I haven't really gotten beyond trying out the game and was thinking about this optional rule. My concerns are that it may unbalance the system somewhat. Using techniques straight from the book will not change that much, but techniques designed with this rule in mind, e.g. using only the primary characteristinc to determine the amount of Ki needed, will be unbalanced.

My question is, how do you handle this? Do you allow it to happen, do you force players to create techniques that are just plain badly designed under the rules-set, do you limit them to ready made techniques, or what?

For me, Unification of Ki is a life-saver.

Firstly, it means you can have access to ALL of your Ki (let's be honest - there are certain characteristics that each character just doesn't utilise in his/her techniques, so without Unification the Ki allocated to them is redundant except for Ki Abilities).  You still have the Ki Accumulation restrictions, but you don't have spare Ki points just sitting there gathering dust.

Secondly, it makes game-play a lot easier.  Trying to do book-keeping on 6 different piles of Ki is just needlessly complex and infuriating.  If you've only got to keep track of your Total Ki, it makes it a lot easier.

Personally, without Unification of Ki, I think I might avoid Technicians like the plague.  With it, they're great fun.  And it's certainly not over-powered or unbalanced.  You don't tell Psychics or Wizards that they can only use some of their PP or Zeon, so why have the same restriction for Ki-users?

It's no more unbalanced than having a single Zeon pool.

I don't have extensive Anima gameplay knowledge yet, but my last character (may he rest in peace) was pretty heavy on the Ki stuff. I made him with the standard rules in mind and I was stressing out about making him viable, as my character was very AGI and DEX heavy since he was a shadow, but all the techniques I wanted were the damage augmenting ones which are best with high STR. I feel like using the Unification of Ki allows characters to be more flexible with what they want to be able to do outside of combat. So if you want to railroad your characters more and say "Hey, if you want to be using damage augmentation stuff then you better get your STR attribute as high as possible" then don't use the Unification ruleset. It's my personal preference though.

And as my dead character can attest to, it doesn't lead to "broken" characters. Simply makes Ki more like Magic.

all UoK really does is make that once unuseable ki, useable. It gives you about 13-20 extra ki points, thats about it.

Personally, I find that it helps with the game flow some. As of right now, I'm gamemastering one and i find that its just far easier for the unification to take place. Plus, looking at the other classes, it makes Domine less restricted and more free to use their ki if their pool was like the zeon. It made my players happier. Less hassle and more free to do whatever stunts you could think of, a win in my book.

The Unification of Ki rules are nice from a book-keeping standpoint, but I personally prefer the original Ki rules, as they add more distinction between the Techniques, which is something I like. In the games I run, I have both options available to characters, but utilizing Unification of Ki rules has a couple of different rules associated with it, making it more something useful in combat, and less useful outside of combat. So the character using UoK was trained to access his Ki differently and doesn't necessarily accumulate Ki like one using the original set. It is somewhat based off of the ideas of Dancers from FF 11, or monks from DDO. I have had no complaints from characters who use either system.

For the book-keeping aspect for the original Ki rules, I find having about 6 different colored tokens of some sort works very well, in numbers equal to the Ki pools of each attribute. These are in two separate bowls or areas or something, and as each round of accumulation pops up, you move the right number from your "pool" to the "available". When "available" is spent on a Tech, set the used ones off to the side, return the rest to the "pool", and carry on like normal. No paper used, and gives a nice visual representation, that you can look down at and see if you have enough for your next Tech. One of my players actually came up with that, and has worked out great. When the character isn't doing anything in combat, i.e. during other people's turns, they can get the next round of accumulation ready, so they just add it to the "available", instead of counting it out.

I think you should use it. It doesn't Unbalance the game - at least thats not the experience we have in my group - and it make life SO much easier on those who use Ki.

Where can I find this rule? I see references to the rule but not the Rule itself. Can I get a page number please?

Thanks.

Noxid said:

Dominus Exxet, Page 6.

Huh.  I don't have that book yet (should be in my mailbox in a few days), but I saw a character someplace which had a pool of ki points, which made me go 'ooohhhh!', thinking UoK was a normal rule.  Still, knowing it exists makes my life easier.

Just to play the devils advocate, I think that Unification of Ki overpowers users from how they were originally created. Think of it this way: When you are creating Ki powers, each one has the primary stat. Now, lets say you are a character with a very low Power score, but want to be making a lot of long-range attacks (based on power). Normally, you wouldn't be able to use it very often unless you either went out of your way to buy points/accumulation, or used an optional characteristc (which would cost more ki). To me it feels like this rule is like letting a psychic jump between different disciplines, when they only have access to a few.

Yes, I think, that the unifaction of ki has made the domine-fighters stronger, but I think, they where rather  weak, if compared with psychics or wizards. Usually, they had not many ki-points per characteristic, so they could only use all techniques with there primary attributes one or two times per fight. A wizard can fuel all his spells with his generic zeon and a psychic could improvise many psychic abilites with his free psychic points.

But a domine-fighter could use his techniques not often, specialise of one art of technique (one set of attributes) or try to make him a general ki user, which would mean, he can many, but nothing got (jack of all trades, master of none), but wizards and psychics don't have this problem, they have one set of skills and can use all of their abilities with this. Okay, a psychic must pay for "access to all psychic disciplines", but to make an domine fighter, which could do something, they must take martial master, which costs around the same.

They got stronger, but they weren't this strong from the beginning.