Persona: The Fighting/RPG

[csyphrett]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I was thinking that you needed the persona to work any powers. but if the persona is knocked out, you can't use any powers at all. From a purely mechanical standpoint, disregarding the games' background, it seems the only viable way to do this is a MP with physical manisfestation on it, duplication with the duplicate being completely different, summon specfic creature with a low body/defense/low speed, an automation, or some kind of living focus since the character can't do anything with its powers when its not there.

 

Have you got a persona built to look at?

CES

[Steve]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I was thinking that you needed the persona to work any powers. but if the persona is knocked out, you can't use any powers at all. From a purely mechanical standpoint, disregarding the games' background, it seems the only viable way to do this is a MP with physical manisfestation on it, duplication with the duplicate being completely different, summon specfic creature with a low body/defense/low speed, an automation, or some kind of living focus since the character can't do anything with its powers when its not there.

 

Have you got a persona built to look at?

CES

 

Personally, I just think the Duplication or Summon options are much cleaner builds than using a Physical Manifestation construct.

 

While I understand the OP's desire to avoid cherry picking abilities, I don't agree. If that tight a control over builds is desired, the easiest way to do that is to build the Personas as a complete character and then let a player pick one from the pre-constructed list. Synergy in ability choices can occur, but part of the fun of Hero is building things.

 

There is another advantage to the Duplication/Summon options, and that is experience point expenditure.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Part of the fun of HERO for people who like building things from scratch is building things. Part of the major complaint of HERO is that it takes forever to figure out how the damn thing works. Took me forever. I may be considered a deft hand now, but it was not terribly long ago that I was a wailing n00b. I intend to strike a balance, but you have understood the intent correctly: NO FRANKENSONAS. I'm not going to build all of the powers then let a player take an extremely powerful Persona and have a solution for everything in their build. It happens too often for my taste.

[Steve]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Part of the fun of HERO for people who like building things from scratch is building things. Part of the major complaint of HERO is that it takes forever to figure out how the damn thing works. Took me forever. I may be considered a deft hand now' date=' but it was not terribly long ago that I was a wailing n00b. I intend to strike a balance, but you have understood the intent correctly: NO FRANKENSONAS. I'm not going to build all of the powers then let a player take an extremely powerful Persona and have a solution for everything in their build. It happens too often for my taste.[/quote']

 

As I said before, I understand your goal to avoid an overpowered Persona design by slapping together different power combinations. Unless you prebuild them all completely for your PCs and then let them choose one of the complete builds, power choices on their part will be involved. Building a Persona would not be all that different from building a superhuman for Champions.

 

Let's say you want every character to have a gun, but you don't want any PC to have a custom design. Ok, give them a list of guns to choose from that are pre-built and of roughly similar point costs, and don't let them customize them. That's kind of constrictive, but if you have players that are okay with that, then go for it.

 

What I'm suggesting as a compromise is to build a few basic frame designs and then offer some limited customization options to your PCs. The superhuman gallery from 6e Champions is an example of what I mean. It offers some options to allow customization along a basic theme (Brick, Speedster, etc), but it keeps power choices along the lines of that theme.

 

Maybe there are Speedster Personas, Brick Personas and other types. So long as the powers fit the frame concept, like not putting Speedster powers on a Brick Persona, I think that will get you to where you want to go.

[csyphrett]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Also all of these persona won't work in the real world right? That's a big limitation right there.

CES

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I've begun a "mass conversion" for all of the original skills. The skills are... boring! Quite boring, in fact. Super boring. No status effects, some of them are just variations on the damage dealt. This is going to take longer than I thought, but at the very least I am well into developing a baseline. I set the costs for the Adder/Status Effect to "ridiculously low," but ironically, I really like it and it is working exactly as I intended. The project is rolling, I'm just in mid-assessment. Still figuring out the Persona thing, but.

 

But.

 

I have to admit there is an increasingly powerful argument for Summon.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I've begun a "mass conversion" for all of the original skills. The skills are... boring! Quite boring, in fact. Super boring. No status effects, some of them are just variations on the damage dealt. This is going to take longer than I thought, but at the very least I am well into developing a baseline. I set the costs for the Adder/Status Effect to "ridiculously low," but ironically, I really like it and it is working exactly as I intended. The project is rolling, I'm just in mid-assessment. Still figuring out the Persona thing, but.

 

But.

 

I have to admit there is an increasingly powerful argument for Summon.

 

 

Make the skills sexy. There are some obvious ones. Skills that hit multiple enemies are of course, Area of Effect. Most of these should take "Selective". Skills that are multi-hit are of course, Autofire.

 

All the damaging skills are listed as doing Small, Moderate, Large or Massive amounts of damage. Here's my suggested DC levels based on this:

 

Small: DC 1-3

Moderate: DC 4-6

Large: DC 7-9

Massive: DC 10+

 

Note that the Persona's STR score will increase the damage of all physical type skills (and yes, this includes ranged skills as well) The Persona's Ego score should increase the damage of all Magical type skills. Just treat it as you would STR enhancing a physical skill.

 

Skills have both an inherent accuracy and critical rate. For the accuracy, consider around 90% to be average. Anything significantly below 90% accuracy should get an OCV penalty (usually designed as a Side Effect limitation placed on the skill) and anything significantly above 90% should get a bonus (+1 or +2 max) bought as a skill level and added to the cost of the skill.

 

Critical rate is up to you how it's going to work. I would suggest using the built-in Critical Hit system that Hero uses. It works great. Critical rates tend to be pretty low...10% seems average among skills, thus a skill with a significantly higher critical rate (20% or more?) should get a bonus to their chance to crit. This is written up as +2 OCV (10) only to improve the critical hit rate (-1) which comes out to 5 points per +1 to the critical hit rate. I would suggest no more than +2 to the critical hit rate for 10pts extra. There are other ways to increase the critical hit rate further like skills such as Apt Pupil or weapons that increase Critical Hit chance with them. These bonuses should stack.

 

As far as differentiating skills from one another, there is nothing wrong with this. Use Armor Piercing, Penetrating, Increased Stun multiplier, Indirect etc to make each skill unique and distinct. Just make sure the advantage you add to the skill makes sense for the skill in question. For example, I wouldn't use Double Knockback for the Cleave Skill, but I would use it for Gigantic Fist. For Cleave, I would use Armor Piercing instead. There's a lot you could do to customize them.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I want the Persona skills -- especially in HERO -- to have more payoff than that, given that they also require STUN (and in the case of "Massive" damage, STUN + BODY) to use. My draft is closer to this:

 

Small: 3-5

Moderate: 6-8

Severe: 9-11

Massive: 12+

 

One of the things I decided early on for this campaign is that I wasn't going to "charge" the players for their Persona, and instead treat them like equipment. This isn't that far from the canon, if you consider all the things that go into constantly picking up, learning, and rearranging your Persona stable. If I charged the players for every Persona, it would get out of hand quickly. Instead, I'm charging them to build their Social Links.

 

I'm also going to give them two separate XP pools; one for themselves (the usual, organic, HERO XP) and one for their Personas, so they can actually improve the Personae themselves. My plan is to draft out the first 22 based on the Major Arcana, and in that include powers that are already unlocked (the starting abilities) and those that they can only unlock after spending time binding with the Persona in question.

 

Reading through the wiki it also seems there are two kinds of Persona users: those who can are artificially created (?) and those who are "true" Persona users. Further and of equal interest is the idea that a Persona can be summoned outside of the second world if the proper conditions are met. This was news to me, but it evidently falls within the canon itself.

 

I agree, NSG, that the powers need to be "sexied up" a bit. I did my baseline conversion, and now I'm carefully picking through and starting to reshape things into a more HEROic, slightly Western-influenced game, with more powers and more consideration for 3D combat instead of what is functionally an overhead look at traditional Final Fantasy, both sides line up sort of fighting.

 

I want scenes where players are behind cover, in a dogfight, and they summon a Persona to use Muzzle Shot, then the Persona manifests, fires the shot, remains "hovering" for a few frames, then vanishes. While it's up, it's "susceptible" to damage. A Persona can never be destroyed, but it can be shut down temporarily. Also, going from the Wiki, I've given all powers that hit 100% of the time AOE/Accurate, because, well. They hit 100% of the time. 90% is my baseline, and I ignored the slight variations in the "spells" because it wasn't worth it.

 

I've got a short stack of pre-fabs now, and next I'll start on the Passive abilities. I still haven't found a decent bestiary for Persona -- not the boss list on the Wiki, but a plain old monster list. I may say screw it and start ripping and adapting from the Asian Bestiary I & II, but I want to see what "the game thinks." Monster design is going to be a PIA. I had other ideas last night that I was going to discuss but got caught up in another conversation. So there you has it.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I knew Passive Skills were gonna give me fits, but I like what I did here. It's very unconventional, to the point of being "wrong" if you use HERO through the traditional lens, but it is accurately reflective (HA!... you'll get that joke in a minute) of what the power should do and how it should do it.

 

Counter: Barrier 30 PD, 0 BODY (up to 1m long, 1m tall, and 1/2m thick), Trigger: Physical Attack or Skill (Activating the Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates, Character does not control activation of personal Trigger; +1/2), Backlash (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (120 Active Points); Requires A Roll (6-; -1 1/2), No Conscious Control (Passive) (Only Effects cannot be controlled; See Trigger; -1), Instant (-1), Only to Defend (-1), Only Works Against Physical Skills (-1/2

 

I can fiddle with the limitations at length and ad infinitum, but you get the idea: this isn't a summon based power, as long as you have this Persona equipped and active, you get the benefit of Counter, and Counter, when it works, is amazing. However, it only works on a 6-. Boo. But that 10% of the time your opponent is in for a world of hurt.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I'm now moving onto "Phase 2" of design, where I'm beginning the re-write of every effect into a more "Heroic" vision. Frex, I don't just want all AoEs. That's boring. I want fire to have AOE: Line, and a "Fireball" style attack. I want people to look at the spells and not have them be cookie cutter, but to really pop, and to push the desire to get access to different abilities. I've rolled in the Shock status effect and other such pieces. I'm starting to strongly think about how I want Personas to behave. Right now (I may have posted this but I'm not going back to look) where we are looks like this:

 

Personas are "equipment," but not foci, by which I mean, they are not paid for by the players (although they will pay experience to improve the Persona, the Persona itself is free, along with its base skills).

 

Personae are tied to their Tarot, and each player selects one Tarot (and the person tied to it) at character creation. This is really important, because as they develop their Social Links, and complete missions, quests, what have you, they will want to spend time in the velvet room, fight shadows, and improve their personae in general. Only by building Social Links (including their base link) can they earn the right to equip new, more powerful Personae.

 

Third, as I stated in the mission statement, this system is going to avoid "Frankensona" at all costs; I realize that this is still a head twister to people who are so ingrained in HERO that they speak the language and in turn feel that all players should be free to build what they want, given a few rough guidelines. This game is more focused on creating an experience for my group, and letting them focus on creating memorable characters, rather than trying to give them all the rules, lists, concepts, and mechanics to create a Persona. They'll have a rough enough time picking a Tarot, a Martial Art, a college major, building a story and then seeing it integrated.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I would happen to agree that the GM needs to create all of the Persona. The player will have control of the direction their players advance as well as which Persona they get to equip at any given time (and how much they advance their Persona, but not necessarily freedom in developing their Persona, but the ability to "unlock" various skills/abilities and increasing Characteristics)

 

So the Persona themselves will be free? Not a function of the Summon power? I figured you would give all the players the Summon power and allow it to increase (thus expanding the number and power level of Persona they can summon) by advancing one's Social Links.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Good morning!

 

So there's a couple of ways to think about what I'm doing here. You raise a valid point: "If there's a mechanic to do this, why not enforce it?" Well, I'll tell you!

 

"STOP! STOP WITH THE SINGING!"

 

...right. Your answer is:

 

Let's assume for the moment that as you rightly noted, the focus is on the individual development of the character and any given Persona, and equally assume that XP and new personae will be doled out comparatively slowly, by which I mean, saving all your XP so you can build up Messiah or some other ungodly powerful Persona that you're highly unlikely to have for a couple of years means that you've hamstringed the team in the interim.

 

Second assumption: Everyone summons. Then it becomes less about differentiating "power levels," so to speak, and more about differentiating team members, tarot choices, and the like.

 

My third assumption: I'm already having everyone spend points building up their Social Links through the Contacts function, and of course, spending XP to improve the Persona itself. With all that, ultimately, building a Summon power, while certainly "correct," wouldn't really have the correct flavor. You'd be attempting to Summon constantly, when in fact, your Persona should be "equipped" all the time, in the character sheet slot marked "Persona." Someone a while back said "It's a focus."

 

I poo-pooed the idea, because a Persona is not a Focus, by which I took literally, "it isn't bought that way." However, the idea is sound. It's always equipped, it can be changed, it can be improved, and so on. So, as though they are equipment, no one is charged for the Persona itself.

 

There are a couple of things I've expanded on (next post) that I'm also excited about, and giving other various considerations too (although I'm unlikely to go to the full extreme I considered, the mechanic is cool conceptually).

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Now the real work begins. I've built out the basic powers, I have an FAQ for going to the Velvet Room to see Igor and Margaret (she is far hotter than Elizabeth) and combining Personas, all of that is in place. That's all "step one." I know how they blend (roughly) and I'm still making my way through the Persona Wikia. I'm working on a concept for this edition's Rise/Girl from P3 who operated as the monitor on the outside. I know that certain cards tend towards different story arcs. Good, all good.

 

But this is HERO, and this is a table top RPG, it has to go beyond "just" being a videogame conversion. Comparatively, HERO: Combat Evolved was easy. That's just a pile of alien profiles and equipment builds, then you build a story and equip your team. Here, things are a lot more complex, because of the combination of pre-set powers, social elements, fighting styles, and group interaction. So, to better represent each Social Link, I wanted an "in-game benefit" that carries forward, similar to leveling up. I have two core ideas:

 

Idea 1: Granting Bonuses based on S-Link Level.

 

Let's take The Lovers (VI) as an example. At Level 2 of the S-Link, you gain +1 to all Seduction rolls -- if you don't have Seduction, this doesn't do you much good, and instead your get Seduction as an Everyman skills. At level 5, you get +2 to all rolls, or, Seduction as a Proficiency. Level 8, then, grants +3 or Seduction as a Skill. And so on. This helps keep the S-Links relevant outside of just a combat based structure of the Persona.

 

Idea 2: Improving the Persona so they remain relevant outside of combat. In Persona, you only get the Passive effects while wandering around in dungeons -- because no one needs constant healing when they aren't fighting. But we know that we can't segregate combat to "just" the Second Realm, that's ... kind of stupid, and sets up a false sense of reality that's too easily broken, and, is just a little dull. To that end:

 

Persona Passive abilities become "always on," in either First Realm or Second Realm. Second, and building on Idea 1, I am strongly considering adding specific, Persona-relevant improvements to each one. So equipping Apsaras makes you more attractive (Suddenly, everyone behaves as though you have Striking Features). Equipping Mitama dramatically improves your lifting capacity, equipping Orpheus means you can actually play a string instrument if you are so inclined, and gain Perfect Pitch, and so on.

 

I want them to be minor, a few on the fun side, but meaningful. This can also help players fill in weird gaps that they might not have otherwise gotten into their characters. Not sneaky enough, but you need to break into a corporate security building? No problem! Equip Nekomata and you're off and running. Now, can it replace a character who has all the skills and synergies to be the party thief?

 

Of course not, and it isn't meant too. What it can do, and what my intent is, is to allow people who might not have skill X to still be able to move with the group because they made strong Persona choices. So those are some of the ideas I'm having to help push this out of a pure, simple conversion and into a bona fide HERO campaign, with depth and development.

 

Thoughts?

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

So I've developed something akin to a ... business briefing document to break down what i'm doing for my players and give them an idea of what's what within the setting, for their Personas and Social Links. I want them to have an idea of what the people they meet will be like who are Major Arcana (which as I'm certain most of you can noodle through is only, maybe, 44 some characters as I see no need to have 7 NPCs all represent Death (XIII).

 

I did some slogging, digging and organizing, and I've boiled it down to 10 Persona per S-Link, for a nice straight walk up the ladder. The World was the hardest, that took some fiddling. There are a lot of powers that have come and gone in the history of the setting, so settling on "3, 4 and Arena" was probably the best move I made to date. It keeps things relatively consistent and let me do more with the powers and keep it open without really hamstringing myself or the options of the players. I did make the mistake of building out one of the major NPC Personae, Hermes.

 

Oops. That didn't come out right. Well, it did, but where most Persona have 4-8 powers, this one had nearly 15, and I didn't put it together til after (I was well into being cross-eyed and pointing and clicking for the sake of it at that point). After that, I did my first "real" Persona, Nekomata, and she came out really well, Two starting powers, 3 locked powers, and skill enhancers. Those can be bought up independently for cheaper than you could buy them for your PC, because for every one point a PC gets, a Persona gets 5.

 

Lastly, I'm uncertain if I should do "giant MPs" or just have people buy skills at a set ratio. Frex, all "Level 1" skills cost n. XP, all Level 2 cost n1+n2 XP and so on, or if I should just let HERO do its thing and make sure I give out sufficient XP to cover it all. The "obvious" answer is an MP, but they already have 3 categories of skills (Active, Passive, Resistances). I'll have to give that piece more thought. But, it's coming along really well, there's not much left before I can start putting the document into my player's hands.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

I lied. Of course, I spent more time watching Supernatural than I should, but that's separate. I'm real curious what a field test of this is going to look like when all is said and done. I added the Magma chain just for effect as it came up from a Persona 2: Innocent Sin character. They should really build faster than I've been doing it, but I'm also considering each one carefully. What skills do I want "Pixie" to have? What about Air Getlam? What skills do you give a persona of the Faerie King? The texts and wiki don't always tell me everything I need to know. Conversely, I want them to be supportive without flipping it around and making the player a talking dummy that wears masks.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Don't forget that P3 and P4 had predecessors. In Persona 1 and 2, when a character equipped a Persona, the characters stats were averaged between the characters stats and the Personas. Perhaps you can do something like that.

 

Also, each Persona can be written up as its own character but all of its skills and abilities can be written up as Useable by Others. That way, even though the Persona is its own entity, the controller can use the 0ersonas skills and abilities at his or her discretion.

 

How do you plan to link the social links to the Persona to limit which Personas can be made in the Velvet Room? Handwavium? (Just use the grid from the strategy guide?)

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Persona: The Fighting/RPG

 

Mother eff. Board ate my reply. Well. Much shorter version.

 

I am familiar with P1 & P2, but I consider them "Gen 1" editions of the game, and using wholly different mechanics and powers. For consistency, I'm limiting my conversion to P3 & P4. Other than minor rebalancing, the powers are the same, the Personae look & feel roughly the same, and the two games talk to each much more synchronously than P1 & P2 can speak "forward." I won't even get into all of the spin offs, because then my mind would utterly explode.

 

Persona behave like equipment (I think I mentioned that some time back) and once equipped, grant their powers to the character who equips them, until removed or changed. This is fairly consistent, although I will likely associate an END cost with everything, even if it's END, Only to Activate (-1/4) for something like Striking Appearance, and have it last a full scene. I want the Personas to have real, non-combat functionality but I also want to illustrate that using a Persona, even invoking a skill that you don't have is difficult and comes with a price (albeit a small, recoverable one). None of the powers to date have been built UBO, because my vision of the Personas is that they are still the same soul.

 

Your soul, in this setting, is like a carousel that, for most people, only has one image in it at any given time. But the light is so bright that if you put another image in front of it, it would project outwards. This is my concept. So you can add additional Persona to the carousel, you can take them out, you can improve them, but there's still only one carousel -- you. At this time, changing a Persona is a 1/2 Phase Action.

 

There is a strategy guide out there in legoland that details how every Persona is forged and I will use a bastardized version of it. One of the keys for the success is having Social Links matter (that's been done) assigning a Persona to each level (10 levels is sufficient, and 1 Persona per level, done) and then the only thing holding me back is the struggle of "Personal Level." I don't want anyone getting Lucifer sick early, that won't work. There will need to be sufficient explanation around those mechanics and why they work the way they do.