If you like anime, you’ve no doubt considered building a 4e game campaign with anime influences. There’s a lot of great material in anime that makes for great gaming. From Lodoss Wars to Sword of the Berserk or even Naruto, there’s a lot to borrow from in the genre. run one of the aforementioned settings in 4e though, and you’ll see that something doesn’t quite fit. But before you try to amp up the power levels of your game to match the whacked out uberness of anime and manga, allow me to present you with another alternative.
You see, most people think that big whacked out powers make anime cool –you know, suns exploding , big crazy powers where you announce the name while perorming the move. That’s definitely part of it, but expanding on that for your game won’t replicate the feel of a good anime series. Tense back and forth fights where protagonist and antagonist push each other back and forth to their limits and beyond…this is the best part of anime (I know that there is anime that doesn’t fit this mold, but we are excluding these from the mix to focus on action/adventure). So prevalent is this pushing of one’s own limitations that there’s actually a term for it –the limit break.
What’s a limit break? It’s where your character hits a bump in the road, getting bloodied or hiurt badly, and then pushes himself beyond his normal limits to another level of fighting altogether. Your character uses his internal motivations to drive himself further and further beyond where he can normally go. It’s a “power up” mid-fight triggered by various circumstances.
How conflict is resolved in good anime is it’s single most telling feature, so it’s fitting that the way to best implement anime in your 4e game is through this special type of conflict. This guide isn’t here to add more class powers, or lengthy rules and houserules to get anime right. This guide provides the rules you need to run a special sort of fight — the limit break fight.
A limit break fight begins like a simple boss fight. The characters are facing a tough monster as the climactic scene. The first thing the limit-break fight does is make the monster tougher. We push it a few levels beyond what would be a near TPK. (Or we make a limit breaking monster/boss in parts, but more on that later). That’s right –we set the characters up to lose from the very start.
It won’t be long till someone gets hurt badly, or gets put down. This is not just an exercise in cruel and unfair DMing. The fight begins to take form now. The fighter gets hurt badly, dropping to a knee. He remembers the time when he promised his fallen comrade that he would slay the dragon he fights nows. Even though he is frightened and bloodied, he renews that vow to his friend at that very moment. He rises, a new thirst for battle in his eyes.
The fight rages on, and the fighter and his comrades grow in capability. The dragon starts out confident of victory. he trades his haughtiness for desperation in the face of his adapting, tenacious foes. He pulls out all stops, but now it’s too late! The party has marshalled their resources and their will to overcome the dragon. During the fight we also have many roleplaying opportunities and room for character development.
It’s clear that the Limit Break fight is no ordinary fight. These fights should be saved for very very special fights. Limit Break fights will take even longer than a normal fight but will reward you with deeper storytelling and drama within the fight. So with that, let’s continue on with how to run a Limit Breaker fight,shall we?
Tune in next week for part 2.
Similar Posts:
- 4e and the Art of the Limit Break, Part 3: Martial Limit Breaks
- 4e and the Art of the Limit-Break: Divine Limit Breaks
- Limit Breaks, Part 2: Drive
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
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The idea is good – I guess next we’ll see the mechanics of it?
Glad you liked the article! Yup, next time we’ll get into the mechanics of it. After that will be a look into some examples of play.
One of the influences for my modern Endday 4e D&D campaign is Bleach, so I’ll be watching this closely. Good stuff!
A quick and easy way to make this work mechanically would be to give the character an additional action per round and let the player work out what to do with it.
@greywulf Bleach is another good one that I failed to mention. I’m excited to get this one delivered.
@therecursionking welcome! That’s a good start, but the system also needs a way to expand the characters endurance. These fights will be longer, and the characters need a way to keep going to see the conclusion. I’ve got some ideas that I’ll be sharing, but that is a good start, definitely.
Interesting… I always considered the boss fight at the end of every scenario a sort of “limit break” fight. Everybody blows their daily powers within a few rounds, doing all kinds of cool stuff that they don’t do in a “normal” fight.
I’ll be interested to see the mechanics you present.
Hey, just found this website a few minutes ago (to explain the comment on a month-old post).
Here is an idea to increase players’ endurance in these long battles: when the tide first begins to turn, each PC recovers two healing surges and has the immediate option to use one as a free action. This would be a one time event and acts as a minor reset button.
I always thought that an action point was kind of a limit break. After a mile stone you have built up enough excitement or energy or what not that you can pull off a super human feat of speed and mover extra fast, or pull off an extra power.
You can use an action point a little bit for that, but this expands on that. Check out some of the power entries to see how far it goes