I commend your efforts, OP, but I do believe the most appropriate way of handling this is making your own system.

If I remember my lore right from /jp/, Ar Tonelico was originally the main designer's campaign setting for some rpg he ran.

How very full-circle.

Basically for 3.5e, one of the ideas I've been tossing around was having a reyvateil singing a song as a standard action, and each turn the reyvateil continues to sing the song an extra die of damage gets added. So the most basic song would do like 1d4-1 damage, maintaining it another turn would make it 2d4-1 and so on.

Successful attacks by other party members would boost 'harmonics', and if a cetrain number of points were reached the song advances. (something like getting one point of harmonics for hitting an enemy with a basic melee, and 2 points of harmonics are needed to advance a song).

If a song is advanced, it gets an effect added to it, such as increasing the radius of the song's effect when it's released, or increasing the damage die by one size, so maybe maintaining a song for one turn would take it from 1d4 to 2d4, but if you advance it it would go from 2d4 to 2d6, and so on.

Different songs would obviously have different advancement tracks which might branch. And each advancement level could correspond to the existing 9 levels of magic in DnD.

Releasing the song would be an immediate interupt.

Does this sound horribly broken or like it might actually work?

>>16580606
Sounds like it could work. You'd of course need different levels of harmonics for the different advancement levels, and possibly make it based on damage dealt/received instead of basic hits so that high level parties can advance past the first few levels of a song with a single hit to keep the reyvateil relevant.

Also, I approve of this whole AT game idea in general, especially as Cynthia has been a recurring NPC blacksmith in my campaigns for years now.

Is it time for setting pictures?

I think it's time for setting pictures

This one's already been posted, but have some higher res

I really should put these all in a folder so i dont have to dig for them. I can't even find the pic of Airport City Nemo anywhere (but that gets posted on /tg/ fairly often anyways)

>>16580688
>image
... oh, you goofy, irritating bitch you.

Oh wait, found it

>>16580566

This OP.

Not everything is going to conform to your specific system. You need to be able to adapt and say "Well if this doesn't really work for d20, then what will?" and go from there. Try reading more and different RPG books to get an idea on how mechanics could work like this.

you gonna include the psycho-diving thing?

Also, munchkins/special snowflakes are gonna want to play virus dudes like that one girly-faced templar guy who had special powers because of spoiler alert.

>>16581061
Cosmospheres should probably be optional, and preferably run as little side-sessions with just the two involved players and the GM (possibly even without the GM) as they would take so much time.

And people wanting to be humanoid viruses or reyvateil origins could be a problem. What with there only being one of the former and three of the latter, but it should be easily solved by the GM simply saying "Humans, Teru, Reyvateil Betas and Third Generation Reyvateils Only" before everyone starts making characters

How are you going to implement the constant, hapless double entendres into the system? It's important, I swear!

>>16581157
My players manage that well enough in non-AT games anyway, it should be easy enough.

Also, of all the possible double-entendres to choose from you pick that? I don't even think that IS a double entendre!

>>16581206
I had too many to choose from, 's all.

>>16581138

Well there is always alchemy for vanguards who don't want to just swing swords dumbly.

Plus, didn't those Middle-Easterny people have an even more advanced form of alchemy/"magic" that was just jury-rigging old pieces of high technology or something?

>>16581279
The Teru actually do have some form of magic, which is shown in AT2 by that area where you go in an infinite loop unless you know the secret, or one in AT3 which is a massive spoiler so I wont post it here.

It seems to be more for major stuff though, and very little actual combat usage. If anything in combat it's basically the same as other combat skills like Croix's various attacks with his lance, or Cocona's various attacks including her song magic.

Which is a good point actually, as Cocona shows you can instantly use song magic in battle as a normal attack which is about the same level as other melee attacks. Should that just be a skill or should you actually make a full reyvateil character if you want to do that?

>>16581389
That brings up an important question:

Would being a reyvateil be a class, or a race?

Technically it should be a race, but the way song magic would be handled makes it seem more like a specific class.

Also, the best reyvateil

>>16581604
Reyvateil a race, Song Maiden a class.

Reyvateil race gets a feat that lets them choose if their melee attacks deal song magic damage instead of blunt/slash/piercing/whatever damage.

Song Maiden class basically acts as the sorceror class and open up proper song magic trees to be used.

>>16581629

So someone could play a Reyvetail fighter or rogue that uses their songs as a weapon, without having song magic?

You could run it in Strands of FATE

>>16581639
Pretty much. I mean, once again, look at Cocona. In AT2 and AT3 she's a vanguard in your party even though she's a reyvateil, and in both games she has an attack where she uses song magic, even though it counts as a normal attack.

Plot-related song magic is a different beastie entirely of course, so stuff like METHOD_HYMMELI/. would be up to the GM to decide when it's use and who it's used by.

>>16581710
Give us a few points why it would be good for this, please.

Or is it just your favorite system?

>>16581815
Well Strands is the generic FATE system. You can use it to run just about anything you want, you just need to set up the skills right.

It's rules are fairly easy to learn, and the character creation is tons of fun.

>>16581815
It's a generic, like GURPS or Mutants & Masterminds. It probably isn't suitable at all.

>>16581846
Damn, had my hopes up there

>>16581604
Jaqli is buckets o' moe.

That is all.

OP, don't have a static increase every round or you run into 'Why don't I just cast every round and do damage over time'

Perhaps something along the lines of:

Round 1: 1d6
Round 2: 3d6
Round 3: 7d6

So their is actually a benefit for charging. Double last round + 1d6. It's a lot of damage BUT otherwise you could have just fired every turn for static damage. Also perhaps limit the maximum charge time to 'Level +1' to prevent 'I charge for 3 mins then wipe out the city'

If I had to do it, I'd base it off the Warlock with custom invocations and such.

>>16581913
You lose your song advances (increased damage die, increased area, added status effects, etc) every time you release a spell, so that's one of the main benefits of charging up.

It really makes it a choice between 1d4 every round, or 4d8 with a 3-tile radius and a chance to set enemies on fire every 4 rounds.

>>16581952
We do need to think of some good song trees if we go down that route, otherwise we could end up with some really weak or ludicrously strong songs

>>16581974
The song trees should be thematically linked to some form of character-personality psychobabble.

Also, pepen everywhere.

>>16581913

Not a terrible idea. If you go with D&D 3.5, just customize the warlock. Remove invocations that don't fit, add some new ones, give them all the ability to charge songs like that.

I'd make the charge work a bit differently. Don't be 2x the previous round +1, that scales terribly as you will reach thousands of dice very quickly at high levels. Make it Blast + Round Charged d6 added ever turn. 1/2 level (Rounded Up) +1 as the limit on charge time. Little less crazy, as Eldritch blast scales already.

So a level 3 character could do

instant 2d6
1 round charge 5d6
2 round charge 9d6

Powerful but you DID just spend 3 turns casting.

>>16581952

Take This >>16582011 and make it 'You can only add 1 essence/shape after 2 turns charging, with an additional one for every 2 extra turns.

So you get 'Instant 1d6 to one person' or 'Oh god, everyone half a k away was blinded and hit with xd6 damage' because you charged for a few turns.

>>16582011
That sounds reasonable, although the d6 can of course be replaced by other die depending on song and advancement level.

Much better than spending 4 turns on a d4 song to reach 4d4.

>>16582049

Well yeah. Some may reduce dies but have additional effects.

I don't know the setting I'm afraid but do they have healing songs? The ability to get infinite healing is very nasty on a DM, though, if he's expecting it it's not too bad.

>>16581884
Well no matter what you're going to need a set of basic mechanics and also a way to represent song magic with those mechanics. Using any generic system at all as a starting point means you only need to worry about the second thing.

You shouldn't pick a generic system based on whether or not it can accommodate your idea - they all can, that's why their generic - it's about what mechanical strengths you want to inherit from your system choice. With GURPS you can quantify absolutely goddamn everything, for example, while FATE goes the other way and one of its selling points is its use of GM and player fiat.

>>16582078
Yeah, there's healing songs, but instead of charging up for one blast they heal steadily as they're being sung, and heal more each turn as you advance the song.

Nightmare mode for DMs:
Learn Hymnos. Make your own Songs Of Plot Advancement.

>>16582078
I don't think any of these effects should actually be infinite, they should have some kind of cap.

If you do add a cap one thing to consider is, do Harmonics make you song stronger at each level or do they help you get to higher levels faster? That is, if I begin charging a song and my vangards do really well can I keep charging it even further and fuck everything, or does it cap out from harmonic charges and I get to cast something else?

Potentially increasing your skill at a song could only increase its max level, under the assumption that charge times will be largely mitigated by harmonics so most things will be always be cast at full power in one or two rounds.

>>16582144

Ah, in that case it might be good to just go with 'They heal EB + rounds charged d6' damage every round.' Perhaps with an increased cast time limit to let them keep going longer.

So you can go 'Heal 1d6 this turn, 2d6 next turn, 3d6 the turn after'

>>16582201
Perhaps sustained songs should only be charged by harmonics, so you can't start one out of combat and just get the maximum effect all the time when it's relevant.

Then again, presumably you could start the Song of Fiery Death out of combat, and have a massive nuke prepared for the first unlucky schmuck you run into.

>>16582284

If you can just walk about singing. How much focus did it take in the series? (Never played)

Also, that's a very good idea with the healing song. Every time an ally takes out/bloodies a target, it advances a 'round'.

>>16582303
In 3 singer stands on one place and if someone gets near they have to be kicked away. So, i guess, you can't just run around singing.
But that applied only to PCs, of course.

>>16582145
On that note:
http://hymmnoserver.uguu.ca/

>>16582333

Alright. So it takes your full turn to cast. Some NPCs can be what are called 'Cheating Bastards' but a lot tend to be anyway.

Between Immovability and the fact it's a damn song that helps with two of the major ways to mess with the charge ability, ambushes and marching about singing.

>>16582303
In 1 and 2 (the only ones I've played), it's strongly implied to take a great deal of effort to maintain a song, which is why a Reyvatiel needs a vanguard - they can't protect themselves while they're busy singing (in fact, in 2, they simply didn't get the same guard options that a vanguard would).

Also, songs are limited by reserves of mental strength/life force - in the games, your MP steadily drains while you're charging a song, and when it hits 0, you have to activate it or lose it. I'm not sure how nicely the MP system would work with 3.5e though.

>>16582303
Actually, maybe dump the idea of rounds of charging entirely in favor of scaling songs just with harmonic charges.

The singer can use an action to maintain the song and passively generate a charge or two, so you can slowly advance a song just by continuing to sing it, but most of the charges ought to come from your allies hitting things.

Let me know if this doesn't faithfully represent Ar Tonelico, because then I can use it for this awesome battle of the bands skirmish game I just started inventing.

>>16582409

Sounds good. So they could VERY slowly turn a damage spell into a huge blast but with allies it grows much faster.

HOWEVER, how does one add charges? Is it every foe taken out or every hit? Because the latter means that you will build up insanely fast when the twf ranger goes '6 attacks at him'

>>16582374

Also, i don't know whether would it fit or not, but the idea sounds cool:
weaving your party's revyateil's gymn into opponents, derailing it and either stopping or subverting the original, possibly resolving the conflict without much fighting.

>>16582432

And the former means that large foes will never give a charge until they die.

>>16582432
>>16582459

Maybe just make 'Hits a foe during your round' give a charge with crits adding the crit mod in charges instead?

Have not played the games.

>>16582432
maybe charge limit based on general mood of the song? So Oh_god_we_seriously_need_a_huge_nuke_of_doom.mp3 would be sung faster, while Stay_here_and_listen_as_i_repair_the_macguffin.mp3 is slower and calmer.

>>16582432
Actually choosing the numbers is always the hard part, isn't it.

I would have crits and finishing blows always add charges, and probably also bloodying blows. Crits might add charges based on the weapon or character's level, and defeating/bloodying based on the enemy's level (or they can just be flat amounts).

In addition to those, I'd also like a more consistent method of charging. Maybe the vangards have special moves that always grant charges, or any regular attack that deals enough damage would grant a charge even if it doesn't crit/defeat/bloody an enemy, where 'enough' could either be determined by the song, the weapon, a singer attribute, or a vangard attribute depending on how you want to design the game and/or how it works in Ar Tonelico.

The one concern I have is that adding a bunch of mooks to a fight actually makes it easier in some ways, since there are a lot of easy targets to farm charges from. Meanwhile, if the only enemy is one super scary monster you can potentially only charge off crits.

>>16582458
That sounds cool in practice, but how would you represent that mechanically beyond a bunch of contested song rolls?

Not that I mean to say that it's a bad idea, on the contrary I really want it to work and am hoping someone has an awesome idea for it.

>Scroll through /tg/, see OP's pic
>"Wait, I know that tower. On /tg/? Seriously?"
>Open thread, no trolling or saging

Where am I?

I've always really liked the world building in Ar Tonelico as well as the music. Problem was always the JRPGness of it.

>>16582582

That's actually a perfectly viable idea. Perhaps have it be possible to 'Steal' songs back and forth. So a caster could wait until bigsongofkaboom.mp3 is about to go off then yoink it for themselves and their side. I'd say that it would be a contested Perform: Song roll, with a +2 bonus for the defender so songs don't vanish every turn due to jackassery.

Have an attempt, failed or succeeded, knock a charge from the song to keep the NPCs from just trying round after round unless their plan is to play lockdown, which is a viable idea.

Would also make 'Gank the fucking chorus' a possible strategy on both ends.

>>16582458
>>16582582
>>16582641
That sounds like a really cool idea and mechanic, but it's unfortunately not possible in-setting.

>>16582665

Hence the name 'NeverPlayedTheGame'. I'm working half-blind with ideas because this seems cool.

>>16582582
Diplomacy in addition to contested song rolls. Second to change the overall mood, first to actually convince or disarm the opponent.
Or, in severe cases, just rolls, to overpower opponent's song, like in battle against Ar_ru

>>16582665
We have altered the setting. Pray we do not alter it further.

>>16582689
It's fair enough. And now that I think about it, it MIGHT be possible, but you'd have to be pulling off some hacking at a very fundamental level VERY fast to tell the song server to fire the blast somewhere other than where the singer wants it to go. And you'd need to be connected to the binary field to do it, so you'd need one of the origins on your side. I don't think even Jacqli could pull that off.

There's a massive essay on how song magic and wave theory in general works here, if you ever wanted far too much information on how magic in a setting ever worked: http://artonelico.wikia.com/wiki/Wave_Theory

>>16582665
as in "explicitly not possible"? Because JRPGs tend to alter their canon a lot.

>>16582745

Cool. Maybe make it a prestige class thing then if you like it but it's not that viable to give as a general option. So not everyone can do it but someone who's put a LOT of work into specializing in subverting songs? They might be able to pull a fast one.

>>16582751
Pretty much.

For one thing, the feelings of the singer need to match with the carrier wave of the song (pic related) otherwise the song will have little to no effect. In order to subvert a song and have it keep its full effect, you have to have subverted the feelings of the singer for the entire song, which is probably not gonna work. Especially as if you change the singers feelings through diplomacy or magic, it won't change it for the time she'd already spend singing.

>>16582757
Well, the way songs works is that the songs themselves are an encoded instruction to the server tower (Ar Tonelico) which then provides the energy to realize the song. To intercept a song, you'd pretty much literally have to hack the server in the time it takes for the song to finish, which would be entirely impossible for the average Reyvatiel - they simply don't have the access privileges.

Someone with that much control over the server would either be a tower administrator (pretty much equal to a goddess in any other system) or equivalent in power, or somehow networking a bunch of Reyvatiels together might work (a la IPD).

In any case, it miiiight be something a character could do at epic levels, but at that point, you wouldn't even need to steal other people's songs.

>>16582818
And the technical side of it is that when the reyvateil starts singing she connects to the song server to provide her magic. Trying to hijack this connection to change the output would be like trying to hack my connection to alter the content of this post between me pressing Submit and it being processed by the posting server.

Likewise, trying to subvert the output of the song server would be like trying to hack into a computer and directly edit the output to the monitor.

Cosmospheres are too much freakyshit for most games to handle.

That and the way the characters in the games treat it, it should be handled as 'fade to black'

>>16582363
Reported for posting install ports on a blue board

>>16582919
:3c

So, back to topic. would >>16582527 do as "charge" management system?

>>16583314
Kinda. Different red magic songs do different amounts of damage at different advancement levels, but all charge up at the same rate. Some are easier to advance than others though IIRC.

Certain equipment can speed up the charge rate of songs though.

>>16582201
Nah, it's not like that at all, it would be "heal 1d6 every turn at this level of advancement" sort of thing. Blue magic doesn't charge like red magic. It also eats up MP a lot faster.

>>16582745
>http://artonelico.wikia.com/wiki/Wave_Theory

Holy fucking shit. That was a LOT of words. I wish more games would put that level of thought into their setting. Inventing your own fundamental physics for the universe in order to explain how magic works? Thats a whole new level of crazygonuts.

>>16583314
If the primary method of building charges is combat, this is already implicit in that the mood during combat is usually much more hectic and faster paced than at other times.

>>16583518
So, there then must be other ways to obtain charges.

>>16583513
It's awesome, isn't it?

It's a pity that a lot of it is taken from sources other than the games themselves. I remember going into the first game with the expectation of FUCK YEAH MAGIC AS SCIENCE, but it was pretty standard JRPG and fanservice until the last third of the game (where you finally recruit a character who has been around long enough to explain shit).

>>16583548
The way it works has been kind of simplified in this thread to make it work easily in a tabletop game.

In the original games, you have three things in combat that affect songs. The base damage of the song, the burst percentage, which is what you charge up, and the harmonics between the vanguards and the reyvateil.

When you pick a song, the reyvateil starts to sing it, and the burst starts to rise. The damage output of the song is the base damage * the burst %, so you often end up with burst in the tens and hundreds of thousands. The harmonics increases the rate at which the burst charges, and can also advance the song. Advancing the song takes it to the next stage, increasing the base damage.

Ok that turned out really confusing, so watch it in action from AT2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUX_EhL_-K0&t=1m40s

>>16583548
I think we talked about Reyvateils being able to use their action to generate a charge as a way to guarantee some consistent amount of charges even if your party is dicking about, which would also serve as a way to slowly generate charges out of combat.

You could also allow skill checks to generate charges (based on margin of success maybe?), perhaps with a bonus for the Song Magic or Perform: Sing skill or whatever skill, if any, is tied to song magic. In fact, this could even be the way a reyvateil generates their own charges in combat as well.

>>16583626
You should have posted a video of AT1 instead, that would apply better to a tabletop game as it's more of a classic turn-based combat system than AT2's "I dont even know what to call it" system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqEvsHytqqw&t=2m
Your harmonics are shown at the bottom. The blue bar is built up or decreased by your vanguards' performance in combat, and the purple builds up over time as your reyvateil sings. When the two meet, you harmonics level goes up.

Each time your harmonics level goes up, the burst % increases faster.

The burst always goes up as the reyvateil sings, and it reverts to 0 after a song is released. So each time you start singing a new song, you have to charge up burst again. The only exception to this is switching from singing blue magic to singing red magic, where the burst does carry over.

>>16583750
AT1's combat is more relevant, but AT2's shows off how songs charge up and advance better.

But yeah, outside of combat you don't charge songs. Doing something with a song outside of combat should just be a skill check or something.

So how are you going to do the stripping gimmick from 3? :V

>>16584125
Unless Finnel, Saki or Tyria would be in your party, you wouldn't need to, as it only applies to them.

>>16583931
>Doing something with a song outside of combat should just be a skill check or something.
This.

Where did this "charge outside of combat" thing come from anyway? That would mean your character would be walking around singing destructive magic and using up energy when it might not even be used...

There are so many little things about this setting that are absolutely wonderful, yet you never find them out unless you really dig for them.

Like how the guy who was in charge of the project to build the second tower chose a tower guardian that he knew would kill him the moment construction of the tower actually started, simply because it looked like maid. No fucking wonder the world got blown the fuck up when the smartest minds of science in that age acted like that.

You lowly waste of oxygen insects better not be forgetting about the best character of the series

>>16584624
Get back into your own tower, Shitframe.

I'm monitoring this thread. Sucks that I have to go to bed now, or I'd try to continue. Polite sage for no contribution besides the best reyvateil.

>>16584624
But-but that's not Misha.

I'm assuming that grathmelding/synthesis would just be covered under basic craft skills, correct?

>>16584881
Yeah, pretty much. No point fixing something that's not broken.

>>16584921
I was going to say "but then how will we get the hilarious synthesis cutscenes" and then i remembered we're talking about a tabletop version.

I think I need more caffeine.

Hopefully this thread will survive until morning. I'll leave you with one of the most heartwarming pics I have.

Two more setting pics. I think this one's in Archia

and one of Clustania.

クラスタニア万歳！

OK, lets try making ourselves a song tree instead of just talking about it.

Going by >>16582011
>Make it Blast + Round Charged d6 added ever turn. 1/2 level (Rounded Up) +1 as the limit on charge time.
We'll handle burst that way for now, and assume that you advance songs by having vanguards deal a required amount of damage during the encounter.

We should make a basic starting red magic, so lets start off with d4 for damage.

Advancing the song to level 2 would then be changing dice from d4 to d6.

Where should we go for level 3 though, increase dice again? Or possibly go for a different effect?

Also, what would be a good amount of damage for vanguards to deal in order for the song to advance from level 1 to level 2?

>>16585519
I don't think I've ever bean jealous of a jRPG character until now. Damn you, Croix Bartel.

>>16586070
I'd say d8 + 2 square radius for level 3.

Also, we forgot to mention. What damage type does song magic not related to a specific type do? I can't quite remember if there's a Holy or Radiant damage or something, but would it be that? Could it jus tbe generic damage with no type?

>>16586205
I just checked my PHB and the few cleric spells I found not affiliated with a specific element just seemed to be damage without any specific type, then again it was just a quick look and I don't have any splatbooks so I might be wrong.

Also this thread's slowed down quite a bit, huh? Maybe it's just the wrong time of night for this sort of thing.

>>16586070
>Blast + Round Charged d6 added ever turn.

Can someone explain what this means?

I can't quite figure out how that turns out to mean 2d6 instant, 5d6 after 1 turn, and 9d6 after 2 turns

Does DnD have rules for rocket-propelled lances with built-in machineguns?
What about boomerang-shields (dual wielded, of course)?
Hmm, how about laser-edged flying surfboards?
Doctors Bags with built-in laser cannons?

>>16587004
>Does DnD have rules for rocket-propelled lances with built-in machineguns?

Just use rules for a regular lance, and treat the machinegun-part as a hand crossbow (or a pistol if you can find rules for that).

Thats what I did a few years back, and nobody could withstand my MAXIMUM PENETRATION.

Leglius' chakram could be handled with a suitably strong throwing weapon, if there aren't rules specifically for chakram.

However, I have no idea how to handle Tatsumi's V-Board or Gojo's Bag. Shortsword and Repeating Crossbow, perhaps?

>>16586503
Is that supposed to be KOS-MOS at max level?

About weapons; i guess DM just could let players think of craziest shit they can imagine and then just stat it.

Also, how will song-charges work fluff-wise? I mean, we're talking about magical programming songs, not usual spell incantations.

>>16589080
They can be whatever the player wants them to be. I mean, Luca has one spell that kills enemies by bitching at them about the other members of your party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8lcOXU-27U

>>16589381
This. The form of the spells that reyvateils gain is based on whatever crazy bullshit is going on in their cosmosphere at the time the song is acquired.

Other spells from the games include:
- Being crushed by a stampede of penguins
- Compacting your enemies into a rice ball which is thrown at the rest of the enemies and explodes
- A small girl that shoots enemies with a pair of SMGs
- A spell that covers your enemy in bubbles and then drops a giant rubber duck on them

>>16589702
>Being crushed by a stampede of penguins

>>16590056

Sounds like a job for Frosty the Screwman.

>>16590056
Yep. It's in here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn9vKaULpqQ&t=2m35s

In fact, watch the entire thing, it really shows off just how weird Song Magic can get. Also these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG5H-2idOkw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQLKXgJNIR8

There's also some hilarious Blue songs, like a song called 'Reset Button' which pretends to reset your console, and then reverts the battle to how it was when it began.

You know, Ar Tonelico was based on a setting for a standard tabletop that the creators homebrewed. Why not just use any old fantasy system that has spellcasting take a round or two and save yourself the massive trouble of working out a new system?

>>16590283
We're in creativity mode, dude, why settle for less!

>>16590359
Accuracy, speed, less having to figure out corner cases when they come up.

D&D, blaster wizards, bards, and healan' clerics. No metamagic feats to speed up casting time or remove vocal components. That should do it.

>>16590387
If you can stomach it, use 4E for the Defender classes as they're a good way to approximate vanguards.

Would being able to heal 1d4 every turn on all members of your party be overpowered in 3.5e?

Even if you could only do it for like 2/3 turns in a row?

>>16590507
For the first few character levels, yes, but later it would be a pittance.

>>16586205
>>16586070
I think song magic should always start out with a radius, otherwise you're pouring a lot of time into something that might only hit one enemy if you aren't high enough level to have any song advances yet.

I'm pleasantly surprised this thread is still here. /tg/ continues to be best board.

God. Why does anyone want to use 3.5 for anything? I know this isn't helpful at all but it seriously annoys me that the first choice for homebrew games is either d20 or d%.

Personally I'd suggest FATE but you seem to like the idea of integrating d20 mechanics so I dunno.

>>16591468
I think we mostly ran with DnD simply because it already has most of the required rules, classes, weapons and items and stuff fleshed out, and all that needed to be added was Song Magic

>>16591510
That and it's probably familiar enough with most groups so you won't have to re-learn all of the basics of combat

>>16591468
FATE is a good alternative. Especially with supplements like Strands of Fate or that one fantasy one...what's it called?

Isn't FATE one of those generic "suggested for everything, not quite good for anything" systems like GURPS?

>>16593677

Yes and no. FATE tends to heavily abstract things compared to other systems, making it easy to adapt to various games but requires players who are willing to give up certain mechanical intricacies that they're used to. GURPS just has... Everything.

I approve of this thread, even though I can't really contribute

>>16593677
You know, FATE (not Legends of Anglerre, Diaspora or any other FATE altered for a specific setting, but FATE) was meant to be a toolbox to do heavy modding in order to do whatever you want appropiately.

So, FATE played with RAW is obviously going to be a dissapointing experience. If you don't do "houserules", which are actually meant to be core rules by design.

Inb4 bad design.

>>16580545

Coming in late to this, but my GF suggested OP may want to consider using Mage : The Ascension as a base for the rules themselves, due to the Celestial Chorus Tradition, which'd be way easy to redo into the Reyvateil song-magic.

>>16596575
Care to elaborate?

>>16596575
>GF suggesting oMage
She's a keeper.

>>16596659

(gf here)
Eh, from what I can remember, they can basically hear the song of the earth, or can sing the song of the earth or something. Basically, using music to communicate directly with Earth that reminded me a lot of the Reyvateils when I first read about it.

That and the system is pretty flexable as I remember. You could easily do a futuristic Ar Tonielco setting. I made a character for a one shot where everyone character came from a different time period. I had a girl who was from a future where machines and humans were closely linked, but some girls had a gift of singing with the earth and it worked out pretty well. I can't remember exactly which paradimes I went with though...

>>16586382
Seriously, can someone explain what
>Blast + Round Charged d<whatever> per turn
means? I'd like to give this a try but i don't fully understand what this means

>>16597316
He might have meant burst, which would make more sense in applying it to the AT universe; certain actions by the vanguards (the other party members) would increase the game's burst gauge, which would increase the power of the song magic. Rounds Charged is relatively self-explanatory. I would assume that the sidedness of the die would scale with the evolution of the song, though that's optional (and would tend to require a pile of each of the lesser used dice). An example:

Casting of a d4 spell begins, no burst actions have been taken, this is the first round. Burst=0, Time=1, add 0+1 dice to the pool. Pool size is 1
Second round, no burst actions have been taken, this is the second round. Burst=0, Time=2, add 0+2 dice to the pool. Pool size is 3
Third round, two party members took actions to increase the burst gauge. Burst=2, Time=3, add 2+3 dice to the pool. Pool size is 8.
Fourth round, one party member took an action to increase the burst gauge and the spell evolved. Burst=3, Time=4, add 3+4 dice to the pool and upgrade to d6 from evolution. Pool size is 15. Singer chooses to fire the spell, dealing 15d6 damage.

You could tinker all kinds of mechanics into this via the burst bonus or via song evolutions. I'd be interested in seeing how the party's combat habits change to take advantage of the potency of burst actions (which, for the sake of balance would generally need to be sub-optimal).

Bumpy.

>>16597604
That actually makes a lot more sense for vanguards increasing Burst. That way you can have vanguards either aiming to either inflict raw damage, aiming to increase the song's burst, or aiming to get the song to advance

>>16597604
>>16601277
We talk about the party causing the burst to increase, but what actually would cause that to happen? Landing a hit on an enemy? Using a specific kind of attack (melee/ranged)?

How is this thread still going?

>>16601300
I'd say we should come up with a table of different things, and after the singing reyvateil's turn you roll on that table to decide what you need to do to increase Burst or Harmonics.

For multiple reyvateils, how do we do combined singing? Simply change the possible charge time from "1/2 level + 1" to "lowest levelled reyvateil's level +1"? In AT2 your burst doesn't go up any faster when you have two girls singing, but their MP consumption is a lot smaller IIRC, so this should work well.

>>16601316
From the looks of things it's thanks to two or three interested people who keep dragging it back from the depths of page 15

>>16601355
May I suggest this chart, rolling d20 to decide?
1-3: Attempt Melee Attack
4-6: Successful Melee Attack
7-9: Attempt Ranged Attack
10-12: Successful Ranged Attack
13-14: Charge
15-16: Aid Another
17-18: Full Attack
19-20: Flank an Enemy or Attack an already Flanked Enemy

>>16601655
So let me get this straight:

>Reyvateil starts singing an attack song that does d4s of damage at its first level and d6s at its second, and needs some arbitrary number of harmonics points to advance to the next level based on the song
>Reyvateil Player rolls 2d20, one for burst and one for harmonics, lets say it comes up as a 4 for burst and a 19 for harmonics
>Vanguard PCs who successfully hit enemies with melee attacks add another die of damage to the song
>Vanguards who flank or attack flanked enemies add points towards advancing the song to its next level
>Successful melee against flanked enemy adds a die to song damage and adds a harmonics point
>Reyvateil's turn rolls around again
>Roll 2d20 after turn for new burst and harmonics criteria

Is that right?

It sounds like it could work, and adds another level of strategy to combat beyond "nuke everything as fast as possible"

Would Paladins still count in this setting?

>>16601783
Yes, but you'd probably have to fluff it so that their powers are all skill with their weapon of choice, rather than from a god, as the closest things there are to gods in the setting are the Reyvateil Origins (who aren't even as powerful as some Betas) and the Wills Of The Planet, who can't do any typical god-like stuff thanks to the planet being utterly fucked.

>>16601802
Just remembered, you could also have it as part of their gear. In AT3, Aoto can shoot shockwaves of symphonic evergy simply by using the transformation mechanism of his ridiculous Sword/Drill/Scissors thing the right way at the right time during a swing. You could explain stuff away with that.

Pretty much any 'magical' ability short of actually casting spells could be explained away as absurd martial skill or high-tech gear.

>>16601655
>>16601719
I can see that working. It's pretty much an analogue of the harmograph stuff they used in AT2 for advancing spells.

We still need a basic song tree to use as an example though

>>16601802
>the Wills Of The Planet, who can't do any typical god-like stuff thanks to the planet being utterly fucked
That and most of them are actively pissed off at humanity and want revenge

OK, fuck it. Here goes for a basic red magic song tree, with 3 harmonics actions needed to advance the song to the next level:

>1 - d4 Damage, 2 square radius
>2 - d4 Damage, 4 square radius
>3 - d6 Damage, 4 square radius

>4a - d6 Fire Damage, 6 square radius
>5a - d8 Fire Damage, 6 square radius
>6a - d8 Fire Damage, 6 square radius, continuous 1d10 Fire damage save ends
>7a - d8 Fire Damage, 8 square radius, continuous 1d10 Fire damage save ends
>8a - d10 Fire Damage, 8 square radius, continuous 1d10 Fire damage save ends
>9a - d12 Fire Damage, 8 square radius, continuous 1d10 Fire damage save ends

>4a - d6 Cold Damage, 6 square radius
>5a - d8 Cold Damage, 6 square radius
>6a - d8 Cold Damage, 6 square radius, entangled save ends
>7a - d8 Cold Damage, 8 square radius, entangled save ends
>8a - d10 Cold Damage, 8 square radius, entangled save ends
>9a - d12 Cold Damage, 8 square radius, entangled save ends

This sound too dumb for anyone?

>>16602236
>9d12 damage even if nobody builds burst
Holy Shit that's a lot of damage, but then again you would have to charge it for 9 turns to get that and need to be high enough level to get 9th level spells, so it kinda balances out

>>16602236
Well you forgot to change the second branch from 4a-9a to 4b-9b but i can see it working. it does get brokenly powerful at high levels though, but I guess that's the point

>>16601895
>We still need a basic song tree
I'll get to the second game's more complicated song system in a minute, but the first game's spell system was significantly more superficial:
Song Name Type Charges Lv. 2 Burst Lv. 3 Burst Lv. 4 Burst
Primal Word Red Infinite 2500% 5000% 7500%
From:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/932632-ar-tonelico-melody-of-elemia/faqs/48351

In the first game they just used burst level to determine evolution points and used a spell stock system (think prepared spells). Using this simpler system, Song Evolutions occur after set points in the size of the dice pool. So, if when the Singer's turn begins and the pool size is updated and exceeds the next breakpoint, it increases the damage die. An example of AT1 conversion (noting that this is something on the level of a cantrip [and does!] spell):
Primal Word: Damage Die: d2, d4, d6, d8 (infinite stock).
Mana: 3, 5, 8, 12 /turn
Breakpoints: 5, 12, 18

While casting, the start of the Singer's turn works something like the following: Update total burst, Increment round change, Increase dice pool, check for spell exceeding breakpoint, decide whether or not to cast the spell or continue charging.

>>16602278
As I mentioned above, the second game adds significant complication to the evolution requirements, using breakpoints for Burst, Psyche, Harmonics, and Care in addition to a pair of superlative mechanics in the Synchronity Chain (Two singers in perfect synchronization through Psyche buildup for a special song evolution and forced execution at the end of the turn) and Replakia (A hundred singers contributing to the song through a special song, effectively it's a spamable tactical nuke). The complexity involved in all of that is probably a bit much for a tabletop game, but does hint at a way to have spell growth trees based on the vanguard's actions taken to raise the burst gauge.
Note: the Rank is denoted as Evolution Level - Branch ID
Hidden Enchant
-Rank 1-1: Smiley Girl
--Power: 11 No Requisite
---MP: 8 Luca's Cosmosphere, Level 1

-Rank 2-1: Lady Momoyo
--Power: 23 2000% Burstech 2
---MP: 17 Luca's Cosmosphere, Level 4

-Rank 3-1: Thorn Princess
--Power: 33 6000% Psyche 3
---MP: 22 Luca 's Cosmosphere, Level 5

-Rank 2-2: Crylady
--Power: 18x2 4000% Care 3
---MP: 23 Luca 's Cosmosphere, Level 8

-Rank 3-2: Romance
--Power: 45 8000% Care 3
---MP: 29 Luca 's Cosmosphere, Level 9

-Rank E: Goddess of War
--Power: ?? Synchro
---MP: NA Clear Infelsphere Level 4, Luca Route
From:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/939100-ar-tonelico-ii-melody-of-metafalica/faqs/55952

This spell tree branches during the first evolution, either evolving to Lady Momoyo or to Crylady which can then evolve to the third tier as Thorn Princess or Romance, respectively. The Goddess of War is a Synch Chain evolution and I include it for completeness's sake. This is a decent branching to consider because the difference is between offensive "Burst" actions (which would lead to the Lady Momoyo evolution) or defensive "Care" actions (which would lead to the Crylady evolution).

>>16602285
So for a simplified spell tree for this (AT2 example):

-Rank 1-1: Smiley Girl
--Power: d4 No Requisite
--MP: 4/turn
--Breakpoint: 8 (Off -> Lady Momoyo, Def -> Crylady)

-Rank 2-1: Lady Momoyo
--Power: d6
--MP: 9/turn
--Breakpoint: 16

-Rank 3-1: Thorn Princess
--Power: d8
--MP: 12/turn

-Rank 2-2: Crylady
--Power: d6+10
--MP: 13/turn
--Breakpoint: 20

-Rank 3-2: Romance
--Power: d8+20
--MP: 15/turn

Of course, you could add whatever flavor or special effects you want to the spells here.

>>16602278
So that'd be 5d2 of damage turning into 5d4 of damage? Or would it be 5d2 turning into 1d4?

>>16602259
It really balances out when you consider what other sources of damage in most game systems can dish out over the course of 9 turns, though once you start adding on early additions of burst rolls (even just 1 a round), damage starts to scale to fearsome levels. Another good mechanic to add would be that the Singer has a saved action while singing that can be taken without breaking the spell, but at a cost of some portion of the current burst level (I was thinking cut it in half).

>>16602334
As I intended it, 5d2 to 5d4

(I really need to get into the habit of refreshing before I make a post)

So basically the AT2 style mechanic would be the same as the AT1 style one, but with fewer stages and possible branches? That sounds quite workable, but how would you manage the Atk/Def on the breakpoint for branches? Possibly find other criteria instead?

Also, should we go with 'Any successful attack increases burst by 1 die' or with >>16601655 's funky table to decide each round?

>>16602431
>'Any successful attack increases burst by 1 die'
Keeps things simple

>>16602536
Well, due to the growing pool involved, with just a party of 3 (2 vanguards, 1 singer) you could effectively expect 1 additional burst per round, which would tend toward the dice pool growing at a rate of +1, 3, 5, 7... per turn, for dice pools of 1, 4, 9, 16, 25. This works for smaller parties, but as the party grows larger, the burst additions would quickly outpace reasonable growth in encounter difficulty: With 5 in the party, 2 burst a turn is probable, leaving a growth of dice pools at +1, 4, 7, 10, 13, for expected pool sizes of 1, 5, 12, 22, 35. These are with 50% success rate on attacks. Over a duration of 5 turns, 35 dice worth of spell damage averages at 7 dice worth per turn. 7 dice per turn is overkill, I would think.

Possible solution (Leveraging in-universe fluff): The burst gauge grows via actions of a partner vanguard, the caster's chief defender, rather than from any vanguard. Sword and Song, if you will.

>>16602674
>Possible solution (Leveraging in-universe fluff): The burst gauge grows via actions of a partner vanguard, the caster's chief defender, rather than from any vanguard. Sword and Song, if you will.

I fully support this idea. It also means you end up with someone in the party to cosmosphere dive for each reyvateil too (after all, one guy diving into 3 different girl's cosmospheres is essentially the same as one guy fucking 3 different girls, and is of course not going to be normal)

>>16602674
>>16602704
I can dig it. And if two (or more) reyvateils are cooperating on a song (like in AT2) they pool their max charging time and vanguard burst together, but otherwise charge at the normal rate of 1/turn?

>>16602732
I would have said combine burst (both normal and vanguard) but keep max cast time to that of the lowest level reyvateil, as you still put in the same amount of energy to singing the magic, and you're combining the effort of multiple singers for greater effect

I ran an Ar Tonelico game a few months back, albeit I just said "Humans only, Sorcerors and Wizards are female only. Go."

Hopefully when this is fleshed out I can use it for a continuation/sequel campaign. You guys rock.

pic related, one of the reyvateil PCs, as drawn in a drawthread

>>16602866
...and it was 4e too, so things were a bit different than how I would have wanted.

Have the pic of a drawthread's interpretation of the other reyvateil PC. Wish it had been scanned, but you can't get everything.

EXEC_BUMP/.

So, Viruses.

Refluff existing monsters, or make our own?

>>16605646
Monsters is monsters, anyone can make them. And refluffing existing monsters is more than enough for viruses and tower guardians

So... anything left to do?

>>16608098
- Blue Magic AKA Buffs and Healing spells. We haven't ironed those out nearly enough
- figuring out how to handle branches in song trees (choose? meet criteria?)
- making a few more song magic trees along the lines of >>16602289

>>16608171
A new thread may be necessary to drum up the interest needed to finish this list off totally, but we can safely say that in this thread /tg/ Got Shit Done™

>>16608171
Blue spells would depend which system you're going to be basing things off from.
Blue magic in AT1 was quite varied, but really the most useful aspect was tacking on special effects via the 'Grathnode Install' system, which is a whole different ballgame entirely. AT2 had more distinct effects and far less blue magic overall but the effects were arguably more useful.

Porting it over to a PnP environment could end up looking like this:
Blue magic confers a buff to the party while it is active. If the Blue magic evolves, then obviously the effects will change however Blue magic does not pair up with Burst to improve its effects. Blue magic needs to have a high MP/turn cost. That's the trade off for using it, a reduction in offensive capabilities in exchange for a very strong support capability. AT2 also halved the Burst when switching to a Red song.

Handling branches in song trees. It really depends on how close you want to stick with the source material and what the overall combat system is like for the 'vanguards'. Going to need to get other details hammered out first before this is approached IMHO, or at least worked on concurrently with the vanguard combat style.

>>16608171
>>16609517

Continuing on... One thing to note with the AT song magics is that Burst's main use is to actually evolve the songs. There's a fairly sharp drop off point where additional burst doesn't actually contribute that much more to the damage done. Going from 10,000 to 20,000 sure, that adds a lot of extra damage. But going from 50k to 80k isn't that much of a jump. As much fun as it is using Replakia (AT2's answer to tactical nukes) to get a 16mil burst song after charging for 5 extra turns, it's probably (and in-game, it is) more effective to have used the Replakia to hit say, 1mil in 1 turn then use the 'extra' 4 turns for another spell.

Going over the emulation of Burst for Red magic, I personally feel that the majority of the damage from spells should come from the base properties of the spell and the effects of the Reyvateil's stat modifiers. Burst should be used primarily as a means to advance song magic to the more powerful variants and for longer battles, the ramp up to accumulate a good rate of Burst accumulation helps in maintaining sustained damage output.

Touching on that point, AT1 and AT2 has as a game play mechanic the idea that the Vanguards are more than capable of dealing with small fry. A battle that lasts 1-2 turns is something for the Vanguards to deal with as it's not worth the Reyvateil's bother. With AT1, you had to spam out three spells when the Emotion Gauge filled to get to the higher levels of the EG and hence the (generally speaking) faster Burst rates. AT2 was more throttled on the turn restrictions of 1 evolve per turn so it took 3-4 turns to fully evolve a song. Once they got settled in though, the spells could be chained out at near optimal strength.

>>16608171
Blue magic, via the system I worked out above would run as a continuous buff effect which would increase as the song evolved. Pulling again from AT2:
Cure Melody
-Rank 1-1: Cureynor
--Power: NA No Requisite
---MP: 6 Initial Song Magic
----Small HP Recovery + Revive
-Rank 2-1: Curall
--Power: NA 1500% Harmonics 1
---MP: 10 Cloche's Cosmosphere, Level 4
----Medium HP Recovery + Revive + Cure Status
-Rank 3-1: Cureo
--Power: NA 6000% Harmonics 3
---MP: 15 Cloche's Cosmosphere, Level 9
----Large HP Recovery + Revive + Cure Status

Now, a revive effect might be nice for the game, but would be system dependent. For a DnD-esque system this would probably amount to an automatic stabilization and recovery to some set, but low, level of health. I must also concur with the above poster that the effects of burst on blue magic were all but negligible. I'm not quite sure how to handle this, but give me some time for the coffee to kick in and mull it over. Just as a preliminary conversion for this spell:

>>16612786
-Cure Melody-
-Rank 1-1: Cureynor
--MP: 6/turn Radius: 10m
--Breakpoint: 4
---Recovers d2 health and stabilizes any ally in the area of effect
-Rank 2-1: Curall
--MP: 10/turn Radius: 15m
--Breakpoint: 12
---Recovers d4 health, stabilizes allies and increases their health to 0, and removes a negative status effect (random)
-Rank 3-1: Cureo
--MP: 15/turn Radius: 20m
--Breakpoint: None
---Recovers d6 health, stabilizes and increases health to 10, removes 2 negative status effects (random)

The problem I'm running into with removing burst from the effectiveness of blue magic is that it reduces the evolutions to a set number of turns (since cast duration is the only thing increasing the dice pool). The simplest solution would be to split the burst and duration pools apart and only refer to the duration pool for spell effectiveness, while referring to both for spell evolution, but I dislike the additional bookkeeping that this would require. Another solution is to just give the blue spells constant effect, though this clashes rather badly with the spirit of the song magic being a lengthy, but powerful, in-combat spell system. A final option is simply to build the inherent burst penalties into the spells by making the dice rolled less important than the static bonuses (i.e. If the targeted effectiveness is 20 health, then a red spell would be d4 with an average of 8 dice, while a blue spell would be d2+8 with an average of 8 dice).

>>16612797
Finally, for the branching, this was a mechanic introduced in AT2 that relied on an nonconvertible system to decide on which branch of the spell was taken. Spell branching, should it be included, should be left to DM discretion for which branch it follows based on the vanguard's actions during the preceding combat rounds, with the branching points specifying what kinds of actions favor that branch. Such as:

Branch 1 (spell name): Spell cast, Skill Use, Delayed Action
Branch 2 (spell name): Attacks, Immobilization of an Enemy, Defensive Actions

While I don't like laying it on the DM to make that call and have the recall to make it, I haven't come up with a better way to simulate the mechanic used in AT2 which also keeps things simple.