Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting

castfromhp · 04-28-2011, 12:58 AM

This is very much a brainstorming thing for me right now, so I apologize if my thoughts in this post are a bit scrambled.

Ivalice is one of my favorite settings from Final Fantasy. The architecture, aesthetics and focus on politics are all great, so I decided I wanted to make a sourcebook for myself for running Final Fantasy style games. After looking through a few of the older threads on this, including one about FFXII in particular, I haven't found something to help with the specific approach I wanted to take, which I'm having a lot of trouble with.

Some FF RPG projects like Returners try to very closely model gameplay from the videogames in a tabletop. Even some GURPS rewrites got rid of the entire default magic system and instead modeled spells as powers. That's not really how I want to do things. The progression from fire to fire2/fira to fire3/firaga is frankly boring. Mages in FF are commonly seen in FMVs or other non-battle parts of the game to use what would be analagous to the cantrip spells in GURPS like create fire to light a cigarette. I think giving mages versatility in spells is a good thing. Instead of just fire, they should have fireball, flame jet, etc.

However, I do think the default GURPS spells are lacking in sheer mass damage potential. GURPS wizards seem much better suited to be utility characters. This is fine for Oracles/Mystics, Red Mages (to an extent), and a few other of the mage classes, but a Black Mage is meant to be superior at sheer nuking power. To this end, I think I'd like to create the -aga spells, flare, ultima, etc as powers, likely costing a lot of FP and being x times a day casts.

This brings me to my biggest dilemma with what I'm working with thus far. I'm working on templates for the major classes I plan to have in the game, but I realized there's really nothing stopping someone from taking the Black Mage template and then sinking the rest of their character points into buying Ultima or a similarly overpowered spell rather than going through the progression of weaker Black Magicks.

The idea I had was to make packages/templates for multiple ranks of a class that would not only provide advantages, skills, etc (ex: black mage 1 would grant magery, choice of spells from fireball, lightning, etc, probably some energy reserve) but also act as a prerequisite system (ex: no buying some of the more advanced weather spells until you're at least black mage rank 3). A high rank might immediately grant a choice of one of firaga, blizzaga, and thundaga.

If you've tried statting out big spells as powers, you can probably see the issue already. Ranks would cost an inordinate amount of character points if I went strictly by the point value of the Powers, advantages, etc granted by them. This means either giving out character points like candy, which I don't want to do, or it means players wait a long time between major points of character progression. People will probably want to be able to buy the next rank of a class or a base rank in another class rather than being mostly stuck improving what they have, buying more spells of their level, etc. I want to encourage players to take a base class, buy a few of the things they unlock by taking that class, and still be able to reasonably buy the next rank later.

Do you think it'd be ridiculous if I made each rank of a class into an advantage or sorts, making the package cost something like a flat 30 character points per rank? Obviously with classes like Black Mage, the point total for a rank is going to be higher than, say, Thief, though I do plan on statting up a good deal of powers to give non-magical classes to match their cinematic representation in the games. From a balance perspective, do you think this would work?

kirbwarrior · 04-28-2011, 03:25 AM

What exactly is the rank? Is it just an UB?

I'd use the normal system, and add on the more powerful spells, with higher prereq counts. I was thinking of doing FF in GURPS, and that was my idea.

castfromhp · 04-28-2011, 03:41 AM

The basic idea is that each rank in a given class would be a package of things you'd normally buy with character points on a stand alone basis. For example, buying rank 1 of Black Mage would give you something like ER 5, magery 1, choice between lightning, fireball or a similar spell, and a few cantrip spells like create fire or something etc. It would also act as a prerequisite to buy other lower level spells. Rank 2 would add another ER 5, gift some other spells, and act as a prerequisite for a broader range of spells, including earthquake, rain of fire, etc. At higher ranks instead of being gifted a spell they'd receive a power fluffed as a spell, since there isn't much in GURPS that reaches the same mass damage dealing potential as higher level spells in FF seem to.

Part of the reason I want to try to make something as unwieldy as this rank system work is the idea of advanced classes. Summoner would require at least a total of so many ranks be taken distributed between other casting classes like Black Mage or White Mage. Dragoon would require ranks in Knight or other physical classes. The Summoner package would include guidelines for statting up an Esper as a summonable ally, the Dragoon package would include Jump statted up in Powers.

So my main issue is that the actual point value of these class packages are going to be higher than what would be reasonable to charge for them and still let players advance their characters at a reasonable pace, just because Powers tend to be so expensive.

I thought about just adjusting prerequisite counts for spells, but that doesn't do much to address the multitude of Power-like skills used by the physical characters in the FF games. Jump comes to mind, as well as the monk's air render, the paladin's holy blade, etc. To prevent players from buying the most powerful abilities right off the bat, I would need to create a whole prerequisite tree for physical abilities as well. So I felt it just made more sense to aggregate spell prerequisites into one system for prerequisites for all special abilities characters will have.

kirbwarrior · 04-28-2011, 04:39 AM

Alternative abilities jump to mind. If any abilities can't be used together, such as the entire BM spell list, make them AA. That makes traits cheap (It's in powers somewhere...).

I tried going with that idea, but it feels too "gamey" and takes away from roleplaying (if you're DFing, thats another thing...).

For classes that require so many ranks, replace that with so many points from this list.

I love Ivalice, and I tried making it in GURPS. I stepped back from the job system and am now trying to make that world work as an actual world.

Gold & Appel Inc · 04-28-2011, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by castfromhp

[snip] Mages in FF are commonly seen in FMVs or other non-battle parts of the game to use what would be analagous to the cantrip spells in GURPS like create fire to light a cigarette. I think giving mages versatility in spells is a good thing. Instead of just fire, they should have fireball, flame jet, etc.

However, I do think the default GURPS spells are lacking in sheer mass damage potential. GURPS wizards seem much better suited to be utility characters. This is fine for Oracles/Mystics, Red Mages (to an extent), and a few other of the mage classes, but a Black Mage is meant to be superior at sheer nuking power. To this end, I think I'd like to create the -aga spells, flare, ultima, etc as powers, likely costing a lot of FP and being x times a day casts.

This brings me to my biggest dilemma with what I'm working with thus far. I'm working on templates for the major classes I plan to have in the game, but I realized there's really nothing stopping someone from taking the Black Mage template and then sinking the rest of their character points into buying Ultima or a similarly overpowered spell rather than going through the progression of weaker Black Magicks.

I'd just write some new, higher-level, spells if I wanted to use the default Magic system at all. I use spells-as-powers for some settings, but combining the two bugs me because they're not balanced with each other. I'd restrict the top-shelf stuff to a level of Magery higher than the normal setting max, and only let Black or White Mages buy it (at a discount for however many Colleges it affects).

castfromhp · 04-28-2011, 11:09 AM

Kirbwarrior: Do you mean something like "prerequisite: spent x character points on a, b, or c"? I thought about that, like requiring Black Mages to have spent a total of 50 points on other spells before getting some higher level stuff, but I thought it'd be too difficult to do the book-keeping on that in comparison to a rank system.

It does feel pretty gamey, I agree, but I think it still leaves a lot of room for players to build their characters however they choose. For the most part, it'll only be the magic-users who are encumbered with an inability to pick freely, and I feel that's just the same as any setting where the GM rules that mages have to pick one college restrictions or similar. Most skills will be available to everyone. It's just stuff like trained by a master and the custom powers replicating FF skills that will be restricted to the more physical classes. Additionally, players can "multi-class" so to speak by taking low ranks in a variety of classes instead of just a bunch of ranks in one if they choose. In fact, it's pretty much required that they do so in my system to access some of the advanced classes.

I feel like making the custom powers like Jump available to just anyone kinda ruins the FF feel if it's really easy to buy that along with black magic along with paladin skills, etc. I'd like to get rid of the rank system because I agree it's unwieldy and too restrictive, but I need a broadly applicable prerequisite system of some sort.

I'll have to look into alternative abilities. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the nuances of Powers as I should be.

Gold & Appel Inc: Part of the thing is that the kind of spells I'd like to create are so powerful that pricing them as normal spells would break balance even more. Ultima or Flare or Holy are just so obviously better than, say, explosive fireball. Even if I use a magery restriction, I feel like that's all that players will buy once they reach it, never looking at the rest of the spell list, which I don't want to happen. Magery is pretty cheap after all, if it gives big benefits like that. Especially for 200-300+ point characters.

And that still doesn't address the problem of needing to make Powers for all the abilities other classes have that border on magical in effect but aren't properly spells. Jump is the one I keep repeating. The FFTA Hunter's sonicboom or something like the Assassin's last breath. Requiring those classes to learn spells just doesn't feel right.

Novembermike · 04-28-2011, 11:26 AM

Do you want to simulate the games or the setting? If it's the games you're going to have some problems since they're based on a system that's fairly different than gurps (the 255 max attack vs defense system). If it's the setting, GURPS mimics it fairly well by default. Most people don't know magic but anyone can learn, and magic is split into several different paths (Black, White, Summoning, Oracles etc).

castfromhp · 04-28-2011, 11:36 AM

I'm more concerned with the setting over the games, but I do want the way character building and advancement work to reasonably match up with the games in that there are fairly set job/class roles that people can move freely between. And choosing to dabble in multiple classes implies a trade-off with the most powerful abilities any one of those classes would have. This requires some sort of prerequisite system that isn't built into GURPS. It's surprisingly very easy to just take a ton of spells at IQ+magery-2 for one point a pop and qualify for even the spells that require one spell in each college. I don't want this setting to work like that because GURPS magic will be the default, but at higher levels, the big FF style spells will come into play.

There are some setting elements in FF which I feel are inseparable from the gameplay. Not the specific mechanics of stats, but things like summons/espers/eidolons. Those are easy enough to handle as allies though. But then there are the character classes as stated. There are blue mages, with each blue magic spell probably needing to be created from scratch as a power. Dark knights are commonly known for sword skills that either sacrifice HP for a greater effect or sap enemy HP.

All in all, it'd be very easy to just recreate the setting of Ivalice and play it with default GURPS rules, but I think it'd be missing the feel of Final Fantasy that way as characters' abilities wouldn't match with what they should have according to setting lore.

Novembermike · 04-28-2011, 11:56 AM

If you just want the advancement to work, split the more complex stuff into classes and only allow advancements in one class. You might be able to buy the first rank in shields as any class, but you need to be a squire or knight to go beyond that. The same could go for magic (be the right kind of mage), certain athletic skills for ninjas or thieves and weapon skills. Then you could allow players to switch classes every session or so.

04-28-2011, 12:58 AM	#1
castfromhp Join Date: Apr 2011	Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting This is very much a brainstorming thing for me right now, so I apologize if my thoughts in this post are a bit scrambled. Ivalice is one of my favorite settings from Final Fantasy. The architecture, aesthetics and focus on politics are all great, so I decided I wanted to make a sourcebook for myself for running Final Fantasy style games. After looking through a few of the older threads on this, including one about FFXII in particular, I haven't found something to help with the specific approach I wanted to take, which I'm having a lot of trouble with. Some FF RPG projects like Returners try to very closely model gameplay from the videogames in a tabletop. Even some GURPS rewrites got rid of the entire default magic system and instead modeled spells as powers. That's not really how I want to do things. The progression from fire to fire2/fira to fire3/firaga is frankly boring. Mages in FF are commonly seen in FMVs or other non-battle parts of the game to use what would be analagous to the cantrip spells in GURPS like create fire to light a cigarette. I think giving mages versatility in spells is a good thing. Instead of just fire, they should have fireball, flame jet, etc. However, I do think the default GURPS spells are lacking in sheer mass damage potential. GURPS wizards seem much better suited to be utility characters. This is fine for Oracles/Mystics, Red Mages (to an extent), and a few other of the mage classes, but a Black Mage is meant to be superior at sheer nuking power. To this end, I think I'd like to create the -aga spells, flare, ultima, etc as powers, likely costing a lot of FP and being x times a day casts. This brings me to my biggest dilemma with what I'm working with thus far. I'm working on templates for the major classes I plan to have in the game, but I realized there's really nothing stopping someone from taking the Black Mage template and then sinking the rest of their character points into buying Ultima or a similarly overpowered spell rather than going through the progression of weaker Black Magicks. The idea I had was to make packages/templates for multiple ranks of a class that would not only provide advantages, skills, etc (ex: black mage 1 would grant magery, choice of spells from fireball, lightning, etc, probably some energy reserve) but also act as a prerequisite system (ex: no buying some of the more advanced weather spells until you're at least black mage rank 3). A high rank might immediately grant a choice of one of firaga, blizzaga, and thundaga. If you've tried statting out big spells as powers, you can probably see the issue already. Ranks would cost an inordinate amount of character points if I went strictly by the point value of the Powers, advantages, etc granted by them. This means either giving out character points like candy, which I don't want to do, or it means players wait a long time between major points of character progression. People will probably want to be able to buy the next rank of a class or a base rank in another class rather than being mostly stuck improving what they have, buying more spells of their level, etc. I want to encourage players to take a base class, buy a few of the things they unlock by taking that class, and still be able to reasonably buy the next rank later. Do you think it'd be ridiculous if I made each rank of a class into an advantage or sorts, making the package cost something like a flat 30 character points per rank? Obviously with classes like Black Mage, the point total for a rank is going to be higher than, say, Thief, though I do plan on statting up a good deal of powers to give non-magical classes to match their cinematic representation in the games. From a balance perspective, do you think this would work?

04-28-2011, 03:41 AM	#3
castfromhp Join Date: Apr 2011	Re: Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting The basic idea is that each rank in a given class would be a package of things you'd normally buy with character points on a stand alone basis. For example, buying rank 1 of Black Mage would give you something like ER 5, magery 1, choice between lightning, fireball or a similar spell, and a few cantrip spells like create fire or something etc. It would also act as a prerequisite to buy other lower level spells. Rank 2 would add another ER 5, gift some other spells, and act as a prerequisite for a broader range of spells, including earthquake, rain of fire, etc. At higher ranks instead of being gifted a spell they'd receive a power fluffed as a spell, since there isn't much in GURPS that reaches the same mass damage dealing potential as higher level spells in FF seem to. Part of the reason I want to try to make something as unwieldy as this rank system work is the idea of advanced classes. Summoner would require at least a total of so many ranks be taken distributed between other casting classes like Black Mage or White Mage. Dragoon would require ranks in Knight or other physical classes. The Summoner package would include guidelines for statting up an Esper as a summonable ally, the Dragoon package would include Jump statted up in Powers. So my main issue is that the actual point value of these class packages are going to be higher than what would be reasonable to charge for them and still let players advance their characters at a reasonable pace, just because Powers tend to be so expensive. I thought about just adjusting prerequisite counts for spells, but that doesn't do much to address the multitude of Power-like skills used by the physical characters in the FF games. Jump comes to mind, as well as the monk's air render, the paladin's holy blade, etc. To prevent players from buying the most powerful abilities right off the bat, I would need to create a whole prerequisite tree for physical abilities as well. So I felt it just made more sense to aggregate spell prerequisites into one system for prerequisites for all special abilities characters will have.

04-28-2011, 11:09 AM	#6
castfromhp Join Date: Apr 2011	Re: Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting Kirbwarrior: Do you mean something like "prerequisite: spent x character points on a, b, or c"? I thought about that, like requiring Black Mages to have spent a total of 50 points on other spells before getting some higher level stuff, but I thought it'd be too difficult to do the book-keeping on that in comparison to a rank system. It does feel pretty gamey, I agree, but I think it still leaves a lot of room for players to build their characters however they choose. For the most part, it'll only be the magic-users who are encumbered with an inability to pick freely, and I feel that's just the same as any setting where the GM rules that mages have to pick one college restrictions or similar. Most skills will be available to everyone. It's just stuff like trained by a master and the custom powers replicating FF skills that will be restricted to the more physical classes. Additionally, players can "multi-class" so to speak by taking low ranks in a variety of classes instead of just a bunch of ranks in one if they choose. In fact, it's pretty much required that they do so in my system to access some of the advanced classes. I feel like making the custom powers like Jump available to just anyone kinda ruins the FF feel if it's really easy to buy that along with black magic along with paladin skills, etc. I'd like to get rid of the rank system because I agree it's unwieldy and too restrictive, but I need a broadly applicable prerequisite system of some sort. I'll have to look into alternative abilities. Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with the nuances of Powers as I should be. Gold & Appel Inc: Part of the thing is that the kind of spells I'd like to create are so powerful that pricing them as normal spells would break balance even more. Ultima or Flare or Holy are just so obviously better than, say, explosive fireball. Even if I use a magery restriction, I feel like that's all that players will buy once they reach it, never looking at the rest of the spell list, which I don't want to happen. Magery is pretty cheap after all, if it gives big benefits like that. Especially for 200-300+ point characters. And that still doesn't address the problem of needing to make Powers for all the abilities other classes have that border on magical in effect but aren't properly spells. Jump is the one I keep repeating. The FFTA Hunter's sonicboom or something like the Assassin's last breath. Requiring those classes to learn spells just doesn't feel right.

04-28-2011, 11:26 AM	#7
Novembermike Join Date: Apr 2011	Re: Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting Do you want to simulate the games or the setting? If it's the games you're going to have some problems since they're based on a system that's fairly different than gurps (the 255 max attack vs defense system). If it's the setting, GURPS mimics it fairly well by default. Most people don't know magic but anyone can learn, and magic is split into several different paths (Black, White, Summoning, Oracles etc).

04-28-2011, 11:36 AM	#8
castfromhp Join Date: Apr 2011	Re: Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting I'm more concerned with the setting over the games, but I do want the way character building and advancement work to reasonably match up with the games in that there are fairly set job/class roles that people can move freely between. And choosing to dabble in multiple classes implies a trade-off with the most powerful abilities any one of those classes would have. This requires some sort of prerequisite system that isn't built into GURPS. It's surprisingly very easy to just take a ton of spells at IQ+magery-2 for one point a pop and qualify for even the spells that require one spell in each college. I don't want this setting to work like that because GURPS magic will be the default, but at higher levels, the big FF style spells will come into play. There are some setting elements in FF which I feel are inseparable from the gameplay. Not the specific mechanics of stats, but things like summons/espers/eidolons. Those are easy enough to handle as allies though. But then there are the character classes as stated. There are blue mages, with each blue magic spell probably needing to be created from scratch as a power. Dark knights are commonly known for sword skills that either sacrifice HP for a greater effect or sap enemy HP. All in all, it'd be very easy to just recreate the setting of Ivalice and play it with default GURPS rules, but I think it'd be missing the feel of Final Fantasy that way as characters' abilities wouldn't match with what they should have according to setting lore.

04-28-2011, 11:56 AM	#9
Novembermike Join Date: Apr 2011	Re: Ivalice in GURPS - FFT/FFXII setting If you just want the advancement to work, split the more complex stuff into classes and only allow advancements in one class. You might be able to buy the first rank in shields as any class, but you need to be a squire or knight to go beyond that. The same could go for magic (be the right kind of mage), certain athletic skills for ninjas or thieves and weapon skills. Then you could allow players to switch classes every session or so.