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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    MonkGirl

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    Default Ivalice conversion (5e)

    I generally do homebrew settings, but I have a few players very interested in doing a campaign in Ivalice (the world of Final Fantasy Tactics/12).

    I've got a good start in converting races and the like, but am going back and forth on how to handle Gods. There are definitely Clerics in the setting, but the Gods are pretty distant entities (called Occuria, very Lawful Neutral and manipulative but also very 'behind the scenes' with no big churches or the like).

    The big established church in the setting followed a mortal 'saint' who was likely possessed by a demon-thing. The Lucavi/Scions make decent candidates for Gods but... Pretty evil (or at least dangerously chaotic) across the board, and thier feel seems more like Warlock Pacts than a Cleric/Power relationship. There are also 'Scions of Light' but nothing other than names are given to them.

    Thoughts? Should I just say the Occuria are behind Cleric magic via mortal 'Saints'? Or should the Scions/Lucavi act as the 'Gods' for Clerical magic and the Occuria act more as a 'collective Overpower' that manipulate but don't share their power with mortals?

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Ivalice conversion (5e)

    I've only played FFT, FFTA, and FFTA2 - I don't know anything about FF12, so I can't really provide input based on that. Of the three, FFT is by far my favorite, so expect my opinions to be colored by that despite the fact that I haven't played it in 10 years.

    First of all, "Ivalice" and "races" bugs me a bit. The original FFT was a humans-only setting, at least as far as sentient humanoids went. None of the other FF games that use the name "Ivalice" seem to genuinely be that setting. That's just personal opinion, though, I suppose.

    FFT seems, to me, to be a somewhat secular humanist setting as far as divinity is concerned. Genuine faith and miracles are never confirmed, though demons certainly seem to exist. Of particular note, when a holy knight is possessed by a demon (effectively destroying the mortal's soul in the process), the demon can wield the holy attacks that the knight knew. If there were an external divine source for such powers, then it should be disabled or at least corrupted when a demon takes the helm. This implies that "holy" powers are personal in nature, like any other skills in the setting, and come from practice and muscle memory just like casting fireball spells or swinging a sword.

    Does this mean that no gods exist? Who knows? Demons or demon-like entities certainly exist, but the existence of horrors from beyond our reality doesn't imply the existence of benefactors from beyond (just ask H. P. Lovecraft). The lack of concrete evidence of beneficient divine entities doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist, either, it just means that the people of the setting are in roughly the same position as the people of the world we're in - whether to believe or not is fundamentally an act of faith.

    Humans uncertain of whether a higher power exists who choose to stand against the forces of darkness anyway - that's what the original FFT was to me. The system doesn't need gods to work, "clerics" might just be white mages who attribute their spells to an external power, or people whose faith is strong enough to fuel "miracles," but they cannot prove external origin of those miracles. As far as I'm concerned, leaving the exact nature of the known extradimensional entities ambiguous fits right in with the tone of the setting.
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    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    MonkGirl

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    Default Re: Ivalice conversion (5e)

    FFT mentioned other races (moogles used to live in Sweegy Woods) but most had died out by then besides Humans. Other games in the series take place earlier in the timeline. However there are a few intelligent monster races (goblins, treants, mindflayers) to consider as well

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Ivalice conversion (5e)

    Quote Originally Posted by Naanomi View Post
    I've got a good start in converting races and the like, but am going back and forth on how to handle Gods. There are definitely Clerics in the setting, but the Gods are pretty distant entities (called Occuria, very Lawful Neutral and manipulative but also very 'behind the scenes' with no big churches or the like).

    The big established church in the setting followed a mortal 'saint' who was likely possessed by a demon-thing. The Lucavi/Scions make decent candidates for Gods but... Pretty evil (or at least dangerously chaotic) across the board, and thier feel seems more like Warlock Pacts than a Cleric/Power relationship. There are also 'Scions of Light' but nothing other than names are given to them.

    Thoughts? Should I just say the Occuria are behind Cleric magic via mortal 'Saints'? Or should the Scions/Lucavi act as the 'Gods' for Clerical magic and the Occuria act more as a 'collective Overpower' that manipulate but don't share their power with mortals?
    Just remove the connection between clerics and the gods. Mortals don't depend on the gods to use either white or black magic (nor any of the various other kinds of magic). Each 5e class uses white and black magic in different combinations, and clerics are just spellcasting undead-slayers whose specialty in white magic also makes them good at healing.

    Final Fantasy games are notorious for 1) integrating the way magic works into the setting into the video game mechanics (i.e. materia) and 2) making some of the classes related to guilds and factions in the setting (i.e. dragoons). If you go that route and start rewriting classes or setting up new subclasses, you're going to have a lot of work laid out for you.

    If you don't want to do too much work, I would recommend sticking to the 5e classes as they are. Maybe impose a few restrictions (i.e., "no druids because all the factions in tune with nature use very little magic", or "the only cleric domain you can choose is Life because white magic makes sense and the rest don't").

    You're also gonna have to figure out how Mist interacts with spellcasting.
    Last edited by Thomar_of_Uointer; 2015-03-21 at 03:52 PM.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Ivalice conversion (5e)

    Sorry for the off-topic rant about races in FFT. It just distracted from my relevant point, which is basically what Thomar_of_Uointer said - separate "cleric" the job/class and "priest" the role in society from one another. The kinds of things that D&D clerics do are generally available to secular white mages in FFT games, so there isn't much reason to keep religion linked to those effects in an Ivalice-D&D conversion. It also makes it easier to port over the morally gray, politically complicated church of the original FFT, if that's your inclination.

    If you're drawing from FF12 Ivalice as your primary inspiration, then like I said, I can't really help you there. I've never managed to find the time to play FF12, though I probably would if I could.
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    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    MonkGirl

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    Default Re: Ivalice conversion (5e)

    I'm going with a FFT 'feel', including a massively human-centric population; however other races will be available and be exclusively defined as either foreign or very secluded so there will be prominent social complications for choosing one.

    Thanks for the candor, the idea of seperating Magic from the Gods is a good one, though a social connection will exist (ie: people associate cleric magic... Actually all magic... with the church but it is techically doable with out any specific Divine Agency)

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