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:
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.
+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.
