#The NPC Rebake Project and NPC Tinkering Power Zone (NO MULTIATTACKERS ALLOWED)

1 messages · Page 14 of 1

brisk flax
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so

smoky bluff
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but man this is a lot of stuff

bold crystal
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I mean the strider is just a lot of stuff

brisk flax
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yeah no fuckin shit which is why I would not personally make Four NPCs In One

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but we don't always get to pick the battles we're given

smoky bluff
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lol true

bold crystal
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I feel like you did pick this battle but I'm not complaining

smoky bluff
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how do i code this?

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well i think i have an idea

bold crystal
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the rifle having that as the crit effect is a little scary but it's losing the accuracy unless it sticks to the kit, which definitely limits it

brisk flax
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so the notable elements here are, essentially:
1). Every kit has a thing that triggers by remaining in the kit, as well as a swap bonus. You can be rewarded for swapping, but also for remaining in the same kit
2). the Ranger Long Rifle is no longer dependent on kit swapping to be good, as a weapon it is independent of that with the paracausal effect now being On Crit. It still keeps the "ignores ordnance" swap effect because it kind of has to in order to be swappable to and still shoot on the same turn
3). Every kit should have something it can do besides shoot a gun. By default, both the marksman and skirmisher kit are pretty fuckin' bare-bones, being a gun and a reaction apiece

bold crystal
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actually I kind of want to see the version of skirmisher kit where the kit and swap bonuses are swapped

smoky bluff
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damn, strider got hands

bold crystal
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I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not, it's just a...

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could be interesting.

brisk flax
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that's a possibility, I'm unsure which I prefer. The intent of "oh you can swap to skirmisher if you get dove upon" was intended, to my eyes, to be a "fuck off I'm escaping" sort of thing, and after turning it over a few times I realized oh wait it has a gun with Knockback 3 already

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so the thought is, essentially, that kit swapping is designed instead of just being "oh you get Free Disengage" to instead be a means of getting someone off of you

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it's essentially a baked in version of the Offensive Weapon Swap optional

bold crystal
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yeah, I like it. I think I'd like it either way, really

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it being the swap bonus might have a slight issue where like, 'you can only use stuff from one kit' basically obligates you to swap first since you can't get the swap bonus if you do anything else?

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I'm not sure if that's an issue per se but it's a little friction

brisk flax
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I'm not quite sure I'm following, sorry

bold crystal
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that is, you can't Flash Grenade > swap to skirmisher and use the swap bonus to fire the Explosive Carbine

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probably not a concern

brisk flax
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I think that's my point of confusion

bold crystal
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In any given turn, they can only use weapons, systems, and traits from one kit.

brisk flax
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Oh okay I forgot that was there

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that was copied over from the wallflower entry

bold crystal
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ah, strider.

brisk flax
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I know I made choosing to use the Start Of Turn bit optional and using THAT prevents you from kit swapping

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I haven't figured out how strict about that I want to be yet because I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the other kits

bold crystal
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yeah fair

brisk flax
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it's possible that allowing "swapping and using gear from multiple kits" might be fine depending on how the other kits shape up, but I'm not sure yet

bold crystal
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I'm not sure the hard restriction is all that necessary, frankly, with swap being a quick anyway - matters mostly for veteran overcharges and such

brisk flax
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there's a school of thought which is "just stick to Marksman and Skirmisher and call it a day" but that would be diverging pretty substantially

indigo oasis
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I like it, but reading it it feels like 5 features per kit. You sure the Grenade features are necessary?

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THey seem the most tacked on to me

brisk flax
bold crystal
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the strider is a mess.

indigo oasis
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Fair enough, although I think the passive kit bonuses do give an extra active element to each kit

brisk flax
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like part of the issue is "why would I ever want to stay in a given kit" and part of the reason you wouldn't, beyond the other reasons, is marksman and skirmisher give you nothing to do

bold crystal
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like, base strider has so little to do on-turn that 'swap in and out of marksman constantly' is action-efficient.

brisk flax
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"what is this NPC's turn like without any optionals" is the Barricade Lesson

indigo oasis
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Mmm I see

brisk flax
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what does a strider with zero optionals look like, what does it do

bold crystal
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(not that optionals solve the strider's problem because its non-kit optionals are Nothing)

brisk flax
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like again, I am aware that this is A Lot of Shit, but I'm not the guy who made this NPC

indigo oasis
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Yeah fair nuff

brisk flax
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if you asked me, from a cold start, "hey how would you do this?" I would say (politely) "don't"

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the strider, baseline, suffers massively from:
1). a one-dimensional gameplay loop that massively incentivizes swapping back and forth to charge up the long rifle
2). no actual depth to its gameplay outside of taking other kits and swapping to them to proc kit swap bonuses

indigo oasis
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Not saying this should be changed, but there seems to be 2 passives and 3 actives per kit. The passives being the Kit Bonus + one other thing, and the actives being the Swap Bonus, Weapon, and Grenade. SInce the Swap Bonus is just from the swap it kinda streamlines things a bit.

brisk flax
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a baseline strider shoots someone with the gun then swaps kits, or maybe swaps kits and shoots someone, and it repeats that until dead

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and the kit swap bonuses it gets, baseline, are extremely tepid

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well

bold crystal
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siege kit's swap bonus is kind of neat.

brisk flax
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one is so good it defines it in an unhealthy way and the other is eminently forgettable

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yeah the optionals are better, I'm speaking of marksman and skirmisher

smoky bluff
brisk flax
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like make a Zero Optionals Strider

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the simplest one you can, where you click "Strider" in comp/con with no optionals, then hit go

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what does that guy look like to play?

indigo oasis
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Is the plan to keep it so that it has 2 base kits and then optionals tack on more kits, rather than going the MBT route?

brisk flax
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The thing with the MBT is that very little of its pick-and-mix stuff really dramatically alters what the MBT is

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the MBT is striker/artillery, that's it

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you get five big guns and five smaller guns

indigo oasis
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Also- would it be straying too far from the CRB if there were no optional kits and optionals instead just expanded on the kits? Focusing more on depth rather than breadth?

brisk flax
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there's no "this turns the MBT into a hacker"

teal steeple
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hi, quick question: is there an implementation of the structure/stress rebake changes for foundry vtt?

brisk flax
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that is to say, "just stick to two kits" is a thing that has occurred to me, but I'm unsure if I want to go that route or not yet

bold crystal
indigo oasis
# brisk flax there's no "this turns the MBT into a hacker"

mmm, makes sense makes sense. I know the Strider tends to run a little smoother when I houserule that but it can stay a houserule if it means making intent clearer. Tho tbh the Strider's optional kits, while having strong changes to the striders playstyle, never felt so far as "turning it into a hacker." They all felt cohesively scrappy in themes and mechanics, if that makes sense

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But yeh I getcha

brisk flax
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yeah and tbh I think that's also a bit of an issue, albeit something of a lesser one, which is "the strider's kits often feel kind of slapdash"

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the sapper kit is a jamming pylon, a smoke grenade, a flash grenade, and a gun that dispenses lock on

indigo oasis
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Yeah if the intent of the rebake is to make them feel more distinct then I absolutely agree- tho it is a shame about all the bloat

brisk flax
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setting the name aside, I have no idea what all of that is really meant to angle towards beyond "a collection of stuff"

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if the idea is just "more random crap" then you don't want additional kits, you want optionals that add to existing kits

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if you want additional kits, they need to have a clear sort of "this turns the strider into more of an X type unit" or what's the fucking point

bold crystal
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I think it's some sort of like, force jammed then force them to move out of it to provoke lockon then use that for a kit with a gun that does actual damage(or for an ally with a gun)

indigo oasis
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See the Avenger rebake is interesting because it forgoes some of its strengths like Vanguard Armor for other strengths- having a mode switch be a matter of exchanging strengths and weaknesses to throw off opponents rather than just be a different kit entirely with mostly the same weaknesses

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Strider... yeah I can see how one would struggle to apply something similar and not just make a different NPC

teal steeple
brisk flax
bold crystal
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that might be too harsh on it but they're really all very uninteresting guns.

teal steeple
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working on a combat encounter, how does this sound for an extraction encounter (1 of 2 fights in the mission). the map is busy and sticky, natural choke points, quite a lot of difficult terrain around the objective, so i think it'll likely be punishing if the players play for the objective without dealing with the surrounding threats.

SITREP: Extraction
LL: 2
RESOURCES: 2x

COMP: (some of these are reinforcements)
Pyro
Demolisher
Hive [V]
Mirage
Cataphract (2x)

GRUNTS: CONTROLLERS & SUPPORTS & ARTILLERISTS (at most 3-6 of these, play it by ear as to whether i reinforce with controller/support/artillerist)

trail pivot
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yeah when I did the strider a while back, the "it has no reasomn to stay" and "what are these optionals" were two of the biggest things I floated around with, and I ultimated decided to cut the optional kits and just double down on giving it both a turn and reasons to stay in a kit

flint hollow
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I'm really curious to see what will result out of the strider rebake.

I don't know if it's the Venom artwork, but I've always been unable but to picture Striders as the Toyota hilux technicals of NPC mech. Not necessarily in terms of actual mechanics with how the swappable kits work but the mech often gives me kind of a... guerilla vibe to it?

It's hard to put in words the "why" of it but the core marksman/skirmisher vibe gives something akin to an intended strike-and-fade using skirmisher to get away to use marksman again (ideally back in another spot of cover etc and as the original Venim had immunity to difficult terrain it might have contributed to the vibe).

The kits, and the fact they need to swap between them rather than having them properly mounted/etc, feels very... ad-hoc? Which might be where the technical vibe also comes from.

Anyway just an observation/musing.
I'm not good with tweaking mechanics yet to know how this might be played upon(and even if it should).

young turtle
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Honestly i feel like strider’s whole vibe could work well if it was just one gun with a mod you swapped around

vale crescent
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Ya, venom also was originally a ||Member if the bicam weren't they?|| As much as I think the strider fits fit the HUC. I just think Sniper fits better for venoms role

vale crescent
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Out of scope for the rebake... But what if the Strider was a template. Not an NPC class

smoky bluff
cobalt hull
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i personally think that strider works well for venom, it kind of shows their mastery of the jungle

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also, is there any reason to run a strider with the siege or sapper kit other than just the flavor of it? they just really bad, like worse than the base kits

vale crescent
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Sapper kit is ridiculously good

cobalt hull
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is it just for the jamming pylon?

vale crescent
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Everything apaprt from the shotgun

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Burst 2 jammed is crazy, and agi save jammed as well shut down like 2 of my players when they ggot close

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Siege kit is ok, the terrain deployment is really cool but the weapon's a bit mid... IG it's comparable to an Aces missiles

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Eeeeh, blast 2 arcing is pretty good for not a super heavy

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Just not as good as 9/10/12 paracausal

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God damn it that's the scaling? 9/10/12 😩

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And for sapper kit. Smoke grenades until end of scene are neat

cobalt hull
vale crescent
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Ya

rose hamlet
brisk flax
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@neon blaze re: your archer feedback, I'd like to get your take on the CRB archer's Impending Threat which is similarly "someone takes any action"

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basically, what the rebake does is take Impending Action and just fold it into Suppress

# 
Reaction, 1/round, Trait
Trigger: A hostile character in line of sight and
Range 10 from the Archer moves or takes action.
Effect: The character must choose: lose the triggering
action/movement, or continue but let the Archer
immediately attack them with a single weapon.```
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This is the CRB Impending Threat, which exists as a separate reaction independent from Suppress, which is used basically on any action or movement the Archer wants it to be used on

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The rebake version is

Trait
Moving Target's trigger now includes the target taking any action that does not target the Archer.```
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So I would argue that this version of Impending Threat is less powerful because
A). it isn't its own separate reaction usable independently
B). it allows the Suppress/Moving Target character to take actions that target the Archer, which can include things that damage them and thus break Suppress' effect

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like functionally both of these things can let you target people for doing things like stabilizing or throwing non-targeted grenades as you noted, which means this isn't vastly different from the CRB archer in terms of what it can do, like is someone going to give up their Stabilize to get out of the CRB Impending Threat (the only way to get around it, by giving up the action)?

heavy pebble
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I recently used each version of impending threat for a recurring boss. I didn't like the original because A) the trigger was so broad it took up a lot of my attention and B) when I used it intelligently (e.g. against a barrage) the players never chose to drop the action. It was basically just a free attack.

The new one didn't actually make a difference because they were terrified of this character and used systems to repeatedly shut down the boss's reactions. It had other stuff it could do, but the few times they triggered Moving Target it was from movement and not other actions. But it was a big boss target so that might have warped things.

solid pilot
brisk flax
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the change in the rebake is designed to mitigate that by forcing both a targeting restriction (has to be the guy you marked with suppress), an action restriction (it's not its own reaction so you can't double dip both that and suppress within the round), and an out clause (you can target the archer and it doesn't trigger it)

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there are still instances where an archer can use it to just get an attack off, as noted if someone under the gun opts to stabilize then that's probably that, but on the whole I think it's significantly more reined in than before

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and if you use it as a "free attack" then that's your suppress used up

heavy pebble
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Oh, also I noticed I could trigger the new version off protocols but decided that was unfair

brisk flax
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which again is no different from the original version

heavy pebble
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Well the old version you could drop the protocol, new version you can't.

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It was triggering off like, terashima stance change.

brisk flax
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yeah but I guess my take is that most people who want to do a thing aren't gonna be like "well I guess I'm not putting up Active Camouflage after all"

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okay probably a bad example in the specific

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but if someone is leaning hard on crack shot, I'm not convinced they'll want to go "no" to avoid an archer attack

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same with stabilizing or standing from prone or whatever

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the corebook impending threat gives you an out, but most people are not going to give up, idk, a barrage to avoid it

indigo oasis
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Personally I’d run the archer as taking the first moving target attack it possibly can, going for reactions, protocols, anything, unless it wanted to keep the Impair. Mostly because if it doesn’t do so right away it’ll lose it, and allows the player to potentially “bait out” Moving Target attacks and basically waste actions they weren’t worried about in the first place

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Adds some depth

heavy pebble
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I don't like giving choices to enemies, those are for players. Anyway, I guess shooting people for protocols would have been okay and maybe I should have done it (with a fair warning).

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Players initially assumed that it wouldn't trigger off actions with no target and I had to correct them.

indigo oasis
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Tho I like playing smart enemies so it’s more of a guideline than a rule to me

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If I wanna challenge my players, becoming a better strategist is typically the first step I take

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Rather than just souping up the OpFor with 6 billion templates

indigo oasis
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When Micro-Missile Barrage says "when they do not have cover", is it referring to having cover against the Assault or just not having cover in general? I presume the former

neon blaze
# brisk flax <@180296907078369280> re: your archer feedback, I'd like to get your take on the...

Only got around about now so apologies for the delayed reply, but for Core Book Archer: I don't think I've actually ever used CRB Impending Threat, because every time my brain tries to find "Archer shuts down options under threat of shooting" I instead end up at Hail of Fire (which is a whole other thing itself). I think both kind of fall into the issue of feeling bad but in different ways despite being near enough the same - CRB literally eats your actions with no wind up, but the Rebake one still kind of made for real feel-bad situations

I do think tying it to an action (especially its Suppress) makes it less out of nowhere but the frustration of "can't do anything without reprisal" definitely felt like it was grating on the group. It's definitely less powerful, but still wasn't lending itself to being fun nor interesting

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Again, I do think part of the oppressiveness - in hindsight - was absolutely because Rock & Roll allowed me to just slam this down on two people instead of one and get insane value on shutting down not one but two player turns, move or no

indigo oasis
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Sounds like it didn't feel good in the CRB either

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Which is valid but like. A bit too divergent from the design principles.

bold crystal
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I think something to note is that 'any action that targets the archer' means you can get away with 'barrage, shoot the archer once, ignore it for the rest of the attacks'

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and such

indigo oasis
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As an aside, Small note on the Spite as I'm building my OpFor (I know theory isn't too appreciated but if it's for an OpFor I'm actively building to deploy it feels a little actively practical)- I was initially considering adding Crown of Thorns but I had misread it- it asks the target to not overcharge rather than overcharge. Without or even with Condemnation, the fact that Imprison already builds up heat and wants a mech to boil over made it feel too not-enticing compared to the other options. If I'm imprisoning a target I'm taunting them into Overcharging, so making them not do it feels weird.

Idk if that's anything but just something that came up- now that I mention it I'm gonna take it instead of Feedback Shield less because it's what I prefer and more to see how it fares, plus Feedback Shield I was already uncertain about liklihood of coming up due to Enthrone being so good at disincentivizing attacks as is.

neon blaze
# neon blaze Again, I do think part of the oppressiveness - in hindsight - was absolutely bec...

The main situation that had me doubting was when the Viceroy took a turn - she took a while trying to find options that could break her out of it before we ended up at "nothing"; she brought up Invade, which I said wouldn't break Suppress, though wouldn't trigger it and maybe put Impaired to make the shot harder, but she didn't feel it was worthwhile seeing its a Reliable 4 anyway. With no way to do damage beyond Range 5, and no way for allies to help beyond giving her Overshield, in the end she just begrudgingly took the shot. It was absolutely a hard counter for her build, but also not a counter that meant she could have allies better suited of fucking with the Archer help with, so she just had to constantly eat the damage until she was in range.

After that, my Dumas player decided he needed to Stabilize because he now had 3 HP and 11 Burn. I should of absolutely shot him for this - it would of been a good set up and punish and Structured him again ... but at the same time I didn't make the punch because it just felt cheap to not only Structure him like that but also to go "yeah your Repair now does nothing". Also frankly he could of just. Died, seeing he's already down 2 Structure after ... well, not single, but definitely handedly holding down the objectives. I fully admit to holding back because the alternative was "the player gets to actually play the game". This situation mind I think was less about player frustration, or even unique to Impending Threat being too much, but it was kind of a circumstance that made me think a lot about how much Impending Threat can actively punish

bold crystal
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(or if you're using condemnation to apply it to everyone!)

indigo oasis
bold crystal
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as an optional I think 'overcharge or take damage' would be way way scarier

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but not like in a good way, in a 'this is too easy' way

indigo oasis
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Yeah perhaps forcing the target to opt into Overcharge is a bit of a taboo

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Just feels like punishing something that's already being punished... and I just realized Tom Spite had an Overcharge punish too so this is prolly a legacy of that

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NEvermind then, I'll give it a try regardless

indigo oasis
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Think it's just a me problem then lol

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I think people like Insidious Prison

bold crystal
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admittedly I'm not sure that's different from corebook impending threat, which I think is also immediate.

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but maybe that's a problem.

indigo oasis
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It's a problem that can be fixed without necessarily overhauling the ability at the very least

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Wait

bold crystal
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...wait, I just had a stupid thought. can impending threat(either version) outspeed disengage?

indigo oasis
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Ok nevermind I thought I had contradicted something I had intended but nevermind

indigo oasis
bold crystal
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actually disengage doesn't make you not trigger reactions entirely(just on movement) so that's not relevant

indigo oasis
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Oh wait I just noticed Rebake Impending Threat removes the option to lose the action to avoid the attack

neon blaze
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and from experience nothing sucks more than having no options

bold crystal
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yeah, for sure.

indigo oasis
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I think in the scenario of an archer targeting a Zheng with no ranged options with Suppress it's still bad but also a "experience the consequences of your build" kinda scenario

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As an example

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I'm aware the spectrum of being helpless is broader than that and because of that that's an issue

bold crystal
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also I thought disengage was, like. stronger. rip to that.

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wandering nightmare losing to impending threat is maybe the more relevant thing there.

indigo oasis
bold crystal
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I think an important part of core impending threat was, if they forced you to give up the action, they lost their reaction to do that

neon blaze
indigo oasis
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Fair fair

neon blaze
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Impending Threat just meant that her throwing a Flash Charge at it (which she did) also got her shot so she was fucked regardless. No action felt good to take

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and thats the core feeling I kinda walked out from the experience

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"No action feels good to take"

indigo oasis
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Well hang on with Rebake Archer would throwing a Flash Charge including the Archer in the AOE not trigger it?

neon blaze
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Everything suddenly became very agitated and begrudging, and while no one spoke out about it, I could kinda feel some latent frustration

indigo oasis
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The simple fix of "the reaction happens after the action" is probably the most direct way to make it less frustrating

neon blaze
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Wording is specifically "targets" rather than "affects"

indigo oasis
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Well.... yeah I agree that sucks

indigo oasis
bold crystal
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and it's not even like, a 'make a save' thing where you could argue it's a target... yeah, that sucks.

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not sure if that's intended but it's definitely painful.

neon blaze
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either way I'm not in the wheelhouse for suggesting wording changes or whatever, thats Kai's decision in the end rather than mine. I'm just trying to be clear on where my interactions ended me up at

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Kai is correct that, yeah, the Rebake one is much less potent (telegraph, action sink, can be turned off) and seeing I never used the core book version I can't really draw an exact line of how the two feel different, if at all

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but the core framework of Impending Threat being "everything you do that isn't directly targeting triggers Moving Target" combined with "Moving Target doesn't go away until you trigger it or you deal damage to the Archer" on top with Rock & Roll just summed up as two players taking guaranteed extra damage every turn for several turns and neither side found that really compelling

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where the core issue lies is harder to find

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like I said, Moving Target by itself kind of would of fucked over (and did) both of these players. Impending Threat just made it even more suffocating, and Rock & Roll more blanketing. Was it just Archer Being Archer? Was it Rock & Roll doubling up the effects? Or was the fact Impending Threat was making what should of been Hard Counters to the original Suppress not actually stop Suppress feeding into that frustration?

Hell, was it the Bastion with Near-Threat Denial that made it so players would take 6 AP if they even tried to Skirmish and break Suppression, which is worse than just letting the Archer shoot? because that was a factor too - both targets were Auxslingers and I fully intended on punishing that. they knew it had it, because it was in Athena a while before

brisk flax
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The point is that the rebake version is a modifier to Suppress but here's the thing: the CRB version also goes off before the action

neon blaze
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I'm fully okay with admitting I found a very novel situation of "right NPC at the right time with the right support against the wrong players". there is a reason I wanted to tie up the Balor with an Elemental for as long as possible, after all

brisk flax
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At the risk of making assumptions, this feels a bit to me like the Hecatonchires Hiding thing, where a thing that's always existed is determined to be pretty strong, only in this case it's Impending Threat

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Because the rebake version is basically worse than the CRB version along several axes, excepting only "you can sacrifice the action to not get shot," but how many people are going to sacrifice, idk, a stabilize? Or a Barrage? Or a crucial action?

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The CRB version just lets the archer cherry pick when to use it, so there's no real "baiting it out"

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Combining it with Rock and Roll is noted as being a pretty strong combo, to which I would say the counter in that case would be "someone who isn't the Suppress target force moves the archer or the marked target, because Rock and Roll immobilizes the archer and the gun is range 10"

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This is assuming the marked target can't target and damage the archer which would also break the suppress

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For that target anyway

neon blaze
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absolutely yeah, which was mostly the case

brisk flax
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If I can skunk an entire action in exchange for a reaction that isn't even my only "shoot someone" reaction for the round, then I am king shit of fuck mountain

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Impending Threat is basically Moving Target except your gun isn't loading and you also have reliable and you also have like 2-3 other similar reactions at your disposal

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Other forms of counterplay would be just shutting off reaction-ability via grappling, specialized tech, throw a wandering nightmare down, etc

bold crystal
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(also wandering nightmare, as noted, gets them shot first.)

brittle cipher
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bring friends to wandering nightmare

brisk flax
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like I'm sorry, but this feels like a case of an ability with multiple avenues of counterplay to neutralize it where no one was in a position to do so, and so they got got

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someone can grapple the archer, someone can move the archer, someone ELSE can throw flashes or wandering nightmares, someone can move the suppress targets, you can just jam the guy, etc etc

neon blaze
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It was very much a case of "the players that had the answers are currently Not Present"

brisk flax
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instead, nobody was in a position to do any of those things, at which point I'm afraid I'm not really sure I see the problem; sometimes the bear gets you

neon blaze
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either the Balor or the Lich (which did have Nightmare) needed to really be involved and they just weren't, because they were fighting over other objectives

brisk flax
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yeah idk, this kind of (reading the battle report and all the factors involved) feel like a scenario where things just lined up to be that way and not, like, "this ability had no way of doing anything about it"

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there's a half dozen ways to interact with this

neon blaze
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which is why I'm not 100% sure on how much is on Impending Threat and how much is on everything else, yeah

brisk flax
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that don't involve someone being shot

neon blaze
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I 100% held back in the one single instance because I wasn't interested in the "you start your turn, you're dead" scenario but outside of that, it was Archer doing its thing really

lilac lily
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Hey, I just read over everything, and had a few thoughts (sorry if any of this is redundant, I haven't been following all the discussion)

  • I really appreciate the design commentary
  • A few of the ideas are similar to ones I'd wanted to do for "powered up" versions of the core NPCS (make the Assault's melee Barrage make sense, give the Demolisher more to do at short range, etc.), so I was happy to see them implemented here
  • Veteran Traits are fun
  • Ultras taking damage to shrug off conditions and destroyed weapons seems like it will make it more viable to actually destroy them, instead of just ignoring them and going for the objective
  • I think the Rainmaker needs a modest mobility or survivability buff if its range is being reduced. I think it will struggle to set up and execute on combos before being focus-fired, even with arcing
  • In general, I feel like I'd need a larger number of Rebake NPCs to challenge the players at higher tiers than their vanilla counterparts, since this cuts down on NPC burst damage and range, but players get access to increasing amounts of both as they level up, and can outrange even Bombards at LL8-9, and even with vanilla NPCs, it can be difficult for me as GM to get a notable amount of attacks off unless I deploy a staggering amount of NPCs, and then wind up taking a bunch of turns in a row at the end of the round with no little to no PC interactivity. It's possible that the rebake NPCs have increased defensive abilities to counteract this. It does seem like the design philosophy of the rebake is more "you can go as hard as you can within these limitations", than "you need to rely on bullshit", which is a good thing. I'm curious what the Tier 3 experience has been like for people using the Rebake NPCs so far
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  • And finally, a tonal note: The Assault's final optional is called "stormtrooper" in the list, and "shocktrooper" in the design notes. To my knowledge, the former is explicitly nazi-coded, which we may be undesirable for Lancer's NPCs. Lancer does lend itself well to cathartic sapce-nazi smashing, but I could also understand why some groups would want to avoid such elements in their campaign, or include them in a more abstract way. The NPCs are designed to be generic and somewhat fiction neutral (compared to DnD monsters, for instance), and sometimes take the role of allies, or opponents for whom that coding doesn't make sense. So I'd put forth a gentile suggestion to go with "Shock Trooper" of the two
brisk flax
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Nothing in playtest feedback has noted any particular deficiencies in the rainmaker, and so I'm disinclined to change it

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The purpose of the rebake rainmaker isn't really "setting up combos" either the way the CRB one is, but regardless, nothing in terms of actual play reports have been brought to my attention that seem like it's struggling, and my feeling is that if someone wants their rainmaker to have more protection, that's what the rest of the opfor is for

lilac lily
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If it's working as-intended, that's great!

brisk flax
#

to unpack this a bit more now that I'm back home on my desk and not phoneposting

  1. I do think that at higher level play you may need more NPCs. I think this is fine because the way current multi-attacker NPCs "challenge" players is by massively frontloading damage and turning high level play into rocket tag where you need to kill the triple-attacking supreme melee ronin or the specter poised to deal 10x3 damage plus an additional 5 with a cheeky ram on top of it. This is a form of challenge, but it's one I think is somewhat dysfunctional. Nothing in the rebake will stop players from building hyperoptimized DPS platforms and I don't think anything in the rebake COULD do that, but the solution to "I need to make fights harder on my players" SHOULD be (imo) "I will use more enemies and/or more templates to increase their threat" rather than "I will use one of a small handful of multiplicatively power-scaling NPCs to hang overhead like a frontloaded doom clock"
  2. Part of the rebake's top-down design intent is for NPCs to function as pieces of a whole, not self-contained elements. To expound on this, the rainmaker DOES exist to "create combos" in the sense that every NPC does, in conjunction with other units. What I'm not as interested in is "the rainmaker as a solo independent element that can park 20 spaces away and has a perfunctiory extra damage combo that's unintuitive but spikes its damage higher than you'd expect, and also it's billed as a slant-controller but barely performs as such." The rebake NPC roster as a whole attempts to broaden out things like beneficial movement, lock on synergies, and other elements throughout the NPCs to make supporting each other easier, and this is how I would like the rainmaker to be supported, to which end I don't think it notably lacks even with the range reduction, given it can still shoot, move, ignore LoS, etc
lilac lily
#

I entirely agree with point 1, I didn't think through the implications of the new (and old) templates as a difficulty adjustment lever,
as for point 2, I also didn't take the stuff other NPCs can do into account
I'm going to try the rebake and check back in once I've had some actual experience running it

young turtle
#

There's an added thing with the removal of multiattack which is that by tier 3 lancer isn't exactly "harder", its just more punishing if you don't correctly sus out that you need to take these ones out first

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and because of how they work, you actually gain more in core lancer by one hit killing an npc at tier 3 than you do at like

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Tier 1 or 2 (sometimes)

brisk flax
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Yeah, high level lancer often becomes rocket tag because it's "kill these guys or be killed in return"

young turtle
#

in core lancer, putting more npcs to challenge players at tier 3 is kinda like walking on eggshells because you have to make sure you don't put too many multiattack enemies

brisk flax
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the difference between a single operator attacking thrice and three operators is the latter have their attacks broken up interstitially, the former doesn't

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if you do not remove the single triple-attacking operator in time, then on their turn they will shoot you with every attack at once

young turtle
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If you have 3 operators rebakes its more meaningful to me than by having 1 operator with 3 attacks because it means actually tackling those is a decision that doesn't boil down to "lets do as much damage to the one guy that can output 3 times the damage"

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not that I would neccesarily recommend 3 operators rebake at once, more so that they're kinda the equivalent in terms of how many attacks they throw around

brisk flax
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I think the aim is, at least, a GM shouldn't be punished with a hugely deadly combat way outside their expectations if they decide "I want to use TWO ronins instead of one"

young turtle
#

rebakes seem like they generally make it more viable to have more npcs at once, which also means that "just burst them down asap" isn't as much of a solution to everything

brisk flax
#

"what if I want to use more of X at once" has been one of the broader goals, both in terms of former multiattackers and things like rainmakers etc

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lancer has a number of NPCs that are tacitly just kind of a pain if you bring multiples to a fight

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and this gets worse with multiattack-by-tier scaling

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I've mentioned it before, but there's a reason the "big boss fight" in solstice rain is an operator, because Tier 1 is the only tier I would be comfortably doing an Ultra Operator fight without having to really be concerned about things going off the rails in a bad way

rose hamlet
brisk flax
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anyway

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speaking of bad ideas

fluid zodiac
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5 rebake assaults with micromissiles in a single sitrep? Yes.

brisk flax
fluid zodiac
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(they were not all deployed at once)

brisk flax
#

they said it shouldn't be done, and it turns out they were right, props to the haters

young turtle
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okay

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I think this works

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tbh

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I think focusing on the two kits was the right call

brisk flax
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I mean, and I say this not wanting the rebake project to be "ugh here's how I am FIXING things," it would be hard to work less than the existing strider

young turtle
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Core Strider is a really odd beast, I figured out how to make it work but like

brisk flax
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I think the strider as it exists might be lancer's weakest NPC in terms of just sort of mechanical implementation

young turtle
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its because there's one way you make it work

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and its straight up by making it a movement spam npc

brisk flax
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the fantasy is very compelling but from a gameplay perspective and also just a pure numbers perspective it's kind of a mess

young turtle
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As in, you take optionals that help with movement

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Like it works but only when played in a very specific way

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in my case the only way I could find to make it work was straight to spend as little time in skirmisher as possible

brisk flax
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also yeah hustle, of the optional traits, feels the most mandatory

young turtle
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Marksman kit in core is basically the thing you want to use as often as possible

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which ends up being odd because that kinda just makes core strider an npc with loading in practice, kinda

brisk flax
#

the strider is exceptionally frail, physically and in terms of heat cap, and it lacks a big punchy defensive ability like barrel roll or hunker down, you have Duck but that's only on one kit and has a number of qualifiers, and you-

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yeah

young turtle
brisk flax
#

you're encouraged to always be cycling between Marksman and Skirmisher (or something) to reload the rifle

young turtle
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Bastion is closer to that

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for me

brisk flax
#

yeah bastion is also kind of a struggle at times

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but like at least the bastion is more intuitive in the sense of "if I put this guy next to another guy, they get resistance" and it just does it

young turtle
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I would also put Barricade there if it didn't have those banger optionals

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yeah

brisk flax
#

the strider is an unintuitive NPC

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you have to find the right way to make it work, and your reward is honestly not THAT impressive

young turtle
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The strider's biggest problem is that it doesn't work like you think it does

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yeah

rose hamlet
# brisk flax

Ditching the extra kits is controversial and yet so brave lol. I like the new “non kit” optionals provided.

Question about wording: Did you deliberately not want to call the Kit Bonuses Protocols or is that just how it shook out on this draft?

vale crescent
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Spare parts being able to be looted from the corpse looks fun

brisk flax
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the long rifle isn't bad in terms of damage output plus paracausal but it's like, idk, you could just run another artillery

young turtle
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just use a sniper

rose hamlet
young turtle
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you can do what a strider does with a core sentinel and a sniper pairing

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sure its two npcs but they also output about as much hurt

brisk flax
errant needle
#

Honestly, I could see using this for like, 'this is intentional jank' for flavor. An OpFor with multiple striders because the dudes can't afford precision quality mechs like dedicated Snipers and Sentinels.

brisk flax
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that is, if I put them into the kits as Orange Block Protocols, it wouldn't make it as clear that they're mutually exclusive with swap bonuses

young turtle
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oh also wording question

rose hamlet
young turtle
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does it mean you can chose not to gain kit bonus to swap kits again?

brisk flax
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and by swapping, you get a swap bonus

young turtle
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Oh see that's not how I read it, i thought this happened on the use of swap kit

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you swap kit and decide "hey do you want the kit bonus or not"

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is how I currently read it

brisk flax
#

Each kit comes with a special Kit Bonus that activates at the start of their turn, as well as a Swap Bonus that only activates when they use this trait to swap to that kit; if the Strider chooses to gain the Kit Bonus, then they can't activate this trait (and thus gain the Swap Bonus) until the start of their next turn.

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basically you only get one bonus per turn, either "I stayed in my kit" or "I swapped kits"

young turtle
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i see

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OH its there so you can't like

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swap from one kit to another and still have like

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the kit bonus

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i see

brisk flax
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If you hunker down in Marksman mode, you can get free lock ons, if you stay in Skirmisher you get free movement, but you can't go "I will get a free lock on, and THEN I will swap to Skirmisher and get a free attack"

young turtle
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Yeah okay

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I see the vision

brisk flax
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part of the issue with the Strider, as I see it, is nothing about it encourages you to stay in one kit for more than one turn

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it's kind of down to how the core long rifle works

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where swapping back and forth is the way to power it up

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but it's also just sort of like

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why would you

young turtle
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I do think this could use a lil bit of a formating touch up to make this a bit clear, with like, an item list?

indigo oasis
brisk flax
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you get bonuses for swapping, you get nothing for NOT swapping

young turtle
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Like

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hold on

brisk flax
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Kit Bonuses are "this incentivizes you to stay in a kit"

vale crescent
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I need an opfor which is like 4 grunt Striders with Spare parts and a chunky goliath that just keeps eating them when they die

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I also love the endless bag of knives

rose hamlet
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I do notice that the Skirmisher kit can double tap with the shotgun on a swap kit turn and I don’t know how I feel about that

brisk flax
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you're going from a rifle dealing 8/10/12 damage to two shots with a weapon dealing 4/5/6 damage

vale crescent
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It does also play into it having a back up plan if you get close

indigo oasis
brisk flax
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so ROUGHLY numbers wise it is similar except the carbine is worse against armor

indigo oasis
vale crescent
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If it is a concern, IG it could be something like making the attack with the carbine have to happen immediately, or smthn

brisk flax
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the carbine's big thing is knockback 3

young turtle
# 
At the start of its turn, the Strider decides to either:
-Benefit from its Active Kit Bonus, and cannot Swap Kits during this turn.
-Not benefit from its Active Kit Bonus, but can Swap Kits during this turn, allowing it to benefit from Swap bonus.```
vale crescent
young turtle
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Or something like that

rose hamlet
young turtle
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I think a form of list would help

rose hamlet
young turtle
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Anyway my other feedback is simple make the carabine knockback 4 you coward/s

vale crescent
brisk flax
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yeah it needs to be tested because tbh I'm not convinced that double-tapping with, at tier 1 lets say, a 4 damage gun is really bank-breaking stuff

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this is ACTUALLY in "armor is a counter to multiple attacks" territory

rose hamlet
young turtle
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My actual feedback with double tapping the carabine is that because of it, you might want to elect to not knockback the target if you do that

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Sure you can move in between attacking for free

brisk flax
young turtle
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Yeah

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That's also fair

brisk flax
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"what is the current circumstance and how should I act" should be strider 101

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if the goal is "the NPC with a bunch of tools for a bunch of situations" that's how I look at it

rose hamlet
young turtle
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if it turns out that attacking twice is too much I would actually suggest making the swap bonus give more knockback actually

rose hamlet
brisk flax
young turtle
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But it also seems like with Skirmisher you kinda wanna be in CQB range-ish because Knockback 3 is much more disruptive in the middle of someone's movement than it is otherwise

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imo

rose hamlet
young turtle
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yeah

rose hamlet
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In which case it may be fucked haha

young turtle
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but threat 3 is kinda big anyway

rose hamlet
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Which, again, is fine, it’s Artillery, not a defender

young turtle
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way I see it

indigo oasis
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I’m very happy the Siege Loadout stuck around in some way, I think an artillery that builds its snipers nest is a fun idea but way too potent for a full NPC class (barricade would be offended)

brisk flax
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kit bonuses are there to give an option and say "maybe you want to stay in this mode," but I think the only way to complete yank the incentives of swapping out is to remove swap bonuses and I'm uninterested in the reengineering that would require because, frankly, the rifle is sort of locked into that as a requirement with its "ordnance but not if you swap" thing going on (that is, I am uninterested in un-ordnancing the long rifle on a baseline level)

young turtle
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the double tap on kit swap is actually a good way to make that knockback stick to someone and force them to adapt their gameplan

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since it can knock them back 6

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which is enough to go above average standard move in most circumstances

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this assumes a clear path

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tho

rose hamlet
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Yeah, and 2 hits and not an “edge of the range” first shot

young turtle
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But then again you can move between those shots

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so you could hypothetically bank someone around a corner slightly

indigo oasis
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Question: how come the Marksman Kit Bonus is described as a free action at the start of the Striders turn instead of a Protocol? it sounds more streamlined to make it a protocol but maybe there’s some mechanical interaction I’m missing

brisk flax
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this isn't to interrupt or shoot down anyone, but a lot of this is probably really strongly in the "this is gonna need playtesting to see how it shakes out" camp

rose hamlet
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Agreed 100%

young turtle
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I'm mostly thinking out loud about use cases

rose hamlet
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I’m mostly just talking through anticipated behavior at this point

brisk flax
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the strider is such a grab bag of stuff that it's like, how will this work in practice? man I dunno

young turtle
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This is reminding me about how there isn't really a caliban coded npc

brisk flax
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like I have a vision but I also have no idea how the rubber's gonna meet the road

young turtle
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forced movement rules

rose hamlet
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But yeah forced movement is great

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I meant mostly the pursue prey part

young turtle
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that's kinda what i'd want out of one actually

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Pursue Prey is neat

rose hamlet
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I guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite here since I made one like that

twin reef
rose hamlet
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My brain just goes to the 4d chess of Multiple Actions with Lots Of Knockback per Action

young turtle
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lmao bless

bold crystal
#

honestly being cut down to two kits is. reasonable. the siege kit being preserved as extra swap bonuses is nice though

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I also see that it's not locked into only using stuff from one kit each turn, which is good probably

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the optional that stands out most as 'needs testing' to me is the survival knife

brisk flax
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the survival knife is, to me, in the spot of secondary weapons like the berserker's harpoon gun, a low damage utility add

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2/3/4 damage isn't "set the world on fire" stuff, the draw is mainly the chance to slow someone

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and yes, it does also work as "ablative system trauma fodder" for people using those damage tables

indigo oasis
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You can pry System Trauma from my cold dead hands

brisk flax
bold crystal
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that could be good - I wasn't clear, but my concern was that it could be a little weak as-is

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I do think it slots neatly into like, how the strider wants to use it - skirmish(throw knife) swap to skirmisher kit and knock back the now slowed target(and get the knife back), and then it's an option again for the strider's next turn

brisk flax
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yeah damage-wise I don't want to scale it up any, but I think there's a good argument for making the control element stronger

vale crescent
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I guess the strength for making the control element stronger is just how its save characteristic scales

solid pilot
#

oh shit strider drop

rose hamlet
solid pilot
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what's the over under on lcp? and related question would you be ok with someone doing a bootleg one up? ||will prob be running first encounter for wallflower this friday and it seems the players are leaning on Trapdoor Spider so perfect time for playtesting||

cobalt hull
#

I ran the first encounter with the spite the day before the rebake version was released. I'm not knowledgeable on the rebake spite, but man was it an annoying enemy to run

subtle nacelle
#

I was actually wondering if kai gives us the greenlight to make a wallflower rebake lcp in the same repo

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@brisk flax worth a tag i think

brittle cipher
#

I'm partway through running a fight with rebake avenger (OWS combat 2, swapped one of the vet berserkers for a vet avenger w/ feign death and cycle of violence) and its sick

Started as a durable harasser (and one that could actually threaten my armor-loving players!), then the players finished off the berserker and suddenly the avenger went from "very durable, kinda annoying but 4 damage isn't too bad and he hasn't gotten erupting shrapnel on anybody who does a bunch of attacks" straight to "bro just structured the hacker and dropped the drake to 3 hp in one turn, we gotta deal with this MF"

They considered dealing with him before destroying somebody else but ended up not doing so, which I was quite happy with.

brisk flax
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Once I do that, you'll probably have a less rough draft to work from

cobalt hull
#

Thank you yet again Eleonor 🙏

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i am still going to kill Roland tonight, sorry

smoky bluff
#

I do think i have an issue with the strider's kit bonus for marksmen because when it locks on as a free action, that means it can't use its ranger long rifle

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although adaptive camouflage sort of makes up for that

oak heron
#

That might be a good mechanical reason to change it to a protocol

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I assume Spare Parts shouldn't leave behind a wreck if an Ultra Strider melts down

smoky bluff
#

meltdown doesn't leave a wreck

bold crystal
#

.

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this came up before, basically; meltdown is not 'destroyed'
(or at least like, not destroyed in the sense abilities key off of they're definitely fuckin' obliterated)

smoky bluff
#

Now all we have to do is wait for another rebake file i guess

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and then eleonor can take it from there

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hm maybe there is a better way of formatting this

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@subtle nacelle Sorry to ask and ping you but do you think that the swap bonus and kit bonus should be seperate in the lcps or is combining them more efficient

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1.3.1 has them in different reactions but 1.3.2 combines the 2 as the "Swap Bonus" and "Kit Bonus" reaction

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eh I'll just go with 1.3.2 since i feel, personally, i rather have the swap bonus and kit bonus already listed down when referring to siege loadout and recon loadout

hollow tangle
#

Just ran the first combat of Solstice Rain having replaced the NPCs with their versions from the Rebake. It went really well actually, my players were at LL0 as expected and completed the mission with only 4 structure lost and no NPCs on the Holdout objective without needing to use any of their core powers.

paint job did proc twice though, which was wild, but still went really well imo

smoky bluff
#

Honestly, paint job procing twice and they get away with 4 structure? Absolute value

hollow tangle
#

It's a team of 5 too, so they have loads of resources left

brisk flax
solid pilot
#

I'll probably treat it as a protocol in testing

sharp mirage
#

Is that all the NRFaWF NPCs?

brisk flax
#

yes thank god

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"what about eidolons" there I beat everyone to the joke, no I'm not doing eidolons

prime urchin
#

~~What about SSMR pain ~~

bold crystal
#

(also like, eidolons kind of just work. some of them are hardcountered by certain player strategies or comps, some are really annoying... but that's like, what they are. it's not like the core npcs or the core wallflower npcs where some of them are vastly too strong or uninteractive and some just straight up suck(I mean. arguably.), they by and large Do The Things They're Supposed To)

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(and more importantly they're not common foes.)

vale crescent
rose hamlet
#

Single layer eidolon as part of a faction roster… 🤔

prime urchin
rose hamlet
#

It is a mystery 👻

vale crescent
#

THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE KNIVES!!!

errant needle
#

Also, I think with those, it's like... done, mostly? I think the only other NPCs out there are the big setpieces

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and the MBT and Tempest both work pretty well as is

rose hamlet
#

Leech is the one other normal NPC

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Still relatively recent though, compared to CRB + Wallflower

twin reef
#

Is Leech a multiattacker?

#

Wait, it's got that potential infinite attack loop

rose hamlet
#

“Infinite attack” as in “attack until its tiny but tier scaling heatcap explodes” but yeah

indigo oasis
vale crescent
#

I assume Siren's song NPCs are also quite well rounded

neon blaze
#

To be fair, the MBT does get some very curious scaling

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Not on the same level as like, other stuff, but it has some pieces here and there that raised a brow when I used one

rose hamlet
#

I mean I have my own thoughts about the SSMR stuff but I don’t know if I’d personally rebake them at this point

brisk flax
neon blaze
#

... Okay I misremembered and crossed some wires. Smoothbore gaining scaling damage to terrain was something I did find odd with the MBT, but that wasn't what I was originally thinking about

#

I think I just. forgot I had a core book Priest giving it accuracy the whole time which was the part my brain was jumping to

brisk flax
#

"damage dealt to terrain" is a thing the CRB, on the NPC side, tends to apply tier scaling to and not always consistently

#

like the bombard has a weird 10/15/20 damage scaling to terrain at one point which I'm going to generously assume is just an unintentional oddity

neon blaze
#

aye, definitely not a feeling unique to it by far in that regard

#

10/15/20 is even weirder

brisk flax
#

it's a weird one to thread because just a flat 30 AP would be "fine" except it would then mean "yeah the average NPC with a jackhammer-alike can just blow up size 3 objects on demand"

#

and like I guess I can see the desire not to do that

neon blaze
#

But yeah no it was def my brain grabbing the wrong piece

brisk flax
#

but then again the book doesn't really weigh in on "should objects in the map be made of minecraft blocks or not" and it's kinda like all right whatever

neon blaze
#

I typically just find scaling terrain damage to be odd in practice because objects, ironically, are probally the most "fixed" thing in Lancer in regards to tier

brisk flax
#

but yes

#

priest accuracy scaling by tier is another one of those "yeah let's just not do that" things

neon blaze
#

it made tier 2 Winter Scar interesting, I'll say that

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doubly so seeing I was using the standalone veteran traits at that time which. wow.

#

"2 Accuracy triple shot Smoothbore" did about as you'd expect, which is funny seeing no one really died

brisk flax
haughty venture
#

I always love reading the designer notes, it's cool getting the thought process and explanation for why the changes are being made.

indigo oasis
#

I am noting how the Erupting Shrapnel Revenge Bonus was moved off of Vanguard Armor and onto Erupting Shrapnel. Prolly for the best but it was fun having my players see the various Revenge bonuses scattered about the Avenger the longer they fought their first avenger- I agree with the change but just a bit of a sad loss

#

I guess since there’s a PDF of it now, Kai, you think you might publish the expansion and put it on sale?

brisk flax
#

maybe

indigo oasis
#

It’s quality stuff so I think it’d be more than fair if you got paid for it, but also a paid expansion to a paid expansion isn’t an easy sell

brisk flax
#

also I won't be doing anything with this in any official capacity until/unless I get some playtest feedback on it

#

I've had a few trickles of Avenger feedback to the effect of "yeah it's good" but that's about all

rose hamlet
#

Well, with an LCP potentially forthcoming, these will definitely be more accessible for playtesters! Looking forward to seeing how they all play

indigo oasis
#

I will be using a Rebake Spite soon so that'll be fun

brisk flax
#

oh right uh @subtle nacelle

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hello

#

I mentioned waiting a couple days on this, so here you go, this is the 1.0 for the Wallflower NPCs in official capacity

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This is the one that should be used rather than the individual documents as it's been subject to revision etc

bold crystal
subtle nacelle
#

perf! thanks for the heads-up

bold crystal
#

As a protocol, the Strider may Lock On to a hostile character within Sensors and line of sight as a free action.
bit of redundant wording here

#

the Striker really doesn't play
this is nitpick at best but this should be Strider

neon blaze
#

I will say immediately at a glance, as someone who really does not enjoy the original Avenger - Vanguard Armor is kind of smart, actually. I really like that and I think it rectifies a very core dilemna I've had with the Avenger for a while (which spurred me to do my own re-examination like, ages ago)

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It makes more sense than Assault Armor, thats for sure

#

fuck. am I going to end up using Avengers finally. is thats how this is going.

#

ah well my players probably deserve it, Destroyer Avenger 2 time

brisk flax
#

I'm interested in any feedback you have to give on the matter of course

#

Re: the Strider in particular, one thing I kicked around for a while was the thought of making Hustle (get a free move whenever you swap kits) into a baseline feature

#

As Swap Kit costs a free action, the Strider is in the camp of having constrained action economy, and thus isn't as freely able to move, boost, and do another thing

#

I'm not doing that for now because I want to see how the rest shakes out, but one possible changeup I have in reserve if it proves to be too constrained still is bumping its speed back down to 4 and reconsidering that as a baked in element

neon blaze
#

yeah I'm just flicking through at the moment, I probably won't shuffle my campaign roster too much but it is tempting

brisk flax
#

do it

neon blaze
#

I was planning on bringing a Sniper for the final encounter because frankly I have been dying hard to this Balor

#

but since the Balor popped Core for Scene 2 I've been thinking its not as necessary to put the hurt on

#

so I might actually reduce it from a Vet Sniper to just A Strider

#

or a Vet Strider its not like my players haven't demonstrated that Structure is fallacy anyway

#

they eat Elite Vets like oatmeal

#

Combat Drill does damage, apparently, who knew

#

but yeah at a glance Avenger is both much healthier (10+5+4 potential damage a turn get out of here) and also much more of a choice rather than being a like, arbitrary checkbox to an encounter

#

The first time I used an Avenger, it unironically caused a full Team Wipe; ever since, they've not been allowed to exist, because everyone now knows to kill the Avenger first or they lose. so they kill the Avenger first, and it definitely dies

#

i can't blame them but it did take all the fun out the NPC very quickly for being so binary

indigo oasis
indigo oasis
brisk flax
brisk flax
#

"guy who gets up close and is hard to kill there"

#

inverse siege armor isn't an unviable concept, it basically speaks to a very aggressive NPC which is your quintessential melee/CQB striker type or maybe some sort of tar pit defender, but I don't find it particularly helpful on the avenger

neon blaze
young turtle
indigo oasis
# brisk flax inverse siege armor isn't an unviable concept, it basically speaks to a very agg...

Yeah it feels more defender coded than Point Defense Shield- I get what you’re going at comparing it to Cataphract but I feel that with a different set of bones you could get a very different feeling NPC when using Assault Armor compared to a Cataphract.

Like a Cataphract, due to the way Point Defense works, likes to target one specific guy and stay engaged with them so they can benefit from resistance the most while keeping up pressure, while also running or pushing away other combatants whenever possible. Meanwhile something with Assault Armor would want to be engaged with as many enemies as possible- kinda like a berserker or breacher in that sense

#

Notably wading into a crowd of enemies is not what an Avenger wants to do- it wants to babysit an NPC til it gets angry

#

And with a range 8 weapon it just feels like a conflict of interests, even if it has threat 3

rose hamlet
indigo oasis
rose hamlet
#

It’s not as good on a Rearguard IMO because the Rearguard can’t force enemies to play the Assault Armor game; the Avenger problem repeats and it gets shot first and dies

rose hamlet
#

I considered it on my Torrent but decided against it because it’s anti synergistic with its knockback

#

I guess the question is “how does Vlad CP change how Vlad plays when active”

indigo oasis
#

A big issue with Assault Armor that’s coming to mind, however, is distinguishing it from Demolisher’s Shock Armor in a way that isn’t “better shock armor”

#

Or at least distinguishing the NPC

rose hamlet
# indigo oasis Or at least distinguishing the NPC

Yeah no Assault Armor definitely makes the most sense on Vanguard-role taking a point, since you’re most likely to face CQB-using Rearguards in the process and AssArm is juuuuust the right range for most threat 3 CQB weapons

restive fable
#

I've been using Rebakes on my NPCs for the last few encounters, and should be testing out an Elite Avenger rebake (accompanying a group of Conscripts to try to clog up a Holdout zone) this Sunday. Might drop some feedback once I see how they do

smoky bluff
#

Conscripts + avenger is actually baller and evil wth

halcyon wasp
#

I ran conscripts + avenger once to see if I could actually proc revenge before the avenger died, lol.

#

I did, and it was great.

smoky bluff
# brisk flax there

Should I just update my lcp to the changes made? Or will Eleanor make her own lcp

brisk flax
#

Eleanor has been pinged and I assume she and the crew will update the github with a wallflower lcp

subtle nacelle
#

You can contribute to our repo by forking and pull request

#

Im definitely gonna work on it, just been busy these few days

errant needle
#

Honestly, I'm wondering if test running Rebake Avenger + Spite in one fight is too rude for players who haven't met the originals. 😄

rose hamlet
brisk flax
#

like the Strider is an obvious culprit, but the big issue I think the Wallflower NPCs suffer from is that moreso than many others, they're tremendously counterintuitive in ways that can catch you off guard, have extreme swings between feast or famine, etc

#

the Avenger for example is an NPC who exists in the space of "once this guy's gimmick goes off, good luck getting it to go off ever again"

#

that's pretty awkward for an NPC whose entire deal is That Gimmick

#

Spites have that weird "long range but also short range" thing going on that doesn't really cohere very well

ancient forge
#

Yeah. I think I've made a strider scary once, Spite has never managed to work for me (players passing literally all the saves), and they just killed the avenger very easily the one time I used that (speaking of original versions here)

brisk flax
#

Lurkers are weirdly slower than you would expect and swing wildly between being super protected and debilitatingly weak, etc

ancient forge
#

They scanned it, grokked the gimmick, and prioritized it

brisk flax
#

There IS some rudeness you can pull off with them, the first time an Avenger pops off, landing the perfect Imprison, etc, but here's the thing: NPCs should be rude

#

an NPCs job is to make the players go "that's fucking bullshit!" and then die a couple rounds later

#

I think the Wallflower NPCs suffer from being extremely inconsistent in their ability to apply that rudeness

ancient forge
#

I know my npcs are working when my players call them out as rude

brisk flax
#

I'm not even sure if the rebake Strider is really locked in yet tbh, as I mentioned earlier having to set aside a quick action to mode swapping is a thing that I may end up revisiting if it still proves to be too hemmed in by that

#

I do think there are some places where the rebakes might be less, like, arbitrarily strong in certain respects, there's no reason for Lurkers to have a secondary weapon that's just "yeah it's more damage lol"

#

Avengers no longer do the flat +5 damage thing, etc

bold crystal
#

spites not being able to spam invade>imprison for free* damage, etc

tulip hawk
#

The breacher's dual shotguns saying "The final attack rolls can never be affected by accuracy" means that it can never go "positive" as in having +1 or +2 accuracy, or is it suggesting something else? Since it's clearly supposed to knock people prone and technically benefit from accuracy in that way? (to offset it's inaccurate)

bold crystal
#

it's like reverse shatterhead, basically. it can never have accuracy in the same way the shatterhead can never have difficulty.

brisk flax
#

correct

#

the Breacher can benefit from Accuracy to cancel out difficulty, but it can't ever have positive Accuracy

#

If the Breacher has, idk, +6 Difficulty on an attack, it can benefit from +6 Accuracy to take it all the way to neutral

#

it can't go from neutral to +1 Accuracy

tulip hawk
#

cool thanks for the clarifications, just wanted to be doubly sure before i put my foot in my mouth explaining to my players who will no doubt argue that because of the way it's worded it shouldn't ever use any at all

brisk flax
#

Nope, that's what "final attack roll" means

#

after all modifiers are applied, you look at the final attack roll

#

does it have Accuracy then? if so, it doesn't get it

#

as joan said, it's the exact same wording as the Shatterhead Colony Missiles

#

just reversed

smoky bluff
subtle nacelle
#

ah. it's github terminology. it essentially means making a copy and then making suggested changes.

#

if you're not familiar with version control and the such, dont worry. send me the latest version of your lcp and we can patch it in

brisk flax
#

Note that any lcps Kukri made predated the compiled document

#

not that there might not be anything worthwhile there, but there's a number of wording/formatting etc changes between the individual docs and the compiled version

subtle nacelle
#

good point

solid pilot
#

bug report: Explosive carbine has copied effect text from Ranger Long Rifle (and as such if following the wording doesn't work at all /j)

image.png
indigo oasis
solid pilot
#

yeah I didn't know if I should have pushed it to the github because the wallflower ones weren't in yet

indigo oasis
#

Ah nevermind then

#

It’s late I forgot

#

*forgor

smoky bluff
#

damn

#

hang on then

#

might as well update it to the new format while we are at it

smoky bluff
#

@solid pilot most recent LCP that should have most of the other npcs updated as well, i also put up a pull request on github to have it added so you can submit the reports to github if they are added in later

📎 kai-npc-rebake-NRFaWF-1.3.4.lcp
carmine idol
#

Thanks @smoky bluff , merged your lcp to the repo o7

#

Mind, with a handle like hubG1T I thought your experimental PR's were a bot lol

restive fable
#

Reporting back with my experience with an Elite Avenger and a bunch of Conscripts

the group slapped a Wandering Nightmare on the posse and the Avenger died from a failed Burn check before doing anything, since he'd rolled a Jammed from a system trauma result. The PCs countered his gimmicks effectively since the only weapons that smacked the Avenger in the end were all paracausal so Vanguard Armor didn't come up, but it did present a challenge they had to play around at least. Overall I think the design is nice but I couldn't really stress test it besides seeing PC counterplay

I'll try a Spite next week

restive fable
#

Overall I have been noticing that Rebakes, being less "rude", pose less of a threat to T3 players than before and my structure/activation budget has been creeping up as a result, but I'm also playing against very well-rounded player builds with good game knowledge

#

And I think the way the new fellas' gimmicks work reward clever counterplay more than before

brisk flax
#

I do think that at higher level play you may need more NPCs. I think this is fine because the way current multi-attacker NPCs "challenge" players is by massively frontloading damage and turning high level play into rocket tag where you need to kill the triple-attacking supreme melee ronin or the specter poised to deal 10x3 damage plus an additional 5 with a cheeky ram on top of it. This is a form of challenge, but it's one I think is somewhat dysfunctional. Nothing in the rebake will stop players from building hyperoptimized DPS platforms and I don't think anything in the rebake COULD do that, but the solution to "I need to make fights harder on my players" SHOULD be (imo) "I will use more enemies and/or more templates to increase their threat" rather than "I will use one of a small handful of multiplicatively power-scaling NPCs to hang overhead like a frontloaded doom clock"

#

and there are other NPCs beyond multiattack scalers that are less onerous as well, for example the rainmaker is no longer as high damage as it used to be, but things like Bombards, Snipers, etc still deal their normal amount of damage, most strikers are unchanged in that regard, etc

#

all of which is to say that I do agree with the premise that at Tier 3, rebake NPCs will require a different form of encounter budgeting than CRB ones

restive fable
#

The players seem to be reasonably fairly challenged with me using approximately 1.5x to 2x the "recommended" structure budget, eyeballing it -- the previous Control mission used about as much structure as a Holdout (but I kept to an activation tail of about 2-3 enemy activations), and I think I'll be at 3 or 4 times the normal budget for this holdout if I keep the pressure throughout all six rounds

#

I wouldn't recommend EVERY GM pile on as much extra structure on every T3 encounter budget as I do because I'm playing with some pretty competent players who like high damage builds, but it does make sense to hold more reserves or shake things up with usage of stuff that can't simply be deleted off the map by hyper optimized DPS

bitter lava
# brisk flax ```I do think that at higher level play you may need more NPCs. I think this is ...

Sorry for the ping-response-
While I agree with the thought process, I do think it's something where certain players will fuss more about the action economy swamping/round-length extension from more NPCs on the field than just getting hit heard; I suspect it's probably due to players building said hyperoptimized DPS or survivability platforms and then realizing they aren't as effective against simply more enemies than enemies that are super accurate or hit hard or multiattack etc.
(Also players getting frustrated about length of combat but I'll concede that that's something that just is inherent to intense high-LL play currently)

brisk flax
bitter lava
brisk flax
#

fundamentally, whichever way the rebake took things, people tend to complain about change

#

if you get used to doing things one way, having to do things another is going to elicit a certain amount of friction

bitter lava
#

Yeah

#

thus far the rebakes have been great from my POV as GM; intend to keep using them going forward when I can

#

funny enough, some of it is literally just due to reduced cognitive overhead on the vast majority of rebaked NPCs

#

from the streamlining and cutting-down of multiattack and similar

brisk flax
#

fundamentally that's one of the goals yeah

errant needle
#

I am rather enjoying the tactical LEGO set that the Rebakes present in that regard. Bastion with Siege Guardian and Stack Up to move as a fireteam with some Scourers that both can fire and help the Bastion reload its gun if they have nothing else to do is gonna be fun.

wanton maple
#

Uhhhh.

#

I just had a horrible realization

#

An Ultra Bombard with a Ravager Cannon

#

Stacking Cluster munitions on a Ravager Cannon is BRUTAL

brittle cipher
#

That'd be why rebake cluster munitions only effects attacks with the Bombard Cannon

wanton maple
bold crystal
#

yeah the rebake removes that interaction(and the hellfire projector one etc)

#

(fun fact. technically, a core bombard with hellfire projector could add extra burn via cluster munitions because it's not bonus damage!)

brittle cipher
brisk flax
#

that's the most current version, with that adjustment made

wanton maple
#

Ah, yeah

#

Looks like I remembered to update my Saturday groups Foundry, but not my sunday

subtle nacelle
#

the lcp version is a bit higher, but makes references to the 1.5 doc version

opal folio
#

this is potentially kind of a scummy interaction, but can the scourer use its Melt against a razor swarm (hive or heca) to trigger the effect?

vale crescent
#

No, because it isn't a valid target

fluid zodiac
#

Balor's drone is valid, but the two you listed are not valid

opal folio
#

right, 'not a character' i see that. am i correct in thinking that this would also make razor swarms immune to command override and other similar effects?

vale crescent
fluid zodiac
#

Therefore command override can't effect it, as it's a hostile source

indigo oasis
#

I would personally houserule otherwise due to the fact that the Hive’s razor swarm is a valid target for effects that target drones (aside from melt) but that sounds like a valid RAW interaction

opal folio
#

hmmm, there aren't any vanilla interactions that do anything similar to command override, are there? The hydra has its ability to hijack drones, but that's meant to let them have fun with enemy razor swarms

indigo oasis
#

At least in terms of interactions

#

Not really in terms of mechanics

#

The first option moves drones, the second one makes adjacent characters take damage, and Command Override does both at once

#

And Puppeteer famously works on Hive Razor Swarms

brisk flax
#

hey it's an update, with veteran traits, everybody stop talking about that other thing and talk about this

surreal zenith
#

i love Ranger Training

#

does that apply to all Prone or just the self-inflicted one?

indigo oasis
#

Hm, any reason the allied movement from Bondmates doesn’t use a reaction of any kind? My best guess is “too many words” (relatable) but I just wanna check

#

And how does Seeded Shadows work when the Lurker is a reinforcement?

#

I do love both those features however- Seeded Shadows seems like a fun way to look at a Rangertail player and declare “I can do that too”

brisk flax
#

so it's just sort of a general thing, and also the Strider can opt into it

brisk flax
indigo oasis
#

Anyway these Veteran features are super fun

brisk flax
#

the same way that bringing a reinforcement with Viper's Speed into the mix also doesn't do anything

indigo oasis
# brisk flax currently, it doesn't

If the intent is to keep it that way I could see it being helpful to declare that explicitly- personally I like the design choice of it not working with reinforcements

brisk flax
#

reinforcements aren't "on the board" when combat starts

#

bondmate movement not using reactions is because I don't know why it should, non-action movement is explicitly a thing that exists in lancer at various points

young turtle
indigo oasis
#

Not saying it has to just curious

young turtle
# brisk flax

immediate thought: I think you can make the lurker vet trait meaner genuinely

#

Like range 8 or something

#

my first thought about it is like, on some maps there might not be 3 good spot for those

#

(could also probably use "up to 3 shroud zones")

brisk flax
#

I think I'd like to get some testing feedback first before I start making changes, but condensing three turns worth of protocols into one off the bat feels like a pretty good starting point for something that's basically a twist on viper's speed in terms of "start off the fight with an extra kicker"

indigo oasis
#

That seems mean enough- those tend to not be within range 10 of the PCs

brisk flax
#

the lurker ITSELF might need to get meaner, with regards to things like its damage now requiring more setup (dragging people into the zone and only THEN does the whip's damage double on subsequent attacks) but that's also something I'd like some testing to see

ancient forge
#

Ooh, I’ve got an avenger combat coming up this Friday, perfect timing for the veteran trait

smoky bluff
#

I did ran a lurker rebake, it was pretty mean, an exposed Genghis, due to bad luck, was forced to land inside a Lurker's shroud cloud

#

20 Possible Kinetic Damage could've been dealt to the poor pilot

young turtle
#

😎

smoky bluff
#

I couldn't do it, i went for the Everest inside the cloud instead

young turtle
#

jokes aside, I think the main thing i'd say is pretty safe to change Kai is to make it "up to 3" tho

#

rather than have to deploy all 3

indigo oasis
brisk flax
#

it's a pretty painless change though I admit I'm not quite sure as to the necessity of it, since having 3 zones out doesn't really prevent you from deploying more

#

you just drop a zone to stick a new one down

#

The Lurker can have no more than three Shroud Zones active at a time; if they create another, one of their currently active Shroud Zones of their choice dissipates.

young turtle
#

Mostly because that would stop some rare cases where you may not even be able to deploy all shroud zones for some reasons

brisk flax
#

this is a change from the core version which doesn't have that clause

young turtle
#

Altho that's less likely because of the wording change compared to core

indigo oasis
young turtle
#

I think its just also generally a good safeguard against specific interactions

young turtle
indigo oasis
#

Fair, though it is legal since the Shroud Zones can overlap

vale crescent
brisk flax
#

I'm probably going to make it so that shroud zones can't overlap one another to prevent weird stuff like that, but I also have to say that if a map can't accommodate three blast 1 templates, I think you've got some bigger issues

#

I'm more sympathetic to "okay what if someone brings multiple veteran lurkers" that being the case

vale crescent
#

Heavily depends on player deployment too

brisk flax
#

even a 25x25 map is going to have the space to stick three shroud zones without a lot of fuss

#

"what if someone runs a 10x10 map where every space is filled with a character" is not really a scenario I'm inclined to care that much about

vale crescent
#

I can see the trait being much more powerful on "NPC defending" sitreps for example Gauntlet or control, compared to on holdout. But like, Some NPC kits are stronger in some scenarios than others is a thing that is not a problem IMO

indigo oasis
vale crescent
#

If it's recon/ a small point the players need to be on it just means it's an absolute pain to deal with

brisk flax
surreal zenith
#

save them from themselves

young turtle
#

Also I agree with the "no spreading them" bit because it both feels a bit weird as an incentive but also feels like one those things that, even if it technically works, feels a bit cheap

#

(bit like the grunt controller zones technically saying nothing about not stacking even if it isn't supposed to happen)

brisk flax
#

yeah, like even setting aside the feel of it if people have perfect information recall, "actually there were three zones stacked there instead of two, you just forgot to keep count" is one of those things I would rather never have happen

#

so out it goes, fuck it

indigo oasis
brisk flax
young turtle
#

Sometimes you have to save GM and players from themselves

#

like Step put it

brisk flax
#

if I'm running a super complex drone mech with 50 different reactions, that is my own personal burden to bear

#

the GM is under no obligation to remember my stuff for me

#

Shroud Zones have information that both sides of the table need to know at all times

#

"I the GM stack my shroud zones in an unintuitive way, and now the players need to pay super strict attention to avoid misremembering how many zones are stacked where" is not something you can lay at the feet of "well this is your own personal burden," because you are making it someone ELSE'S burden

#

and "just don't stack them then" isn't a workable answer when there's a clear mechanical reward/incentive for doing so (reinforcing a single zone hardpoint)

indigo oasis
#

When you put it like that, yeah I change my mind actually, fair call and agreed

brisk flax
#

so if you want to drop electro-chaff in overlapping patterns fine, but it's not going to let you set it up so someone steps on a single map tile and takes 6 heat at once

indigo oasis
#

The fact that the zones are limited and can’t be redeployed certain helps

vale crescent
young turtle
young turtle
#

Generally my experience with them has been 4 for one unit and they had two types at most

brisk flax
#

there's a 1.6 changelog I'm in the process of working on

#

"free zone" would also work I guess, as long as it's specific in one regard or another

#

it's not like lancer doesn't have zones which can overlap currently

bold crystal
#

I love ranger training. great vet trait

#

rebuke is also a good defender-y trait for the spite

indigo oasis
#

I have a swallowtail player… that’s the end of the sentence

#

I can’t wait to see how that maths out with Spotter 1

oak heron
#

For Defensive Shroud I think it should be "then teleports to"? Right now it reads as though the teleport is conditional on creating a Shroud Zone

neon blaze
#

thinking about a Bastion + Avenger pairing with Solidarity now

valid plaza
#

(me after seeing two mechs bonded by Solidarity) well well well

smoky bluff
#

Veteran Avenger is now a dynamic duo mech

#

Buddy cop adventures

vale crescent
#

Two veteran avengers

#

I misread the Avenger veteran trait and thought I saw it didn't say an allied character

errant needle
vale crescent
#

I mean, protocol to approach a hostile. You structure them, trigger revenge them reload you shotgun

restive fable
brisk flax
oak hornet
#

god, can't believe Kai is shilling someone else's homebrew like that

smoky bluff
restive fable
#

(Yeah I've used it before and I think some of the optionals can give it the grudge match feeling)

finite egret
brisk flax
#

hey you guys wanna see something cool

vale crescent
#

When the mass produced shitbox looks fire 🔥

valid plaza
#

that looks sick as hell

bitter lava
#

holy shit that rules

spice aspen
#

bold move showing off your internal components blueprint to something within balor distance kittyIsREALLYLooking *moves 3 spaces and ends my turn*

wanton maple
#

Tech attacks you and tech attacks you and tech attacks you

errant needle
#

Task: Make Mass Production Mook look Boring
Difficulty: <EXTREME>

halcyon wasp
#

Holy shit that's awesome. Peyton Gee?

brisk flax
oak hornet
#

IT’S OUR FUCKIN BOI!

brittle shore
#

Oh hell yes

errant needle
#

Very emblematic, because the only way the cover art could more reflect the contents is if it was four Assaults standing sheepishly to one side surrounded by bullet riddled PC mechs and a caption that said "That wasn't supposed to happen."

restive fable
#

*grunt Assaults that look noticeably shabbier than average

neon blaze
#

etc etc

indigo oasis
#

No lie a combat I have for an encounter has its “miniboss” be an Assault, aka a Veteran Elite Brigand Assault (Prototype Pattern Groups Alt Pirate Template), and genuinely with the crit effect and Commando he looks genuinely scary

restive fable
#

I've used Ultra Assault before for a John Lancer kinda feel

I cheated and added an Archer LMG

wanton maple
#

A Vetrain Elite Mercenary Commander Assault was a Miniboss last encounter, and it completly brutalized the party

ancient forge
#

I just now realized that I can really scare my players by throwing hives with Command Override at them on their next holdout combat. Of note: they have a hydra. The pilot is almost certainly going to disarticulate it. There's also two different players with turret drones.
I'm also gonna be trying out the Avenger/Priest pairing. One elite, one veteran with Solidarity

#

I'd feel guilty but they've been doing really well this mission, all still have core powers to spend (including the No Grunts Allowed combo), and it's the last fight before downtime

austere compass
#

Omg that cover is phenomenal 🤩 Peyton does it again

indigo oasis
#

Something I realized about Command Override is that you can put drones next to each other and give them burn

brisk flax
#

These days you have to live in Washington DC and check out the ads in the subway stations for that sort of service

ancient forge
nocturne stag
#

How does armor scale in the rebake at higher tiers compared to base lancer?

indigo oasis
nocturne stag
#

as in armor functionality between the two is identical or rebake armor just is Bad(tm)?

indigo oasis
#

The Bastion gets +1 armor at tier 3 but that’s about it

indigo oasis
#

Think one other NPC has scaling armor but it’s not coming to mind rn

nocturne stag
#

oh no I mean like

on players, since multiattack on one target is largely gone from the roster

indigo oasis
#

Well Multiattack outside of NPCs like Breachers and NPCs that have extra abilities to get extra attacks like Berserkers has been phased out. According to Kai, Armor in CRB doesn’t scale so he sees no reason Multiattack exists

#

Armor in CRB acts less like a counter to Multiattack and more like a consolation prize for having it- the damage reduction technically being higher doesn’t really matter if you’re just taking more damage anyway

nocturne stag
indigo oasis
#

If armor scaled outside of exactly 1 core bonus then there would be value in it, but as it stands it doesn’t

brisk flax
#

And to be honest, I don't really think that turning 7x3 damage into 6x3 damage significantly works as a tradeoff to the tier-scaling multiattackers

smoky bluff
#

Breacher rebake with Overcharge

worst_breacher_butteryicarus.png
#

today

vale crescent
#

Breacher moment

brisk flax
#

Armor is a good counter to aux weapons on the PC end because aux weapons tend to exist in a damage range threshold of 1-4 points per attack

vale crescent
#

That or they're breaking armour on an evasion 16+ PC

brisk flax
#

So 1-2 armor makes a big difference

#

Tier-scaling multiattackers on the NPC end are doing like 6-10 damage per attack

nocturne stag
#

Righto

What about Jager Dodge and Singularity Motivator? Is a lot of their CRb budget in dodging multiattack or just repositioning more generally?

brisk flax
#

I'm going to be real honest: I do not think Tom considers tier-scaling multiattack NPCs as a major factor in PC mech design

#

I simply do not think they're treated as some kind of important pillar of the NPC roster in that way

twin reef
#

The only CRB multiattacker that could be meaningfully hindered by armor is the Barricade, and that's really just "inflict slowed" with a bit of damage attached.

brisk flax
#

Not in the same way as, idk, having a good spread of NPCs with high evasion versus high e-defense

smoky bluff
#

today had a sitrep with the Operator that on critical hits, the laser plasma rifle turn the damage into burn.

Ultra Breacher
Veteran Operator
Lurker
Hive

Reinforcements
Lurker
Assault

Players LL6 Core Power
Kidd
Zheng
Caliban
Death's Head
HMG Everest

Players commented on how similar the Rebakes were to the original, nothing really felt out of place and they had fun fighting the Ultra Breacher
Operator couldn't crit and the death's head landed a really good blow on it, landing a clean headshot and blinding it, It tried to bombrush the Death's head down with erasure on its last legs but the Caliban make uses of DD/288 and punched it away.
Lurkers were threatening but they rarely did anything, the first lurker got nuked by the Death's head and left crippled then the zheng came along with xiao li's tenacity to finish it off.

The Zheng landed a 28 Explosive damage on the Breacher with their DD/288. Structuring it twice, Shit was great.

Overall, the Operator ability to crit on burn is rarely an ability that shows much in my game so it just sort of feels like a normal operator, but i am ever so inclined to fish for crits with strike and fade.
Lurkers did try to do some work on objective, but today rolls were really bad and so they couldn't make use of their abilities

brisk flax
#

To unpack some of my thoughts on multiattack scaling NPCs since it continues to come up: I think a lot of the received wisdom around multiattackers like that is, to put it perhaps a bit too bluntly, cope

#

"Multiattackers are there to make armor better" is one of those things that might hold more water if the numbers weren't as wild, if armor had more scaling, etc, I think that as an attempt to parse the dynamic it's making the best of a bad situation, but it's still a bad situation

#

Likewise with anything like Jager Dodge, Reactive Weave, etc, getting to make a guy waste their additional multiattacks is cool and all but they still get to make all those attacks every time they hit the "skirmish" button, are you going to Brace each time an Operator glances in your direction?

#

I think that there's maybe a world where you could have an NPC whose thing is "makes a bunch of attacks like some sort of PC-end auxslinger" and not have it be weirdly gameplay warping, but also by the same token, I feel like that would also be a lot of rolling and call-and-response for not a whole lot of practical benefit in the end

#

like if you want to make "guy whose gun is bad against armor" you can just do that by going "armor is doubled versus this gun"

neon blaze
brisk flax
#

I don't know that I would particularly want an NPC whose thing is "yeah every time they attack they make 3-4 attacks at 3 damage each"

#

AoE gets a pass imo because the tactical demand there is "look for good placement" and I'm more okay with that than "I shoot this guy, then I shoot this guy again, then I shoot this guy again, then I shoot this guy again"

plucky patrol
brisk flax
#

like I dunno, I suppose I just don't particularly view the tier-scaling multiattackers as being a particularly important deliberately designed element of Lancer's advancing gameplay by tiers so much as a thing that people have simply grown accustomed to over 5+ years of playing core rulebook release Lancer, so to speak

#

people have had years to develop responses and approaches to dealing with the Supreme Melee Ultra Ronins of the world but I don't think that means that Ronins doing 2-3 attacks at a time at Tiers 2-3 is a vital part of the ecosystem

neon blaze
#

it always been weird in the end

plucky patrol
#

I was testing at 3 attacks at 3 damage each, which was really the highest I could go at Tier 1, and it resulted in an NPC that was threatening very out of band damage versus the many PC mechs that didn't have armor, but also literally could not hurt a Drake

neon blaze
#

and its largely why i've been pointing to other people when homebrewing npcs that "not every number needs to go up"

neon blaze
#

for a 3 attack weapon, reducing by 1 damage reduces its total damage by 3 and thats the lowest incremental you can do

#

so your choices of output will always be multiples of 3

#

or 4, or whatever

#

i think the most reasonable you can do as a result is 2 as a result without getting into weird math land

nocturne stag
#

2 still ends up being janky when it comes to getting parity with the damage the NPC would be doing normally at tier 1 though

fair to consign multiattack balancing a lost cause

neon blaze
#

i do think there is some utility for "multiple attacks from one weapon" but honestly, one of the big ones is already in Core, which is "its just a non-template AoE" on the Rainmaker and the one weird Ultra gun I've never used

young turtle
#

My take is that Armor only really feels good design wise when it negates SOME of the damage and not most or all of it

#

Depending of course

#

If completely denying damage is there but rare it tends to be fine

#

But imo the moment it takes a sizeable part of the design it gets weird

neon blaze
# neon blaze i do think there is some utility for "multiple attacks from one weapon" but hone...

the other is "ablative fire" for stuff like trying to eat up multiple layered defenses like Flicker Field or Stalk Prey or Soul Vessel but that can also be done by stuff like Reliable (though I also think Reliable shouldn't be the go to for every case like that. there might be a way to pseudo-replicate the effect akin to "armor is doubled vs this attack" stuff by saying you gain reliable if you miss by a close certain margin ala XCOM graze)

young turtle
#

Because fundamentally the game pushes you towards either doing a trade that barely advances the board state or you use it on someone else and them the supposed advantage it gives to certain builds never comes up really

#

Armor is kind of a weird design space

neon blaze
#

I love armor but do agree it can be polarising at times

#

It's not secret that a lot of people have felt frustrated with the White Witch for that reason, both as players and GMs

young turtle
#

Yeah

neon blaze
#

because it can easily force those "no sell" conditions but can also be circumvented quite extremely for the same reason

nocturne stag
#

‘Armor more accessible but having the reduction capped for low tier reasons’ jumps to mind, but that’s also. Extremely awkward

young turtle
#

Like armor if it’s high is SUCH a pain because it’s so effective the right move is to not engage with it

neon blaze
#

which feels bad in of itself for the user

#

"oh so this giant block of armor is worthless then, gotchya"

#

it happens a lot

plucky patrol
young turtle
#

I think on npcs it is a little bit more interesting because they can more easily be designed around it

#

Imo

#

And generally you cannot simply ignore an npc

neon blaze
#

NPCs are indeed designed to Die in the end, one way or another

young turtle
#

Stuff like Bastion is cool but better in the rebake because it’s like

#

A check to see how you handle it

neon blaze
#

and its something I preach a lot when designing NPCs

young turtle
#

It doesn’t feel "cheap" for a player to try and bypass it

neon blaze
#

it helps to not just know where it'll be good, but where it suffers

young turtle
#

End of the day it’s all about how it changes the board state

neon blaze
#

obviously it wouldn't be as extreme as that but I do understand the concern and have heard it being a genuine thing

#

you could probably get away with it being gated to "single attack made by a single NPC", especially since your players are static most the time so their E-def/Evasion will always be the same and you can just memorise as a GM

#

but it is a bit more overhead than usual

indigo oasis
nocturne stag
#

I wonder in a rebake world (for no more armored grunts reasons) if it makes sense to say “Incoming damage cannot be reduced below 1, except by Immunity”

young turtle
#

My favorite example of what i think is a "fun" armor interaction in core is like, reliable against a metalmark

#

Okay actually it is fun and cool dunno why i put it in quotes

neon blaze
#

yeah little bits of Armor on high agile frames has always whipped

young turtle
#

Reducing damage by 1 for reliable is fun

neon blaze
#

and its why I've come to respect Metalmark a lot as a platform especially (I've had to fight one like 6 times now)

young turtle
#

But it can also be good if you have access to resistance like with an atlas

#

It can reach some breakpoints

nocturne stag
#

Increasingly I’ve come to appreciate the frames that are generally decent statted and just have a few bonuses to Playing Lancer

metalmark tort manticore (?)

young turtle
nocturne stag
#

1000 white witch players go to the blink

young turtle
#

It also plays well with multiple damage pings

#

I dont know if it would work in lancer as is tho

nocturne stag
#

I like it cause it uses language already in the book of ‘reducing to 1’, but not sure on the balance

Probably fine? The main reason is just to prevent tier 1 armor jank

neon blaze
#

I think the problem of "cannot be reduced below 1" as it stands currently is it does mean you could potentially "waste" investment if you overarmor or something, which might feel bad considering - while limited - there are sources of putting your armor up

#

Core Bonus does it obviously, but there is also the FORGE-2 which give them as a temporary buff

nocturne stag
#

the same applies for armor as is though right? Like having more armor than the attack would deal

neon blaze
#

I mean not realistically, because "reduced to 0" is always going to be worthwhile no matter how much you did it by

#

and with that in mind you're not taking extra Armor for those attacks, you're taking it for ones that (assumedly) do even more damage

#

Lancer is already kind of close to the point of "damage always gets through" mind considering the ordering of Exposed -> Armor -> Resistance -> etc etc but I do believe Armor is built in such a way that its absolutely meant to blunt things wholesale like half-saves and Reliable while only being able to shave stuff off of actual Hits

#

not sure how I'd personally feel about "Armor of any value always lets Reliable through" for instance

brisk flax
#

like armor in lancer is good even if it only shaves off bits of damage because lancer's numbers are such that this is still valuable, otherwise nobody would give a shit about Personalizations and its +2 HP

neon blaze
#

its def something other games have played with I'm sure, though I couldn't name any off the top of my head, but I do agree with Eld in that I'm not 100% certain if it'd pan out well

nocturne stag
#

Reliable vs armor is a good point yeah

brisk flax
#

so I think "take 1-2 damage off the 8-12 damage attack" is still pretty good value for the money as opposed to "take 6 damage off the 30 damage specter triple-attack"

neon blaze
#

exactly yeah

nocturne stag
#

oh yeah the crb multiattack is screwy rn im thinking of hypotheticals in a rebake world

rose hamlet
#

All this talk about multiattack NPCs and armor has me thinking about how my PF2e table has multiattackers that combine their damage from all attacks first, THEN apply Resistance to the single instance of combined damage

#

If I brewed any multi attacker coded NPC, I’d probably look to use that approach tbh

#

Lancer IMO is just in a weird space where it couldn’t decide between Flat Reduction/Addition and Proportional Reduction/Addition, so it’s kinda just messy

nocturne stag
#

I think NPC armor works pretty well with the multitude of tiny damage pings that PCs are liable to throw out, but the scaling of NPC versions of the same into higher tiers gets a bit awkward

at the same time though the damage getting amped up is probably necessary to keep pace with player hp pools without armor, so ehhh
hp values at that high level probably end up very similar anyhow?

brisk flax
#

I like that lancer has a couple different vectors of damage mitigation and these all perform differently and have different functions and use-cases (armor and how it interacts with low-damage attacks/reliable damage, resistance and how that interacts with bigger attacks and limited access, etc), like in general I think that's fine

#

"what if we made a guy who shoots three times per attack" is just "what if we had multiplicative scaling?" and it turns out that's the root of a lot of problems

rose hamlet
#

Yeah of course, I guess my point is that I think Armor wasn’t designed with a lot of intentionality, if that makes sense? Like agreeing with the assessment that Armor/Multiattack interactions were a post-hoc justification

brisk flax
#

I think I'd look at it from the other angle, which is my view is that I don't think the NPC multiattackers had the intentionality

#

I feel, and this may just be me reading into it, that armor had more intentionality with how it interacts with, say, PC-side multiattacks

#

the classic "this is what blunts aux weapon spam" thing

young turtle
brisk flax
#

or low damage AoEs, reliable damage, etc

#

I feel like you can draw some pretty clear lines to show that armor has robust interactions there in ways that feel fairly deliberate more than arbitrary

#

meanwhile "the specter swings three times" feels more arbitrary

rose hamlet
#

Valid

young turtle
#

I think npcs have multi attacks because it was the easiest way to make some of them threatening to pc at higher ll

brisk flax
#

the numbers are out of whack, and also it only appears in a tiny handful of NPCs without any clear cohesive factor

#

(a slightly bigger handful if you count oddballs like the barricade)

young turtle
#

Like it’s sorta sound, right, in theory

neon blaze
#

It def felt like ... I wouldn't say a holdover, wrong word

brisk flax
#

the Breacher DOES feel very intentionally designed, which is why I preserved that mechanic

young turtle
#

A tier 2 specter is twice as threatening

neon blaze
#

but its absolutely stemming from the earlier lancer when frankly we just didn't know better, tom included

brisk flax
#

just tweaked it a bit

young turtle
#

A tier 3 specter is thrice as threatening

#

Easy math

neon blaze
#

theres a lot of weird things that have slipped through the cracks for the same reason, even on the PC side

young turtle
#

It doesn’t really pan out in practice

#

But like i buy that more as the intent than anything else

brisk flax
#

Yeah

#

to be clear, I really don't want this to be me going "wow tom was a fucking idiot and a fool, he just threw darts at a board"

#

like I'm sure there were reasons and as eld has pointed out, there IS a form of sense to it

#

I do think that some of the NPC-end stuff was stymied a bit by being a relative late addition to the game in terms of its development

#

NPCs as they appear in the CRB only really showed up near the back 1/3rd to 1/4th of the game's time in the oven

neon blaze
#

yep

young turtle
#

I think the idea was like

brisk flax
#

but yeah I don't think tom did stuff "just because" and I see the logic in multiattack NPCs being a particular vector of threat, it's just one that I don't think had the consequences as fully mapped out, versus Armor which was in the game from the word go

young turtle
#

They’re x times more dangerous

#

But they have to hit those

brisk flax
#

Armor had a lot more time to get shaken down, and did, it used to be higher across the board and more stuff had armor etc

young turtle
#

Compared to flat damage increase

brisk flax
#

it got shaved down like Size did

young turtle
#

It’s also possible it was always more meant to be spread out

#

I think

#

I’m not familiar with what got made first but it does feel like the rainmaker is kinda the shape those could have taken

#

I dunno if rainmakers came in later or something

#

Compared to like, hives and operators

brisk flax
#

yeah "attack multiple guys" would be fine-ish (the specter still scales a bit weird but hey, let's hear it for +5 damage)

#

also even just like, idk

#

the big issue is a multiattacker who gets to frontload it

#

versus, say, an Elite who gets Two Attacks but you get a turn in between

#

nobody's like "oh, Elites are so broken," they're just a guy

indigo oasis
#

And I mean, an NPC that scales different is definitely going to feel more distinct than others

#

For all its flaws it did make the operator, ronin, and specter extremely stand out NPCs. They just stood out too much and for the wrong reasons

#

I can’t say the Ronin, for all the improvements that I advocate for now, doesn’t feel less distinct in the rebake. It does feel less distinct from the likes of the Cataphract and Berserker, even though definitively it’s a better designed NPC and I have just as much fun running it as I did before, maybe more fun

brisk flax
#

I'm of the stance that the CRB Ronin is not actually very distinct either, in a way that argues against its existence

#

"it does outsized damage" is not really a Distinction, imo

#

like if the CRB Assault is a unit that is too generic for its own good to the point that it ends up forming a set of stumbling blocks for newer GMs, I feel the CRB Ronin is a unit that's too generic to the point that it has made me go "you could cut this from the book and it wouldn't change much"

indigo oasis
#

Fair enough

rose hamlet
#

Oh hell. I just had an idea for a vanguard-coded Ronin variant

#

Time to head to PPG

young turtle
indigo oasis
#

I keep swearing I read back on everything before hitting send and turns out I didn't

indigo oasis
#

Good use for Vet Ace’s air superiority: Low Gravity sitreps. Not Zero-G, Low Gravity. Ya know, the one that gives everyone Jump Jets for free? Yeah that just shuts it down for the players specifically

valid plaza
#

does that turn off the ability to boost completely? when you're in a Low Gravity sitrep you can't choose to fly when you boost, you just "count as flying"... that's mean as hell if so

indigo oasis
#

Maybe, lemme ask rules questions

#

Tbh Ace disabling flight is pretty helpful specifically against effects like Hunter 1 where the method of movement is simply made to be flight

indigo oasis
#

Rules Corner is silent

brisk flax
#

Peyton is wrapping up cover art, and once he does, I will be sending this over to Mina to get an estimate for layout: once that happens, this shit is going to be set in fucking stone for the foreseeable future

#

This has all had a lot of good feedback but I'm not going to keep it open forever because I want to get this done, what that means is if you have any feedback on the main rebake stuff you've been holding on to, now would be an extremely good time to get it in to me because once this is sent over to layout, that's gonna be it unless it's something that dramatically breaks the game in some fashion

#

The Wallflower NPCs have barely gotten any playtesting so far and so will be remaining open for testing for a while, I am not going to incorporate them into the main document without it

#

as such, if you're asking yourself "hey, is there anything that could use some testing," the answer is yes, test the hell out of the wallflower stuff

brisk flax
indigo oasis
# indigo oasis Rules Corner is silent

Update from Rules Corner- disabling flight in Low Gravity = disabling Boosting. RAI you'd probablybe able to argue you can still be able to boost just not fly, but RAW you do just have boost disabled. It's a niche enough interaction that I'd rule to let the Ace just have it and disable boost- flight disabling is pretty niche most of the time anyway

brittle cipher
fluid zodiac
#

That operator crit effect is mildly terrifying

rose hamlet
#

it's mostly psychological damage more than anything, IME

brisk flax
fluid zodiac
#

Hence "mildly"

bold crystal
#

the operator design notes should probably include some thought on the 'burn crit' thing

brisk flax
#

feels kind of straightforward to me if I'm being honest

bold crystal
#

I mean yeah it just isn't commented on at all(since it was a late-stage change) which feels weird

brisk flax
#

I feel like the reliable damage is much more of a "why is this here" element

#

that and the range change

neon blaze
valid plaza
neon blaze
#

it doesn't overtly do More Damage but does have an implicit threat to it all the same that can't just be shrugged off

#

it sticks in a way that doesn't Randomly Explode players but has a tangible effect and honestly, i like that

smoky bluff
#

There is also a lot more strategy and thought that can be expressed with the rebake operator but you can just be a bumb like me and just bombrush the players without a care in the world

ancient forge
#

Did the first half of a holdout tonight (people got sleepy); no issues to report so far with any of the units I brought to the fight. My players did refuse to scan the veteran avenger and kept pumping attacks into it instead of the priest buffing it and enabling vanguard armor, which was subtly delightful even if it didn't come close to activating revenge. It soaked some resources, softly punishing their instinct to kill the scary gun-mech first (without just being mean). They've decided they need to scan the elite avenger (which showed up as reinforcements at the end of the last round) next session when we pick it back up, so I'm expecting some fun when they learn what was going on with the first one's damage reduction.
Other details I can think of might not be anything new, but: being able to crawl the razor swarms around for free made it feel like a more active threat when I dropped one on the objective. Assassin's mark target has gotten lucky on saves against it, but it's still felt threatening and is dealing some respectable damage even without the heated blade's effect coming into play (zooming in from behind a big LoS blocker to leap at their target helped). Destabilize is a fun option for just pushing players around - the controller grunts don't feel like terribly dangerous threats, but they always have the potential to inflict prone, so it feels worthwhile compared to the strikers I've used before. And even if that doesn't proc, it's still handy for yanking the bondmate players apart. Nothing much to say about the scourer or pyro: they're doing stuff, but the player's actions sorta naturally fell into a counterplay by way of positioning, so they haven't gotten to do a lot.
I'm not sure how much this can be attributed to the Rebake, but it does feel like I've had an easier time keeping track of various passive or conditional effects of npcs that interact with their other actions or traits.

#

Oh wait, I got to use melt to blow open a fortification they'd prepared - it splashed the same player that the assassin marked, but they moved behind a LoS blocker between them and the Scourer so I didn't get to follow up. Still, they were wary about the fact that they got splashed by something that could have an effect later, which beats the player reaction I've gotten out of using CRB melt in the past

#

Assuming nothing postpones next week's session, we'll wrap this up and probably have more Avenger feedback (and more core rebake feedback, if that's not quite locked in by then)

brisk flax
#

sounds like things are working pretty well so far

restive fable
#

Probably will have some Spite feedback tomorrow. I've also been using all rebakes, nothing much to comment other than 'they seem to be working good'

#

My Avenger burned to death after being smacked by irreducible burn damage so I THINK the idea of vanguard armor works in theory but it didn't become relevant to play

brisk flax
#

paracausal damage is always going to be the brute force answer to a lot of problems, just kind of how it goes

opal folio
#

the barricade is a fucking terror now, i love that thing

restive fable
#

Having the Best Optional by default is a nice thing

blissful lion
#

Ace’s vet ability felt a little unimpressive in my combats, and the additional saving throw felt more cumbersome than necessary for an attack and an ability meant to happen every round - especially if the blast hit a couple characters I’m rolling a few dice already and then waiting on another dice… for not a whole lot of payoff. I probably didn’t play it super well and can see the potential for teamplay with it, getting one of their allies out of the PC’s overwatch sounds cool, just didn’t really have the comp/opportunity for it. A little weird in my zero-g combat too, where do you land in space? Also now the PC is effectively immobilised since all movement is flight (unless I got that wrong) which sorta sucked, maybe I should just pick a diff vet trait for aces in zero-g? Or make it a choice rather than a save - lose reaction and take lock on OR become slowed/land/can’t fly…? As I’m saying it I’m not really convincing myself tho :3

blissful lion
#

Maybe the flying/landing thing is more a save if the ace ends their turn flying adjacent to another flying character? Or like when they become engaged, force a save and on success they land and the ace can keep moving? I can sort of see the vision of the landing ability, but it feels like flying isn’t all that common except in zero-g, especially for people to be ending their turn flying unless it’s a dusk wing (and I mean I’m not expecting you to be balancing every ability around zero-g or low gravity and all those whacky battlefield effects lol)

#

Maybe it’s more like when someone begins flying the ace can use a reaction to try make them land and the PC gets a choice to follow through and risk some complication or be forced to land and take their movement another way? I have no idea

#

Offensive barrel roll into the PC to make them land >:)

#

Anyway, I haven’t seen anyone else really critiquing this so who knows, maybe I just suck at playing them

indigo oasis
ancient forge
#

That’s not correct; page 86 of the CRB says characters in zero g without a flight system are slowed

#

Oh wait I parsed what you’re saying wrong

#

I see the as-written issue. My guess would be the intent is to treat it like not having a flight system, but I ain’t the writer here

#

Does sound like it’s caused an issue if it’s not, though

indigo oasis
#

The ruling I’ve heard the most is that disabling flight in 0-g does nothing

#

The disabling reactions part seems to have the most utility for Vet Aces, but I have mentioned the utility of a Vet Ace in a low gravity Sitrep, or in a 0-g Sitrep where ground is present, like perhaps underwater

brisk flax
#

Tom has stated "can't fly" stuff doesn't apply in zero-g, you can't use a flak launcher to immobilize people

#

"can't use reactions" still applies in both cases

#

which is the other use for Air Superiority in either context

dire shadow
#

What's the most recent wallflower rebake lcp? I think I lost track of updates

brisk flax
#

Whatever's in the github repository would be my guess

#

The document is currently at 1.2

#

I'm unsure if those changes have been added yet, or if the main lcp has been updated to 1.6

#

@subtle nacelle would probably know more about the status on those

neon blaze
#

players have unwittingly selected an Apex Core for the last encounter; really excited for it now

RecOWS spoilers for said unwitting players ||Nothing says "Ultra Rebake Cataphract" like extra accuracy on attacks and extra difficulty on saves it inflicts. I'm gonna Striker/Controller all over the place||

#

I will hopefully be able to get some Strider data too also on a related note

#

unrelatedly related though: finished Gatecrashers and yeah I'm really feeling the Operator after being able to get not one, but two Self-Erasures on Exposed targets (one even being stunned)

#

its a good argument for it being a shorter range Artillery for certain

indigo oasis
#

Not gonna comment on it in detail because of nearing the end of playtest season + nothing new coming up, but ran a modified control my players lost, but they did enjoy the NPCs from this supplement as opponents, felt fair and fun to fight

subtle nacelle
brisk flax
#

Gotcha. 1.6 is currently handed over to Mina, so I feel like that will probably be the last main document update you guys need to do