Rogue Review- Anima Beyond Fantasy

Some friends were talking recently about the antics they had in an RPG system I have never heard of before called Anima: Beyond Fantasy. They described insane hijinks involving demon dads, mech-robots, and instant death magic that piqued my interest. I kept asking questions trying to understand the system. It had been a loooong time since I learned a new serious RPG. I’d dabbled in the various D&D systems and Deadlands but didn’t deep dive into either of them. I fell full bore into trying to understand the inner workings of this monster.

The setting takes place in a world similar to Earth but with a unique history. It’s ostensibly set in your typical medieval era, but with several major twists once you pull back the curtain. This was one of the first things that caught my attention. They designed the game around the players developing ungodly powers and learning more and more about the powers hidden behind the curtain. You quickly advance to a stage where you are an army unto yourself, but doing that has consequences. People will notice. Powerful people. My friend’s last game ended after the aforementioned demon dad used them to take possession of a mech-warrior. Yeah, legit death-robot, not some steam and gear knock-off.

So, yeah, the game’s completely over the top. But in a good and surprisingly balanced way. It encourages you to develop ridiculous powers but there’s always a trade-off. This is what truly sucked me down the rabbit hole. Character creation uses a point buy system. I know there are quite a few systems out there that use this feature but I had never really gotten into learning one before. It’s intoxicating. Of course, I had to try out several dozen different character ideas.

Character Basics

You start fairly typically, pick a class, distribute some stats. There are eight main characteristics (Agility, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength, Perception, Intelligence, Willpower, and Power) and a few ways to generate them. My GM went with the flexible system (which fits the game) of a point pool we could use to spend on them. Anything below 5 gives a penalty and anything above 9 costs two points, with a hard cap at 10. Each stat affects different skills, as well as different play styles. You can’t really ignore any of them without expecting some deficit.

After stats, you need to pick a class. You are not locked into a class permanently, though it is costly to change. But they aren’t your typical D&D classes either. A class merely determines how much it costs to buy things. For example, a Warrior can buy fighting stats cheaper than a Wizard. But either can spend their Development Points (DP) however they wish. This is the true beauty of point buy systems; freedom. The more I’ve explored it, these cost restrictions do end up playing a fairly major role. It’s cost prohibitive to buy abilities that are higher priced. So while you can develop sword skill as a vanilla wizard, you’ll never be as good. Since there are many classes to choose from, and you can switch later, you should be able to find the one that fits your needs.

Next comes picking Advantages, which you buy with Creation Points (CP). You get three CP to start and can take up to three Disadvantages to gain up to 6 more. But you really don’t want to gain six more. Disadvantages are serious, especially if they award two CP. For example, a two point Disadvantage is Serious Illness. Your character is going to die in a few months. Yeah, hard limit on your character’s life. And you get accruing penalties each month you’re alive. You can make 3-4 pts of Disadvantages work if you integrate them into your character concept. And you’ll definitely want to because CP are powerful.

You need certain Advantages in order to gain access to some supernatural systems. Don’t take it at character creation, can’t use those systems. Further, to make the best use of either of those systems, or really any other particular idea, certain CP will allow you to go from mediocre to truly good at something. Finding the balance between a few Disadvantages vs making a character do what you want it to do is the real trick.

Finally, it’s time to spend your Development Points (DP) in four categories; Combat, Supernatural, Psychic and Secondary. The game places limits on how much you can spend in each. This is another aspect of the classes. Some allow you to spend 60% in a given category instead of the usual 50% limit. If you focus on only a single category, you will have a lot of points to invest in Secondaries (skills). If you make a hybrid class, your secondaries are going to suffer but you will have more abilities to compensate.

Combat

The basics of combat are another unique feature that caught my attention. It operates as an active defense system. Initiative plays a very important role. If you get to go first and attack, your opponent is forced to defend themselves and won’t be able to attack. At first this seems like it would suck. “You’re telling me if I get attacked first, I don’t get to do anything?” But it simulates the feel of real combat better. If you’re defending yourself, you don’t have time to attack. The game mitigates the “I can’t do nothin'” feeling by allowing counter-attacks. If the attack roll misses bad enough, you may be entitled to a counter-attack (if you have any attacks remaining). It also encourages tactics. Each time you defend, your next defense roll will have a penalty. Gang up on a target, or get ganged up on, and you’re going to have a bad time.

There are three principal ways to defend. Block is stopping the attack with a shield or your weapon. There are limits to this depending on the type of attack. You’re not stopping a fireball with a dagger. But it is based on your Dexterity, which is also the base for your Attack so it’s easier to pump one stat.

Dodge is the other physical defense. This is effectively moving out of the way of an attack. It can be used against any attack but has limitations of its own. If you’re trying to dodge an area attack, your speed has to be high enough to get out of range. Some magical attacks can hit crazy high areas so this could be a problem. If you’re in a tight area, there’s no place to dodge too, which can incur heavy penalties. Fortunately, speed is tied to Agility, just like Dodge.

Finally, there are supernatural defenses. We’ll discuss the different types of “magic” in this system next, but magical defenses work slightly differently. Instead of using your Dodge or Block skill, you use Projection (Psychic or Magic) which is also what you use to cast offensive magical spells. This means only one stat to pump up for attack and defense. Most magical defenses also don’t accrue penalties for each consecutive attack. Get attacked five times, it’s the same roll, unlike Dodge/Block which would take huge negatives. There are built in limits to each type of magical defense though but explained with each specific spell/power.

Finally, once an attack “hits” you, it’s now time to see how much damage it does. There’s no damage dice in this system. It instead is tied to the weapon’s base damage, strength (if a physical weapon) and the success of the attack. If you beat the defender’s defense by a small amount, you still won’t do any damage. Armor further reduces damage taken. But remember, even if you do no damage on a hit, you’ll prevent them being able to make an attack on their turn and it will give them a penalty to their next defense. This system is all about diminishing returns.

Supernatural

The game uses three supernatural systems. Only one of them is actual magic but for all intents and purposes, they are each a distinct flavor of magic like abilities. Each has an unique approach with widely disparate floor and ceilings to the power that they offer. You can have a character that doesn’t make use of these systems, but they will hit a power plateau before very long.

Ki is the most open system and is about unlocking the full potential of the physical body. Anyone can buy into it and in fact, every class gets a certain amount of Martial Knowledge (MK) each level to spend. This ranges from 10 to 50, and there are CP to start with up to 120 more, so if you want to invest you can do so heavily. But even if you don’t, by level five any character can unlock the basic ability (Use of Ki which costs 40) and one ability (many cost only 10). You can also spend DP to buy MK at a 1:1 ratio. This counts against your combat spending cap though, so if you buy a lot, that’s less to spend on attack or defense.

The most basic use of Ki is achieving Inhumanity and Zen. With any of the secondary skills, after a certain point, an ordinary human just can not achieve any higher results. In order to benefit from enhanced training, and achieve the overtop potential of the game, you’ll need to get those somehow. All the supernatural systems give you a route.

Beyond that, Ki has two main functions. Abilities are straight forward things that you learn how to do. This can include flying, changing shape, healing, multiplying your body. Cool stuff. You can also learn Ki Techniques, which are special combat actions you can learn. They cost Ki (a derivative of your characteristics) but if invested in, can pull off some crazy shenanigans. Like punch a guy to the moon level. Toying with it, I was able to make a technique that created an illusory duplicate of myself and gave me a bonus attack, at a distance, allowing my character to punch a target from two different directions (effectively allowing me and the duplicate to attack). At level 1.

Psychics are the next stage of supernatural. Access to these powers requires a CP. Their powers center around using the mind to bend reality. They can do impressive things, more than most Ki abilities but not as over the top as high-level magic. They are the mid-tier. Their powers are centered around the Willpower characteristic. Unlike Ki or magic, their abilities are not limited by some version of a mana pool. Instead, you can cast psychic powers every turn. However, unless you pump your stats, every time you cast a power, you run the risks of exhausting yourself. Even if you pump your stats, the game has a system called Fumbling, where if you roll a 1-3 (on a percentile d100), you roll again and subtract that number from your end result. This applies to every dice roll but for psychics is particularly dangerous. Even if you would succeed on a die roll of 1, with the fumble penalty you probably won’t, and if it’s high enough, you might knock yourself out in one go.

The final system, actual magic, is the hardest to master but has the highest ceiling for potential affects. To illustrate this, the top level spell from the Light magical path allows you to convert everything within one AU into pure light. An AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Now, you’ll never want to cast it at that level but there are weaker levels to the same spell.

Magic has a mana pool called Zeon. You then have a Magical Accumulation (MA) which determines how much magic you can take from your Zeon pool a turn. If the cost to cast a spell is equal to or lower than your MA, you can cast that spell in one turn. If it’s higher, you need to spend a few turns charging up. All of this is tied to your Power characteristic.

Spells themselves are divided up into several opposed Paths; Light/Darkness, Creation/Destruction, Air/Earth, Fire/Water, Essence/Illusion and Necromancy. There are also multiple subpaths you can learn in conjunction with the main ones. The abilities contained within each are vast and varied but if you can image it as a magical power, it’s probably in there somewhere. Anything you can do with Psychic Powers or Ki, you can do better with magic. You just probably can’t do it as often or as soon in your character development.

Learning spells is a factor of your Magic Level, which is tied to your Intelligence. Additionally, the effect a spell can have is also reliant on your Intelligence. Further, to cast a spell that affects anyone else is going to require effective use of Magical Projection, which is affected by Dexterity. This means wizards have three characteristics and three skills they need to balance learning. Magic is a major game of balance, especially at lower levels.

Conclusion

Anima: Beyond Fantasy is a very dense and complicated RPG. If you’re looking for a quick adventure, probably not for you. But if you want something super-crunchy with lots of potential (and enjoy min-maxing) it’s worth looking into. Unfortunately, it’s out of print and is a translation from its original Spanish origins, so getting legitimate legal copies can be tricky. I believe there’s even a revised core rulebook that doesn’t exist in English. Of course, the internet exists…

One final note of caution, the book’s art features a lot of scantily clad women. I mean, you see that all the time in fantasy stuff but this book takes it to a completely different level. The text and system is completely independent of the artwork though. Just be prepared for it if this kind of thing bothers you. Personally, I felt like it crossed the line from art into objectifying women a bit too much for me.