Review: BESM d20

[Drolyt]

So the other day the power was out where I live and I needed something to read by candlelight. I was digging through piles of books when I found my copy of the besm d20 anime role-player's handbook. My shift key isn't broken, for whatever reason the there are no capital letters on the front cover, which is extra weird because usually BESM is all caps. Anyways, this was a book I bought when I first got into RPGs but never had the chance to play, so feeling a bit nostalgic I decided to go ahead and read it. This proved fortuitous as this is one of the most entertaining books I have ever read, though not in any way the designers (if you can call them that) intended. Since I can't sleep at the moment I figured I'd write a review of it.

ROLE-PLAYING GAME MANIFESTO
I'm not at all sure what these people have against normal capitalization, but whatever. The first thing in this book after the credits page is a "role-playing game manifesto". We could probably devote a whole thread to dissecting the poisonous philosophy this "manifesto" espouses, but I'll just leave this here:

These rules are written on paper, not etched in stone tablets.
Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts.
If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can.
There are no official answers, only official opinions.
When dice conflict with the story, the story always wins.
Min/Maxing and Munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the player.
The Game Master has full discretionary power over the game.
The Game Master always works with, not against, the players.
A game that is not fun is no longer a game - it's a chore.
This book contains the answers to all things.
When the above does not apply, make it up.

Basically it isn't the game's fault that your high-school student (spoiler: student is an actual class you can take) can't contribute as effectively as your friends' dynamic sorcerer (also a poorly named class), your friend is just a horrible munchkin. Also your GM should just ignore the rules and do whatever he wants. I'm not clear why you are supposed to buy the book after reading this, but for some reason I did so let's move on.

Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter is literally 3 pages long, and while there isn't anything too terrible, it fails to include anything you wouldn't already know if you were reading this book. Headings include What is Anime?, Anime Origins, Anime Genres, What is a Role-Playing Game, and Playing BESM d20. The most interesting part is the genre listing, which includes Mecha, Magical Girl, Hero Team (Sentai), Martial Arts, Sports Anime, Exotic Girlfriend, Interdimensional Exiles, Supernatural Action, Samurai or Ninja Action, Swords and Sorcery, Weird Conspiracy, and Pet Monster. Aside from some poor names the most glaring problem is that the book nowhere explains why you would want a single game to handle all of these different genres. It also doesn't explain why this particular ruleset is better suited to these genres than another generic system like GURPS or HERO (mostly because it isn't) or what it is about animation from Japan that requires a separate set of rules than comic books from The United States or novels from India.

Chapter 2: Character Creation
This chapter is also exactly 3 pages long. It doesn't actually tell you how to make a character, it's just 3 pages of "talk to your GM" and "make a character outline". There are only 2 interesting things in this chapter. The first is a picture of a standard animesque fantasy adventuring party, some elves (or at least people with pointy ears), a pixie girl, a guy with a hawk on his shoulder, pretty standard. They're just standing there in the woods. It is actually a well drawn picture. On closer inspection though I notice that for some reason one of the women is holding a baby. That's weird, isn't it? Is carrying a baby through the woods something you are supposed to do in this game? Looking even closer, I realize that the characters are all posing for a photograph. That's just bizarre, is this supposed to be a fantasy setting with magic cameras? The best I can figure is this is in fact not a picture of fantasy characters, but a stylized portrait of fantasy cosplayers.

The other interesting thing is that discretionary character points are base... oh, did I forget to mention that this class-based d20 product is actually point based? Yeah. You have ability scores, races, classes, feats, and skills just like any other d20 game but you also have attributes that you buy with character points. I think their goal is to make character creation as complicated as possible so you won't notice how broken it is. Anyways, you start the game with a certain number of "discretionary" character points based on your starting level which you can buy various things with, so a 1st level character has 40 points while an epic character has 50. The weird thing is I can't find any rule that says you gain character points when you level up, so basically characters that start at a high level are slightly stronger than characters that start at 1st level for no readily apparent reason. This is the first hint that the "designers" of this book weren't paying any damn attention to what they were typing.

Chapter 3: Abilities
Because of the d20 license this book isn't allowed to actually tell you how to generate abilities, but it doesn't really matter because you have to spend some of those discretionary points on your abilities anyways, each ability costs a number of points equal to your score divided by 2, round up. That's right, round up, because odd numbers didn't suck enough. I know it's early, but at this rate I'm gonna need a drink pretty soon. You can then shift your scores up or down by spending (or saving) 1 character point for every 2 points of ability score. It doesn't actually give a limit for how high your ability scores can go but does include this gem:

The values of these abilities range from 0 to infinity, with a normal human range from 3 to 18. The normal human maximum is 24, but superhuman or supernatural characters may have higher ratings. A value of none for an Ability Score, which is different from 0, is a special case appropriate for specific character ideas (discussed below).

So the normal human range is 3 to 18 but the normal human maximum is 24 because fuck it we don't need proofreaders (although two editors are listed in the credits, I'm not sure what they were doing). Also the explanation for ability scores of none is a single paragraph that does not in any way explain how they work or how many points you should pay for them. We'll be seeing a lot of that, you can't actually play this game without mister cavern making shit up to cover the holes in the rules. Despite this the credits page lists over fifty playtesters. I can only assume their playtest packets read "magical tea party".

Oh, before I forget this chapter was only 2 pages. I wonder if the next chapter can fit on a single page?

Chapter 4: Races
Indeed it can! Basically this is just a list of races and their special abilities and their point costs. That's right, you pay character points for your race. So humans, elves, gnomes, and half-elves all cost zero points because obviously those are all balanced with each other, while dwarves and halflings cost one point each and half-orcs give you five points. Finally, there is a new race: an artificial construct, which for 4 points makes you immune to poison, sleep, paralysis, stun, disease, death, "necromantic effects", critical hits, subdual damage, ability damage and drain, energy drain, and any affect that allows fortitude saves but doesn't affect objects. Unfortunately I'm not sure how one would play an artificial construct since they don't have a con score.

Chapter 5: Classes
Finally, this is where the fun begins. These are standard d20 character classes, except instead of class features they give you attributes from chapter 6, except the designers are lazy so many classes just give you character points to buy your own attributes. The classes are Adventurer, Dynamic Sorcerer, Giant Robot, Gun Bunny, Hot Rod, Magical Girl, Martial Artist, Mecha Pilot, Ninja, Pet Monster Trainer, Samurai, Sentai Member, Shapechanger, Student, and Tech Genius. Despite these classes representing wildly disparate genres, the designers felt compelled to copy the Other Classes section from the Player's Handbook and the results are as stupid as you'd expect.

The first class is the Adventurer, and they don't have any class features. They get a d4 hit die, 4 skill points per level, low BAB and all bad saves, but get 5 character points every level. This results in less total character points than other characters, but this is supposed to be balanced by the fact that you get to choose your attributes. This is exactly as balanced as you'd expect, and there's not much else to say about this class. The Dynamic Sorcerer on the other hand deserves a post all to itself.

[Drolyt]

The Dynamic Sorcerer is the most broken class I've ever seen. Not so much because it is very powerful, although it probably is depending on how you interpret the rules, but because I have no idea how the hell their spellcasting actually works and I'm pretty sure nobody else does either (to be clear, it is pretty obvious how it is supposed to work, but the actual text is completely contradictory). They have a d4 hit die, poor BAB, good will saves, and 4 skill points per level. At every odd numbered level they gain a rank (attributes come in "ranks" rather than levels for no particularly obvious reason) in an attribute called dynamic sorcery, while at every even numbered level they gain two character points to spend on whatever. The problem is dynamic sorcery, which is extremely poorly worded.

Basically, every character in BESM d20 gets this thing called energy points, 1d2 per level. The reason I haven't brought this up before is because it isn't actually mentioned until chapter 6 in the dynamic sorcery attribute, despite being useful to other characters, mostly to temporarily increase ability scores, though naturally temporary isn't any more specific than "a few minutes" or an "important task". Dynamic Sorcerers, of course, get to use a bigger die to determine their energy points, ranging from 1d4/level to 3d10/level depending on their rank. It is never specified whether this change is retroactive, so I have to assume that whenever you gain a rank you have to reroll all your energy points. Dynamic Sorcerers also gain 20 extra energy points at 12th level and again at 18th level, and you can buy extra energy points in increments of 20 for 3 character points.

Spells cost rank squared energy points, with rank-1 equalling D&D spell level. 9th level spells for example cost 100 energy points while 2nd level spells cost 9 energy points. So you can either spam crap tons of low level spells or just a handful high level ones.

Clear? Good. Now check this out:

Should the spell effects target more than one person or object, the GM may choose to increase the effective Rank required by one if affecting two people, by two if affecting 3-6 people, by three if affecting 7-20 people, and by four if affecting 21-50 people. The GM will decide the Attribute Rank needed to cast a particular spells.

Note that the book gives you no more context than I have for this quote. I'm not sure whether this means you are supposed to penalize fireball, or are allowed to create multi-target versions of single-target spells or what, but I am sure I'm gonna need a drink soon.

Now this:

In addition, any spell that is an attack on another entity also requires an Attack dice roll to hit. If the spell inflicts direct damage, the target will normally be allowed a Defence roll to avoid its effects. If the spell is something that has a more indirect effect, an appropriate saving throw (usually Will or Fortitude) should be allowed to resist or see through the effects.

If the book anywhere explains how this "Attack dice roll" works, I can't find it. That's fine though, because the Dynamic Sorcerer has a bit of text that directly contradicts the above quote anyways:

At first Level, the Dynamic Sorcerer must choose one of Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. this choice will determine the Ability used to determine how powerful his or her spells are. To cast a spell, the Dynamic Sorcerer must have their chosen Ability Score equal to or greater than 10 + the spell's Level. The Difficulty Class of a saving throw against a Dynamic Sorcerer's spell is 10 + the spell's Level + the modifier for the Dynamic Sorcerer's chosen ability.

This doesn't really help players that take the dynamic sorcery attribute without being a Dynamic Sorcerer, which you can totally do, but whatever. There is also no mention of caster levels anywhere in the book as far as I can tell, so I guess just pull that out of your ass.

So what kind of spells can you cast with this ability? Whatever the hell you want. You can cast any spell from a "d20 System product" whose level is equal to or less than your rank-1, or pull a spell of "similar power" directly out of your ass. No limited spells known, no spell preparation, just phenomenal godlike power; it doesn't help that most of the other classes are very fighter-like in their capabilities. There is of course no explanation of what to do if a spell at different levels on different spell lists, so I guess you can write up a PRC that gets miracle as a cantrip, print it out at the library and declare the resulting piece of paper a "d20 System product" and forever after cast miracle for the low low cost of 1 energy point.

I refuse to believe anyone actually playtested this and decided it worked. I refuse to believe anyone in the design process even read this thing after the first draft. I think I'll go have that drink now, cultural norms be damned. I'll try to get to the rest of the classes tonight.

[icyshadowlord]

You know a book is bad if it pretty much starts by telling you about MTP as an option.

[GnomeWorks]

The first class is the adventurer, and they don't have any class features. They get a d4 hit die, 4 skill points per level, low BAB and all bad saves, but get 5 character points every level. This results in less total character points than other characters, but this is supposed to be balanced by the fact that you get to choose your attributes. This is exactly as balanced as you'd expect, and there's not much else to say about this class.

As someone currently playing in a BESM d20 game, I think it appropriate to chime in.

Most of the group is very beer and pretzels - not a whole lot of delving into the mechanics of the game, and since most of the group is familiar with bog-standard D&D 3.5, lots of the weird gaps in BESM get covered by importing assumptions from that.

However, being someone with significantly more free-time than everyone else, I've looked more thoroughly into the game and built some absurdly broken stuff. I've abused the adventurer because those free five points can go anywhere, and if you know what you're doing within the game, it gets abusive super-fast. The adventurer isn't underpowered, but only by virtue of the fact that the game as a whole utterly lacks anything vaguely resembling balance (which isn't really a point in BESM's favor).

[Wiseman]

Your reaction to this book about sums up mine when I first took a look at it.

[name_here]

The classes are adventurer, dynamic sorcerer, giant robot, gun bunny, hot rod, magical girl, ninja, pet monster trainer, samurai, sentai member, shapechanger, student, and tech genius.

I am impressed; they have actually managed to create a class list that isn't fully used by any anime/manga I've seen. Nanoha season 3 gets damn close, but there aren't any giant robots.

[Koumei]

IIRC, Giant Robot is what you use if you're playing the pilot - either the main character is a Giant Robot and the pilot is a cheap companion, or the pilot has loads of action hero skills but still puts the majority of points into "Has an awesome Cohort" (Giant Robot).

Anyway, I just wish to point out that as this game introduces "Maximum skill ranks" as an optional rule, high school students are the best at maximising a single skill, Class Skill or not, above what anyone else can do. Remember that "attacking" is a skill in this, so they can actually have the bestest attack rolls ever (and spend their discretionary points on having actual good attacks for that).

So they're only underpowered if you make them up to be an actual high school student, taking the Bard approach to skills, and then they're supposed to "do things" next to a bunch of specialists. You're more than welcome to just turn them into hyperspecialist iaijutsu masters.

[Drolyt]

So I was a bit tired when I started typing this up, I realize I didn't really explain what BESM is. So basically BESM stands for Big Eyes, Small Mouth, and was a fairly rules lite point buy RPG designed to be used with anime. The system it used was called Tri-Stat, so named because you have 3 stats (Body Mind and Soul as I recall, or was it Spirit?). A superhero RPG called Silver Age Sentinels used the same system. It was for a time quite popular, with quite a few sourcebooks including several based on licensed anime (Hellsing, Slayers, Trigun, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo!, probably others). So obviously during the whole d20 boom they decided they needed a d20 version of BESM. Now, apparently one of the design goals for this product was to put as little work as possible into it, as a lot of stuff is just copied and pasted from the Tri-Stat version. This is a source of many of the games innumerable problems, as they shoehorned in everything they could from the Tri-Stat version whether it made sense in d20 or not.

Guardians of Order (the company that published BESM) went out of business in 2006 due to "overwhelming debt" (at least according to Wikipedia). I'm not super clear on what happened to them since they had a ton of books including a ton of seemingly valuable licensed content (I believe they had the rights to Game of Thrones at one point), but regardless BESM was acquired by ArtHaus, which published the (by then already completed) 3rd edition of BESM in 2007 and nothing since.

The first class is the adventurer, and they don't have any class features. They get a d4 hit die, 4 skill points per level, low BAB and all bad saves, but get 5 character points every level. This results in less total character points than other characters, but this is supposed to be balanced by the fact that you get to choose your attributes. This is exactly as balanced as you'd expect, and there's not much else to say about this class.

As someone currently playing in a BESM d20 game, I think it appropriate to chime in.

Most of the group is very beer and pretzels - not a whole lot of delving into the mechanics of the game, and since most of the group is familiar with bog-standard D&D 3.5, lots of the weird gaps in BESM get covered by importing assumptions from that.

However, being someone with significantly more free-time than everyone else, I've looked more thoroughly into the game and built some absurdly broken stuff. I've abused the adventurer because those free five points can go anywhere, and if you know what you're doing within the game, it gets abusive super-fast. The adventurer isn't underpowered, but only by virtue of the fact that the game as a whole utterly lacks anything vaguely resembling balance (which isn't really a point in BESM's favor).

It's worse than that though. To begin with, the only way it is balanced for choosing your own powers to cost more than taking a premade class is if you both a) admit your system does not make balanced characters and b) completely ignore the bullshit in their own "manifesto" about how min/maxing is always the player's fault. More than that though the low number of points means that players that aren't trying to optimize will very likely produce a horribly weak character, though honestly the rules are bad enough that they could get lucky and make an overpowered character by accident.

The classes are adventurer, dynamic sorcerer, giant robot, gun bunny, hot rod, magical girl, ninja, pet monster trainer, samurai, sentai member, shapechanger, student, and tech genius.

I am impressed; they have actually managed to create a class list that isn't fully used by any anime/manga I've seen. Nanoha season 3 gets damn close, but there aren't any giant robots.

That's fine, since the giant robot is medium sized by default. Also I missed two classes, martial artist and mecha pilot.

IIRC, Giant Robot is what you use if you're playing the pilot - either the main character is a Giant Robot and the pilot is a cheap companion, or the pilot has loads of action hero skills but still puts the majority of points into "Has an awesome Cohort" (Giant Robot).

No, giant robot is actually the name of the class that lets you play a human sized robot.

Anyway, I just wish to point out that as this game introduces "Maximum skill ranks" as an optional rule, high school students are the best at maximising a single skill, Class Skill or not, above what anyone else can do. Remember that "attacking" is a skill in this, so they can actually have the bestest attack rolls ever (and spend their discretionary points on having actual good attacks for that).

So they're only underpowered if you make them up to be an actual high school student, taking the Bard approach to skills, and then they're supposed to "do things" next to a bunch of specialists. You're more than welcome to just turn them into hyperspecialist iaijutsu masters.

I was going to get to the skill thing later (my god did they fuck that up), but I didn't actually notice the part where students got so many skill points. It's not quite as bad as you make it out because there are still class and cross-class skills, but still worth noting.

[Leress]

It was Body Mind and Soul.

[GnomeWorks]

Guardians of Order (the company that published BESM) went out of business in 2006 due to "overwhelming debt" (at least according to Wikipedia). I'm not super clear on what happened to them since they had a ton of books including a ton of seemingly valuable licensed content (I believe they had the rights to Game of Thrones at one point), but regardless BESM was acquired by ArtHaus, which published the (by then already completed) 3rd edition of BESM in 2007 and nothing since.

They got boned for copyright infringement. They did some weird combination anime/game guides for a few shows, and apparently didn't have the rights for one of them, I think. They didn't have the financial ability to withstand the lawsuit, so they folded.

At least, that's the story I heard. Been a long time, obviously.

It's worse than that though. To begin with, the only way it is balanced for choosing your own powers to cost more than taking a premade class is if you both a) admit your system does not make balanced characters and b) completely ignore the bullshit in their own "manifesto" about how min/maxing is always the player's fault. More than that though the low number of points means that players that aren't trying to optimize will very likely produce a horribly weak character, though honestly the rules are bad enough that they could get lucky and make an overpowered character by accident.

Ahh, I see your point... yeah, giving fewer points to a class that can just choose its abilities would imply that the power system is inherently breakable on some level. That conclusion makes sense.

You're definitely right though, if someone who doesn't know what they're doing tries to play an adventurer, they're pretty much boned from the get-go.

[Drolyt]

Giant Robot
So, the Giant Robot. As noted, the Giant Robot is medium size by default, but you can pay points to make him bigger, in theory anyways. This class has a d10 hit die, 2 skill points/level, medium BAB and a good fort save. You have to have the Construct race to take this class, which I guess means you can't play it because there is no Construct race. If you do manage to take the class somehow (perhaps with the Artificial Construct race) you would, over the course of 20 levels, get 4 ranks of features, 4 ranks of armour, 4 ranks of flight, 2 ranks of massive damage, 1 rank of size change (growth), and 17 character points to spend on whatever you want. Let's take a look at these.

Features is basically filler at every level you get it. Essentially for every character point you spend in this attribute you get one minor but useful noncombat ability, which may be biological or technological in origin (but for some reason it has to be mundane, no matter how minor the advantage). Examples given for technological features appropriate for the Giant Robot include diagnostic equipment, gyrocompass, modem, radio, and self-cleaning mechanism. Honestly I don't have a problem with this ability as such. I'm not a huge fan of rules lite games or point buy systems, but if that is what you are going for a rule to the effect of "spend 1 point for a minor perk not covered by other rules" seems perfectly reasonable. What I do have a problem with is that this is the only class feature the Giant Robot gets at 1st level. So a 1st level Giant Robot has 2 skill points, 0 BAB, only one good save, a d10 hit die and effectively no class features. What the hell?

Armour. This attribute costs 4 points/rank and gives you 4 points of damage reduction per rank. Seems like they could have divided everything by 4 there but whatever. The weirdest part is a sidebar that tells you to convert monsters from other d20 products by turning their natural armor into ranks in the armour attribute, and then do the same thing for characters wearing armor. So in BESM everyone always hits but does a lot less damage. Alright then.

Flight completely ignores the manueverability rules in favor of translating the rules from Tri-Stat. It also gives speed in miles per hour. So at 4th level they get 10 mph fly speed, which the book "helpfully" explains is approximately 18 feet/round. Let me reiterate, at 4th level (a level before fly spells become available) the Giant Robot gets an unlimited use fly speed that completely ignores the d20 movement rules. At 18th level this becomes 500 mph. I'd translate that to feet/round but the book didn't bother so why should I?

Massive damage just gives you an extra 2 points of damage per rank. Nothing to see here.

The weirdest thing Giant Robots get is size change. At 10th level they gain the ability to increase their size by one category as an at-will ability. Even if I'm willing to accept that all Giant Robots above a certain level can fly I really have to object to the idea that all characters of this class, regardless of concept, are supposed to learn enlarge person (self-only) at 10th level.

Okay, I'm going to have to stop there for tonight. If I have time tomorrow I'd like to get through the rest of chapters 5 and 6.

[Schleiermacher]

It reads to me like a "straight" review of this system is essentially pointless, because the rules are written so sloppily that you need to apply liberal amounts of mind caulk to every second paragraph in order for them to be parseable at all, never mind playable in any but the most technical sense.

Am I wrong?

[Drolyt]

It reads to me like a "straight" review of this system is essentially pointless, because the rules are written so sloppily that you need to apply liberal amounts of mind caulk to every second paragraph in order for them to be parseable at all, never mind playable in any but the most technical sense.

Am I wrong?

No, that's about right. I don't think anyone's ever actually played this game without a liberal does of MTP, and honestly I'm not sure what you would gain if you did manage to get it running. Tri-Stat BESM (at least as I remember it) is a very simple and easy to get into game (basically the only thing recommending it over HERO which does the whole point buy powers thing much better) and while I wouldn't call it a good system it is far more playable than the d20 version. Of course maybe my memory is fooling me and Tri-Stat is just as bad, I might look into that after I finish this review.

[Leress]

Tri-Stat system doesn't get hella crazy until Tri-Stat dx came out. I use to play BESM 1st and 2nd edition a long time ago and there was a lot of self-imposed limits to not make ridiculous character with a given point value.

They got boned for copyright infringement. They did some weird combination anime/game guides for a few shows, and apparently didn't have the rights for one of them, I think. They didn't have the financial ability to withstand the lawsuit, so they folded.

At least, that's the story I heard. Been a long time, obviously.

I thought it was that they didn't pay people for their work.

---

Drolyt, do you have Advanced d20 Magic or BESM D20 Monsterous Manual?

[Drolyt]

Drolyt, do you have Advanced d20 Magic or BESM D20 Monsterous Manual?

No, but I might be able to get them. Anything good in them?

[Leress]

Drolyt, do you have Advanced d20 Magic or BESM D20 Monsterous Manual?

No, but I might be able to get them. Anything good in them?

The only thing good I can remember is that Advanced d20 Magic used the drain system for casting from Slayers d20.

[Koumei]

3Ed BESM is a lot better than the older ones, but that isn't really saying anything. It was a roll-under system using 2d6 and without using houserules or supplements, you ended up with this scenario:
Player: okay, my Attacking is 15, so I roll... 4, yep, I hit.
DM: okay, its Defence is 14, so it rolls... 11, yep it dodges.
(Repeat for all eternity)

And you get around that by buying the expensive "Extra Attacks" (or by being the PCs, and thus having an innate numbers advantage) because you only get as many defence rolls as you get attack rolls.

For their debt, I thought it was a case of them buying every licence they could, such that they had a huge backlog and couldn't really afford to pay people to make the products for those licences they held (never mind that some of them sold really poorly), so they were carrying a huge heap of licences that would sit and rot for all eternity while nobody is being paid to actually produce anything.

[Whipstitch]

Also, nabbing anime licenses was a pretty damn speculative business back in the late '90s and Sailor Moon was really the only big gun they had. I mean, hey, props to Slayers, Dominion Tank Police and Demon City Shinjuku for being reasonably available stateside at all, but ultimately those franchises are just footnotes compared to the stuff that helped bust things wide open on Cartoon Network.

[Username17]

Guardians of Order died of overextension. They had a lot of valuable licenses, including yes, Game of Thrones. But those licenses also cost monthly fees. They got themselves into cashflow problems where they couldn't afford to pay their staff to make new books and still pay for their licensing fees. Without making products, they couldn't get a cash flow, and eventually they went into liquidation.

Some of it was paying out for licenses that weren't popular enough to justify doing that for (I mean, I like El Hazard, but most people haven't heard of it). But mostly it was just taking on more licenses than they had the manpower to service at one time. And thence, death spiral.

Game of Thrones is like a license to print money. But only if you can actually hire someone to work the printing presses.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Adam Jury did graphic production duty on a chunk of BESM books, but not this one...well, sorta. He worked on BESM d20: Stingy Gamer Edition. This was part of a brief fad where companies would churn out "accessible sized" main books, like the Conan RPG Pocket Edition.

[Atmo]

Does anyone know if Anime d20 SRD fix those BESM d20 problems?

[Leress]

Does anyone know if Anime d20 SRD fix those BESM d20 problems?

No, it is pretty much BESM d20 revised edition which didn't really fix the major problems with the system.

[Atmo]

Does anyone know if Anime d20 SRD fix those BESM d20 problems?

No, it is pretty much BESM d20 revised edition which didn't really fix the major problems with the system.

So i'll stick with OVA. Atmo out.

[Prak]

Let's see, the couple of times I played BESM (or rather, made characters for) I made a schoolboy with tentacles, literally, Jon Talbain from Darkstalkers (so, a werewolf with martial arts). Don't think I ever actually got to play the schoolboy tentacle monster, and the thing I primarily remember with Jon was killing a drow with a door still on the hinges.

I also heard a story from a friend about playing BESMd20. He took an ability that gives character points when he would take damage. ...and wore a thermite helmet.

[Aryxbez]

As someone currently playing in a BESM d20 game, I think it appropriate to chime in.

Very fitting, as I'm also playing in a game, mostly because our 4th game folded, and found the Uresia setting book in the store we play at, and decided to play that (especially since I get to play sentient DQ-styled slime!). Though yeah, the game is played via very minimal interaction of its various subsystems (though did use D20 Mecha supplement for our PC's "mechs"), various houserules like a condensed skill list, Step 3 of PC creation (I'll get to that) and made the skill ranks maximum mandatory.

Though yes, step 3 is bafflingly bad, as it steals away pretty much all of your points for little/no gain. Even on a simple array like: 15,14,13,12,10,8 (which would be 36pts out of 40 gone. Or 6 8's =-24pts, or 6 10's=-30pts). This little bit pretty much puts character creation at a grinding halt, and encourages you to play a character with as many Nill ("-") in ability scores as possible so ye ACTUALLY have points to spend on your character. So basically, in encourages one to play this. Crappy enough houserule we went with was -21ts docked of 40, and get 18,16,14,14,10,10 (max 24 in a score till...plot), though honestly I think that entire step should be ignored and instead just roll stats, and use anyone's set, or just give a set array w/no points taken from the initial discretionary.

Combat wise, from what I can tell, pretty much after the level you start at, you're going to start falling off if a non-spellcaster. At best I guess, ye maximized enough to be excessive for your level to hold back till your inability to simply stab stuff to death happens. Also, what Koumei said about defense rolls and extra attacks is evident in this game as well.

For anyone who cares (read:Nobody), I recently had made a list calculating the BESM classes based on the class system they have on pg32.

ADVENTURER! (apparently have -6%, so they should have -12pts less or 188pts, if "margin of error" included =180pts)
Chasis (saves/BAB/HD-etc):
HD=20pts, BaB=30, Saves=+18pt (all saves), Skill=20pts
Abilities (cp x20 =+100)
Total:158pts (100+20+20+18) 188 if BaB is multiplicative as well

Dynamic Sorcerer!
Chasis
HD=20pts, , BaB=0? (30 if 3xevery lv goes up), Saves=+24pt Skill=20pts
Abilities 106 (+80 Dyn-Sorc, +20cp, +6 En-Bonus)
Total:170 or 200 if BaB multiplies. (106+30+24+20+20)
NOTE: if this class went way of counting every spell, cost would be wonkier I'm sure, might do it later.

GIANT ROBOT
Chasis
HD=50, BaB=+45, Saves=24, Skill=+10
Abilities=63/69 (Features+4,Flight+16,Armour+16,+18cp, Mass-Dam +4/10, +Size (Growth)+5 )
Total:192-198 (+50+45+24+10+63/69)

GUN Bunny
Chasis
HD=40,BaB=+60,Saves=24, Skill=+20pt
Abilities=42/56 (+16-18feats*, Div-Rel +4, Mass-Dam+8/20, +8cp, Def-Con-Mas+6)
Total: 186-200 (40+60+24+20. +42/54)
NOTE *=Gave Improved Initiative Feat TWICE

HOT ROD
Chasis
HD=40,BaB=+45, Saves=+24, Skill=+20
Abilities=68-80 (Per-Gear[car]+12, Mech-Gen+4,Flunkies+3-6, Item-Pow+9-12, Org-ties+3-9, +18cp, Wealth+6, Aura-Com+2, Div-Rel+3, Def-com-Mas+4, Feats+4)
Total: 197-209 (40+45+24+20 +67-79)

Magical Girl
Chasis
HD=40, BaB=+45, Saves=+24, Skill=+10
Abilities=55-93(Servant+8/20, Spec-atk+8/20,+12cp, Item-Pow+18/24, Jumping+1,Flight+6-12, Rejuv+4)
Total: 174-212 (40+45+24+10. +55-93)
NOTE: Maybe Servant is crappy,making it 200 even.

Martial Artist
Chasis
HD=50, BaB=+60, Saves=+30, Skill=+10
Abilities46-48 (Unarmed Atk/Def skill +1?, Mass-Dam+8, feats+6-8*, Speed+4, Spec-Atk+16, Def-Com-Mas+4, +7cp,+
Total:196-198 (50+60+30+10. +46-48)
NOTE:1st lv ability is odd "Highly skilled" seems appropriate equivalent (+2 ranks to two skills, ability gives +4sp for 1pt). *=Gave Improved Initiative Feat TWICE

Mecha Pilot
Chasis
HD=40,BaB=+45, Saves=+24, Skill=+20pt
Abilities 71-79 (OBMecha+48, Per-Gear+2, Aura-Com+5, Org-Ties+4-12, +12cp)
Total 200-208 (40+45+24+20. +71-79)
NOTE: Seems assuming Organisational Ties are at lower end to make it even maybe?

NINJA
Chasis
HD=40, BaB=45, Saves=+30, Skill=+20
Abilities= 63-67 (Jumping +4, Feats+12-14, Per-Gear+4, Telepot+10, Ht-Senses [hearing/sight/smell] +3, 6th-sense+2, Spec-Mov+4, Speed+4, Invis+3, Env-Cont+2-4, +11cp, Def-Com-Mas+4)
Total: 198-202 (40+45+30+20. +63-67)
NOTES:Likely Environmental Cont abilities are on the lower pt-cost side. *=Gave Improved Initiative Feat TWICE

PET MOnster Trainer!
Chasis
HD=20,BaB=+30, Saves+24, Skill=+20
Abilities 107-110 (Pet-Mon+60, An-Friend+4, TCute-Mon+8, Tele(w/pet)+3/6, +29CP, Wealth+3)
Total: 201-204 (+20+30+24+20. +107-110)

Samurai.....JACK
Chasis
HD=50, BaB=+60, Saves=+24, skill+20
Abilities=47 (Feats+10, Per-Gear+2, Speed+2, +14cp, Aura-Com+4, Mass-Dam+6, Jumping+2, Ht-Aw+2, Spec-Atk+4, Div-Rel+1)
Total 201pts (50+60+24+20. +47)

Sentai Member
Chasis
HD=30, BaB=+45, Saves=+30, skill+20
Abilities 78 (6th-Sen+1, Per-Gear+4, Mass-Dam+4, Div-Rel+5, Rejuv+4, Ex-atk+8, Comb-atk+9, Ht-Aw+1, Atk-Com-Mas+12, Telepathy+2, spec-mov+1, Art-Dis+1, +26cp)
Total =203pts (30+45+30+20. +78)

Shapechanger
Chasis
HD=40, BaB=+45, Saves=+24, Skill+10
Abilities +85 (Alt-Form-0 =2pts, Alt-Form [full-pow] +36, Elas+8, Regen+12, Mimic+20, +7cp)
Total=204pts (40+45+24+10. +85)

STUDENT (Yeah....I know)
Chasis
HD=20, BaB=+30, Saves=+24, Skill=+40
Abilities 82-94 (Div-Rel+5, 6th-Sense+1, Flunkies+6/12, Mind-Sh+3, Art-Dis+2, Aura-Com+2, An-Friend+2, Org-Ties+3-9, Per-Gear+4, Spec-Mov+1, Spec-Atk+4, Mech-Gen+2, +47cp
Total 196-208 (20+30+24+40. +82-94)

Tech Genius
Chasis
HD=20, BaB=+30, Saves=+24, Skill=+40
Abilities= 81-91 (Mech-Gen+12, Per-Gear+12, Flunkies+5/10,Comp-Scan+6, Item-Pow+15/20, Wealth+9, +22cp)
Total 195-205 (20+30+24+40. +81-91)
NOTE: Flunkies likely sucky kind, and Item of Power is on expensive end, that'd make it even.

We could probably devote a whole thread to dissecting the poisonous philosophy this "manifesto" espouses

The Manifesto has been discussed before, but beyond this review, I'd be Glad to talk about its terrabadness otherwise. It baffles me it has "This book contains the answers to all things.", a quote that contradicts all of its stupid messages, pick any point, and this one pretty much deflates any meaning the manifesto was going for (though seems to me they put that there sarcastically).


For what it matters for the purpose of this review, are you using the "Revised Edition" of the game at all? I'm not sure what all they changed, but apparently they added a table for all the superpowers, and a system for making classes in the game (safe to say adds up pt-wise, but not balance wise).