BESM d20 questions

[Faerie]

I'm thinking of running a BESM d20 campaign for my gaming group. And since pretty much everyone in the group has and uses hero lab, I was thinking it'd be good to have a data file for it I could share. Has someone already completed and shared a BESM d20 data file? And if not, what's recommended to make one?

Since I'd have to buy one of them, I need to know if I should get the D20 OGL data, or Authoring Kit if I want to make a BESM char creator/editer.

[Mathias]

How much does BESM d20 differ from Pathfinder or from d20? Does it use the exact same set of basic concepts - that there are classes, feats, AC, BAB, etc.?

If so, then you could, with a lot of work, take Pathfinder or d20, hide everything, and then create the new things you need.

If you need to change the basics of the game, you'd need to start from scratch, using the Authoring kit.

[Faerie]

It's based on D20, but stats are point buy. There's also anime style 'attributes', which are basically special abilities and traits, you spend points on. Different classes get automatic attributes, points to spend on attributes, or a combination. This is in addition to feats and skills. Magic's done a bit differently too. And you can take character flaws (or flaws on a specific attribute) to get more points or decrease the cost of an attribute. While it's recognizably D20, it's different enough to still be it's own system too.

For example, I once made a BESM d20 character who had an attribute which allowed them to never have to reload any gun they're firing until AFTER the battle ends. He had a giant chain gun with a 100 round revolver style clip. Then there's magical girls/guys, people with cute animals of mass destruction (ala pokemon), people who Own A Big Mecha, people who can pull obscenely large weapons out of their breast pocket, people who can fire a pistol and deal enough damage you'd think it was a rocket launcher or ICBM...

[Dianae]

Sorry for coming late to the party, but I had some information to share on the matter.

Note for Mathias, or any one else who had not worked with or heard of Guardians of Order, the company who published Big Eyes, Small Mouth and it's variations.

Truth of the matter is that BESM d20 was a hybridized semi-universal gaming system that brought wacky, over the top, free form anime inspired rules and assigned point values to all aspects of character creation, and layered them on top of the d20 3.0 OGL's stricter guidelines. Unfortunately, I think it is different enough, in a lot of the fundamentals, that you would probably need the Authoring Kit. I only have Pathfinder in Hero Lab, so I can only speak for it's ability to be used as a base.

The entire system Guardians of Order created is based around using point buy for every aspect of Character Creation. There are some aspects of a point buy system in Pathfinder that might be usable as a springboard, but on a much larger number scale. These are the Advance Race Guide's Race Builder and the Summoner's Eidolon.

There were conversion rules for the d20 core classes to bring them up to a balanced progression based on their point buy rules and some arbitrary guidelines. Luckily, the System Reference Documents were freely available while GoO was still around. and I think I still have the files somewhere in my computer.

The main conversion issues are that everything in BESM has a point value assigned to it, some of the conversions were iffy when it came to class features, though I think that most of them are able to be broken down and assigned a point cost.

There are a few major deviations from the d20 OGL rules(the core of d20 and pathfinder) that I could see causing coding headaches if one were to try and convert or adapt one system to the other. Most of these are the attributes that give a specialized power pool. The rest involves modifications(assigning point values) to the 3.0 core classes. Depending on the variations in how classes are created/edited in Pathfinder vs 3.5 would be the basis on where to start from.