[OSSR] Dragonmech

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Maxus
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[OSSR] Dragonmech

Post by Maxus »

OSSR: Dragonmech
"Medieval Fantasy Mechs Powered by Steam, Magic, or the Labor of a Thousand Slaves"
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Here's your cover

Introduction
In which the core campaign book's introduction is pared down with some notes of my own.

There have been many (many, many) attempts to put some technology into your D&D, usually steampunk-ish. And you can see the appeal--some of the aesthetics are cool, and I suppose genre's emphasis on personal inventiveness and creativity appeals to a lot of RPG players. I can also respect the desire to see magic and technology mixing it up. Hell, I share it.

Among the more serious attempts at this was Goodman Games' Dragonmech. There were a solid half-dozen or so sourcebooks (discounting the Campaign Setting, which I'll focus on here), three of which were basically about things that mattered in the setting (four if you could excited about a bookful of mechs, more on those later), a basic adventure, and then a location book on the last big city in the setting.

I once did a thread on this setting and even got permission from Joseph Goodman (who has seemed like a decent guy in the PMs) to post some of the non-OGL mechanics, like the build-your-own-invention doodads.

I'll try to be objective here giving an in-universe description of the setting and just repeat what the book says here; I'll get into analysis later: It was a fairly standard D&D world, and then for whatever reason, the moon began drifting closer to the world. It is easily visible during the daytime, and so close gravity has been stripping off the lunar surface for about a hundred years now. The 'lunar rains' vary from bigass meteors to a sandstorm of burning hot sand. This would have been catastrophic enough, but there's also creatures on the moon, including, of course, dragons much more badass than terrestrial dragons. So these creatures are now invading the world and causing further social upheaval.

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Everyone's scared shitless of these. It could be worse; they're certainly not pretty.

Not only that, the lunar gods are pressing their assault so the terrestrial gods are devoting their attention to fighting back, and what with the lessening of faith in general, clerics don't always get their spell.

The lunar rains are dying down because there's a lot less loose material on the moon these days, and as stuff settles, the dwarves are basically running the show. A lot the surface races tried to go to the tunnels below and the dwarves wouldn't let them into dwarf territory without a fight, there's a lot of bad blood especially between the humans and dwarves. The elves have gone into full-panic mode and built one bigass mech to protect the remnants of their territory.

People need shelter from the nightly meteor storms (and a way to fight the dragons off that's more accessible than savvy level 10+ adventurers), so they've built giant walking mechs, some of them used as cities. (The game includes size categories for, if I recall, Colossal I-V, and then City Mech sizes A-F or some shit like that.)

This is supposedly being hailed as the 'Second Age of Walkers', the first age having been literally forgotten except for a few bigass metal statues and this ancient and reclusive guild of clockmakers gearwrights which came out of hiding to teach people how to make the mechs. Techies. But not everyone's accepting the changes so you have have the ordinary D&D staples like fighters, rogues, druids, paladins and wizards, rubbing elbows with the coglayers, mech jockeys, and steamborgs.

There's plenty of 'conventional' D&D in here, along with the new steampunk features and tech-focused variants of normal classes. I'll cover them and their features as they go along.

With me so far? Good.

That's basic fluff out of the way. Next, I'll get started on the real deal.

Images linked from Goodman Games' own website on the subject
Last edited by Maxus on Thu Feb 06, 2014 5:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by name_here »

Hell yes, Dragonmech. The setting is so cool.

Unfortunately, the actual piloting a mech rules kinda split control between all the party members so one guy is driving the mech and other guys are manning the guns instead of going for a model where everyone gets their own mechs.
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Post by Maxus »

Characters
In which we're spared the indignity of a 'what is a role-playing game'.


I don't know what they're like now, but Goodman Games strikes me as some decent people; at least at the time. If you want to read along, they actually have this chapter up for download here.

It's eighteen pages and covers the races, classes and the variants, but leaves off the back half of the steamborg and the PrCs. And you can squint at this three-column layout along with me.

I don't know about you, but I like the art. Except the steamborg's expression; he looks high.
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Hey, dudes, guess what? This smoke isn't coal smoke!
Races

The characters chapter starts off with a rundown of how the various races are faring with the collapse of their previous civilizations. I would like to state I don't like the rap humans get. They were nomads, so they were 'uncivilized'. It even puts quotes around 'civilization' when referring to their old culture.

Not gonna lie, Joe Goodman. Dick move.

Anyway, humans have gotten a charismatic leader and he's created the Legion, which claims it's not wallowing in racism against non-humans, it's just really pro-human, honest!

Yes, your reaction to that claim is shared by everyone in both the real universe and this fictional one.

The dwarves are supposed to be the real powerhouses of the setting; they had their underground cities and so forth, so they only had to deal with refugees and not regular rains of red-hot boulders and what a friend calls lunar rapeapes.

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I can't find a point of inaccuracy that would sway a jury.

But the dwarves did take horrible losses in the wars with refugees and you know, I feel that's basically about right. I don't know how everyone wasn't wiped out in the first good lunar meteor storm (maybe it's a regional thing, like rain bands), but this conflict sounds plausible to me.

It notes the dwarves apply their craft bonus to mechs, and dwarves raised in mechs, or, I suppose, have spent extensive time there, lose stonecunning and gain +2 to Mech Pilot. The authors are on record saying they didn't want this to be human-centric, and dwarves get the master-race card this time, I suppose. They have a confederacy built another five city-mechs that each patrol adjacent territory, as well as a lot of their old holdings. They're supposed to be the political movers and shakers, with the humans trying to follow their lead in making a mech-based nation-state and the elves being focused on the elves.

Elves are both emo (the forests have eroded and they can remember was it was like before! Waaaaaaaaah!) and get elf-wank. Their mechs are pretty much golems with a pilot, crafted out of wood and magically animated so it's still alive and can take root (which, indeed, it must). It says their mechs are the most powerful, despite mechs being 'invented by dwarves and developed by humans.' Of course they are.

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This is the single elven city-mech. It was magically shaped and animated from an entire forest.
It is almost half a mile tall. It bristles with wands.
The citizens know how to use them.
Even the dwarves admit they can't come close to this accomplishment.
HAIL THE MASTER RACE.


At least it ends on a good note; living for seven hundred years means they figure they have time to beat it, and they're looking for old artifacts, cutting deals, make alliances, and try to find magic solutions to the problems. My money's on the magic over the tech, for reasons I'll explain later.

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You go, girl.

Gnomes had the problem of the dwarves: They suddenly had prime real estate. They lacked the dwarf solution: They didn't have a siege mentality. So gnomes got screwed and run out of their homes. But now suddenly they're technology wizards (despite no bonuses to reflect this, like the dwarves get) and valued where they are. They also joke a lot, in a laughing-on-the-outside, crying-on-the-inside sort of way.

Half-elves and half-orcs are actually adjusting to the changes fairly well--society's been remade anew so they have a means to fit into it now. Hell, I think I read a mention of some breeding population of half-orcs is in here somewhere, and how they have a name for themselves that's not 'half-orc'. Except, of course, half-orcs are only riding the changes so well because they had no pride in the old world to start with.

Sigh.

Halflings also came out well. I guess this is a good time to be half-something, right? Anyway, they could find shelter from the new threats where others couldn't, and there's now a mech-adapted subrace called Coglings, who grow up in the engines of mechs. They're valued because, well, short dudes are good for getting into tight spaces. There's some note about halfling not becoming mech pilots, despite being able to more comfortably pilot Large-sized mechs (yes, mechs are found as small as 10 feet tall), and having the Dex bonus which the piloting skill is predicated on. I'll talk about this fluff/mechanics divide later.
--------------------------------
Classes in the world

Next is how classes adapted to the new circumstances.

Barbarians have been more common than fighters, and in the hard times bards are in high demand and, according to the fluff, immune to suspicion in most communities because they can do their bit to keep morale up.

So you keep a bard in a sack, and just keep him filled up with whiskey so he doesn't cause trouble until you need to trot him out to get you in somewhere.

Now comes the clerics: There's a general crisis of faith, and the lunar gods are fighting their own war against the old gods, so clerics have to make a DC 6 Wisdom check every day after they do their hour of prayer for their spells. If you fail, no spells for you* and the DC goes up by 2 for the next day. If the cleric wins a victory against the aliens, the DC goes down by 2. If the cleric manages some major accomplishment, the DC goes down by 1.

They can also attempt to cast any spell spontaneously, as long as it's against the forces of the moon (or healing the effects of their actions), by succeeding a DC 20 Wisdom check. It basically means you get a free spell.

Sometimes.

Druids: What with everything getting the burning sandpaper effect, there aren't many unsullied forests or what have you, and Druid numbers are much reduced.
Actually, why is it always forests? Or, sometimes, swamps. For the sake of variety, I'd like to see a druid of plains or high mountains or the arctic. Or, how about a druid of deserts? A dried-up leather-skinned, heavy-browed wildman who makes the bugs leave him alone except when he need a crunchy snack and drinks a jackal for breakfast every morning.
I digress; Druids are just about gone, but the ones who remain make up for it by being psychotic about the whole 'protecting nature' thing. It also specifically requires druid players to come up with a backstory as to where they learned their stuff.

Fighters are fighters, blah blah blah, no one cares about them.

Monks are still around and some nomadic mech clans like them and apply monk combat techniques to mech combat. Sounds nice and all, but, well, monks.

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When your foot is over his head, his fist is on level with your crotch.

Paladins are more numerous, thanks to people trying to man up and fight the good fight (of which I approve, if only Paladins were more capable of fighting the good fight than a good cleric or wizard), but have the same spellcasting gimp as clerics, except they're a lot less like to pass the wisdom check. MAD, yo.

Rangers basically have the same fluff as druids, rogues have come through just fine (and have a tech-focused variant called the Stalker), Sorcerors are more common and some of them are showing a lunar or astronomical theme to the special effects (the example is magic missile now producing little meteorites instead of little balls of force).

Wizards are also in-universe reduced in number. Except for, you know, PCs.

Classes

The first 'class' is the Clockwork Ranger variant; they're specialized for the giant engines inside the really big mechs. They can use Handle Animal on constructs, some different skills, a somewhat different spell list, and a different animal companion list, themed around the critters in the gear forests. Yes, they're called that.

The first real class introduced is the Coglayer. These guys are your tech-variant of the wizard. They get the build-your-own-device parts, proficiency in the tech weapons, and their class level as a bonus to Craft (Mechcraft), K (mechs), and K (Steam engines). Because fuck the RNG. But as a nice touch, you can build steam-based weapons. So you can kit out the party if you really want to, and the steamgear is usually nice.
I'm going to break off here and talk about Steam Powers, which are elaborated on later in the book.

The build-your-own device powers are called Steam Powers. Basically, you have a list of a bunch of parts, can build/maintain a number of them based on your class level and your Int modifier, and can use them to build more complex devices. Individually, they're useful for something, but the utility really comes in combining them. One of the devices is the Iron Arm--it's a mechanical arm, by itself worn on a shoulder rig and operated by a little control device, with 18 Str. Cool by itself, but you can combine it with, say, a few other powers to so it'll attack upon receiving a vocal command. Or you hitting a button on a remote control (they have basic radio tech in here).

I really like these. They're something every steampunk game should include: A means for the players to interact and get inventive with the established setting tech.

They're mostly not as powerful as spells; you can make some effects better than sucky spells. There is a force-field generator that by itself makes a little Shield (like the spell), but can work up to making walls of force and 'uniform shapes' (however you wanna define those) by combining it with another gadget, the amplifier (a staple in about any complex collection of devices). These aren't force like the magic version--it has AC 10, hardness 10, and 10 HP per inch thick, so you can hack through it (a FAQ Ruling from Goodman said after it's been hacked through, it closes up, like the T-Rex stomach bullshit).

If you can't think of plenty of uses for a floating, shapeable, self-repairing iron-like substance that you can turn on or off as you will, well, I'm sorry for you.

Even so, some of the interactions are vague. You can make a lightning bolt shooter with a few gadgets and then just keep adding amplifiers on it. Amplifiers add another damage die (in this case, d4s) and doubles the range if you make it a ranged weapon. I seem to recall writing a mech-mounted weapon with a range over 13 miles or so. It depended on if the range doubled D&D critical style or like natural mathematics.

You can basically get away with whatever your character can pay for with money and materials and you can bullshit past the DM. Auto-targeting lightning bolt shooter? Why not?
I posted a little on the Goodman Games forums a few years back, and put up the idea for a Giant Arm (a large-sized Iron Arm with 24 strength made by combining two of 'em) and one of the devs was all "I never would have thought of that, that's pretty cool." So it basically is 'whatever you can explain away'
Back on subject.

Next up is a wizard class variant called a Constructor, who, you guessed it, has alterations to be more tech-fluffed, with altered skills, spell lists, and the ability to get a clockwork familiar. They're all members of the College of Constructors. I guess I'll get to them when their spell list comes up. Next!

The second real class is the Mech Jockey. They're the mech pilots. They get medium BAB by themselves, but Full BAB when they're piloting a mech. They can do a lot of things to make mechs go faster, push harder. They're explicitly likened to fighter pilots, and are basically the rockstars of the tech classes. So, of course, it says that most mech jockeys are humans.

Really need to decide if humans suck or rock here, guys. Thought this was not going to be a human-focused setting.

On a thoughtful note, their extreme coordination means they get Weapon Finesse and Quick Draw for free. Also a nice touch is they get very good spacial awareness and can just judge their mech's reach and size like it was their own. They also get reduced penalties for riding in a mech, which can give you seasickness because they're pretty clunky.

Cool for them, probably a bad sign for everyone else.

The next class is another variant: The tech variant of the rogue, the Stalker.

At last! People can play stalkers in a game and not weird out the rest of the table. They get the usual addition of some tech skills, and also two abilities that they must take as their special abilities at level 10 and 13: At level 10, they get contortionist, which gives them +5 to Escape Artist and lets them fit through some tighter spaces. At level 13, they get That Piece Looks Important, which lets them take a Disable Device check against mechs to sabotage it in a non-obvious way. The length of time and DC varies from 1 hour for a large mech (with a DC of 16), to six months of study (DC 42) for a City-mech F. If it works, the mech in question comes to a complete halt in 2d6 minutes and the sabotage must be identified and repaired, which takes a length of time and DC half of what it took to break it.

Which is cool, but the increasingly long times of study required make it impractical for a gametime activity. But hey, you can do a campaign about screwing up the political balance of power by stopping a city-mech, and that's cool.

Last paragraph about it: "This ability is far more subtle than simply bashing in an important gear. It’s sabotage in the most inconspicuous possible manner. The stalker might remove a single bolt, cut a single wire, or file the edges of a gear by a single millimeter. This ability sums up the very motto of the stalker: cause maximum damage with minimum visibility." Okay, I'll give props for that.

The last class is the Steamborg.

I have a great fondness for these guys, not least because I played a level 8 Steamborg with 18 Con who got 84 HP out of a possible max of 96 (I'm usually lucky on HP rolls). So here's the deal: Steamborgs get a small implanted steam engine, which pulls water from their body (requiring them to drink a lot more), and it powers prosthetics. They're assumed to have 'enough' coal in the engine to keep them running for the foreseeable future, but if they run out, they lose use of their prosthetics; so a character will keep a natural arm or something.

They're a rare class with constitution as their main stat. They get some steam weapon proficiencies and tech skills (but notably not Mech Pilot, which is unusual for the tech classes. Last I checked, Mech Jockeys, Coglayers, and Stalkers all had it), medium BAB, good Fort and Will.

The Steamborg gets bonuses based on what prosthetics they're going for--arms can give strength, legs extra speed, eyes bonuses to attack rolls, that sort of thing. You can have a number of prosthetics equal to your con modifier (which is a really conservative way to do it, really), and they can make steampowers, too (just not as many as the coglayers).

They also have to make a check every day or act like a robot through a mechanic called Lose Self. Because getting a mechanical arm totally wounds your soul, amirite Street Samantha?
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Her soul can't tie its shoes.
Another unusual touch is undergoing surgery to get some extras grafted in. The first time, it's getting metal plates grafted to their skin to give them a natural armor bonus, and the second time they can get their skeleton reinforced and replaced with steel to give them a con bonus. It takes money, recuperation time, and the services of someone with enough ranks in Heal, but it's pretty cool. If not really worthy of a class feature; why can't other people do this, given these are passive enhancements?

At level 19, they're so mechanical they become Ageless as long as they can keep themselves maintained and their steam engine running. And not crappy "You don't physically age but die of old age when your time's up." I mean "You get immortality as long as you keep yourself running." And that's pretty cool from a fluff standpoint. But it's level 19 and you don't care.

You don't get three or four prosthetics from the word go. You get Artificial Parts points, one every other level, and can use them on some of the aforesaid bonuses.

The bonuses are really underwhelming--+1 strength, +1 to melee and ranged attacks, +1 to Reflex or Fort, and so on down the list; I suppose the way to go would be to pick something like Strength or Attack Bonus and just go for that. A +10 attack bonus in addition to whatever you can score and you just won't care about medium BAB.

And so on until you get to "Natural Weapon". Which is cool and all, especially how you could scale it to crazy town if you -just- focused on that (what's 1d4 damage increased by size nine times?), but sort of underwhelming given how it lets you build weapons into your prosthetics.

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Hey, if I had a prosthetic mechanical arm, I'd want a retractable shiv or a built-in gun in there.

The real crazy comes at the bottom when it says two Artificial Parts points can be swapped out for an extra HD.

Correct me if I'm wrong, because I've never seen that bullshit except for here, but I think they'd get another Steamborg HD. D8, Good Fort and Will, and presumably extra skill points, but not class features.

They can also get an extra attack in exchange for three artificial parts points. That's right, gain pretty much nothing out of your key class feature for six whole levels in exchange for an extra attack at your lowest bonus.

God, I love that game design mentality. Don't you? Screw yourself now to get something later. And the something also sucks.

Steamborg is the soul and center of everything that's cool about Dragonmech, and everything that's wrong with it. It's got cool fluff. I like it quite a bit conceptually for the setting. I really ought to write a Tome Steamborg that gets feats based on their choices in prosthetics.

But it's extremely mechanically underwhelming (unless you like having the highest hitpoints of the entire party), and speckled with dumb mechanics. Extra HD? Sure, though we don't say how to handle that. Plenty of the classes in general have role protection via DC shenanigans (more on that later). or getting bigass bonuses to their class skills.

The game was written by conventional gamers and it shows throughout in how afraid it is to make changes. The new classes pretty much aren't as strong as the variants. Fluff is good in spots, but the new concepts have very conservative mechanics because Balance, while the monsters design probably doesn't indicate thinking like an optimizer: The lunar dragons are resistant to damage from air, fire and water spells (half damage, and none on a successful save) and take double damage from earth spells and effects.

What, are we going to have those Sand Dragons from It's Hot Outside save the world with their sandblaster breath? What other earth effects -are- there that do any kind of direct damage? As a nice touch, they get a +10 to their save against mind-affecting effects, mind blasts, psionic powers, and detect thoughts because of 'alien psychology'.

Now, I bloody well know a smart enough wizard is going to end-run those restrictions. A smart wizard isn't using Fireball on these bastards to begin with. Not when you have Solid Fog and that anti-dragon spell from It's Cold Outside.

With the reduced population, you can see why, in-setting, civilization started building mechs (which I'll get to eventually, I promise), but mechanically? You don't really -need- a mech except as a shelter from the rain, if you use the lunar weather rules (roll dice to determine the severity of your nightly sandblasting).

The tech rules are, at least, cool. But they're also overcomplicated (oh god, just try to build your own mech sometime using their rules, I dare you) and underwhelming when compared to stuff already in game (unless it's a mech). And that's a shame.

Anyway. That's normal classes. Next are the prestige classes.

I can (and do) bitch about Goodman Games' mechanical eptitude, but their marketing is pretty good. In all honesty, it's nice that they give out the free sample PDFs. There's more samples for the mech rules and the mech types. I'll link to them when appropriate.

*Thanks to Starmaker for reminding me that I didn't actually put this in.
Last edited by Maxus on Thu May 21, 2015 3:31 pm, edited 20 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Starmaker »

There's a general crisis of faith, and the lunar gods are fighting their own war against the old gods, so clerics have to make a DC 6 Wisdom check every day after they do their hour of prayer for their spells. If you fail, it goes up by 2 for the next day.
Also: you don't receive the spells.
Actually, why is it always forests? Or, sometimes, swamps. For the sake of variety, I'd like to see a druid of plains or high mountains or the arctic.
I completely agree. I think it's a particular case of a persistent shitty fantasy trope: "good" nature and "evil" nature. Not "inhospitable to humans, populated by monsters", not "things found in nature evil people emulate", just the constantly reinforced vague suggestion that Good is forests and Ghibli hills (where animals presumably get nourishment from heavenly manna) and Evil is everything else.
And not crappy "You don't physically age but die of old age when your time's up."
I'm offended for realz by the idea of allotted time independent of physical age.
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Post by Maxus »

Starmaker wrote:
There's a general crisis of faith, and the lunar gods are fighting their own war against the old gods, so clerics have to make a DC 6 Wisdom check every day after they do their hour of prayer for their spells. If you fail, it goes up by 2 for the next day.
Also: you don't receive the spells.
Derp, forgot to mention that. It is sort of important.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Hicks »

Back before Warforged were a thing, I had Dragonmech and figured out how to play a sentient suit of steam powered armor using steam powers; it would pilot a custom mech, then hop out and dungeon crawl if quarters got too tight.

Dragonmech was awesome. In fact it was so awesome that is was the first D&D book I ever bought, followed by the XPH, then the 3.5 core three.
Last edited by Hicks on Thu Feb 06, 2014 9:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Starmaker wrote:
Actually, why is it always forests? Or, sometimes, swamps. For the sake of variety, I'd like to see a druid of plains or high mountains or the arctic.
I completely agree. I think it's a particular case of a persistent shitty fantasy trope: "good" nature and "evil" nature. Not "inhospitable to humans, populated by monsters", not "things found in nature evil people emulate", just the constantly reinforced vague suggestion that Good is forests and Ghibli hills (where animals presumably get nourishment from heavenly manna) and Evil is everything else.
No, that doesn't make sense because there are Evil Druids. Evil Nature totally supports Evil Druids.
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Post by Maxus »

But even evil druids always hail from forests, that I know of.

Okay, sometimes there's one in a swamp. But mostly it's woods or nothing. No druids of deserts, moors, ugly coastlines, or tundra.

And you hardly ever see evil druids. The last two I saw were Order of the Stick and this evil ghost psycho elf-druid in this terrible Forgotten Realms novel.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Blicero »

Maxus wrote: And you hardly ever see evil druids. The last two I saw were Order of the Stick and this evil ghost psycho elf-druid in this terrible Forgotten Realms novel.
There's at least one super high level evil druid in the FR, who I think is meant to be the big bad of the Great Dale or something. I think BGII might have a bunch as well.
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Post by name_here »

They put in a good showing in BGI too. And NWN2 has some druids who got their minds screwed with and turned evil.
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Post by Maxus »

I just took a gander; the back half of this book is the fluff, and the front half is the crunch. We'll get to mechs and politics eventually, but for now:


Prestige Classes

First up is the ever-dignified Anklebiter. These guys specialize in attacking mechs without mechs of their own. They get bonuses to boarding and breaking/entering mechs, and as a class feature have the 'connections' to buy a number of bombs a day. There's three flavors of bombs, and the highest is the Rust Bomb.

See, mechs fight like, say, normal characters against other mechs or stuff similarly-sized (leaving out a lot here), but they have a lot in common with structures against PCs. They have low AC (because they're as hard to hit as a house) but high hardness and HP (because they're metal things the size of houses and it's hard to hit one hard enough to break it). The Anklebiter is all about getting into a mech and attacking the crew.

I do like this one ability where they hurt themselves to get a bonus to, say, forcing a door or something. Roll a DC 10 Fortsave, and every point you beat it by gets added as a bonus to your check to force the hatches or whatever you're trying to do right this second, at the cost of HP equal to the bonus. Works on ordinary doors or other things you're trying to open in a hurry.

But mainly, these guys are that "special". Their big scaling bonus is to climb so they can scurry up a mech faster. Still, Connections, Tools (get a +4 masterwork bonus to break stuff open and can also take time to try to break bolts and weaken hinges to reduce the target DC of whatever they're trying to break), and Bloody Invasion showed that someone was aware that some of these DCs get ridiculously high. By the same token, if your character isn't an anklebiter, I doubt he'll be pulling a hatch open to get inside a mech.

The next class is a an odd one: The Assimilated. First, I'm going to rise above the temptation for Borg jokes. A Steamborg/Mech Jockey fusion. That is, they're steamborgs who get themselves increasingly integrated into a mech until, at the least, it -is- their body and that little lump of meat can be torn out without killing them. An Assimilated cripples their flesh body--literally. First they give up their legs and need a wheel chair or some other way to get around. Then they lose the use of their arms. Finally, they go completely immobile and at the last is that total-unity deal. They get bonuses to Mech Pilot, and an Attack Bonus in their mechs, but they take attack penalties until their own BAB goes away. They also lose their ability to take most other classes because, well, they get increasingly unmobile.

Image
When even the needs of your flesh have been forgotten, you have been Assimilated.

The requirements are crazy. You need to fail your Steamborg Lose Self check five times in a tow, and you need a 10th-level Coglayer or Steamborg to help integrate you into the mech. And, of course, you need a mech to integrate with. You need three feats and have to be at level level 13 when you enter (at the last, you meet the skill requirements at 12), can't be lawful (For some reason) and have a consitution of 18+ because you're going to be pared down to your torso and head before this is over.

But once that's done, well, you have this bitchin' body and you're explicitly described as being as aware of it as a normal person is of theirs. You feel hot, cold, wind, pain...And, presumeably, can fight like hell in the thing. I like these guys from a fluff standpoint. They're further indication that someone thought writing thought about the setting and concluded that some steamborgs might like to have a big mech body.

Next class is the Gearwrights. Remember I told you how the Coglayers are the techno-wizards and fuck the RNG with their bonuses? Right.

That, squared.

The Gearwrights are the organization that came out of the blue with the plans for mechs and said they'd been sitting on this knowledge for time uncounted, so to be a Gearwright class means joining the Gearwright club.

And hoo boy. Entry requirements are met at level 7. Have to be Neutral. Need 16+ Dexterity and 18+ Intelligence. Have to be a dwarf or a gnome (humans are allowed in if they exceed the numerical requirements by 20%. So instead of 10 ranks in Mech Pilot, you'd need 12 and so only be able to start this at level 10). You have to be sponsored by an existing Gearwright. Have to pay 500 GP a year membership dues.

But you become a coglayer who gets bigger and badder bonuses. Like the ability to Take 30 on a check (same as Take 20, except 30 times longer rather than 20), get the ability to kill downtime for bonuses), and to advance in the class past a certain point, you have to be promoted up the ranks, and there's only three in of the highest level--the Master Gearwrights--and they basically change over once every three hundred years and a new one has to be accepted by all three Masters and voted in by a majority of the Senior Officers (the second-to-last-level Gearwrights).

On the one hand, there's some thought there. On the other hand, the restrictions and stipulations on even -entering- are unreal and the advancement provides all sorts of means for a DM to screw with the player. So no one's gonna use this unless they've begged the DM to begin with.

The next class is the Mech Devil. You need 18+ Dex and 16+ Intelligence and have other roleplaying requirements to learn to be the Mech Jockey's daredevil. It also mentions the Irontooth Clans (nomadic mech-centered clans) really respect monks and will accept any monk of 5th level or above into the clan, if they want is.

Image
The art for these guys reminds me of some of the old ra-ra America posters. The shadowed eyes, the chiseled features, looking off into the distance. All he needs is a flag waving behind him, or a kid right next to him.

Really, bards get you in everywhere and monks can join the crazy raiding nomads. Now if Fighters automatically got some sort of respect, we'd have some sort of trifecta...

Anyway, Mech Devils get skill bonuses, some special uses out of mechs, including a few monk abilities like Deflect Projectiles and so on. They rock mech combat. Next.

The next PrC on our chopping block in the Riftwalker. The flavor is this one wizard came up with the idea of plane-shifting his whole tower when the lunar rains were severe, and he taught others how to do it. They're a casting PrC with--and this is important--their own 8-level spell list that doesn't advance other casting. You can also get in as a monk. Because monks are kewl, right?

Anyway, this is better than it sounds. They at least get medium BAB, and can burn their spells to planehop, explicitly, as long as they can make the search DC to find a rift (they're everywhere) and have the uncast spells to burn to power it. They can't take others with then when they riftwalk at first, but eventually they can burn more spells to bring others with them. Spell levels are spent on how many steps in the planes you're taking. It only takes one spell level to go to a transitive plane, and another spell level to get back. Going to an inner plane is another step, and an outer plane is yet another step.

One of their high level abilities lets them burn a single spell level--say, a magic missile--and use that to travel 10 times as fast and ignore solid obstacles in their path, including enemies. It's pretty sweet, with some limitations (like they have to physically travel 1/4 of the total distance moved). Their capstone is Evasion, along with some defense boosts thanks to them constantly blinking in place.

I like this class. It's flavorful, and the spell list is pretty awesome; it's got a lot of mobility spells like gaseous form, fly, and dimension door, it's got a lot of defense spells like Blink and Protection, and a lot of summoning spells and a lot of shelter and utility spells.

This is a badass PrC. I'll even go as far as to call it the best one in here, and it isn't inherently tied to the rules about technology, so you could use this for other campaign settings without needing to explain a bunch of rules and gadgets. Burning spell levels to power abilities isn't so bad, especially because the rates are relatively cheap. And the requirements are pretty easy: The skills all need five ranks, but you need to cross-class because you need K (planes), Spot, Search, and Survival, and you need to be able to cast second level spells (or use ki strike), so I -think- you can come out ahead of the game and possibly finish this ten-level class at level 14 and have a bunch of pretty solid spells. You get your 8th-level spells at class level 7, by the way. And your level 8 spells include Gate.

These guys rock pretty damn hard; Gate is, after all, too good to get at level 11-12, and they have a bunch of spells that...I don't think the writers knew what they were giving him. Leaving aside the Riftwalking, these guys turn into formidable casters before too long. Casting is identical to wizard casting, by the way--Int-based and spellbooks.

Next is the Steam Mage. The Tech Theurge. He sucks super hard and loses 8 caster levels over 15 class levels. His shtick is supposed to be that he can combine magic and tech, and, say, apply Steam Power effects to his spells. Like putting an amplifier on a wand of fireballs to make the fireballs bigger and more damaging. He might be a decent coglayer--he gets lot of steampowers--but he sucks at a mage. The only way he's doing anything worthwhile is if he takes that wand of fireball and sticks it to a wall of amplifiers to make Fireball do damage you'd care about.

NEXT is the last PrC, the Vessel of Dotrak. Dotrak is the nascent God of Technology. He's currently forming and gaining awareness, but his presence is being felt. It's been hinted that one day he'll wake up and then the fireworks will start and the Terrestrial Gods might have the combined power to fight back against the lunar gods.

The shtick in this class is the character doesn't pursue it, it just happens to them if they embody the principles of Dotrak. It seriously recommends that the DM impose the class change if a 10%-chance-of-success secret roll for an apt character succeeds. And then further advancement happens if a 1d6 comes out higher than their current Vessel of Dotrak level; if it doesn't, they get to advance in one of their old classes. If you make it to level 6, you're guaranteed the rest of the levels.

Fuck. That.

HOWEVER. The other stuff is pretty cool. They get cleric casting, and the first sign that Dotrak digs your cogs is you wake up and you don't have a heartbeat because your heart has become a clockwork device. This continues through the class: As they advance, their body slowly changes into living metal--first their nails, then their teeth, then their bones turn into metal (same mechanical effect as the Steamborg surgery), and at level 6 their eyes and skin go metallic and at last they turn into a living construct, but still heal naturally and can be raised and are described as equal parts intricate and gorgeous. Pretty much all of these provide some mechanical benefit or another.

At level 10, they get some superpowers to repair mechanical problems in machines, commune for a while to get a +20 bonus to fixing, identifying, or building technical things.

Right. That's the classes. Some cool fluff on about half of them, but it's speckled with weird-ass entry requirements and a couple of "lol silly player, you don't get to pick what your character becomes!" moments in the Gearwrights and Vessels of Dotrak. There's also nice abilities sprinkled in there--some indications that someone thought about what this class would need to do its purported job.

I'll go into more detail on the spell lists (the Constructor gets a lot of proprietary spells, f'rinstance) when I get there. Next are skills and feats, I believe.

Preview: There's a bunch of mech-related skills, and also a fuckton of feats about piloting a mech. I may skip a lot of these.
Last edited by Maxus on Thu May 21, 2015 3:41 pm, edited 9 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by Nebuchadnezzar »

I've been enjoying this thread, and have been checking out the books as a result. The fluff is OK, and think it's a shame that steamborgs are so terribly done. Stat requirements for PrCs is poor form. The riftwalker is a surprising fast progression caster, getting both Planar Binding/Ally spells. With Precocious Apprentice one could enter it at 3rd as a Wizard1/Ranger1, or a Factotum2.

I haven't really gotten into the mech rules yet, but suspect they're awful.

A couple of characters that seem possibly interesting to stat up:
Riftwalker/Nar Demonbinder/Ultimate Magus
Mark II Steamborg 2/Mech Jockey8/Assimilated5/Mech Symbiote5, with maybe some of the Irontooth PrCs thrown in.
Tik'tok (small living construct with bonuses to mechanical skils) Coglayer/Cogworm/Gearwright (if you handwave some of the fluff), who lives inside the Assimilated mech and voltrons it up.
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Post by Maxus »

I've always wanted to make a halfling mech jockey who pilots a Large-sized mech on Dungeon-delving. Or possibly just an assimilated who does the same thing.

The mech rules are complicated and I'll summarize here:

Mechs comes in five power sources:

Steam
Clockwork
Animated
Necromantic
Slave-powered.

Steam mechs are cheap with low manpower requirements and pretty strong. Clockwork mechs are technically superior, and faster but are fucked up worse by critical hits.

Animated mechs are the semi-golem mechs. Necromantic mechs are throwing enough bodies together and animating the pile. And slave-powered mechs have large crew requirements, but they're very simple to design so orcs use them.

Mechs past a certain size require crew--I think you could go up to Gargantuan before you need crew, with the right mech flavors.

Mechs have "payload units"--how much they can carry. Weapons take up payload units, crew will take up payload units. You can also improve a mech--and getting strength is a lot cheaper than improving its dexterity because dexterity requires a finer degree of engineering, whereas Strength requires you to find some way to pack in some bigger pistons or something.

A mech's cost is determined by its size, variety, and extras, and takes study and construction time

Making a very simple mech, say a Large-sized Steam Powered, takes a DC 30 mech-craft and construction time is measured in man-hours, where you hire laborers and pay them by the day.

I'll go into in more detail when I get to it, but that's your basics. It involves a lot of checking and rechecking your math and making sure everything's calculated correctly.

Also, mechs don't have any sort of CR guidelines.
Last edited by Maxus on Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by sake »

Maxus wrote:Actually, why is it always forests? Or, sometimes, swamps. For the sake of variety, I'd like to see a druid of plains or high mountains or the arctic. Or, how about a druid of deserts? A dried-up leather-skinned, heavy-browed wildman who makes the bugs leave him alone except when he need a crunchy snack and drinks a jackal for breakfast every morning.
Druids of other terrains are like Clerics who follow philosophies or concepts. The crunch says they're perfectly possible but they'll never, ever show up in fluff, and trying to play one is a sure way to get the DM to mark you down as the troublesome player

That said, I think one of the Neverwinter Nights expansions actually had a desert druid. And they went to the trouble of noting how out of the ordinary that was in the dialog tree. She was a npc though.

I've always wanted to play a city themed Druid roughly based on Jack Hawksmoor because the idea of cities as vibrant organisms ever bit as alive and mystical as your standard generic fantasy forest, instead of banal, dead zones of iron, concrete and the eeeeeviiil forces of industry, just sounds neat as fuck.
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Post by Prak »

I've always liked the idea of a necromancer druid founded on the concept that negative energy is a naturally occurring force and the existence of several undead which rise without need for spellcaster intervention.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by darkmaster »

If someone came up to me and asked if I wanted to play this game, my response would be. "Okay, but I'm piloting Big O." And I would shout "BIG O SHOWTIME!" At the start of every fight.
Last edited by darkmaster on Fri Feb 07, 2014 8:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:
darkmaster wrote:Tgdmb.moe, like the gaming den, but we all yell at eachother about wich lucky star character is the cutest.
Fuck you Haruhi is clearly the best moe anime, and we will argue about how Haruhi and Nagato are OP and um... that girl with blond hair? is for shitters.

If you like Lucky Star then I will explain in great detail why Lucky Star is the a shitty shitty anime for shitty shitty people, and how the characters have no interesting abilities at all, and everything is poorly designed especially the skill challenges.
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Post by Maxus »

I'll talk about that when mechs come around, but the short version:

These mechs are intentionally clunky. The leg controls are literally two levers that you alternate. If you wanna do it one-handed, you can get a connector bar installed. It is an incredible display of piloting ability and familiarity with your mech, for example, to be able to make it dance.

But yeah, you can pilot a Gargantuan-sized mech. Which is, well, 32-64 feet tall. Not too bad.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by darkmaster »

But- why would do that? Like- okay, technology levels or whatever, but if the draw of your game is awesome mech combat and a bunch of your classes are based on mechs why would you try to make your mech combat feel slow and clunky. It's not like you could have like- contengent unseen servant spells hooked up to your pilots and making things run more smoothly. That might actually be pretty cool really.
Kaelik wrote:
darkmaster wrote:Tgdmb.moe, like the gaming den, but we all yell at eachother about wich lucky star character is the cutest.
Fuck you Haruhi is clearly the best moe anime, and we will argue about how Haruhi and Nagato are OP and um... that girl with blond hair? is for shitters.

If you like Lucky Star then I will explain in great detail why Lucky Star is the a shitty shitty anime for shitty shitty people, and how the characters have no interesting abilities at all, and everything is poorly designed especially the skill challenges.
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Post by Starmaker »

hyzmarca wrote:No, that doesn't make sense because there are Evil Druids. Evil Nature totally supports Evil Druids.
me wrote:not "things found in nature evil people emulate"
You got it backwards. Evil nature supports evil druids, but evil druids can and do exist in neutral nature. You don't need to go all--
Horses are good. Wolves are evil. Dogs are Good [atoned wolves]. Cats are evil. Bees are good. Wasps are evil. Plains are good. Swamps are evil. Snow-topped mountains are good. Volcanoes are evil.
--to have social darwinist or eco-terrorist or Monsanto druids. This can theoretically work in a human-centric outer-plane-like paradisiacal/hellish supernatural setting where there are Good places populated by fluffy bunnies who feed on manna and Evil places where everything feeds on everything else in the most visually unappealing way. But not in any other world that is significantly less supernatural and/or less human-centric. If nature is aligned, you cannot have mundane animals anymore.
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Post by Maxus »

To show the technology levels. And to be non-anime, I suppose.

In-setting, they haven't come up with the assembly line yet. Pretty much every mech, even ones of the same broad function and class, are made uniquely. There's also a big rivalry between magic and the new technology, which I personally find stupid and counter-productive in a setting where old traditions are cast aside in favor of whatever works.

Anyway, I'll get to it in due time. Gotta get through Skills, Feats, and Gear first.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Post by name_here »

But once that's done, well, you have this bitchin' body and you're explicitly described as being as aware of it as a normal person is of their. You feel hot, cold, wind, pain...And, presumeably, can fight like hell in the thing.
No kidding. As I recall, you get +20 mech BaB in a short progression.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
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Post by Prak »

Maxus wrote:I'll talk about that when mechs come around, but the short version:

These mechs are intentionally clunky. The leg controls are literally two levers that you alternate. If you wanna do it one-handed, you can get a connector bar installed. It is an incredible display of piloting ability and familiarity with your mech, for example, to be able to make it dance.

But yeah, you can pilot a Gargantuan-sized mech. Which is, well, 32-64 feet tall. Not too bad.
Or you swap out levers for an elliptical strapped to your own actual legs...
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Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by name_here »

As I recall, Anime mech control can be created by extensive steam power use, although they're pretty big and clumsy.

If you have enough steam powers I think you can actually have the mech operate by remote voice commands, but more likely you'll have voice control to switch weaponry to autonomously targeting enemies and firing automatically. It's like five steam powers to make it voice controlled fire itself, reload itself, take visual input, and distinguish friend from foe (somewhat poorly, hence the voice control to switch it on and off) might need a sixth to traverse the turret.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
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Post by Slade »

I can't wait till you talk about weapons!
Some of the weaponry reminds me of 40K like the Chainsword, etc.
Unlike the steam gun, the steam pistol in later splat doesn't require waiting to fire again (or doesn't mention it). So it is actually good.

Of the large mechs: Ashigaru, Sensei (but is animated version), Under Breather; cheapest is Under Breather but it isn't that good (also lowers Dex by 2).
Ashigaru at least boosts strength (+6 Str).

Oh, all the large mechs seem to be Power Armors not normal mechs so they boost attributes.
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Post by Maxus »

Skills and Feats

The major new skill here is Craft (Mechcraft). It's the major skill for designing and repairing mechs, and it's also used for the new gear--the steam-powered guns and chainswords and so on. Some of these get inventive, when they're not ripping off Warhammer.

Image
Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! Souls for the Lawyers!

Anyway. Mechcraft is going to come up a lot. Coglayers can certainly earn their keep in that regard.

Then you get two new Knowledges--Mechs and Steam Engines. And Handle Animal can be used to influence constructs by Clockwork Rangers, like wild empathy but with gears. Nothing special.

Lastly, there's Mech Pilot. You have to beat certain DCs, but Mech Jockeys and their prestige classes get enough bonuses that they can just do that, probably. Even so, the DCs are susceptible to lots of modifiers and it makes sure you know mechs aren't precision instruments.

On to feats.

First is Combine Spell, a metamagic spell in which casters can all cast the same spell to make a bigger version of the same spell in some respect. Which is a nice idea, actually. I'll quote it here.
Combine Spell wrote: Combine Spell
(Metamagic)
You can cast spells that combine with the same spell cast by other casters or yourself, in order to generate greater areas of effect.

Benefit: All spellcasters involved must declare before casting that their spells are to be combined and what effect is to be achieved. If the spells are cast simultaneously (by multiple spellcasters) or in immediate succession (by one caster), one aspect of the spell’s range, target, or duration doubles for each spell cast. These doublings use the traditional d20 system of incremental doubling (e.g., x2 twice is x3, not x4).

Combined ranges and durations double normally, as do targets that affect areas or numbers. In the case of “creature” targets, the spell’s potential target size rises by one size increment per extra spell cast. (Normally “creature” target spells are limited to creatures no more than twice the caster’s size.) For example, three endure elements spells cast by a Medium caster could be used to affect a Gargantuan mech.

All spellcasters involved must have the Combine Spell feat. This feat is commonly used to cast spells capable of affecting mechs. See page 143 for more details.
See the shenanigans if even two casters cooperate.

Leaving aside playing co-op Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, there's the item creation feats. Then Gearhead, which gives you two more Steam Powers. Which is something you're going to take if you get steam powers.

A feat to move through gear forests with less penalties. Next!

Then there's the various mech bonus feats. There's chains of these, but they all add up to "You can treat a mech as being less clunky." The Mechdancer fluff says people with this degree of skill even have dance competitions for the hell of it.

I approve.

My favorite in here is the Siege Weapon Proficiency. Because, see, a lot of mechs don't have fancy steampowered cannons. They have ballista or catapults. And you can use them when they aren't found on mechs!

The last two feats of interest are Moonwatcher, which lets you make a fairly easy check to predict the lunar rains, and a feat that gives you a change of a random small mutation once a week that may be beneficial or harmful but it's a +2 or -2, with a 50% chance of doing nothing. And the mutation goes away and another takes its place. You have to worship some crazy lunar god of change who demands you make changes to something longstanding. Who does that sound like?
I'm delicately alluding to this guy.
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They used to be men, but their servitude to their dread master has made them something both more and less than a man. They never sleep and they're utterly ruthless in the service of their dark lord. They are Game Workshop's lawyers. And Goodman Games was fortunate indeed not to draw GW's burning gaze
So that's it. A short update this time. A few skills, and feats to let you use a mech to do more things than walk or attack. And a couple of proficiencies and crafting feats.

Next up: Spells and Steam Powers.
Last edited by Maxus on Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:55 am, edited 5 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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