SMT HOMEBREW

CORE MECHANIC and CONCEPTS
-Resolution uses roll-under percentile dice. This best matches the stat lines used in most SMT games.
-The goal is primarily to emulate the game-feel of core Shin Megami Tensei (SMT1,2, Nocturne, Strange Journey, IV). It could also be compatible with the Persona games. It is a poor match for Digital Devil Saga, as that game differs significantly in certain core gameplay aspects from other SMT games.
-This is not intended to replicate an SMT game 1-to-1. Instead, it is using the core concepts of SMT (Summoning, Post-Apocalyptic storyline) and building a cooperative table-top game around them.
-Note that in most cases, specific numbers are not available and so variables will be used, always in [Brackets].
-Dev notes on why certain things are done are denoted by //

CHARACTERS
>HIT POINTS: A character has two levels of Hit Points: HEALTH and VITALITY

>>>HEALTH: Health is how much physical damage your body can take before you struck down. Your starting Health is [H] and rarely increases above that.
>>>VITALITY: Vitality is how long you can stay in a fight. It represents stamina, willpower, mental fortitude, combat skill and pure dumb luck. Successful enemy attacks drain your Vitality. Don't think of this as losing Vitality, think of it as spending Vitality to prevent yourself from being very badly hurt. Vitality increases as a character's power grows.

A Player Character's total Hit Points are [H] + [V].

//This is meant to replicate the vastly inflated HP totals that characters in SMT games have compared with most Tabletop games, as well as an explicit expression of how HP is meant to be used in most tabletop games, going all the way back to DnD. HP isn't meant to be how much meat on you, it's an abstraction of how long you can fight for.

All player characters also have the following array of Stats. A starting character can have a stat as low as 20% or as high as 65%.

>STRENGTH: Any kind of physically taxing act, such as running, climbing, jumping, swimming, lifting, carrying, is governed by Strength. Strength also is used for feats of endurance and stamina. Finally, Strength is used to attack with a melee weapon.

>AGILITY: Your swiftness and dexterity, your ability to evade damage or move without being detected. Agility also affects your initiative in combat.

>PERCEPTION: Your ability to notice things in the world around you, whether obvious or hidden. Perception is also used to attack with a firearm.

>INTELLIGENCE: Your ability to learn, remember, analyze and solve problems. It's also used with certain Magic, mostly effect spells like the -Kajas, -Kundas and various Shields. Also useful in demon negotiation.

>WISDOM: Your intuition and ability to detect the feelings of others. Wisdom makes you an effective leader, comforter and interrogator, and it also powers some other spells, particularly the core attacking spells like Agi or Bufu.

Finally, and most importantly, are a character's IDENTITIES. Identities encompass things that define your character, like a job, a background, a personal belief or a powerful vice. Identities have number values, just like Stats, and when you want to make use of something from your Identity you roll as you would a Stat. An Identity with a low value is that hasn't been well developed, either because you only recently assumed or, or because you were never a very good example of that identity.

An example of this might be a teenager with two Identities: High School Student and Gang Member. He has a fairly low High School Student score (30%) because he's not very good at studying or doing the rest of the stuff that a student needs to get by, but he's got a pretty awesome Gang Member score (70%) because that's where he invests most of his time and energy.

All Identities say "Because you're a _____, you can...", and they invite you to list up to seven things that your Identity lets you do. In the above example, you can say "Because you're a Gang Member, you can intimidate someone, break into a building, fight with your fists or clubs, avoid the authorities, steal a car, interpret graffiti and know the mood of the streets." If you want to do one of those things, you can roll your Identity instead of the Stat you'd use. Punching someone is normally a Strength roll, but if you have the Gang Member identity you can roll that instead.

You get [XXX]% to create a starting character's identities. If your game is set after the Apocalypse, as most Shin Megami Tensei games are, you should have at least two Identities: one for before it happened, and one for after. An identity shouldn't be below 30% or above 70%.

>POWER and SPIRIT
Finally, all characters have POWER and SPIRIT. Power measures your aggressiveness and will for violence, and it increases the damage of your melee attacks. Spirit measures your will and mental clarity and you spend it to perform magic. A starting character has ten points to split between Power and Spirit. You can put all into one if you choose.

DEMONS
Demons are at once more complex and simpler than humans. They have extraordinary abilities and can do man things humans cannot, but many simple concepts about society and life elude them. They tend to be somewhat one-dimensional, obssessed about specific things and utterly ignorant of others.

Demons have the following characteristics

>HIT POINTS: Demons don't need Vitality. They are supernaturally tough and don't suffer injuries in the same way that humans do. As a result, their Hit Points aren't broken down into two separate fields. A Demon whose hit points are depleted aren't necessarily killed, but are scattered into the ether or whatever and will need to be resurrected. Humans usually aren't so lucky.

>RACE: Demons are divided into a number of Races, like Fiends, Fairies, Dieties, Dragons, etc... Races occupy the same position as a player character's Identities, giving a demon a range of things it can do. Fairies, for instance, can fly around, hide, trick people, act seductive, create distractions and use healing magic. Any demon in the Fairy Race can do that. Generally more powerful demons represent stronger iterations of that Race, so Race is a good way of measuring the relative strength of demons.

>SKILLS: A demon can have up to four Skills. These are frequently unique to each Demon, based on its various characteristics. Going with the above example, all Fairies can fly and use healing magic, but the Fairy Pixie also has the skills Simple Ice Magic, Simple Electric Magic and Think Small, which takes advantage of her extreme tininess compare to other Fairies.

CHARACTERS and DEMONS
Character should treat Demons as extensions of themselves. In combat, a demon doesn't have its own turn, but instead it's commanded by its master to act in place of his or her own turn. This allows combat to progress without needing to worry about each player character having a party of 3 demon buddies, so that there are 9-15 individual characters on the side of the players. Characters can deploy demons to tank hits for them, to attack or to help them out in various situations using their Skills or Racial Abilities.