Well, no, not really. But if you're told "Hey, you can have your own mech, just work out the cost and stat it up!" and you go "SURE THANG! :DDDD" and then hit the rules and have to run through it a few times to make sure the cost is right, well, that's when you wish you had some advance warning than "That day, four hours before gametime".
Advance warning I'm endeavoring to provide.
I dislike the excessive bookkeeping in running a mech and feel like there could be ways to streamline this.
I'd also have to check the Lunar Dragons statblock when I hit the monsters section, and try to see how a couple of the sample mechs work against them.
[OSSR] Dragonmech
Moderator: Moderators
Last edited by Maxus on Tue Feb 11, 2014 6:21 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!
I think this is why the rules seem to encourage Mega Zord style multi-pilot mechs, so that it's "The Party's Mech" rather than any one particular player's and everyone works on it together.
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.
The problem is that the default lineup of mechs is fairly thin. I mean, yeah, a couple hours for making your mech is perfectly acceptable. A bit less so when you realize you're going to have to do it again when you want to upgrade your mech, but not too bad. But any faction has at most a couple mechs statted out.Seerow wrote:Am I weird for not minding taking a few hours on a major thing like a personalized mech?
I mean sure, I'm sure the rules are convoluted spread out across a few dozen tables and have tons of options. But honestly, that is probably going to be what makes the book worth the money to me.
For the same reason that after buying the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, I was not disappointed that my Stronghold took me more than 10 minutes to slap together. My group and I spent several days deciding what we wanted to do with the a stronghold, and repeated that every time we got more money to dump into it. And we had a blast doing so.
It's entirely too time-consuming if you want to whip up a Battletech-style lance of mixed types. That Mech I made was not really a particularly interesting one; it had one or two weapons and few special features.
Also, there's enough interdependent variables that you're liable to screw up if you do it by hand. Actually, I suddenly have the urge to write a mech creation program. That would fix my primary objections.
edit: unfortunately, the online PDF bits are too incomplete to work from and I don't have my copy with me. So much for that idea.
Last edited by name_here on Tue Feb 11, 2014 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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.
The price certainly encourage it (assuming WBL), and a large mech can have something for everyone to do on it--a gun or weapon for everyone, and ports for the wizards and archers.
It never spells that out, but that is about the only way you're going to get anything over gargantuan, in practical terms.
It never spells that out, but that is about the only way you're going to get anything over gargantuan, in practical terms.
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!
-
radthemad4
- Duke
- Posts: 2073
- Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:20 pm
And we haven't even gotten to the setting yet! Highpoint is really pretty cool even prior to the Lunar Rain and Second Age of Walkers.
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.
The World of Dragonmech
In which my 300-level geology classes cry out for vengeance.
Did you guys have a nice break? Good.
The subtitle should clue you in. I respect Goodman Games for this game--on the whole--but there's occasions when I cringe at fantasy maps.
And my inner proof reader takes off his green sunvisor and facepalms at descriptions. Seriously. It starts off talking about how Highpoint is a "Continental landmass".
CON-TIN-ENT YOU JACKASSES. CALL IT A CONTINENT. IT LEAVES OFF TEN WHOLE LETTERS AND A SPACE.
Other 'landmasses' (*shudder*) are to the east and west, but Highpoint's the one with the mechs. Got it? Good.
Now is something I like: It mentions that thanks to the moon and other factors, the seas rise and fall 30 feet over the course of the year (the poles freeze a lot of the ice). Likewise, Highpoint society basically has two seasons: Low-water and high-water. A lot of people are nomads, trade routes are seasonal and adapted to these fluctuations in water level, and there's plenty of amphibious/aquatic variations of the standard races. I like that. Probably because I've always sort of liked the aquatic races for some reason.
The geomorphology is Highpoint is a series of plateaus, and has a high average elevation, the western half is mostly desert, the eastern half is much wetter and more habitable. The Wet Desert is a broad, flat low-lying area that gets covered, if I recall, in shallow salt water every year. There's the "Endless river" which runs the length of the continent, even a thousand miles underground (and appears to connect two oceans).
Folks, rivers don't connect oceans. Just FYI.
There's a calender listing the months/growing seasons. It says Highpoint has a year of 252 days. Which sounds cool and all, but can cause problems. For one, that's almost a third off the year. A kid 12 Highpoint years old is 8 on Earth. Keep that in mind, folks.
Next is a note on the lunar cycle and how the moon can take up 3/4 of the sky in the right spot, and you can see details on the surface even on the parts that're shaded. When it's full, night's about as bright as day.
Anyway. It does have an interesting take. There's five major elevations in the setting. The moon, the surface, the subsurface (going to about a half-mile down, has the dwarf kingdoms in its area), the 'underdeep' and then you have the Stygian Depths, which no one really knew about under the lunar rains sent people trying to came underground and people went deeper than they ever had.
It recaps the wars of territory when the rain started, and mentions the Stygian Depths again. there's also a table for rolling the lunar rains on a d20. A 1 means clear skies and folks have a party.
And that's it for this section: Next is the Highpoint Gazetteer.
In which my 300-level geology classes cry out for vengeance.
Did you guys have a nice break? Good.
The subtitle should clue you in. I respect Goodman Games for this game--on the whole--but there's occasions when I cringe at fantasy maps.
And my inner proof reader takes off his green sunvisor and facepalms at descriptions. Seriously. It starts off talking about how Highpoint is a "Continental landmass".
CON-TIN-ENT YOU JACKASSES. CALL IT A CONTINENT. IT LEAVES OFF TEN WHOLE LETTERS AND A SPACE.
Other 'landmasses' (*shudder*) are to the east and west, but Highpoint's the one with the mechs. Got it? Good.
Now is something I like: It mentions that thanks to the moon and other factors, the seas rise and fall 30 feet over the course of the year (the poles freeze a lot of the ice). Likewise, Highpoint society basically has two seasons: Low-water and high-water. A lot of people are nomads, trade routes are seasonal and adapted to these fluctuations in water level, and there's plenty of amphibious/aquatic variations of the standard races. I like that. Probably because I've always sort of liked the aquatic races for some reason.
The geomorphology is Highpoint is a series of plateaus, and has a high average elevation, the western half is mostly desert, the eastern half is much wetter and more habitable. The Wet Desert is a broad, flat low-lying area that gets covered, if I recall, in shallow salt water every year. There's the "Endless river" which runs the length of the continent, even a thousand miles underground (and appears to connect two oceans).
Folks, rivers don't connect oceans. Just FYI.
There's a calender listing the months/growing seasons. It says Highpoint has a year of 252 days. Which sounds cool and all, but can cause problems. For one, that's almost a third off the year. A kid 12 Highpoint years old is 8 on Earth. Keep that in mind, folks.
Next is a note on the lunar cycle and how the moon can take up 3/4 of the sky in the right spot, and you can see details on the surface even on the parts that're shaded. When it's full, night's about as bright as day.
Anyway. It does have an interesting take. There's five major elevations in the setting. The moon, the surface, the subsurface (going to about a half-mile down, has the dwarf kingdoms in its area), the 'underdeep' and then you have the Stygian Depths, which no one really knew about under the lunar rains sent people trying to came underground and people went deeper than they ever had.
It recaps the wars of territory when the rain started, and mentions the Stygian Depths again. there's also a table for rolling the lunar rains on a d20. A 1 means clear skies and folks have a party.
And that's it for this section: Next is the Highpoint Gazetteer.
Last edited by Maxus on Fri Feb 14, 2014 7:21 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!
--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!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limitNext is a note on the lunar cycle and how the moon can take up 3/4 on the sky in the right spot
Indeed. That would be why the moon is getting torn apart by tidal forces.
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.
1: The planet would be tidally locked, or at least 3:2 synchronous or something.
2: That makes the planet spin really fast, because the moon is very close.
3: The bits off the moon would form a ring, not bombard the planet, as they're all still in orbit.
4: "Tides" are what's tearing apart the moon, it's also not good for the planet.
5: 3/4 of the sky is ... well, it's much bigger than you, you're on the moon and it's Saturn.
Like the geology stuff, there's a lot of problems with the astro-physics. Moons don't do that.
Really, if you want to bombard a planet with bits, have a comet pass close by and disintegrate around the sun. Remains spread out from a big chunks around every 60 years until it's finally a tame light show once a year. Sit yourself along the timeline somewhere liveable.
2: That makes the planet spin really fast, because the moon is very close.
3: The bits off the moon would form a ring, not bombard the planet, as they're all still in orbit.
4: "Tides" are what's tearing apart the moon, it's also not good for the planet.
5: 3/4 of the sky is ... well, it's much bigger than you, you're on the moon and it's Saturn.
Like the geology stuff, there's a lot of problems with the astro-physics. Moons don't do that.
Really, if you want to bombard a planet with bits, have a comet pass close by and disintegrate around the sun. Remains spread out from a big chunks around every 60 years until it's finally a tame light show once a year. Sit yourself along the timeline somewhere liveable.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
Maaaa~aaagii~iictussock wrote:1: The planet would be tidally locked, or at least 3:2 synchronous or something.
2: That makes the planet spin really fast, because the moon is very close.
3: The bits off the moon would form a ring, not bombard the planet, as they're all still in orbit.
4: "Tides" are what's tearing apart the moon, it's also not good for the planet.
5: 3/4 of the sky is ... well, it's much bigger than you, you're on the moon and it's Saturn.
Like the geology stuff, there's a lot of problems with the astro-physics. Moons don't do that.
Really, if you want to bombard a planet with bits, have a comet pass close by and disintegrate around the sun. Remains spread out from a big chunks around every 60 years until it's finally a tame light show once a year. Sit yourself along the timeline somewhere liveable.
Phlebotinum : fleh-bot-ih-nuhm • A glossary of RPG/Dennizen terminology • Favorite replies: [1]
nockermensch wrote:Advantage will lead to dicepools in D&D. Remember, you read this here first!
Highpoint Gazetteer
In which a lot of places are listed and contradictions happen.
The first section here makes sure to reiterate that civilization was essentially nomadic in Highpoint, what with the high-water/low-water thing, so living on the coast wasn't a go and natural resources depended on the season.
Then it clarifies that dwarves and elves were the ones to make permanent settlements. Wait a second. They need to decide what counts as civilization. I mean, okay, if you said "the elves and dwarves made permanent settlements, most everyone else was nomadic."
Then it contradicts itself even more and talks about loose city-states on the Endless Plains (the major region), either made by or dependent on the nomads, etc, etc. Consistency, folks. You can make the setting any way you want, just describe it coherently. It also doesn't help that it describes the Good Old Days a lot. That said, the good old days do play a part here: Evidently with a lot of people used to wandering, they adapted quickly to living out of a mech for shelter.
Anyway, supposedly the nomads only had a dozen cities, and only four of them are left.
The first, Glatek is a trading city built -into- the ground by humans and it's an important spot for this amphibious race called the slathem. It's interesting enough, and survived the rains by being largely underground.. The wealthiest part of town is the deepest, and the slum is at the surface. It mentions that it still makes money and both the humans and dwarven mechdoms want to bring it over to their side; then it does some elf-wank with "the elves consider it an ally and not a conquest"
The next city, Edge, got its own location book later on. It's built on the cliff beside the waterfall where the Endless River comes back out onto the surface. It's a thousand-foot drop, and comes out of the side of the cliff rather than the top of it. It's another mercantile mecca, and there's a lot of ingenuity given over how to give visitors a trip up or down the cliff in exchange for money. There's porters, stairways, wizards with wands of Fly (I'm surprised Dimension Door doesn't get a mention). The cliff has also provided some protection from the rains, and the locals think the god of travelers looks out for them. It has people on top of the cliff, people at the bottom of the cliff, people on the walls, and the dwarves and drow both have a trading enclave on either side of the river at the top of the waterfall (which, I repeat, is still underground).
Living here would keep your cardiovascular system intact, I bet you.
The third city is Stilt City. It's built on the flood plains where the High-water can cause problems, and they got around this by building their city on stilts. Which is actually a thing real people do when they live in places where water level rises can be a pain in the ass.
That's the Gulf of Mexico on the right. Hurricane territory.
There's a lot about how they set up lattices to hold mud from the floods and all and it's pretty cool but, again, I squint at the opening to this and its insistence that humans are nomadic and no one lived by the ocean because of the 30-foot difference between high-water and low-water. Yet these folks are humans who built a city in the flood zone--and made the flood work for them. AND it has a feudal government with a king, after earlier stating there were no human kingdoms, just tribes and territories that could be called city-states. But there's a city which contradicts every one of those claims.
The fourth city, Chemak, is this super-fortified city built in eight concentric rings, which are each divided into eight segments. It goes on about their ruthless militaristic pragmatism, and how they once lured an invading orc army into a segment, dropped all the gates, and burned the buildings inside down with the orcs in there and shot the surviving orcs full of arrows.
Hardcore, guys.
Anyway, it's been worked on for about 3,000 years and it's a badass fortress in its own right, and solidly-built enough that it stood up the meteor rains.
Next is a list of a few of the destroyed cities: Some tree city built by the elves, a city built on a mountain (wrecked by five lunar dragons that came on a vendetta after the leader of the humans managed to organize people there to bind and mortally wound a lunar dragon, which fell dead out of the sky some little ways away, on the leader's house), and some mage-city which claimed the constant assault wore down the mages (uh-huh, sure, right) and they took their library with them in a disappearing act.
The library sounds sort of dumb. Supposedly it only had a couple hundred books, but the books were two feet wide and had pages three feet across; props for bigger is better but I've had to help push recycling carts full of bound paper and that shit gets heavy. The site of the city still has a lot of magic items in nooks and crannies, so it's a prime target for adventurers.
That's the cities here. Next on our tables are the nomads themselves. Still in the Gazetteer.
In which a lot of places are listed and contradictions happen.
The first section here makes sure to reiterate that civilization was essentially nomadic in Highpoint, what with the high-water/low-water thing, so living on the coast wasn't a go and natural resources depended on the season.
Then it clarifies that dwarves and elves were the ones to make permanent settlements. Wait a second. They need to decide what counts as civilization. I mean, okay, if you said "the elves and dwarves made permanent settlements, most everyone else was nomadic."
Then it contradicts itself even more and talks about loose city-states on the Endless Plains (the major region), either made by or dependent on the nomads, etc, etc. Consistency, folks. You can make the setting any way you want, just describe it coherently. It also doesn't help that it describes the Good Old Days a lot. That said, the good old days do play a part here: Evidently with a lot of people used to wandering, they adapted quickly to living out of a mech for shelter.
Anyway, supposedly the nomads only had a dozen cities, and only four of them are left.
The first, Glatek is a trading city built -into- the ground by humans and it's an important spot for this amphibious race called the slathem. It's interesting enough, and survived the rains by being largely underground.. The wealthiest part of town is the deepest, and the slum is at the surface. It mentions that it still makes money and both the humans and dwarven mechdoms want to bring it over to their side; then it does some elf-wank with "the elves consider it an ally and not a conquest"
The next city, Edge, got its own location book later on. It's built on the cliff beside the waterfall where the Endless River comes back out onto the surface. It's a thousand-foot drop, and comes out of the side of the cliff rather than the top of it. It's another mercantile mecca, and there's a lot of ingenuity given over how to give visitors a trip up or down the cliff in exchange for money. There's porters, stairways, wizards with wands of Fly (I'm surprised Dimension Door doesn't get a mention). The cliff has also provided some protection from the rains, and the locals think the god of travelers looks out for them. It has people on top of the cliff, people at the bottom of the cliff, people on the walls, and the dwarves and drow both have a trading enclave on either side of the river at the top of the waterfall (which, I repeat, is still underground).
Living here would keep your cardiovascular system intact, I bet you.
The third city is Stilt City. It's built on the flood plains where the High-water can cause problems, and they got around this by building their city on stilts. Which is actually a thing real people do when they live in places where water level rises can be a pain in the ass.
That's the Gulf of Mexico on the right. Hurricane territory.
There's a lot about how they set up lattices to hold mud from the floods and all and it's pretty cool but, again, I squint at the opening to this and its insistence that humans are nomadic and no one lived by the ocean because of the 30-foot difference between high-water and low-water. Yet these folks are humans who built a city in the flood zone--and made the flood work for them. AND it has a feudal government with a king, after earlier stating there were no human kingdoms, just tribes and territories that could be called city-states. But there's a city which contradicts every one of those claims.
The fourth city, Chemak, is this super-fortified city built in eight concentric rings, which are each divided into eight segments. It goes on about their ruthless militaristic pragmatism, and how they once lured an invading orc army into a segment, dropped all the gates, and burned the buildings inside down with the orcs in there and shot the surviving orcs full of arrows.
Hardcore, guys.
Anyway, it's been worked on for about 3,000 years and it's a badass fortress in its own right, and solidly-built enough that it stood up the meteor rains.
Next is a list of a few of the destroyed cities: Some tree city built by the elves, a city built on a mountain (wrecked by five lunar dragons that came on a vendetta after the leader of the humans managed to organize people there to bind and mortally wound a lunar dragon, which fell dead out of the sky some little ways away, on the leader's house), and some mage-city which claimed the constant assault wore down the mages (uh-huh, sure, right) and they took their library with them in a disappearing act.
The library sounds sort of dumb. Supposedly it only had a couple hundred books, but the books were two feet wide and had pages three feet across; props for bigger is better but I've had to help push recycling carts full of bound paper and that shit gets heavy. The site of the city still has a lot of magic items in nooks and crannies, so it's a prime target for adventurers.
That's the cities here. Next on our tables are the nomads themselves. Still in the Gazetteer.
Last edited by Maxus on Mon Feb 17, 2014 1:55 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!
--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!
Alright so speaking of cities, how the fuck are you supposed to make city mechs? I get the rules for them. make a mech, but bigger. The problem I see is the craft(mechcraft) DC is like in the 60s, or higher. What the fuck? And there's one definitely statted out in the table of contents. "the construction (of nedderpik) was supervised by the three junior gearwrights he left behind." What? How?
Did they have a level 20 dwarf make one of those cheesy +skill ring? Did they get a bunch of his friends to slap their ass with aid another? Did a psion do it with that sadism+something combo?
Did they have a level 20 dwarf make one of those cheesy +skill ring? Did they get a bunch of his friends to slap their ass with aid another? Did a psion do it with that sadism+something combo?
It's not that out of reach.
First off, skill ranks are class level +3. Coglayers get their class level to their mech skills again, so a 20-level coglayer is rocking a +43. Gearwrights of the right kind get double their class levels (past a certain point) to their skills, and gain the ability to take 30 (like a take 20, except, well, yeah). So that +43 (it'd be higher, like a +50 or more) becomes a +73 (really a +80, at least).
And that's without magic items. With magic items, it gets up into the triple digits.
It explicitly says it takes them a fucklong time to design their best stuff, but when they do, it's hardcore. And a junior officer gearwright is a level 17 character.
I don't like that it has PrCs that are all "Yeah, this class BUT BETTER AT IT"
tl;dr: a mid-high level coglayer who takes 20 will be able to do it. A high-level gearwright who takes 30 will be able to do -anything-.
First off, skill ranks are class level +3. Coglayers get their class level to their mech skills again, so a 20-level coglayer is rocking a +43. Gearwrights of the right kind get double their class levels (past a certain point) to their skills, and gain the ability to take 30 (like a take 20, except, well, yeah). So that +43 (it'd be higher, like a +50 or more) becomes a +73 (really a +80, at least).
And that's without magic items. With magic items, it gets up into the triple digits.
It explicitly says it takes them a fucklong time to design their best stuff, but when they do, it's hardcore. And a junior officer gearwright is a level 17 character.
I don't like that it has PrCs that are all "Yeah, this class BUT BETTER AT IT"
tl;dr: a mid-high level coglayer who takes 20 will be able to do it. A high-level gearwright who takes 30 will be able to do -anything-.
Last edited by Maxus on Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:37 am, edited 7 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!
--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!
I'm not saying that cheesing out skills isn't hard. That's pretty much a given, and a topic we've heard a lot about. All I'm saying is it's a bit....unreasonable? I guess they are "texas$" huge.
As an aside, the rules for taking 10/20 say that that it takes 10 times or 20 times as long. that's pretty fucking long.
But in the setting, it said 3 junior coglayers designed the biggest mech ever. a DC 80....I mean I guess they took 20? It just seems like a lot is all.
As an aside, the rules for taking 10/20 say that that it takes 10 times or 20 times as long. that's pretty fucking long.
But in the setting, it said 3 junior coglayers designed the biggest mech ever. a DC 80....I mean I guess they took 20? It just seems like a lot is all.
This game does a lot of role protection. Mech Jockeys are the only ones with the mechanical and psychological ability (mechfingers goes a long way for bullshitting a DM) to safely pilot a mech all the time because of the checks you need to do anything but walk it in a straight line.
And so, Coglayers are the only ones who really make great big mechs.
I asked Joseph Goodman how Tannanliel (the Elf Wanking Engine) got made by an archmage, and he said the archmage has some divinations specifically for mech design.
Yeah.
And so, Coglayers are the only ones who really make great big mechs.
I asked Joseph Goodman how Tannanliel (the Elf Wanking Engine) got made by an archmage, and he said the archmage has some divinations specifically for mech design.
Yeah.
Last edited by Maxus on Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:55 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!
--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!
....w-what?Maxus wrote:
I asked Joseph Goodman how Tannanliel (the Elf Wanking Engine) got made by an archmage, and he said the archmage has some divinations specifically for mech design.
Yeah.
Okay, well, I guess I'm not super crazy at least. The book is still interesting as a setting, as long as you don't look to close I guess.
That's what I said.
This is by no means the worst setting out there. I don't particularly see how it's medieval, but there's some nice bits.
But every now and then there's some NPC wank happening.
This is by no means the worst setting out there. I don't particularly see how it's medieval, but there's some nice bits.
But every now and then there's some NPC wank happening.
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!
Apparently they released "revised mech creation rules in '07.
There's also a "Mech manual".
Just figured I'd mention that... a bit late.
There's also a "Mech manual".
Just figured I'd mention that... a bit late.
Phlebotinum : fleh-bot-ih-nuhm • A glossary of RPG/Dennizen terminology • Favorite replies: [1]
nockermensch wrote:Advantage will lead to dicepools in D&D. Remember, you read this here first!
I'm now just being kind of amused by the mental image of an elven mech constructed for the sole purpose of wanking. Maybe it's a well pump mech?Maxus wrote:I asked Joseph Goodman how Tannanliel (the Elf Wanking Engine) got made by an archmage, and he said the archmage has some divinations specifically for mech design.
Yeah.
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.
Highpoint Gazetteer, continued
In which we find out about those nomads we kept hearing about
This section claims to showcase the five major groups of nomads. Let's see if there's anything worth the looking, shall we?
The first group are Stavians, who are very much into mounted combat. In fact, all human characters who are Stavian get Ride as a class skill, and a +2 to ride check (but don't know how to use weapons you can't use on horseback). There's two major groups of them: The first rides horses. The second rides dusk devils, these giant extradimensional bugs that came to Highpoint well before the lunar rains.
This is from the monster section later on. There's two varieties here, but look at the speed there. Dang.
So there's two sides that have a mostly good-natured disagreement about what they should be riding (I side with the folks riding the bugs. Those are awesome). They're peaceful and prefer to let threats pass them on by/outrun them.
And then it goes weird and says disputes are always settled via races and obstacle courses, and their crafts are those which can be done from horseback. Like leatherworking and weaving.
Sigh. Like that'd work. Seriously. They don't have potters or smiths, because that'd involve wagons and specialized equipment, but they have looms and leatherworking equipment.
Then you have the Thurd. Who are a filthy group of barbaric miscegenated savages descended from orcs and humans, and of course, are worthless brutes because they're related to orcs and this is Dragonmech--but here's the deal. They don't call themselves half-orcs because usually, you have to go back a couple of generations to find an orc or elf ancestor. Blah blah blah, more racism against a fictional people that--
--you know what? Actually. I don't like how the half-orcs are described in negative terms throughout the book. I know they're the token 'brute' race, but come on. There have to be decent half-orcs around somewhere? But in Dragonmech, nope. They're violent savages and live like the orcs do. Every. Time. They. Come. Up.
The third tribe are the Wisps, who are pretty much rangers. Human Wisps gets Hide and Move Silently as class skills, and a might +1 to Spot, and lose their bonus skill points at first level. They also have cloaks that're made of pockets of dirt, in which seeds are planted so the cloaks are made of living greenery.
There's a tribe of nomadic farmers. Yes. Really. They exploit the seasonal sea-level changes and basically are Nomads Most Likely To Have Bodyfat. Next.
The last tribe are the Hypsies. They're ripoffs of the Roma. I'm not totally convinced the name isn't a typo cause by someone's finger behind a half-inch off of where it should have been. Next.
New Peoples
So there's new folks showing up as adaptation to the lunar rains continues. The Worm Farmers domesticated and use giant forty-foot-long worms that travel in packs. The worms eat the dirt and leave behind the not-dirt. I'm not sure how that works, because I took geology in college and can attest that dirt is made up a fuckton of stuff (and that sedimentary petrology is a fucking nightmare). But anyway, yeah, the worm farmers place great value on worm poop. Which can contain concentrations of substances which are not dirt, like metal (if you run a worm through an ore-rich area), and vegetable matter (if you run it through a plant field).
And yeah, worm farmer's a trade now. I'm sure if Warhammer Fantasy RPG had thought of it, they totally would have made you start as a worm farmer. Anyway. Unglamorous though it sounds, it does end on a cool note and say that the worm farmers are starting to lose pigmentation and become more light-sensitive as they adapt more to life underground.
Next:
Now anthropomorphic tortoises, tortogs, who can take tank the lunar rains, up until the actual "meteor storm" stage. They've always been in-setting, but now they're getting a niche because they'll get your stuff there.
The Dusk Runners are a Mysterious Group who travel the whole world and are the original domesticators of the Dusk Devils above. Otherwise, not much interesting there.
The last group is the Endless Traders. They travel a yearly route--go overland to the head of the Endless river, buy boats, take boats down the Endless river (including the subsurface trading), and arrive in the surface laden down with goods from the deeps, having traded surface goods at a profit. They hit a specific point, sell their boats, and do it all over again. It's actually a nice-sounding life. Busy as all hell, though.
This part wraps up with the "orc hordes" getting special mention. I'll quote the first paragraph.
Orc mechs are simple and brutal, and usually man-powered, but orcs also don't care about individual mechs that much, so they'll totally do suicide attacks and they're all about trying to board and kill a crew to steal a mech intact. And even a crappy orc mech is still a help in battle.
Next up: So that's -pretty much- the Endless Plains. The next regional settings don't have nearly as much text devoted to them.
In which we find out about those nomads we kept hearing about
This section claims to showcase the five major groups of nomads. Let's see if there's anything worth the looking, shall we?
The first group are Stavians, who are very much into mounted combat. In fact, all human characters who are Stavian get Ride as a class skill, and a +2 to ride check (but don't know how to use weapons you can't use on horseback). There's two major groups of them: The first rides horses. The second rides dusk devils, these giant extradimensional bugs that came to Highpoint well before the lunar rains.
This is from the monster section later on. There's two varieties here, but look at the speed there. Dang.
So there's two sides that have a mostly good-natured disagreement about what they should be riding (I side with the folks riding the bugs. Those are awesome). They're peaceful and prefer to let threats pass them on by/outrun them.
And then it goes weird and says disputes are always settled via races and obstacle courses, and their crafts are those which can be done from horseback. Like leatherworking and weaving.
Sigh. Like that'd work. Seriously. They don't have potters or smiths, because that'd involve wagons and specialized equipment, but they have looms and leatherworking equipment.
Then you have the Thurd. Who are a filthy group of barbaric miscegenated savages descended from orcs and humans, and of course, are worthless brutes because they're related to orcs and this is Dragonmech--but here's the deal. They don't call themselves half-orcs because usually, you have to go back a couple of generations to find an orc or elf ancestor. Blah blah blah, more racism against a fictional people that--
--you know what? Actually. I don't like how the half-orcs are described in negative terms throughout the book. I know they're the token 'brute' race, but come on. There have to be decent half-orcs around somewhere? But in Dragonmech, nope. They're violent savages and live like the orcs do. Every. Time. They. Come. Up.
The third tribe are the Wisps, who are pretty much rangers. Human Wisps gets Hide and Move Silently as class skills, and a might +1 to Spot, and lose their bonus skill points at first level. They also have cloaks that're made of pockets of dirt, in which seeds are planted so the cloaks are made of living greenery.
There's a tribe of nomadic farmers. Yes. Really. They exploit the seasonal sea-level changes and basically are Nomads Most Likely To Have Bodyfat. Next.
The last tribe are the Hypsies. They're ripoffs of the Roma. I'm not totally convinced the name isn't a typo cause by someone's finger behind a half-inch off of where it should have been. Next.
New Peoples
So there's new folks showing up as adaptation to the lunar rains continues. The Worm Farmers domesticated and use giant forty-foot-long worms that travel in packs. The worms eat the dirt and leave behind the not-dirt. I'm not sure how that works, because I took geology in college and can attest that dirt is made up a fuckton of stuff (and that sedimentary petrology is a fucking nightmare). But anyway, yeah, the worm farmers place great value on worm poop. Which can contain concentrations of substances which are not dirt, like metal (if you run a worm through an ore-rich area), and vegetable matter (if you run it through a plant field).
And yeah, worm farmer's a trade now. I'm sure if Warhammer Fantasy RPG had thought of it, they totally would have made you start as a worm farmer. Anyway. Unglamorous though it sounds, it does end on a cool note and say that the worm farmers are starting to lose pigmentation and become more light-sensitive as they adapt more to life underground.
Next:
Now anthropomorphic tortoises, tortogs, who can take tank the lunar rains, up until the actual "meteor storm" stage. They've always been in-setting, but now they're getting a niche because they'll get your stuff there.
The Dusk Runners are a Mysterious Group who travel the whole world and are the original domesticators of the Dusk Devils above. Otherwise, not much interesting there.
The last group is the Endless Traders. They travel a yearly route--go overland to the head of the Endless river, buy boats, take boats down the Endless river (including the subsurface trading), and arrive in the surface laden down with goods from the deeps, having traded surface goods at a profit. They hit a specific point, sell their boats, and do it all over again. It's actually a nice-sounding life. Busy as all hell, though.
This part wraps up with the "orc hordes" getting special mention. I'll quote the first paragraph.
Yeah. I really don't like this for some reason. However.The endless plains have been home to nomadic orc hordes for as long as anyone can remember. Disorganized, chaotic, violent, and stupid, these brutes have been the chief impediment to the progress of civilization. While the humans advanced from tribes to cities, the dwarves built monumental strongholds, and the elves crafted tree cities over thousands of years, the orcs remained … simply orcs. No advancement in orc society has come for as long as anyone can remember.
Orc mechs are simple and brutal, and usually man-powered, but orcs also don't care about individual mechs that much, so they'll totally do suicide attacks and they're all about trying to board and kill a crew to steal a mech intact. And even a crappy orc mech is still a help in battle.
Next up: So that's -pretty much- the Endless Plains. The next regional settings don't have nearly as much text devoted to them.
Last edited by Maxus on Tue Mar 04, 2014 6:41 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!
--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 REST OF HIGHPOINT
In which not much happens.
The rest of "regional" section isn't much until you get to the mechdroms. Terrain gets more inhospitable and less inhabited the further you go west, until you hit the Wet Desert, which is sparsely populated.
There's a few ancient curiosities around--a 1,000-foot-tall dwarf statue carved out of rock that may or may not be of a mech, some old mech heads out in the Wet Desert.
MECHDOMS
Where the real business happens.
A mechdom is a territory which is protected and/or patrolled by mechs. Some mechdoms are just with a single mech, others have groups or small fleets, and then you get the ones with the City Mechs.
This isn't such a bad bit of setting here. It says some mechdoms collect tribute or taxes from the residents, who pitch in to try to keep the mech running or fight off ground forces as needed. Others are unwelcoming of non-mech-personnel. This makes sense, right? Anyway.
STENIAN CONFEDERACY
Wherein the short races stand tall.
The Stenian mechdom is five city-mechs which patrol a contiguous chunk of land. It's all about the order, supposed to be a Lawful society, has a bit of alignment philosophy wherein the residents hold Law to be greater than Good, because you can't have Good without order. We're just gonna avoid the alignment arguments there.
The dwarves are semi-racist, their rule is authoritarian but a sort of soft authoritarian (law enforcement has enormous leeway to decide what to do to enforce order) so they're not as bad as they could be all the time, but have plenty of room to get bad if they want. Their writeup points out that the fact that they have petty political squabbles is a sign of how successful they are: They can worry about things other than survival.
A Stenian city mech's government is more or less military. In an interesting note, it makes a distinction between city-mech demographics and surface demographics. The city mech population is 75% dwarf, 20% gnome, 4% halfling, and 1% human. On the surface, humans are 35% of the population, a plurarility. Total population is 18,000 in the city mechs, 10,000 in the various smaller mechs, and 300,000 on the surface. With a controlled area of 200,000 square miles.
IRONTOOTH CLANS
Messing with them is like picking a fight with Mighty Mouse
I'm sure they got mentioned earlier, but the Irontooth Clans don't have a centralized government, or even a decentralized one like the Stenians. They're just a bunch of nomad bands with a hard-on for mechs who all live more or less the same way.
Despite that, everyone steps lightly around them because they're the best small-mech pilots, and even if they don't have city-mechs, they'll still shred most anything to come their way. It seems they squabble amongst themselves a lot, but unify to turn on outside threats.
Anyway, they're an ethnically diverse group, often within the same clan, and says almost everyone has a level in mech jockey or coglayer, and steamborgs are common and not ostracized here.
There's only about 10,000 in the Irontooth clans, but they can pretty much all fight. They don't really have a non-combatant population. They can punch more than their weight would indicate, so they're left alone as being too much trouble to deal with.
L'ARILE NATION
Because apostrophes make things sound magical.
The elf mechdom, with Tannanlielfwank as its centerpiece, but each elf village built their own 'village mech', I guess you'd say, to house a hundred or so residents. Each of these has a sapling of a special elf tree that was used for the materials for the mechs.
The L'arile Nation is in the old forest where all the elves were, and it still hasn't been completely destroyed. So they spread out, keep in touch, and keep an eye on threats and handle most conflict by avoidance and hiding; having your mech made from a tree helps them camouflage the mechs. Population is 10,000 in mechs, 30,000 living in the woods.
RUST RIDERS
ONNA HIIIIIGHWAY TO HELL
The motorcycle bandit gangs of mech jockeys. They're outlaws and no one likes them much at all. Next.
THE LEGION
Because humans are inherently evil, right?
The human mechdom. The leader, Shar Thizdic, got the idea to try to wipe away all the old tribal and regional differences and band humans together based on being human and not a dwarf or a gnome or orc or elf. So the Legion is pretty much organized entirely on military lines, and they have two city-mechs, with plans for more. Remember Cerberus from Mass Effect? Yeah, those guys. All about "HUMANITY FIRST AND HUMANITY ONLY! FUCK YEAH!!!!"
They're kinda worrying the dwarves because the first Legion city-mech is a piece of shit, as city-mechs go. It's small (again, as city-mechs go), put together haphazardly, has constant problems. It's still a city-mech, so it works fine for intimidation and patrol and residency.
The second city mech is on par with a smaller dwarf city-mech, the humans having learned from the mistakes and refined their techniques. Mentions that if they keep doing it, they'll be matching the best dwarven work by City-mech #4 or #5.
MECH TRIBES
Dunno why these guys get their own section
So there's small nomadic bands that don't belong to any of the above categories. They're just nomads who live on a mech when at all possible.
CITY MECHS
This section has a lot of facts and figures and bits about life on a city mech, as well as profiles for a couple of them. What you mainly need to know is they're mostly uncomfortable and crowded, they're armed to the teeth, and they each have some of their own flavors of governance and traditions. F'rinstance, the first dwarven city-mech still has a lot of the feudal dwarf flavor. The more modern thinkers live on the more recent city-mechs.
ORGANIZATIONS
Wait, didn't we cover these already?
THE GEARWRIGHTS GUILD
The main thing here is it mentions the age of the Gearwrights Guild. Their library has been reckoned to be 50,000 years old, judging from the amount of time to write and print all that stuff. Likewise there's books inside there that're printed on stamped metal plates, and with dates that, once you figure it out, after often tens of thousands of years old.
Another interesting note is the Gearwrights are going easy. They still do R&D, but only rarely, if ever, make actual prototypes or final production models at full scale, because they're worried about their handiwork falling into outside hands and being reverse-engineered. So the implication is that the Gearwright, if need be, could come out with anything.
THIEVES GUILDS
Because section 2231.B(i) of the UN's by-laws requires all fantasy settings to have thieves' guilds.
Thieves guilds still live on mechs, albeit by a symbiotic relationship with the government rather than secrecy. There's only so many places to hide on a big walking tank, so you've got to make friends and ensure some blind eyes towards your activities.
STALKERS
Unfortunate name
So it talks about how the Stalkers are really kinda new, and they mostly know each other socially. I suppose you have a certain freemasonry among people who know what it's like to swim through a pond of grease, shiv a grease lizard before it gets you, and crawl up a rotating drive shaft to rachet out a bolt while still on the rotating drive shaft. Anyway, yeah, so most bona-fide good Stalkers know each other by reputation, at least.
DRAGONMECHS
TITLE DROP!
The Dragonmechs are a specially-trained anti-lunar-dragon force of the Stenian Confederacy. They're the jet fighter pilots of mechs. Top Gun with Danger Zone blaring.
Which makes them the fourth or fifth group of "GREATEST MECH JOCKEYS IN THE WORLD" mentioned in the book so far.
Next up: Creatures!
In which not much happens.
The rest of "regional" section isn't much until you get to the mechdroms. Terrain gets more inhospitable and less inhabited the further you go west, until you hit the Wet Desert, which is sparsely populated.
There's a few ancient curiosities around--a 1,000-foot-tall dwarf statue carved out of rock that may or may not be of a mech, some old mech heads out in the Wet Desert.
MECHDOMS
Where the real business happens.
A mechdom is a territory which is protected and/or patrolled by mechs. Some mechdoms are just with a single mech, others have groups or small fleets, and then you get the ones with the City Mechs.
This isn't such a bad bit of setting here. It says some mechdoms collect tribute or taxes from the residents, who pitch in to try to keep the mech running or fight off ground forces as needed. Others are unwelcoming of non-mech-personnel. This makes sense, right? Anyway.
STENIAN CONFEDERACY
Wherein the short races stand tall.
The Stenian mechdom is five city-mechs which patrol a contiguous chunk of land. It's all about the order, supposed to be a Lawful society, has a bit of alignment philosophy wherein the residents hold Law to be greater than Good, because you can't have Good without order. We're just gonna avoid the alignment arguments there.
The dwarves are semi-racist, their rule is authoritarian but a sort of soft authoritarian (law enforcement has enormous leeway to decide what to do to enforce order) so they're not as bad as they could be all the time, but have plenty of room to get bad if they want. Their writeup points out that the fact that they have petty political squabbles is a sign of how successful they are: They can worry about things other than survival.
A Stenian city mech's government is more or less military. In an interesting note, it makes a distinction between city-mech demographics and surface demographics. The city mech population is 75% dwarf, 20% gnome, 4% halfling, and 1% human. On the surface, humans are 35% of the population, a plurarility. Total population is 18,000 in the city mechs, 10,000 in the various smaller mechs, and 300,000 on the surface. With a controlled area of 200,000 square miles.
IRONTOOTH CLANS
Messing with them is like picking a fight with Mighty Mouse
I'm sure they got mentioned earlier, but the Irontooth Clans don't have a centralized government, or even a decentralized one like the Stenians. They're just a bunch of nomad bands with a hard-on for mechs who all live more or less the same way.
Despite that, everyone steps lightly around them because they're the best small-mech pilots, and even if they don't have city-mechs, they'll still shred most anything to come their way. It seems they squabble amongst themselves a lot, but unify to turn on outside threats.
Anyway, they're an ethnically diverse group, often within the same clan, and says almost everyone has a level in mech jockey or coglayer, and steamborgs are common and not ostracized here.
There's only about 10,000 in the Irontooth clans, but they can pretty much all fight. They don't really have a non-combatant population. They can punch more than their weight would indicate, so they're left alone as being too much trouble to deal with.
L'ARILE NATION
Because apostrophes make things sound magical.
The elf mechdom, with Tannanlielfwank as its centerpiece, but each elf village built their own 'village mech', I guess you'd say, to house a hundred or so residents. Each of these has a sapling of a special elf tree that was used for the materials for the mechs.
The L'arile Nation is in the old forest where all the elves were, and it still hasn't been completely destroyed. So they spread out, keep in touch, and keep an eye on threats and handle most conflict by avoidance and hiding; having your mech made from a tree helps them camouflage the mechs. Population is 10,000 in mechs, 30,000 living in the woods.
RUST RIDERS
ONNA HIIIIIGHWAY TO HELL
The motorcycle bandit gangs of mech jockeys. They're outlaws and no one likes them much at all. Next.
THE LEGION
Because humans are inherently evil, right?
The human mechdom. The leader, Shar Thizdic, got the idea to try to wipe away all the old tribal and regional differences and band humans together based on being human and not a dwarf or a gnome or orc or elf. So the Legion is pretty much organized entirely on military lines, and they have two city-mechs, with plans for more. Remember Cerberus from Mass Effect? Yeah, those guys. All about "HUMANITY FIRST AND HUMANITY ONLY! FUCK YEAH!!!!"
They're kinda worrying the dwarves because the first Legion city-mech is a piece of shit, as city-mechs go. It's small (again, as city-mechs go), put together haphazardly, has constant problems. It's still a city-mech, so it works fine for intimidation and patrol and residency.
The second city mech is on par with a smaller dwarf city-mech, the humans having learned from the mistakes and refined their techniques. Mentions that if they keep doing it, they'll be matching the best dwarven work by City-mech #4 or #5.
MECH TRIBES
Dunno why these guys get their own section
So there's small nomadic bands that don't belong to any of the above categories. They're just nomads who live on a mech when at all possible.
CITY MECHS
This section has a lot of facts and figures and bits about life on a city mech, as well as profiles for a couple of them. What you mainly need to know is they're mostly uncomfortable and crowded, they're armed to the teeth, and they each have some of their own flavors of governance and traditions. F'rinstance, the first dwarven city-mech still has a lot of the feudal dwarf flavor. The more modern thinkers live on the more recent city-mechs.
ORGANIZATIONS
Wait, didn't we cover these already?
THE GEARWRIGHTS GUILD
The main thing here is it mentions the age of the Gearwrights Guild. Their library has been reckoned to be 50,000 years old, judging from the amount of time to write and print all that stuff. Likewise there's books inside there that're printed on stamped metal plates, and with dates that, once you figure it out, after often tens of thousands of years old.
Another interesting note is the Gearwrights are going easy. They still do R&D, but only rarely, if ever, make actual prototypes or final production models at full scale, because they're worried about their handiwork falling into outside hands and being reverse-engineered. So the implication is that the Gearwright, if need be, could come out with anything.
THIEVES GUILDS
Because section 2231.B(i) of the UN's by-laws requires all fantasy settings to have thieves' guilds.
Thieves guilds still live on mechs, albeit by a symbiotic relationship with the government rather than secrecy. There's only so many places to hide on a big walking tank, so you've got to make friends and ensure some blind eyes towards your activities.
STALKERS
Unfortunate name
So it talks about how the Stalkers are really kinda new, and they mostly know each other socially. I suppose you have a certain freemasonry among people who know what it's like to swim through a pond of grease, shiv a grease lizard before it gets you, and crawl up a rotating drive shaft to rachet out a bolt while still on the rotating drive shaft. Anyway, yeah, so most bona-fide good Stalkers know each other by reputation, at least.
DRAGONMECHS
TITLE DROP!
The Dragonmechs are a specially-trained anti-lunar-dragon force of the Stenian Confederacy. They're the jet fighter pilots of mechs. Top Gun with Danger Zone blaring.
Which makes them the fourth or fifth group of "GREATEST MECH JOCKEYS IN THE WORLD" mentioned in the book so far.
Next up: Creatures!
Last edited by Maxus on Mon Apr 07, 2014 7:51 am, edited 4 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!
--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!
On the Legion: it's also worth noting that they created City Killer, which is a steam cannon so ridiculously huge people aren't quite sure it can actually be fired at full power without exploding. It's basically a giant middle finger to the dwarves, although there's essentially no way they could actually get it up the cliff face to fight a dwarven city-mech.
Statwise, however, it'd still take quite a lot of time to do significant damage to a city-mech.
Statwise, however, it'd still take quite a lot of time to do significant damage to a city-mech.
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.
The Stars are right once again. The moon fills the sky, so it must be time to talk about Dragonmech...
Creatures
In which all the cool art is in the back half of the chapter.
The first thing it does is the Lunar creature type. Which is like this: +10 to mind-affecting effects from terrestrials, because "alien psychology" (but doesn't give a reciprocal +10 to terrestrials against lunar mind-affecting effects). They take half damage from air, water, and fire effects and attacks (so only fire stuff, in conventional terms), no damage on a save, and double damage from earth "attacks and effects".
So can some giants throw rocks as these bad boys until they die?
Anyways, there's some notes on their physiology and says they're immune to lycanthropy, and seem to have some version of it that doesn't induce shape-changing.
Then, I guess because they're speaking of it, lycanthropes have a harder time fighting the changes.
Now to actual creatures:
The first is the Clockwork Puppet--the same thing as built by Coglayers. Just in two examples of the type. Pretty nice, an idea of what they can be used for.
Second is the Cogling, the mech-adapted halflings. There's three pages on them, with a couple of entries and then stuff on their habits and society.
Crumble Bugs are next. They makes stuff rust. Can weaken weapons and areas. They're about a foot long, says they can more or less rust out 24 square inches a round. A crumble bug infestation on a mech is like a milder case of brown mold on the Plane of Fire. It's got to be dealt with, and fast.
Lunar dragons get their entry. I'll summarize it for you:
Fuck you.
They're supposed to be tougher than normal dragons (look like they're on par with golds/reds), and have no treasure at all.
That's right. None. And their breath weapon is only protected against by blanket energy resistance.
But for as tough as they are, they're still vulnerable to shivering touch. So there's that.
Dronogs are a lunar creature, a beast of burden-type thing. They have a couple of tricks but apparently are found being controlled by the skinstealers (more on them later). They have a nasty trick called Mental Static that takes 1d4 Int, no save, off, but it comes back when you leave the range.
Dusk Devils are the things I mentioned earlier. The great big bugs some people ride. They're cool.
Forestrati are treants traumatized and blackened by the burning effects of the lunar rain. They can't animate trees, but they're also fire-resistant now.
Grease lizards are alligator-esque things that live in greasepools in the big mechs. They can be used for a Clockwork Ranger's animal companion. They're also covered in grease, so they take double damage from fire.
Iron Shamblers are made from the Animate Gears spell, but any pile of scrap can be animated. Pretty much 200 pounds needed per HD.
Now we come to Skinstealers. They're flat creatures, pretty large--six to eight feet a side, and under two inches thick. They grapple onto people (sacrificing natural attacks for a +1 on grapple) and get a DC 15 Dominate Person. If you fail the save, they control you. Can't get a new save unless it tries to make you do things against you nature, only one new save a day. Can use you to try to dominate others).
On the upshot, once you realize the jig is up, they're not hard to peel off. 4d8 HP and they take damage first. Skinstealers are intelligent and savvy. They're pretty cool things, and it mentions them as possible characters.
Next is the Slathem. They're amphibious seven-foot-tall fish-men. Smoother-lined than the sahuagin, though. They have a cool bit about their cities being underwater half the year.
So elegant. Such smooth. Very aquatic. Much long.
Smoking Dead are undead with engines put in them somewhere. They're tougher than a basic undead, but slower.
"Don't have a clue why it just pulls to the left like that. Just run it until it breaks so I have something to fix."
Tortogs are the tortoise-men. An interesting note: They're Large-sized. Only five-feet tall, but so wide and dense they weigh six hundred pounds. They don't feel pain when their shells are nicked, they have a burrow speed, and they can withdraw into their shells to get some nice defensive bonuses.
And to prepare to use Skull Bash. If someone like Koumei ever writes a water mage, I'd so want to play one of these so I could use Hydro Pump.
Traktraks are another animated pile of parts, but they occur on their own. It says no one's really sure why they happen, but the Dotrak believers think it's Dotrak's influence on the world.
And then it says, yep, the Dotrak believers are actually correct.
Can we take a moment to appreciate how refreshing that is. Gives an in-universe theory, and then lets the DM know what's really happening instead of that wishy-washy "make your own, but here's our suggestions!" stuff.
The last Creatures entry is three types of CR 4 giant worm. One has a sonic attack, another is physically stronger.
So there you go. Creatures specific to the Dragonmech setting.
Next up, Dragonmech Campaigns.
Creatures
In which all the cool art is in the back half of the chapter.
The first thing it does is the Lunar creature type. Which is like this: +10 to mind-affecting effects from terrestrials, because "alien psychology" (but doesn't give a reciprocal +10 to terrestrials against lunar mind-affecting effects). They take half damage from air, water, and fire effects and attacks (so only fire stuff, in conventional terms), no damage on a save, and double damage from earth "attacks and effects".
So can some giants throw rocks as these bad boys until they die?
Anyways, there's some notes on their physiology and says they're immune to lycanthropy, and seem to have some version of it that doesn't induce shape-changing.
Then, I guess because they're speaking of it, lycanthropes have a harder time fighting the changes.
Now to actual creatures:
The first is the Clockwork Puppet--the same thing as built by Coglayers. Just in two examples of the type. Pretty nice, an idea of what they can be used for.
Second is the Cogling, the mech-adapted halflings. There's three pages on them, with a couple of entries and then stuff on their habits and society.
Crumble Bugs are next. They makes stuff rust. Can weaken weapons and areas. They're about a foot long, says they can more or less rust out 24 square inches a round. A crumble bug infestation on a mech is like a milder case of brown mold on the Plane of Fire. It's got to be dealt with, and fast.
Lunar dragons get their entry. I'll summarize it for you:
Fuck you.
They're supposed to be tougher than normal dragons (look like they're on par with golds/reds), and have no treasure at all.
That's right. None. And their breath weapon is only protected against by blanket energy resistance.
But for as tough as they are, they're still vulnerable to shivering touch. So there's that.
Dronogs are a lunar creature, a beast of burden-type thing. They have a couple of tricks but apparently are found being controlled by the skinstealers (more on them later). They have a nasty trick called Mental Static that takes 1d4 Int, no save, off, but it comes back when you leave the range.
Dusk Devils are the things I mentioned earlier. The great big bugs some people ride. They're cool.
Forestrati are treants traumatized and blackened by the burning effects of the lunar rain. They can't animate trees, but they're also fire-resistant now.
Grease lizards are alligator-esque things that live in greasepools in the big mechs. They can be used for a Clockwork Ranger's animal companion. They're also covered in grease, so they take double damage from fire.
Iron Shamblers are made from the Animate Gears spell, but any pile of scrap can be animated. Pretty much 200 pounds needed per HD.
Now we come to Skinstealers. They're flat creatures, pretty large--six to eight feet a side, and under two inches thick. They grapple onto people (sacrificing natural attacks for a +1 on grapple) and get a DC 15 Dominate Person. If you fail the save, they control you. Can't get a new save unless it tries to make you do things against you nature, only one new save a day. Can use you to try to dominate others).
On the upshot, once you realize the jig is up, they're not hard to peel off. 4d8 HP and they take damage first. Skinstealers are intelligent and savvy. They're pretty cool things, and it mentions them as possible characters.
Next is the Slathem. They're amphibious seven-foot-tall fish-men. Smoother-lined than the sahuagin, though. They have a cool bit about their cities being underwater half the year.
So elegant. Such smooth. Very aquatic. Much long.
Smoking Dead are undead with engines put in them somewhere. They're tougher than a basic undead, but slower.
"Don't have a clue why it just pulls to the left like that. Just run it until it breaks so I have something to fix."
Tortogs are the tortoise-men. An interesting note: They're Large-sized. Only five-feet tall, but so wide and dense they weigh six hundred pounds. They don't feel pain when their shells are nicked, they have a burrow speed, and they can withdraw into their shells to get some nice defensive bonuses.
And to prepare to use Skull Bash. If someone like Koumei ever writes a water mage, I'd so want to play one of these so I could use Hydro Pump.
Traktraks are another animated pile of parts, but they occur on their own. It says no one's really sure why they happen, but the Dotrak believers think it's Dotrak's influence on the world.
And then it says, yep, the Dotrak believers are actually correct.
Can we take a moment to appreciate how refreshing that is. Gives an in-universe theory, and then lets the DM know what's really happening instead of that wishy-washy "make your own, but here's our suggestions!" stuff.
The last Creatures entry is three types of CR 4 giant worm. One has a sonic attack, another is physically stronger.
So there you go. Creatures specific to the Dragonmech setting.
Next up, Dragonmech Campaigns.
Last edited by Maxus on Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:24 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!
--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!
-
Josh_Kablack
- King
- Posts: 5318
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: Online. duh
Well you you only have to worry about the ones that can fly thenMaxus wrote:The first thing it does is the Lunar creature type. Which is like this: +10 to mind-affecting effects from terrestrials, because "alien psychology" (but doesn't give a reciprocal +10 to terrestrials against lunar mind-affecting effects). They take half damage from air, water, and fire effects and attacks (so only fire stuff, in conventional terms), no damage on a save, and double damage from earth "attacks and effects".
So can some giants throw rocks as these bad boys until they die?
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."