Note: I also reserve the right to secretly kludge things if it’s in the player’s best interests to do so. I don’t expect this to happen too often, but it may come up if I have really messed something up (e.g. skills or combat).
There’s a FP (burning spirit) item that has an element with it. Feel free to change to any of the other elements. Also, feel free to change the type of item it is, with the exception that you may also be expected to pay some yen towards it as well. Also, silver throwing knives – feel free to replace with another seemingly-infinite thrown weapon (e.g. shurikens, holy waters, small hand axes, arrows, etc). In fact, for almost any item, if you have a good idea of what you want to do, but it’s not listed in the manual, tell me about it. I’m happy to kludge something together. Especially if it is close to, in terms of abilities, to something that already exists.
Note that clothing/armor/decorations are already intended to just be general styles of clothing, so as long as what you're telling me on your character sheet makes some amount of sense in its adaptation, I'm fine with it.
Birds – although Mystia and Tokiko are the only bird youkai, obviously not all of the birds are night sparrows. Feel free to pick another type of bird and I’ll do my best to come up an alternate ability (to Blanket of Darkness) for them. If your bird is a song-bird, you’ll get the sing-song ability, otherwise I’ll see what I can do.
E.g. Owl – nocturnal – owl-youkai prefer to sleep during the day and work at night. Night-sight – owl youkai can see normally at night (e.g. all vision ranges at night are the same as they would be during the day) and get the benefits of enhanced sight during night.
Hawk – gets the benefits of superior flight, gets the benefit of enhanced sight when explicitly tracking something.
Half-phantoms – this race is broken at present. I have no idea how they were supposed to play, but I thought up my own kludge for their racial ability…
“Two Halves are Better Than One”
Your spirit half can be operated independently of your corporeal half. Mechanically, this does the following:
For the cost of 1 life, once per incident, your spirit half can be controlled independently to within ~30 ft. This lasts 30 minutes or until the end of the stage, whichever comes first. Your spirit half has no attack or bombs, an extra evasion and hitbox score (it’s immaterial after all) and only one life (the one you gave it). If your spirit half is not hit in combat, you regain the life after this ability expires.
On its own, the spirit half can take the form of any material object or person you can visualize, or a person holding one object. The spirit half makes no noise and floats above the ground. It may pass through walls but doing so will obviously break the illusion that it’s a physical object. It cannot interact with anything (e.g. open doors, hurt someone)
In battle, the spirit half can take one of two stances: Offensive or Defensive. Your spirit half behaves like a regular combatant and can be hit by attacks. If your spirit half is hit, you may bomb on its behalf.
Offensive stance: Pick a target. That target suffers -1 to its evasion as long as your spirit half remains. If the target loses all its lives, you may pick a new target on your next round.
Defensive stance: All attacks that could hit you first must hit your spirit half. If your spirit half is hit in this fashion and the attack was multi-target (e.g. a spellcard), the attacker gets to immediately roll against your evasion and hitbox as well. Otherwise, the spirit half dissipates and the attack sails safely into space.
Moon-rabbits and Lunarians – they’re welcome in Gensokyo now, although you will probably be known by the inhabitants at Eientei, and if you’re a Lunarian, you should probably have a good reason for coming to earth – in universe, they’re kind of space-racist and thus prefer the moon.
Being small – get an extra +1 bonus to thievery rolls – you’re tiny, that means you have tiny fingers! (This is an attempt to make Small just as valuable as Big. )
Spells – the spell name and descriptions are suggestions. Keep the costs, (General) effects, requirements, and stage limits, but feel free to modify the name and how they look. (What do I mean by general? For example, Ice arrow will always be a water elemental attack, but it need not be an arrow nor made of ice - it could be a rain storm of some sort, a ball of water, fog or some sort... water cantrip specifically includes etc. in its description. If you are unsure of what a cantrip or spell could do, feel free to talk to me. E.g. for nature cantrip, if you wanted to temporarily preserve food, I would say that nature cantrip would do that.)
The following spells are all reclassified as enchantments, not elemental. Any boost, blind, silence, root, sleep, lunacy. You can also make lunacy and blind illusion based if you’re so inclined. (This shouldn’t have much mechanical effect.)
Endearments – have a good idea for an endearment? Tell me about it and I’ll make a decision. Don’t give yourself any points until I confirm something though.
Biography/art/song endearments – give yourself 1 point if you have anything at all, for a first estimate, and I’ll tell you how many extra points you get, if any, after you finalize with me. Ideally your art and song will be 1. presentable and 2. not revealing a lot about your character, so I may ask your permission to use them in the dramatis personae post. Your biography will not be presented to anyone except me.
Code of honour: I expect you to tell me what that code is! Likewise I need to know how you’re exploitable. Expect to be called to use your code of honour, and expect to be exploited.
As with all characters, your character sheet is hidden so you shouldn’t tell anyone else this stuff… however, you will also go on the dramatis personae, so if something substantial is revealed publicly, expect everyone to know about it.
Want to have decorative stuff in your spellcard? That’s free. Any mechanical stuff will cost you, though.
Skills: Probably a bit broken due to the fact that apparently this game was on a D20 system before it swapped to D6-D6. As a temporary, kludge, Skill rolls are d6 + associated stat + skills (+ whatever other applicable bonuses). As such, you should expect anyone to be able to do simple feats all of the time (except in extreme circumstances or adverse endearments), challenging feats if they have some natural talent, and everything else if they have some extreme talent. E.g. to easily make folded metal weapons, you need a combined stat + skill + bonuses of 11, meaning for Might 4 (an average starting Might rank) you need skills + bonuses of +7, meaning you probably will have 5 points in blacksmith and either take the blacksmithing ‘feat’ or take extra time to make items (allotting extra time -> a bonus, as you’re not in a rush.)
Stances: There are three stances in the rule book: Assault, Play it safe, and Flirt with death. I propose to add two new ones (although I expect them to come up rarely). 1. Defender – a pure-dodging stance. Add +2 to hitbox and evasion. While in this stance, you may make no combat maneuvers (i.e. spells or attacks of any kind) against an enemy. Basically this is just combining the two focused stances into something for someone who wants to survive. 2. Distracter – an aggressive stance, intended to draw enemy fire. While in this stance, you may only make 1 combat action per turn. (I.e. no multiple spells or attacks per turn). Pick a target. You suffer -1 evasion vs all other targets, and -1 hitbox versus that target only. In exchange, that target suffers a -1 to hit versus all targets. This could be useful, for example, in drawing the fire of a major enemy, but you run the risk of exposing yourself to incoming fire. Note: This effect does not stack – an enemy can only be so distracted!