WiP: DisgaeaGame Revised (still 3.X)

[Koumei]

Okay, may as well have its own thread at this point. First, a copy-pasta of relevant bits of previous discussion:

Probably going a bit further in using custom content and making it use less D&D stuff (though basically keeping the framework there because the basic idea there works for Disgaea).

Where exactly you want to draw the line between race and class for a Disgaea based game is an open question... A Ghost and an Armor is the same thing except one is a caster and one is a warrior. A Slumber Cat and a Nekomata is both just a girl with cat ears, with one being a monk and the other being whatever the fuck you want to call a slumber cat.

Similarly, many Humanoid classes are automatically going to be combined. There's no way in fuck that you're going to write Skull and Mage as different classes, because it's the same character type with only the sex and hat changed.

Anyway, Disgaea 5 has 44 classes in it, and you could do that with 4 classes and 11 races. But what you're actually going to do is to have Basic Races that get to pick from the weird bullshit class like like Kunoichi and Galaxy Mage, and then have major races that only get to pick a basic class (Mage, Fighter, Scout, Healer), and then have a few Fixed Progression Races that have their own fixed progressions and don't let you pick a class at all.

So Human and Cat Girl are Basic Races and you can be an Archer or a Knight if you want. Ghost is a Major Race, and you have to pick a basic class but get Ghost powers for going up in level. And a Dragon is a Fixed Progression Race and you don't get to be anything else.

Basic Races plus Basic Classes are for Followers. So when mooks show up, they can be Human Fighters and they are allowed to suck.

I feel that doing the "Take ten levels of your class, then Prestige out to a fancy title" thing works pretty well for Disgaea, especially seeing as higher-tier classes flat-out have names that make good prestige classes. Who wouldn't want to write "Genocidaire" on their sheet?

I'd use the Slumber Cat as a "minion" thing - you'd have a bunch of them instead of Prinnies, and whereas Prinnies have a bunch of HP and explode when thrown, these run up fast, hit you once (as a Makai Kingdom player, I'd say "with a katana") then die in one hit. Having Leadership just be a thing, with players having bunches of disposable minions, seems very appropriate for the game.

Another thing I'm considering, which I turned down when making the original (because it was going beyond the scope of "A D&D plug-in" and D&D classes were already handing out plenty of abilities), is making the Weapon Skills a thing, and if you get "gains weapon skills with X weapon class" as a class feature (so an Archer just GETS bow skills, and a Fighter chooses 3 weapon types), then as your BAB goes up (even through prestige classing), you get the new powers. On the plus side, two Fighters can work out really differently beyond race choices and stuff, and if someone just HAS to multi-class (which doesn't really seem necessary, but always plan for players wanting to do things) then it still scales. On the downside, that's basically writing up a spell list thing, and even Human Fighter minions will be throwing Megaton Drivers around.

will there be political rules based on what politicians to throw into who

The reason for using weapon skills is to facilitate multiclassing. Every power that is dependent on having the Gun Skill tag and a BAB of X makes a Gunslinger/Samurai more viable and every power that is dependent on having a Gunslinger Class Level of X makes the split class character less viable. That's pretty much the beginning and end of it.

Okay, I'm going to leave the Weapon Skills thing aside for the time being, until I decide exactly how feature-packed an Advanced Class is and how empty a Basic Class is and how good your progression is for having an Advanced Race. Because you want both types of Real Player Character to be good, with some good abilities and choices, but you also want Minions to be kind of lame (and also quick to make).

I'll stick with the Tome thing for magic items, with Scaling Bonuses and various Weapon Qualities (which can flat-out be "Has X type of innocent in it" for half of them). That sounds a lot better than lists of 40 polearms, 40 axes and so on. There will be your standard 8 slots which can be eight sets of shoes if you really want, but there will also be a very special separate slot which is for your Title. Yes you can gather a bunch and then choose to specifically equip a Title.

The Dark Assembly will function much the same as it previously did, so while you won't be throwing senators into each other, there will still be the bit where players can unlock "Lets us explicitly take this game into an exciting new adventure" with a mini-game that involves bribes and skill checks (and possibly murder).

Feats won't be the big Tome ones, they'll be the smaller ones as suggested by Frank in another thread, and you get one per level, and obviously they're called Evilties. The actual games can influence these a bunch, and I'm fine with there being a whole bunch that different races and classes can specifically choose to have. Basic Races can also use these to pick up some special powers that are, in the games, Creature Skills for that race but are too good to give a Basic Race for free.

So here's my list of Basic Races:

• Human: Bonus Skill Points, Bonus Evilty
• Angel: +2 Wis, provides light, can glide/slow-fall
• Android: +2 Int and +1 Natural Armour, doesn't need to sleep, doesn't have "The Construct Package" and has a Con score like everyone else
• Orc: -2 to Sense Motive/resist Charm effects, +2 Strength, +2 Bonus to Flank/Aid Other Bonuses (ie they are now +4), Scent
• Nekomata: +2 Dex, +2 Climb and Jump, Darkvision, Fatiguing Pounce
• Jack: +2 Stealth and Intimidate, Swift Demoralise, Darkvision, doesn't sleep
• Vampire: has a Con score and doesn't have fifty Immunities, can drain blood from a Pinned or Helpless creature to eat, Light-Sensitive, +2 Bluff and Handle Animal (bats)
• Marionette: doesn't have the whole Construct thing, Feint as a Move Action, +2 to Balance, Escape Artist and Tumble but -2 to resist Compulsions, and either minor DR or Poison Resistance?
• Gargoyle: +2 Con, +4 to Jump and Resist Tripping, +1 Natural Armour, DR 5/Adamantium
• Nine Tails: +2 Cha, +2 Sense Motive and Spellcraft, Detect Magic, can't be flanked (could be loaded up with mystic seer stuff and made Advanced)

Basic Classes are Mage (choose Red/Blue/Green/Star), Healer, Scout, Warrior

Advanced Races are:

• Empusa
• Alraune (could be Basic if you just don't give them racial spellcasting or healing auras and limit their reach to simply 10 feet?)
• Moth (again, if you just make them "a flying thing", that's a Basic Race. But they're probably best taking the Scout class and gaining special status attacks as they level)
• Ghost (will still have a Con score, but will gradually get the ability to be Ethereal)
• Sea Angel
• Imp
• Maybe include Majin as "Human with great stats, can only take lame classes"?

Advanced Classes:

• Samurai - master of swords (and decent with bows and spears), iaijutsus people in half!
• Gunslinger - can shoot holes in time and space, has a hair trigger
• Ninja - sneak attacking, teleporting, status-afflicting sword/dagger users
• Archer - make doom and fire rain upon foes
• Saint - a great healer and buffer who can get along with any afterlife
• Heretic - healers who can also anti-heal, becoming great damage dealers
• Prism Mage - casters of all of the elements!
• Iron Knight - clad in superheavy armour, they stomp around taking little damage
• Mystic Knight - spellcasters who excel at stabbing as well! They lower enemy resistances too
• Berserker - warriors who don't care much for armour but do care for killing you with an axe or club
• Monk - martial artists who can change styles, unleash special moves and counter all attacks
• Master Thief - gunners and stabbers who excel at stealing your money, weapons, pants, watch, soul and ideas
• Sage - mystics with a smattering of Star magic and Healing, who can see the future and spread damage out over large areas
• Masked Hero - stupidly fast-moving flying champions who fight with fists or guns
• Professor - inventors who make great items and boost expendable items and generally power allies up

With Prestige Classes mostly serving as specialist things for Advanced Classes (Genocidaire, Carnage Princess, Nether Pirate) or as a way to give more variety to the advancement of an Advanced Race (so a Ghost Warrior becomes Haunted Armour this way)

Awesome Races:

• Dragon
• Mystic Beast (the horned dog things with illusions and wind magic)
• Chimera (which in Disgaea is a jackal cobra with an array of curse powers)
• Efreeti
• Djinn
• Holy Dragon
• Serpent (the giant shark)

Minions:

• Basic Undead
• Basic Animals
• Sludge
• Prinny
• Slumber Cat/Death Sabre
• Putty
• Pixie
• Eryngi
• Scrabbit

Monsters:

• Shadows
• Beholders (the eyeball things from Makai Kingdom are close enough)
• Golems
• Wood Golems (Treants)
• Baciel
• Zombie Dragon
• Giant Slug
• Galactic Demon
• Mimic
• Owlbears and other weird crap
• Cockatrice

That's what I have in basic note form at the moment.

[Kaelik]

Maybe not particularly helpful, but my first thought was that it was Disgaea for 2E D&D and therefore automatically a piece of shit, so you might want to consider alternative naming schemes, since it is still just a 3.5 hack.

[Koumei]

Good call. Fixed to avoid confusion or assumptions of automatic shitness.

[Red Archon]

Could you summarise what the fuck this Disgaea thing is, keeping in mind that some of us don't watch cartoons or speak a single word of Japanese? I read the Wikipedia page for Disgaea, and it didn't help me understand what's going on. Is it like a anime meme hodgepodge? What are you trying to achieve?

[Koumei]

It's a series of Japanese, anime-inspired*, turn-based tactical battlers with goofy comedy, over-the-top effects, and... basically it takes several tropes of Eastern religions and plays them straight. Except when played straight and not just glossed over or reinterpreted, they become jokes. The basic idea is you generally play the ruler of one of the Netherworlds (~= hell), trying to expand your powerbase so you can control more demons and get more mana power (~= souls) and then [plot things] happen along the way. Negotiating with senators (violence optional) and reincarnation play big parts in the game mechanics, along with... basically taking feng shui and crossing it with "the black squares are lava".

Also the numbers get quite big, with the maximum level being 9999 and the maximum for stats being... in the millions, with hundreds of billions possible for damage and HP. And all those numbers still amount to the game being rocket tag most of the time.

*And anime-inspiring. It has an animu series that basically tells the plot of the first game, give or take.

[maglag]

I believe that the part where there are countless hells and the souls of the damned being converted into the shape of exploding penguins isn't mentioned in most eastern bibles. Or that the candidate to rule over hell would have mercy on children who got on his way to loot to his heart's content.

There was also a Heaven in the first game, although I'm not sure it was mentioned ever again.

My favorite character is Flonne the Angel assassin (now a fallen angel):
1-I have a mission to slay the protagonist evil overlord!
2-But is it ok to kill someone I don't know? Are they really evil?
3-Then it is only ok to kill people I've taken the time to know properly?

EDIT: The hells also usually work bizzarro world style, for example demonic kids are expected to skip school classes, while those who do listen to their lessons and do their homework are considered deliquent rebels.

[erik]

And there's the Dark Assembly, basically you can meet the democratic congress in hell and you can put forward proposals like opening up access to other areas. If you cannot bribe and charm your way to enough votes. Force the issue through by fighting them!

[Aryxbez]

Since we're crossing over, figure I'll do the same from this post.

I mean, in their own game, you are playing as a legion of 1000 Prinnies who are all identical, and slaves to Etna, and the fact that there are a thousand of them should probably tell you something about their individual value and life expectancy.

Sure, but they're given an item to circumvent that exception to be the protagaonist, that fact is also played for laughs & have an in-world reason for so many lives. In the first game, they were their own unit, and were just as possible as becoming powerful as well. So in that respect, I see no reason not to simply have it as a playable option for a singular PC. People can have hordes of humans, orcs, kobolds and the like, just because those are "minion races" doesn't mean they can't be protagonists.

So at this point with updates, if gonna put the stats out there, may as well go all the way for a popular icon of the franchise.

[Koumei]

I believe that the part where there are countless hells

China, dude. Thousand and one hells.

the souls of the damned being converted into the shape of exploding penguins

If you can resist being 100% literal, I wish to point out that reincarnation is basically that. Shitty people get shitty reincarnations. People who are unenlightened and basically spend their whole life getting high and masturbating come back as insects. That's why there are so many insects.

Or that the candidate to rule over hell would have mercy on children who got on his way to loot to his heart's content.

The evil deities and demons and stuff range from 100% pure evil to "kind of annoying" in a lot of Eastern religions, depending on which one you choose. There totally are things that basically translate to devils which are "quite irresponsible and bad-mannered" and are only as monstrous as your average jerk.

The hells also usually work bizzarro world style, for example demonic kids are expected to skip school classes, while those who do listen to their lessons and do their homework are considered deliquent rebels.

That's because they're learning to be proper evil creatures!

Anyway, I put more thought into the classes and decided that, seeing as some players are still taking Basic Classes (those who want Advanced Races) and the Basic Mage still gets some form of magic progression (albeit more like a Tome Fire Mage and less like a Wizard or Sorcerer), the basic Warrior is going to need something equal, so yes. There will be "Pick a weapon category, gain special moves".

Disgaea puts all spells and techs on the same resource (MP), but that's more a limitation of the engine (similar to how illusions and summoning are just fancy visuals for "do damage" effects), and I think it'd be a good idea to have some variety there.

As for prinnies, I could go into great depth discussing how they are treated by the games (Prinny Laharl, dialogue with all generic units on the map), or how even the Makai Kingdom demon prinnies aren't exactly normal, or how Frank once said making them playable "would be retarded" and that's generally good advice. But at the end of the day, they're not like Warforged where I personally hate them: I like the existence of prinnies, I think they're a good mascot and a good thing to have in the game as minions, I just don't want them to be playable and wouldn't want to play with someone who DID play one. As such, I think I'll just disregard anything you have to say, Aryxbez, and continue with them being minions and other people being able to control a bunch of them through minionmancy. A solution that works for everyoneme!

[Mechalich]

Considering that people generally don't actually play using Prinnies in actual Disgaea console games because they are so ridiculously unoptimized compared to any of the other monstrous races you might want to use (though the reality of most Disgaea games is that using non-unique characters is only something you do if they have a specific ability that non of the uniques have, like a thief's stealing or the D5 Sage's 'attack everything on the map' ability) I think having them be non-playable in a tabletop rendition is totally viable.

Disgaea puts all spells and techs on the same resource (MP), but that's more a limitation of the engine (similar to how illusions and summoning are just fancy visuals for "do damage" effects), and I think it'd be a good idea to have some variety there.

It's also because increasing MP is a thing you can do via the reincarnation and bonus points system though, making it easy to switch characters from martials to casters when reincarnating (there are specific leveling approaches to do this, usually in order to unlock maximum AoE range) and because in the endgame you want every character to have the best heals, the best buffs, and any status effects you might want for super-hard item-world runs.

Of course, Disgaea really stops being a tactical combat rpg very early - in later iterations you could often unlock uber-leveling tricks as early as chapter 2 and the optimal approach (in terms of time sunk into the game) was to quickly over-level a few characters and proceed to completely ignore tactics entirely as you curb-stomp the story completely. So I'm assuming the system will be primarily based on representing the playstyle of a sort of fairly basic vanilla playthrough of the first half of a Disgaea game.

[OgreBattle]

At what level can I cleave mountains

[maglag]

I believe that the part where there are countless hells

China, dude. Thousand and one hells.

...Derp me. I somehow read western myths in your post, not eastern.

the souls of the damned being converted into the shape of exploding penguins

If you can resist being 100% literal, I wish to point out that reincarnation is basically that. Shitty people get shitty reincarnations. People who are unenlightened and basically spend their whole life getting high and masturbating come back as insects. That's why there are so many insects.

Ahem, I don't recall insects being easy to manipulate into my personal army, nor having a lot of them living in your home as a sign of status.

As such, I think I'll just disregard anything you have to say, Aryxbez, and continue with them being minions and other people being able to control a bunch of them through minionmancy. A solution that works for everyoneme!

I'm all for prinnies being at the bottom of the food chain, as long as they can double as improvised explosives.

[Almaz]

"Prinny Horde" should obviously just be an ability where you are Etna and have a surplus of prinnies to use as artillery, or to stack so you can hop up on them, or whatnot.

[name_here]

Prinnies are iconic to the series as being completely disposable minion grenades. You bring them along to level them up so they explode more enthusiastically when you throw them. They are not a suitable PC concept.

[Username17]

Your big issue when making a heavy mod for D&D 3e is how you're going to handle team monster. 3rd edition D&D has a lot of monster manuals, and being able to copypasta that shit is super useful for the DM side of things. Your basic plan, I think, is to get people to fight a bunch of enemies. Both because that's fun and because it's appropriate to the source material. This in turn suggests that characters are going to be a lot burlier than their D&D counterparts - especially the martial classes of course.

But while being generally hard decor will let you take on a group of twenty Hill Giants, it won't let you take on a group of twenty Medusae. If a single Medusa is any threat at all, a group of twenty of them will plaster the party in one round. Save or Die enemies just don't make good horde foes.

So what you're going to want to do is to take as given a small number of foes from various monster manuals and decide from an aesthetic standpoint how many of them you are going to want to put on the table in your setpiece battles. Then, when you have a SGT gauntlet in mind, you can figure out how powerful the player characters are going to need to be. And then you can decide from ass pulls and personal preference how much of that power you want a character to have because they are a Samurai, how much you want them to have because they are a Vampire, and how much you want them to have because of their Evilities and Equipment and whatever the fuck else.

So I've already highlighted why a Hill Giant would be an appropriate benchmark enemy for 7th level. For first level, Death Dog or Giant Toad could be appropriate, but Ghoul or Dryad would not be.

-Username17

[Mechalich]

Your big issue when making a heavy mod for D&D 3e is how you're going to handle team monster. 3rd edition D&D has a lot of monster manuals, and being able to copypasta that shit is super useful for the DM side of things. Your basic plan, I think, is to get people to fight a bunch of enemies. Both because that's fun and because it's appropriate to the source material. This in turn suggests that characters are going to be a lot burlier than their D&D counterparts - especially the martial classes of course.

I'd think you'd want to go the other way. Disgaea and associated games live in the land of one-shots. If you aren't one-shotting an enemy, or at least having 2-4 characters combo up to one-shot an enemy then that foe is either a major boss or you're doing something wrong. Even at ludicrously high power levels, characters in Disgaea usually die to one attack if fighting appropriately powerful enemies (that may well mean the attack does 100 million damage or something, but that's what happens).

On the plus side, the game treats death as totally meaningless. You're down for the extent of the fight, that's all.

So to be true to the spirit of Disgaea in a 3.X mod you'd want everyone to be tissue-paper thin, PCs and monsters alike. Disgaea combat tactics are all about range, positioning, those god-cursed geo-symbols, and occasionally the elemental resistances of enemies. Actual attack strategy is almost always 'use your most devastating move each round' single target or AoE as appropriate.

Save or Die enemies just don't make good horde foes.

Disgaea doesn't really have save or dies. The closest thing is Poison, which kills quickly over a few turns if not cured, but that really only matters in item world runs. Otherwise if you die in four turns you usually don't care because you would have anyway or the fight is already over. It has powerful save or sucks and occasionally useful debuffs, but these are easily cureable (any squad should be able to pull out a nearly limitless supply of low-level healers with espoir assuming minions exist at all) and have workarounds.

I'd think you'd want to remove most or in fact all save or dies from 3.X Disgaea, or just convert them into attacks that do one-shot levels of damage but have a relatively low chance to hit.

[maglag]

Your big issue when making a heavy mod for D&D 3e is how you're going to handle team monster. 3rd edition D&D has a lot of monster manuals, and being able to copypasta that shit is super useful for the DM side of things. Your basic plan, I think, is to get people to fight a bunch of enemies. Both because that's fun and because it's appropriate to the source material. This in turn suggests that characters are going to be a lot burlier than their D&D counterparts - especially the martial classes of course.

I'd think you'd want to go the other way. Disgaea and associated games live in the land of one-shots. If you aren't one-shotting an enemy, or at least having 2-4 characters combo up to one-shot an enemy then that foe is either a major boss or you're doing something wrong. Even at ludicrously high power levels, characters in Disgaea usually die to one attack if fighting appropriately powerful enemies (that may well mean the attack does 100 million damage or something, but that's what happens).

On the plus side, the game treats death as totally meaningless. You're down for the extent of the fight, that's all.

So to be true to the spirit of Disgaea in a 3.X mod you'd want everyone to be tissue-paper thin, PCs and monsters alike. Disgaea combat tactics are all about range, positioning, those god-cursed geo-symbols, and occasionally the elemental resistances of enemies. Actual attack strategy is almost always 'use your most devastating move each round' single target or AoE as appropriate.

The key difference is that in Disgaea one player plays a team of elite dudes, but I suppose in a D&D hack each player only has one elite dude.

So even if death is easy to heal after battle, it's still bad if your elite dude gets one-shot in the first round, maybe before getting a single action, and then the player can only go play Super Smash Bros while the rest of the party actually keeps playing the D&D&Disgaea.

[Koumei]

At what level can I cleave mountains

By tenth level, probably before. I mean, carving the terrain up isn't going to break the game, it's something relatively low-level characters can just do in Disgaea (admittedly as a visual effect), and it's something fun. Later on when abilities create volcanoes and shit, I want that to actually be a thing, and not a 4E special power. I probably won't include the ones that destroy the planet on which you are standing, but honestly, "You shoot the sky, blowing up a planet in space. Chunks of planet now land all over the battlefield" should be fine. Depending on how the SGT lines up once I've picked out some monsters that are appropriate.

Your big issue when making a heavy mod for D&D 3e is how you're going to handle team monster. 3rd edition D&D has a lot of monster manuals, and being able to copypasta that shit is super useful for the DM side of things. Your basic plan, I think, is to get people to fight a bunch of enemies. Both because that's fun and because it's appropriate to the source material. This in turn suggests that characters are going to be a lot burlier than their D&D counterparts - especially the martial classes of course.

Yeah, as much as the video games totally are rocket launcher tag, that amount of PC death doesn't really work for a tabletop RPG where you expect everyone to be present and having fun - nobody cares if 90% of the things in Disgaea 2 stay inside your base panel or get wiped out in turn 1. I'm not going to literally inflate the HP numbers to Disgaea levels, even though it'd be fun to write "100 million HP" on the character sheet, because that'd be dumb in practice.

Overall, just from the "Hit Points" perspective, I think I'll do away with dice for those, and each class can just have a fixed value, modified by Constitution, and then if you're not explicitly a minion (on either side - Team Monster can have "real characters" and "minions" too) you x4 at first level just like skill points. Thus making space for really shitty NPCs.

I'm not sure about inflating the numbers - to some extent, the assumed bonus to Con everyone just ends up with (Inherent and Scaling Magic Item) can help make that happen when "1d6 damage per level" doesn't get a bonus per die.

Save or Die enemies just don't make good horde foes.

This is of course true in regular D&D as well. If they rock up at all, I'd have them specifically be the bosses. So while four Medusae would not be appropriate as a level eleven challenge, one Medusa + six Trolls (or two Trolls and eight "Human Scout 3") would be.

So what you're going to want to do is to take as given a small number of foes from various monster manuals and decide from an aesthetic standpoint how many of them you are going to want to put on the table in your setpiece battles. Then, when you have a SGT gauntlet in mind, you can figure out how powerful the player characters are going to need to be. And then you can decide from ass pulls and personal preference how much of that power you want a character to have because they are a Samurai, how much you want them to have because they are a Vampire, and how much you want them to have because of their Evilities and Equipment and whatever the fuck else.

This seems reasonable, and the "specifically from Disgaea" monsters will generally map closely to existing monsters or can at least be made with these in mind. I think I already got ahead of myself with vaguely jotting down what I want the classes to do before saying "This is an Owlbear. You fight it at level 3, and therefore you need ___".

Time to go form a list~

[Mechalich]

The key difference is that in Disgaea one player plays a team of elite dudes, but I suppose in a D&D hack each player only has one elite dude.

So even if death is easy to heal after battle, it's still bad if your elite dude gets one-shot in the first round, maybe before getting a single action, and then the player can only go play Super Smash Bros while the rest of the party actually keeps playing the D&D&Disgaea.

Granted, though I'd like to think that running a system where enemies drop in 1-2 hits and therefore most combats will take only a handful of rounds and ought to move fast.

The problem I see is that traditional D&D battles aren't anything like Disgaea battles - which are rocket tag wargames of a peculiar kind - so I was trying to think of a modification that would help preserve some of the flavor. 3.X battles without save or dies (and with save or sucks highly limited) can get really sloggy really fast.

Mostly I worry that if the battles don't feel Disgaea-like there's not a whole lot to emulate. Sure there's a few minigames but most of them are battle related (even the Dark Assembly is something you fight when it becomes time to pass something actually important). All of the games have completely linear storylines, you hit the same maps one after another regardless of you capabilities, with simply an option for grinding in between. The games have a low comedy send up of RPG tropes and ridiculously over-the-top effects, but you can't really bake those into the rules. There's no out of combat encounters of meaning, there's no skill system, and there isn't even a coherent setting (in fact the various game convenience aspects of the settings that do exist are played mostly for laughs).

I mean, I envision a Disgaea campaign plays as a modded hexcrawl, where the characters use the Dimensional Gatekeeper to transport them to various points in a netherworld or netherworlds, but how do you build a collaborative story for that?

[maglag]

The games have a low comedy send up of RPG tropes and ridiculously over-the-top effects, but you can't really bake those into the rules.

Koumei just confirmed she's gonna code the "ridiculously over-the-top effects". Cleave mountains before level 10, make planets above explode to rain meteors on the battlefield.

Then a bunch of exotic races and classes where a robot maid with automatic pistols, a ghost unarmored berseker with an oversized weapon and a nekomata samurai can all get along. This isn't as much as "Try to consolidate the elements from all Disgaea games into tabletop format" and more of "Koumei converts her personal favorite bits of Disgaea into tabletop form".

[Koumei]

I want to try to get minions onto the Rocket Tag scene, where they totally do die in basically one hit. Even from each other. I mean, if we agree that Basic Classes still get to cast Giga Fire and unleash Winged Slayer, then we've pretty much accepted that some minions are going to be Human Fire Mage 10 and Jack Warrior 10, and... yeah, they'll have relatively low HP because they're minions, but they'll still be whipping out effects that do real damage. And they won't take PCs or proper monster threats from full to empty in one hit, but they can one-shot each other just fine.

And the "real people" on each side can just wipe enemy minions out (while still getting chipped for "enough damage that I can't flat-out ignore them" if they give the minions the chance to hit them first).

I know that Disgaea 1 was rocket tag and the games went progressively MORE hardcore into that (by making more and more things scale your damage up, mostly). Apparently D5 pulled the reigns back a bit (Armour Proficiency levels) such that in your normal "first playthrough without going mental" you can have some tanky things that absorb hits?

[Username17]

As far as defense goes, the big Disgaea 5 defense change seems to be that characters who "Defend" can take hits for nearby allies like a Sword and Fist Devoted Defender. And there are abilities that let you increase the area and effectiveness of that. So having a formation with a Ruby Knight defending a bunch of school girl mages is totally a thing.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Right, so flipping through the first two Monster Manuals so far, we're looking at:

Zombies: appropriate minions for a level equal to half their hit dice (ie you can get a bunch of 8 HD zombies at level 4 and you basically mop them up)
Skeletons: appropriate minions for a level equal to their hit dice

Level 1: Ash rats and Crested Felldrakes and Small Elementals and Animooted Objects all seem fine, and if I do the "you have more HP at level 1" thing then you can just fight like three of them off the bat in one encounter and not have it be "Very Challenging". More importantly though, at level four you can fight entire packs of these that support bigger things.

Level 2: Medium Objects, Black Bears, Dire Bats, Shocker Lizards, Cloaked Apes, Dread Guards, Worgs. These are all basic things there, again probably fought in pairs or with chunks of level 1 support.

Level 3: Large Objects, Medium Elementals, Horned Felldrakes, Ankhegs and Ass Vines, Hellhounds, Mephits, Dire Wolves, Fire Bats... level 3 has loads of stuff that works just fine and fits Disgaea. Ogres, Wights, Shadows, Blamebrothers... seriously, there's loads. Most of these are still fine in small groups at that level, and make good support for level 5 encounters.

Level 4: Yak Folk could be a boss, commanding weaker genies and potentially using their weird Save or Lose power on a single PC. Six Basic Class levels and you have a solid boss that has a whole bunch of CR 5-8 Genies for servants. You also have brown/polar bears, owlbears, minotaurs, mimics, harpies, griffons and hound archons.

Level 5: Huge Objects, Large Elementals, Nightmares, Manticores, Trolls, Winter Wolves! Some really solid things there - I could easily see the map opening up with a couple of trolls spread out far enough that a good assault can kill one before the other one gets there, and also with four ogres and a pile of orc minions. If you literally have to fight all of those at the same time, that's an Extremely Hard challenge for level 5, but playing Divide and Conquer gives you a lengthy-ish battle with a bunch of stuff. You could user an Achierai (flavoured to look like the Disgaea Cockatrice) or a Ravid as a boss, that'd be fine.

Level 6: seven-headed hydras, average salamanders, wyverns, blood apes and ormyrr. Nothing that exciting here, but they work.

Level 7: Medusa could be a boss. Of course, you probably want that to be part of a higher level challenge now that she's actually turning you to stone good and proper. Also you have dire bears, hill giants, bulettes, gargantuan objects, black puddings, remorhaz, huge elementals, frost salamanders, and even spectres.

Level 8: an entire Hag Covey makes a great boss encounter at this level. Chuck some ogres and shit around it too. Bang. But for general "this is a CR 8 monster that works well", you have the stone giant, behir, grey render, greater shadow, shield guardian, treant and nethersight mastiff.

Level 9: Frost giant, Nessian warhound, Night hag, Greater elemental? We're already getting to the stage where "lots of the weaker things" are more interesting, and levelled assholes for bosses.

Level 10: Oh hey, fire giants and noble salamanders and bronze serpents. Although the Greenvise is kind of cool, and if their death fog has to be centred on themselves and not cast "Over there on the party right from the start", then they make a pretty good enemy.

But a good fight for level ten would look like a big map with a level ten mage who has a shield guardian (a tough boss), eight minotaurs in a pack (a solid mob that slows you down and deals some damage), and a couple of tag-teams of bulettes at different places. And a whole pile of zombies littered about the field to work as speed bumps.

Level 11: Cloud giants, cauchemar nightmares, dread wraiths, elder elementals, fomorians.

Level 12: A Sun Giant or Frost Worm makes an acceptable boss at this point, but other than that you have... the kraken and purple worm? Ethereal Slayer?

Level 13 gives us the Storm Giant and nothing else.

Sleep through level 14.

Level 15 has what, the Nightmare Beast as a boss? Sixteen gives the Tempest and seventeen gives the deathbringer. And then... there isn't much left.

So already there are quite a few things there that could work. I'll look through the other books for some higher level things and try to put together some solid SGTs.

[Koumei]

Okay so any proper battle is going to be set up as a set-piece battle with bigger terrain than normal. Sometimes even with big war things where multiple waves of enemies keep entering the field to wear people down until the boss arrives. So instead of having a session include 4 encounters of CR ~= Level each, a session will probably have one major encounter, that has 4 encounters' worth of foes scattered over the map.

Same Game Test Level 5:

• 1 Vine Horror + a bodyguard Assassin Vine, with a pair of Assassin Vines as "scouts" 60-100 feet ahead, and 6x Eryngi Green Mage 2 scattered about to cause trouble as well.
• 2 Trolls a little ways away from each other in the background, with 4 Ogres scattered around the area as well and 6x Orc Warrior 2
• 6 Crested Felldrakes as the guard line, backed up by 2 Ankhegs then finally a Manticore
• A Hell Hound + Flame Brother Salamander, with tag-teams of Fire/Magma Mephits ahead, and lurking in the general area is a Medium Fire Elemental

Same Game Test Level 10:

• 1 Red Ethergaunt*, with two Greater Shadows as scouts, and 8x 4HD skeletons just loitering around as the visible things
• Scattered around a mini-maze: Human Caster* 8 with Shield Guardian, pack of 8 Minotaurs, 2x Tag-teams of Bulettes, as many zombies as you like
• 1 Yak Folk Cleric* 6, with a strike force of 2 Efreeti** ahead, and 4 Djinni** ahead of those, and 8 Janni even further ahead
• A Medusa and Ravid have teamed up for hilarious things, with various scattered servants: 6 Gargoyles, one Gargantuan Object, 8 Medium Objects

Same Game Test Level 15:

• 1 Hullathoin, with 3 Skybleeders scattered around and four Dread Wraiths circling
• A batch of 3 Purple Worms, and their noise soon draws out a Barbershop Quartet of Cloud Giants
• 2 Storm Giants send 4 Cloud Giants ahead as the first strike, all to guard 1 Eldritch Giant
• A graveyard contains a boneyard and piles of weak undead chaff... and a pair of Charnel Hounds, and one Deathshrieker wandering around

Same Game Test Level 20:

• 2 rival Yuan-ti Anathema, each sending a Pureblood Knight 13 on a Battletitan as their first strike, and then 8 Holy Guardians (each) for their second strike
• 1 Chronotyrin*, with eight Astral Stalker minions send out in a wave, and 2 Greater Siege Crabs as the scary front-line. GIANT MOTHERFUCKING CRABS.
• 4 Broodkeepers hang back, protected by a wall of eight Necronauts, along with eight charging Ethereal Slayers coming in from the sides

Later on I'll add more to those and also put in a few other levels. To make it easier to build progressions.

*Things that cast as regular PHB classes can be used for testing purposes, but not in the game itself because that sort of defeats the purpose of making new casting things

**Efreeti and Djinni as seen in the Monster Manual, not the Disgaea ones which are quite different

[Username17]

So simple one man iron man SGTs won't do it for battles like that, for reasons that I'd think would be obvious. So what you're going to do instead is look at characters in terms of offensive and defensive units. That is, it takes X rounds to drop one of the PCs by the enemies and it takes Y rounds for the PCs as a group to take out the enemies, and you want the combined X of all the PCs to be comfortably more than Y, but not overwhelmingly so. Characters can contribute defensively by having a high X and offensively by reducing Y.

So let's talk about defense ranges. An Owlbear Skeleton has an attack bonus of +6, and you intend to use those as squad monsters at level 10. The basic zombie has only a +2 attack bonus and you intend to use them as terrain at that level. That implies a low end floor for a level 10 AC is 22 and no vanguard character should have an AC less than 26. By the same token, we're also supposed to care about Minotaurs, who have an attack bonus of +9 and love to charge. So only the most defensive specialist characters should have an AC of 31 or more. And Efreet are supposed to be major threats, with their attack of +15, so none of the characters should have an AC of 35+.

With Gargoyles (37 hit points) and Owlbear Skeletons (32 hit points) being standard 10th level group monsters for level 10, the simple d6 per level attack spells look pretty good as a baseline. You need to be a little lucky to drop Gargoyles who fail their save in one blast, and you need to be a little unlucky to fail to do so to the skeletons. That sounds pretty good.

-Username17