Tutorial for Character Sheet?

[ElizLestrad 28]

Does anyone know if theres a video tutorial or something out there on how to fill out a dang character sheet or at the least a step by step walkthrough with diagrams and such?  Half the spots on the sheet doesnt even seem to be mentioned in the book. And considering I just forked over $62, I'm not really that happy about it.

For example, on secondary abilities whats the base? Is it the applicable stat itself or is the base how many DP you put into the category...or is Class how many DP you put into a stat.  For that matter, how do you determine the base for your attack, block and dodge... is that how many DP go in or again, is that actually the Class section.  If the Base IS your stat score, then does that mean the bonus is the same as your stat bonus (as in +15 for 9,10 ; +10 for 7,8 ' etc)?

They also dont mention anything on how to fill out the initiative table or the proper way to calculate life points.  Sure they tell you the Base, and your bonus class LP, but does the multiplier only come into effect as you increase in levels or is it always in effect? Are life points calculated like this:

((Base + Class) x LP Multiplier) x multiples

or like this:

((Base +Class) x Multiples) x LP Multiplier

or some other way? I dont know because its not mentioned....or at the very least not in the least bit clearly.

I mean, theres soo much information on the dang sheets (4 pages? Really?) that it would have been nice to know how to fill the sheet out considering its hard enough already to try and figure out how to even create a character even with that (actually not very helpful at all) 3rd party "walkthrough".

Hopefully at some point Anima will get their own ETools, where there will just be a program you enter all your rolls in and that lets you distribute DP appropriately, etc that fills out the character sheet for you because its honestly been nothing but a major headache trying to figure this out.

[Natso 0]

Well theres some nice tutorials on how to make a character in general, that should explain the order you should generate main stuff (classes, abilities, and so on).   About the multiplier:  when you invest the amount of DP shown in the class (for instance, Warrior's Life Point Multiple is 15) you increase your HP by an amount based on your constitution.  When you are level 1, you also get a +15 (life points per level) if you are warrior.  So, the multiple increase only applies to hp from your constitution.

 

Most of the stuff about initiative, etc, all is explained in the various chapters (no, its not all in one spot).

 

Take your time.  Getting my first few characters generated took a really long time, even with good instructions.

Cheers

 - Natso

[commanderq 0]

Ill briefly go over how to make a charecter for you.  But if you want to know for sure, make a charecter and post it including the DP cost you spent for everything.  People hear will critinque it.

So step 1: you get 3 CP (creation points).  pick your advantages and disadvantages.  your limited to 3 disadvantages but not limited to the points you recive from them. (so you could take a 2 point disadvantages and 2 1 point ones etc).

step 2: pick your class and spend your 600 DP.  As a general rule for new players stick to a fighting type, or just make a freelance.  Split your DP into 3 groups of 200 each.  Spend 200 dp on your primary skills, 200 on your secondary and then you have 200 left for boosting HP, purchasing combat modals or anything else you want that is not skill related.  Keep in mind this split into 3 groups of 200 is not mandatory, I just find it a nice and neat way to go about making charecters.  If you have some DP left over from your last 200 put it into secondary or primary as you see fit.

step 3: create a backstory cause your done.

step 4: stretch and bake a pie.  you deserve it.

As far as LP goes, its your (base + (multiple X con bouns)). and your multiple for everything in anime is always 1 to start with.

[TheTenth2 0]

1) there's been lots of bad translating in the character sheets, like the ones who did it were not the same that did the book ...

2) the base would be the DP you've spent modified by the cost in that skill group (1, 2 or 3 ; so sepnding 10 points in a skill costing 2 gives you 5 base in skill), then you'll have a different column for the bonus for class and another for stat bonus and even one for "natural bonus", same logic for attack and dodge

3) initiative will be : DEX bonus + AGI bonus + size bonus (20 usually) + quality bonus (usually 0) + class bonus + special (+20 for magic users and psi)

4) life points : base (depends on constitution) + (class bonus x character level) + (constitution score x number of life multiplier bought) you never actually multiply your base

[midnightprince 0]

 All the necessary information IS within the book. It just takes a bit of reading to comprehend the character creation process. Anima is a complicated game because it provides so many possibilities. You won't find the ease of DnD regarding the character sheet.

Also, keep in mind that if your not playing a character with magic (which is suppose to be rare) then there will be alot of blank area's on the sheet too.

[ElizLestrad 28]

Allow me to rephrase the entire problem. I know how to create the character, theres no issue going through the process itself as it is very straight forward, and thats really only thanks to that French group who more or less rewrote the entire section in a streamlined fashion.

The issue is that there is no direction, period, of filling out the actual character form itself as there are a majority of spaces on the four page sheet itself that are not covered in the 220 some odd pages that make up the Character Creation section, regardless of whether someone uses magic, ki, weapons, what-have-you.  It also doesnt help at all that the official character sheet itself is layed out extremely poorly, though I'm sure that has more to do with the fact that the character creation  is out of order thus the process doesnt follow the character sheet from top to bottom.

For further clarification, let me give an example of what would have helped this process greatly:

-Following Pg61 in Core Rulebook "

Now that you have chosen your character's secondary abilities, look at the right hand column on page one of your character sheet titled "Secondary Abilities." Here you will see six Columns. The first column, is a series of Circles and Squares.  Here you can write your ability scores again (Circles) and use the boxes to mark class skills.  Once that is done, you will see the main five columns: Base, Bonus, Special (Spe), Class, and Final.

Base - How many CP you spent on the skill
Bonus - The bonus for that skill's applicable attribute.
Special - An additional bonus or penalty due to advantages or disadvatages.
Class - Any class bonus you recieve for the applicable skill
Final - Your final ability score


Or

Now that you have finished filling in section two of the Character sheet, turn to section six on page three entitled ..... fill in your final stats where it says ..... You wont have to do anything with these numbers until later in the creation process, but it will make things much easier later on in the process.

See? Was that really hard? Regardless of its accuracy, from start to finish that took less than five minutes to write and its just barely two paragraphs.
Now think if they had done something like that for the Initiative Box, or the Life Points box....or the Combat Abilities segment.
 
Honestly it seems to me that Anima tries way to hard to be another Gurps or Hero System where its complex only for the sake of being complex because the game doesnt seem to try that hard to present itself in a user friendly manner.  Having an open RPG...or as Midnight Prince stated [one that] "provides so many posibilites" doesnt have to make itself overly cumbersome to do so. Look at the D20 system.  You can do everything from a fist fight, to a sword fight, dogfight, submarines, to the entire Normandy Invasion with no more effort than it takes to tip a hat.  Heck you can even have a mage casting fireball at one target while unloading on another with a Mac-10.  Now look at the Hero System that boasts the same "infinite possibilities" claim and their base rulebook (actually two) might as well be the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  I just hope that once you get through character creation the gameplay isnt as appaulingly math intensive as Gurps or Hero was.

Example:

D20

Warrior is attacking a Troll with a Short Sword
The warrior rolls 1d20 and scores an 18 meaning he hit the troll.
Warrior rolls 1d6 and does 3 damage.
(Total time: 1 min)

Hero/Gurps/Anima(?)

Warrior is attacking a Troll with a Short Sword

1d20 x [(2+Cos[42])^2) - 3/piR^2 ] / Hypotinuse of The Great Pyramid of Egypt +4 = X

1d20 x [(2+Tan[Earths Diameter])) + (2piR^2)/5 ]  - Number of Lincoln Logs chucked by a woodchuck in less that 43 seconds + the average airspeed velocity of an unlaiden swallow/2= Y

X > Y = Hit

Warrior now rolls for damage......
 

 

Ok so I exagerated "a little" on that, but the ludicrousy of such deliberate overcomplication really does speak for itself when it takes 20 minutes to do a single player's turn because nobody thought they would need a calculator and the GM can't use a Slide Rule. Though to be honest, it wasnt a very good slide rule.  Hopefully I'm just being paranoid though, I havnt gotten that far in the book yet.


Back to my origional point though, I know Anima isnt a Fantasy Flight origional. but really, a tutorial would be nice, an actual video tutorial would be even better.  But I'll probably just end up waiting for someone to program an E-Tools character creation program that fills out the stupid sheet for you, or failing in that, driving down to GenCon next year and paying one of the staff to show me.

[midnightprince 0]

 Yeah, I can see your point here. I personally like the Anima system, but direction would be nice, I mean, what exactly are those circles on the sheet for? It's left to speculation really. Small things like that is what I'd be interested in finding out. Speaking of, is there every a staff member for FFG that answers questions here?

[Arcaia 0]

I took the circles to be the bits you fill in the cost in DP for, as a reference for later levels so that you wouldn't have to open the book every time you level.

My main problem, other than long maths, on the system is that every rule has atleast two variants attached, so it's never simple and straightforward. Still, you can memorise mostly everything with careful reading.

[midnightprince 0]

 I tend to use my screen heavily for the tables that simplify the whole combat experience.

[ElizLestrad 28]

Yeah at this point I think Ive pretty much scowered the Net for a streamlined character sheet and have all but given up.  I think what makes the most sense at this point is to go through the record sheet and cross out any section not explicitly mentioned in the character creation process.  Then scan the record sheets and reorganize each section to be in order of appearance in the character creation process removing all the sections of the sheet not mentioned or explained enough to be of use.  That way as your working on filling out the sheet, each section will be in order of the chapter they appear thus hopefully eliminating much of the flipping back and forth.  Sections related to Magic, Ki, etc would be on their own seperate sheets thus eliminating clutter on the character sheet and making the sheet more modular.

Now all I need to do is find the motivation to do it........

[Cultadium 12]

ILoveCheese made some decent editing..

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bw6m-aNBSyZNNTE3ODI5NzktNzUzNC00ZWVjLTkzMTQtOGQ3NjFlM2RhNTM1&hl=en

[hellgeist 0]

I made a character creation guide for filling out the sheet last year - you can still find it here:

http://download299.mediafire.com/mldetw2uxchg/myyojueont5/Order+of+Steps+for+Character+Generation.pdf 

[Xultanis 0]

I've recently started running an Anima campaign, and one of my players has made a rather nice character sheet in Excel that covers most of the character creation aspects.  Granted, it doesn't help a whole lot with the act of coming up with the character, but it auto-calculated stat bonuses, primary and secondary abilities, and tracks DP spent, with a class-selection down that auto-adjusts the secondary ability costs.  It'll work great for any non-supernatural characters, and decently for casters/summoners.  Psionics and Ki aren't really too friendly with it, but he'll probably be adding those later.  I'm working with him to make it OpenOffice friendly so that people don't have to use Excel for it (since OpenOffice is free). 

If anyone knows a good file hosting site, I'd be happy to upload the current versions (Excel and OO) because they are usable.  We were going to wait until we had them polished a bit more, but seeing as they might be able to help you out, I'll go ahead and pass 'em over.

[ElizLestrad 28]

Thank GOD, that guide is perfect. Hellgeist, you are a genious.

[AvivHighwind 0]

Yes! That tutorial helped my friend and I create our characters! Thanks

[hellgeist 0]

Thanks, I'm glad that turned out to be useful.  

[grumpster3 0]

Hellgeist, Thank You for the guide.

[Knight of the White Wolf 0]

Totally awesome guide! Thanks for this!

[Hrathen 1,463]

Also I recommend looking at the excel character sheet section of this very forum.  The sheet is fan made and it isn't perfect but it is really good.  It takes care of all the little stuff like your move and your fatigue points