Guess what!
I have been working on a ttrpg with my partners because we managed to find a final fantasy ttrpg so bad to us that it actually made us appreciate 5e a little bit! We figured we could do better and now I am in a state I can yap about it to all 3 of you who follow my blog!
Behold!
Final Fantasy Legends Reborn
To throw not-so subtle shade at the ttrpg we found, final fantasy legends edition, we found it to be severely lacking in many ways and have decided to try and take the parts we liked about it while trying to apply things such as, play testing, and any modicum of trying to make things balanced and fun.
While it is not in a playable or even one where you can see yet. I will be making posts over the next while going through many of the mechanics and such for the system both to let people know about it, and potentially receive feedback on things. But first we have the core tenants of character creation to go over.
How do you make a character?
The main thing that made ffle evocative that we wanted to keep was the skeleton of character creation. You would have your class, which gives you your progression on things like health and mp, and damage die. In the original there was also separate stats that were not tied to your class selection. We did not like that and thus moved away from it to have your class determine a lot about your progression.
The four classes determine:
1. Your HP progression
2. Your MP progression
3. Any physical and magical thresholds you may have before armor is taken into account
4. How much damage you get when you get another damage dice
5. A unique reaction for damage mitigation.
These are the basic things you have to keep track of with your class, and reduced the stats to ‘how much mp/hp/damage/threshold you get’ which we felt is the only real important ones you need to do. And there are 4 classes to choose from
Warrior:
- High HP progression, high physical threshold, high damage dice
- low MP
Expert:
- Two reactions per turn, dodge reaction lets you take no damage per turn, use expert consumable progression
- mediocre hp progression, low mp, no physical or magical threshold
Mage:
- High MP progression, mage spell progression
- lowest HP progression, reaction requires you to spend MP, tied for lowest damage die
Adept:
- Can either specialize in tankiness or damage dealing, has access to either warrior or mage’s reaction
- medium HP and MP progression, specialization makes you not as tanky or not as good at dealing damage.
These are the base classes which the next system are built on.
You get three jobs to customize your class
In addition to your class, you will also select three jobs to have. The jobs are where the bulk of the customization lies as each class is associated with 8-10 jobs each. In addition you do not have to only select jobs that are associated with your class, and can grab them from any of them, just as long as you grab 1 that is associated with your class. I will go into more detail on job specifics at a later date, but they are the main core of what your character can do.
In addition once you have selected your jobs you have to determine how fast you want them to progress, between fast, medium, and slow. One for each. The progression determines the order in which your jobs level up, with your fast job getting its new features a level before your medium job which gets its features a level before your slow job.
Lastly there is one thing I have not mentioned, that of ancestry. In some of the final fantasy games you get to play characters who are not human, is that not a feature in this system? And the answer is no, but not because this is a human baseline specialization, instead because without specific rules on ancestry, you get to have the freedom to play anything even if it is not in final fantasy canon. For example, in the playtest game I am a player in, I am playing a warmachina inspired by the weapon series from 14 and the mechanics for that come from the job selection as well as feat selection (which I will also go over another time). That freedom lets you have some out there characters and does not limit what sort of character you can play.
Conclusion
I am never good at concluding topics I discuss, so just leave it with I hope this has been an enjoyable read, and hopefully sparked some interest for me to discuss this system more. I have had a blast helping my partners with it and hopefully we are able to have this system evoke lots of things from final fantasy while not limiting ourselves to its trappings in order to provide a much more fun ttrpg experience.
