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

[hybrid lion]

Could you rotate around each other? Both sides taking a “step to the left”

Mmm no that would just drag

Not how mirrors work

[rose hamlet]

anyway, I'm Glad I looked at Gladiator, that's fun wrestling tech

[hybrid lion]

Yeah I kind of liked the OG Gladiator specifically for its ability to play “tall person keep away” with the objective but I have to admit that the combo wombo hydraulic claw is probably way more fun to use

[young laurel]

Gladiator NPC when?
"Los Tiburon. The Shark of the Land."

[rose hamlet]

but yeah, roles are arbitrary constructions most helpful for constraining design goals, and the tools one role uses can be used by other roles as well, often depending on context and how they're executed

"forced movement" doesn't make you a controller, or a vanguard, or a rearguard

It depends on how it's used

Example: pulling someone towards you is Tank energy, pushing someone away is Vanguard or Rearguard energy (but can also be Tank energy if the goal is to peel someone off an ally), moving someone in any direction is Controller energy when the target is hostile and Support when they're an ally

[hybrid lion]

Wait doesn’t grappling immobilize the smaller meaning they can’t get up from prone?

[rose hamlet]

yup

[young laurel]

Knockback is Vanguard energy
Grappling is more so Tank energy

Cause usually Grapples means that the victim has to acknowledge you are the bigger threat to it for now.

[hybrid lion]

And grappling/ramming is a melee attack right?

[rose hamlet]

yup

[young laurel]

Yeh

[hybrid lion]

Hm ok

[young laurel]

In that regard, my Breacher+ (Caliban-pilled Ram Specialist) is a Vanguard.

An Exotic Regenerating Hive (CRB or Rebake) is more likely to be seen as a Tank if it wants you to get closer to it instead.

Just generalizing but that is the idea.

[rose hamlet]

ANYWAY another example of how Kai’s rebake has shifted some roles is that Assault is now more solidly Vanguard-ish in how it can flush folks out with its flanking accuracy

[young laurel]

Definitely.

[rose hamlet]

As opposed to the Reliable plinkage that made it more like an Artillery

[young laurel]

Before in the CRB, Assault was more so an inevitable and unavoidable source of damage

[hybrid lion]

Wasn’t Assault always vanguard and newbie dms just saw it and said “oh basic guy with gun!”

[young laurel]

Nope

Assault in the CRB is an Artillery unit in a Striker trenchcoat.

[hybrid lion]

I haven’t read it in a sec but I remember it being stupid tanky

[rose hamlet]

CRB assault isn’t as encouraged to move up and take an objective as Kai’s

[young laurel]

Kai's Rebaked Assault is a very enjoyable Vanguard. Because it now very much cares about the Cover System.

Rebaked Assaults are the actual standard guy with gun.

[rose hamlet]

And if you want to deny it its little bonus, you’re encouraged to reposition

Which, if you were behind cover while on the objective, usually means getting off the objective

[hybrid lion]

Lmao I didn’t read the rebake section yet Kai also addressed the guy with gun misconception

[young laurel]

Actually taking Jericho is extra rewarding when going up against Kai's Rebaked Assaults

Provided of course you are not bigger than Size 1.

[hybrid lion]

Is there a size 2+ that doesn’t either

• function as its own cover
• aims to obliterate people before they get that close

[young laurel]

My Assault+ is no different in terms of caring about Cover but I took a page out of Everest.

It has a ton of optionals that basically allow it to dip its toes into many different roles. They just aren't as effective as truly specialized NPCs.

I ran an entire opfor with nothing but Assault+ NPCs with its Jack of all Trades style optionals.

It was doable but my players found it interesting. My Assault+ is now just a NPC Everest.

[young laurel]

Not as far as I know. Most of the ones that do not fall under this category don't really care about taking damage in some way.

[indigo oasis]

Btw night parade, I heard you had Squad+, Monstrosity+, and Human+- mind sharing those?

[young laurel]

Like what they do or the file itself?

[indigo oasis]

Either or

[young laurel]

The way these three are built are different fundamentally from Mech NPCs. In fact they have some special rules.

Human+ is essentially a customizeable pilot or an "annoying fodder" type NPC. They won't win battles on their own and are best used basically representing enemy pilots or if you are feeling memey in a campaign. PC Pilot vs Human encounters.

They have a slight rule that makes it so anything larger than Size 1/2 is going to have a slightly harder time hitting them. But attacking them in general is gonna always Impair them hit or miss, cause a mech shooting at a meatbag is always gonna make them flinch. They are very customizeable with a loadout system.

Squad+ is simpler in design, they now have Grunt and Veteran equivalents amongst their optionals. But are mainly divided into three subtypes of Squads.

• Infantry (Closest to CRB Squad)
• Pipecleaners (Best representing a swarm of little shits trying to hack away at your ankles)
• Disruptors (Party of discount Goblins)

Monstrosity+ is by far the main star. I went above and beyond with enhancing it, CRB Monstrosity already has an extensive portfolio of traits and mutations to make each Monstrosity unique. This one has even more with different "Build Types" and a ruling that while still limits Tech Attackers, it still is SOMETHING. The Monstrosity+ also has a separate "Stress" mechanic unique to itself.

[indigo oasis]

Oh so Monstrosity+ kinda has Squad Kits for Monstrosity- I like that!

(at least for the Build Types + Optional Expansoin thing)

[young laurel]

Heat is also very dangerous to these guys.

Human+ always has 3 Heatcap (yes they have one now) but take Energy damage equivalent to Heat. If they go over their heatcap they take Burn instead of Energy.

Squad+ takes half the Heat as Burn.

Monstrosity+ you can heat gun them to death because it legit gives them Heatstroke. They have a Heatcap of 5

[indigo oasis]

I assume Human+ and Squad+ can be targeted by techs now becaue they have technical equipment?

I'm now extra curious at seeing their documents now

[young laurel]

Human+ can, but Squad+ can only be affected by Tech Actions that deal Impaired and Slowed.

[young laurel]

This is what I mean for Monstrosity+ getting Heatstroke and have a way for Tech Attackers to not cry.

[zenith sapphire]

tbh, I wonder if squad can make do by using an alternate structure table to allow it structure, this would of course cause lower than half hp status going back up and losing which is weird; which I would suggest making it a status applied by the structure check results, either for a turn (2-4) or until cleared by stabilizing like exposed (1).

[trail pivot]

i guess the important question is "Why would you?"

[young laurel]

In addition to that, the Squad doesn't really need an alternate structure table. They are already an odd NPC by merit of being essentially ten dudes (usually) in a group fighting in a do-or-die situation. It doesn't really fit them.

Plus they don't really gain structures or stress at all.

[vale crescent]

My multi structure squad which has half attacks on half health, then it proceeds to get structured and all the guys get back up and it deals full attacks again

[fathom quiver]

I've always loved the implication that the infantry isn't getting tougher, but higher tiers just have more dudes

I'm quite happy with the Reconus squad kits

Also of note, technically Squads can still gain templates like Elite, Veteran, and Spec Ops, they just never get structure

[vale crescent]

Ignoring template limitations is a thing I yearn to do

I need an elite or commander squad at some point

Hell like some hellish self reviving subaltern squad in the form of a multi structure squad

[young laurel]

I feel like Squad is one of the NPCs that does not work with extensive templates. I've tried to modify my Squad+ to try and make it template friendly, but it still felt jank. So I stuck with the current iteration.

[marsh nest]

Is your NPC+ stuff available anywhere? Always interested in groups of NPC bits, and especially squad reworks.

[vale crescent]

Instructions unclear. Squad has been given prying claws and boarding leash

Taking inspiration from menace where your squad just has armour and basic weapons. Then the squad lead has the special weaponry like machine guns grenade launchers or RPGs

[zenith sapphire]

First off, the initial thought is that squad is the only thing that can't be made to be bulkier with the addition of template, while there can be something about the line of innate frailness of human, I think it also limit the effectiveness of squad to serve in more prominent roles.
The initial design was to allow squad to gain extra bulk by slapping on HP when they would normally gain structure. Which runs into the issue of SSMR Tempest with single structure all HP condensed meaning that it's hard to temporarily neuter when others would take a halt due to structured, and the original half HP check not quite effective in this case as a either absolute no effect or fully neutered into less than adequate.
Hence I considered making it so the half HP status is applied temporarily if you done enough damage to pass a threshold.
Which is then I realized I just reinvented structure chec.
Narratively speaking, the individual squad member could be healthier or more robust with better gear etc, and a simple reskinning from structure check to something like "resolve/moral check" would be fine.

[fathom quiver]

In my UIB campaign, there was a friendly NPC Squad that occasionally helped out the group, I had them as Elite and locked at tier 3, though the second time I ran it I swapped out Elite for Spec Ops, since they still got the extra activation, plus the crit bonus and limited invisibility

[indigo oasis]

Well hang on don’t tempests get their own form of Structure via their climate nodes?

[rose hamlet]

Yup

[young laurel]

It is in the third party forum, look for my Kitchen. (There is no document yet. I am focusing on completing the 0.2.0 version first before I make the document)

[hybrid lion]

what retrograde do u guys use for grunt artillery

I was thinking strider but they're a bit too dripped out

Striker > Assault
Controller > Witch
Support > Barbarossa V2
Defender > Bastion
Artillery > Strider? Sniper? Archer? Bombard?

[restive fable]

GMS SP1 with a two handed weapon

The basic Everest template looks really basic if you do the bare minimum paintjob and use the Factory Standard template

you could use basic GMS SP1s for all the rebake grunts and it'll let you do both the rifle and blade variation on the striker grunt

[vale crescent]

Nelson mk 2 with no accessories can also look like a spindly little guy with a rifle

Probs better for striker now I think of it

[hybrid lion]

why do the deployables have their own LCP?

[rose hamlet]

easy import into Foundry

[hybrid lion]

ah ok

I wasn't sure bc it seems easy enough to extrapolate from the rules

[restive fable]

it's a lot easier to drag/drop turrets and stuff with the additional deployable lcp yea

[hybrid lion]

Probably not on Owlbear though right?

[subtle nacelle]

owlbear doesn't really track character sheets on the map. they just have tokens, and also sheets, but separate really

[carmine idol]

I haven't used Owlbear for Lancer, but I imagine Witchdice probably works for deployables too?

[hybrid lion]

As far as I know, it doesn’t have a “drag and drop” feature. The witch dice sheets track their own internal action economy, but they aren’t tied to the actual board tokens in any way I don’t think

[potent jasper]

ran an encounter with rebake spite, can say i liked the edicts on imprison, added a fun little button to press to keep players on their toes. it did in fact do its job of locking people down

[brisk flax]

I'm tinkering with an opfor comp utilizing spites (I'm thinking of doing one for each of the wallflower rebakes) and the thing my thoughts keep circling back to is the Spite is a controller (hybrid controller anyway) that really benefits from another controller to play with

[potent jasper]

it was the wallflower combat btw, made some modifications to the opfor, two scourers, witch, six grunt strikers, and threw in a barricade as i had made the map flat more or less

[brisk flax]

On their own, the Spite doesn't have a lot of hard control, they have choice punishment stuff, but like while they can hit you with Imprison they have no real way of directly attacking your reactor outside of basic invade, they lack the ability to just tell you "no," but what they do have is a lot of force multiplication potential with other sources of control effects

[potent jasper]

once the witch went down I lost most of my control levers, spite was good at single-target lockdown

[brisk flax]

funnily enough, what I'm thinking of most specifically is Witch + Spite

that feels like a very natural pairing

[potent jasper]

rebake witch keys off danger zone, and spite gives people Can't Clear Heat Disease, so its a really good combo

[brisk flax]

They play off each other well...the Witch has the heatgun to really force Imprison to be a more immediate problem and the harder control to make running the Spite down harder, while the Spite can really fuck with anyone trying to run down the Witch instead and help keep it alive with Enthrone

[indigo oasis]

It just hit me- Rebaked Empowered Investiture fills pretty much the same niche Pause Engine used to fill. That’s neat.

[zenith sapphire]

well...wallflower did witch(chain) and spite as one of it's comp didn it?

[dapper plover]

combat 3 The Horde, which is also the first encounter to use Spites at all, pairs it with a Witch

spite+witch running backline with a couple scourers on the midline and dangerous terrain + berserker grunts for chaff

[twin reef]

Wallflower loved berserker grunts.

[smoky bluff]

I just realised the Strider can move with skrimisher kit when an allied character activates

this changes a bit of things for me

[restive fable]

It has been months and I finally managed to get two Overwatches off with Eye of Midnight

thank you Rebake Sentinel

[young laurel]

It must have been satisfaction

[restive fable]

The Sentinel died the round after but hey, I finally got some overwatching in (players coulda walked around but took the plunge anyway)

[tribal mason]

For the Spectre's Tactical Cloak when it said

all characters are aware of this
It's about people knowing about the possibility of the quick action, right?

If so, should I disclose it when the combat starts with a Spectre on the board or when one joins?

[shell vale]

Skeleton of an opfor. The mirage mostly teleports Titan-Snare Drones directly into your grill.
2X Barricade (Titan-Snare Drone)
1X Elite Mirage
2X Hive (Command Override)

Might replace one of the Hives with an Assassin so there's an actual Striker/Artillery.

[restive fable]

an Assassin would be good I think, get some damage in so you don't have to slowly chip them to death with a Hive

[smoky bluff]

yes

[brisk flax]

Essentially yes, there's no other real way to convey it

everyone should be aware when a specter hits the board that their action bar has a new option called Break Tactical Cloak

[tribal mason]

Well, there is always the option of scanning.

It would fit into that idea of scanning to discover enemies weaknesses, or am I missing the point?

[brisk flax]

yeah but if you have to scan to do it, then that's not "all characters are aware of this"

the point is that you do not have to scan to do it because otherwise it's very possible that nobody's going to discover this option

and that would completely undermine the reason for it existing in the first place

[tribal mason]

Ok, I see the intent

[brisk flax]

With some things, it's possible to give a visual/descriptive cue of some sort that doesn't explicitly spell out what it is right away but that still conveys intent because the interaction is more apparent or because you can rely on people probably understanding what it means without telling them. Deathcounter has a visible energy shield and when it no-sells an attack the shield pops, that's pretty basic 101 level stuff. Some enemies create zones on the ground, and it's not hard to figure out "oh I probably don't want to stand here"

but there's no effective shorthand way to convey "this invisibility effect has its own unique contested check to temporarily disable it that anyone can attempt 1/round"

[lucid echo]

I just ran a combat of breaking through the lines with two snipers, two rainmakers, two breachers, two demolishers, and a commander veteran cataphract, plus two elite monstrosities for my four players.

No particular notes, worked well.

Thank you for all the rebakes.

This was a gauntlet with the NPCs starting out with their close range units near the objective and the snipers starting out closer to the PCs. There was a wall of death advancing by 1d4 each turn behind them.

Somehow they managed to fight and destroy everything but the elite reinforcements.

[indigo oasis]

If I wanted to make an Ultra Demolisher less tanky, do you think giving it Superior Shielding would do the trick?

Siege Shield stacks with Shock Armor too well, and Silvershielding is just good period. Superior Shielding would drop Resilient and be the most work-around-able

There’s also Evasive considering demolishers have tiny evasions but having 11 evasion is still nothing to scoff at

[twin reef]

Evasive Demolisher is just funny.

[indigo oasis]

Also true

Demolishers in my experience have just been incredibly tanky against my PCs, so for a combat where the side objective is “destroy the ultra” I’m thinking of ways to make it’s bulk more indirect

[lucid echo]

What's the loadout of your players?

Can they heat-gun it? Can they disable it? Can they do huge amounts of damage to low evasion things? Do they care about armor?

[indigo oasis]

The load out is:

• Brawler Zheng
• Autogunner “Pegasus” (3rd party alt that lacks Omnigun but it runs more or less the same)
• Swallowtail w/ Minotaur Tools
• Hydra

You’d think with 1-2 shred tools they’d destroy a Demolisher but apparently when you have an objective already present + a bunch of more frail enemies harassing them they could barely make a dent in the Commander Demolisher I threw at them

[zenith sapphire]

silvershielding evasive hover

[indigo oasis]

Actually... "Fast Demolisher" with the rebake sounds like a weirdly fun gimmick

Give it Supreme Mobility, Evasive, and that one optional that allows it to take 4 Heat to move 4 spaces before attacking

Probably not Supreme Maintenance tho (or whichever one allows it to take 4 Heat to clear slow or immobilize with Juggernaut), that'd be too mean

[young laurel]

As a sort of Speed Burst Demolisher?

[indigo oasis]

Exchange tanking and heatcap for more mobility

[brisk flax]

okay taxes are done, damage was about what I figured, so I'm going to move forward with getting the wallflower rebakes finalized and out the door

The 1.6 changelog, which I'm not even really going to put in a pdf or anything, is this

-Avenger Judgement Shotgun adjusted, to-hit changed from +0 +1 Accuracy to +0/1/2, no longer deals bonus damage on critical hits by default, this effect is now tied to allied characters being destroyed within Range 5
-Strider Smoke Grenade adjusted, in addition to the usual conditions for ending the effect the Strider may also now end it whenever they swap kits```

As feedback on wallflower rebakes has slowed to a virtual standstill, I am declaring PROJECT OVER at this point, everything seems to be in a good enough spot that I don't think waiting any further is going to deliver something massively transformative

[rotund coral]

I'm running a rebake lurker in my current combat and it feels like it's in a really good spot

[buoyant stump]

Swapped to using the Rebake in my current campaign and just finished our first mission with it, overall very happy with it and it's good enough that I want to tell people to use it for the narrative module I'm working on, but also designing encounters for rebaked npc's instead of default seems like a questionable idea lol

[minor tundra]

I believe there's been a couple projects out there that have listed "Rebaked rosters" as alternate enemy force compositions

[rose hamlet]

My honest take is that most combats are going to be unaffected by a shift to the rebake

Like yeah there’s some differences here and there but IMO they’re largely gonna turn out the same

[wise creek]

Speaking from experience, the only thing I'd be wary of is the Ultra template. It's really easy to pick some really cool optional traits from the Rebake version, but designing a core Ultra that has the same game plan might be more difficult than you expect

[brisk flax]

In what respect?

[wise creek]

I guess most of the game plan actually comes from the NPC class itself now that I think about it. But obvs you can take advantage of the added systems

I forget what exactly I chose but I had an MBT supported by Grunts that would've been given overshield by one of the Rebake traits to give them a bit more survivability. But that gimmick couldn't really have existed with just the core Ultra

[brisk flax]

Ah okay, you mean that trying to make equivalent core and rebake ultras might be hard

I gotcha

Yeah that's probably a consideration if you get weird with it

[wise creek]

Yeah I'd say the best way to mitigate it if you're designing with both in mind is to try to figure out a gimmick using just the core first then maybe expand on it with the Rebakes after you nail it down

A lot easier than working backwards from the Rebake

[young laurel]

NPC tinkering. Bastion is technically the closest thing to CRB and Rebake that can be considered a Vanguard Tank if we go by Valk's lovely class breakdown.

Would it be too much for an NPC to go all in one for that gimmick? Or it is best to give them a somewhat flexible kit?

Genuine NPC build question.

[indigo oasis]

More limiting though- much harder to make Control or Support Ultras with this method

[rose hamlet]

No, not too much, that’s why I made the Howler

Also: NPCs are purpose built for specific play; when they’re not, it’s weird (see Scourers)

[wise creek]

Yeah that's true. Ultimately it just comes down to, as the author, how much you care about parity between the two types of combats

Like Valk said, generally Core vs Rebake combats aren't too different

If you wanna go wild on Rebake specific combats then you can always put a rider at the front of the book that says "hey you're not getting the full experience if you're not using the Rebakes"

[indigo oasis]

Yeah in most cases the rebake simply smoothes over rough edges rather than overhauling things. But there are a few noteworthy overhauls

[young laurel]

What do you mean by Scourers feeling weird?

[rose hamlet]

As in “Scourers are nominally strikers, yet their optionals include an AOE save vs Jammed of all things”

Which Kai has pointed out and subsequently replaced in this rebake

[brisk flax]

I know some people are fond of NPCs having "flexibility" like that within their optionals and I don't necessarily mind some broader spectrum stuff (i.e. the Rainmaker rebake which has a sideline in "doing Lock On" in addition to typical artillery damage stuff) but imo if you want a Striker to suddenly pop off with hard mass CC out of nowhere like that, that's what you use cross-classing for

the same way that if you really want an NPC to be barrage capable, I think a better approach than "we'll just put a second gun here" is "grab a gun off someone else"

[young laurel]

Ahhh, ok I get it now.

Yeah, Scourer is a bit weird like that. I've been thinking of reworking my Scourer+ as well to have its own gimmick.

My boy still feels a bit too close to CRB in comparison and in that same weird way.

The idea I had is to make it lean more onto the focus firing aspect of its kit and sort of building around that aspect with some stranger elements in its optionals to spice up its kit.

[brisk flax]

I think the element of the Scourer's kit that stands to act as a hook to hang other effects on is the cooling module

[twin reef]

That reminds me of how Thermal Overload could, it says: "do your best Tokugawa impression. Right up until your reactor melts down, anyway."

So a really good Tokugawa impression.

[young laurel]

Really just Sherman in an NPC trenchcoat.

What if I just make it actually just fully a Sherman?

But yeah, if the Cooling Module is the centerpiece of the Scourer... I think I can cook up something foul with it.

[brisk flax]

I mean I think the centerpiece is essentially Focus Down, that's what the NPC is, but Cooling Module is also pretty integral to its identity

[dapper plover]

Focus Down defines "what does it do"
Cooling Module defines "what can PCs do about that"

[young laurel]

Maybe having optionals be ways to switch up those two might be interesting. I got ideas and I can't wait to get home after work to brain storm.

[indigo oasis]

Honestly the Scourer would be, in terms of what it does, unchanged if you removed Cooling Module and the heat tag from Thermal Lance

But in terms of how PCs respond to it a lot would change

[twin reef]

Yeah, NPCs having clearly signpointed strengths and weaknesses is a good thing.

[young laurel]

Yeye.

I'm thinking of altering it slightly to be more of a Heat Building and Heat Clearing Striker, with its abilities playing around Focus Down and Cooling Module to achieve different effects while either in Danger Zone or after clearing Heat.

[errant needle]

It kind of amuses me using Rebake NPCs exclusively that in every ranking, the Scourer has proven to be one of my groups' repeat nemeses just due to its deceptive bulk.

Unless you're thinking about tactics, 2 armor and passive Energy resistance can tank a lot of punishment.

[brisk flax]

It's pretty passively tanky yeah, as opposed to having active defenses like a lot of strikers or some special mitigation factor like invisibility

Being Anti Nuclear Cavalier is extremely sneaky

[young laurel]

Defender in a Striker Coat

A Scourer is deceptively tough, and woe be upon anyone that tries to crack through it via Energy because that is a horrible idea.

[indigo oasis]

Funnily enough the rebake did literally nothing to the Scourer’s bulk. I think in terms of base kit Vanilla and Rebake Scourer are identical it’s just the optionals

[indigo oasis]

Absolutely not it has 10 HP

Yes I know Bastions also have 10 HP, shush

[errant needle]

That and Kinetic and Energy being the most common things in PC damage kits

an Ultra Scourer basically tanking a fully charged Sherman's core power to the face was a bit of a wake up call for my players. lol

[indigo oasis]

Ultra Scourers really take the whole “just target someone else” philosophy and crush it in their hands

[young laurel]

Not mine. :]

Mine definitely isn't squishy if people don't have Shredding or AP attacks.

[restive fable]

I've seen "the Tempest Charged Blade does 5 damage" on a Scourer

very unfortunate.

[smoky bluff]

Ablative Shielding proving it still got it

[young laurel]

Average Nuke Cav user vs Sleeper Build Scourer

https://tenor.com/view/armstrong-armstrong-metal-gear-armstrong-punch-senator-armstrong-raiden-punching-armstrong-gif-26179277

[rose hamlet]

Casual reminder to folks that bulk alone does not a defender make

[twin reef]

So is the Scourer a Sherman or a Manticore?

[indigo oasis]

Yes

[rose hamlet]

Shermanticore, yes

[indigo oasis]

Shmanticore

[young laurel]

Fair enough

[restive fable]

More of a Sherman, because I expect a Manticore Scourer to create a violent explosion when it overheats instead of like cooling itself

[zenith sapphire]

manticore is the veteran scourer that manages to use forbidden technique: lance double-tap

for when you really want to take home the reminder of not standing in LoS when scourer already tags you

[young laurel]

Cross Classing NPCs to make NPC versions of Player mechs is funni.

[indigo oasis]

Thermal Overload + Veteran (Last Line)

[restive fable]

the Manticore-Scourer randomly setting off a bomb after it dies is funny-ass shit

[indigo oasis]

Veteran Scourer that sets itself to self destruct 3 rounds from now in case anyone tries to get close

[zenith sapphire]

you could always like manually overheat yourself since overcharge lance double tap is a guaranteed stress

pair that with vents and you even get to hide in the spontaneous invisibility

[brisk flax]

the manticore is like the "NPCified PC mech" white whale in that nothing really fits either in terms of like direct analogue (very tanky self-heating CQB/tech guy) or The Memes (guy that explodes)

I remain pretty firm in my position that if you really want to make an NPC manticore without homebrew, the best starting point is a CRB Hive, it has several optionals that can turn it into a high damage output unit and it's naturally pretty resilient

I've tinkered off and on with an NPC called the Fury where the idea is that it gradually builds up to a big AoE eruption on a countdown and then repeats the cycle which was meant to sort of evoke a similar vibe, but I couldn't ever really quite nail the play pattern down in a satisfying way

[rose hamlet]

Fuck now I’ve got the itch to try this

Hm

[trail pivot]

I had one in the early concepts for a manticore npc called the Demon, which weirdly enough had a gimmick similar to the lycan's shell removal in that the demon would get faster by shedding its shell, but the shell breaking was involuntary, and it otherwise had nothing in common other than lightning as a theme. it got put on hiatus due to life and campaigns though, and maybe some day I'll revisit it. I probably would add it to my other project instead of putting it in gms cc though

[young laurel]

I was thinking of making custom NPCs as well aside from CRB Remixes.

An early concept of one of them was something like a Manticore-like NPC that is a Controller named the Wisp. Likes swapping places with hostile characters (Beckon) and is meant to be an NPC that likes to mess with entrenched enemies and likes being surrounded by them in order to deal damage (not heat, too powerful otherwise).

He'd be a bit tanky in order to survive that kind of tactic tho. It thrives off of popping in between hostiles after swapping places with a friend of theirs.

Scrapped it because it felt a bit too powerful at the time.

[fringe peak]

question, anyone ever make a guide as to some important ench marks for homebrewing npcs

[rose hamlet]

Not to my knowledge, but I wish they did

[trail pivot]

i kind of have internal guidelines but it's very rough to like, get a sense of concrete doctrine, and tbf i've been generallly too busy/not paid enough to take the time to write that kind of tthing down

[rose hamlet]

I set up a spreadsheet to compare NPC “effective Hp” and largely used that to get a gauge of how tough/survivable most of my NPCs were in comparison to the vanilla ones

[fringe peak]

kk, been working a biological support npc that's supposed be absed off like mounts and attack dogs

[echo wolf]

There's a biological defender in Liminal Space, I know that

[indigo oasis]

Probably a better question for #homebrew-design

[zenith sapphire]

Any idea what would pair well with a pair of ace?
initial choice was rainmaker and scout but that's a bit thin on staying power.
would priest with dispersal shield/sanctuary be a good touch for ace or would priest not quite keep up with ace's speed for the rest of it's kit like investiture? or support grunts?

[indigo oasis]

I mean Ace, Rainmaker, and Scout are “The Lock On Brothers” so that’s fine. Plus not every Sitrep needs defenders and I’d say Scout, Ace, and Rainmaker have at the very least decent staying power

Could throw in a Barricade for funny control or Berserker for staying power I suppose

Actually ace and rainmaker have enough damage output so maybe not berserker

[zenith sapphire]

3PC:
2xAce
1xRainmaker (Seeker Volley)
1xCommander Scout (Pathfinder, Bolster Network/Press the attack)
1xPriest
4PC:
1xHornet (Umbral Interdiction)
5PC:
2xSupport Type Grunt
1xIDK yet

[indigo oasis]

A priest certainly won’t help an Ace much but it can do other stuff

[zenith sapphire]

I mean I like dispersal on ace

ace have thinner HP so dispersal's a greater HP buff on ace than others

that and also on hornets

ah got it, priest could idk tag dispersal on one of the ace and then investiture the rainmaker

ace have enough mobility to just fly back to the priest when dispersal shield finish recharging or smth

[brisk flax]

I'm working on an encounter like this, and the biggest sort of stumbling block is basically that Aces are divorced from the rest of the opfor in a way that a lot of other NPCs aren't, by virtue of being on an entirely different axis

so I think that for a comp where aces form a sort of central element rather than a "guest star" role that you kind of have to think of it like two separately operating forces

In particular, you probably want a solid foundation for some sort of point contesting/holding element

Priests have the issues noted...you can dispersal shield them but investiture is a wash

so you need something else the Priest wants to actually support

[indigo oasis]

Alternative You could make the Priest a Flying Vehicle lol

[brisk flax]

The Mirage would actually be a strong contender for a support to enhance the Ace, but the problem is I think it runs the risk of getting too frustrating because Mirages have a lot of Invisibility going around and the Ace has Barrel Roll which isn't incompatible with Invisibility

you'd have a lot of potential situations where you could end up stacking multiple "your attack just misses" effects onto things

[indigo oasis]

It’d be a fun thing to do once

Ever

You never spring that on the same play group again

[brisk flax]

See I actually kind of doubt it would be fun is the problem, otherwise I'd consider it

there's gimmicky stuff that's like "okay sure, for a one-off" but then there's just "oh this actually kind of sucks"

[indigo oasis]

It’d probably be fine if the team has a Leviathan user, as missing is not as big a consequence to them

That’s it I think

[brisk flax]

big problem though, Leviathan caps out at Range 8

[indigo oasis]

Ahhh yeah true

[brisk flax]

like it becomes a combat where the solution is basically "gear check for Reliable damage + Range 10"

[zenith sapphire]

It's been like forever since I see a PC comp in action without aoe artillery builds so mirage lending out the invis is a weird choice even when hiding etc.
personal opinion not entirely objective

[indigo oasis]

Now I wanna figure out what kinda context could make that combo not hair pullingly awful

[brisk flax]

the way you'd do it is basically never giving one of the aces dataveil or using that one mirage optional that has people count a target as invisible and maybe not using multiplicity

so you'd be using teleport stuff plus "gives soft cover"

[indigo oasis]

I think if the Mirage were alternatively put in a map where lacking Dataveil makes it an easy target… and it doesn’t have more than 2 structure, that’s also a way it could work while allowing you to Dataveil the ace. Since the big Dataveil counter is “hit whoever doesn’t have it”

[zenith sapphire]

I wonder if casting sanctuary on ace is mean or not

[brisk flax]

like dataveil is part of it but it's also just "don't use Illusory Subroutines" and "don't keep stacking things that force attacks to miss/be invalid" etc

[indigo oasis]

How you deal with a Mirage’s support abilities is “kill the mirage yesterday” and that’s kinda always been the case

[brisk flax]

basically the reasons the Mirage could be valuable to aces in a less shitty way is that flying Aces have very little access to cover, which Mirages can grant at a distance, and teleporting is always generally useful

but everything else a mirage can offer aces, imo, stacks a little too annoyingly with the ace's own base kit ability to ignore attacks

lynchpin support elements are fine to position as priority targets, but I also think that comps shouldn't inherently pivot around a single "you HAVE to kill this guy first" keystone

[zenith sapphire]

I think I saw a guy tape overshield to grunt bio hornets as a counter demonstration to 'grunts are mid' once and the idea of overshield on harder-to-hit target stuck with me since then, have yet to try that..

[brisk flax]

I say this as someone who thinks the interaction with overshield and grunts can sometimes be an interesting space to play, but "grunt hornets, but give them overshield" seems very weird to me when hornets already have the lowest HP of any enemy in the game

this doesn't really seem like a counterargument to "grunts are mid" to me

this is just making an elite hornet with extra steps

[zenith sapphire]

in retrospect it's technically just slapping HP buff to unit with defnining traits on low HP and hard to hit

not ideal i suppose

[brisk flax]

like idk, "grunts are mid" feels like a weird sort of stance in general because yeah that's supposed to be the point

[zenith sapphire]

I think the original quote was grunt are mid as in not worth the point cost, even when tripled the amount, compared to a standard npc

so they aren't worth the 'supply cost'

[brisk flax]

as someone who's spent a lot of time messing with grunts and similar things, I think a lot of people do not really interrogate exactly what they want out of a "grunt unit" and it sometimes feels like the simpsons bit where skinner's mom tells the bagger at the grocery store that she wants him to pack all the groceries into one bag, but not make the bag too heavy

[brisk flax]

I mean they aren't in a certain sense and are in another, if you turn one standard Assault into three Assault Grunts you're losing a substantial amount of staying power in exchange for tripling the potential action output

turning guys into (CRB) grunts is turning them into distributed glass cannons

also, frankly, a lot of "well you can destroy a bunch of grunts at once" stuff makes me think that a lot of people clump their grunts up together out of a sense of sportsmanship instead of, like, "all these Assault Grunts are 3+ spaces away from one another"

[fathom quiver]

Partners to give Aces: A Friendly Leech

Tbh that's not a terrible idea, lol

Leeches can act as support and directly buff the ace, and the aces can drop them off

[trail pivot]

my thoughts regarding supporting an ace would be like, using scouts for the increased lock on's as well as other npc's that really don't mind spending lock on's as actions, in that sense

and rather than relying on npc's to give the ace cover, i would just create zones for aces to duck into and out of, and focus on presenting npc's that are applying the kind of pressure to force the player's hand,

[cursive walrus]

the Priest's Fractal Assault no longer requires a systems save?

[brisk flax]

It doesn't because the way the ability works has been changed

[cursive walrus]

ah yeah i missed the 1/round which is why i was surprised lol sorry

[brisk flax]

The CRB version is "if someone damages this target, they have to pass a save or be stunned." The rebake version is "the person doing the damage can decide whether to become stunned or to have the damage of their attack/whatever reduced to 0"

[cursive walrus]

classic case of illiteracy i fear

[brisk flax]

I mean both are 1/round

[cursive walrus]

yeah i just somehow totally missed it in the rebake

[brisk flax]

Generally speaking, reactions in lancer tend towards 1/round, and usually exceptions have to spell it out

[young laurel]

For me, what could support an Ace...

Priest's Dispersal Shield is good yeah.
Scout too because of Lock On city.

To round out the rest of the opfor, I would slap down a Sentinel for the Priest and either a Hornet or Cataphract for forward pressure alongside Ace.

[trail pivot]

i think what you'd really want is more forward pressure os that the ace isn't always obligated to carry the pressure alone, imo,

because otherwise its too easy bully the ace

[smoky bluff]

Yeah aces are dodgy kind of people but they can't take mutiple beatings like an assault

If you need to contest an objective, you need a NPC with alot more force but then you risk having that npc be the main show

[trail pivot]

its okay to have multiple main shows imo

[young laurel]

Then in that case a forward pressure ally would definitely be among the following.

Assault
Berserker
Breacher
Cataphract

As they are meaty enough damage dealers that can put the pressure on the ground while Ace deals pressure from the air.

Supported by a Sentinel Backline to prevent the supporting Priest from biting the dust from a PC flank maneuver.

[brisk flax]

This is what I mean about having the opfor work in two components

[patent spindle]

More of a heads up than anything: The .lcp data may need to be reformatted slightly for v3, now I've had a mess around with it. Namely, Veteran and Ultra templates don't automatically get applied with their base features, and don't automatically increase Stucture/Stress. There also seems to be a minor issue with the colour of Systems from the Rebaked lcp, theyre all the Trait red.
Also this message regarding -1 additional features.
If you're already aware of it Kai please ignore this message entirely

[subtle nacelle]

Im roughly in charge of the LCP, so any feedback on v3 would be really nice to hear about.

[patent spindle]

Sure! How much time and tolerance do you have? C/C and the Rebake have been carrying my ass so Id love to see it thrive

[subtle nacelle]

starting monday i can start working on stuff

i still need to update the wallflower lcp to the 1.6 changelog from 2 weeks ago XD

[patent spindle]

Hey I havent studied how to even do lcps yet, so you've already got a handle on it more than I haha

I thank you for your service though

[north geyser]

How does this lcp work? Does it just generate a copy of every hostile in core/expansion with the new rules or does it overwrite?

[patent spindle]

It makes a second [K] tagged version of each NPC

and there is a second [K] tagged Ultra and Veteran template as well

[subtle nacelle]

there's no generation XD. we manually wrote all the content using code editors with json support.

the .LCP file is actually just a renamed .ZIP file with a bunch of .JSON files at the archive root

you can right click unzip them

[north geyser]

Ok so for foundry I just need to load LCP and generate a copy of every “K” marked hostile to have the current rebaked set?

[subtle nacelle]

foundry generates compendium items when you import an lcp

you should not need to "make" anything but your NPC's loadouts

like for a particular encounter

[north geyser]

Tru but if you pull from compendium it generates a unique character for each copy. Easier to just have 1 of each character and just spawn multiple tokens

[subtle nacelle]

the [k] is to differentiate them from corebook versions. So in the NPC class compendium, you'll see ACE and Ace[k]

(because for some reason the crb lcp is all caps in a lot of places)

[subtle nacelle]

when you make an encounter, I like to have a folder in the actor tab for that encounter and drop in all the unique loadouts each NPC is gonna take that fight. Then, I pull copies onto the map from there. But i still very much just use the premades from the compendiums

also, NPCs are marked Hostile by default

also also, when you import a newer version of an LCP into the compendium (barring breaking changes), the system updates all the compendium items. Created actors, and in-play actors are unaffected.

[patent spindle]

Anyway, feedback. Using an Ace (Rebake) and an Ace (Vanilla)... (plus Bastions teehee)

1. The Features seem too be adding to the "Select X additional features" on their own, resulting in -1/-2 etc (img. 1 & 2)
2. The formatting likely needs to be updated with the new styling (see: Ace's reaction, Bastion's System).
3. Veteran [K] and Ultra [K] aren't applying their basic systems automatically, nor are they flagging as "Veteran/Ultra" (img. 3 & 4)
   That is all I've found so far, I certainly hope it's a simple fix. It seems that Beef had a similar issue in the past about point 1, so perhaps it's a mixed problem? Other lcps seem to have similar issues, so it's not isolated.

[subtle nacelle]

the vet and ultra things might be hardcoded behaviour for the crb lcp but i might talk to beef (compcon dev) about it

[full tide]

my general rule with CRB encounters was that if you wanted anything important to an encounter's design to last more than a turn, you'd slap veteran on it. Is that strategy going to be problematic with designing for rebake encounters?

[young laurel]

Shoot, looking at that. Will that affect how Foundry Lancer will read LCPs and Comp/Con logins?

[rose hamlet]

Nope, sounds fine

[rose hamlet]

Beef says the Compcon v3 setup will be backwards compatible with v2 data, so I imagine the lancer for foundry team will mostly be extending the lcp spec instead of rewriting the whole thing

[young laurel]

Ah ok, then that just means current LCPs will just have to update file structure.

Not looking forward to that.

[tribal mason]

I think Beef talked about a converter for LCP

[rose hamlet]

I just said that v2 LCPs will be backwards compatible lol

They should update to add cool new features but not be afraid of impossible breakage

[young laurel]

Damn, I'm a dum then

[rose hamlet]

Like, lancer for foundry team will likely extend rather than replace

[brisk flax]

The only thing to keep in mind is that rebake veterans all get the Limitless trait, aka overcharging for 1d6 heat, by default

[fathom root]

hmmmm, how do you upload a file backup from v2 to v3?

i seem to be getting error

[rose hamlet]

#1238165746203361343 ?

I imagine you can’t upload a v2 backup to v3 though

[fathom root]

true...

[brisk flax]

I should also add some broader context: just in terms of the veteran template alone, no, there really isn't a substantial difference there. The rebake does also include an alternate stress/structure table that can be used with multi-stress/structure NPCs which DOES affect their survivability (positively) in that things like veterans or elites aren't able to lose weapons or systems and can't immediately get stunned/die on a bad roll

note that you aren't obliged to use the alternate table if you use the rebake veteran template, you can mix and match as you see fit

broadly speaking, in terms of feedback I've received, rebake veterans/elites using the revised structure/stress tables have more staying power, not necessarily to an outsized degree, but they do tend to remain in fights longer

[patent spindle]

I have found that Limitless is (as designed) a double edged sword. There's always the risk that you just blow up your veteran in order to do something cool, and I think that's neat.

so while yes "just slap on Veteran" does mean more Limitless going off, it also means your OpFor might be getting preeeetty toasty, prime real estate for your hackers.

[restive fable]

I like that Limitless allows you to blow up Veterans for power

Most NPCs don't generate any heat which makes exploiting heat crimes asymmetrical between players and NPCs, and people do get disappointed about their "make dudes melt down" fantasy not working as well as they'd hope

[young laurel]

Do you think it would be fair for NPC Recharge abilities to basically generate half the number as Heat? Aside from the swingy dice nature, aside from luck it isn't really costing the NPC much.

IE: Recharge 5 ability. When that ability gets Recharged the NPC gains 3 Heat.

[brisk flax]

Valk has experimented with recharge AS heat before, apparently it was a little too generous

recharge PLUS heat feels, imo, like it probably wouldn't be impactful in an interesting way because it's entirely arbitrary

It's something I'd be interested in seeing someone try, to be clear, I don't have perfect game design shinigami eyes or something, but I suspect that being so random means it'll fluctuate as much as recharge invariably does, that sometimes you'll get someone who hits the hot six a bunch of times in a row and sometimes a recharge ability will never recharge

plus, without any sort of actual intentionality behind it, I feel like it would lose a lot of "table moment" impact, if that makes sense

[brisk flax]

like what's being described here is a case where the GM makes a deliberate decision to push the accelerator and maybe it works gloriously and maybe it causes the NPC to eat shit, but I think something like this is more able to create a memorable and engaging moment at the table that everyone hooks into than "sometimes NPCs just overheat"

everybody loves a good "oh shit, how's this gonna play out?" moment

[patent spindle]

Especially when you can play it as the Veteran getting risky or even desperate to take out the competition before turning into a Size 1 Object

[brisk flax]

Yeah, there's some narrative juice there for sure

I did want the Veteran template to feel, on some level, like proper veterans where it's guys who know some dirty tricks and can push their machines further in risky ways that echo what the PCs can do

[patent spindle]

It definitely fits for that. Makes for some fun tension at the table too. Maybe that Breacher Vet will risk that 33% to Stress to get a second skirmish in. Maybe it's what I need to do as GM to cause that bit of fear.

[young laurel]

True true...

Ah, wait. What if we do it in reverse.

USING a Recharge Ability will deal half the heat of the Recharge cost.

This should In Theory eliminate the randomness of gaining heat on a successful Recharge. But leave it be that the NPC is intentionally heating itself to use these abilities.

What about that?

[bold crystal]

well that's just putting heat on a recharge ability.

there's no reason you can't but it has a similar problem to existing recharge abilities where sometimes you just whiff the recharge.

so the heat doesn't end up being meaningful unless there are other sources.

[brisk flax]

Also, from an intentionality perspective, recharge abilities are a bit of a scatterplot thing to tie heat costs to imo

like you have your short-cycle lances, and then you also have your Extrudites

From another analytical perspective, recharge and heat costs are doing two different things

recharge is basically adding variance, akin to things like attack or damage rolls, it exists to add an unpredictability to combat so that you can't always count on "well they've used their ability so it's on cooldown"

whether you think it lands the mark or not is a matter of debate, I know some people don't like it, but that's what it's doing

heat costs, meanwhile, are push-your-luck

you CAN use the ability again, it just might come back to bite you. Do you do it? Is it worth it? Could you get a really sweet overcharge off and make a big play?

I think tying the two of them together is a bit at odds, personally

[young laurel]

Hmm, going by that design standpoint.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Plus Recharge is essentially its own cost that could be used for abilities that don't necessarily warrant a Heat cost. Depending on the NPC it is attached to.

[brisk flax]

yeah it's sort of why I don't really cross the streams there

I don't think it's a Thou Shalt Not sort of deal, I just don't see myself leaning in that direction

[young laurel]

Fair fair fair. Thinking on it more, it makes sense that Recharge and Heat Costs are both separate for a reason.

[rose hamlet]

Okay so you want my Recharge Heat rules from PPG

3 Heat for recharge 5 is hella STEEP from what I’ve found. I used to do like, 2/3/4 for recharge 4/5/6, then 1/2/3, and now finally 1/1/2

The older ones were way too disruptive to the NPCs’ gameplans

Current ones lay on some pressure for PCs to leverage and disrupt but don’t hobble the NPCs on their own

Obviously if a recharge ability already has self heat, don’t add any more

[young laurel]

Hmmmmmm, intorestingaru

[rose hamlet]

To be clear, this is also AFTER I tested completely replacing recharge with heat, and finding it to be waaaay too swingy/powerful for the reasons Kai highlights

So,

https://tenor.com/view/both-agree-yes-good-gif-4591420

The 1/1/2 is mild enough that the game plays normally unless you pack a proper hacker, which is my ideal I think

[young laurel]

Hmmm, nice.

[rose hamlet]

As a note I also find that recharge abilities fall into two broad categories:

• abilities that you want to use a lot but NEED to curtail
• abilities you want to use occasionally and thus DON’T need constant uptime

SCL falls in the first category, Vanilla Defense Net the second

Tbf the second category is one that could stand NOT having recharge, as a result

[modern jackal]

~~so I'm working on a little one-shot to try and get back into the swing of things and i'm wondering what, if anything, i should add to round out the enemy team. All are Rebakes cause I like em a lot

Player Count: 2 (plus an allied Bastion and Support NPC)
LL 0

Enemy Count: 1 Sentinel, 2 Hornets, 1 Priest and 1 Veteran Strider~~

i considered giving Strider Mercenary and maybe adding an Assault or something but it might be too much damage?

oh, i'm silly this is rebake channel and not GM lmao

[patent spindle]

~~There has been a new problem found regarding C/C v3. Testing for future and all that, now that auto-syncing works. ~~
Good news, the "Additional Features" counter is no longer showing -2 on creation! Bad news, it's because the NPC has no features.

Disregard, seems to be a v3 problem

[rose hamlet]

really feeling like this is a bug with C/C v3 and you should mention it to Beef instead

[patent spindle]

You know what, you're absolutely correct. Did not check to see if it was shared with Core NPCs

Which it is

[rose hamlet]

C/C v3 is in development and I don't think it's quite fair to expect folks to update a homebrew LCP before it's properly released

if Beef's goal is backwards compatibility, then this feedback is most valuable to him, not the LCP brewers here

[patent spindle]

While true, Eleonor did ask for feedback regarding v3 quite explicitly

[blissful lion]

I know that this is already out and this is like... way too late to make this comment, but it feels like the hive has a lot of optionals that are like "counts as taking damage from razors" but only other optionals do anything with that.
Could a 'taking damage from razors' mechanic be part of its base kit as well? I'm not sure what it'd be really... it'd probably involve taking something away from its base kit like making drone barrage have inaccuracy unless they take burn or something... seems like it might be too much squeeze for not enough juice.

[restive fable]

If an enemy takes damage from razors, hunter killer becomes more accurate?

[blissful lion]

Maybe it only has seeking when you take damage from razors 🤔

and you have a difficulty to clear the burn...

[blissful lion]

I always thought seeking + smart + burn was pretty rough

Or like... the hive could make an attack with its nexus from the razor's LOS... hrmmm

[subtle nacelle]

Hey Kai, I'm fiiinally getting around to implementing these.

• Judgment Shotgun is now Attack Bonus: 0/1/2, and 0 Accuracy?
• Is the new effect: "After an ally dies within Range 5, the next hit deals +1d6 bonus? or the next attack?
• may end when they swap kits? as in optional or required?

[subtle nacelle]

actually, do you have the v1.6 pdf available, cuz it's been so long im not sure where to find this stuff anymore

[brisk flax]

Hello I am currently working all day, but when I return in uhhhhhhhhhh 4.5 ish hours I will shoot you the PDF with precise wording, sorry

[brisk flax]

@subtle nacelle Here's the 1.6 wallflower rebake pdf

Per the specific changes:
1). Yes, that's the new attack statline
2). The new effect is this:

Whenever an allied non-Grunt, non-Drone character within Range 5 is destroyed by a hostile character, this weapon automatically reloads and the Avenger's next attack with it deals +1d6 bonus damage on critical hit. This effect does not stack.```

3). Yes, "may end" is meant to be optional, it's there to address Striders who pop smoke but by repositioning later have enemies use the smoke for cover of their own, this way you can choose to end the smoke cloud if it's no longer advantageous for you to do so, or leave it up if it is

[hot nest]

Quick question, the Rebake Scout's Pathfinder says "After the scout makes a successful attack (...) an allied character can Boost as a Reaction. Does that consume the Scout's Reaction, or the reaction of the character who's Boosting?

[rose hamlet]

Typically this is the allied characters reaction

[hot nest]

I assumed so

[rose hamlet]

Otherwise it would be something like “the scout may use a reaction to allow an ally to boost”

[hot nest]

[rose hamlet]

For another example, it’s the same wording you might see when something says you can “ram as a free action” thus modifying the ram action being taken

[hot nest]

Got it. I was testing stuff in Lancer Tactics, a scout triggered this, let an Assault boost which triggered Overwatch and the Assault used Hunker Down on that Overwatch, so gonna file a bug report about that.

[brisk flax]

Confirming that yes, this is the ally's reaction

[hot nest]

Alright, I've a delicious 🐛 to give to Olive

[brisk flax]

Similar wording/effects can be found in places like Siege Spec 3 (where you can force other people to drop prone as a reaction) or even Predatory Logic

if the ally can't take a reaction (Jammed, grappled, whatever) they can't get the bonus movement

[brisk flax]

@subtle nacelle and @carmine idol just to let you know, the 1.6 wallflower update will be the final one for lcp purposes, also I've finalized the one change to the core lancer rebake document, which is as follows:
Operator Strike and Fade: "Whenever the Operator teleports during their turn after making any attacks, all attacks against them receive +1 Difficulty until the end of their next turn." change this to "until the start of their next turn."

[blissful lion]

Pryo's firebreak is "line 5, H4, in free spaces within Range 3 and line of sight" I was originally using it like "it starts at range 3 and then you place the line there" but is it meant to be that ALL spaces of firebreak are within range 3 of the pyro? It's a little more difficult to use than original "one space adjacent" - and with a line 5 you can pretty much only place it one kinda way.
. ping me so i don't forget this :3 thank you!

[brisk flax]

One part of the wall needs to be within range 3

However you do that

Like if there was a weapon that was "range 3, line 5" with no restriction on orientation, that's how you would do it

[blissful lion]

Ok awesome

[brisk flax]

This does mean that if you want you can position firebreak so it stretches out far from the pyro, that's okay, the point of the change was to make it more positionally flexible to make up for the Pyro's slow base speed

do note that the entire firebreak line has to be placed in free spaces though

no "I will position this over the top of someone to deal automatic burn to them"

[brisk flax]

Anyway, while I wait for wallflower stuff to finalize, I'm chipping away at something I've been messing with since the discussion of RPVs first came up, which is basically that I think rather than making RPVs their own special unit (I think bespoke grunts already fall into that category) or a particularly unique class (tbh I'm not sure what I would do for an RPV Class that isn't already covered by the existing catalogue) or its own template (I don't care for the RPV template and I'm not sure how I would adjust it to something I do care for), what I have settled on is "make a template that gives someone ELSE an RPV they control"

Essentially, Handler is a template that gives another NPC a pet drone that can take commands

You can either give up some actions to direct it, or if you give it no actions it has a Programmed Action it follows on its own

This is a proof of concept, I figure the final implementation would have 4-5 different Remote Platforms to choose from

[open veldt]

Sorry to ask this because its a bit of a silly question or very revealing about how big i make my maps but, Was the idea for the Harbinger Rockets (Which are very cool btw) always for it to be sort of a map wide effect? I'm only asking because 30 is F A R and now i'm questioning everything i know map scale wise
(I can delete this to keep the thread clean but since its a rebake ability related question i thought i should ask here.)

[brisk flax]

I mean essentially yeah though it's not really the first time lancer does stuff like this. CRB Atlas Missiles are Range 30 as well, Short-Cycle Lance is Line 30, etc

About the only thing that goes larger in terms of concrete numbers is the occasional "Range 50" thing which might as well just read "Range Infinity"

[open veldt]

Gotcha yeah that makes sense but I just wanted to be sure Want me to blank these to keep it clean?

[brisk flax]

nah it's fine

[rose hamlet]

Hell yeah the 4e Summons coming back to play

[brisk flax]

yep, more or less

it also neatly ties the remote platform to another unit which means you don't have excess activation trails at the end of the round

[rose hamlet]

And tbh I consider “range 20” to effectively be “anywhere I can see on the map” on most maps I use, so you’re in good company

[trail pivot]

nice to see another pseudo-summoner template, i did similar concept, though the focus was on providing infantry cover to an npc to make them into a miniboss style of npc,

[brisk flax]

"Guy with their own infantry squad" is a real neat concept

[trail pivot]

yeah, i'd been recently pairing down and reiviewing a lot of shit in the npc side of crisis catalog due to the campaign break im on and it was one of the concepts i enjoyed a lot but always had some unplaceable quibble with the design until recently, when i figured out that "this shouldn't be a regular template this should turn something into like a mini boss." to bulk out the spear head and give them something to coordinate with,

[indigo oasis]

Oh yeah I recently was drafting stuff for a template to focus exactly on that- essentially just “Commander Alt w/ a grab bag of optionals that each correspond to an infantry, vehicle, or off battlefield team supporting the unit”

It’s very rough around the edges tbh but I feel like it’s an idea I wanna workshop

Though it’s not really a summoner since one of the ethos’ I’m approaching it with is “I want there to be minimal optionals having to do with drones or deployables- it’s supposed to evoke the effect of Combined Arms Warfare without all the unit tracking”

[indigo oasis]

Anyway this looks neat! It doesn’t really feel like an RPV substitute and more feels like it’s own thing, but I assume that’s intended

[brisk flax]

In the sense that it's meant to be a different form of "what if there were remote vehicles on the battlefield" I think you could look at it as "an RPV substitute" but in the sense of "it's meant to let you turn anybody into a remote vehicle" no, the same way bespoke grunts are a form of substitution for the grunt template

[ancient forge]

Oh this feels like it could be a fun thing to introduce in the wallflower campaign I've got going

We should be coming back from our break from that this week... I think I could work it into the next encounter

[bold crystal]

oh this is interesting. it's sort of in a similar space to like, hound missiles - 'I have this thing that I'll launch at you and you have to deal with it or have problems'

there's other space in there of course(like a slower 'support' unit that tries to follow allies around and give them overshield or something), but that's kinda the fundamental. it's a hound missile with some other stuff.

[brisk flax]

yeah, hounds are a good way of looking at it

how I see it in my head is this is also, if you squint, sort of a form of "cross-classing" in that it's a way for NPCs to get some gear outside of their wheelhouse, albeit carried around externally

like you can give someone who doesn't have robust attack capability something like a Shrike and now they have a way to melee attack people

[indigo oasis]

It kinda takes the concept of “Targeted System Trauma” and makes it work within Lancer. Only kinda.

[rose hamlet]

Yeah I imagined a Priest or Mirage with Shrike when reading it

[bold crystal]

yeah the example one is interesting to put on like, a support.

[ancient forge]

Support was what I was just looking at adding it to

[twin reef]

The drone has its own heatbar?

[restive fable]

Spite with a Shrike, brrrr

how much do you think this template's "worth" in terms of additional difficulty?

[fathom quiver]

One thing I'd like to see is the ability for something to take multiple remote platforms; I know I've used "the NHP comes at you in an Ultra and is commanding a bunch of grunts as drones"

[indigo oasis]

At that point I question why you don’t just run the boss as an Engineer tho

If you’re giving this template multiple remote platforms I mean

[fathom quiver]

Because they're a priest

You could apply that argument to the entire template

[indigo oasis]

I don’t think that’s the case but I see your point

[brisk flax]

I think this template is going to be a pretty healthy additional chunk of complexity just with a single drone to account for

[brisk flax]

Probably Veteran-ish, though it honestly might not even be that given it doesn't directly protect the NPC directly, so maybe closer to pirate or mercenary

[subtle nacelle]

https://github.com/Shteb/Kais-Wallflower-NPC-Rebake-LCP/releases/tag/2.3.1
Wallflower Rebake PDF v1.6

the only potential work remaining is compcon v3 related

but im waiting for bugs to be squashed first. beef already has these LCPs in their testbench last i know

[brisk flax]

I can't remember, did you already do a new version of the core rebake lcp with that strike and fade adjustment?

[subtle nacelle]

ah, no not yet. i knew i was missing something

I can do that right now if you link it to me

[subtle nacelle]

- "Whenever the Operator <strong>teleports</strong> during their turn before making any attacks, they gain <strong>+1 Accuracy</strong> on all attacks with the <strong>Raptor Plasma Rifle</strong> until the end of their turn. Whenever the Operator <strong>teleports</strong> during their turn after making any attacks, all attacks against them receive <strong>+1 Difficulty</strong> until the start of their next turn. If the Operator splits their movement with an attack, they may only choose one of these effects."
+ "Whenever the Operator <strong>teleports</strong> during their turn after making any attacks, all attacks against them receive <strong>+1 Difficulty</strong> until the start of their next turn"

like this?

green is new text, red is old

[tribal mason]

Oooh, how did you do that?

[subtle nacelle]

```diff
- red text starts with a hyphen

• green text with a plus
  ```

[tribal mason]

Thank you! :D

[subtle nacelle]

there's a ton of other languages supported. For example, I like to hijack elixir's syntax highlighting for compcon mech stats

-- HA Gilgamesh @ LL6 --
[ LICENSES ]
  HA Iskander 1, HA Genghis 2, HA Gilgamesh 3
[ CORE BONUSES ]
  Integrated Ammo Feeds, Universal Compatibility
[ TALENTS ]
  Heavy Gunner 3, Demolitionist 3, Grease Monkey 2, Leader 1
[ STATS ]
  HULL:4 AGI:0 SYS:0 ENGI:4
  STRUCTURE:4 HP:19 ARMOR:1
  STRESS:4 HEATCAP:11 REPAIR:6
  TECH ATK:0 LIMITED:+5
  SPD:4 EVA:8 EDEF:8 SENSE:10 SAVE:14
[ WEAPONS ]
  Main Mount: Mortar
  Flex Mount: Assault Rifle
  Heavy Mount: Krakatoa Thermobaric Flamethrower
[ SYSTEMS ]
  SPEAR Charges x7, HAVOK Charges x7, Grounding Charges x7, Pattern-B HEX Charges x8

i change the word diff to elixir in the markdown code block

[tribal mason]

Hmmm, yeah I remember that now. I should use it more

[smoky bluff]

Huh i don't see it on phone

[subtle nacelle]

yep, only works on desktop/web

[brisk flax]

the change is simply adjusting the defensive bonus to fall off at the start of turn rather than the end to eliminate weird edge cases of "does the defense bonus stack if I use it back to back and, idk, get overwatched on my turn"

it came up during discussion with olive who was working on lancer tactics implementation

[subtle nacelle]

Oh, then the LCP already had this change, as far as I can tell.. this is the current text in the LCP, ignore the highlights.

the offensive side ends at EoT, the defensive one ends at SoT

[brisk flax]

Gotcha, that's what I was wondering. I talked about making this change a little while ago but I wasn't sure if it had been integrated into the lcp yet

[carmine idol]

I might have done a rogue change to implement back when you first mentioned it, apologies for lack of comms there 😅

[brisk flax]

Ah it's fine, this was first floated back in november of last year, frankly I can barely remember what happened last week

[indigo oasis]

mood

[fathom quiver]

While a template to turn an NPC into “the pet class” is neat, and definitely more interesting than an RPV, I think that having to have the entire OpFor be commanding drones would be leagues more complicated than a single handler having multiple. Maybe an ultra-only option that gives it multiple, but locks the drones into only having the skirmish/quick action?

[brisk flax]

well you don't have to have the entire opfor commanding drones

what you seem to want out of this is not what I want out of this

As it's currently blocked out, this template gives an NPC the equivalent of two optional systems plus a passive/autonomous effect whenever they don't use them

[fathom quiver]

I’ve just never wanted to deploy a single RPV

[brisk flax]

I mean the thing is, I think the RPV in broad strokes is wholly unnecessary and don't really care about it

if I want "guys who are just robots" then I simply use flavor and call it a day

[fathom quiver]

I have seen it at the table, but that was when it was a singleton ultra enemy

[brisk flax]

"these grunts are RPVs"

or something

this is an outgrowth of me thinking about something RPV-analogous, but I frankly don't think a lot of templates, not even counting RPV, are things I would use tons of, the same way that not every member of a space pirate squad would necessarily merit the Pirate template

I just don't think lancer's templates, as they exist, really lend themselves well to "everyone in the opfor gets this"

[indigo oasis]

Yeah there are very few templates in Lancer with streamlined "mechanical baggage" so to speak. This can be both a positive and a negative thing depending on what you're looking for.

[fathom quiver]

Again, I can see why a template that gives someone an off-role buddy is good and fun for the game, but in the context of being interested in an independent NPC feature that acts on its own according to a “program” with simple logic that can be manipulated, I can see GMs wanting to field multiple of them, though I may be wrong in that.

[indigo oasis]

The main challenge I see is that, as designed, the Drone still shares its turn with its Handler. So having more of them increases complexity significantly.

An Ultra with 2 of these drones has its turns significantly elongated

[fathom quiver]

And I feel that is a solvable problem

[fathom quiver]

Control Link is only 1/round anyway; maybe make it so that only one drone can be active on a turn

[brisk flax]

With all due respect, "this is a solvable problem" is one of those things where my response is going to be "okay, then feel free to solve it in your own work"

[fathom quiver]

My ticket to the big time, homebrew modifications of template drafts.

As it exists now, any NPC with this and extra activations basically doubles the passive actions their buddy gets without ever taking a single action themselves. Maybe with the other types of remote platforms direct control might be a little more necessary than the Shrike, which pretty simple.

[restive fable]

I might test this out as modification of the Commander template (swap voice of command + the typical optional for a Shrike drone)

God knows I perpetually forget to use Voice of Command so maybe I'll remember if there's a drone...

[wise creek]

Woo Wallflower rebakes

[brisk flax]

Happy official Wallflower update day for everyone who celebrates https://kaitave.itch.io/lancer-npcs-rebaked/devlog/1484126/lancer-npcs-rebaked-wallflower-update

go get your pdfs and lcps and etc

[brisk flax]

@subtle nacelle @carmine idol you guys can de-public the wallflower lcp github stuff whenever you like

[undone halo]

will there be community copies?

[brisk flax]

the community copy is "get in touch with me and I will probably float you a key"

or you can pirate it

also everything has been available for many months here in this channel and I don't plan to deprecate the pins

[calm hawk]

Hi, I did a lcp writeup of your Conscript Rebake for my table is it okay if I upload that here?

[brisk flax]

sure

[calm hawk]

Here it is

[orchid ledge]

based, congrats

[brisk flax]

Feels nice finally getting that one done

[indigo oasis]

Dam the designer notes in the Wallflower rebake are long

[rose hamlet]

Lots of thoughts to be had! Glad that it’s out of your headspace now Kai, congrats

[brisk flax]

I'm gonna say this as neutrally as possible: that's because there's a lot to talk about with those ones

like the strider basically gets two whole pages of nothing but designer notes for a reason

[indigo oasis]

My initial statement was also as neutral as possible. Neutrality acknowledged and reciprocated.

[subtle nacelle]

The strider swap kit is 3 separate npc features in the LCP

[carmine idol]

@brisk flax WF Rebake is now private - let us know what you need for updated lcps and we'll compile those and mail them over as needed :>

[brisk flax]

Thanks, appreciated. So far I think everything's in good shape

[tribal mason]

Thank you for your work Kai!

[buoyant stump]

https://tenor.com/view/neutral-if-i-dont-survive-tell-my-wife-hello-gif-13790639

Neutronians

[indigo oasis]

My feelings on this are incredibly neutral

[ancient forge]

This is certainly a piece of lancer content

[patent spindle]

https://tenor.com/view/gif-gif-19496988

(This is just for the bit I actually adore this entire Rebake project with a good chunk of my being thanks Kai <3)

[young laurel]

Honestly, makes sense because it is Strider.

[shrewd lava]

Didn't make it in time with play sessions to give feedback before final release.
In any case, congrats Kai!

Are there any changes from the latest beta lcp, do I need to download the new one from itch.io, or everything stayed as it was?

[subtle nacelle]

you should download the latest to make sure you have the last ones.

in wallflower (v2.3.1), there were some changes to Avenger's Judgement shotgun, Strider's smoke grenade, and a typo fix for Lurker's Umbral Shroud.

in core (v1.20.1), Operator's fade, of strike and fade, ends at start of turn now

these are the very last changelogs

[smoky bluff]

Btw I found a very elegant solution to the Optional Veteran Traits that's honestly better formatting for the LCP in igf1's lcp

[subtle nacelle]

well, what is it?

[smoky bluff]

So they formatted the veteran optionals under the npc classes json but in NPC features it's origin is labelled as

"origin": {
      "type": "Template",
      "name": "Veteran [K]",
      "base": false
    }

[subtle nacelle]

oh!

[smoky bluff]

Resulting in this formatting, which is a lot neater than what we have now

[subtle nacelle]

that is really nice

i forgot features required double pointers

[smoky bluff]

didn't even know it was a thing till i went and look

[merry peak]

they're doing veteran optionals for the igf npcs?

[subtle nacelle]

vex did

they're already in the lastest lcp

[merry peak]

To practice how to make NPC LCPs, I decided to do what SMFScar did and turned the Gladiator Rebake into an LCP. Also like SMFSCar, I'm asking if I can post it here.

[brisk flax]

yep, go for it

[merry peak]

(This also includes the Veteran Trait, added in like how In Golden Flame did it.

(reupload because I had to fix a feature name)

[minor wyvern]

Ohh I am using a lot of gladiator right now

[potent jasper]

oh right for the recon loadout on the strider, should there be action types listed on the kit bonus for it

[novel hound]

Question: does the damage from Hive's Command Override Optional stack? So if you had 3 drones next to a mech when that is triggered, would they take just 2 burn or would they take 6 burn in total?

[brisk flax]

The Strider's Kit Bonuses gain the following effects:
"gain the following effects" are the operative words

Kit Bonuses are protocols

When you take Recon Loadout, those protocols gain the associated effects

They aren't separate actions, they're additional effects

So, for example, the Skirmisher Kit Bonus goes from

spaces. This movement ignores engagement and
doesn't provoke reactions.```
to
```Kit Bonus: As a protocol, the Strider may move 2
spaces, and they may choose an allied character within 
Range 5 and that character may immediately move 2 spaces. 
This movement ignores engagement and
doesn't provoke reactions.```

[brisk flax]

the damage doesn't stack, there's one check of "are you adjacent to any of these drones y/n" and if "y" then you have to pass one Systems save or take 2/3/4 burn and gain Lock On

[novel hound]

Ok thanks, that's what I was thinking, but I was not sure

[shrewd lava]

What is expected interaction between Spite's Imprison, Edicts and Spite (or Imprisoned Target) entering Intangible?

[shrewd lava]

The only thing that is sure, if Imprison is not broken, is that Spite cannot use Edict against it's Imprisioned target while they are in different phases of Intangible, since it's an action that wants to affect other target. But does imprision breaks? Pauses? Are previously given Edict orders discarded?

At the moment I've played it so it broke completely, just to speed things up during combat, but it felt too much of a "get out of jail for free" card.

[smoky bluff]

I'd think that you should play it so that the Spite cannot enact Edict, but Imprison is still active

Since the Virus is effective, with the mech while intangible

[shrewd lava]

Some whould consider it to be an ongoing interaction with the Spite.

[bold crystal]

I would class it as one - it ends if the spite dies, so it's not independent. it fails my general check of 'if you killed one of the involved characters it would end'

[brisk flax]

Neither Imprison nor ongoing Edicts should break, but you're correct that an intangible spite wouldn't be able to give someone new Edicts while Intangible

To my knowledge, "make the guy intangible" doesn't cause effects to slough off in that way. Tom has mentioned that if someone goes intangible after they've been lock/hold javelin'd that this WILL make the javelin fall out, but I don't think this applies to more ephemeral sorts of things, otherwise the argument would be "can you clear Break Armor by going intangible y/n"

(also to be clear, I think tom's example was with the webjaw snare, a thing that has an actual physical unit quality in that it has HP etc, I suppose it makes sense to extrapolate that to the Lock/Hold Javelins which don't, but someone more pedantic could argue that it doesn't count the same, not that I'd necessarily be inclined to do so)

[bold crystal]

the example was with webjaw and charged stake; it's not clear why charged stake would end, since it's not a deployable, but.

effects that require an ongoing interaction between two characters or objects (like traps or force fields) end.
'ongoing effect that requires interaction' isn't further defined, but some effects are supposed to end immediately. we just don't know which.

(a lot of words have been spent on this in rules questions so I do have a general rubric - if it relies on the relative position(s) of the characters, it ends. if killing one character would stop it, it ends. if it relies only on save target and neither of those other things, it doesn't end.)

[brisk flax]

I can see that argument, and if you think it'd be more consistent to work it that way I could be swayed around to it

[bold crystal]

it is what I think is generally most consistent. intangible has a lot of weird edge case interactions but this covers the most obvious cases, ime

[brisk flax]

Yeah that's fair

[bold crystal]

(and to overexplain a little, specifically allowing saves is because a lot of things that would otherwise not be 'interactions' (such as mines, some drones and deployables, accelerate, excommunicate, etc) rely on save target to see if they do anything.
this is very much an 'arguable point', but I think it's generally smoother to still allow saves to be made/not count them as 'an interaction' for basically the same reason as, like, mines still being able to trigger/check save target while the deployer is dead.)

[meager kestrel]

Is it cool if I take individual abilities from Rebake stuff (Like the support's mule Harness or the discreet Grunt boilerplate) to put in my own published content?

Like if I put my own discreet Grunts in and they have necessary modifications or something

[brisk flax]

I don't mind, I assume you'll be doing it the way modules generally do where it's listed as an optional but not the entire text?

Like Support (Desant Hardpoints*) or something

That's fine

[meager kestrel]

I'm already doing the module thing for any stuff using Rebake since I'd asked already and you'd given the OK. But I was just curious if a system or two was OK to use a full stat block for the core versions since I'm including OpFors of both core and rebake.

Totally fine if not, I just wanted to check

And for the purposes I'd be using custom discreet grunts for I definitely wouldn't need to use any specifics upon closer inspection.

[brisk flax]

Yeah that's fine, you're giving attribution somewhere (doesn't need to be in the same page, it can be in the credits) so that works for me

[meager kestrel]

Awesome, thanks

[shrewd lava]

That's a neat way to cover most cases I think. I'll be taking that.

And for Imprison, I guess I'll just be slotting 2 Spites minimum from now on :D

[indigo oasis]

How would 2 spites address intangible?

[rose hamlet]

Better coverage, I assume

Mitigation over negation

[shrewd lava]

By making it a difficult decision for a Calendula player on which ally to save with his Core Power.

With 6 players I should've done so from the start, tbh. Even without considering Intangible interaction.

[restive fable]

not just calendulas really -- I can't run solo Spites very effectively in my previous or current party because there's a guy with PEBCAC each time

pebcac trades favorably action to action vs Imprison (barring if you roll a 1, but I rolled three consecutive sixes on PEBCAC because it was my wife playing my PC’s brother using it on me, so I wildly overestimate the chances)

[shrewd lava]

Good ol' turn it off and on again 👍
Actually, shutdown+powerup is also a solution in case player is REALLY stuck in imprisonment, and no-one can help. Add Overcharcge (or other quick action cheat) to shutdown and you don't even suffer being stunned for a round, just waste a turn.
Most costly, but always available way out, that is often forgotten.

[brisk flax]

I think this ties in to something I was talking about earlier, and which I'll be working on some as I continue to chip away at the opfor files, which is that I think the spite works extremely well as a force multiplier rather than a sole controller

I don't even think it needs to be two spites, a spite and a witch are an extremely strong pairing

[shrewd lava]

Assuming 3-4 players, which is default for Lancer as far as I understand it, I do agree.
But after adding N-th player I feel like you just have to slot a second [Persistent unavoidable problem unit]™

[brisk flax]

That might be so, tbh I kind of consider 6+ players to be in the realm of voiding the warranty

not that it's, like, an inherently flawed practice, but a lot of the game's considerations go out the window below 3 players or above 5

[shrewd lava]

I didn't want to leave anyone behind, and now I have to pay the price 🥲

[carmine idol]

Been there once, I feel you. Never again mind, the extra players burned me out lol

[buoyant mortar]

im sure this has been addressed but couldn't find anything with a quick search, I notice the breacher's shotguns say the attacks can never be affecting by accuracy; this means follower count only can bring it to neutral?

[rose hamlet]

Sounds correct to me

[twin reef]

Yeah, it means if you have an enemy with Lock On, Prone, and Follower Count, it still doesn't mean you get to roll with accuracy.

It's the opposite of Shatterhead.

[brisk flax]

As others have mentioned, this is correct

The reason for this is that at a certain point, it becomes easier than you would expect to flip the shotguns around into positive accuracy, at which point what you have (in the CRB) is a very potent multiattacker hitting with accurate attacks, which is not really what I think the Breacher should be

part of this is you have various sources of accuracy and can do dumb things like "Priest Investiture which gives scaling Accuracy by Tier" which also no longer exist, but I'm more interested in the Breacher's mechanics being based around volumes of inaccurate fire rather than encouraging the GM to stack accuracy until you have positive overflow

which is why you have various things like Breach and Clear, the changes to Painmaker making it easier to stack attacks into a single go, the Leadwall veteran trait, etc

and yes, it's basically the same wording (and effect) as the Shatterhead Colony Missiles, just in reverse

[buoyant mortar]

Awesome, thanks guys, glad I was reading that right

[carmine idol]

Heya @brisk flax, some early stage v3 stuff:

Would you like the terse field to mimic the CRB ones, or would you like to write your own for the field? Ace example from CRB LCP below:

      "flavor": "The first person to embody [so on so forth]",
      "tactics": "Aces are very fast and [so on so forth]",
      "terse": "Fast and evasive striker that can deal consistent damage."
}```

[brisk flax]

If I'm understanding the "terse" field correctly (a brief summary of the NPC) then the Rebake pdf itself has those on page 11

you can use those, but let me know if some are unsuitable (too long etc)

[carmine idol]

will do o7

[bold crystal]

note those don't exist for the wallflower rebakes

[brisk flax]

rip me

[brisk flax]

@carmine idol for Wallflower NPCs, you can use the following terse descriptors:

Lurker: Slippery strikers that use shroud zones to teleport around the map and threaten enemies.
Spite: Controller/defender hybrids that infect characters with a persistent command virus.
Strider: Multirole artillery/strikers that swap between different configurations on the fly.```

[inner scarab]

Is there a ballpark for when/if the lcps will be updated to v3?

[rose hamlet]

Probably just “when they’re ready”

Thankfully the v2 version should still work

[fathom quiver]

If this works, there is a way to get the Rebake NPC Structure/Overheating tables into Comp/Con

[carmine idol]

Ooh that'll be worth investigating for the v3 release

[carmine idol]

and yeah valk's right, "when they're ready" as it's a lot of features to go back over 😅

[inner scarab]

That's fair lol. Just wondered if there was a ballpark out yet, but no worries

[rose hamlet]

Wanted to report a mismatch for the Bastion [K] between the LCP and PDF:

• Bastion [K] in PDF has a flat 8/8/8 Heat Cap
• Bastion [K] in LCP has a scaling 8/10/12 Heat Cap (this matches the Core Rulebook's Bastion's Heat Cap)

Which is the intended heat cap for Bastion [K]?

[young laurel]

I think it may be the flat 8 to sell its weakness but don't quote me on that.

[rose hamlet]

I mean, it's a Defender, and Heat Cap is a second health bar, this is why I ask

[young laurel]

True enough

[carmine idol]

It's probably the pdf one and it's an error on my part ~u~

Also @brisk flax, would you like slight rewordings to incorporate usage of the new {speed} tag for example? So:

• "The Ace can fly {speed} in any direction"
• "The Ace can fly spaces equal to their Speed in any direction"

(in v3)

[young laurel]

Maybe I should raise my own Bastion's heatcap.

[young laurel]

sheeeet, it can reference stats from the actual NPC now?

[carmine idol]

seems like it right? ✨technology✨

[young laurel]

God, that means I'll have to root through my entire lcp to update it for V3.

Payne.

[carmine idol]

yuuuuup

we've got... however many features there are across the entire base npc roster to go through lol

[tribal mason]

Ooh, that's cool!

[young laurel]

Can't be worse than mine.
:]

I say as my LCP has near 700 NPC features.

[carmine idol]

sweet mother above, all the best NPK 👁️👄👁️🙏

I think I'm ignorant to your work and efforts - what's your lcp with a bajillion?

[tribal mason]

Oh boy, good luck with that!

[young laurel]

If you know pokemon romhacks like Emerald Kaizo.

Then think that but for Lancer NPCs.

I'm basically doing a full enhancement, overhaul, rework, and the like for everything core rule book and first party.

Already the most dramatic changes have come to several NPC Classes and Templates.

They lean a helluva lot more to their respective niches.

Some data is pretty much similar to stuff other people have done to them. (Kai included) with my own tweaks.

Out of curiosity, how many does the Rebaked LCP have?

NPC Features I mean.

[carmine idol]

A measily 400 xD

holy moly this is a lotta stuff, ty for letting me know about it 👀

[young laurel]

Despite the fact I am still nowhere near done.

I like my stuff.

It is hell testing it due to how much I want to cover.

But it is my stuff nonetheless.

[rose hamlet]

I’m low key dreading adding all the bits and bobs to my NPCs for v3, I’ll be real, but if it means better automation down the line I’ll probably strap in for it

[carmine idol]

Yeah very much opting for the slow and steady approach - tis a lot, but people will be fine without it for a decent time. I like to imagine that a lot of this will key in nicely with Lancer V13 when that comes around too maybe? 👀

[rose hamlet]

I doubt v13 lancer will support all the bits and bobs tbh

Not right out of the gate at least

[carmine idol]

Some day then 😌🙏 Maybe v14, or a module or another. Tbf im not really sure what else there is to integrate, the existing import does anything i'd want it to do anyway

[rose hamlet]

The desirable integration would be tracking and adding buttons for stuff like

• inflicting saves
• inflicting damage
• embedded attacks (like explosive knives)
• passive abilities (like natural resistances and immunities)

[young laurel]

Ahem

[rose hamlet]

Like if Foundry auto-included energy resist on my scourers I’d be a god

[young laurel]

I'd like to point you to a buddy

[carmine idol]

Does lasossis' stuff do that by any chance? 👀

[young laurel]

I believe so, just that you'll have to figure out the coding side. But he has constructed the framework.

By that I mean macros.

Like how Lancer Weapon FX allows you to custom make your animation macros and drag drop abilities connected to it.

It is more or less similar in that regard.

Just that LaSossis right now is focusing on the framework of the module to be able to handle what he wants it to do. (Which is a lot of automation that makes GMing easier)

[brisk flax]

Two things:
1). The PDF always takes precedence over the lcp in matters of "which is correct," so the Bastion heat cap in the book is correct
2). If you want to make adjustments for better v3 functionality that's fine with me, just please don't burn yourself out over it

[indigo oasis]

Isn’t inflicting damage already in there?

[brisk flax]

That said, let me get home from work and double check my notes, I don't think the PDF should be wrong here but I'll confirm when I'm actually at my desk

[minor tundra]

It's not auto, so you might already know this and are intentionally excluding them, but it does have Resist X conditions that do get factored in whenever you use the apply damage button on attacks

[rose hamlet]

I’m aware of those, it’s a matter of automatically applying those without having to spend time setting it up

[minor tundra]

Real, yeah 🙂‍↕️

[young laurel]

Can't you just auto add the resistance to energy status on the NPC sheet?

I do that to mine and it just auto applies the status whenever I drag from the actor tab to the field.

[rose hamlet]

1. I haven’t tried this but I’ll try it out
2. Removing even this step is good
3. Resistance was an example of many other potential benefits

[restive fable]

what's the trick to auto adding statuses?

[young laurel]

• open the actor tab and create an NPC sheet
• open the compendium tab and look for statuses & conditions
• keep both open and look for the NPC sheet's status tab
• drag the resistance from the statuses & conditions to the NPC sheet
• profit

[young laurel]

I would show you how myself, but I am at work currently

[restive fable]

ah thanks, that might be enough to figure it out myself! much appreciated

[rose hamlet]

Works for stuff in the compendium, but if the status isn't in the compendium it's harder it seems (and it looks like my compendium lacks the Resistances and Cover statuses)

[young laurel]

That doesn't seem right? I have those on my end last I checked.

They should have come with the base core lancer lcp

If not then they might be from Lancer QoL

But if they ain't there too then I will check when I get home.

[rose hamlet]

I know they're built into the system, but I don't know where else they might live

anyway that's #lancer-vtt talk

[brisk flax]

@carmine idol @rose hamlet confirming that yes, the Bastion's heat cap should be 8/8/8, as part of the general standardization/bounding of things

I generally try to keep heat caps fairly consistent across tiers unlike HP or defenses, UNLESS the NPC has a particular reason why it might want more heat cap (like the Pyro for example)

[steel wigeon]

I might be blind, but i'm only just noticing rebaked bastion doesn't have pause engine. Tho stack up is beautiful.

[brisk flax]

It doesn't have it, no

Pause Engine is something that I have mixed feelings about, trending towards the negative, in the sense that it's a big block of Nothing Happens that you can't really interact with

Even for being the only real actively used system the bastion has rather than a passive one, its effect is still ultimately pretty "passive" in execution, it's just "what if friendly intervention was even more potent for a round"

[steel wigeon]

Hmm, the times I used base Bastion with Pause Engine, the most memorable one was me deploying it as an objective sitter from the very start of the sitrep.

Since the pcs didn't bother to touch it or even scan it, believing they can kill the scout it was protecting + it rapidly in the last round of combat, I just popped pause engine.

It kinda felt like me as a method of asking the pcs on whether they want to gamble on an anchor point in the battlefield suddenly becoming unbreakable at the worst possible timing.

Or whether they wanted to spend firepower and actions to remove that roadblock (though not as literal as a barricade).

New Bastion should be interesting to fiddle with using stack up (phalanx shield wall yay)

[brisk flax]

yeah idk the thing is, to me, "when we decided to try and engage with this guy, it turned on a big No Sell screen that meant we couldn't" sounds like an undesirable outcome

the thing about something like Deathcounter is that it might no-sell a thing, but it does so in a way that's very easy to break and keep going, the big hangup people have with it is simply that it lacks any sort of telegraphing and GMs aren't always conscientious about explaining it once it's triggered

[steel wigeon]

Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but isn't it a good thing that npcs are able to lead to a 'bad or bad' list of choices if handled improperly, since handling them improperly (whether by chance or by conscious decision) is likely playing into the NPCs strengths. An example being choosing not to engage a Seeder, resulting in it turning a control zone you need to enter into a minefield?

[meager kestrel]

The neat thing about the rebakes is that you can just put Pause Engine back in there if you need it. I still use the occasional core system or grunt despite almost exclusively running on rebake at this point

[steel wigeon]

Though in hindsight pause engine is a big fat no, so I can see what you're saying. But it's still a punishment for the pc's choice not to respect what it can potentially do per se.

[meager kestrel]

I think pause engine would be more interesting if it was more potent but there was a silver bullet PCs could use. Being targetable by heat and dropping on overheat for example

[brisk flax]

I don't think the outcome of not engaging with an NPC at the correct time being "they turn on Immunity to Everything, don't you feel like a dummy?" is a good one

there are a lot of choices and consequences in the NPC roster, the one being described is one that, if you put it to me, I would say sucks actually

the thing about "Bad or Bad Choices" is that if you don't actually present it as a choice, then it isn't actually a choice except in retrospect, and then from that point forward it's just a Scan tax

the Hive's "let me move you or be immobilized" is a choice, the Assassin's Transfix being "you have to try and peel me off of your friend or they stay Stunned" is a choice, hiding a pocket counterspell and going "well it's your fault for not baiting it out of me earlier" isn't the same thing. Or the Seeder, for example, you can see the Seeder laying mines so you're pretty quickly able to follow what happens if they're left alive to its logical conclusion

[steel wigeon]

Ah, so it's lack of leadup/foreshadowing to the big moment, as well as lack of ability to do anything about it once the big moment happens?

[meager kestrel]

Basically. Same reasons nobody likes blue decks in MTG

rather, playing against blue decks

[brisk flax]

Essentially. I don't think NPCs can't ever hold some stuff in reserve, you have Barrel Roll, Hunker Down, there's other stuff that's like "oh I didn't know they could do that," but a lot of that stuff tends to be one-off effects, there are other tradeoffs, etc, or if there's something bigger then having some sort of indicator can be used, like the various orbital strike type abilities, the rebake Deathcounter, etc. I don't really think that "you learn in the 11th hour that the NPC had an ability you could only have learned they had if you had engaged with them sooner" counts as a choice in the "forced to make a choice" sense, that sort of dynamic requires information to make choices about, otherwise it's just blindsiding

the other part of it is that yeah, once it's active Pause Engine is just blanket immunity to everything, there's no "well we can't damage them but we can use forced movement or grappling," you just shrug and wait for the duration to expire

the third, gripping hand is that I just don't think Pause Engine is very interesting

[marsh nest]

Do you think Pause Engine would be better (not necessarily good, but at least better) if it came with a 1 round very obvious charge up phase which instructed the GM to let the players know about an energy build up and so on, leading them to ask “it’s a Bastion, what could it be doing that’s so special?” And have a full round to engage with it if they wanted?

[smoky bluff]

I think that is an interesting exchange instead of being stunned for a turn after the pause engine goes out

its kind of like the medic tf2 when he has ubercharge, his medicgun emits a very clear electrical glow that informs you that he has the 'ability that makes you immune'

[marsh nest]

(It would also be a lot harder to use on the GM side, have to predict when you’ll need it a round in advance, but that might well be fine as this conversation indicates)

[young laurel]

It would be difficult to keep track of GM side if they aren't experienced with their lads

As that kind of ability would require an extra overhead unless you got something automating it.

[brisk flax]

I think, reductively, pause engine would be better if it was more interesting

at the risk of self-aggrandizement, I think the Kutuzov's core active is one idea of what I mean by this; it's an ability that prevents two characters from interacting with each other, which has a degree of no-sell to it (this one guy with the Cyclone Pulse Rifle can't shoot at my friend, can't even look at them) while still being interactive (so it's up to someone else to deal with them for the duration)

as it stands it's just not an ability I'm particularly taken with. Telegraphing it might make it better idk, but it feels like telegraphing would be in a weird place because unlike "this guy shines a Starcraft Ghost targeting laser on the ground" it isn't necessarily clear what "this guy is charging something called a Pause Engine" does or what the consequences will be for not immediately dealing with it

[rose hamlet]

Yeah, the best features in games are ones that foster interactivity and choice, and Pause Engine ain’t really that

“Oh I attack something else” isn’t interactive, at the end of the day, especially if Pause is popped last second to contest a vanilla objective with little counterplay

[brisk flax]

Arguably it would be better if it only granted Immunity to damage, though you'd have to rework its adjacency clause because then it would simply be "okay I use puppet systems and break it, the end"

[rose hamlet]

Yeah no one could give it damage immunity but not heat/hack/grapple immunity so the solution becomes “do something to detain them instead of kill them”

[young laurel]

I personally would try and make it Immune to Melee and Ranged Attacks, but Actions, Tech Attacks, and Tech Actions are free game.

[meager kestrel]

Is remote projecttor on Aegis supposed to allow you to have more than one field out since it has recharge? Or is it meant to stop you from placing the usual field?

[brisk flax]

Remote Projector doesn't have recharge

This one, right?

[meager kestrel]

The LCP does at least

[brisk flax]

sounds like an error then

[carmine idol]

Another to the list - currently it's:

• Bastion HC should be 8/8/8.
• Remote Projector should not be Recharge.

Will put out a v2 with the fixes in first, the v3-ification will take a while

[rose hamlet]

Yeah that makes good sense, it’s what I’m doing with my stuff too lol. Separate branch for v3 while I continue to dev v2

[young laurel]

Take your time, for the most part the v2 LCPs still mostly work. I am procrastinating and not doing my v3 right now. :]

Also is there a place where we can see the structure of a v3 LCP?

[rose hamlet]

https://github.com/massif-press/lancer-data/wiki/npc-classes-and-templates

Alternatively: Crack open your v3 Core NPC LCP and use a code editor to check the JSON files

The core NPC LCPs use the new “collection” style but “Library” style is still valid (esp for backwards compatibility)

[carmine idol]

Yeah I'm currently using the V3 CRB NPC LCP to figure out all the new jazz going on. also acronym soup lol

[rose hamlet]

Call it the CNL for short (CRB NPC LCP)

Nested acronyms have never caused problems before

[young laurel]

Not a bad acronym at least

CNL (Colonel - which can be pronounced as Kernel which is a happy accident)

:]

[trail pivot]

I'm not even sure how one makes an lcp v3

[brisk flax]

Yeah same, I don't think I'm going to be updating the Suldan lcp anytime soon

[rose hamlet]

Honestly bare minimum it’s just adding a flag that says “v3 compatible” since v2 LCPs are largely still compatible with v3

Beyond that a dev can follow the updated specs to add effect details for comp con active mode automation

Basic example would be adding a “mod” field for Cluster Munitions that says it modifies Bombard Cannon; in compcon, the effect would be appended to the Bombard Cannon and the extra trait would be hidden (so it removes extraneous features from a sheet and consolidates it in a single place of reference)

All that said: ideally, the LCP maker would support those specs and make it easier to add stuff without a code editor

[trail pivot]

ahh, yeah I Haven't used the lcp maker in I think years

[smoky bluff]

ugh, Yeah I should really get back to working on the lcp v3

[next hedge]

is the lcp updated to compcon v3 or nah

im assuming not since i cant read

[vale tide]

Honestly, as much I admire the work beef and his team put into v3, I kinda dread big update like these for fan-facing project because lots of creator don't have the time or the willingness to keep their work up-to-date and this becomes a parameter to take into account when you decide which hb to use.

(this isn't directed toward you Kai btw, I just had this on my mind for a while now)

[brisk flax]

my understanding is that 400 different element updates are required for this, and given that v3 is about 4 days old by this point, things will be done when they're done and an announcement will be made

[brisk flax]

also my understanding is that v3 updating isn't required to use an lcp via comp/con, it's there mainly for better active mode integration but not a strict break in compatibility

[vale tide]

and that's great. Means that at least for Lancer, older content won't be shut away because it is deprecated

[chilly yarrow]

Thank you for including notes about the thought process behind certain decisions. I love having little insights into why things are the way they are

[viral wadi]

Yeah, that's my understanding, too. Is that the v3 stuff is just to have it work with the v3 active mode. (I'm not 100% sure on if not having it stops any v3 Active Mode integration, or just makes things clunkier.) It's honestly really overwhelming, haha, and doesn't feel like the documentation is quite as straightforward about it as it was for v2.

[hybrid lion]

To be clear, you mean that player side LCP stuff still works right? Because I have not gotten NPCs to work and I thought I saw someone say that those do need to be updated for V3

I was just using the v2 link and json files to still access Rebake, did I not need to be doing all that?

[brisk flax]

Questions about the wheres and whyfores of the lcp side of things really need to be addressed to either stebb or Eleonor

[minor tundra]

there's a bug where sometimes you need to reupload LCPs for NPC data. It's mentioned in the compcon news notifs

[next hedge]

Ok

[hybrid lion]

Ah ok ok

[marsh nest]

For me the v2 NPCs (including Rebake) do work, but they had to be manually reloaded. The massif main NPC one updated itself once I logged in and such.

I have not tried active mode but everything rebake seems to be working in terms of the compendium lookups

Which is nice because it actually searches the NPC features list now, instead of requiring a separate search!

[hybrid lion]

What does active mode actually do with NPCs?

[carmine idol]

So in npcs updated to v3, it better integrates them with conditions, actions and some other bits and bobs. Otherwise with v2 npcs, it just lists those things in a less seamless way I think

[next hedge]

No worries mate. Gotta manually put em in forge anyways. Was curious since i didnt know when v3 happened and again i just didnt read the above messages

[patent spindle]

Just clarifying if this is a com/conism - is Glitch Scanners a tech attack? i.e. does it need to be used on a PC target?

[indigo oasis]

It’s the same as it is in CRB

So no

[patent spindle]

Fantastic, very good. Comp/Con has it listed with a +0 / +0 so had to check

[brisk flax]

@carmine idol do you know if this is an error or just a comp/con particularity with deterministic tech actions?

[patent spindle]

further example, as this seems to be news to Kai at least haha

[drowsy bison]

i think comp/con has had an issue with deterministic tech actions getting unnecessary +0/+0s before in v2 as well, because I recall this happening with Spites and Goliaths with stuff like Imprison and Crush Targetting in the past

[young laurel]

Comp Con has always had an aodd issue when it came to reading tech actions, always seems to believe that it is a tech attack.

reading that some of them have a modifier and others do not.

[shrewd lava]

How 'Feign Death' general veteran tallent is actually supposed to be played?
I get how I can surprise players with it if they didn't scan that veteran, but it also says that players can reveal that he is not actually dead with system check... but why they would ask for that system check if they don't know that he is feigning? And if I tell them that they can check, it will only work for the first time they encounter that trait.

And what action is this check supposed to be? Free\quick\full? Automatically when adjacent?

[shrewd lava]

Worked the first time, since they were not adjacent (or anywhere close) and hadn't encountered it before.

[brisk flax]

Strictly speaking, if a skill check is called for without any other specifics pertaining to its action cost, it defaults to a Full Action

I'm also not really sure that you, as the GM, are forced to prompt them to make a check to see if someone is feigning death or not

if they ASK you "is there a way we can figure out if someone is feigning death" then you can go for it, otherwise they can scan people or shoot at wrecks or something

[carmine idol]

I think it's just a C/C error - the data looks fine near as I can tell

[young laurel]

Squints

I think I know what it is. I've tinkered with my LCP similarly.

The Tech Type, I've seen that reference mostly in tech attacks.

If I remember correctly (I'll double check my LCP when I get home)
"tech_type": "Quick" This more so references what kind of tech attack it is.

[young laurel]

Ah nevermind, it is something else because mine may not have that problem it seems.

[young laurel]

Weird, comparing a tech action in my lcp to that doesn't really show any difference.

[carmine idol]

Yeah did the same comp across V2 CRB and couldn't find a differentiator either

[young laurel]

Seems like a local C/C problem too, since mine doesn't show the +0 stuff on Tech Actions

[carmine idol]

Maybe needs a reimport? Seems that the global fix for all V2 issues right now is "please remove and reimport it thnx"

[young laurel]

"Please remove and reinsert DVD disc" ahh solution

Never you mind when it actually works

[meager kestrel]

Having briefly worked in IT, turning it off then on again accounts for like half of all issues

[restive shell]

First just wanted to say I really love the rebake NPCs.

I wanted to mention that IDK if this was the design intention, but many of the systems not being tech actions has had jammed feel a bit lackluster since they just activate the system they were probably already going to use. But I also have only played rebake NPCs mostly so IDK if this is the same in base lancer?

[fathom quiver]

Certain NPCs are affected less by Jammed, generally

[bold crystal]

yeah that's generally the same as core lancer

[restive shell]

Gotcha. The thing that brought this up was System Reboot on the support not being a tech action.

specifically.

[bold crystal]

yup, no change

[brisk flax]

If anything, more stuff in the rebake has been turned into tech actions than the CRB

The Mirage's Glitch Scanners is now a tech system rather than just a general one, the Goliath's Crush Targeting was always tech but improperly color coded, but now it has substantially more tech focus in its optionals, etc

[restive shell]

Gotcha, noted. That one had felt particularly weird so I wanted to mention it, but I guess base lancer does it too.

Besides that one thing Remote Reboot made me want to post on, NPC Rebake has really been cool and a lot of minor aspects of lancer NPCs that felt iffy are tweaked in really fun ways.

[bold crystal]

also rebound scan. I'm not sure if there's any more - there are definitely a couple more 'tech optionals' than there were though

[brisk flax]

In general, Jammed is not a condition I would consider very lackluster because of uneven distribution of tech actions

Jammed shuts down:
1). all attacks other tham ram, grapple, and improvised attack
2). all tech actions (taking and benefitting from)
3). all reactions

[bold crystal]

the support is maybe the one NPC that's near-totally unaffected

[brisk flax]

that there are some NPCs that can skirt by kind of unphased by that is sort of a side note, most of the roster is in some way going to get fucked hard by at least one of those clauses

outside of Stunned, I would say Jammed is some of the hardest CC in lancer

like Immobilized might suck for the melee strikers of the world, but you can still shoot guns, you can do tech stuff, it's much more situational in terms of what it does and doesn't shut down

Jammed? 90% of the time, being Jammed is going to result in a largely dead turn

People sometimes bring up that the rebake has lots more sources of Shredded, but I don't think Shredded is nearly as punitive as other conditions (also most of that stuff is located in optionals anyway, so if you bring 15 sources of Shredded to the fight, it's kind of your own fault for making that sandwich)

[rose hamlet]

Shredded is just Vulnerability, yeah, doesn't directly affect the target's action economy

[brisk flax]

I'm also of the opinion that the CRB doesn't actually give the NPC roster a ton of great Shredded options in general

[rose hamlet]

Yeah, to the point i've tried to fill the gaps... and such I've got a rep for having lots of AP effects lol

[brisk flax]

I have had this sort of commentary on the rebake from multiple sources and it's always kind of weird because nobody ever actually unpacks it

The rebake has added two new sources of AP that I counted on a preliminary glance (Berserker Harpoon Cannon, Barricade Spike Barrier), removed one (Assault High-Impact Rounds), and put a condition on another (Rainmaker Huntsman)

It then added seven new things which can proc Shredded, all of which are optional

I have to assume this is all part and parcel of the "it devalues armor" thing people keep bringing up in regards to me ditching tier-scaling multiattacks

[rose hamlet]

having seen what Armor can do, I'm not convinced it needs its lofty perch preserved

[trail pivot]

im here and there on applications of AP, as it were, I just think that one way to address "high armor" is to just like, make something hit really fucking hard tbh.

[indigo oasis]

Yeah tier scaling Multiattackers never really cared much about armor in the first place due to all the other stuff they had tbh (Operator had accuracy + mobility + range for days so they could always target someone else, Ronin and Specter had absurd damage to punch past it, Barricade’s damage was more secondary than anything, only Goliath really got hit by it and that’s a bad thing for its design imo)

[trail pivot]

3 armor is 3 armor but taknig 10 damage at tier 1 is going to hurt even if it does get reduced by armor

[brisk flax]

okay I guess the operator critting on burn is technically AP as well, maybe I should go count how many new sources of burn I added, the Hive has a bunch but also you only get one razor swarm period now so how do you tabulate that do you think

like I can bust out command override and harrier maniple but does that count as new sources of burn or a replacement for theoretical infinite razor swarms do you think

[trail pivot]

i think the method of application also applies as well, (see, on save or on unavoidable or highly accurate attacks, versus on, say, the demolition hammer or a small passive field effect

[brisk flax]

yeah like the pyro can set the ground on fire which does burn, probably don't walk in the fire I guess

[indigo oasis]

(Oh and Cataphract whose multiattack… existed I guess, and that involves way too much dice rolling due to attacks gaining more accuracy with tier rather than to hit numbers)

[brisk flax]

Don't forget CRB hives

[indigo oasis]

They had multiattack? Huh

[trail pivot]

a multiattacker of all time

[brisk flax]

CRB hunter-killer nexus is actually insane

[trail pivot]

yeah they did hives inexplicably did striker damage

[brisk flax]

okay maybe not INSANE insane, but it's part of why I think the hive is a little too striker-juiced

[indigo oasis]

CRB Hives- they can do it all

[trail pivot]

and since people didn't "think" of them as strikers they never really thought about "yeah accurate smart seeking ranged Burn weapon" that was dealing almost as much as the assault did in raw damage by tier 3

but it was faster

[brisk flax]

between that, seeker cloud, and electro-nanite cloud, imo it's too easy to make a hive into a weirdly chunky damage dealer

honestly I'm kind of surprised more people haven't complained that I shaved its speed down

[trail pivot]

i noticed but im not complaining tbh

[brisk flax]

the hive is the NPC that I expected to get the most blowback about with the changes because for a long stretch of lancer, the hive's incongruous omni-capability has been a big part of its identity, it has high speed, high HP, control, you can spec into high damage, etc

usually when something that's a little too good at this or that gets reined in, you see people gripe about it

[trail pivot]

i think its their lack of being "memorable" and the general kind of tech/drone niche they have that just makes them less memetically sticky, compared to say, the operators and bombards of the world, it doesn't really activate the same kind of Big Numbers impulese if its anything to do outside of its multi attacking nexus status, which already got covered by the big multiattack sweep

[indigo oasis]

If I were to guess the “Omni capability” was something that both wasn’t that ubiquitous (tables had different definitions of why Hives were dangerous but it was usually one definition) and the Rebake, frankly, didn’t pare any of that down too significantly- especially thanks to making its optionals more flavorful and significant

[restive fable]

Some people are paranoid and kinda assume the GM is always picking the Optionals that will ruin them the most, maybe. They see the NPC having the optional and go "this will always be used because It'll mess me up"

[smoky bluff]

It kind of reminds me of werewolves vs silver. Off course people trying to hurt a werewolf would use silver. Anything else is probably not going to deal anything significant damage.

But not everybody is walking around with silver bullets to use

[meager kestrel]

I rarely end up running recurring characters of factions that would be familiar with the PCs and I need to do that more

[autumn ocean]

Question for people here who ran ultras in a class outside of strikers and artillery

I kinda want to try to run an ultra support, defender or countroler but i'm scared it would feel like a drag for players or just that it doesn't feel like a boss

I assume tge best way to figure out would be to try to run one and see, but i'm curious if any of you tried to and what feedback you got from it

[smoky bluff]

Ultra Supports that are designed around support is an interesting enemy to fight against, I'd think. Support are relatively tough to take down and can repair other mechs on the field. The Rebake gives the Support more Supportive tools but I honestly feel like such tools are secondary. Since this is an ultra, I'd recommend more flashy Ultra weaponry such as the Hyperdense blade and maybe another Ultra tool like siege armor for survivability against artillery players and play the support where you can usually find it. In the thick of things. Although the support is relatively passive, where it wants to be is near its allies. And unfortunately. Most Lancer NPCs also want to be where the action is at. So throw the support next to it and support the NPCs. The last Ultra optional can be a Support Ultra tool like Aceso flock or orbital eye. Or you can give them supreme melee to be even more threatening when grappling, which is what most supports will be doing anyways.

I'd also think you'd absolutely want to have a right-hand man sort of npc. A npc that also draws the attention and puts in the pain for players, something like a berseker. or if you're doing homebrew. Kensei are perfect. Give them some veterancy and elite, sustain with self repair and you got yourself a pretty dynamic aggressive duo who wants to be in the players face constantly

Oh wait you're talking about the class design

For Supports, they lack aggression and usually have a very passive playstyle as base, Give them survivability tools and weapons to make them more active in the fight. Players are sure to notice

For Defenders, they often lack the means to get into the thick of the action, give them control tools, mobility systems, or something else to do before they close the distance. Taking them down is the challenge so giving them more survivability is not recommended

For controllers. Its similar to supports but you should be more careful with survivability. You want to strike that nice balace of "hard to kill" but not hard enough that its frustrating as they are already designed to limit player options

It is also important to consider the op for around the ultra

for support, since they boost the npcs performances around them, giving more defenders or strikers works fine

For Defenders, you'd probably want artillery to pressure players to come to the defender. In which case, the defender will do their thing

For Controllers, You want defenders and supports to keep it in the fight and save it from being focused down too early

[autumn ocean]

Yeeep supporter in general!

Priest Mirage, Support and Scout

[indigo oasis]

Look at this

[smoky bluff]

oh yeah that file too

[indigo oasis]

It has a prebuilt Ultra Defender, Ultra Support, and Ultra Controller encounter. If you’re unsure just use one of those

Okay well there’s no Ultra support encounter in there yes but uh. Eh.

[autumn ocean]

https://tenor.com/view/bae-baelz-hakos-baelz-ハコスベールズ-ホロライブ-gif-9696755741114530264

Yeee but by support I meant supporter, sorry!

[indigo oasis]

Make an Ultra Mirage with Silvershielding, Sidereal Alignment, and pair it with a Demolisher, Seeder, and Sniper. You will make a monster

[autumn ocean]

I already dropped one during last mission

But I'll keep that to the side for way later in the campaign

[indigo oasis]

Ultra Scout with Orbital Eye + a Rainmaker + Ace Buddy could be fun

Ontolotactical Array is also very fun as a support tool- have whatever Ultra got that get all the allied NPCs with low accuracy weapons. Breacher, Demolisher, Bombard, whatever

[steel wigeon]

Ultra Seeder is the ultimate test of target prioritisation and pathing

[ancient forge]

Oh right, the handler template; I did try it out in my most recent lancer session

[brisk flax]

Re: ultra supports, I think that a Pure Ultra Support with All Support Stuff runs a risk which is "what does this guy do on their own?"

"Put a gun on them" is sort of a meme answer sometimes because it can feel like you aren't really using the support as a support at that point, but I think it's valuable for an ultra to always be able to do something even if it's on its own, and also there's a threshold of diminishing returns with support stuff

A weapon or some other sort of aggressive capability is therefore, imo, a reasonable thing to consider

[indigo oasis]

Yeah an Ultra has so much budget into it that oftentimes it’s Allies… don’t have that budget. Which means if the players are efficient they can remove all those Allies very quickly and leave the Ultra defenseless

[brisk flax]

This is something I'm thinking about because one of the comps I'm making for the opfor files will be an Ultra Support where I talk about this

[indigo oasis]

There are probably a few contexts where you can make an pure support Ultra encounter such that it’s equally enticing to take out the Ultra or take out the Allies, but it’d take a lot of work and a lot of tanky units

[ancient forge]

I’d made a Handler Support. The shrike drone survived by using up one of the restock drones I had the support deploy, otherwise it would have been destroyed before it could even reach the players (my group is fond of long-range AoEs). Unfortunately I’d slightly misread how the drone’s movement worked so it had trouble closing the distance with the PCs despite the party striker diving 3/4 of the map round 1; I’d mistakenly thought it only moved as part of its programmed or manual actions. So it ended up underperforming. However, once it reach valid targets it seemed about as threatening as any of the melee striker grunts on the field, just sturdier. Could’ve taken an extra point of structure off the players had my luck been just a tad better on one attack roll

[indigo oasis]

Weirdly, this reminds me of Prototype Pattern Groups which has an Aura-Making NPC called the Zealot, and PPG gives it a custom Ultra trait where Allies in that Aura just. Can’t be destroyed. Which feels like the exact kind of ability that allows for an Ultra to go all in on Support because it heavily mitigates the ability for players to render the Ultra alone

[brisk flax]

So you think that it would have performed better with the proper movement?

[ancient forge]

Probably. I think it was about two or three rounds of it just trying to get close enough to do anything, where if I’d been moving it correctly I think it could have gotten its first attack in by second round at latest, and it would’ve also been harder to catch it with the iskander’s gravity cannon.

I could see the PC’s stort then seeing it as a bigger priority and trying to smash it with its plasma maul, but they also like to catch lines of things with their impact lance and there were good opportunities nearby

[rose hamlet]

I was reading this convo and thinking the same thing lol

[brisk flax]

sounds like a reasonable first outing then

[plain wyvern]

May I ask how does Feign Death interacts with Conscript's Survival Instinct? It'd be funny if one run for their life only to find the other was playing death the whole time

[brisk flax]

it doesn't because conscripts can't take templates

[rotund coral]

I ran an ultra support with Nova missiles a while back. It was in an Extraction sitrep and my players were annihilating the two reinforcements per round as soon as they showed up. The ultra support helped the NPCs finally get a foot in the door and have some staying power. It ended up drawing fire away from a sniper while its restock drone helped the sniper reload. It worked out pretty well in the end. It wasn't a big flashy setpiece boss but it did help make the combat feel meaningful.

[indigo oasis]

Now I wanna run an Ultra with Ontolotactical Array and Nova Missiles

[plain wyvern]

just 1 more, can a Barricade uses Remote Assembler if it takes Extrudite?

[bold crystal]

no reason it can't!

[plain wyvern]

i just realized the lcp wording is different from the pdf wording

[indigo oasis]

I think that’s for making automations + stuff easier

[rose hamlet]

Differences between PDF and LCP should probably be directed towards @carmine idol

[carmine idol]

Yeah this is done because there isn't really any other way of doing it lcp side

[bold crystal]

probably add a note or something saying this still counts as mobile printer if there isn't one

[rose hamlet]

Compcon V3 could actually make this easier with mods, which add tags or features to an existing feature? But yeah

[sour mist]

I've been thinking a fair bit about support ultras, as I want to use a boss-style priest in a mission.

I originally was going to have an Engineer with Ontolotactical Array and Aceso Flock and Nova Missiles, but for a variety of reasons I want to change the body to a Priest

Was going to accompany it with a bastion, sentinel, demolisher, berserker and two non-biological squads of subalterns

On an escort sitrep

[meager kestrel]

Who's your priest bondmate in that comp (assuming ideal conditions)? I'm assuming the Demolisher

But other than that it doesn't seem to have incredible investiture targets there, which I'd think would be a borderline nescesity with an Ultra Priest

[indigo oasis]

my liege, perhaps a Breacher?

[meager kestrel]

If i were personally designing a Priest Ultra fight I'd want every single other NPC type to be a great investiture target.

[indigo oasis]

Yeah why do you have 3 defenders?

[meager kestrel]

To be fair they're very offensive defenders

[indigo oasis]

Sentinel and Berserker are probably decent investiture targets too- simply via sheer volume of attacks

[meager kestrel]

Could probably lose the bastion in this particular combo though

[indigo oasis]

If you wanted more defenders, imo Kai Rebake Avenger paired with a Priest is hilarious

Investiture it, and if they kill the priest first the Avenger basically makes the accuracy bonus permanent, and if they try and kill the Avenger first- well good luck dealing with Vanguard armor + dispersal shield

And Splinter Rounds + Abjure is just a great way to either spread around attack punishment or make one guy have a really bad day

Otherwise an Archer could be particularly cruel, as would a Rainmaker or Bombard

(Cruel Positive, I mean)

[meager kestrel]

My vote would personally be swapping out the bastion for a bombard since priests really benefit from good artillery buddies (although I guess on escort they're less good)

[indigo oasis]

Idk could be a valid retreat option- if you give the Priest Supreme Mobility it can nyoom to wherever it's needed while boosting allies along with it

GReat support tool and good for just moving Investiture around

You could get really funky with an Ultra priest by having it take a turn to investiture someone, have them go next, and then use its next turn to end investiture to put it on another guy who then goes next, getting 2 turns of investiture attack accuracy out of 1 round

Other good Investiture targets would be barricades (guarantee those Graviton + Drag Down hits) and Seeder (guarantee those blast Grav Grenade attacks to make mine pushing more effective)

[sour mist]

An hour excellent point, but for Plot Reasons if the priest dies all the other NPCs shut down, so that's not going to work.

The Supreme Mobility is a very good idea.

Might ditch Ontolotactical Array then

[indigo oasis]

why?

It'd be really funny to accuracy stack with Investiture and Ontolotactical

[sour mist]

Well, I have to ditch one trait. It's the Array, the flock, or the Nova Missiles

I guess it could be the missiles

Replacing the Bastion with a Breacher and accuracy stacking it might work decently well.

Also, because the squads aren't biological, it can technically buff them as well

[indigo oasis]

Ditch Aceso Flock and take Empowered Investiture instead

wait

actually nevermind don't do that

Fractal Assault tho

[sour mist]

Okay, for 5 PCs:
Ultra priest (fractal assault, Ontolotactical Array, supreme Mobility, Nova Missiles)
Breacher
Sentinel
Berserker
Demolisher
2 x subaltern squads

Then peel off some amount of units for smaller PC groups

3 PCs, keep the ultra (maybe sans supreme Mobility), 1 squad, and two of the mechs.... Berserker and sentinel maybe.

[twin reef]

I'm thinking about a fight with an Ultra Sentinel. What would be the best way to have a team with an Ultra Defender?

[smoky bluff]

This is pretty stupid but how about 2 artillery npc

[twin reef]

Yeah, I was thinking one of them should be a Veteran Sniper, for story reasons. The other should be a Veteran Assassin.

[indigo oasis]

Sentinel's are defenders in that they lock down characters into zones. So what you do is bring in whatever controllers with forced movement you can find in order to bunch up the entire team together for the Ultra to strut up to and Overwatch into Oblivion

[twin reef]

I think it'd have Impaler as a Sentinel optional and Puppet Crasher as the Ultra Optional.

Impaler synergizes with the assassin, while Puppet Crasher synergizes with both its own Overwatch and Moving Target.

Wait, how does involuntary movement that doesn't ignore reactions work with Moving Target?

The sitrep will be Discourse if that helps. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XgknPO4mGJ9rReLOThZtCK5SWQkQFC5sgk2zTxnRjoQ/edit?tab=t.0

[indigo oasis]

It'd trigger I suppose?

[twin reef]

Would the target have the option to give up the involuntary movement?

[indigo oasis]

oh huh they wouldn't- I guess it wouldn't trigger then nevermind

oh wait actually Rebaked Archer fixes this

Or it was always like that- one of the two, point is Moving Target doesn't stipulate anything about allowing the target to give up the movement in order to end Suppress

[twin reef]

The option to give up the movement is in Moving Target.

[indigo oasis]

WEll it's not in the rebake- I'm reading the effect right now

I assume you're using rebaked NPCs

[restive fable]

Assassin can pair with Sniper ok, provided you are getting players to respect the Mark, but if not, can't remember if the Sentinel could provide any conditions the Assassins needed

[indigo oasis]

Impaler can

[restive fable]

in my experience I haven't been able to get a good heated blade attack ever without someone else setting up

Assassins make bad solo dancers

[brisk flax]

I'm pretty sure they mean sniper moving target

[brisk flax]

My interpretation of this interaction is that if you used puppet crasher to move someone and proc moving target in that fashion that the player being puppeted wouldn't have the option to "give up" the remaining movement

[twin reef]

But yeah, one of the features of this sitrep is that, in addition to normal reinforcements, two grunts come in every round carrying symbols.

[brisk flax]

probably the easiest self-setup is Leap into an attack, going for a prone target, but you can't count on it happening reliably every turn due to multiple factors (a save, a recharge)

[restive fable]

I try this every time and it fails every time

I try to run Assassins in tandem with supports now because it's either that or "give up and use them as Devil's Cough carriers"

I think the relatively low baseline save target just gets in my way here

I think I've gotten a single heated blade double damage hit off that didn't come from something deterministic like shroud charges

in almost two years...

and it was fully absorbed by Emergency Repair Module

[indigo oasis]

If you make ‘em size 1 they can ram

[rose hamlet]

Leap is good action compression for that reason yeah

[brisk flax]

This is why Assassin's Mark now gives Assassins save-infliction bonuses!

I also agree the assassin baseline has weirdly low save target for how important save stuff is for them

[twin reef]

There are a lot of player mechs with save stuff in their kits and ST 10.

[brisk flax]

sure and PC mechs and NPC mechs are very different in terms of what I expect out of them

[restive fable]

Handy to have, I'll try to remember that but I lose my one structure assassins fast so I feel pressured to try to squeeze in a double damage heated blade on the one turn I have (I will fail. Shoulda just waited)

[brisk flax]

if you make an NPC mech that's built around a special mechanic of "debuff these guys to do extra damage" and all their self-sources of that are tied to forcing saves and they have the lowest save target in the game, I'm going to identify than as more of a flaw than the category of mechs that exist as a big pool of lego bricks for people to mash together

there are also NPC mechs who have a save or two in their kits and don't have robust save targets, I don't think it's inherently a 1-1 requirement, but I do think that the assassin to me is a particularly noteworthy example of this being an incongruity with what it wants to do