So I've been helping an acquaintance get a hold on Dragonmech--he's really interested in the setting--and while I've been helping him with the rules as written, I've been thinking about how you would make it Tome-compatible.
As stands, even I can tell
-The major 'steam-focused' classes are mostly centered around one thing.
-the Coglayer is all about, "I'm a skillmonkey gadgeteer and I build things!" while their best bet, as far as I can tell, is to put all their steampowers into one damage-dealing device and use that for combat, though the design intent seems to be that the Coglayer indeed be the skillmonkey. Dragonmech itself is more skill-focused than is usual.
-The Steamborg's major feature is that it can get +10 to some attribute over 20 levels. Like Strength, Dexterity, Attack rolls, or melee Damage rolls, or Natural Armor. But, in its defense, it's probably going to have pretty damn good hit points, because you've put its highest stat in Con.
As far as I can tell, the immediate things that'd need doing would be...
-Tome-style feats and skill feats.
-Coglayer needs more stuff to do. Or to be even more awesome at what it already does.
-The Artificial Parts should probably work like scaling feats and have a lot more options than "One particular stat goes up by a point".
Hell, the Steamborg could probably be broken in at least two, and probably three classes:
--One that's sort of a 20-level, tech-powered version of the Fiendish Brute (with its own artificial parts list mainly focusing on stuff big heavy bruisers would care about, like Str and Natural Armor increases),
--one that's a skillmonkey/specialist (again, with its own artificial parts list),
-- one that's middle ground (who can choose some features from either side and gets a few unique things of his own.)
But, hell, that's a lot to do and I'm not even sure how large the ability bonuses from Artificial Parts should be, or even what they should scale to.
Dragonmech, Tome-style?
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Dragonmech, Tome-style?
Last edited by Maxus on Mon Jun 23, 2008 3:15 pm, edited 1 time 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!
--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!
You've skipped the mech pilot. The best thing to do with that might be to eliminate them entirely and let everyone pilot mechs or let noone pilot mechs. Having a specific mech class built in is a lot like having a diplomancer, only much harder to houserule away.
-the mech pilot's entire set of class abilities is about being the only character capable of competing in the main focus of the setting. The mech pilot is either the only person doing level appropriate things or fighting like a cohort warrior. This is not going to work at any gaming table, or hurts martial classes majorly. On the other hand, just letting the mech jockey have a mech that makes him level appropriate next to a melee fighter or barbarian might work, or might just be a much more effective version of "I attack. I hit. I do some damage. I attack. I miss. I attack. I hit. I do some damage."
-the clockwork ranger is the same as a regular ranger in raw combat ability, but with a different environmental focus. If anyone cares, start from a tome-style ranger.
-The stalker has no differentiation until level 10. Fix that or just add to the regular rogue. Diversity in build doesn't help any individual rogue, unless forgery, appraise and sneakily disabling mechs is crucial to your character concept.
add to your list:
-replace mech system on the character side. establish what is level appropriate for characters to do in a mech and give either a universal ability or class specific level appropriate things to do in a mech.
-fold stalker into regular rogue (just my vote).
-fix clockwork ranger, if anyone cares.
-the mech pilot's entire set of class abilities is about being the only character capable of competing in the main focus of the setting. The mech pilot is either the only person doing level appropriate things or fighting like a cohort warrior. This is not going to work at any gaming table, or hurts martial classes majorly. On the other hand, just letting the mech jockey have a mech that makes him level appropriate next to a melee fighter or barbarian might work, or might just be a much more effective version of "I attack. I hit. I do some damage. I attack. I miss. I attack. I hit. I do some damage."
-the clockwork ranger is the same as a regular ranger in raw combat ability, but with a different environmental focus. If anyone cares, start from a tome-style ranger.
-The stalker has no differentiation until level 10. Fix that or just add to the regular rogue. Diversity in build doesn't help any individual rogue, unless forgery, appraise and sneakily disabling mechs is crucial to your character concept.
add to your list:
-replace mech system on the character side. establish what is level appropriate for characters to do in a mech and give either a universal ability or class specific level appropriate things to do in a mech.
-fold stalker into regular rogue (just my vote).
-fix clockwork ranger, if anyone cares.
alternitive: give the mech a borelauncher/ have the other classes do the sort of cool stuff mentioned by the creator in the back of the book. actually, the book itself mentions several solutions to the mech jockey problem, such as having two seperate teams, one for the mech, one for ground operations (requires a large mech), or letting everyone man turrets, generally by making mech weapon use a free feat and having no specalized mech jockies (again, large mech).
I've done the home team/away team thing before.
I left the mech jocket out deliberately because, as far as I can tell, they work okay at their assigned role--piloting a mech. So not many complaints about the mech jockey itself, just that other people should be able to get some talent at piloting a mech.
Hell, I've seen someone play a Halfling Mech jockey who piloted a Large mech around as a melee tank. That thing was supped-up like you wouldn't believe...
I left the mech jocket out deliberately because, as far as I can tell, they work okay at their assigned role--piloting a mech. So not many complaints about the mech jockey itself, just that other people should be able to get some talent at piloting a mech.
Hell, I've seen someone play a Halfling Mech jockey who piloted a Large mech around as a melee tank. That thing was supped-up like you wouldn't believe...
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!
--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!
Except that then the mech jockey doesn't have all the special tome powers of everybody else and is therefore underpowered. What would work nicely is to roll the coglayer and mech jockey together, with the concept in-mech being that he deeply understands the workings of his mech; he vents nasty hot stuff from the engines, gets better grappling in the mech, his overruns have special rider effects; in general, he uses the fact that he is in a mech to his advantage. Outside of a mech, he works as a current coglayer - one big, crazy thing he built himself makes him level appropriate, although he doesn't entirely suck without it. Overall, the concept is based on deeper understanding of the technology that anyone can use, but he exploits weird quirls to gain an advantage.
The alternative, at least for the coglayer, is to give him a limit on his single largest device, and then some sort of pool of declarable steam powers. In-game, he pulls the perfect device out of his pants and announces that he "just happened" to build it last week. Fairly classic mad scientist/super agent technique for dealing with scary situations. This coglayer still has the issue of being very easy to do wrong, especially if the player doesn't get the main device needing to be what makes him a level-appropriate character when everybody else can give knockout punches to dragons and summon up efreeti.
the borelauncher solution doesn't really work out, since it leads to either an incredibly boring role for melee characters if the mechs are small and simple, or one group doing a dungeon crawl in a mech while the mech jockey plays a game of battlemech. The two halves become separate, until one part is done and the whole battle is arbitrarily declared over, at least from one half's point of view.
The alternative, at least for the coglayer, is to give him a limit on his single largest device, and then some sort of pool of declarable steam powers. In-game, he pulls the perfect device out of his pants and announces that he "just happened" to build it last week. Fairly classic mad scientist/super agent technique for dealing with scary situations. This coglayer still has the issue of being very easy to do wrong, especially if the player doesn't get the main device needing to be what makes him a level-appropriate character when everybody else can give knockout punches to dragons and summon up efreeti.
the borelauncher solution doesn't really work out, since it leads to either an incredibly boring role for melee characters if the mechs are small and simple, or one group doing a dungeon crawl in a mech while the mech jockey plays a game of battlemech. The two halves become separate, until one part is done and the whole battle is arbitrarily declared over, at least from one half's point of view.
Hi guys, I found this thread about DragonMech and just want to offer some of my opinions.
1) Some of the premises of DragonMech don't make much sense. Supposedly, the lunar rains raised hell and havoc for the inhabitants of Highpoint. And people were powerless against the lunar rains and monstrosities until some mysterious dwarf shows up with blueprints of mechs. And suddenly there was hope again.
There are massive problems with this story. Wizards, clerics, and druids exist in this setting as evidenced by the special rules and various background stories. What's more, high level casters do exist. Even if you accept that most clerics are depowered by the wars between terrestrial and lunar gods, there is no reason to believe that the few high level wizards and clerics on the planet can't kick lunar dragon ass. Mechs shouldn't be needed.
There is also the question of how the mechs even came to be in this time of chaos. The whole theme of mechs is that they are nonmagical (except for animated and undead mechs, the majority of mechs are nonmagically powered). But how the hell did the dwarfs, humans, and orcs build these giant machines without magic or technological infrastructure in such a short amount of time? Furthermore, the amount of coal that the steam powered mechs consume is staggering. There's really no way to fuel so many mechs without some sort of modern mining infrastructure, assuming no magic is used.
2) Are mechs really that powerful? Most of them are merely brutes with a lot of hit dice, a big sword, and a big gun. The weapons' damage are that great either. Assuming lunar dragons fight stupidly like melee brutes, then the mechs should do okay. But can mechs handle magical tactics? Mech tactics are simply too limited compare to the traditional spellcasters.
3) Anyone find the mech combat rules needlessly complex?
The way I see it, for the world of DragonMech to exist, the world cannot be a traditional D&D setting in the past. The ability to build mechs without magic is beyond the means of the citizens of this world, and mechs themselves are a waste of resource considering that traditional magic is more than adequate against the lunar threat.
1) Some of the premises of DragonMech don't make much sense. Supposedly, the lunar rains raised hell and havoc for the inhabitants of Highpoint. And people were powerless against the lunar rains and monstrosities until some mysterious dwarf shows up with blueprints of mechs. And suddenly there was hope again.
There are massive problems with this story. Wizards, clerics, and druids exist in this setting as evidenced by the special rules and various background stories. What's more, high level casters do exist. Even if you accept that most clerics are depowered by the wars between terrestrial and lunar gods, there is no reason to believe that the few high level wizards and clerics on the planet can't kick lunar dragon ass. Mechs shouldn't be needed.
There is also the question of how the mechs even came to be in this time of chaos. The whole theme of mechs is that they are nonmagical (except for animated and undead mechs, the majority of mechs are nonmagically powered). But how the hell did the dwarfs, humans, and orcs build these giant machines without magic or technological infrastructure in such a short amount of time? Furthermore, the amount of coal that the steam powered mechs consume is staggering. There's really no way to fuel so many mechs without some sort of modern mining infrastructure, assuming no magic is used.
2) Are mechs really that powerful? Most of them are merely brutes with a lot of hit dice, a big sword, and a big gun. The weapons' damage are that great either. Assuming lunar dragons fight stupidly like melee brutes, then the mechs should do okay. But can mechs handle magical tactics? Mech tactics are simply too limited compare to the traditional spellcasters.
3) Anyone find the mech combat rules needlessly complex?
The way I see it, for the world of DragonMech to exist, the world cannot be a traditional D&D setting in the past. The ability to build mechs without magic is beyond the means of the citizens of this world, and mechs themselves are a waste of resource considering that traditional magic is more than adequate against the lunar threat.
Something like that.
They do make a point about there being no such thing as an assembly line yet, so every part is handmade.
Problem is, I think, that there are far more lunar monsters than there are high-level wizards (who are mostly elves) to combat them. Furthermore, the Lunar dragons have Spell Resistance. I'm pretty sure it'd be too dicey for comfort--because defeating a lunar creature is a drop in the bucket, but losing a level 18 Arch Mage is a major loss.
Yeah, the mech rules are waaay complex. I don't even remember half of them.
And the reason the mechs came about is, supposedly, the technology has been stored (a lot of the supplements go into detail about the inner workings of the Gearwright's Guild), and that dwarf showed up with something people could manage to build.
They do make a point about there being no such thing as an assembly line yet, so every part is handmade.
Problem is, I think, that there are far more lunar monsters than there are high-level wizards (who are mostly elves) to combat them. Furthermore, the Lunar dragons have Spell Resistance. I'm pretty sure it'd be too dicey for comfort--because defeating a lunar creature is a drop in the bucket, but losing a level 18 Arch Mage is a major loss.
Yeah, the mech rules are waaay complex. I don't even remember half of them.
And the reason the mechs came about is, supposedly, the technology has been stored (a lot of the supplements go into detail about the inner workings of the Gearwright's Guild), and that dwarf showed up with something people could manage to build.
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!
--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!
Casters have options beyond save-or-die spells. Planar binding and shapechange are obvious alternatives.Maxus wrote: Problem is, I think, that there are far more lunar monsters than there are high-level wizards (who are mostly elves) to combat them. Furthermore, the Lunar dragons have Spell Resistance. I'm pretty sure it'd be too dicey for comfort--because defeating a lunar creature is a drop in the bucket, but losing a level 18 Arch Mage is a major loss.
Most of the complexity comes from a misguide attempt to emulate realism. They should have just made mechs that function as normal Constructs with the exception that there is one pilot inside, and that pilot controls the mech. Piloting complexity can be removed by just saying the pilot have perfect control of the mech (through magical neural networking or similar justification), or build in some limitations into the Construct as special abilities (e.g., can only take either a move action or attack action each round). The damage threshold stuff should either be just be gotten rid of or massively simplified to effects like "if your mech hitpoint is below XX%, you take Y penalty to whatever."Yeah, the mech rules are waaay complex. I don't even remember half of them.
As cool as the idea of giant machines running around skewering magical invaders is, mechs simply don't not make any sense in this world. I see mech armies as useful in defending the masses from lunar enemies, but these mechs will be created by Wizards, Clerics, and Druids using magic and item creation abilities. The mechs will have to be golems that are modified to be controlled by a pilot in a cockpit instead of an elemental spirit. The cockpit itself is probably enchanted against various attacks and intrusions (e.g., teleportation effects, mind-affecting effects) to protect the pilot against magic. Mech-building will have to be made affordable by some "newly-discovered" item creation rules. And mech cannons can be made of giant evocation wands that cast evocation spells that don't suck.