Fursona by PurpleXVI

The Horrible Start

posted by PurpleXVI Original SA post

Fursona!



So, Fursona. Man, what to say about Fursona? It's basically as if every piece of furry "culture," art and spirituality(for those who think they're ANIMALS AT HEART) was jammed into one horrendous pile of shit with bad art, and then had D&D rules applied to it. Yes, I know it's Pathfinder, but that's really just 3.5th edition with a few numbers swapped around, anyone who thinks otherwise can go take a long hike in a big forest made of dicks.

Fursona doesn't provide a game on its own, instead it's just intended to help you create furry PC races to foist on your Pathfinder GM until he wants to kill himself, you or both.

Really, the only question when cracking open this .PDF is whether the art or the writing is going to turn out to be worse. With that said, let's begin!

Why be human?

That's the first question the book gives us, and it does point out that animals can be pretty rad. Armoured insect-folk! Flying bird-folk! Sensual cat-f- wait what? Yeah, one of the "advantages" it points out we're missing as boring old humans is "the sensuality of the cat." We're also introduced to the book's poor editing on this first page as it invites us to remember the myraid[sic] animal-inspired species in D&D, and we're told that Ironclaw is totally as old and therefore as legitimate as what Gygax made.

Blah blah blah, examples of anthropomorphic creatures in anime(what a fucking surprise), videogames(yep, total surprise) and cartoons(shocker!). I also think they misplaced some of their back-of-book marketing as it starts going on about how many millions of combinations we can make! Wow! 660 million hideous half-animal misfits!

Sidebar time!



"This game is totally not about the porn but if you really have to create an army of dickgirl foxgirls here's all the resources you'll need!!!!" Also we're going to find out how it's "totally not about sex" when we get to a couple pages of pretty much nothing but fucking-related feats/disadvantages later on. That'll be a bit, though.

Orders

A big list of "orders," which are basically this game's races. You pick an animal "order," and then slap modifiers on to create a specific monstrosity. A quick look identifies some orders that are definitely not part of modern biology, however, Lovecraftia and Xenomorphia . I will have to give the game credit for one minor thing, though, in addition to including all of the "classic" furry wank-animals like foxes, cats, wolves, etc. they've also included some of the grosser animals, like the order Annelida. For some reason, however, worms and sea urchins are always evil.

Spiders, bugs/shellfish( Who get some of the book's rare, acceptable art ), three kinds of birds( Who are much less lucky with their art, Christ ), two kinds of dogs( Hahahahah what the FUCK is that ), all sorts of scaled and swimming things( Dragons don't quite get the art to match their supposed majesty ) and before we can even get to cats, the game manages to completely ruin the sidebar from earlier.



I mean, wouldn't want players to get into debates about their characters' tits, would we now?

For those concerned with the mechanics, there also seems to be little attempt at actually balancing the races so far. Most just get +2 to two stats, -2 to another, and a few skill boosts, while others sport that PLUS natural armor that stacks with worn armor and multiple other bonuses.

Lovecraftia gets some unremarkable art, "Micromonstria" shows up to horrifyingly remind us that the vore and macro communities are around, Orphidia are the proud serpe- PFFFHAAHAHA



WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUR HAND

Ahem. Fish, reptiles, pigs, elephants and then "Rodentia" gets its art hidden behind a link because it could get someone fired , I'm pretty sure that whoever drew this thinks back on it in the middle of the night and seriously contemplates committing suicide every time. The remaining species are just pretty much whatever I haven't mentioned so far and Xenomorphia, who sadly get no art.

Without warning, we're then thrust into...

Minor Racial Abilities

Blah blah, we have four points to spend on Minor and Major abilities, we can get more from disadvantages, let's get into this.

It starts off mildly, with the oddball "ages in reverse" but turns sour already before we're out of the A's, with Androgynous Beauty(allowing us to have a bonus to seducing any gender) and Androgynous Fertility(allowing us to knock up dudes AND be knocked up ourselves if we're a dude). This is just great, Fursona, just great, and why don't you follow that up with a sidebar? Just to break up the action a bit while I go have a cry.



Some of the abilities are actually slightly cool, like Aqua Jet(basically natural propulsion for in-water movement) and Bio-Luminescent. Neither are really hugely overpowered or anything, but they're kind of neat flavour abilities. Again we hit the balance issue, though, as Bio-Luminescent(which really has no ability that we wouldn't get from a torch or a spell, which, considering this is Pathfinder, must be assumed to be relatively easily available), costs the same as skill-boosting abilities like All-Around Vision which additionally makes us immune to flanking.


Punk bat appears to have some unusual anatomy/proportions

A bunch of generics like darkvision, expert this, expert that, a few biological ones like laying eggs, a "grappling tongue" which makes me shudder a bit...


Sadly, the Racial Ability "Natural Moustache" was scrapped, though we have this leftover art to commemorate it

The need to be "inedible" and why it's considered more expensive than 360-degree vision reminds us vividly what fetishes we're wading through a knee-deep morass of, a bunch of boring stuff, being able to vomit up your food, Single Gendered and little else of note, besides the fact that you can buy "Lactating," which means that as long as you eat and drink, you also constantly produce milk. Totally not fetish bait, no sir.

Unfortunately we have two more chapters of abilities and "art" to go. Major Racial Abilities and Disadvantages, the latter of which includes "Animal Lusts" among others. Then there's Templates which includes, I shit you not, "VG Sprite," I may have to just upload that entire page. For now I think I need a break from this shit, if this is what was good enough to include in the main book, I dread to think of the sort of hellspawned shit they relegated to the two supplements.

Racial (Dis)Abilities

posted by PurpleXVI Original SA post

There's some more cool art by that same guy later in the book, I'll be sure to throw it up. Also, part of the issue there is that species-wide abilities related to fertility and breeding are weirdly enough things that have a cost for the individual character. If you really wanted to do this thing and include stuff like that, you should perhaps have a point pool for the race as a whole, for "civilization" advantages related to things like diet and reproduction, so you don't end up with a Suevilization that would logically overrun all of the others(if you want them to be able to eat rocks and have a hive mind, maybe they have to reproduce really slowly or something). But there's no logic to why a single character should have to pay points because his species are "Fast Breeders"(and, weirdly enough, being infertile, called "Mule," is something that costs the individual points...).

Fursona

Major Racial Abilities and Disadvantages

So while we've already had some hints that things can get creepy with Fursona, this is about where things get bad with a capital B. Major Racial Abilities are more about just being broken as hell, though, as an Order Xenomorphia you're basically a human without the skill boosts or free feat, but in exchange for that you can, even before we get into disadvantages, start with DR 5/Adamantite(for those not acquainted with 3.x or its spawn, this basically means that unless you get hit with an Adamantite weapon, damage is reduced by 5, a normal weapon would do 1d6 or 1d8 damage before any modifiers, so I'm sure it's kind of obvious how ridiculously useful this is) at first level, which is enough to render you immune to pretty much most things that'd get thrown at you at that stage.

And it can easily be combined with Acidic Blood which does 1d4 damage to anyone who hits you in melee, and it doesn't matter if they're using a blunt weapon, though polearms will keep them out of range of it(hah! Glaive-Guisarmes are finally useful!).

Draconis and Micromonstria can get cheap, level-scaling breath weapons, a cone of 3d6 damage usable as many times per day as your Con modifier, and Draconis could use their leftover points to scrape up some cheap DR on top of that(3/Adamantite). So you'd basically be halfway immune to pretty much anything that would threaten normal-first-level characters and capable of erasing entire packs of hostiles just by breathing heavily in their direction.

I'm not going to go through all of the abilities here, but suffice to say that it's very easy to rack up combat monsters like that with the Major Abilities. Especially if you pick Xenomorphia which, despite having pretty much no basic Order modifiers, have almost all of the best Major combat abilities as racially favoured(including being able to fling free organic bolts that synergize with any poison abilities you also pick up).


We also get this guy. I'm not sure what he's supposed to be related to, but he sure looks fucking goofy

Anyone who's been reading this thing would also by now notice a lot of mentions of "passing for human" and a lot of abilities that give penalties to disguise checks for that purpose(like having multiple arms or other really blatant physical abilities), as well as a few that give bonuses to it. This will become relevant once we get to the part of the book with suggestions for adventure seeds. And yeah, the reason is pretty horrendous, but oddly enough not something to do with fetishes.

OH, WAIT, HERE WE GO. HERE'S A PROPER HORROR IN THE MAJOR ABILITIES:


Jesus Christ how horrifying. I mean, I'm sorry, I can only see how this plays into some people's fetishes and nothing else.

There are also some just plain stupid ones, like "Pincers," which give you a natural weapon by replacing your hands with crude claws, and gives you a penalty to anything that requires proper fingers to do. Unfortunately there's a "Bite attack" option that's two points cheaper in Minor abilities, actually gives BETTER damage, and has no penalty.


I am seriously going to end up linking like 90% of this book's art

But then we get to the good stuff, we get to DISADVANTAGES, and once again it swings and misses right out of the gate, in the A's.


Just... thank you Fursona, thank you for doing that. Thank you for reminding me WHY YOU ARE SUCH A PIECE OF CREEPY SHIT.

Each of these advantages gives you two more points to make your character ridiculously overpowered with by picking stuff from the Major Abilities. Some of them are appropriately limiting, but others are completely useless(Battle Weakness: A -5 on rolls to confirm a crit, pick this as a caster and enjoy your free points, or just buff your attacks with major stuff to the point where you don't really NEED crits to murder people's faces off). There's also "Immortal Viscera," which gives immortality to anyone who eats your organs after murdering you. While this could be roleplayed as kind of a horrifying ability because it makes people WANT to kill and eat you, you can spend the extra points to avoid that incoming death.

Anyone may have noticed that we're approaching the M's, and what starts with M? Mating. Yep, that's right! We've got more Fursona misery coming up!

There's "Mate and Die," as soon as you knock someone up, you lose 1d3 CON per day after until you just wither and collapse. There's "Mating Frenzy," one part of every year, your entire species just wants to FUCK, if you don't knock someone up, you permanently lose 1d3 CHA and CON. And Mating Season, which just makes you awkward socially most of the year, and dumb as bricks during said Mating Season because all you can think of is boners. A bit onwards to S and we surprisingly only have one bad thing, Sexual Jealousy, which makes you hate every creature of your own species and of the same gender as you, because they're competition for getting laid.


That's some serious navel fluff

I was somewhat amused by "susceptible to salt" for slug-anthros and other creatures with a membranous other surface. Then I looked to the left and saw "Submissive," which isn't specifically sexualized in the description, but I can sure as fuck think of people who'd treat it that way. Then I look down, and what do I see?


Let's just get out of the fucking Disadvantages while we still have our sanity and...

Templates

Shit! Ambushed by more awful RPG!

Well, okay, how bad can it g-


Oh, that bad. Let's get it over with.

In Fursona's defense, they're not all bad. The one it starts out with, Accidentally Created, is actually kind of interesting. You're not part of a species as such, instead you were made by some magical accident or another, and you may very badly want to turn back, or maybe you're getting used to it. It doesn't really do that much mechanically, it's largely a roleplaying thing.


Alright, I've got no snarky comments for this one, it looks pretty okay



This ties into the "Bumbler" template, which is basically the fucking "Kender" template. It makes you "small and good-nature" and "often overlooked." So this sidebox is suggesting that you play a hugely annoying kid or something similar. The "Continual Evolution" trait it mentions is also broken as fuck, for the record, if a Micromonstria(only ones that get it as a Racial Favourite) picks it, they keep getting points for Racial Traits every fucking level and ha ha holy shit they're going to end up being ridiculously powerful tanks at everything.


This otter looks pretty serious about cutting a bitch up

Largely the templates start out pretty well, aside from Bumbler and associated sidebar. Mostly they're ones that make your creation in some way some sort of fucked up accident. But then we get to something bad. "Earthborn."


"YOUR FURSONA IS REAL IN ANOTHER WORLD AND YOU BECAME HIM!" This is a thing that comes up later, if I recall correctly. But God does it gall me just seeing it here.



No comment on this one. Compared to some of the others, like Bumbler, which have genuine disadvantages, Earthborn is pretty much a pure boost. Also oddly enough, despite the fact that they're supposed to have a weakness in knowing little about magic, their stat boosts would make them excellent arcane casters.

Template: "Half-Willing Prey" just grosses me out and there's nothing I can say. Gross gross gross. EDIT: Since someone asked me about the specific contents, it's as simple as this, "your character is totally cool with getting eaten by a big strong predator." Seriously. Template: "Primordial Ooze" is pretty okay except for one line, "the creature smells of mud and rich earth and stale semen ."


I promised you that there'd be more of this guy's awesome art

For anyone who thinks that "Half-Willing Prey" is as bad as the templates get, though, oh boy, you're in for a surprise. We've got three fucking horrendous ones coming up in a row now.

The first one is "Tooned."


Yeah, you know what? Bumblers are small-time, THESE assholes are the real Kender of Fursona. They also have a massive pile of boosts, coming out ahead of stat modifiers, being immune to most status effects, COMPLETELY immune to all bludgeoning damage(including falls) and able to basically hypnotize people with their presence.

But we can do better, and by better I mean worse.


It also has some of the most fucking stupid abilities ever. After scoring 100 Critical Hits, VG Sprite furries get an "extra life" that hovers around their head like some goofy-ass Ioun Stone and instantly True Resurrects them if they die. Oh and their Ability Score Modifiers section also notes that they make "exciting lovers." I'll be honest, there may have been a bunch of little other mentions like this in the prior Templates, but I'm not going back and subjecting my sanity to them again just to find every little piece of creepy.

This one also comes with art! And by "art" I mean "utter shit."

This one is going behind a link since it's, uh, special .

There's also the possibility that it may actually be related to the next template. Vixen. I don't even need to quote it, because it basically says: "YOU ARE SEXY HOT ANIMAL GURL." And you're so HOT SEXY that anyone who could be attracted to you has trouble hitting you and you get to add your Charisma bonus as AC. Oh yeah and you have a special ability called GIFT OF ECSTACY entirely related to the fact that you're rockin' in the sack. Jesus Christ Fursona. What happened to that sidebar from the start of the game?

And with that... we're free of Fursona's horrible "contributions" to chargen and into the realm of Fursona's horrible "contributions" to campaign setup. Yeah, get ready for this shit to be fucking awful, I'm bringing it out in the next post for everyone to point and laugh at.

A Broken Character Test

posted by PurpleXVI Original SA post

Okay, I took a moment to see what the most broken thing I could create from chargen with Fursona was. It wasn't Xenomorphia, actually, it was Micromonstria.

Order modifications: +2 DEX, +2 INT, -2 CON, SMALL, KNOW(DUNGEONEERING)

This isn't too bad, we start off with a happy AC and stealth bonus, and are generally pretty well-off. The crazy shit gets when we get involved in Micromonstria's discounted abilities in Major stuff. We completely ignore Minor, and go ahead and find two things in Disadvantages that won't fuck us over. Let's just take Immortal Viscera and that other one that makes it hard for us to confirm Crits. We won't need Crits to kill fucking EVERYONE.

This gives us 8 points.

For 1 point(with the discount), we get Chameleon Skin, that's +20 or +10 to Stealth depending on whether we're standing still or moving. Let's be something with a Sneak Attack and we can always count on getting it off, because fucking NOTHING is spotting us.

We also stop to spend 2 points(discounted) on Continual Evolution giving us another point for racial abilities every level, and we can save those and use them to buy big abilities or to pay off Disadvantages.

Darts we also get for 1 point. 24 times per day, we can launch Darts, up to 4 per round with no penalty, and they each do 1d6+CON modifier damage, as well as transmitting any Venom or Minor Toxicity we might have. This is already a base of 4d6+sneak attack potential damage.

Now, we can do better. We spend our last four on Venom. Normally it just gives us a spit-and-spray attack with one pre-chosen kind of venom(we have four options, acid or three stat-lowering effects which also have status side effects like blinding or paralysis). We take the acid. Because it's +2d6 damage. To each of our darts. We're now rocking a potential 12d6+sneak attack damage per round, and normally there'd be a save against the acid, a reflex save to avoid it, but considering that it's being delivered by the darts, I'd say that the attack roll circumvents that. The other poisons get a FORT save, so that'd still be in effect.

Admittedly we can only pull this trick 6 times a day, though we can lower our rate of fire for small enemies if we want to, resort to a normal ranged weapon at no penalty or just spit our Acid normally. Saving throws against our Acid and any other abilities we'd have from Venom are, by the way, based on CON, so we're going to be pumping that.

Also, two levels in, with two more points, we can take Minor Toxicity and the poison which forces a FORT save. Anyone who fails it is KO'd for 1d4 rounds. And yes, our darts can carry that as well. So we can just spray them at four different targets in a crowd(or one if we want to force him to make four FORT saves, assuming we hit with all four darts) and probably count on at least one of them fucking up his save and being an easily-stabbed chump.

There's also another hilarious mess we could create with Arthropoda which basically means +10 STR and +4d6 acid-and-electric damage to grapple attacks from Chargen. But it's less funny than playing a poison-laced, living shrapnel grenade.

Three-for-One Conclusion

posted by PurpleXVI Original SA post

Fursona

Fuck it, let's finish this piece of shit off.

Campaigns

This actually starts off with some reasonable questions, like asking the GM to consider whether his entire world is "anthros," whether they exist normally along the rest of the standard D&D races or whether whatever "anthros" are around are lone, unfortunate victims of magical accidents or visitors from other worlds.

Then it hits the spells and everything goes right back to shit again. Let me just show you the first one, I feel that it really does not need any commentary.



Puns and pandering to the furry fandom in one go. Leave behind your human shell and become a yiffy foxgirl or a squid or whatever the fuck!

Right after that is what's basically a wizard fursuit, a magical pelt that you wear and it turns you into the anthro that the pelt is from. Delightful.

Suggestions of replacing a few standard fantasy races with furries, which could occasionally yield some cool results. Take Forgotten Realms and replace Drow with spider-folk or something.

Sidebar on what happens when different animal Orders fuck, yawn, step up your game, CF, you can horrify us more than this.

Suggesting a world where humans are PRIMITIVE AND INFERIOR and THE GLORIOUS FURRIES RULE THE WORLD. And then... and then we hit the adventure seed, the world suggestion, that I have been waiting for...

The Ultimate Enemy, a.k.a. World of Fursecution


Gotta fight the evil hy000mans before they destroy the world, fellow furry shitbags! Dust off your fursuits, take the $5000 TV shop katanas off the walls of your mother's basement and lead the battle!

Servile DOG ANTHROS assist the humans, dwarves are INDUSTRIALISTS, elves are ANTHRO FRIENDS because they're totally TREE HUGGERS. This is why being able to disguise yourself as human has been so vital all along.


Probably not a meat cleaver in the original script.

As an off-spring there's also TYRANT ANIMALS where the ANIMALS RULE, WITH PETTY HUMANITY CRUSHED UNDER THEIR BOOTS.

But, really, that's it for Fursona. The last misery we're left with is rules for anthros catching fleas and getting heartworm.

...

DID YOU THINK IT WAS ALL OVER? THINK AGAIN.

Fursona II



IT'S NEVER FUCKING OVER.

NEW ORDERS: GIRAFFES, JELLYFISH, TURTLES(even using that same derpy turtle-man art from the first book) AND MORE.

NEW ART


What the fuck am I looking at?

NEW FEATS!

DOUBLE THE DAMAGE OF A PINCER BECAUSE IT WASN'T RIDICULOUS ENOUGH BEFORE!
ADD A FUCKING DEATH SPELL AS YOUR GAZE WEAPON!
SUPERFECUNDATION! WHICH MEANS YOU'RE LITERALLY A FUCKING SPERM BANK!


Lion girl disapproves of being next to a feat about jizz

NEW TEMPLATES!

WHICH ARE REALLY BORING!

NEW SPELLS!

WHICH GET BACK TO BEING AWFUL REALLY QUICK! I SURE CAN'T WAIT TO HAVE "MATING PERFUME" IN MY SPELLBOOK AND-

Oh for God's sake, ANOTHER spell to make you better at fucking and pump out babies faster? What the hell is this?

Fursona III



I swear to God I'm getting this done all in one post so I NEVER HAVE TO LOOK AT THIS GAME AGAIN. Is it just me or is the cover art getting worse? This book seems mostly dedicated to cross-pollinating Fursona and a bunch of other settings, including Black Tokyo and some other Chris Field RPG about mutants that I'm never getting near because it sounds both boring and shit.

Anyway, new orders, most of them are pretty uninteresting, except for now being stuff like mutants and crap, and as a side-note we get another one of Chris' glorious sidebars. And by "glorious" I mean "fuck you Chris Field."




It's like he's almost desperate to plug Black Tokyo or enforce a straight-up crossover. Note the addition of "Fashion Anthros," genetically engineered to be pretty and sexy. Guck.



If I never review anything ever again, it's because I'm busy stalking down Chris Field. What is WRONG with this man?

Racial Abilities

These seem more designed to make me vomit in my mouth than to make me capable of killing dragons with my bare hands. Speaking of hands...


Hey Benly, want to add a magical handjob ability to your battle crab? HERE YOU GO!


Check it out! You can get XP from it! Just as good as killing!

The disadvantages aren't a great improvement either.


Now you can defend your character's rapist behavior by insisting that you're just roleplaying his disadvantages!


As skewed and unsettling as Chris Field's mental processes

And that's it, that's somehow it . As long as Field stays away from the furries, I am DONE with this shit.

So what's next? Should I get back to Kult? Review more of Field's horrors? Someone mentioned a horrifying abortion supplement he'd written, I mean, hell, I may as well make a theme of this bullshit. I doubt anyone can find anything worse to review. Maybe I can see if I have the stomach to finish that Black Tokyo review.

BRING IT. Recommend me the worst shit!