[RotM] Work in Progress

[Garryl]

Mecha
- TODO: Reorder things once the basics are together.

A Quick Overview
Any character can hop in a mecha and get it to move, but it takes special training to use these enormous war machines to their fullest extent.


Subtypes

The Mecha Subtype
Mecha are pilotable war machines. Most mecha are constructs, although some esoteric creatures have evolved or been genetically engineered to have a symbiotic relationship with other creatures in a similar manner. Regardless of whether they are machines or monsters, all mecha function in a similar manner to each other.

Mecha blur the distinction between creatures and objects in some ways. They can have nonabilities for their Wisdom and Charisma scores, despite being creatures. A mecha lacking either or both of these ability scores is non-sentient.

Mecha that are constructs, undead, or otherwise not living creatures have a few special traits that do not apply to living mecha.

• Unlike other constructs, a construct mecha does not gain bonus hit points by size.
• Unlike other constructs, undead, and other types commonly associated with non-living creatures, a non-living mecha is not immune to mind-influencing effects. It may still be immune due to mindlessness or other abilities.
• Unlike other constructs, undead, and other types commonly associated with non-living creatures, non-living mecha are subject to critical hits and effects requiring a Fort save.
• A non-living mecha responds differently from other non-living creatures when reduced to 0 hit points. A non-living mecha with 0 hit points is disabled, just like a living creature. It can only take a single move action or standard action in each round, but strenuous activity does not risk further injury. When its hit points are less than 0 and greater than its destruction threshold (based on its size, as indicated on Table: Non-living Mecha Destruction Threshold below), a non-living mecha is inert. It is unconscious and helpless, and it cannot perform any actions. However, an inert non-living mecha does not lose additional hit points unless more damage is dealt to it, as with a living creature that is stable.

Table: Non-living Mecha Destruction Threshold

Size Category	Destruction Threshold
Small or smaller	-10
Medium	-20
Large	-30
Huge	-40
Gargantuan	-60
Colossal	-80
Colossal II or larger	-80, -20 per category beyond Colossal

The Machine Spirit Subtype
Machine spirits are constructs that possess a distinct personal will. They may not be alive as living constructs are, nor even necessarily sentient, but they do have souls.

Machine spirit mechas can exert their will over themselves, even if they are not sentient. A machine spirit mecha can assert control as the primary pilot. Non-sentient machine spirits still cannot pilot themselves, and thus are considered inactive while they are their primary pilot. This capability is usually used to prevent undesired pilots from piloting the machine spirit in question.


Piloting a Mecha
Piloting a mecha allows you to have it act according to your direction. The process is much more direct than handling an animal or commanding a dominated creature; you are directly controlling its very movements. A skilled pilot can push a mecha to limits of its effectiveness, or even beyond, although an unskilled pilot can easily be worse than leaving the machine on autopilot.

The Mecha's Effectiveness
A piloted mecha acts under the direction of its pilot, taking actions as the pilot dictates. The mecha uses its own normal statistics, ability scores, proficiencies, and special abilities, although a nonproficient or unskilled pilot may worsen them, while an exceptional pilot may push them beyond their normal limits. A piloted mecha uses the base attack bonus, base saving throws, and skill ranks of its pilot. When rolling for initiative, a piloted mecha uses its pilot's initiative check result. A pilot with particularly high or low ability scores provides a bonus or a penalty to the mecha's ability scores (see below).

If the pilot has any modifiers pertaining to enhanced or impeded skill or fortune (competence, insight, morale, luck, profane, and sacred), they also apply to the mecha. Stacking rules apply as normal, so if the mecha also has any bonuses or penalties of the same type applying to the same rolls or statistics, only the largest bonus or penalty applies.

The Pilot's Control
As the pilot of a mecha, you must direct it to take actions each round. Typically, this requires a full-round action each round to allow the mecha its full normal allotment of actions for the round. You can attempt to pilot a mecha with lesser actions, but this similarly restricts the actions the mecha can take (see Table: Mecha Actions By Pilot Actions below). If your mecha is allowed multiple turns of actions in a round or is otherwise granted additional action above the norm, you still only need to spend the actions to pilot it once per round.

Table: Mecha Actions By Pilot Actions

Piloting Action	Mecha's Actions
Full-round action	All normal actions, including swift and immediate actions.
Standard action	Limited to only no actions beyond one standard or move action for the mecha's turn(s). No swift or immediate actions.
Move action	Limited to no actions beyond one move action for the mecha's turn(s). No swift or immediate actions.
No action	Mecha is not piloted. Unpiloted mecha are usually inert, although some can act on their own.

Since you are directing the mecha's movements, your senses and perceptions determine concealment, visibility, and similar factors for the mecha. While piloting a mecha, you have full access to its senses and sensors. This allows you to see and hear everything the mecha does, and to detect anything it does with any exotic perception methods it may have, such as radar or darkvision. Sensory attacks (such as gaze attacks and mind-affecting sonic effects) usually do not transfer through the mecha's sensors; the mecha is fully affected, but you are still protected inside the cockpit.

When reacting to a threat outside the mecha you are piloting, the mecha's initiative modifiers apply to you as well, assuming that you have access to the mecha's sensors. Stacking rules apply as normal, so only the largest modifier of each category or source applies.

Any action you direct the mecha to take that modifies its initiative count (such as readying an action or the Moment of Alacrity maneuver) also applies to your own initiative count.

Ability Scores
A particularly strong pilot who knows how to get the most power out of their body can extend that knowledge to the they pilot. Similarly, a particularly attentive pilot may notice things that even the mecha's powerful sensor suit miss out on. The reverse, unfortunately is also true, as a clumsy pilot can make a mecha trip over its own feet just as well as they trip over their own.

While you are piloting a mecha, you apply a modifier to each of the mecha's ability scores, excluding those for which either you or the mecha has a nonability. To calculate the modifier for a given ability score, remove all modifiers to your ability score aside from racial modifiers, permanent adjustments from leveling up, inherent modifiers, and ability damage, drain, and burn. If your race's normal size is larger or smaller than Medium, you add or subtract an additional special adjustment (as indicated on Table: Pilot Ability Score Adjustment By Size below) to account for how much of your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution is simply an application of raw size and mass, which is already factored into the mecha's own ability scores. Finally, subtract 10. The result is the bonus (if positive) or penalty (if negative) that you add to the mecha's ability score.

Bonus/penalty to mecha's ability score = base score + racial + leveling + inherent - ability damage, drain, and burn +/- special size adjustment - 10.

Table: Pilot Ability Score Adjustment By Size

Pilot Size Category	Str	Dex	Con
Fine or smaller	+4	-8	+0
Diminutive	+4	-6	+0
Tiny	+4	-4	+0
Small	+2	-2	+0
Medium	+0	+0	+0
Large	-4	+2	-2
Huge	-8	+4	-4
Gargantuan	-12	+4	-6
Colossal	-16	+4	-8
Colossal II or larger	-16, -4 per category beyond Colossal	+4	-8, -2 per category beyond Colossal

Nonproficient Pilots
If you are not proficient with the mecha you attempt to pilot, the process is more difficult, and your unfamiliarity prevents you from pushing the mecha up above its normal peak effectiveness no matter how skilled you may be. You cannot improve the mecha's statistics (base attack bonus, base saving throws, and skill ranks) if yours are better, only worsen them if yours are lower. Likewise, you cannot provide a bonus to the mecha's ability scores for having high ability scores of your own, only apply a penalty if yours are low.

All attacks made by the mecha are considered nonproficient, even if the mecha is normally proficient with the weapon or no proficiency normally applies, imposing -4 nonproficiency penalty on all attack rolls. This does not stack with the nonproficiency penalty if the mecha is already nonproficient.

Finally, accessing the mecha's senses is a swift action. You gain access to the mecha's senses for your turn and, if the mecha acts on the same initiative count, on its turn as well.

Inside the Cockpit
In order to pilot a mecha, you must take up its controls from inside its cockpit. Cockpits are designed for efficient piloting of the mecha, but the cramped conditions don't leave room for the full range of normal movement. At the controls, you typically have a +3 max Dex bonus, a -3 armor check penalty, and a 25% arcane spell failure chance. This functions just like encumbrance or armor. Use only the worst penalties from mecha piloting, encumbrance, and armor worn. Since you are inside the mecha itself, you don't have line of effect to anything outside of the mecha (unless a hatch is open, see below), only to the mecha itself and to other things within the cockpit. On the flip side, you have total cover from everything outside the mecha, so your foes can't attack you directly. Most mecha cockpits are fully enclosed deep within the mecha behind layers of armor plating, relying on instruments to provide sensory information, although some (usually those of smaller mecha) have a clear window or viewport and thus do not block line of sight.

While the secure enclosure of a cockpit may provide protection from nearly all direct attacks, it is still far from a perfectly safe place to be during a battle. The g-forces incurred when a hundred-foot tall mecha is battered about by a similar opponent are still extreme, consoles may explode in sparks when a critical component is damaged, and no amount of engineering can protect a pilot from being crushed to death by impacts strong enough to buckle and collapse even a mecha's massive, reinforced armor plating. A physically unfit pilot may well collapse from the stresses well before the damage to the mecha reaches critical levels.

Whenever the mecha you are piloting takes damage from an external source, the same damage also applies to you. Unless the damage was from a critical hit or an effect against which the mecha rolled a natural 1, this damage is converted to nonlethal damage first (if it isn't nonlethal already). Critical hits and natural 1s also apply any ability damage the attack may cause to you as well as the mecha. The mecha's damage reduction, resistances, hardness, immunities, and other defenses apply to this copied damage (and ability damage), in addition to your own protections. Only damage and ability damage are copied this way; other effects of the attack, even ability drain, apply only to the mecha. If an attack or damage source would apply to both you and the mecha you are piloting (for example, a fireball spell cast into an open cockpit), only the worse combination of the two results applies to you. In the case of both lethal and nonlethal damage, you takes the lethal damage, plus additional nonlethal damage equal to the difference between the two if the nonlethal damage was to be larger.

- TODO: What happens once the mecha is rendered inert or destroyed?
- Inert: Largely a metal tomb. Non-crit damage not converted to nonlethal, and non-crit ability damage translates through, too. Note that escaping from the mecha may be more difficult, but that's covered under compartment rules.
   - Compartments for inert mecha: Full-round action to open doors and hatches.
- Destroyed: What happens to the pilot once the mecha's destroyed? Assuming no escape pods (again, see compartments rules, plus specific mecha and mecha upgrades that may have them), the pilot is exposed to the outside (if the cockpit is an external compartment) at the very least, and possibly just dead. Probably don't want instant death, no matter how much damage the final attack may deal or how badly the mecha might flub some saving throw... Maybe something like destruction damage dealt to everyone inside, with the damage scaling up based on the mecha's size or HD?



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- TODO: How am I handling feats? Probably not having them transfer over. Which ones might translate is on a case-by-case basis at best. Even for the ones that seem like they might (Power Attack, Improved Trip, Dodge, etc.), enough physical conditioning can be argued to go into them as to make them not transfer over. The fact is, it would be virtually impossible to make guidelines that fit and/or excluded everything correctly, and there's still too much in the middle that should be a judgement call. Just leave the feats out except where some abilities are specifically letting them through.