General Discussion and Suggestions

[oslecamo]

Yes, general Arsenal space can be filled with (and only with) combat and special weapons.

No, only one Great One upgrade per super robot.

[ketaro]

Okay, thank you.

I kept editing in stuff to my last post without noticing you'd responded yet so

I know we talked about it in the PS game but the Fighter transformation affects fly speed how? Am I increasing my base by 150% it's normal value or is my base becoming 150% of itself? I'm still lost here.

100 mu fly becomes 250 mu?
or
100 mu fly becomes 150 mu?

If you have multiple built-in weapons can you attack with all of them in the same round?

Edit: If you have Twin-linked weapons with the Volatile property on both, do they both explode or would just one of the two linked weapons explode upon taking damage/nat 20ing?

[oslecamo]

100 mu fly would become 150 mu.

Yes, you can attack with all in-built and arsenal weapons in a full attack. Could've sworn I had added a clause for that in the intro but found nothing so added now.

Twin-linked volatile weapons would explode one at a time.

[SorO_Lost]

K, my turn to be confused. When you say "all" do you mean abusively all or you can split up your attacks between any of the weapons however you like?

[oslecamo]

Relevant text:

When full attacking, a mecha may choose to either perform iteratives with a single weapon or attack once with any or all of its in-built and arsenal weapons. In the latter case, all weapons after the first take a -5 penalty on the attack roll and only add half the relevant stat to damage.

[SorO_Lost]

So at level one a Super Pilot can select Extra and attack three times per round.
By level four it can attack six times per round (2 built in, 2 extra, 2 arsenal).
By level eight it can attack nineteen times (2 built in, 3 extra, 4 linked arsenal, 10 grenades).
Man all it needs is some Rending, or Sneak Attack w/e.

[ketaro]

Is Spirit Regen not obtainable multiple times for stacking effect? I apparently was doing just that and I could have sworn it either use to do so before or I asked and got an okay but I can't remember for sure....

Could it be a stacking feat?

[Anomander]

By level eight it can attack nineteen times (2 built in, 3 extra, 4 linked arsenal, 10 grenades).

I'm pretty sure arsenal weapons are not built-in weapons, though. Otherwise it opens the door to a lot of new tricks.

[oslecamo]

Is Spirit Regen not obtainable multiple times for stacking effect? I apparently was doing just that and I could have sworn it either use to do so before or I asked and got an okay but I can't remember for sure....

Could it be a stacking feat?

First version of Spirit Regen was stackable indeed but I changed that a bunch of updates ago.

So at level one a Super Pilot can select Extra and attack three times per round.
By level four it can attack six times per round (2 built in, 2 extra, 2 arsenal).
By level eight it can attack nineteen times (2 built in, 3 extra, 4 linked arsenal, 10 grenades).
Man all it needs is some Rending, or Sneak Attack w/e.

Also, you know, being able to make more than two full attacks before running out of ammo for over half your weapons.  Very Gundam Heavyarms.

Also the extra weapons are melee by default unless you use tank transformation, and tank disables your arsenal weapons so that's a no go. The only way you can pull the last bit is being close and personal provoking 10+ Aoos from the ranged grenade attacks.

By level eight it can attack nineteen times (2 built in, 3 extra, 4 linked arsenal, 10 grenades).

I'm pretty sure arsenal weapons are not built-in weapons, though. Otherwise it opens the door to a lot of new tricks.

Eeerrr, the text I posted above explicitly states that arsenal weapons can be used along in-built weapons for the full attack.

[SorO_Lost]

Also, you know, being able to make more than two full attacks before running out of ammo for over half your weapons.  Very Gundam Heavyarms.

Yeah but once I killed the mechs next to me I don't really suffer for those AoOs and once I kill all the mechs I don't suffer from running out of ammunition either.

[Anomander]

Also, you know, being able to make more than two full attacks before running out of ammo for over half your weapons.  Very Gundam Heavyarms.

Yeah but once I killed the mechs next to me I don't really suffer for those AoOs and once I kill all the mechs I don't suffer from running out of ammunition either.

Very much this!
A real pilot on most robots could equip 25 twin-linked steel knives, for example. The penalty to attacks get too high before long but the potential may play out with the right abilities. The first 10 could come into play and the rest would hope for a natural 20.

[oslecamo]

Added hard cap of 1 weapon per pilot level.

[SorO_Lost]

So we're capped at fourteen attacks in PH, let's see...

* lv14 Super Robot maximum upgrade defense is Growthx3, Great Plating, & Plating x8. That's 285 hp & 33 DR.
* You can also have 79 Arsenal points with lv4 gear but are capped at 14 attacks (apparently).
* So let's do 30 for the Ability Score (several have more in PH), Mightyx8, and the -50% bonus penalty is ignored by the +50% bonus for using one weapon type.
* We will use the Incision Knife (42pts spent) since it has Rending, it deals 2d8+31 against DR 16/- or 24 per hit.
*drum roll*
That's 336 damage per round, you can actually miss twice and still kill your opponent. Without using ammo!

And I have no idea how this is supposed to work with [Heavy] Weapons otherwise we could have used the FXA-03M2 which deals a rending 10d12+46*7 or up to 1,050 damage even with the DR from the super-defense-bot factored in. But that one is limited cus you can only use it four times per Encounter which just isn't enough to kill that fifteenth elite guard.

[oslecamo]

The +50% damage is not for using one weapon type only, is for using one weapon only, point.

Also a super with those upgrades would be 4 DR(base)+14 (level)+8(plating)+(9 gargantuan Great One)=35 DR.

Mighty is 8x2=+16, 30 ability score gives a bonus of +10 that's halved for +5, each Incision Knive deals 2d8+21, not very sure where you got the previous value from.

Average damage is 30 against valid DR 17, so 13 hit per damage, for an actual total of 182 damage. Assuming you hit everything.

Heavy weapons still limited by the needing a fullround action to use.

[Anomander]

Average damage is 30 against valid DR 17, so 13 hit per damage, for an actual total of 182 damage. Assuming you hit everything.

And 40 energy for the use of Mighty. Mighty itself it doesn't accomplish much but there are so many other modifiers to damage that very high damage can indeed be reached rather easily... if everything hits. Still very strong. It is like a monster using natural weapons to fight except that natural weapons cannot be part of the combo. Not sure if that affects the use of that option for the Einst with their bioweapons/natural weapons.

Here's a group of questions:

Added hard cap of 1 weapon per pilot level.

Twin-linked weapons still count as 2 separate weapons for that purpose one a single one? 1 per pilot level is pretty amazing.

If a support staff chooses a real robot base, say, the Astelion (3 built-in weapons). He has to get rid of half its built-in weapons; is the removal rounded down or rounded up?

Are the perceptions that aren't already specifying that they depend on line of effect (such as blindsense and darkvision) bypassing line of effect? Or perhaps they work as emanation auras, going around obstacles? It is an important detail since otherwise some of them, like sensing things that aren't touching the ground then essentially just become a limited blindsense that isn't called blindsense.

Say you use a single weapon during your turn and thus get effective 2-handed damage. And then during the enemy turn you use an AoO with a different weapon while the current round still isn't over ; does it retroactively change the damage inflicted during your own turn since it no longer is the only weapon used that round? As that is how it seems to work. Unless instead of using only a single weapon per round is meant to be a single weapon per turn.

Some pilot feat abilities vs LoE: The Innovade's machine controlling aura, the Cyber Newtype's telepathy aura, both and the Coordinator's ability to detect within their aura's range and the Leader feat's aura; do they ignore line of effect or are perhaps spread/continuous burst effects? As all they require is for the potential targets to be with in their aura's range.

It may be obvious that Counter is a very powerful feat. Should there be a limit to the number of times it can be picked? Whether X per Y HD or by applying a limit in its usage, such as not being possible to use it more than once for the same thing (which promotes having more feats Counter can be used with, which also decreases the number of feats that can be dumped into Counter). So it could counter only once for Defend, once on Offensive Support and once on a defensive weapon.

Maybe a limit to the amount of Leader feat picks as well. A regular cohort or a second officer cohort could have nothing else to do than get pumped with Leader feats. The second officer may be prevented from having allies within the ship benefit from it because of that clause about him not being able to contribute to the fight except through spirit usage (unless the he gets command while a multiclass captain leaving on his real robot) but regular cohorts do not have that restriction.

[ketaro]

So in my discussions with Anomander I have found that Moon Vanguard very much would benefit from a section in the Mecha Basics thread defining how it and it's Nanoarmor can and cannot interact with a multiclassing/gestalt Super Pilot, Real Pilot, and Ship Captain's mechas/ships.

I've never thought about it before, but Super Nanoarmors that take advantage of the Growth upgrade would be tricky to wear whilst inside most Real Robots. For example, Katherine's Nanoarmor is Gargantuan. On Mecha scale she is a Small sized Mecha. Her Real Robot is Medium sized on Mecha scale. The mental picture here is an unmodified Real Robot having a cockpit big enough to accommodate a Mecha only 1 size smaller than the Real Robot.

Visually, I can't see this working despite this being exactly what I based my entire character around at the beginning 

Realistically, A Moon Vanguard/Real Pilot would have to have a very customized Real Robot to accommodate being piloted with an equipped Nanoarmor. Hell, at 16th level that Nanoarmor could be the same size as the Real Robot you're trying to pilot. What is the Real Robot now if we continue to try to make this work? An exoskeleton for the Nanoarmor with the Nanoarmor itself realigning and installing itself to become all of the functioning systems that make a Mecha work? So now in this hypothetical, A Moon Vanguard/Real Pilot's Real Robot has become a suit of armor for you suit of armor.

On the other hand, all of this weirdness is entirely avoidable if the Moon Vanguard gestalts/multis into Super Pilot and just has a Super Robot with Growth upgrades itself. But now we're all redundant with a Super Nanoarmor and a Super Robot.


On to more specific things related to my character though. Anomander had this quote from you in response to one of his questions long ago.

nanoarmor is a very small mecha, a piece of gear with its own stats that borrows abilities from you, not a self-buff. Otherwise this will end with you trying to cram mechas of diferent sizes inside each other to try to stack all their abilities.
I'll let overdrive work with the "bigger" mecha. But you still can't use the nanoarmor's HP/DR/saves/AC/weapons/arsenal.
I'll make a special exception for the bigger mecha geting the youkai-forged blades from your nanoarmor however.

So Overdrive can affect the Mecha you're piloting with a Nanoarmor, but no using the Nano's HP/DR/Saves/AC/Weapons/Arsenal. Cool cool. What about when the "bigger" mecha gets critted with you inside, inside your Nanoarmor?

Can you use your Nano's energy to fuel the "bigger" mecha?

You allowed Youkai-Forged Blades from the Nanoarmor to be able to be used through to the "bigger" mecha, but what about any Super Nano upgrades that are being applied specifically to the YFBs? Main Weapon, for example.

In regards to Katherine; being a Real Pilot and a Moon Vanguard (of which both classes are Pilot classes), how does Born to Fight interact with the Moon Vanguard's Maneuver system compared to how it works with a Real/Super/Ship Pilot class' maneuver system? Born to Fight calls out being able to use "Pilot Maneuvers" while outside of your mecha, not caring whether they are readied or not readied maneuvers because most Pilot classes to not have Readied/Unreadied maneuvers. Can Born to Fight be used to access any Pilot Maneuver from your Moon Vanguard's known list regardless of it being readied or not?
I gotta admit, I may have been already using it like that on a couple occasions >.> At least for me, it hasn't seemed overpowered yet, especially with the 5min cooldown attached to each maneuver used as such. Admittedly I saw it as a more versatile version of Tome of Battle's Adaptive style.

I'm not sure I got everything as I've had a lot of questions come and go over the last 2-3 days...maybe Anomander will come by and fill in some of my gaps.....

Oh, this last one's entirely offtopic from my above stuff but any plans on a tactical Pilot Feat for Martial Machine like you've got for all the other Pilot Schools so far?

EDIT: Considering my Yokai-Forged Blades are a built-in weapon of my Nanoarmor, does that mean my hands are technically free/empty to hold things?

[oslecamo]

Average damage is 30 against valid DR 17, so 13 hit per damage, for an actual total of 182 damage. Assuming you hit everything.

And 40 energy for the use of Mighty. Mighty itself it doesn't accomplish much but there are so many other modifiers to damage that very high damage can indeed be reached rather easily... if everything hits. Still very strong.

Well it's one of the reasons I made the Prevail feat. Trying to wear down your opponent by a big amount of small attacks isn't so hot if they get tougher as their HP drops.

It is like a monster using natural weapons to fight except that natural weapons cannot be part of the combo. Not sure if that affects the use of that option for the Einst with their bioweapons/natural weapons.

Good point, added a clause for that in the Einst Queen bioweapons section.

Here's a group of questions:

Added hard cap of 1 weapon per pilot level.

Twin-linked weapons still count as 2 separate weapons for that purpose one a single one? 1 per pilot level is pretty amazing.

No, the benefits for Twin-Linked weapons are explicitly stated on the ability itself (fire both as standard or full attack iteratives with both replacing everything else).

If a support staff chooses a real robot base, say, the Astelion (3 built-in weapons). He has to get rid of half its built-in weapons; is the removal rounded down or rounded up?

Another good point, clarified it's rounded up.

Are the perceptions that aren't already specifying that they depend on line of effect (such as blindsense and darkvision) bypassing line of effect? Or perhaps they work as emanation auras, going around obstacles? It is an important detail since otherwise some of them, like sensing things that aren't touching the ground then essentially just become a limited blindsense that isn't called blindsense.

Clarified that spacesense and the metal detection don't demand line of sight. The "see through certain things" is already pretty explicit I believe.

Say you use a single weapon during your turn and thus get effective 2-handed damage. And then during the enemy turn you use an AoO with a different weapon while the current round still isn't over ; does it retroactively change the damage inflicted during your own turn since it no longer is the only weapon used that round? As that is how it seems to work. Unless instead of using only a single weapon per round is meant to be a single weapon per turn.

You can't make the AoO with a different weapon at all. You already chosed to only use one weapon in that round.

Some pilot feat abilities vs LoE: The Innovade's machine controlling aura, the Cyber Newtype's telepathy aura, both and the Coordinator's ability to detect within their aura's range and the Leader feat's aura; do they ignore line of effect or are perhaps spread/continuous burst effects? As all they require is for the potential targets to be with in their aura's range.

Telepathy still works as telepathy, blindsight still works as blindsight.

Clarified for the Innovade's custom aura.

It may be obvious that Counter is a very powerful feat. Should there be a limit to the number of times it can be picked? Whether X per Y HD or by applying a limit in its usage, such as not being possible to use it more than once for the same thing (which promotes having more feats Counter can be used with, which also decreases the number of feats that can be dumped into Counter). So it could counter only once for Defend, once on Offensive Support and once on a defensive weapon.

Maybe a limit to the amount of Leader feat picks as well. A regular cohort or a second officer cohort could have nothing else to do than get pumped with Leader feats. The second officer may be prevented from having allies within the ship benefit from it because of that clause about him not being able to contribute to the fight except through spirit usage (unless the he gets command while a multiclass captain leaving on his real robot) but regular cohorts do not have that restriction.

Limited both to 1+1/4 HD.

So in my discussions with Anomander I have found that Moon Vanguard very much would benefit from a section in the Mecha Basics thread defining how it and it's Nanoarmor can and cannot interact with a multiclassing/gestalt Super Pilot, Real Pilot, and Ship Captain's mechas/ships.

Yeah, no, it's in another subforum altogether.

I've never thought about it before, but Super Nanoarmors that take advantage of the Growth upgrade would be tricky to wear whilst inside most Real Robots. For example, Katherine's Nanoarmor is Gargantuan. On Mecha scale she is a Small sized Mecha. Her Real Robot is Medium sized on Mecha scale. The mental picture here is an unmodified Real Robot having a cockpit big enough to accommodate a Mecha only 1 size smaller than the Real Robot.

Well that's more of power armor for your power armor, which isn't that rare. There's quite a lot of Gundams where the mecha ends up piloting a bigger module.  The Huckebein MK III Boxer also is this, although doesn't get any special rules since it was one of the first ones and I was/am too lazy to add any special rules to represent that in particular when the original game also didn't care much besides "now counts as a bigger/stronger Huckebein, enjoy".

Visually, I can't see this working despite this being exactly what I based my entire character around at the beginning 

Realistically, A Moon Vanguard/Real Pilot would have to have a very customized Real Robot to accommodate being piloted with an equipped Nanoarmor. Hell, at 16th level that Nanoarmor could be the same size as the Real Robot you're trying to pilot. What is the Real Robot now if we continue to try to make this work? An exoskeleton for the Nanoarmor with the Nanoarmor itself realigning and installing itself to become all of the functioning systems that make a Mecha work? So now in this hypothetical, A Moon Vanguard/Real Pilot's Real Robot has become a suit of armor for you suit of armor.

Gundam Seed.jpg

On the other hand, all of this weirdness is entirely avoidable if the Moon Vanguard gestalts/multis into Super Pilot and just has a Super Robot with Growth upgrades itself. But now we're all redundant with a Super Nanoarmor and a Super Robot.

On to more specific things related to my character though. Anomander had this quote from you in response to one of his questions long ago.

nanoarmor is a very small mecha, a piece of gear with its own stats that borrows abilities from you, not a self-buff. Otherwise this will end with you trying to cram mechas of diferent sizes inside each other to try to stack all their abilities.
I'll let overdrive work with the "bigger" mecha. But you still can't use the nanoarmor's HP/DR/saves/AC/weapons/arsenal.
I'll make a special exception for the bigger mecha geting the youkai-forged blades from your nanoarmor however.

So Overdrive can affect the Mecha you're piloting with a Nanoarmor, but no using the Nano's HP/DR/Saves/AC/Weapons/Arsenal. Cool cool. What about when the "bigger" mecha gets critted with you inside, inside your Nanoarmor?

Nanoarmor eats it along the mecha, fleshy bits at the core are safe for now.

Can you use your Nano's energy to fuel the "bigger" mecha?

No.

You allowed Youkai-Forged Blades from the Nanoarmor to be able to be used through to the "bigger" mecha, but what about any Super Nano upgrades that are being applied specifically to the YFBs? Main Weapon, for example.

No. The YFB will count as another in-built weapon of the bigger mecha using base stats only.

In regards to Katherine; being a Real Pilot and a Moon Vanguard (of which both classes are Pilot classes), how does Born to Fight interact with the Moon Vanguard's Maneuver system compared to how it works with a Real/Super/Ship Pilot class' maneuver system? Born to Fight calls out being able to use "Pilot Maneuvers" while outside of your mecha, not caring whether they are readied or not readied maneuvers because most Pilot classes to not have Readied/Unreadied maneuvers. Can Born to Fight be used to access any Pilot Maneuver from your Moon Vanguard's known list regardless of it being readied or not?
I gotta admit, I may have been already using it like that on a couple occasions >.> At least for me, it hasn't seemed overpowered yet, especially with the 5min cooldown attached to each maneuver used as such. Admittedly I saw it as a more versatile version of Tome of Battle's Adaptive style.

Correct, the cooldown is a key penalty.

I'm not sure I got everything as I've had a lot of questions come and go over the last 2-3 days...maybe Anomander will come by and fill in some of my gaps.....

Oh, this last one's entirely offtopic from my above stuff but any plans on a tactical Pilot Feat for Martial Machine like you've got for all the other Pilot Schools so far?

Yes once I get some important work finished in RL and actually get time to write new homebrew.

EDIT: Considering my Yokai-Forged Blades are a built-in weapon of my Nanoarmor, does that mean my hands are technically free/empty to hold things?

Yes.

[Anomander]

Thanks for the swift answers! I appreciate.

[ketaro]

Yeah, no, it's in another subforum altogether.

Well then how about putting it in the Moon Vanguard's thread? It's a Pilot class that pulls almost all of it's abilities from the SRW Pilot stuff and all 

Edit: And yes, thank you! That clears up some things I may or may not have been doing wrong

Well that's more of power armor for your power armor, which isn't that rare. There's quite a lot of Gundams where the mecha ends up piloting a bigger module.  The Huckebein MK III Boxer also is this, although doesn't get any special rules since it was one of the first ones and I was/am too lazy to add any special rules to represent that in particular when the original game also didn't care much besides "now counts as a bigger/stronger Huckebein, enjoy".

Gundam Seed.jpg

The only show I can recall ever seeing bigass mechas piloting biggerass mechas was Gurren Lagann 
But those are all Supers and Supers inside Supers makes sense to me.
It's the Reals that get weird 

[CKirk]

Maybe a limit to the amount of Leader feat picks as well. A regular cohort or a second officer cohort could have nothing else to do than get pumped with Leader feats. The second officer may be prevented from having allies within the ship benefit from it because of that clause about him not being able to contribute to the fight except through spirit usage (unless the he gets command while a multiclass captain leaving on his real robot) but regular cohorts do not have that restriction.

Limited both to 1+1/4 HD.

With this change to Leader, it seems to me (based on observations of the Ship Captain in my campaign) that Ships Full of Hope needs to have its range decoupled from the number of times you have the Leader feat, because as it stands, a ship captain's range with buffs will now be only 1+1/4th HD. If you want to keep the number of Leader feats relevant, make the range on Ships Full of Hope maneuvers be leadership range + ship captain level. Basically, my game's Ship Captain has been taking almost nothing but Leader just because he can't use any of his maneuvers on the rest of the party if he doesn't. I don't know if that's intended, but it feels very harsh.