Ite's FF7 D&D Variant

[Ite]

Ever wanted to play D&D in the world of FFVII? Or perhaps you'd like to throw some materia at your players in your ongoing campaign. Here's a full variant to do just that. Each link in this table of contents will lead you to a .pdf, first the full document, then smaller bits of it for your mobile/browser needs.

The Book of Materia (full)
- Introduction, Equipment, and Basic Materia Rules
--Magic Materia (part 1)
--Magic Materia (part 2)
--Magic Materia (part 3)
--Support Materia
--Command Materia
--Independent Materia
--Summon Materia
- Part 3: DM Options

The Book of Materia Bestiary (WIP Google Drive Folder)

Bonus! FFXIV Aetheryte Shards

Edit Dec-2022: Major update with lots of rules removed, replaced, or added. Feedback about this version begins on Page 5 of this thread. The full document is available for download above, and you can view it on your browser by reading it piece-by-piece (the full version is too big for google to preview lol). If you want your art to be featured, comment on the thread and we'll get in touch! In the meanwhile, enjoy the system!

 

[Flintlock]

Not much feedback, I'm afraid, but colour me impressed.

 

[Ite]

Thanks Flint

 

[ForceStealer]

Cooooooool

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Part 1 Page 3: It looks like there's a column on the right that's completely cut-off when displayed, because the center column of blank space is too wide. I was able to C&P it, but on the page, only 3-4 letters at the start are displayed at the far right of the page.

Spoiler

Firearms
Guns are widely used by the military. Anyone with the soldier background is proficient with firearms. If a PC wishes, they may replace one tool proficiency from their background with proficiency with firearms.
Properties
Firearms use special ammunition, and some of them have the burst fire or reload property.
Ammunition. The ammunition of a firearm is destroyed upon use. Bullets can be purchased in clips of 10.
Burst Fire. A weapon that has the burst fire property can make a normal single-target attack, or it can spray a 10-foot cube area within normal range with shots. Each creature in the area must make succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or take the weapon's normal damage. This action uses ten pieces of ammunition.
Reload. A limited number of shots can be made with a weapon that has the reload property. A character must then reload it using an action or a bonus action (the character's choice.)
Materia Slots
A materia slot is fairly straightforward in its design: a round cage meant to hold a fully developed materia crystal. These can be sold as hanging baubles or (more popularly) they can be inlaid inside armor or weaponry. Either way, a basic, un-adorned materia slot costs 5 gil. Expert jewellers craft ornate materia slots that are prized art objects inandof themselves - these cost significantly more.

Explosives
Grenades are commonly used by the military.
Gunpowder
Gunpowder is chiefly used to propel a bullet out of the barrel of a pistol or rifle, or it is formed into dynamite. Gunpowder is sold in small wooden kegs and in water-resistant powder horns.
Setting fire to a container full of gunpowder can cause it to explode, dealing fire damage to creatures within 10 feet of it (3d6 for a powder horn, 7d6 for a keg). A successful DC 12 Dexterity saving throw halves the damage. Setting fire to an ounce of gunpowder causes it to flare for 1 round, shedding bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet.
Dynamite
As an action, a creature can light a stick of dynamite and throw it at a point up to 60 feet away. Each creature within 5 feet of that point must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw, taking 3d6 bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
A character can bind sticks of dynamite together so they explode at the same time. Each additional stick increases the damage by 1d6 (to a maximum of 10d6) and the burst radius by 5 feet (to a maximum of 20 feet).
3

Super neat stuff though. I've been working on a ton of homebrewing stuff in Evernote lately, and I might have to go over to the Home Brewery to just toss it all down in a nice format, so thanks for inadvertently linking me ta that!




X

 

[Ite]

Yeah Homebrewery is a wonderful concept and it's clear that the (solo!) programmer is pouring their heart and soul into it. It is buggy though, so I'm considering moving to GM Binder

Edit: thanks for the heads up on that formatting error. I tried to fix it on my phone and it looks like I jammed up the whole thing :/

 

[Agrippa]

I'm tinkering around the edges a bit on materia in D&D. Mostly I'm thinking about using a modified version of D&D 3.5's power stone system. But instead of becoming a useless orb/chunk of crystal after one or more uses, materia allows you manifest/cast psionic powers/spells* as if you knew them. As long as those powers are on your class list and you're high enough level to cast them, ect. If you have no levels in a manifesting class, or if that manifesting class doesn't have those powers on it's power list, you instead gain a number of uses of that spell long rest, short rest, quick rest or encounter, based upon your level. Materia must be fitted onto a weapon, armor or other piece of equipment, and can only be attuned or replaced once every full rest. Also, you can't stack power uses from multiple pieces of materia. This isn't Dark Souls people.

*This is assuming that you just reflavor psionic powers as spells, as I do.

 

[Ite]

I'm happy to announce that as of today, THE VARIANT IS DONE.

Not everyone is gonna agree with the changes I've made (summons are more like Aeons, some materia and spells are missing/replaced) but hopefully it'll be a fun thing to try out at your gaming table. I'm starting a playtest of it now, we might podcast it.

Would anyone like to host the pdf? I don't know shit about the internets (*harrumph wheeze and so forth*)

 

[Ite]

The alpha test of my D&D variant: "The Book of Materia" was a great success! I played with two teams of 5, a Saturday crew and a Monday crew. One team was pro-Shinra, one team was pro-AVALANCHE. I ran a "Rogue One" like story, where Team AVALANCHE was trying to steal the blueprints for a Mako Reactor while Team Shinra was trying to hunt them down and stop them. Team AVALANCHE wound up in Wall Market, where someone knocked out Don Corneo and stole information from his desk. Team Shinra fought a Hell House in the slums, and met up with a Turk in a safe house in Sector 5 (guess which one). It all ended in a climactic battle in the lobby of Shinra HQ, a 5-on-5 death match!

One character stacked purple materia and was dual-wielding scimitars with insane, Final Fantasy level epicness. Another character stole a red materia from a store and summoned a Tonberry onto the battlefield. We recorded the sessions and are editing them into a podcast right now.

I'm compiling feedback from the players and will be making adjustments to the rules over the next few months. I probably won't have it ready for KupoCon: Pomtropolis (which was my initial intent). The next phase of the project will be an open beta, which of course I'll post here.

 

[ForceStealer]

Are those materia pages still available?

 

[Flare]

Omg that Gelfling raceaaaaa Dark Crystal <3

 

[Ite]

Don't know if this link will work, but here's a Google Doc of the OPEN BETA!!

[defunct, see OP]

 

[ForceStealer]

That's damn pretty

 

[InterfaceLeader]

It really is beautiful o.o

 

[Cthulhu]

That's some tl;dr detailed shit, I approve . Want us / are you okay with us to publish a thing about it on the front page / facebook / etc? And do you have an official site for discussion etc?

I mean I'm not going to write it because I know fuck-all about D&D and shit, but, just putting it out there.

 

[Ite]

That&#8217;s an idea! Maybe when the full release is out. I want to replace the last of the copyright images and get some feedback from any beta testers.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

X

 

[Ite]

Hi guys! I'm back with another update, this time I've created a module!! Some of the DMs who have been beta-testing this game have asked that I make a small dungeon for them to run a group through. I figured I'd take a location in the game and run it, and include a super-boss, why not? Without further ado:

THE MYTHRIL MINES

 

[Celes777]

Wow, I have no idea what this is but it is beautiful o.O

 

[Ite]

Thanks!

I had to make a few tweaks to the Zolom, but now it doesn't quite fit the page. Until I reformat it, here's the updated stats on the Zolom:

 

[Erotic Materia]

I only just got into D&D, but I would play the EFF out of this.

 

[Ite]

Last update for 2019! I went and started something... pretty major. A full conversion bestiary for all the creatures in FF7, ready to insert into your own campaign, or to play through FF7 in a tabletop setting with friends!

Here's the google drive folder with the first handful of "packs."

I just finished the Midgar section, it contains over 50 creatures. It's organized dungeon-by-dungeon rather than alphabetically, and each dungeon contains "wandering monster" tables -- these are a 1 for 1 recreation of the FFVII random battle mechanics (thanks to DynamixDJ for this resource, which was how I was able to do it).

I did verrrry little flubbing, using mostly a solid formula that "translated" FF7's numbers into 5e's numbers. Exceptions were when the enemy wasn't able behave like it did in the game (e.g. I had to make Dark Nation's magic dice 2d12 which I'll justify by saying he's been augmented by Hojo? Sure. Let's go with that.) and I feel like my HP formula can be refined somewhat, as a Lv 1 party can pretty much gank everyone except bosses. But for now, I'm letting it be for the holidays. When I come back to it, I'll start working on the ~300 more creatures, and then get to formatting it all pretty.

Enjoy!

 

[shaned94]

I was curious how do you reverse engineer the constitution modifier and hit dice with the probability calculator, I was hoping to translate some monsters you don't have posted yet, and what do you consider to be the beginning of each act for the CR

 

[Ite]

I was curious how do you reverse engineer the constitution modifier and hit dice with the probability calculator, I was hoping to translate some monsters you don't have posted yet, and what do you consider to be the beginning of each act for the CR

Hey! So glad another enterprising DM wants to give this a go. As this was 6 months ago, I'm a bit rusty on the details. Here's the (wip) google sheet I used to get the "target HP" -- you'll find it in the Bestiary tab.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xiZ7o1JQJDoa6cI54xMqujaG7HlHDvSGfYfAVQmoEnw/edit?usp=sharing

You'll also find the "five act structure" on the leftmost column, representing the tiers of adventure, plus an extra one for after Meteor is Summoned, cause it's the FINAL fantasy

The reverse engineering is where it gets creative. Let's use H0512 as an example.

The calculation to get the Target HP turns his 1000HP into 110HP.

I honestly start with a wild guess: "This thing probably has a higher-than-average Constitution, being big and fleshy." Then I go to https://anydice.com/ and literally take guesses until the average result of the roll is the target number. I obviously wanted him to have some levels on him, to up his proficiency bonus and to justify some of his features. Taking that, I tried the following:

12d8 + 50 (that's a Con +5 for 12 levels) = average 114
13d8 + 52 (Con +4, 13 levels) = average 110!
14d8 + 42 (Con +3, 14 levels) = average 105

Hah! Looking at it now, I should have gone with the middle option, when what I went with was the bottom one. Just goes to show that this is inexact, and really comes down to your discretion as a DM. I'm not sure why I picked that, but it was probably for some other reason -- I needed enough magic points for him to use an ability, or wanted to up his proficiency bonus, or it was 4am. The most likely reason is due to my "Magic Bonus" mechanic, which takes into account every level. There may have been something about needing H0512's magic bonus to be +15 that made me decide.

As I said, it's really up to you as the DM. Hope that helps!

side note: If you look at the google sheet, you'll notice that the Weapons and the final boss gauntlet have been overridden to keep their OG HP. That's by design. Emerald Weapon should be able to eat the Tarrasque for breakfast. A million HP sounds right

I think it's time I continued this work as well!

 

[shaned94]

Hey! So glad another enterprising DM wants to give this a go. As this was 6 months ago, I'm a bit rusty on the details. Here's the (wip) google sheet I used to get the "target HP" -- you'll find it in the Bestiary tab.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xiZ7o1JQJDoa6cI54xMqujaG7HlHDvSGfYfAVQmoEnw/edit?usp=sharing

You'll also find the "five act structure" on the leftmost column, representing the tiers of adventure, plus an extra one for after Meteor is Summoned, cause it's the FINAL fantasy

The reverse engineering is where it gets creative. Let's use H0512 as an example.

The calculation to get the Target HP turns his 1000HP into 110HP.

I honestly start with a wild guess: "This thing probably has a higher-than-average Constitution, being big and fleshy." Then I go to https://anydice.com/ and literally take guesses until the average result of the roll is the target number. I obviously wanted him to have some levels on him, to up his proficiency bonus and to justify some of his features. Taking that, I tried the following:

12d8 + 50 (that's a Con +5 for 12 levels) = average 114
13d8 + 52 (Con +4, 13 levels) = average 110!
14d8 + 42 (Con +3, 14 levels) = average 105

Hah! Looking at it now, I should have gone with the middle option, when what I went with was the bottom one. Just goes to show that this is inexact, and really comes down to your discretion as a DM. I'm not sure why I picked that, but it was probably for some other reason -- I needed enough magic points for him to use an ability, or wanted to up his proficiency bonus, or it was 4am. The most likely reason is due to my "Magic Bonus" mechanic, which takes into account every level. There may have been something about needing H0512's magic bonus to be +15 that made me decide.

As I said, it's really up to you as the DM. Hope that helps!

side note: If you look at the google sheet, you'll notice that the Weapons and the final boss gauntlet have been overridden to keep their OG HP. That's by design. Emerald Weapon should be able to eat the Tarrasque for breakfast. A million HP sounds right

I think it's time I continued this work as well!

Thanks for the quick reply I appreciate it, looking forward to the finished product, btw i wanted to start with a party of shinra fighting in the wutai war, subbing the wutai soldiers for MPs was easy enough but for foulanders i figured using the guard dog stat block and replacing tentacle whip with fire dance (basically just casting fire on every visible player) would you say that sounds about right?