Totema
2013-11-04, 11:59 PM
Earlier today I had the idea to host a D&D 3.5e campaign with the world of Final Fantasy XI as the setting. I like this idea primarily because I, and the majority of my regular players, are veterans of the MMO and know the setting very well. After considering it for a while, though, I ran into a few obstacles regarding how to make homebrew races that correlate well to those in FFXI.
The primary problem is that the stats in each system do different things, and that's largely because the battles play out a lot differently in each game. Since FFXI is an MMO, routine battles only last a few minutes, and there's very fast and continuous action compared to a tabletop game. Getting hit a lot in combat doesn't matter as much, and in-combat healing is an absolute necessity. The style of combat in 3.5, where a single battle can take all session long, getting hit even once can be lethal at any level of play, and in-combat healing is too inefficient to be worth it, is a much different experience and this is reflected in how stats are laid out in each system. To make a long story short, simply correlating a race's stats in FFXI won't get the same kind of race in 3.5, and getting the same kind of race is exactly what I'm aiming for.
Making the assumption that the vast majority of you have never played FFXI, here's more or less how the stats work in the game:
Strength: How much damage attacks do in battle
Dexterity: How easily you can hit with your attacks
Agility: How easily you dodge attacks
Vitality: How much damage is mitigated when you get hit
Intelligence: How good your "black magic" is
Mind: How good your "white magic" is
Charisma: ...Not much, but certain classes depend on it heavily for their abilities
They're pretty much the generic "fantasy RPG" stats you can imagine, much like 3.5's stats, but don't correlate with each other too well. Dexterity is used to determine hit accuracy instead of ability to dodge, which is handled by Agility, and etc... Add to the mix the fact that HP and MP are independent stats, and there's going to be a whole lot of futzing around to get the races to feel correct.
Speaking of which, here's a rough idea of the stat growth loadouts for each race in-game:
Hume: Medium everything (Seriously, I'm probably just going to use the PHB Human as the race here. No translating necessary.)
Elvaan: High HP, low MP, very high Strength, medium-low Dexterity, low Agility, high Vitality, low Intelligence, high Mind, medium Charisma
Tarutaru: Low HP, high MP, very low Strength, medium-high Dexterity, high Agility, low Vitality very high Intelligence, medium-low Mind, medium Charisma
Mithra: Medium HP, medium MP, medium Strength, high Dexterity, high Agility, low Vitality medium Intelligence, medium-low Mind, low Charisma
Galka: High HP, medium MP, high Strength, medium Dexterity, medium-low Agility, very high Vitality, low Intelligence, medium Mind, low Charisma
That should give a general idea of what each race should do in both systems, I hope. So to reiterate, I want to turn these FFXI races into 3.5 races that feel like they belong in their original setting flavor-wise but are still effective in play.
One thing I was considering was using the "defense score" variant rule in Unearthed Arcana, which would let me translate the races over more smoothly, but I'd rather cut down on the complexity in my game, and not force my players to learn yet another new thing. Additionally, I was considering adding some kind of "hit die modifier" or "spells-per-day modifier" to represent the independent HP and MP stats, but again, I think now that it's better to just not bother with these.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on how I could tackle this?
The primary problem is that the stats in each system do different things, and that's largely because the battles play out a lot differently in each game. Since FFXI is an MMO, routine battles only last a few minutes, and there's very fast and continuous action compared to a tabletop game. Getting hit a lot in combat doesn't matter as much, and in-combat healing is an absolute necessity. The style of combat in 3.5, where a single battle can take all session long, getting hit even once can be lethal at any level of play, and in-combat healing is too inefficient to be worth it, is a much different experience and this is reflected in how stats are laid out in each system. To make a long story short, simply correlating a race's stats in FFXI won't get the same kind of race in 3.5, and getting the same kind of race is exactly what I'm aiming for.
Making the assumption that the vast majority of you have never played FFXI, here's more or less how the stats work in the game:
Strength: How much damage attacks do in battle
Dexterity: How easily you can hit with your attacks
Agility: How easily you dodge attacks
Vitality: How much damage is mitigated when you get hit
Intelligence: How good your "black magic" is
Mind: How good your "white magic" is
Charisma: ...Not much, but certain classes depend on it heavily for their abilities
They're pretty much the generic "fantasy RPG" stats you can imagine, much like 3.5's stats, but don't correlate with each other too well. Dexterity is used to determine hit accuracy instead of ability to dodge, which is handled by Agility, and etc... Add to the mix the fact that HP and MP are independent stats, and there's going to be a whole lot of futzing around to get the races to feel correct.
Speaking of which, here's a rough idea of the stat growth loadouts for each race in-game:
Hume: Medium everything (Seriously, I'm probably just going to use the PHB Human as the race here. No translating necessary.)
Elvaan: High HP, low MP, very high Strength, medium-low Dexterity, low Agility, high Vitality, low Intelligence, high Mind, medium Charisma
Tarutaru: Low HP, high MP, very low Strength, medium-high Dexterity, high Agility, low Vitality very high Intelligence, medium-low Mind, medium Charisma
Mithra: Medium HP, medium MP, medium Strength, high Dexterity, high Agility, low Vitality medium Intelligence, medium-low Mind, low Charisma
Galka: High HP, medium MP, high Strength, medium Dexterity, medium-low Agility, very high Vitality, low Intelligence, medium Mind, low Charisma
That should give a general idea of what each race should do in both systems, I hope. So to reiterate, I want to turn these FFXI races into 3.5 races that feel like they belong in their original setting flavor-wise but are still effective in play.
One thing I was considering was using the "defense score" variant rule in Unearthed Arcana, which would let me translate the races over more smoothly, but I'd rather cut down on the complexity in my game, and not force my players to learn yet another new thing. Additionally, I was considering adding some kind of "hit die modifier" or "spells-per-day modifier" to represent the independent HP and MP stats, but again, I think now that it's better to just not bother with these.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on how I could tackle this?