Author Topic: General Discussion and Suggestions  (Read 211738 times)

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #400 on: October 21, 2016, 03:36:49 PM »
What's the damage die on an Arcane Pilot's familiar pods?
Quote
Familiar:At 4th level the Arcane Pilot can summon a familiar as a sorceror/wizard. If he does so, his Arcane Robot will develop a special combat pod that can be piloted by the familiar. It has all the properties of the "parent" super robot, except
-Half max HP and 1/5 max energy.
-Only one natural weapon, however it can be shot with a range of 25 feet plus 5 feet per 2 CL, dealing untyped damage. Don't add or substract any stat mod to the damage in this case, and they ignore DR.
-Two size category smaller than the "parent" HP. Don't change ability scores, natural armor or natural weapon damage.
So say you had a Gargantuan Mech, it's 1d10 Built-Ins become 4d8 and your Familiar uses 2d8 or about 9 damage per attack if they hit. More if you use Mighty which isn't a "stat mod".

I had a post related to this in the Phantasy Star game and my post observed that a Familiar copies the Hyperdimensional Storage upgrade allowing it to take Arsenal. So if you're level 14 pick up some Large Rectangular Launchers. since there is no clarification how to advance dice oddities, favorably it comes out to 18d8+[250% DexMod]*2, @+10 Dex & Mightyx8 that's 122 per shot. It's a lot but when you get into Evocation, and good Spells to which the Arcane Pilot has none, Familiars are pretty handy for multiplying your damage anyway. They come with the downside of XP lose if they die through so it's like dialing Glass Cannon up to eleven.

The real break point if you go this route though is that the Arcane Pilot can snag multiple Familiars. Extra FamiliarDragon280 is the only other method that can do this outside of other homebrew. And as you can expect, things get about as silly as a White Raven Specialist with Leadership.

Offline CKirk

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #401 on: October 21, 2016, 05:32:18 PM »
What's the damage die on an Arcane Pilot's familiar pods?
Quote
Familiar:At 4th level the Arcane Pilot can summon a familiar as a sorceror/wizard. If he does so, his Arcane Robot will develop a special combat pod that can be piloted by the familiar. It has all the properties of the "parent" super robot, except
-Half max HP and 1/5 max energy.
-Only one natural weapon, however it can be shot with a range of 25 feet plus 5 feet per 2 CL, dealing untyped damage. Don't add or substract any stat mod to the damage in this case, and they ignore DR.
-Two size category smaller than the "parent" HP. Don't change ability scores, natural armor or natural weapon damage.
So say you had a Gargantuan Mech, it's 1d10 Built-Ins become 4d8 and your Familiar uses 2d8 or about 9 damage per attack if they hit. More if you use Mighty which isn't a "stat mod".

I had a post related to this in the Phantasy Star game and my post observed that a Familiar copies the Hyperdimensional Storage upgrade allowing it to take Arsenal. So if you're level 14 pick up some Large Rectangular Launchers. since there is no clarification how to advance dice oddities, favorably it comes out to 18d8+[250% DexMod]*2, @+10 Dex & Mightyx8 that's 122 per shot. It's a lot but when you get into Evocation, and good Spells to which the Arcane Pilot has none, Familiars are pretty handy for multiplying your damage anyway. They come with the downside of XP lose if they die through so it's like dialing Glass Cannon up to eleven.

The real break point if you go this route though is that the Arcane Pilot can snag multiple Familiars. Extra FamiliarDragon280 is the only other method that can do this outside of other homebrew. And as you can expect, things get about as silly as a White Raven Specialist with Leadership.

So it's based on the built-in Super Robot weapons? (also, keep in mind that it says the size change doesn't affect the weapon damage)

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #402 on: October 21, 2016, 05:52:22 PM »
So it's based on the built-in Super Robot weapons? (also, keep in mind that it says the size change doesn't affect the weapon damage)
That's for Minimization only.
Quote
Growth: The super robot becomes one size category larger, gaining all standard advantages and penalties except ability score changes, and its Natural armor bonus only increases by 1. This can only be taken once for every 4 pilot levels. You cannot pick this if you picked Miniaturization.

Miniaturization: The super robot becomes one size category smaller, gaining all standard advantages and penalties except ability score changes, and it's Natural armor and In Built/Arsenal weapons damage doesn't change either. This can only be taken once for every 4 pilot levels, up to diminutive size at 12th pilot level. You cannot pick this if you picked Growth.
All through banning from taking both isn't really that helpful. Spend two upgrade points for +1 NA-AC & +1 Size to Built-Ins? Meh. Arsenal Melee probably dominates anyway.

Also it seems like I misread that -2 Size thing, that's HP only even through Mech's don't gain HP based on Size.
All I can really say is welcome to my world. I've been dealing with things like this for almost four years now.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2016, 05:56:25 PM by SorO_Lost »

Offline Anomander

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #403 on: October 22, 2016, 03:16:17 PM »
A few things.

Mecha buffs and Androids:
Quote
The mecha uses the pilot's base saves, BAB, skill bonuses, feats, and self-buff class abilities for fighting
Is it meant to include racial abilities? Since the classes that grant new weapons are available to the mecha, is an android's integrated technology weapon added to the mecha's built-in weapons? It would only be the arsenal 1, though, as long as it doesn't choose to swap it for one of the mecha's. One With the Machine suggests androids are mostly meant to pilot mechas as otherwise all they get is an arsenal weapon and a penalty. The CAST type is minor.
If racial abilities do not pass to the mecha, is a mecha unaffected by the soulless negative ability?

Cheer/Fortune spirits: Might want to put a limit to it so that someone with, say, Leadership, do not get a huge amount of extra weapons/feats by training his horde and having weak mooks fed to them.
Dream spirit: As written, if someone uses Dream to mimic Gain, Cheer, Gamble and Fortune... they'll keep each effect going until they use Dream to emulate them again. Which is too good considering they'll likely never emulate them again anyway.

Friendship/Devotion relationship feat: Same as Cheer, with a group of minions that keep bringing you back/giving you rerolls and the like.

Arsenal: Any reach weapons in there? Doesn't seem to be any except for the Field Lance, maybe.
Also I see that now that they are increasing with size, optimizing their damage becomes very easy despite the limit set through energy and ammo. Perhaps the damage increase for size should be static for arsenal weapons rather than exponential; A damage increase that is the same for all weapons. That or reducing the high number of dice and the costs. Perhaps. That's the first impression, at least. I'd need a moment to test it out.
I'll probably work on a review of the new Machine discipline when I'm back later this evening.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2016, 06:58:02 PM by Anomander »

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #404 on: October 22, 2016, 04:41:01 PM »
Also I see that now that they are increasing with size, optimizing their damage becomes very easy despite the limit set through energy and ammo. Perhaps the damage increase for size should be static for arsenal weapons rather than exponential
I was thinking of the same thing the other day but there is no easy way to do this.

+X damage per Size increase is the simplest but it doesn't keep up with normal weapons or Built-Ins which use exponential increases. Ideally all choices should be balanced in terms of each other without resorting to banning.

+X per die is also an easy solution but it's one that empowers already powerful weapons to become even more powerful than the weaker ones. For example, @+2/size/die a Huge 6d10 Burst Railgun gains +24 but a 9d8 Heat Rod gets +36 increasing the gap between them from 7.5 to 19.5. You could only use this if you didn't already have a problem with weapon gaps.

A more time consuming solution would be to rebuild the Arsenal table using the expected values. Like if a Longsword deals 6d6 at Colossal, then a Mech's level 1 sword choice should to. Level 2 Arsenal could see the additional of limited attack bonuses and/or new properties to keep up with the ability to enhance normal weapons. But it's important not to go overboard, a lv2 weapon should not be the equivalent of a +4 Sweeping Splitting Dagger to make it appealing. Ols did design some good props and those should be the focus for appeal. Like Power is a unique lower level alternative to Brilliant Energy, Rending is the only way to deal with DR X/-, Pinning is a scaling effect that D&D handles through binary bursts and so on. If you end up exceeding HP expectations, that can simply be made up in one sentence (just tweak the hp formula). And as a side effect, it also further differentiates a none-mech being able to take down mech opponents to promote mech usage over character optimization. Or, stop trying to charge everything with your axe and participate in robot fights! But again, veeerrrryyyy time consuming.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #405 on: October 22, 2016, 04:53:21 PM »
That's not character optimisation, that's misreading the fight and being lazy about updating character sheets. :p

Though there's an entire feat based on doing just that.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 05:02:51 PM by Raineh Daze »

Offline Anomander

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #406 on: October 22, 2016, 06:13:42 PM »
Quote
+X damage per Size increase is the simplest but it doesn't keep up with normal weapons or Built-Ins which use exponential increases. Ideally all choices should be balanced in terms of each other without resorting to banning.
I'd recommend keeping it all super simple and avoid everyone having to figure what's the next size (not hard, but still...) by having all size increases progress as if they were a greatsword. No matter the base die.
Normal -> Large = +1d6 dmg
Large -> Huge = +1d6 dmg
Huge -> Gargantuan = +2d6 dmg
Gargantuan -> Colossal = +2d6 dmg

Maybe an extra d6 per increase for heavy weapons. That way weapons with a huge base damage get better with size as well and remain better than the rest without getting blown out of proportions.
The same could apply to Real Robots' built-in weapons if they were to have their sizes changed. Normal weapons remain as is, since they have their own rules and are usually found with a reasonable die-size for their medium-sized base damage.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 06:15:13 PM by Anomander »

Offline CKirk

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #407 on: October 22, 2016, 07:59:24 PM »
So, if a Battleship Captain/Super Pilot puts main weapon on his main guns, he'll be doing 114d6 damage at level 20 on an Area weapon. Sure, it's Heavy, but that's still absurd

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #408 on: October 22, 2016, 08:52:46 PM »
So, if a Battleship Captain/Super Pilot puts main weapon on his main guns, he'll be doing 114d6 damage at level 20 on an Area weapon. Sure, it's Heavy, but that's still absurd
:plotting

Main Beam Cannon 1d12(S)
Size: huge by default. A captain may choose to start with a bigger battleship up to colossal size, but this won't grant any mechanical benefit besides being able to carry more mechas, filling a bigger space and bigger size penalty to AC and attack rolls. This decision may be changed whenever another Ship Captain level is gained.
You mean 20d12 right? Also that only comes out to 98 damage, or 93 after a +10 Modifier with single weapon & Heavy bonuses and Mightyx10 vs a now drastically out scaled 35 DR.

Let's look at the Boost Hammer's 8d8 & Linked for a lv20 Mech-Medium Sized Real Pilot: 424 after DR.
Also 114d6 only deals 399 damage on average, or 364 after DR making it only 85% of melee's old damage.
So while your calculation is inaccurate and better than the rest of the ranged weapons, it still comes up short.
But yes, after Ols's patch to outscale normal weapons the same hammer now deals 2,440 after DR which I think is supposed to be your real point.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 08:54:34 PM by SorO_Lost »

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #409 on: October 22, 2016, 09:15:36 PM »
In my unqualified opinion the system needs a huge rehaul and I got bored.

So I thought of a rough draft for mechanics, but since Ols fears everything looking alike I won't tell you the secrets. Glance at this and tell me which ones totally are copies of uncreative stagnation.
(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 09:56:39 PM by SorO_Lost »

Offline CKirk

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #410 on: October 22, 2016, 09:41:07 PM »
So, if a Battleship Captain/Super Pilot puts main weapon on his main guns, he'll be doing 114d6 damage at level 20 on an Area weapon. Sure, it's Heavy, but that's still absurd
:plotting

Main Beam Cannon 1d12(S)
Size: huge by default. A captain may choose to start with a bigger battleship up to colossal size, but this won't grant any mechanical benefit besides being able to carry more mechas, filling a bigger space and bigger size penalty to AC and attack rolls. This decision may be changed whenever another Ship Captain level is gained.
You mean 20d12 right? Also that only comes out to 98 damage, or 93 after a +10 Modifier with single weapon & Heavy bonuses and Mightyx10 vs a now drastically out scaled 35 DR.

Let's look at the Boost Hammer's 8d8 & Linked for a lv20 Mech-Medium Sized Real Pilot: 424 after DR.
Also 114d6 only deals 399 damage on average, or 364 after DR making it only 85% of melee's old damage.
So while your calculation is inaccurate and better than the rest of the ranged weapons, it still comes up short.
But yes, after Ols's patch to outscale normal weapons the same hammer now deals 2,440 after DR which I think is supposed to be your real point.
That's why I specified cross-classing and using a Main Weapon. each instance of the Main Weapon upgrade increase die size by 1, and you can take it 3 times for your Main Weapon

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #411 on: October 22, 2016, 09:54:27 PM »
Battleship=Mech?
Nothing in the text seems to support it in the Ship Captain thread.

Offline CKirk

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #412 on: October 22, 2016, 10:00:40 PM »
Battleship=Mech?
Nothing in the text seems to support it in the Ship Captain thread.
It's in the introduction

Ship Captain multiclassing with others:

(click to show/hide)
...Reading it again, I did the damage wrong, because you need to take 4 levels of super robot pilot, not 1. It's only 96d6. And while it is less damage, it's an Area weapon, so it can hit a lot more targets
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 10:15:46 PM by CKirk »

Offline CKirk

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #413 on: October 23, 2016, 08:02:23 PM »
So I've started up a campaign, and is it just me, or is Iron Charge absurd? on a super robot, with no boosts to move speed, that's basically just +6 AC and saves as a stance, with no downsides other than not being in a different stance. if your primary weapon is area? +18 to both. Am I missing something? because those numbers are insane. It should be, at the very best, +1 per 10 Mu, not per 5Mu, or only count displacement, not movement (as it stands, you can move three squares back, then three squares forward, for +6 AC and saves). Maybe cap the bonus at half pilot level?

One more thing about Iron Charge. Is it supposed to be +1 save every 4 Mu? should that be every 5?
« Last Edit: October 23, 2016, 08:25:17 PM by CKirk »

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #414 on: October 23, 2016, 09:38:42 PM »
So I've started up a campaign, and is it just me, or is Iron Charge absurd?
Iron Fury is Dervish's 10th level 1/day capstone about twelve levels earlier and multi-use. And if you're Magic Jar'ed or Mind Switched Unbreakable Will ignores the effect so I guess there is now two of you or maybe it's a temporary switch back (what if your old body was reduced to ashes?). I suppose it's still better than Break the Unbreakable out of Burning Justice. You can just sit in a portable hole on another plane and auto-hit anyone.
*shrugs*
You should try reading Danger Zone's 9th, as long as the weapon you choose uses ammo/energy you can spam it until it's dry. Quick calc would be Colossal lv5 Heavy Beam, 80d8 damage for 1 energy, @+10 ability, Heavy, Mightyx9, add another +48 to that, then of fource you have to work out Energy. 170 base, 180 for Batteryx9, a lv4 Large Generator for +50 more, and a lv2 Generator for +10 more. That's 80d8+48 (408/hit, or assuming DR 40/- 368, four hundred and ten attacks later and you dealt 77,080 damage.

Now use Battle Lust to gain +7,708 Strength for one round and combine it a Linked Brutal weapon, Arsenal or Mech Upgraded (slash ripped has area), and don't forget that +50% bonus for using one type of weapon. [W]+X+5,781 per attack, two attacks per attack action, and at least four attacks for your Full-Round Action and you should easily hit close to fifty thousand damage for your round two follow up.

Which gives you a +5,000 Strength bonus for the next round!
« Last Edit: October 23, 2016, 09:42:13 PM by SorO_Lost »

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #415 on: October 23, 2016, 09:56:26 PM »
Didn't you lecture me about using Sadism with a laser once when I hadn't considered the group thing?

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #416 on: October 23, 2016, 11:36:29 PM »
Didn't you lecture me about using Sadism with a laser once when I hadn't considered the group thing?
Yep I did.

And if you paid more attention, CKirk pointed out a Maneuver was broken so I pointed out the other two in the same School of the Same level were as well, and then remarked it's still not as bad as another, or this one because here it deals seventy five thousand damage. I'm far some saying it was a good thing.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #417 on: October 23, 2016, 11:45:57 PM »
Mostly, it's just that you're making the point more complex than it needs to be. There's something that can do absurd damage in one go, sure, but...

Effects that benefit hugely from doing damage are a separate kettle of fish entirely. Seems odd to not stick to the one point (maneuver has out of hand damage) when there's so many things in the system that a single effect with uncapped scaling is all sorts of trouble anyway .

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #418 on: October 24, 2016, 12:35:27 AM »
Mostly, it's just that you're making the point more complex than it needs to be. There's something that can do absurd damage in one go, sure, but...

Effects that benefit hugely from doing damage are a separate kettle of fish entirely. Seems odd to not stick to the one point (maneuver has out of hand damage) when there's so many things in the system that a single effect with uncapped scaling is all sorts of trouble anyway .
I just brought up a very simplified point that lv5 Colossal Arsenal melee weapon deals 80d8 and can be linked to double the attacks if you have lv6 access less than 10 posts ago and it's on this very page.  :eh

Have you ever stopped to consider I'm not using to many words or I'm not using complex figures?
I'd guess probably not, because we know that that in-sin-u-ates.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: General Discussion and Suggestions
« Reply #419 on: October 24, 2016, 01:25:29 AM »
Random musings: I was thinking about removing energy progression and standardizing costs, since right now energy reserves scale pretty quickly but energy costs don't scale at all. Make energy work more like how arsenal costs work right now. Anyone has thoughts on it?

What's the damage die on an Arcane Pilot's familiar pods?
Same as the "parent" super robot.

Also, the Arcane Pilot's Favored Spell class feature says it improves their maneuvers. I'm going to assume that meant spells?
Correct, fixed.

A few things.

Mecha buffs and Androids:
Quote
The mecha uses the pilot's base saves, BAB, skill bonuses, feats, and self-buff class abilities for fighting
Is it meant to include racial abilities? Since the classes that grant new weapons are available to the mecha, is an android's integrated technology weapon added to the mecha's built-in weapons? It would only be the arsenal 1, though, as long as it doesn't choose to swap it for one of the mecha's. One With the Machine suggests androids are mostly meant to pilot mechas as otherwise all they get is an arsenal weapon and a penalty. The CAST type is minor.
If racial abilities do not pass to the mecha, is a mecha unaffected by the soulless negative ability?
Racial abilities pass to the mecha. Although I would disagree with "CAST type is minor" since it's pretty much the same as warforged and warforged are one of the most popular 3.5 races.

Cheer/Fortune spirits: Might want to put a limit to it so that someone with, say, Leadership, do not get a huge amount of extra weapons/feats by training his horde and having weak mooks fed to them.
Good point, added non-stacking.

Dream spirit: As written, if someone uses Dream to mimic Gain, Cheer, Gamble and Fortune... they'll keep each effect going until they use Dream to emulate them again. Which is too good considering they'll likely never emulate them again anyway.
Added that they end if you Dream again.

Friendship/Devotion relationship feat: Same as Cheer, with a group of minions that keep bringing you back/giving you rerolls and the like.
Well that's actually intended to promote "kill the mooks first/simultaneously!".

Arsenal: Any reach weapons in there? Doesn't seem to be any except for the Field Lance, maybe.
No reach. It's kinda of a clunky mechanic to begin with and not really in the spirit of mecha.

Also I see that now that they are increasing with size, optimizing their damage becomes very easy despite the limit set through energy and ammo. Perhaps the damage increase for size should be static for arsenal weapons rather than exponential; A damage increase that is the same for all weapons. That or reducing the high number of dice and the costs. Perhaps. That's the first impression, at least. I'd need a moment to test it out.
I'll probably work on a review of the new Machine discipline when I'm back later this evening.
Quote
+X damage per Size increase is the simplest but it doesn't keep up with normal weapons or Built-Ins which use exponential increases. Ideally all choices should be balanced in terms of each other without resorting to banning.
I'd recommend keeping it all super simple and avoid everyone having to figure what's the next size (not hard, but still...) by having all size increases progress as if they were a greatsword. No matter the base die.
Normal -> Large = +1d6 dmg
Large -> Huge = +1d6 dmg
Huge -> Gargantuan = +2d6 dmg
Gargantuan -> Colossal = +2d6 dmg

Maybe an extra d6 per increase for heavy weapons. That way weapons with a huge base damage get better with size as well and remain better than the rest without getting blown out of proportions.
The same could apply to Real Robots' built-in weapons if they were to have their sizes changed. Normal weapons remain as is, since they have their own rules and are usually found with a reasonable die-size for their medium-sized base damage.
That sounds good, added it to the Index. Thanks!


So, if a Battleship Captain/Super Pilot puts main weapon on his main guns, he'll be doing 114d6 damage at level 20 on an Area weapon. Sure, it's Heavy, but that's still absurd
With the new sizing rules that should be less crazy.

So I've started up a campaign, and is it just me, or is Iron Charge absurd? on a super robot, with no boosts to move speed, that's basically just +6 AC and saves as a stance, with no downsides other than not being in a different stance. if your primary weapon is area? +18 to both. Am I missing something? because those numbers are insane. It should be, at the very best, +1 per 10 Mu, not per 5Mu, or only count displacement, not movement (as it stands, you can move three squares back, then three squares forward, for +6 AC and saves). Maybe cap the bonus at half pilot level?

One more thing about Iron Charge. Is it supposed to be +1 save every 4 Mu? should that be every 5?
Nerfed it to +1 AC/saves per 15 mu moved in a straight line and only triggers out of basic movement.

So I've started up a campaign, and is it just me, or is Iron Charge absurd?
Iron Fury is Dervish's 10th level 1/day capstone about twelve levels earlier and multi-use. And if you're Magic Jar'ed or Mind Switched Unbreakable Will ignores the effect so I guess there is now two of you or maybe it's a temporary switch back (what if your old body was reduced to ashes?). I suppose it's still better than Break the Unbreakable out of Burning Justice. You can just sit in a portable hole on another plane and auto-hit anyone.
*shrugs*
You should try reading Danger Zone's 9th, as long as the weapon you choose uses ammo/energy you can spam it until it's dry. Quick calc would be Colossal lv5 Heavy Beam, 80d8 damage for 1 energy, @+10 ability, Heavy, Mightyx9, add another +48 to that, then of fource you have to work out Energy. 170 base, 180 for Batteryx9, a lv4 Large Generator for +50 more, and a lv2 Generator for +10 more. That's 80d8+48 (408/hit, or assuming DR 40/- 368, four hundred and ten attacks later and you dealt 77,080 damage.

Now use Battle Lust to gain +7,708 Strength for one round and combine it a Linked Brutal weapon, Arsenal or Mech Upgraded (slash ripped has area), and don't forget that +50% bonus for using one type of weapon. [W]+X+5,781 per attack, two attacks per attack action, and at least four attacks for your Full-Round Action and you should easily hit close to fifty thousand damage for your round two follow up.

Which gives you a +5,000 Strength bonus for the next round!
Nerfed Iron Fury and Battle Lust as well.

3.You still didn't adress the part where the mundane weapons have a much worst acuraccy.
That's easy enough.

Repeating the examples from before, blowing 19 Upgrade Points & 75 Arsenal a Super Mech can get 43+Dex AC. His opponent spends 8 Upgrade Points and 25 Arsenal points to counter and even using a nonmagical weapon with no Feats or Class Features added in has a 65% chance to hit and I purposely avoided bringing in magic because someone didn't like my Splitting example else where and called it broken.
65% chance.
At 20 mu range.
For the first shot.

The railgun can actually reliably shoot things further away than they can just step closer and punch you. The colossal crossbow is a glorified melee weapon with a bit more reach.

But then there is this.
You can't enchant your mecha's weapons/plating. I'll specify that later in the intro if it's not clear enough yet.
Which of course does not affect normal weapons. The Enhancement Bonus cost is the same on a Colossal+++ weapon as it is on a Fine--- weapon, the only thing that changes is the Masterwork fee which can be bypassed with stuff like Magic Weapon, or Minor Schemas of Weapon Augmentation or Concurrent Infusions, or Hilted Wands of Wraithstrike. So honestly Mech weapons are not the only thing with bonuses to attack.
But the mech wapon attack bonus is in-built. You don't need to spend actions/WBL/feats, and can spend those resources in other more interesting stuff And even weapon enhancement only goes up to +5 to attack rolls pre-epic, whereas the high level arsenal weapons can have over +10 bonus.

More in particular, you can ditch a mecha weapon and get a replacement fast and easy out of combat. But if your pimped repeating crossbow gets, say,  disarmed, you need to make a priority recovering it. And you're stuck with it for a lot of levels.

Likewise, since a majority of that 43 AC comes from Dodge bonuses (agilityx8 & bio sensor) you can use the Natch System to remove them, reducing your target's optimized AC by at least twelve points. It's one of the reasons I spammed it on Bahamut at the start of the Phantasy Star campaign even through the modifier was pretty low, if you roll badly on Spot it meant I would hit with anything anyway.
That goes for both weapons. It just means the railgun can reliably snipe you from even further away.

4. That's a little extreme tilted, I'm just talking about narrowing the wide dots like one Arsenal level gives a +0 increase to ranged damage while another Arsenal level gives almost +100 to melee. That's a pretty wide margin and you don't have to move to a Point Buy system to fix it, just trim the dice averages a little closer together and maybe try to compensate for Rending's ability to ignore half the target's DR. This also directly correlates with #6 because in your near random figures you've produced a problem that ranged Arsenal weapons don't really serve much use.
Maybe that's just me, but I believe ranged weapons purpose is to fight at range, not close in to 20 mu to have slightly better than 50% odds at hitting your targets. However I can't push their damage too high or melee mechas get blown up before they ever get a chance to close in.

Which speaking of, did you catch the edit to explain how you want the dice to progress?[/i]

I choose how I want the dice to progress around here, thank you very much.

A more time consuming solution would be to rebuild the Arsenal table using the expected values. Like if a Longsword deals 6d6 at Colossal, then a Mech's level 1 sword choice should to.
Barring shenigans, you can never afford a colossal longsword at level 1.

Level 2 Arsenal could see the additional of limited attack bonuses and/or new properties to keep up with the ability to enhance normal weapons.
In case I still didn't make it clear enough, fiddly weapon customization can go die in a black hole for this project. Mechas regularly discard and swap weapons like normal people swap socks. Spending half your resources into a single one will not be an option.

In my unqualified opinion the system needs a huge rehaul and I got bored.

So I thought of a rough draft for mechanics, but since Ols fears everything looking alike I won't tell you the secrets. Glance at this and tell me which ones totally are copies of uncreative stagnation.

Weapons with zero special properties, cheap pulp fiction jokes, null cost values and thus no way to determine how many a mecha can carry, extra resource accounting, new borked ability, no.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2016, 01:27:18 AM by oslecamo »