. It makes no sense, and the strange, scaling design of this archetype feels either slapped together lazily or worse, broken because of "conservative design" nonsense rules. I can very easily imagine an internal rule floating around of "No alternate stats to AC".

On one hand you'd say "Stat to AC" is abusable. You'd just take Monk and Barbarian together somehow and add two stats to AC. On the other hand, I can already do worse with the rules as written. I just need to build a former monk, or one with the Aasimar trait Enlightened Warrior to get around the Barbarian alignment restriction. One level of monk and nineteen levels of Barbarian later, and I'm adding Dex, Wisdom, and a whopping eight more points to my AC before we talk about armor bonuses. No, my version's actually going to be less abusable because I'm not fucking stupid.

Please keep in mind this is not a new Archetype and shouldn't be used concurrently with the original Savage Barbarian. It is also designed with Unchained Barbarian in mind, which doesn't raise his CON value when he rages. If you're using this with the old Barbarian, you want to include a note that his AC doesn't go up with the bonus from rage. Also note that Naked Courage would replace Trap Sense, as Danger Sense is an intended parallel to that ability.

That's probably enough Ado.

Savage Barbarian

Natural Toughness: At 1st level, the savage barbarian adds his CON bonus to his AC when unarmored and unencumbered. These bonuses apply to AC even against touch attacks or when the Barbarian is flat-footed. He loses this bonus when he is immobilized or helpless, when he wears any armor, or when he carries a medium or heavy load. This ability is not compatible with a monk's AC bonus or similar abilities.

The Savage Barbarian is not proficient with any armor. He remains proficient with shields.

This ability alters the Savage Barbarian's proficiencies and replaces Damage Reduction.


Naked Courage: At 3rd level, the Savage Barbarian gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC and a +1 morale bonus on saving throws against fear when wearing no armor. Shields are allowed. This bonus increases by +1 for every six levels after 3rd, to a maximum of +3 at level 19.

This ability replaces Danger Sense.


Rage Powers: The following rage powers complement the Savage Barbarian Archetype: Guarded Stance, Flesh Wound, Superstition, Internal Fortitude, and Reflexive Dodge.



So there we have it. Here's my standard list of justifications. First is that losing their damage reduction is pretty big, so it's okay that Naked Courage is a little better than you'd expect out of a "trap sense replacer" ability. Adding a stat to AC instead of a flat scaling value of natural armor means we "front load" some of the AC bonus, enough that the Barbarian doesn't feel like he's gimped vs. the guys in armor. The standard Savage Barbarian ruins character fantasy by having the Barbarian needing to wear armor until his abilities scale up enough to take it off.

CON to AC will potentially scale better than the original version. A Barbarian who starts with an 18 and a CON bonus race will end a game with a CON of 36 if he works toward it. That's a CON of 20, 5 points from leveling, 5 points from a stat book or wishes, and 6 from a CON item. That's a total of +13 to AC vs. the +5 they get from the original version.

But so can Monk, and nobody complains. It's not that Unchained Monk sucks or is low damage, either. It's not mitigated by their weapon problems. No, it works out because a maximum potential isn't the only thing that matters when you're trying to balance something. They're only going to have so many stat points, and so much money. Even in my stat-heavy game proposals, they're still making a lot of tight decisions on where to put things. They're probably going to make a choice between a STR and a CON race, something Monk doesn't even need to do: There are plenty of races that give DEX/WIS and even a few that give STR/WIS.

It'll probably work out just like Monk does is my point, seeing as how it's modeled on Monk. Someone who centers their build around CON and AC will be giving up expertise somewhere else. Potential watch-points is their ability to use a shield, which the monk can't do.

The Worst Supplement Ever Made

"I made a very solemn vow about firearms. But for you, I'm making a once-in-a-lifetime exception.

A gun and a bullet, Darkseid.

it was your idea."



Okay so right off the bat, it's probably not the worst supplement ever made. The new World of Darkness's second phase had a lot of truly objectionable crap in it that I'm not going to read. That aside? Yeah, I'm surprised too. I'm surprised my first subject under "Bad supplements" isn't a 3.0 D&D book. It sure had a lot of crap thanks to the OGL and the rush of people trying to get in on that.

It's at least still a D20 book we're talking about. Mutants and Mastermind's supplements are mostly play and GMing advice and the like, since you have a limited amount of new things you can reasonably put into a M&M supplement. More on that later. I'm gonna take a little bit of time to explain some core concepts to you as they come up, since it's gonna be abundantly clear that the creators of Mecha and Manga didn't really understand those. Y'know. The rules. So with only a little further adieu, let's start complaining.

Oh, and I'm gonna end up using the word weaboo a lot. Don't take it personally. I just think it's funny.


Chapter One is a basic intro called Worlds of Manga.

Not much to say here, honestly. This is a necessary chapter in the book, and they explain basic genres and manga conventions well enough. However. I sincerely feel sorry for anyone who needs this chapter. I mean, 90% of people are going to buy this book because they want to play an anime inspired game and they still get PTSD flashbacks from trying to play BESM D20. So anyone who's really reading this section out of necessity is probably being pressed into playing an anime/manga inspired game by their weaboo friends. They have no idea what's coming and I sincerely hope their gaming experience doesn't look as much like the Sakura-Con Commercial as I think it will.

And in our first spurt of faint praise, the author manages to explain harem animes without letting on how creepy they are. That's not easy.


Chapter Two is the meat of the character information...but not all of it. You'll come across that major irritation later. Starting off is templates. I know this isn't the only book that gives these, but I'm not a fan. These are okay as simple inspirations for your character and what you might want to buy, but lord help you if your GM wants to enforce this and you end up taking a lot of traits you didn't want.

You already fucked up. The race hardly started. The dude fired the starting gun and you fell right the fuck over.

Lemme explain. The entire point of Mutants and Masterminds is that you buy what you want and you build the "fluff" of your character around that. You can be a classic tights-wearing dude like Superman or a weird looking freak like Bizarro and have virtually the same statistics. You can build Solomon Grundy, The Hulk, or Killer Croc and only have less than 10 out of 150 points different between any two of them. The idea that you need to buy certain traits to "be" something is ludicrous in this system.

And then there's the Archetypes. First off, they're all different power levels, meaning the writer doesn't understand what Archetypes are used for. They're included in a game partly for inspiration, but also for guidance. Inexperience gamers can take a ready-made character and make it their own just by changing a few points. Showing a final product and letting someone pick it apart is a valuable teaching tool. The vast majority of games in M&M will start at Power Level 10, the default suggested in the core. Every Archetype here that's under or over that number would require work the player may not be able or willing to do to use them. That hamstrings the primary reason you put archetypes in your game.

The Child Assassin is first. Her toughness/defense and attack bonus are poor for her power level, and that's a very negative thing to me. The core Archetypes are all well built in this regard, and have numbers befitting their power level. You don't have to build like this, but I'd say it's expected of most characters in Mutants and Masterminds. It's not expensive to make sure you have one good save and toughness/defense at your current cap. You can express differences via trade-offs between those two numbers. You of course have the option of...just not buying up this stuff properly. I just don't know why you would. Like I said, it's not expensive. I'm also not sure this is such an anime staple as to definitely include it.

Next is Circumstantial Idiot.

Lemme explain you a thing about Shinji Ikari. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a brutal deconstruction of anime conventions. Shinji is a pathetic, cowering loser who, no, does not shape up to become awesome and win in the end. He's placed into a situation far above him by an uncaring, abusive parent and all of that is the point. Whether it's even his fault that he's a complete failure is, I guess up to interpretation. I haven't seen the anime. I just know Shinji exists to express that putting kids into the situations most Anime put them into would be severe abuse in the real world, and that's one of the points Anno was making.

You're not supposed to like him, but many people the world over identified with him. I guess that's to be expected, since we're all pathetic losers thrust into a situation far above us at some point in our lives. His popularity eventually led to anime creators pulling the idea from NGE that people love pathetic losers and missing (or deliberately avoiding) all of the explanations and subtext. Characters like Tenshi Masaki and Keitaro Urashima get invented. Bland, lackluster idiots intended as viewer self inserts. Lifeless losers who coast through all of the important events of the show, winning handily without deserving it. Most of the time, they're the least interesting thing about the show.

Does that sound like something you want in your game? His near-useless build aside, do you really want someone explicitly trying to play a main character? Do you want someone playing a bland idiot in your game? Is it gonna enrich your game to have someone whose entire point is to just blunder into situations and get beat up? That shouldn't sound good, because it's a bad fucking idea. The "Circumstantial idiot" character ruins animes, it ruins mangas, and it'll ruin your game.

I'm glad we had that talk. Cool Sempai is next, and it's dumb too. She can make people love her and then also stun them. So, what. Is she going to be stunning people out of combat? For what purpose? Actually, if she can make people love her, what's she really even need that for? Is she going to be wildly gesturing every round in combat? Was this whole archetype put together as a joke without regard to if it's even really playable? You know the answer to that one.

The pointlessly included ESPer is next. Making a worse version of the Psionic from the core book sure did take up a whole page, though.

Exiled Deity is next. Mutants and Masterminds is such a cool fucking system that you can play something like this and it's okay. Of course, she's PL 15 so you'd have to all but create your own version of this character anyway. She'd take far too much editing down to actually use. And again, her numbers don't line up. It's fucking infuriating that these are poorly built on purpose when the core archetypes are not.

Exorcist is next. Shape up his attack, toughness and defense and you'd have a solid character. Not bad.

Future Warrior is okay too, but again it's pretty close to Gadgeteer and Costumed Adventurer, but this time I don't mind so much. It shows how you can bend those concepts and come up with something really different.

Idol is a good thing to include here. She's a "non combat" character, contrasted to the rest of the archetypes here which just happen to have shitty numbers. This is a concept absent from the core book and it's cool that they included it.

Magical Girl. The one-two punch of being very complicated and also poorly built! Bad archetypes piss me off in any game, but this is one that people are going to really be flocking to given how popular the genre is, and I'm sad that this isn't a better character for them.

Modern Sorcerer. Oh look, it's the Mystic but bad. Great!

Priest. Completely incomprehensible build. It'd go better if I could figure out what character this was supposed to be an homage to. The examples include Rei Hino from Sailor Moon and good old Miroku from Inuyasha. I dunno, this archetype doesn't fit either of those characters very well.

Student. Fuck you.

Techie. OH LOOK IT'S THE GADGETEER BUT WORSE ARE YOU ALL AS TIRED OF THIS AS I AM?

Troubleshooter. Is there some giant glut of assassin manga I just never knew about or is this a weird thing to include? Also, MARTIAL ARTIST, NEXT

Warrior. Is this some sort of commentary on how generic some characters in anime are? Am I being punked? The characters listed as examples are Guts from Berserk and Mugen from Samurai Champloo. I mean, the fact that Mugen was useless outside of a fight was kind of the point of the character...

Whew. Okay. I had more to say about these god-awful Archetypes than I thought. To the author's credit, they give examples for each archetype to help you along, and some of them are pretty deep cuts in terms of anime. Anime fans will probably appreciate that this book brings up some classics and hidden gems in addition to popular stuff.

Next comes some commentary on skills that I'm going to skip over. It's a lot of reiterating information already available in the core book, but I guess providing context for skills in an anime game is a better use of book space than those archetypes.

Feats. Oh boy. I'm not going to comment on every feat. Some of them are fine, and a few are even kind of good. This is where the the book starts to turn into a weird mess, though. It's where you start to wonder if the author has a solid grip on the game's rules or not. In general, he invents several feats that let you "bust" power level limits, particularly on skills.

Here's a super-quick explanation. In Mutants and Masterminds, your maximum allowed numbers are fairly important to building a character. Your maximum skill ranks is five plus the game's power level, the maximum save DC you can inflict is the power level itself, et cetera. What to buy and what to bump to this number is a core part of building your character. It means the game is less about what you're "inflicting" and more about how you get there. A stealthy character at power level ten who does absolutely everything they can to raise Stealth skill(Maximum dexterity and ranks) is going to have a +30. There's just no way to make that number any higher short of leveling up. Period. Where he can express more expertise is instead in the powers he takes(Concealment, Obscure, Insubstantial, et cetera) or the small list of stealthy feats.

 I'm solidly 50/50 on the idea of feats that can overcome these limits. On one hand, M&M has a lot of "conditional" feats that you end up not taking. They aren't that much cheaper than just buying a non-conditional source so it feels like a waste to take them, especially if it's a bonus to damage, attack, defense or toughness. So sometimes busting limits, especially with a non-ranked feat, seems okay. Nice, even. But on the other hand...they start to look downright required, since they're the ONLY way to get a higher bonus at some point. I wouldn't blame anyone who thought the idea of going above the game's limits was too big a can of worms to allow.


Attack Flurry. I'm mentioning this because it's basically just Autofire, the extra, expressed as a feat. This kind of thing is unnecessary, but okay. It gets people thinking outside of the box, which is where the fun really starts with M&M.

Distracting Looks. This is one of many things in this book where I'm just plainly not sure how the fuck it's intended to work. The save DC only scales up to the game's PL, but nothing else is limited. There are three effects, two of which are listed concurrently for no reason, and it's unclear how you pick what happens. It just says "Whatever applies". Do they all apply? Does the user pick? Do you pick when you buy it? Do you have to buy a different version of Distracting Looks for the other two? These effects also all scale with ranks above the game's Power Level, meaning you can easily inflict something like -20 to will saves or -50 to interaction check DCs with you.  It's not even that expensive. Is this penalty intended to take numbers negative? You know, you don't auto-succeed on a 20 in this system, so this feat and something that inflicts a DC 21 will save may as well be a no-save power even if this power isn't intended to cause negative numbers. In addition to its awful vagueness, you now have to think about the sexuality of every NPC they're able to interact with, which I promise you will leave you feeling like a creep. Especially if you end up rolling randomly.

Kawaii. Why does the penalty inflicted by Distracting Looks scale but this doesn't? Just because it's attack rolls? I'd say Will Saves are pretty fucking important and I can build someone so fucking smoking hot that they inflict a hundred point penalty to them. What about this power made someone have a temporary moment of clarity when they were designing?

Slap Silly. Listen, I know there's a weird problem with grapple in M&M, but this was probably not the best way to balance it out. This is damn close to an "Everyone takes this" power. There's also a reference to renaming the feat. I know they're just joking, but no. This is a massive pet peeve of mine. Do NOT rename things you take. Not your skills, not your feats, no. Unless you're trying on purpose to be a headache.

And before I continue, I just want to point out that this book does stop every once in a while to crack a joke. It keeps the anime feel up while reading and it's one of the few things it did right.

Well Known. This is a ranked, unrestricted bonus to diplomacy. The DC for taking someone from hostile to friendly is only a 35. In fact, the strict "attitude shift" version of diplomacy here is showing its age, but Well Known being a massive oversight isn't helping. Between this and Distracting Looks it's really cheap to create a character who instantly solves every conflict with anyone who could possibly be attracted to them or knows who they are. This is genuinely the kind of thing that shouldn't have made it past the editing phase, let alone playtesting.

Playtesting? Who am I kidding? This wasn't playtested. Only two playtesters are listed, and that's plain-ass not enough to actually playtest a product unless the writing staff helped and mysteriously wasn't credited.


Powers are next. The section starts off by saying that Manga heroes are particularly apt to gain 1 point powers as feats instead. No. No, first of all that makes no sense, and second of all, mucking with terminology is needlessly confusing. This is already a system that confuses a lot of people and you're not fucking helping. Having powers listed on your sheet doesn't necessarily mean your character has "Powers" and this is already a huge hurdle for some people to understand. "Powers" is just a category of abilities, and characters who are normal people can still have them. Of course, with some of them you'd obviously be stretching what you mean by normal.

This is also where most of M&M's supplements fail a little bit, so I promise I'm trying to be kind. The thing is, you can't actually add new powers. Everything is intended to be built via the "building blocks" of the base powers in the core books. It's how the game is intended to function. All you can really do in a "powers" section is provide examples of how to put powers together in new ways. That's what Mecha and Manga tries to do, and...falls really flat at. Once again, I'm not discussing everything listed. Some are just okay. None are great, honestly.


Battle Form. This is either boost or alternate form and I can't for the life of me figure out how they arrived at this points value, especially for "second stage". Unlike the examples in Ultimate Power, they don't say how anything is built. The addition of this power impacts the elegance of the system by adding a muddy, weird power which may or may not be "worth it" to buy over powers that do a similar thing.

Combo Finish. And Combos in general. Honestly, I'm all for adding complexity when that added complexity can make something feel different or special, but I don't understand what Combo does that can't be done by a simple "Limited" flaw. Your GM might not agree, but I think "Must be used after a certain other power" fits squarely into the definition of Limited. Otherwise, this system feels like a lot of bloat that brings fuzzy decision making into a game whose core appeal is all of your choices being valid ones.

(Martial Arts) Stance. This is just an example of the "Container" power structure, and it'd have been real nice if the book said that so a reader could go "Oh, so that's how these work" or "So an alternate form doesn't have to be something like Johnny Storm. Neat!". It'd have been a teaching moment that the creators of this book apparently don't care to put in their product.

Maybe that's a real petty thing to include but, like I said before, this is already a game that confuses a lot of people. It's confusing even despite fairly elegant design and explanation in Ultimate Power particularly. No, the authors don't have some obligation to be helpful, but I really wish they had been.

Shadow Clone. This is a power which has no point to buying additional ranks to it. I have no idea how you fucked that up. It's based on Duplication, which requires you to buy ranks to build your duplicates with more power points, but...Shadow clones can't do anything. It's also something like illusion, and illusion scales based on the will save to disbelieve, and the area of the illusion. Shadow Clone doesn't have those either.  It just...doesn't scale with ranks. In addition to that, the clones can Interpose despite not being able to affect the physical world, meaning this is one of the cheapest defensive powers in the game if your gm is an idiot and lets you take it.

Substitution. This is better in every way than Deflect while being massively cheaper. It's an insanely bad idea to design something like this, not just for being so close to deflect, but also for being cheaper than it by at least 3 points per rank since its action is "reaction" out of the box. One of the core ideas behind Mutants and Masterminds is that there's no "hard decision" on what to take. You find the thing that does what you want, and you build it from there. A building block that looks kind of like Deflect, with a cost you can't justify inside the core rule set, is an awful idea.

Conductor. You know, I think the reason this extra doesn't exist in the core book is that you can just pick "Air" as the medium connecting you and the victim and avoid any implied limitation in most circumstances. But, if I'm being honest? This is hardly the only abusable extra so I guess it's fine. So long as your GM keeps an eye out for people trying to be "clever".

Next they have a section on complications and drawbacks. It's fine. It's just repeating things from the core book, but it's fine. It's from an anime or manga point of view, at least. Some of their sample complications are really, really likely to lead to trouble, like "Obnoxious" and "Secrets" but I'd be lying if I said obnoxious characters and toxic secret-keeping didn't exist before this book.

The author forgets to put the value of the drawbacks at the end and puts them within the explanation paragraph, which is such a failure of basic structure that I'll give him the commemorative White Wolf Book Design Award for it. The drawbacks themselves are okay, except for "Part of Body". Applying a power to only a portion of your body raises too many questions. Mutants and Masterminds doesn't have a rule for Called Shots, so this drawback brings up a lot of fuzzy situations on-the-fly interpretations. One of the system's staple flaws "Limited" applies if a power is unusable roughly half the time, like only being concealed at night. Imagine how often having an impervious head is going to come up in a game that has no called shots. Far less than 50% of the time, and since it's a drawback, you're getting even fewer points back than Limited. Alternatively, it may hardly matter at all depending on how it's designed by the player, like "Only my eyes can shoot the laser beams". You want to watch out for drawbacks that will never come up, as well as ones that will come up far too often.

The end of this chapter and the beginning of the next is more advice on character building, world building, and tone. Great. I still don't know who really needs this advice, but it's good stuff to include in your supplement.

Then comes the meat of the Mecha section. I'm not gonna pick this apart. It's okay, so long as you take it as an optional rule. There are certainly worse ways to run a Mecha Anime game. I don't know if I'd use these rules in a mixed game, though, especially since powersuiters are going to be prevalent in M&M and this brings up some weird mathy stuff when compared to buying their suit as a device. You want to avoid that. Otherwise, this is a pretty good, meaty system for mecha that would be just what a game needs for a decent anime feeling.

Martial Arts section. More world-building advice. Listen, I don't want to disparage including stuff like this or anything, but...this is included without any thought to who bought this book. I mean, presumably you know stuff about Manga and Anime if you bought the book, right? If you didn't, there's a good chance you wouldn't bother. So who exactly is this for? This is best included in terms of fitting anime conventions into a game...which the book does some of. The rest is just...re-explaining things that the reader probably already knows. I still keep thinking about that one poor motherfucker who was near-forced into playing an Anime game with his weaboo friends who has no idea what the fuck it is beyond "I saw Dragon Ball Z a few times on Toonami."

Speaking of DBZ, there's a little rule for calculating "Chi Level", which is PP spent on ability scores, plus PP spent on powers, divided by 5. This is the one major compliment I'm giving to this book, so listen closely. This is a great little rule because it subverts "Power Level" in DBZ in a big way. What I mean is, in Mutants and Masterminds, spending the lion's share of your points in powers, even offensive ones, doesn't mean you're more likely to win a fight. Therefore, someone with a low "Chi Level" still might be a major threat. Judging by what he said in this section, I'm going to assume the author meant to do this. So that's your one point so far.

There's a section here that basically suggests to describe your character's attacks or powers as certain video game effects. Anything that gets the creative juices flowing is great, but you should probably know that this is a bit of a crutch. And definitely verbally describe the effect, absolutely don't do something like saying "She does a kick and it looks exactly like Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick." You can be better than that.

Then comes a big, confusing section on equipment weapons. It's fine to add some more equipment to the game, but...man. Man, this could have been put together better. Each weapon has a core type, which the individual weapons then modify with some sort of effect. But, the table of weapons comes first and the stats of the "type" come later. I...do not get why this is put together like this, other than maybe someone had a mini-stroke during the layout meeting. I feel like I'm reading House of Leaves, I keep having to flip back and forth. Otherwise, this is just your standard giant list of Asian weapons that the weaboos go crazy for. It's okay. I'm tired of this because I play a lot of different PNP games, and not everyone does. Especially in M&M, weapon lists like this will probably inspire someone.

Next is an honor and reputation system. I don't know about you but I'm fucking tired of gameified honor outside of systems which revolve around it like L5R. Unlike the Mecha rules, these feel really pointless. The Reputation system is particularly thin and may as well not exist. It provides nothing to the system that a simple rank of the "benefit" feat wouldn't.

The section on "Martial Arts Stances" gives Drunken Boxing a penalty to checks to be knocked down, but also Instant Up and Prone Fighting. it's also yet another product supporting the fallacy that a drunken boxer is necessarily drunk when fighting. To be fair...it's a fallacy repeated even by drunken masters, so I guess I'll give you that one. Otherwise, these are almost exactly like the "templates" above and you can repeat my comments on those. It's true that dealing with an asshole in your gaming group is a greater problem than anything a book could do, but giving that asshole a reason to be pedantic definitely isn't helping.

There's also a section of feats and even archetypes this deep in the book. If only there was a place to put those things that would be more appropriate. Bullet Time is a hilariously bad idea for a feat, requiring more than one rank to provide a benefit and giving you extra actions whenever you action surge with a hero point. At least it says you can still only take one extra attack or this might be the worst thing in the book.

Honestly, while the Mecha section had feats too, I didn't go into them because they were primarily relevant to the Mecha rules, which I called an optional rule set. These, however, would be useful to a wide range of games, and some of them are even pretty fun and unique. The fact that they're back here in the ass end of the book is a crime. There are a few feats that reference Chi level, but...there's references to the Reputation system in the feat section and they didn't see a problem with that!

And then there's a bunch of powers, most of which should just be in the powers section, because not all of them are directly relevant to the Chi optional rule. This is also where I start to really gnash my teeth over the author not including how he built any of these powers under the core rules. Flash Step is a great idea, but...it's just a few ranks of teleport. Just say it, explain that's how you built the power.

People buy LEGOs for the sets, of course. They want to make a pirate ship, or a Millenium Falcon, or a house or something. They also buy LEGOs for the pieces and the infinite creativity to make whatever they want. A lot of the time they do one right after the other. You know what really helps? Showing the steps of how you make the original item in the set. That way it gets the creative juices flowing, shows them tricks they may not have thought of, and gives them something to base their own creation off of.

Mutants and Masterminds is LEGOs. The archetypes and sample powers are the instructions. This book has no idea why they're there. It misses the elegance of the core system, so it does things like refusing to explain itself in its example powers and making wildly differing (and frankly awful) archetypes. I never thought I'd see a book with a fundamental misunderstanding of design this badly, and I've seen 3.X books that literally got the actual rules of the game wrong.

Anyway fuck me there's a section on Pokemon. They call it "Pets" of course. Probably to involve all the Digimon too.  Unlike the previous two sections I'm gonna dump on this one for being largely full of redundant or pointless rules. In M&M, you can easily have a pet using Summon, Minions or Sidekick. Complexity isn't going to enrich this game type and, unlike our other two genre sections, this one has game systems better suited to running a meaty Pokemon game that'd feel great and very close to genre. This section is generally pretty full of pointless complication but, I'm just gonna pick out some of the dumber shit.

The basic pet rules section states that a pet acts on the controller's initiative, plus or minus their own bonus. Furthermore, if the monster acts before the controller, it acts on instinct until you command them. I mean, do I have to explain this one? This is a system where you can just...infinitely buy your own initiative bonus up so it's not quite that bad, but this attempt to simplify just ends up complicating everything. It's potentially an incentive to make sure your pet has a bad initiative bonus.

Then comes the tricks and purposes system lifted directly from D&D. It's fine there but...I don't know, this whole section is clearly an attempt to do what the Mecha section did and provide something unique for a themed game, but I can't help but think this is really pointless and bloated. Maybe it's because it's just taking something the core game already does and making it more difficult. If we were running a core M&M superhero game and I wanted to play a guy with a cool dog, I wouldn't have to worry about any of this.

The next section is "Gamemastering Manga" and it starts off with advice for hero concepts.

I can't.

I just can't.

ANYWAY it goes through a lot of basic personality archetypes and a lot of the commentary I could make here is more general and not solely focused on this book, like "The Whiner" being a pretty toxic thing to play in a group, or "Tsundere" and any of the other "-dere" personality types being reductive and ultimately pretty harmful. That's not really the author's fault, people(read: Weaboos) would think it's weird if you went this whole book without mentioning them.

Then there's a section on gameifying relationships. First off, no. Second, if you must, there's way better games for this. MAID: The Role Playing Game, maybe. Otherwise, a lot of this is, once again, information I genuinely have no idea why it was included and advice for that maximum weaboo feel to your game. There's nothing in this "Gamemastering section" that feels like we're talking about gamemastering, it's just more blandly generic advice like the whole rest of the book. It's almost like listening to someone full-on ramble about Anime, then taking that mashed-up mess of a transscript and just placing chapter headings randomly.

There is yet another optional rule here, for streamlined "challenges". It's basically a rewrite of the whole game system and, honestly, I super don't recommend you do stuff like this. If you find yourself wanting to use things like this or D&D's E6, or you find yourself using more than a dozen house rules...you need to just start looking for a different system that fits what you really want better. At some point, you're starting to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

After that there's some antagonists, some NPCs, some setting suggestions, and my perennial favorite thing, Mass Combat Rules! Oh boy if there's one fucking thing M&M doesn't need it's this. If there's one fucking system that doesn't need rules for Mass Combat, it's this one.


I'm done. I could probably keep going, but I'm done. I didn't want this to be even longer and even more repetitious by dwelling on the problems with the later sections. Like I said, a lot of this is fine, but even the stuff in this book that's fine...leaves me wondering why it's even there. I mean, who's buying this book? Was it wise to assume the reader knows nothing about Japanese culture or Anime? Would it have improved this rambling mess of a book to tighten that aspect up? Probably not, I guess. As it is, though, the basic, general overview of Anime it gives leaves me repeating that word. Weaboo.

It's frustrating because there's virtually nothing to take away from this book. The advice is mostly redundant and rambling, the powers are mathematically upsetting, the feats are broken, and the archetypes would require so much reworking to use that they may as well not be archetypes at all.


Let's leave on a positive note, though. In the very beginning of the book, just underneath the design credits, they give explicit permission to print a copy of the electronic book for personal use. Some of the other supplements do say this as well, but even so. Good on you guys for being so clear about that.