Any Non-Level Based Fantasy Systems Out There?

[Anderlith]

I was just wondering if the Playground could recommend me some game systems that are more like Shadowrun or World of Darkness, that have point buy improvement rather than level based. I dont want the heroes to be superpowerful of the bat, but just reasonably competent, with room to grow outward & upward. With a cool magic system hopefully. That is medival/general fantasy based.

[Arbane]

'Not superpowerful' leaves out Exalted. :D

RuneQuest
GURPS Fantasy
Earthdawn kind-of has levels, but it's VERY like Shadowrun... since it's canonically Shadowrun's pre-history.
Savage Worlds
Dungeon World is level-based...sort of.
If you want medieval stuff, how about Pendragon? (Which is explicitly about being Arthurian Knights.)
HERO System can do fantasy, but might be a bit number-crunchy.
FATE, because you can do anything in FATE.

[Fri]

-Mutants and Mastermind, since Mutant and Mastermind also can do anything :p.
-Ryuutama

[Koo Rehtorb]

Burning Wheel. Each skill/attribute advances individually by using/practicing it. Depending on how many lifepaths you set at character creation you can play anything from literal 10 year old children to highly competent feudal lords or dwarven princes or elven kings.

[Arbane]

-Mutants and Mastermind, since Mutant and Mastermind also can do anything :p.
-Ryuutama

M&M has levels, even if they're supposed to be more 'power level' than 'current level of advancement'. But yes, it can do fantasy pretty well.

I have Ryuutama, I'm embarrassed I forgot about it.
IN that vein, Tenra Bansho Zero, which looks to resemble medieval Japan about as much as your typical D&D game resembles medieval Europe. :D

On the Sword and Sorcery front, I've heard these are pretty good:
Blades of the Iron Throne
Barbarians of Lemuria

[Fri]

M&M has levels, even if they're supposed to be more 'power level' than 'current level of advancement'. But yes, it can do fantasy pretty well.

Yeah, but usually I don't count "power level" in MnM the way we usually treat level since it's considered more power cap instead of something we strive to advance. You usually try to grow laterally (adding more skills, powers) and minding the PL as the limitation of the campaign. Increase in PL is something more special, as in advancement from E6 campaign to E12 Campaign or something.

[Mutazoia]

D6 Fantasy and Warhammer FRP spring to mind off the top of my head.

[Firest Kathon]

Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) is levelless and fantasy. The default magic system is a standard mana- and spell-based system, but there are other "magic" subsystems (runes, alchemy, blood magic) which may qualify as "cool".

The new 5th Edition is available in English, the much more expansive 4th Edition is mostly available only in German.

[Frozen_Feet]

Praedor and Noitahovi, if you can read Finnish.

[Anonymouswizard]

-Mutants and Mastermind, since Mutant and Mastermind also can do anything :p.

I want to add a clarification to this.

Mutants and Masterminds can do any genre (ignoring hard sci-fi, where you first need to put a cap on speed ranks and then once you leave the planet work out how you're doing space travel). However, it will lend itself towards a specific feel.

By which I mean if you want to do Fantasy it'll turn out more like Fantasy Superheroes or Exalted than it will like Lord of the Rings. Science Fiction? You have something more Star Wars than Transhuman Space (and that's assuming you're using low PLs, at PL 10 you're stronger than most Jedi). Wuxia is okay as long as you want high powered Wuxia, urban fantasy if you want high powered urban fantasy, and so on.

In several ways M&M is the anti GURPS. While GURPS will run anything but in a gritty style, M&M will run anything in a Superhero style. That's fine, not everybody wants to play Transhuman Space, some people want to play psychics mind crushing alien hordes, or brave explorers discovering new worlds and sleeping with the blue skinned space babes. However, when saying that something 'does anything' it's useful to note the eccentricities of the system.

For example, Fate can do any genre, at any power level (because the designers decided that there's no need to define what Great (+4) Physique can lift, it'll depend on the game). However, it focuses on the narrative much more, and so won't work for a dungeon crawl, and tends to be pulpy when not specifically configured otherwise.

-Ryuutama

Interesting, I'll have a closer look, although I tend to play Science Fiction much more than fantasy these days.

Because I haven't seen it mentioned, d6Fantasy is free, and completely levelless. It's also classless, and has options both for freeform point buy, and category-based. Bare in mind that, unless you want to go to Amazon, you'll have to print out the book and stick it in a folder (as I've done with both d6Fantasy and d6Space).

[RedWarlock]

So what counts as level-based or not? Rapidly inflating HP pools? Discrete levels of strength numbered 1-20ish? Or characters graded by their 'level' as opposed to by their experience/build-point total?

[Beleriphon]

M&M has levels, even if they're supposed to be more 'power level' than 'current level of advancement'. But yes, it can do fantasy pretty well.

Yeah, but they're more of a way to categorize characters into competency ranges and provide some kind of limit on a point buy system.

[Knaight]

Non-Level based is a pretty huge category (levels are downright rare outside of D&D), and Fantasy is quite possibly the single biggest genre. Interesting magic systems is the only thing that cuts down on this a bit, and even then there's a fair few games. So, a quick list
Strongly Recommended
REIGN: REIGN is just an excellent game in a lot of respects, working as a finely tuned fantasy game. It then has two big things going for it - the magic system is incredibly cool, consisting of a bunch of specific disciplines that are strongly themed and individually interesting, with yet more released for free by the main designer online. It also has thorough rules for large scale conflicts between organizations, and they work.
Ars Magica: Ars Magica is a game that takes mages in a medieval world seriously - it's set in Europe, and it's about a covenant of mages. It also has a seriously cool magic system built around a combination of nouns and verbs individually learned, and it's by far the best known game to implement troupe play, and worth playing for that reason alone.
Like Crunch?
Burning Wheel
GURPS Fantasy
Dislike Crunch?
Deyrini Realms
Barbarians of Lemuria
Warrior, Rogue, and Mage
Like Fate?
Legends of Anglerre
Age of Arthur
Dresden Files

[LibraryOgre]

Earthdawn kind-of has levels, but it's VERY like Shadowrun... since it's canonically Shadowrun's pre-history.

I'd say the different circles definitely count as levels... while it's not as strict as D&D's level system, you still need to qualify for 2nd Circle to get the Durability talent, which improves your various numbers.

The ones I was going to mention... Savage Worlds, D6 Fantasy, and Ars Magica have all been noted. I'd also add that I worked out a levelless version of Star Wars Saga that could work for a long-term non-SF game.

[2D8HP]

From the same "rules family" as Call of Cthullu, Pendragon, Runequest, and Stormbringer; I suggest:

Magic World

[slachance6]

I second GURPS for basically anything, including fantasy if you're not a fan of d20. That said, if you just want players to be more powerful from the start, you could just play D&D, or better yet, Pathfinder, and start at a higher level than 1.

[LibraryOgre]

I second GURPS for basically anything, including fantasy if you're not a fan of d20. That said, if you just want players to be more powerful from the start, you could just play D&D, or better yet, Pathfinder, and start at a higher level than 1.

"We are playing E6. Everyone starts at level 6."

[Anonymouswizard]

"We are playing E6. Everyone starts at level 6."

To be fair, that is approximately how GURPS advancement worked when I it. We began of fairly powerful for the world as 100 point characters, and gained the equivalent of a great every 2-3 sessions (or a stat point every 4-5). It does actually work, if the players are okay with slow advancement.i personally love it.

[slachance6]

We began of fairly powerful for the world as 100 point characters,

I'm not sure that's very powerful by GURPS standards. If the real world is E6, a 100-point character is probably level 3 at best. People like special forces, Olympians and billionaires could probably be built on well over 200 points.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not sure that's very powerful by GURPS standards. If the real world is E6, a 100-point character is probably level 3 at best. People like special forces, Olympians and billionaires could probably be built on well over 200 points.

Not by GURPS standards, but by the standards of the world used we were at about level 5 when the game began, and fairly quickly hit the top percentile. It was a low power world. The GM likes lower powered worlds, we were playing closer to E4 or E5 than E6.

For what it's worth, I towards 150CP for my game, I find 200CP is too much but 100CP limits the racial templates i can include. Depending on the world it can put PCs at anywhere between the equivalent of level 3 and level 5.

[TheCountAlucard]

I like the new third edition of Exalted, but if Exalts are too powerful for you, you could play as mortals.

[Arbane]

I like the new third edition of Exalted, but if Exalts are too powerful for you, you could play as mortals.

That changes the genre from 'fantasy' to 'horror', I think - pretty much anything interesting in Exalted can kill mortals by looking at them funny. (In some cases, literally.)

[Anderlith]

If anyone has taken a look at 7th Sea Second Edition, thats the kind of feel I want, but a more robust system with more options. & to trade the swashbuckling for more sword & sorcery

I hate any system I have to tool myself,
GURPS
M&M (doesnt give the right feel either)
FATE (my players hate trying to come up with suitable aspects)

If i had to I would rather homebrew 7th sea or Shadowrun to fit than build one up from scratch.

While i like Warhammer FRPG, Ive only played 2nd ed. & heard the 3rd ed. Is bad

Whats RuneQuest, Burning Wheel, & REIGN like?

[TheCountAlucard]

That changes the genre from 'fantasy' to 'horror', I think - pretty much anything interesting in Exalted can kill mortals by looking at them funny. (In some cases, literally.)

Have you played a mortals game in the new edition? As long as the group has a good medic, it's still pretty survivable, so long as the group doesn't try and fight Octavian.

Of course, maybe we have different standards for "anything interesting," but I'm hoping that's not the case.

[Catullus]

Would Call of Cthulhu be good?

[TheCountAlucard]

Would Call of Cthulhu be good?

That's not quite a fantasy system. Also it's set in the 20th century. May be a bit too modern.

[VoxRationis]

The Legend of the Five Rings RPG (at least the third edition, which is the only one I've seen) has Insight Ranks, which are sort of like levels, but there are only five of them and they are determined based on your stats, rather than the other way around. Much of the system is tied to the setting (particularly the magic), but the core skill and combat mechanics could be transferred to a more neutral environment without too much effort, and I like several aspects of its mechanics (particularly its separation of skill potential and skill reliability, which d20 fails at horribly).

[Arbane]

Would Call of Cthulhu be good?

Regular Call of Cthulhu, probably not so much, as it's early-20th century horror adventures.
The Dreamlands sub-setting might actually be good for fantasy - ISTR it's less Cosmic Horror and more Cosmic Weirdness.

It uses pretty much the same system as RuneQuest (minus hit locations, IIRC), so it would be possible to use monsters from it in RQ (or vice versa).

[Stryyke]

A bit of self-promotion, if you don't mind.

https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/6...e-final-battle

It's a feat based progression system that provides a high degree of versatility and customization.

[LibraryOgre]

I would still class Legend of the Five Rings as level-based, despite it being an inversion of the usual level-based system (similar to Earthdawn), because your level determines your access to abilities. Not sufficient power to have insight rank 2? You cannot have insight rank 2 abilities. Not sufficiently powerful to advance to the 2nd Circle? You can't learn 2nd circle abilities.