Help with a heartbreaker...

[Andre Canivet]

That seems like it would work pretty well for balance.  The only tough part is helping the players & GM decide what constitutes a broad skill, and what's a specific skill.  Sometimes it can be hard to tell; but I think as long as your players discuss it at character creation, they should be able to avoid disputes later on.  Spirit of the Century does something like that: there's a stage as you're choosing your aspects (traits which can be positive or negative), where the player and the GM talk about the player's choices and iron out their expectations beforehand.

[charles ferguson]

Hey Warrior Monk,

I love your fighter. Please don't get rid of him!

I also love your whole game concept.

I am having touble seeing too much conceptual difference between the tao & the fighter. I mean, I know technically (one has weapons, one doesn't) but in terms of their roles in the game (kicking ass in combat) they seem pretty to fill pretty much the same role.

Just a thought: how about ditching the tao as a seperate class, & instead give the fighter access to unarmed as well as armed attacks? I'm thinking wushu, like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon etc, where the mystical fighters all use ki to give themselves supernatural weapon feats as well as unarmed stuff (plus flying, running up walls, running on water etc).

This would give you 3 classes: Wizard, Summoner, & Fighter (you can call them something else if you want to make them sound more special).

I'm not sure what your magic for the other two clases uses, but maybe you could expand ki to power all supernatural feats & abilities, including runes & summoning?

So then the fighter is just someone who uses his/her ki for physical attacks rather than for runes / summoning.

Awesome sounding game!

Charles

[Warrior Monk]

Many thanks! you're right, the fighter already seems balanced so now I've gotta work on the tao. Since the first time I played a D&D monk I couldn't help but find that the character was just like an unarmed fighter with artificial oriental flavor. Now that I've been reading the Mayhem RPG I agree that the tao must have something more interesting. In Anima, instead of the stands mechanic Mayhem uses to solve the issue, options revolved around a brief tree of martial arts. The only cool thing about that was that you could mix bonuses from different martial arts and keep the best bonus each of them gave to the character.

Basically the idea I had for the tao was that he could empower any physical ability with ki. Thus this would be the only character in the party able to do superhuman level movements. Need somebody to jump a river with a rope on his shoulder to make a bridge? let the tao do it. Need somebody to sneak into the enemy camp in plain daylight? the tao is your guy. Mechanics would be simple as always: roll as many dice as tao levels you have for any physical ability, including of course, combat. Drawbacks list so far? Roll more than half your dice pool of 6 and you lose concentration becoming again a simple human right in the middle of superhuman level action... yeah, it sucks big time but if GM allows you might get a chance to regain your concentration in time to absorb damage... or not.

I still don't intend ki abilities to overlap magic abilities or the other way so enhance magics are off the question. Might this mean that the Tao would be able to enhance other members of the party? It doesn't feek ok somehow...