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

[brisk flax]

like I don't think it's a flaw that the Assault has base ST of 10 and Micro-Missile Barrage because Micro-Missile Barrage is simply a nice extra and not central to what the Assault's whole deal

whereas "yeah Leap/Heated Blade is nice if it works" sucks a lot more, especially given Leap is on a recharge

[restive fable]

assassins being small also means they're extra dependent

[brisk flax]

yeah you CAN make'em size 1 but as noted in the Breacher rebake, that still leaves them unable to ram a lot of PC side mechs

same with grappling, which can proc Immobilized, but only if the target isn't bigger than you (or if they're the same size and you currently control the grapple)

[young laurel]

This can be a lesson and reason to the players on target prioritization or damage mitigation as well. As these kinds of forced effects usually take some effort from the players to either get rid of or work around them.

For instance, I had a player make the big brain play of grappling his ally when he was hit by an effect that would let me control their standard movement on their next turn.

But because they are grappled. I couldn't take advantage of that effect and they are not thrown into the grinder. It was a sad day for me.

[indigo oasis]

Ya know speaking of this, I’m realizing- unless a (Rebake) Assassin has Limitless or something, it would NEVER want to Leap and Mark on the same turn, but it can’t Leap before it Marks if it wants to knock a target prone. Which is a tad awkward. It can engage its Marked Target on the turn it marks it and attack them, but then it lacks the mobility to disengage and is likely a sitting duck, and if it’s already next to their target they miss out on the mobility benefits of leap and at that point why not ram if you’re big enough, which makes you wonder why you marked your target in the first place (the other benefits exist tho but that’s your Assassin’s Mark, that is going to last until you die). And if you try and mark some and then engage a different character in the meanwhile now you’re engaging with a character whom you don’t have blanket resistance to.

A lot has to go right in order for an Assassin to do its normal game plan. But it’s always been an awkward NPC that requires a lot of team support to function so I guess nothing’s new.

And to be fair, after that initial turn of setup if an Assassin can get going it can deal some serious damage

But an Assassin’s target needs to be a character with serious resistances or armor or something if they’re going to outpace, say, a Specter. The advantage Assassin has over specter is that it can choose a character who’s build they wanna ignore whereas a specter has to go by positioning + build

… oh and it’s attacks have native accuracy

Assassin is kinda like a Melee Scourer now that I think about it

And it’s a weird genre of “unreliably reliable”, which is completely different from “reliably unreliable.” In that you can’t always count on it to be unreliable, but when it’s reliable, it’s really reliable

[young laurel]

Assassin's Mark can also be used defensively which is weird but it works. If the target is isolated and you want that Assassin to keep them busy.

Marking them will grant the Assassin passive blanket resistance to all damage that target deals to it.

Alternatively it could be used to Mark a character that could most likely one tap it from range in order to survive longer.

[indigo oasis]

Yeah but with the rebake you’re less incentivized to use it defensively because you desperately need that save target buff

And without taking advantage of both the Heated Knife doubling AND damage reduction ignoring you’re going to be performing worse than a specter. Granted this is a TTRPG- sometimes that’s just gonna be what you end up doing and it’ll have been the best choice you could’ve made, and you’re not trying to optimize your NPC rosters just how you run them. But it’s still noteworthy to me

[trail pivot]

i mean, you can just have like 2 or 3 or 4 assassins

in addition to all the other npc's

[indigo oasis]

That is also true

[restive fable]

Elite Assassins probably might work a bit better. I have no luck with normal Assassins

[brisk flax]

The only difference between the rebake and CRB assassin in this regard is one gets a save bonus and the other doesn't, this isn't really some unique factor

applying an assassin's mark is effectively "range infinity," you just need LoS, so there's very little stopping assassins from picking the targets they want to focus on before anyone is within range to really engage with anything anyway

the assassin likes ally setup, but I think the distinction between it and a specter is the specter is a heavily damage-forward unit protected by a relatively fragile defensive measure, the assassin comes with significantly more HP and universal resistance against their chosen target, which makes them much more effective at things like contesting and disrupting objective points without randomly being mulched if someone brings anti-invis tech or the coinflip goes bust

using assassin's mark defensively isn't really weird, imo, it's one of the cruxes of the NPC, you pick someone you want to have a hard time fighting you and you make it harder to fight you

they're an "antagonist" unit

that heated blade's damage doubling isn't tied to the marked target means they have some flexibility in targeting, but an assassin's gameplan first and foremost is going "who can I make the most miserable" and then making that person miserable

[indigo oasis]

Fair enough- I’ve never really understood Assassins when running them but I really want to because they feel cool. They’re just a tad challenging for me to manage

[young laurel]

Assassins from my experience function for three basic principles (at least the ones I got the most use out of)

• Presence: An Assassin on the field usually means someone is going to get focused and the players have to be aware of who the Assassin is gunning for while keeping the objective in mind.
• Prioritization: Following up on Presence, the Assassin will do its best to get into situations where it has free reign to keep itself safe while hitting their chosen target with the London Special.
• Pressure: An Assassin dogging at players' heels while escaping reliable sources of damage means that the players need to be VERY careful about taking too much damage. Especially the chosen target, as the damage they receive cannot be reduced at all.

The Assassin makes a great partner with equally fast damage dealing NPCs. Ace, Berserker, and Cataphract can be the vanguard to clash with the players first while the Assassin does a loop de loop onto their backline or another player who is out of position.

[indigo oasis]

They’ve rarely ever felt impactful because their damage always felt kinda negligible + their control effects are very easy to just fizzle out. Probably just the dice speaking tho, not the stat block

[young laurel]

Leap is a powerful mobility tool, and it should be used situationally and not as an engagement tool unless you can follow up with an immediate attack or something similarly productive.

[indigo oasis]

Really? It sounds very risky to use as a disengagement tool, especially if you’re running a size 1/2 assassin

[young laurel]

Ah, let me specify

The disengagement tool when there is a lot of cover taller than the assassin to constantly break LoS

Assassin is 1/2 and that is an advantage that can be used to press the players

[smoky bluff]

From my experiences with assassins, most of the time, the threat of a marked character is enough to change gameplans of certain players. So often times, I hide the assassin from seeking and arcing weapons and just sort of wait for the moment to dive.

usually though the assassin uses the mark on the most tanky player and wait for another NPC like a support to do the proning for them

[restive fable]

my average assassin technique:

Leap at low agility player
They pass anyway
I am struck by a missile

Leap at a fragile player
They pass because they actually have Agi
I am struck by a missile

I'll just run a Devil's Cough on one sometime, I've been avoiding that

[minor hound]

discord...

sigh, input focus loss

[marsh nest]

This is close enough to Haiku that I wanted to put a little effort in.

I leap at slow player:
They pass the check anyway.
A missile hits me.

I leap at soft player:
High agility, they pass.
A missile hits me.

Not really happy with it, I think yours actually flow better.

(Edit: Some more thought and using more metaphorical language would help. Swap "slow" for "stone" and "soft" for "glass" and it think it helps a lot. It's not clear anymore, but it's a much better haiku. Another possible alternative is dropping the word player and using mech, and then using the extra syllable for an additional qualifier... maybe low speed mech, low def mech)

[restive fable]

Thank you, and I'm glad this was inspiration for ya

[indigo oasis]

Question: in the v1.2 PDF, is the Ace’s E-Defense supposed to scale as 8/8/10? That sounds like a typo to me

Anyhow I never noticed how the rebake makes it so that evasion + e-defense tier scales for every NPC now, which is nice

[subtle nacelle]

i dont think that's the latest pdf iirc

oh im wrong

i was basing that comment off the master document versions

yea and wallflower rebake is v1.6 pdf

[brisk flax]

Believe it or not, this is how it works in the CRB, it's a 1-1 translation

I suppose I could have made it 8/9/10 but I just ported it over and called it a day

[indigo oasis]

Yeah but it stood out to me since the rebake largely aims to smooth out scaling, but it’s not a big deal

[marsh nest]

If you run it as 8/9/10 I bet nobody will notice.

[young laurel]

Maybe Tech Attackers but who knows

[indigo oasis]

Smart weapons exist

[twin reef]

Oh, also, at one point my GM had an Assassin leap at my Barbarossa, which has +1 difficulty to Agility saves, but he forgot I'm too fat to be moved.

[indigo oasis]

Sadge

[vale crescent]

That's what like, more than £12 profit

That's kinda rad

[patent spindle]

I feel called out by this

[cobalt hull]

can you use enthrone through walls with no LOS?

[twin reef]

Everything requires LOS unless otherwise specified.

[indigo oasis]

Rebaked Sitrep with 2 Barricades, 2 Seeders, 2 Lurkers, 2 Engineers, and 2 Spites. Call it the “I’ve lost track of everything” combat.

“Okay I’ve finally gotten adjacent to the spite, lemme clear imprison”
“No.”
“The fuck do you mean no?”
“That’s the wrong Spite.”

“God dammit that Engineer’s turrets are still up- feign death or something”
destroys wreck
“Huh?”
“Yeah no that’s the other Engineer’s turrets.”
“UGH!”

“Wait… which barricade cube is supposed to disappear?”

“Okay, seeder 1 is dead, so I knock the barricade onto seeder 1’s old mine and detonate it.”
“No that’s seeder 2’s mine.”
“YOU LITERALLY LABELED IT!”
“… oh right my b.”

[vale crescent]

The players weep, as the GM grins

But move the GM screen out the way

And you see tear smeared notes which are meant to be keeping track of what belongs to whom

[brisk flax]

The best way to handle this is with color coded outlines

You have the Red Spite and the Blue Spite, etc

[vale crescent]

Or numbers

Any form of indicator IG

[rose hamlet]

One Spite, Two Spite
Red Spite, Blue Spite

[crude trail]

i'm going to have to name an ultra spite "clark" now ...

unrelated: i really like the strider rebake; i learned about it approximately one day after running a combat scene centered around a very modified strider; this was funny

(i do still like the idea of a strider being able to have a third or alternate kit for specific circumstances, but i can reincorporate that myself if and when i think it's a good idea)
[i suspect that would likely turn out best if one replaced one of the two base kits outright with something similar, like a mortar kit replacing the long-rifle kit in a similar vein to the choice of weapon with artillery grunts, so that will probably be what i try, if and when]

[young laurel]

If in Foundry, best solution is Token Tooltip Alt to reveal what class it is provided your players take the time to read.

If anywhere else, I'm sorry but you'll have to get creative.

[brittle cipher]

IRL game solution:

"Alright gang so today we're fighting The Candy Army. Each NPC is associated with a different candy, and when they put down an extrusion/mine/shroud/turret those are gonna be represented by me putting that candy on the map. The spites' imprison will be represented by me putting a lifesaver hard candy on your mech as a crown. We got red spite and mint spite."

"And yes, you do get to eat your kills"

[young laurel]

Bruh, a strange but effective way to motivate and focus players.

[brittle cipher]

I just woke up and am hungry, so my ideas are both questionable and food-focused

[young laurel]

But you also do run into some complication when some players want to kill the same NPC because they have a candy they want.

[brittle cipher]

Players refuse to kill the engineer in order to farm skittle turrets off it

[young laurel]

Almond M&Ms

[meager kestrel]

You also can't ever leave the table

[brisk flax]

I'm closing in on the "make a channel announcement" stage of draft completeness for the opfor files and one of the encounters is centered around an Elite Veteran Strider with both loadout optionals

because I am not a minimalist, I am a maximalist

[crude trail]

i don't know what these "opfor files" are but i will no doubt find out some day

[wise creek]

It's a bunch of premade NPC compositions, Kai's posted an updated version every now and then

[patent spindle]

Only tangentially related: In a TTRPG I play by the name of Draw Steel!, players get a resource for their character. These are, in my experience, best represented by M&Ms of various colours. When spent, eat your M&Ms. Perhaps we need to include M&M-based Structure/Stress rewar- tracking too...

[solemn hornet]

Does the scout's markee rifle shredded lasts until the end of the scout's turn, or the target's turn

?

[sour mist]

target's next turn.

[solemn hornet]

So if target gets hut by marker, and then target takes his turn after scout, so target loses shredded after hisbturn righr?

[brisk flax]

yes, it works like every single other "until the end of your next turn" effect in the game

[fathom quiver]

A player can subvert it through clever timing, but a good GM can target someone who's already gone

[sour mist]

also, disconnecting it from the applying unit is wise, because otherwise you might have the issue of something lasting until the scout's next turn... and then the scout dies, meaning it won't have a next turn

[brisk flax]

Just gonna leave this here real quick

Hello, the OPFOR files is now in what I am calling 1.0 status which means all 20 of the planned OPFORs are now done

you can roll your finest d20 to pick one at random or simply use whichever one you like, the choice is in your hands

As I noted in the lancer news announcement, my main future plan for this is to incorporate Eld's breakdown of lancer map design as the third major chunk of this, I haven't had a lot of time to go over his notes but I'm hoping my schedule will clear up enough for me to do so now that I'm no longer juggling my own personal work, doctor's appointments, and the like

[brisk flax]

This isn't quite like the rebakes which had mechanical design stuff going on, but I'm still always interested in feedback, which I suppose in this case would include things like:
1). did you use any of the comps, and if so how did they play?
2). did you find the given notes useful or not?
3). feedback on the general "laying the foundations" notes regarding combat scenario creation
4). etc

ALSO, as with NPCs Rebaked, I am opening up the floor to anyone who has similar projects, discussions, etc about combat encounter creation, map creation, etc in Lancer and would like a shout out. As before, your stuff needs to have something like an actual website I can link to, whether it's an itch.io page, a blog, etc

[young turtle]

hi hi everyone! I'll be doing the map making part of this

my goal is to essentially expand on the document I already made a while back with an example map making thing

with stuff closer to what my icon map making guide was

[brisk flax]

If you want (and it's cool if you don't) you could probably link your work-in-progress here

[young turtle]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pcS1sNbFzaxB7yQ-h87DrF-Pr9rRXNmbZYAZr1f3CgI/edit?usp=sharing

[rose hamlet]

Well, if you’re offering: I have takes on Modular Objectives that are available on my Train Lightning blog for free and in paid pdf form in #1254229800952922193

And though I know you’re not a Faction Roster fan, I would still offer/nominate @nova cove ‘s Faction Roster blog post, even if it’s just to critique it and offer your preferred alternative

(Dodgepong can obviously rescind the nomination, I’m just bringing (his) attention to this too)

[brisk flax]

I actually DO want to link to some stuff regarding faction rosters and such

I know some people are more into that

Suki had some cool stuff along those lines as well but idk if it's in website linkable format

Also in regards to Train Lightning, which I probably will want to link, the other thing I think I'd like to specifically make mention of is your discussion of lancer NPC roles

which I think is a helpful and informative bit of information regarding how to view NPCs when creating comps for sitreps

[nova cove]

I think most of the issues that Kai has raised about faction rosters are caused by people cleaving to it too strictly, which I don't necessarily disagree with

[brisk flax]

yeah to be clear a lot of the stuff I talk about is from the perspective of "someone ends up backing themselves into a corner with this, here's how you can unback yourself"

there's also admittedly a bit of "how come your modules use so many NPCs, shouldn't the vestan sovereignty only use specific units?" going into that

[nova cove]

If I were to condense the entire blog post down to one piece of advice, it would be "It's okay (and sometimes beneficial to you and your players) to reuse NPC builds instead of feeling obligated to make new stuff every combat"

[rose hamlet]

Absolutely, go for it

[brisk flax]

I mean I'm probably gonna shout out both train lightning and PPG again

anyway, @nova cove are you okay with/would you like to be linked?

[nova cove]

Sure!

Still kicking myself for not writing my maps blog post yet

[austere compass]

My memory of Wallflower's opfors is dominated by the berserker grunts; I think having one throughline of a common signature NPC can be enough to make a faction feel cohesive (as opposed to limiting it to a set roster).

[brisk flax]

Well, you have time, this probably won't be going out the door for a while

[nova cove]

Fair

Think the big decision I have to make is whether I should make it tabletop agnostic or foundry focused

Maybe those are two different posts

[indigo oasis]

To throw a penny into the ring, personally I like Faction Rosters conceptually for 2 reasons:

1. It frontloads your GM prep, and makes it so that instead of designing new NPCs from the ground up for each combat, you already have a loadout of NPCs and at most just need to make 1 or 2 unique officers per combat. This can be helpful if you're someone like me who has occasionally havens of free time before being in the mines for months. You could also just prep the entirety of your combats in a mission in one period, but if you're trying to make a more flexible mission, Faction Rosters frontload a lot of prep.
2. When introducing never before seen mechanics and NPCs to players, Faction Rosters can heavily limit the GM in terms of what new mechanics they can throw at the players in a constructive way. This is most helpful with 3rd party NPCs as even in the rebakes 1st party NPCs tend to be easier to understand in a first encounter. With more experimental NPCs however, limiting yourself to a faction roster can allow new mechanics to be drip fed to players without overwhelming them and give you plenty of time to get familiar with them rather than just use them in one combat and then forget about them. Or the inverse, every combat having OpFors that are composed entirely of never before seen NPCs every time. I personally like working within restrictions as a GM- within reason ofc. So faction rosters limiting my options makes me feel like I gotta puzzle things out more and gives me a strong incentive to build on mechanics of NPCs I introduced early on that I have to reuse.

But by and large I do agree with what the OpFor Files have to say on the matter. Flavor is free, faction rosters should have variety of roles and notes being hit, and none of this should come at the cost of combat depth.

Question about Marked for Death tho- what's the point of the Hive added for the 4 player composition? Is it just an additional unit or is it meant to contribute a specific purpose to the comp?

[brisk flax]

the hive is like onions and garlic, it goes good in just about anything

specifically in a sniper comp you can force people to move out of cover or choose to become immobilized, in which case the assassin can stab them, you can put the razor swarm in places to make them less attractive to stand, etc

[indigo oasis]

That sounds like a sentence worth adding to the document tbh- I'm still reading through the latest version so I could be wrong but typically when a new class of NPC that isn't a grunt (and oftentimes even if they are a grunt) is added with a higher player count, that NPC's contribution is highlighted briefly in the OpFor tactics.

[fathom quiver]

I've only once used an up-tiered enemy, I ran a T2 Elite Veteran Commander Ronin; this was even before Wallflower, so it was all vanilla. I called him my "discount ultra", and I chose to up-tiered him for reasons other than the numbers bump; second tier got an additional attack and additional veteran trait, and his tactic was marking as many possible people with extended blade and echo mark. It was also at LL4, right before the players would tier up

Doing that instead of an ultra also kept the activation budget down, since I had 5 players at that time

[indigo oasis]

I guess that's... technically a Discount Ultra, as instead of Resilient it has Uptiered Bulk, and instead of Deadly it just has Higher To Hit Odds + Damage (but that's significantly more deadly instead of a sidegrade), and instead of Juggernaut it has better defenses against debuffs.

Still doesn't sound like it'd be a great idea tho- feel like an exception and not the norm

[brisk flax]

Like here's the thing, ultimately I can't stop anyone who wants to uptier guys from doing it and I'm uninterested in policing their games, but I personally think it doesn't do what most people imagine it does which is magically graduate NPCs into a more interesting configuration as opposed to "+2 damage, +1 evasion, +3 HP" with the exception of tier scaling multiattackers

I think there's some stuff you can do with tier scaling and the particularities of certain CRB NPCs like the given example where you have a plan for the specific intersection of "this multiattacker plus these optionals," but imo that stuff is a lot more niche than the broader want for uptiering which seems to be a mix of "I want something to spice my encounter up" and/or "I want to prepare my players for a higher tier," the former being better handled elsewise and the latter being unnecessary

[tulip hawk]

1. I've used a few of the comps in games, two of the most notable being World on Fire (Ultra Pyro) and Target Rich Environment (both as written and one with a scout attached in addition)

The notes are really helpful just to get an overview on how the sitrep is supposed to bounce off each other and synergize, something that's easy to forget in combat since there's so many abilities and junk just in the moment to remember.

That being said, that Ultra Pyro is a bitch of a time, I have one party currently going through it and a prior party he ended up demeching two players, it's Grind Maniple ruins Gorgons and lingering flames combined with puppet systems and white hot ended up landing us a personal record, with the Drake taking an astounding 24 concurrent burn

[brisk flax]

lol owned

[tulip hawk]

To be clear, I'm not complaining, just stating I guess for anyone running that one that it's best saved for last, I think, that Pyro has enough going on to grind most parties to a fine paste if they can't reliably shred it's ass

[indigo oasis]

Could be actionable as an organization suggestion- put the more "intense" opfors closer to the back of the document

As a presentation thing

[brisk flax]

I don't think I'll be doing that because frankly I don't think there's a way I could ever come up with an objective "difficulty rating" for things

[indigo oasis]

Fair enough

[brisk flax]

someone else is gonna run that comp and be like "yeah idk what the fuss was about my players stomped them out in two rounds"

I'm not sure there's actually a way you can apply difficulty ratings like that in lancer combats

[indigo oasis]

That makes sense - I'm sure against a team with a Lancaster, Manticore, and Genghis, they'll be asking what the fuss was with that combat

or even just a Forge 2 user

There's a lot of ways to make burn hurt less in Lancer

[brisk flax]

Not even just a matter of anti-burn, but even with Explosive Jet, the Pyro is a slow, short-ranged unit and they don't have more than below-average sensors

[tulip hawk]

To add, my second party is certainly hating the Pyro but they're not quite in such a pickle with its grind maniple being less useful as it was exceedingly so on a Gorgon, and it's been forced to back off from their White witch, who it only managed to get 11 burn on before having to explosive jet away to cool down

[indigo oasis]

Right, Puppet Systems exists, I forgot

[brisk flax]

Siege Shield helps but you can still just, like, shoot them with guns from a distance, and PC shredded options operating at a distance exist

[tulip hawk]

Target Rich Environment turns out is not even a sitrep when the party has a Hetachonchieres on the team, as their clouds just ruin the 1hp turrets all day, and I learned the hard way that slapping a scout onto that sitrep to "balance" it for six players is the harbinger of the apocalypse, since the shred of the marker rifle makes the turrets a genuine entire opfor all on their own

[minor tundra]

Extremely excited to see this! Always loved the previous remarks and docs on map design I've seen from you, so it's real fun to know you've got more cooking on this front 😌

(also very excited to pore through the opfor doc for similar reasons, Everyone Is Cooking In This)

[indigo oasis]

After reading through it all, the only other OpFor that doesn't acknowledge the new NPC Class from the higher player count comp is Tip of the Spear with its Exposed Weaknesses Scout. Even if the NPC being added is like onions and garlic and just naturally goes good with any OpFor, for the purposes of tutorializing I still feel a sentence or 3 should be dedicated to explaining their presence tbh.

(I'm not counting Grunts or repeated NPC classes for the purposes of this, nor templates. Most templates simply give an existing NPC the ability to do their job but more, Rebake Grunts are typically very rank + files, and repeated NPC classes are already explained, it's just that more are being added)

[bold crystal]

If a melee shitkicker can't close the distance to their target, then they aren't going to be able to do much shitkicking.
yes. yes! I've said a few words on this elsewhere but a cataphract(upsized, if necessary) is a fairly good way to upset quite a lot of melee strikers and pin them down for a turn or two. you're not gonna beat them in melee, but if they're busy beating up a cataphract through point-defense they're not killing your ranged npcs.

[brisk flax]

In general, "how do I stop this melee guy from beating up all my NPCs" is a discussion that's been had a lot in the wake of the Tempest Charged Blade and the Lycan

I think a lot of GMs tend to underuse control somewhat

[bold crystal]

the empakaai and white witch also(to a degree - it's not really primary melee usually but it often acts similarly)

and usually the best answer is you pick them up and you put them further away from your primary damage dealers.

[brisk flax]

It's always been kind of funny to me that there's simultaneous parallel discourse tracks in lancer of "melee is bad, the game punishes melee" and "these mechs with a heavy melee focus are super OP"

[bold crystal]

it's a... both ends are sort of true. it's really easy to build melee without enough bulk to actually go in and survive doing so. the mechs with a melee focus have the bulk, in many cases, or have some other way to deal with the realities of being inside the opfor(possibly by getting back outside it as quickly as possible. hello nelson.)

so you get people going 'dang! melee sucks you get shot to death!' and people picking up something really tanky and going 'dang! melee is way too strong nothing can scratch my paint!'

[ebon trench]

As far as factions go, after reading a lot of stuff from both sides I decided to just keep a small list of 5 "default picks", one for each role, either thematically or mechanically grouped, for each faction. No prepicked optionals, just "together they form an OPFOR".

The idea was "if I can't think of a better option", so I'll deviate from it as the sitrep calls for, either because they don't need a role as much (and thus the fifth is now a second class of another role), or the default pick of that role isn't a good option for this sitrep or is missing its combo buddies (so it needs to be swapped out), both, or just because I'm bored and want to throw a curveball.

I stress that I haven't had the time to work it out in practice, but I liked the idea of having a fallback choice that means a faction tends to bring certain mechs, but not always. But I'll probably end up tossing the idea out completely after some point, now that I think about it, it might still have a weakness to "oops I keep on bringing this class and I'm not really making engaging OPFORs centering around other tactics".

…Now that I really think about it, I basically just created a single prototype OPFOR per faction. Oops.

[brisk flax]

I do think that CRB lancer tends to discourage the sort of high evasion/low HP+armor sorts of "dexterity melee striker" type frames by virtue of overabundant NPC accuracy and default NPC choices having a lot of reliable saturation, but I think while you could SAY that's a problem with "melee being bad," I think it's more indirect than that, but also that even then I think the badness of melee tends to be oversold

also I'm willing to bet a non-zero amount of this is also down to NPC composition, this came up during the rebake's playtesting days where someone ran a test fight and some of the players came away griping about how I love punishing melee builds and then it turned out the GM was running some Demolisher+Pyro comp

[bold crystal]

I'll also say, the dexterity melee striker sort requires a bit of actual thinking to do. you can't just yolo into them and hope it works out!

[brisk flax]

like yeah sorry man I didn't make him pick those units

[solemn hornet]

Oh... oh no... im planning to also run a demo-pyro comp for my upcoming combat...

Ehh my inexperience will make balanced

Because i could (theoretically) just make the demolisher jumpscare with the boost for 4 heat thing

[trail pivot]

you know, I never understood how or why any melee build would struggle with pros, when charged blade is like, right there

or even without it, really

[sour mist]

all-aux melee might have a hard time with a pyro

I haven't seen one of those

but they're theoretically possible

[brisk flax]

Depending on the optionals, the rebake can make it nastier to close in. Firebreak now does actual burn if you cross it, Unshielded Reactor covers more of an area, etc

so like, yeah, I can 100% see it being mean to people who want to close in, but A). that's the point of the unit, it's what Valkyrion calls a "rearguard," it's designed to keep people away from places, and B). if you make a comp with multiple of those units and optionals and etc, that's what's gonna happen I guess

[trail pivot]

I guess in my mind I never really minded those sorts of "hurts to be around" style of effects

one of those "prices of playing the game" considerations, compared to something like a barricade or the demos melee resist + hammer

[meager kestrel]

There's also the fact that Pyros are mainly designed to punish people that get close but aren't actually great at closing the distance. So they naturally like players that charge right into them.

[zealous horizon]

just to confirm, is the Lotus Drone intended to bypass the de facto Invisibility of the Witch's Blur vs characters in the DZ?

[brisk flax]

Yes

[buoyant stump]

What are people's experiences with players and Ultras? I have one player of 5 who seems to just vehemently hate Ultras while the rest are much more moderated in their opinions.

Asking here in particular because I've swapped to the Rebake and when big problem points are things like Ultras having 3 turns to clear conditions, I think it's a lot more manageable when they have to take unmitigated damage or lose tempo.

I'm considering just leaving the ultra at 2 activations to help with this and adjusting the encounter budget accordingly, but idk

[ancient forge]

Have they even gone up against a rebake ultra?

[minor tundra]

Ultras are fine and normal even in the base game, they probably just had a specific encounter with an overtuned one or something tbh

Mechanics such as the ultra gaining an activation against 5 PCs is a balancing choice to help them not fold like paper against 5 PCs before they get to do stuff - those 4 structures can melt much quicker than you expect without objectives that draw player focus and actions away from shooting or stabbing it

[ancient forge]

I will say no CRB ultra I’ve fielded while running for more than four players, while not trivial, have ever failed to fold in the face of dedicated player effort to erase them

[trail pivot]

yeah, also i realyl wouldn't reccomend cutting down ultra's action econ versus 5 players, there is a massive difference in combat ability between 4 and 5 players

like as scary as ultra's are, even the ones designed to last a long time will just kind of die immediately if the players care to do so

[brisk flax]

if they hate ultras conceptually, the rebake isn't going to make them a convert

I've talked about it before but while auto-clearing conditions and such is kind of a brute force approach to the matter, the alternative outcome here is "the centralizing feature of your opfor budget for the encounter gets CC'd into irrelevance"

same for activations

like the alternative to an ultra versus 5 players is, roughly, "4 normal NPCs" which is 4 structure worth of enemy and also 4 activations

as opposed to 4 structure and 3 activations

I think it would help to try and zero in on what it is specifically they object to about ultras, but depending on what it is, idk that there's much you can do about it

the rebake does make Juggernaut less free, but someone getting their Eject Power Cores commuted to Impaired will probably still feel like it's a ripoff

[buoyant stump]

Yeah I think 2 or 3 now across maybe 4 missions?

[buoyant stump]

Yeah I've read through the design doc and that was my take away, what's the point of an ultra if it is just jammed/stunned/etc. for the entire encounter

[buoyant stump]

I think that's pretty much what it comes down to, iirc from them venting it was something like "Whats the point of CC'ing them when they take more turns than you and clear everything anyway" but that just comes back to what was said before about the encounter losing its point if the ultra doesn't functionally exist

[minor tundra]

Another thing to consider as well is like

depending on the objective, your Ultra is still just One Guy

A souped-up guy, sure, but they can only hinder the objective so well, and at times their adds are just as dangerous to the PCs' success

[buoyant stump]

Yeah one thing I've noticed about my players

If there is an ultra they treat killing it as part of the primary objective lol

Even if it is not at all required

[brisk flax]

Also, to go back to what I said earlier, if instead of one ultra you're fighting four normal guys, jamming one of them means the other three can still just shoot you

[spice aspen]

how long is the feedback period on these new opfors? I'm down to run one but it probably won't be 'til mid-June so I'm not sure if it'd still be useful by then

[brisk flax]

Probably won't be closing super soon

[spice aspen]

okie

[austere mulch]

I am technically a ""first-time"" DM, and I only have the Core rule book (GM Side), is it advisable for me to buy the NPC Rebake?

[twin reef]

Yes. A lot of stuff is more intuitive.

[brisk flax]

So, as I'm the author and benefit financially from your decision to do so, take everything I say with a big grain of salt

There are two prevailing schools of thought when it comes to this question:
1). No, you should use the CRB NPCs as written first, they aren't like BROKEN or anything, they work fine, and the Rebake exists to address things that you won't necessarily be aware of if you haven't tried the vanilla versions before delving into the eurobeat remix
2). If you want to, you COULD just dive right in with the rebakes because they aren't a fundamental departure from how the CRB versions work (which is intentional) and some people, as Zemyla just did, find the rebake versions to be more intuitive in varions ways, plus the design notes have been mentioned as being very helpful for new GMs even if they aren't using the rebake NPCs right away

I guess it depends on what you mean by "advisable," you don't NEED it to run Lancer, people did so for many years without, but it's not something that doesn't have its uses even for new Lancer GMs, is I guess how I'd put it

It is NOT a "new standard" or anything, like any project some people don't care for it

[bold crystal]

it won't hurt you to run the core NPCs as a new GM, especially since you probably are not running a game above LL3.

[brisk flax]

I'm also currently working on another project, the OPFOR Files, which is a bunch of advice on combat encounter building along with premade NPC comps, you can check the pins for that

[bold crystal]

which is where the significance of tier differences really start to come in.

[brisk flax]

I do think, personally, that there are differences that are significant even outside of tier jumps, but it's stuff that won't necessarily be immediately apparent to someone brand new

Paring down of average NPC to-hit rates having knock-on effects with regard to the value of Evasion as a PC stat, shuffling around Reliable damage so it isn't consolidated on extremely commonly reached-for NPCs, etc

The structure damage table eschewing System Trauma, things like that

There isn't a lot of "Yeah this NPC had +30 to hit so obviously that had to go"

[austere mulch]

In fact I ""just"" finished my first campaign in LL6, and I end because one of my 4 players I had to kick him out for irresponsible and I was not going to continue it from only 3 people, So I finished it in the season finale... And there was no new season...

My current campaign started in LL2 and they are currently in LL3 about to face a boss that will raise them to LL4.

But I've been interested in the NPC's Rebake more than anything else because of the Grunt's, the veteran and Ultra template, I haven't gotten to use all the NPC's in the Core Rule book yet, it wasn't until recently that I discovered how broken the Operators are and my whole group lost their smiles when they saw a ronin parryng a mortar shell and wiping out the Squad of soldiers from one of my players with the talent of Seargent III (Wa.Zal)

[brisk flax]

well, the rebake ronin can still do that

the thing about NPCs is they SHOULD, on some level, make the players go "that's bullshit!"

[austere mulch]

With a Dash included if the die fails, from what I've heard

[brisk flax]

yeah

the core of the Ronin's identity in the rebake is an anti-ranged melee striker, the "you don't want to shoot this guy" unit

Rebound is its most distinct and notable feature and the rebake leans into that to give it more of a particular identity and tactical role than "the guy with a sword, among six other guys with swords"

[austere mulch]

Curiously, I have never used the Grunt Template because I felt that if I put several of these they would either explode with the allied artillery or disintegrate my frontliner [Melee/CQB] [Duelist/Vanguard/combine-arms] Raleigh Player With a multitude of Assaults Grunt's.

(The poor thing only lived because they had a Lancaster)

[austere mulch]

Curious, as I say, I was mainly interested in Grunt's and templates.

That's why I didn't know whether to buy it or not.

[brisk flax]

There's a whole section on grunts and why they tend to be so feast-or-famine

plate is that it's simultaneously meant to encapsulate
30+ distinct NPC classes, none of which were designed
with "being grunts" in mind. This makes creating and
assigning grunts to an OPFOR a much more difficult task
than many GMs assume, which inevitably leads to the
extremely common occurrence where a new GM goes
"oh, Assault Grunts, I can use these as filler" and adds
a half dozen of them, unaware that what they've actually
created is a distributed Assault that gets to shoot six
times per round.```

[austere mulch]

Pfffff... Funny... I guessed I shouldn't have done that.

The first time I placed a Assault I put the Elite template on it and my players hated it.

[brisk flax]

Elites honestly aren't even that bad, it's basically one guy who acts twice instead of two guys who act once each

[austere mulch]

Now they hate my ever-present rainmakers with endless rain

[brisk flax]

budget-wise you aren't getting away with anything

[austere mulch]

Smart-Targeting Mindfield on demand

[brisk flax]

There are actually several arguments that two normal NPCs can be BETTER than a single Elite

[bold crystal]

in particular, the minotaur.

[brittle cipher]

And that you cover twice as much ground and are half as susceptible to CC of all types (minotaur included)

[austere mulch]

They basically hated him because he had everything

Reliable damage, aoe Damage, melee attacks, Near-Permanent Accuracy, I played it pretty smartly. And it almost always recharge the bombardment of micro-missiles.

I recharge that thing like 9 times...

[brisk flax]

I actually think that one of the things that doesn't click for people at first but which can be even more crucial that CC is that two normal NPCs are much more immune to spillover damage

if I shoot one 15 HP unit and do, idk, 30 damage, then 15 of that damage is lost to the void and does nothing

[brittle cipher]

Big true

[bold crystal]

if you do 20 damage to a guy with 10 HP, that... sucks. if you do 20 damage to a guy with 10 HP and two structure...

congrats!

[brisk flax]

if I shoot one elite NPC with 15 HP and two structure, then 30 damage kills it

[bold crystal]

this is why the annihilation nexus is a good superheavy.

[brittle cipher]

Yeah its the "CPR a grunt" thing but in reverse

[brisk flax]

Now, I don't think it's necessarily as cut and dried as "elites are bad, just use normal guys," BUT I do think that a lot of people assume (reasonably) that Elite NPCs should be a straight upgrade, and the thing is they kind of aren't

their upsides are more contextual/situational, it's kind of a "system mastery for the GM" sort of thing

[austere mulch]

I learned the hard way that an Ultra is not a Lone boss

And then I learned that 2 Ultras weren't the answer either...

In total I think I've only done 4 Ultras.

And the most recent is a... Ultra support

A 0.5 Ultra Support With the appearance of a """white""wash amalgam" that is an Unshackle NHP.

So I guess you recommend me to stay with the official NPC's for now

[indigo oasis]

I mean the Operator statement seems to indicate your mileage may improve with the rebakes, but they are ultimately not necessary to Lancer

And an Ultra Support may fare significantly better with the assistance of the rebakes

[brisk flax]

I mean it sounds like you've already run a fair bit of lancer

which suggests you aren't BRAND brand new to the game

so if you have some stuff you aren't satisfied with (like grunts, templates, etc as you've discussed) then you might find it useful

[austere mulch]

I consider myself "new", because I have 2 campaigns and 3 One-shots.

It's just that I've been on other systems like Dnd5e for longer time.

Or... Anima beyond Fantasy.

Thunder and lightning sounds in the background

In fact, I recently came across GMS crisis core.

And with the gunship.

So I can throw my Aces out the window

[ebon trench]

Nah, put your Aces in the same fight. the gunship is a big bad 1/scene boss unit anyways, it needs backup. Pop in some vehicle aces and pretend you sent the party into a Ace Combat mission.

[austere mulch]

Jjajajajaja.

By the way, i also place the Stongehenge

And that the objective is to shoot down Amazon's drone hub. (Maxor Reference)

[fathom root]

been having real good fun with the rebake after about a year and half of using it

makes me want to rerun my fav Dustgrave with it

since the battles there are already really good, so wondering how the differing npcs would ull off the combats

[carmine idol]

Honestly the best thing the rebake has done for me (and as far as I see, anyone) is make the running and creating of LL4+ content/encounters way smoother. Uptiering no longer results in an incredible bump in damage output, so the overall expectations of encounter building remain consistent up to LL12.

Also our group removed OpCal and AutoStab. We shall be free of floating accuracy/damage mods.

[tulip hawk]

Do you find that that's improved your party's experience? Did anyone have those bonuses attached in the first place before houseruling them away?

[twin reef]

I feel like Autostab and OpCal are a necessary evil. If you got rid of them, you'd have to rebalance pretty much every single PC weapon and good amounts of NPC HP and defensive stats.

[brisk flax]

I'm not convinced that's true actually

I don't really think the balance in lancer rests on the existence of those core bonuses in that sort of ecosystemic sense

I think you might reevaluate some HP numbers sure, but I VERY highly doubt that Autostabilizing Hardpoints is a vital component of anything

[twin reef]

You'd certainly have to come up with substitute GMS cores, though.

[brisk flax]

sure

I mean that goes without saying

[indigo oasis]

AutoStab is absolutely not a necessary evil considering how many ways there are to gain accuracy (Vanguard 1, Crack Shot 1, Lock On, obtaining Seeking, the entire Death's Head License). It could be effortlessly removed without changing anything

OpCal, I feel like you could make an argument for keeping it around in addition to getting rid of it

[subtle nacelle]

Having ran a couple of campaigns where i ban those two for LL3, buildcraft just gets more varied. My players are still kicking my ass just the same

[brisk flax]

but I don't think that overcaliber or autostabilizing hardpoints are vital elements of lancer's balance, for one that would be pretty dumb because it would mean two options are secretly mandatory and everything else is a trap choice, and two I think there's a stronger argument that they aren't actually healthy for the game

if anything I think a lot of things like Vanguard 1 etc could also be ditched, and should

[twin reef]

How many people would take Howitzer without Autostab being available?

[brisk flax]

"here's a super powerful in-slot weapon whose drawback is the Inaccurate tag, also a one talent dip renders that drawback irrelevant"

[subtle nacelle]

Howitzer already being weak isn't an argument in favor of autostab??

[brisk flax]

I'm not really moved by "I wouldn't take this if I couldn't have my cake and eat it too" arguments tbh

lots of people would also decry the loss of autostab as the death of the HMG

[twin reef]

No, because you can at least do stuff like Lock On, Tactician 2, etc. before attacking.

[brisk flax]

I recommended the cyclone pulse rifle could stand to lose Accurate and someone told me that would make it worthless garbage in their eyes

[indigo oasis]

You have to balance weapons around their corresponding talent , and CPR feels like it doesn't really account for the fact Crack Shot exists imo

[brisk flax]

frankly, people get used to a thing that's excessive and decide that anything that pares it down is overcorrection

[rose hamlet]

I like Maria's house rules that transform Autostab and OpCal into much more restrictive Weapon Mods, and replace the Core Bonuses with support/hacking-oriented ones

I frankly think Autostab and OpCal overcompensate on their own, and dislike the yardstick they force us to measure by

[indigo oasis]

Lancer very much likes to restict vertical power increases, so you could argue Core Bonuses are meant to be said Vertical Power Increases. But that's not really consistently enforced across Core Bonuses, and OpCal and AutoStab are sorta the biggest offenders.

Although going off that logic, Lesson of the Open Door is kinda in a similar to OpCal and AutoStab too, which isn't something I initially disagree with but it's not a direct contributor to weapon attacks so I think it's allowed to get away with it.

[twin reef]

I do feel like tuning down or removing Autostab and OpCal are things that will require concurrent reworks of many weapons, and that'd basically be a Lancer 1.5 if not 2.0.

[indigo oasis]

The thing is if most weapons depend on two core bonuses then those core bonuses either shouldn't be optional or shouldn't exist

And I think the point in removing AutoStab + OpCal is that fundamentally, no weapons actually need those core bonuses

The weapons that like them just happen to get disproportionately large power bonuses compared to all other weapons

Take the Howitzer you used as an earlier example

It is Inaccurate, yes, but the reason it's Inaccurate is to offset the fact it's a Blast 2 GMS weapon with a long range + arcing. It's a bombard style weapon, meant to offset it's inaccuracy with sheer volume of targets, and it has good damage too to accompany that

[twin reef]

And it kind of leads to the other thing I feel, which is a lot of Strikers and Artillery which lack Heavy Mounts don't get enough, in stats or other traits, to make up for the loss. Almost all the bonus damage traits are 1/round, and are beaten by even an Iskander Skirmish.

[indigo oasis]

But AutoStab simply makes its weakness nonexistent, making a decent weapon no longer have it's most significant shortcoming rather than making a decent weapon more reliable.

The big problem with AutoStab is that a. It compounds so strongly with other accuracy sources that it practically gives some players Inaccuracy Immunity, making trying to circumvent cover or being deterred by Inaccuracy irrelevant, and b. Many weapons depend on the Inaccurate tag to be balanced, and AutoStab being a no frills source of accuracy completely eliminates that weakness

[rose hamlet]

Yeah no I fundamentally believe that Lancer weapons weren't balanced around those core bonuses as universal picks

[indigo oasis]

OpCal- imo I know it increases baseline damage output, but tbh thanks to it's 1/round limit I do have a hard time seeing what exactly is wrong with it. It doesn't compound with other abilities disastrously apart from Tokugawa or Hellfire Rounds, and it doesn't mitigate weaknesses since it fundamentally affects all weapons equally

[rose hamlet]

in any case, again I like Maria's take that reshapes them into mods, so there's still accuracy/damage tools in the GMS toolkit but in a more limited fashion

[twin reef]

In terms of core bonuses, what should they be replaced with?

[fathom quiver]

See, I thought that the design of Main Melee and CQB weapons was that they were supposed to be generally accurate with their talents.

[indigo oasis]

Whatever you want probably. Lotsa folks have come up with 3rd party GMS core bonuses, so basically anything like that

[brisk flax]

They weren't, I guarantee it, and I would also put money down that removing them from the game would not necessitate a 1.5 edition level systemic overhaul

[brisk flax]

And as far as this goes, frankly I think you could make an argument for a lot of things, but I think that the fact that tons of third party GMS core bonuses are oriented around control, support, or utility suggests a distinct lack in the general purpose core bonus selection

GMS core bonuses currently are five "use gun more better" bonuses and then universal compatibility

[indigo oasis]

To be fair, Lancer expects everyone to use Gun so “Use Gun Better” is technically a universal niche

[brisk flax]

Left to my own devices, I'd be inclined to try and aim for like a 2/2/2 breakdown of better offense, support/control effects, and some GMS style "long term durability"

[indigo oasis]

But that logic doesn’t hold ground well honestly

[austere mulch]

I'm quite interested in that for my table.

I guess she won't have a Public LCP of that?.

[rose hamlet]

Sure, link here, but remember that this is Kai's thread and Maria isn't looking for feedback on these. Take what sounds good, leave what doesn't.

No public LCP

[austere mulch]

Oh, don't worry about that, I'm mainly here because I'm undecided whether or not to buy the NPC rebake.

I'm still a bit of a rookie GM, I've had 2 campaigns and 3 One-shots.

[rose hamlet]

mostly mentioned it to curtail discussion

[trail pivot]

Speaking on the matter, I removed Op Cal and Auto stabs from my games and have been running it like that for a while now, and what i noticed broadly was

• Defender and striker NPC's actually live as long as they are supposed to instead of randomly being oneshot or being torn apart in like 2 attacks or less, which means im not obligated to do shit like home brew on resistances or any other defensive bandaids and stop gap measures.
• Player builds have broadly diversified out of literally just taking exclusively auto-stabs and op-cal, and people are finding use in a bunch of core bonuses i never really saw outside of flavor now that they have to actually consider something else and think about the builds
• Players still don't really have trouble killing things with first party materials, they just have to take an actual damage dealer frame and build in order to do so quickly, instead of being able to effectively and efficiently larp as a DPS Black Witch or Sunzi or something. Which is to say, its really only affecting players who only ever picked and relied on those core bonuses.
• things that were good with auto-stabs and op-cal are still good without them.

TL:DR: removing them good and easy and simple,

Oh and a 6th reason is that it as someone who homebrews, it affords me the opportunity to introduce things that don't get immediately hyper broken by the existence of the do more damage or hit more often core bonuses,

(auto-stabs and Op-cal both also warp perceptions of a homebrew, imo, making it harder to evaluate the strengths and flaws because it's been specifically augmented to unilaterally perform more of what it already does,

[young turtle]

I'll also add that I think if anything these two can also often make people rely on them, not to be immortan joe here going "you will resent their absence" but I for one think a lot of them end up as ways to circumvent downside for weapons in ways that are too easy to be interesting, i'm absolutely here for anyone that finds a way to make the HMG work with talents or situational stuff, for example, but I think autostab HMG ends up far more boring than those, as a single example I mean

Same kinda goes for opcal but its a bit more complicated I think, i've generally valued opcal more on main weapons whereas people tend to put more value on it for heavy weapons, I think both options can work, I just happen to have more of a soft spot when it comes to making a main work as a primary weapon compared to a heavy one, cause it tends to lead to imo more interesting things being done

[indigo oasis]

Personally I feel OpCal’s impact is kinda equal across all weapon weight classes due to the fact that regardless of what weapon is using it (outside a few exceptions like Unraveler or Combat Drill), it’s ultimately an extra d6 of damage per round. So while it is good at turning Main Weapons into better Primary Weapons it’s not necessarily exclusive to that

Plus Duelist and Walking Armory seem to indicate that the role of Main weapons is in Utility First, whereas all other weight classes get Talents that up their damage output directly

[minor oriole]

honestly, on less of a core bonus and more of a talent, nuclear cavalier I also feels somewhat falls into this, mainly by just having extra damage to throw around, of course, that extra damage is conditional, but it's the only talent to improve the damage of any weapon at all, I still love NucCav though, so I wouldn't want to remove it

[young turtle]

I disagree with main weapons being utility first, there's plenty of main weapons which work very well as centerpiece weapons, its just that people end up naturally comparing them to heavy weapons

Duelist is less about making a main into a utility slot, and more about turning your main into something that makes you a bit more adaptable

same goes for walking armory

[indigo oasis]

I feel being Utility first doesn’t necessarily make the weapon a poor centerpiece weapon vs damage forward heavies.

[brisk flax]

I also think nuclear cavalier is kind of centralizing in ways I'm not super always a fan of

[young turtle]

The main thing is that if I put opcal on my main, that is usually because i've made a choice to turn it into something I wanna focus on specifically, when I put opcal on my heavy its because its simply good, heavy being centerpieces is kinda the default assumption

[brisk flax]

It's not very hard to dip into it and it becomes "well why wouldn't you?"

[young turtle]

Like for example putting opcal on a main on my nelson compared to putting opcal on a heavy on my Sherman

[minor oriole]

especially since you can just overcharge your way into danger zone, or just use a system that gives you heat, you don't even need to do harrison stuff

[brisk flax]

If overpower caliber was "main or aux weapons only" it might be more interesting, but I think at the point you're doing that, if question why bother with it at all

[young turtle]

Yeah

[indigo oasis]

I agree it’s centralizing but mainly because NucCav is kinda conquering a large mechanical space of Danger Zone, making it hard for other things to work within the design space and requiring they either worry about stacking with or competing with NucCav

[young turtle]

also at that point you might even want to not make it work on auxes since it can lead to people butting heads with the "no bonus damage on auxes" rule, and like you said at that point why even have it

[brisk flax]

Like here's the thing, Tom also thinks bonus damage sucks

Icon doesn't have it in the lancer sense

[young turtle]

Actually fun fact

[brisk flax]

His statement on this is basically the next game he made

[young turtle]

in 2.0 there's some forms of bonus damage again

somewhat

[brisk flax]

Is it additive or reroll take best or?

[young turtle]

Additive

let me find an example

[brisk flax]

Dang

[young turtle]

the main difference is this time around he wants to make it specifically less reliable/more conditional

[brisk flax]

I figured he was through with that

[indigo oasis]

I think Bonus Damage for the “don’t have a heavy Mount striker frames” is nice- at least in the pre Superheavy Mounting world

Encourages them to lean into a playstyle and try using Mains or Auxes as Centralized Weapons

[young turtle]

its more stuff like this

or these

[minor oriole]

that also depends on whether or not you even want a superheavy, they come with a lot of drawbacks, like requiring your whole turn to use, not being able to overwatch with them, etc. In some cases you might want to skirmish.

[young turtle]

its not exactly like bonus damage in lancer, its a lot closer to "if you use this thing in a certain way, you will do more damage, and some of it is baked into the ability"

Which I think still points to the issue with opcal imo design wise:

[brisk flax]

Actually all this discussion plus thinking of valk's house rules for overcharge have me thinking of an interesting potential shift there

[young turtle]

its unconditional

you make no choice when you take opcal or autostab

its not a commitment to playing a certain way basically

[minor oriole]

the only choice you make it 'when' and that isn't a choice, because you'll only use it if you hit

[young turtle]

another example

[young turtle]

oh fun fact it used to not even be that lmao

[indigo oasis]

Even NucCav has the choice of when because you can potentially just miss your NucCav attack

[young turtle]

I remember days when opcal was not 1/round

now to be fair that was most sources of bonus damage that weren't 1/round

[minor oriole]

even NukeCav at least has you gambling by basically forcing yourself into half HP for tech attackers and other people who can use heat

[young turtle]

I tell this story a lot but that's because it is kinda endlessly funny to me

when the change to make opcal 1/round came about in this server (you can look it up!), a lot of folks thought this would be the end of opcal being viable

straight up arguing it would never be used again

[minor oriole]

yeah, the problem is that, 1d6 extra damage a round in a game where there are only 2-3 ways you can get extra damage at all is good

[minor oriole]

techically speaking you can punish the NucCav player by bringing enough techattackers

[indigo oasis]

Kindaaaa???

I’ve tried this, it’s often more trouble than it’s worth

[subtle nacelle]

I was already of this opinion, but now im more so: There comes a point where it is imperative you actively ignore playtest feedback. That point changes a lot due to the nature of projects, the playtesters and a whole bunch of things, but I keep finding out that lancer playtests had crazy crazy valuations for things

like current HMG being super weak

and now 1/round OpCal

[indigo oasis]

I’ve straight up said some stupid shit as playtest feedback more than once and I am so happy said stupid shit got ignored

[minor oriole]

fair, but it does at least make them have to think about how much they can get away with, I'm not saying to bring 20 grunt witches to the sitrep, but having people that can pressure the guy who runs hot by making them possibly be exposed and then get dumpstered by some other high damage boys can be pretty fun good to keep them thinking

[young turtle]

the thing is that once you're used to something, it is hard to consider it as a brand new thing when its changed

[brisk flax]

Valk has overcharge give rerolls instead of actions, I'm now thinking of a form of overcharge which has a list of bonuses, reroll, an extra quick action, etc, and each time you use a bonus you cross it out for the mission

[young turtle]

So a lot of feedback on opcal wasn't really because people were wrong, i mean they were, but it was also because that's what opcal did for the last while and so when it changed people thought the way it worked before was the norm

Its hard for me to put into words

[brisk flax]

When people are accustomed to OP shit, any corrective balance feels like dumpstering

You see this in online games all the time

[young turtle]

but there's a tendency in ttrpgs with any "builds" that smooth out the optimization into the expectation

[indigo oasis]

This feels like it’d (purely on a thematic level) fit well with the idea of System Mounts substituting System Points

[young turtle]

I have seen someone the other day say that Mino had low HP because "its only 2 more than everest which is already fragile"

[minor oriole]

I don't know if I like that, I can see it, but I think that it kinda loses the thematic playstile of it being an 'overcharge'

[young turtle]

And in a way that makes sense if you consider that people assume you put all points in hull right

[minor oriole]

you're pushing your mech past it's regular limits for a turn

[young turtle]

but its weird to assume the baseline should compete with the invested version

[subtle nacelle]

I see what you mean, totally

[young turtle]

You see this ALL the time

[bold crystal]

my thought on opcal is that it's actually genuinely stronger for things without a heavy mount, most of the time

[young turtle]

i'm a neslon opcal on one mount and charges on the other warrior

[bold crystal]

going from 1d6 to 2d6 is huge. going from 2d6 to 3d6 is not as big.

[young turtle]

I will forever defend this hill

that's me

[subtle nacelle]

not to rehash, but i value the diversification argument over damage values. OpCal and Autostab are boringly good and skew design into a boring plateau

[bold crystal]

I don't think autostab is as blameful here as certain talents, frankly.

[minor oriole]

It’s kinda like Sol ring+arcane signet, it’s more interesting to design a deck without them than with

But it’s such a universal ‘do stuff better’ that to not use them handicaps you

[ebon trench]

Considering the implications of melding together Al's talent reworks, Maria's houserules and struct/stress table, and Rebake for maximum "how much can we rewrite Lancer"

[bold crystal]

'okay my mount has +1 accuracy for the price of a core bonus' okay that's cool there are multiple talents that can stack like 2-3 accuracy on various kinds of attack. brutal 3 is better than an entire LL3 system.

[subtle nacelle]

oo oo oo, can i slip in my tiny narrative Stress rework?
https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/1475691536518746182

[ebon trench]

This, too, is Lancer 2nd Edition

[indigo oasis]

Wait how is Brutal 3 better than Kinetic Compensator?

[minor oriole]

Because it’s free

[bold crystal]

kinetic compensator neither stacks nor persists

it's only +1 accuracy no matter how many times you miss

[minor oriole]

Oh, didn’t realize that.

[bold crystal]

(and also like, it's only ranged attack rolls rather than all attack rolls)

[minor oriole]

I will say that, at the very least, brutal requires heavy talent investment, but obviously you probably have your build calcified around LL4-6, so you can safely take talents that you couldn't really get away with earlier.

[ebon trench]

You have my interest

JSON.stringify("Eleonor") ↩️

[Reply to:](#1334655875679260692 message) oo oo oo, can i slip in my tiny narrative Stress rework?
https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/1475691536518746182 …

[bold crystal]

the downside of brutal is the need to keep track of it and it not playing well with VTTs.

[minor oriole]

and also the rest of brutal is kinda meh, imo, like, sure 5% chance of max damage and knockback 1 on crits is pretty sweet, but it's somewhat underwhelming compared to the other talents surrounding it

[bold crystal]

yeah there are better accuracy options for a lot of weapons. it stands out for like, nexuses and howitzer and mortar primarily

[minor oriole]

oh of course, like, volume of fire stuff especially likes brutal because you can miss 1 attack and get accuracy immediately on the next

[brisk flax]

Anyway, Maria's rundown of an opcalless, autostabless world is kind of what I figured it might be, the same way shaving down NPC accuracy suddenly let evasion flourish as a stat

I'm a fan of frame choice being more pronounced and important, imo I'm not a huge fan of the whole "I'm in a support frame but I also have a 4d6 whatever damage weapon" meme

[minor tundra]

Having given a OpCal NuCav Andromeda build a spin, I can't imagine how anyone can play such a thing and not understand if a GM house-ruled it away 😆

[dapper plover]

opcal nuccav decksweeper 😬

[subtle nacelle]

There's a reason i looove it when the stars align and i can use my Limited 2, Marduk-Class NHP from Legionnaire to deal 5d6 damage in an Orchis. The conditional nature of this wombo combo makes it a looottt more enjoyable

[minor tundra]

Yeah conditionals make you feel smart and clever

[bold crystal]

superheavy mounting really contributes to this heavily. why grab opcal if you can just put on a 'backup' cyclone pulse rifle?

oops, my saladin whipped out 4d6 from its back pocket because it got bored.

[minor tundra]

I feel like Superheavy Mounting has been subject to an Infinite Blood War ever since it was came into being (and not without reason)

Personally the full action barrage requirements has always kept me off of Superheavy Land, but this also speaks more to my personal playstyle as an action and control gremlin and I very much know this is not how everyone plays

[bold crystal]

to be slightly fair here, superheavy mounting can be difficult to get a ton of value from - but it's really hard to pass on 'your core bonus is once per scene you can full action shoot someone in half' at a minimum.

[minor tundra]

Yeah, absolutely, especially if you're crazy about being a Striker

the Combat Drill Atlas is a much less stable entity than any NuCav OpCal build but I understand why people find it just as spooky

[bold crystal]

iconoclast I would consider a... bigger issue. besides the really questionable flavor it does a lot of work at obsoleting the thermal rifle entirely.

[austere mulch]

In the end, I buy the NPC's rebake

[minor tundra]

Iconoclast my beloathed yes. Not to retread highly-treaded ground

[bold crystal]

at this point it's a road, really.

[minor tundra]

End of day though the beauty of Lancer is how easy you can treat it modularly even at the supplement level, and you can take as thin a slice as you want from any and all first- and third- party works

[young turtle]

in death stranding there's a mechanic where if multiple people walk on the same rough path it makes a road, I figured that was relevant

[minor tundra]

Which is why we can go “no nucav at my table” and not break something massively internal, or “hey I’m rebaking every NPC” and we all go crazy for it

Or hell, even just keep the base NPCs but adapt the Rebake’s stress and structure tables for them if you want to be the joker

[carmine idol]

so i've arrived very late back to the conversation so this is a bit of a necro but,

long story short yeah, literally everyone in the party was running at least one (if not both) of Opcal and AutoStab, and it was crowding out more interesting build paths for just "more damage". With the Rebakes reducing tier 2/3 damage significantly, it removed the need to try and engage in rocket tag, thus allowing us to remove OpCal and Autostab.

We did then also add 3 GMS core bonuses picked from a variety of supplements to offset this though, has worked out great.

These are the three GMS bonuses we addeed back in - though I'd have to dig to see which supplements we pulled these from (we otherwise only use first party LCPs, plus Enhanced Combat)

A note on Maria's hacking GMS core - we found it too strong actually, which is why it's not here. It played like "hacking OpCal" as it were.

[brisk flax]

I think the second core bonus there is one of DataNinja's

[indigo oasis]

No it’s not

Wait

[bold crystal]

what?

[indigo oasis]

Shoot I’ve been misreading it for a while

My b

Kinetic Compensator is like. Significantly cheaper than Brutal 3 in most cases tho

[bold crystal]

eeh, kinda. talent vs LLs+SP

how much you can spare depends on build.

[brisk flax]

It doesn't help that the demolisher has a kinetic compensator that works differently

[bold crystal]

right, yeah. demo kinetic compensator works like brutal 3 for the hammer exactly

[minor tundra]

Snipe and Wib joke a lot on their channel about Games Workshop having suffered a wizard's curse that makes them reuse every name they come up with at least once. I like to imagine that Lancer inherited this curse somehow

Also, doesn't Brutal 3's effect stack until you hit, whereas Kinetic Compensator (DEATHS HEAD) is a single proc?

[bold crystal]

yup

[rose hamlet]

this is an absolutely wild and cursed take, thanks I hate it lol

[young turtle]

seriously

[indigo oasis]

I think it’s less Inherited and more Idolized lol

[dapper plover]

12 bulk is nearly as good as you can get it! what!

[bold crystal]

I would rate armor as somewhere around 2-3 HP per point(and in terms of stat allocation it's generally rated as 2), but 12 HP is quite good

especially on a frame that doesn't have 6 evasion by default

[dapper plover]

yeah as far as I remember the only 14 bulk statlines are 12 hp/1 armor or 10 hp/2 armor

and the only frames I remember having those are a tinder box (Blackbeard) or unable to avoid getting hit (Barbie)

[rose hamlet]

Or Zheng (or Empakaai)

[bold crystal]

there's a few 14 bulk statlines of note - the blackbeard is notable at 12/1 and 8 evade, the empakaai is notable at 10/2 and 7, and the zheng is ludicrous at 10/2 and 9 evade

[young turtle]

only way I can make it make sense is if someone assumes anything that's not 18 is low

tbh

which you only get by investing in hull anyway

so

This is kinda why also i'm not personally a massive fan of LL6 being seen as the default "build threshold"

[indigo oasis]

Thankfully Prototype Pattern Groups gives me many an answer to the Zheng

[young turtle]

Anyway speed 5 is slow, it’s only 1 more than Everest which i consider too slow

[indigo oasis]

Honestly if Lancer weren’t a TTRPG with a focus on making the players intentionally kinda busted, the Everest stat line would be above average in every respect

[brisk flax]

What's funny is I regularly see people call the Gilgamesh a "stat stick" when it's basically the most average a frame can be started, plus HA modifiers (armor, higher than average heat cap)

[rose hamlet]

yeah no, Limited bonus aside it's a barely-tweaked everest with appropriate tradeoffs (2 HP for 1 armor, 1 repcap for 1 Save Target + 1 heatcap)

Which like, sure, I guess Everest is a stat stick too? 🤷

[minor tundra]

People getting weird about something released in new supplemental content? say it aint so......

[brisk flax]

It is and it isnt, it's got decent stats, it's just that "average mech" in PC terms is acceptably decent stuff, most of the Everest's sauce is trait related

[thick star]

new player with basically no experience here but also about GMS core bonuses it seems to me that they're less supposed to be actual general bonuses and more bonuses for the stuff not covered by skills. Which is why it's got all the weapon stuff

really looking through it seems like there are very few strictly offensive core bonuses outside of gms

which i guess makes some sense

[brisk flax]

Well, what do you mean "covered by skill?" Talents? Because Overpower Caliber and Autostabilizing Hardpoints are mechanically represented by a number of talents in varying capacities

[meager kestrel]

I mean, I'd argue Everest is the stat stick.

All of its traits are either 1/scene or don't affect combat directly. All it has are stats and initiative and it's quite good

[rose hamlet]

I mean I would too but it's also the "average yardstick" which should inform how we look at the potency of average stats

[indigo oasis]

Sometimes it’s easy to forget Lancer is a low numbers game

[thick star]

i meant like mech skills

[brisk flax]

Well most core bonuses are things not covered by those

"Not covered by HASE" is exceptionally broad in scope

[thick star]

i mean it's nebulous but hull is physical heartiness so ips-n core bonuses increase physical defense, agility is movin and stuff so scc bonuses give mobility, systems represent tech attack and defense so horus does get some offensive stuff, and engineering is heat so ha does heat stuff. Plus the accuracy to checks and saves that they all get

really im just trying to say that weapons aren't thematically tied to any of the four mech stats specifically so they go to gms

[spice aspen]

hopefully appropriate to mention it here since foundry v13 just got its big update: I did a little bit of cursory testing and this appears to still work fine so it should not need any changes across migrating the foundry system, it should just work out of the box. ping me if you run into issues though

[brisk flax]

thanks for checking

[smoky bluff]

Imagine if OP Cal and Autostab were just +2 bonuses

+2 Bonus damage and +2 on your next attack

[trail pivot]

one of those is definitely better than the other, but also i think it would still just kind of be boring and also not really worth it in the former's case

[smoky bluff]

true

[heady copper]

I would for sure like to know where these are from, im a sucker for more gms options

[carmine idol]

Doing a check now and as I see it:

• Himalaya Reinforcement is from Field Guide to Iridia
• AutoCoord is from Maria's Lancer Extras (there's a Google doc around here somewhere)
• Trace Drive is from InterCorp, though we renamed it from the original name of InterBlink

Goal was to get one of mobility, survivability and utility

Optionally also run Remixed Frequencies from Iridia to round it out with a hacking one, though it felt really rather strong hence the ommision.

[indigo oasis]

There’s also Suldan with Enhanced Systems Upgrade, Kangto Endochassis, and Superior Logistics

(I really like Kangto Endochassis personally)

[trail pivot]

I'd been interested in hearing precisely how the experience went, I didn't get much in the way of players at my own table even interested in it in particular

[rose hamlet]

I’ve been running Intrusion Package at my tables, as well; if you’d like feedback, where’s the best place to send it to you?

[trail pivot]

good question 🤔

uhhh hmm, you know, I'm not really sure. I didn't think my house rules would ever get this popular

I guess I could a forum for it or something

[rose hamlet]

Legit I figured you were fine with it being shared but didn’t care for feedback, so I just kinda kept the feedback to myself haha

[trail pivot]

oh, you know, fair, I guess if there's something someone liked or hated about it uhhh I can make a.forum or something about it. It probably won't be as high priority for adjustment as other stuff but yeah

I'll get around to making the forum in full eventually but if you wanna shoot me the tldr go ahead

[rose hamlet]

I’ll collect my notes and send em later

[trail pivot]

[carmine idol]

If my notes concern only Intrusion Package, would you like them via DM or here or thread? c:

[trail pivot]

you'll never guess what I just finished lol #1507078941062463509

[blissful garden]

@rocky crypt (lookie)

[rocky crypt]

oooh nice

[meager kestrel]

I just started reading the OpFor files and I'd never even considered using reinforcement pools as a sideboard. That's such a good thing to use them for and it seems so obvious in retrospect

[brisk flax]

This is a way of thinking that's informed my own construction of reinforcement pools for various combat scenes in modules like Solstice Rain and Winter Scar, and it's a thing I wish I had explained and gone into detail on earlier in retrospect

[indigo oasis]

When you say Sideboard what do you mean out of curiosity?

[meager kestrel]

Kai goes more into it in depth, but I believe the term might originate from Trading Card Games. The idea is that you have a separate decl or cards in a best of 3 format, and after game 1 you can swap the cards in your sideboard with ones in your deck. So usually your sideboard is filled with situational cards that hose a single match up hard but are pretty useless otherwise.

In the context of Lancer, it's using the sideboard as a roster of units to handle various situations that come up in play, rather than a static, general-purpose list. So say you have a control sitrep that has reinforcements. You might bring in a Bombard if the players are doing nothing but camp the back points, whereas that slot might instead be filled by a demolisher if the backlines need reinforcement due to them pushing up.

Or you have a reinforcement slot set up as either a Striker OR Controller depending on what your players killed fastest.

[brisk flax]

I want to say Magic the Gathering coined it but maybe it comes from somewhere else first, but that's the context I'm using

In Magic, a sideboard is a separate set of 15 cards in addition to your deck, and in organized play you're allowed to substitute cards between your deck and sideboard between rounds

In the dinosaur days when I played in magic tournaments, matches were best 2 out of 3, and after each game both players could pull from the sideboard

[indigo oasis]

Huh- fascinating. That is clever

[brisk flax]

it was a way to give extra value to cards that were very niche that you wouldn't necessarily want to include in your main deck because they could easily be invalidated

like, there was a whole set of cards called Circles of Protection that would let you reduce damage dealt by cards of a specific color, i.e. Circle of Protection: Red

well if you put that in your main deck and you play against a guy with no red cards, that sucks

so sideboards were established both to give those cards more play and also to (in theory) make the meta a little less rigid, though in practice there were still pretty hard metas, but in THEORY a sideboard could let you draft counters to certain things if they existed

[indigo oasis]

An immediate example that comes to mind is how in Competitive Doubles Pokemon you build a team of 6 but only bring 4 of them in. The “sideboard” are the ones you bring in instead of the mainstays depending on your opposition

[brisk flax]

yeah

an example of me doing this is combat 1 of Solstice Rain

the initial opfor is a slightly modified Tom Special, the reinforcements are more varied

the infamous bombard, there's a priest, a pyro, a ronin, etc

and also just some grunts

Another way to look at it is a "director" in games like Left 4 Dead which use dynamic difficulty

[indigo oasis]

Oh THAT’s why that first combat has so much class variety!

[brisk flax]

if the players are cruising on easy street, L4D's director will spawn more elite undead

[indigo oasis]

I never got that when I was first running it

[brisk flax]

if they're struggling, it'll pull back

[brisk flax]

well, hence me going "I wish I had explained this in better depth"

[meager kestrel]

Exactly, yeah. I don't play VGC but I watch Wolfey and it's the exact same deal

[indigo oasis]

Yeah I was initially overwhelmed by the combat’s complexity but had I known that was the intent i probably. Wouldn’t have been like that.

[brisk flax]

You see this sort of advice given in the gm corner channel a lot but usually not in so many terms, it's more just "if the players are struggling against your strikers, you maybe don't need to bring in more strikers"

or "if they kill all your controllers, bring in extra" etc

[meager kestrel]

That I have been doing, but most of my combats have been more or less the "copy the OpFor" strategy to reduce complexity

[indigo oasis]

Typically there tends to be a subtext of “you’ll probably bring all the reinforcements in eventually”, this kinda frames it as “it’s better to bring in one or the other” tho which is more interesting imo

[meager kestrel]

Making my own campaign module eight now and while I think most of my combats So far have adhered to that approach, I might start getting a bit more experimental with the OpFors

[indigo oasis]

Like instead of making back ups for the initial deployments just going “here’s a Rainmaker and an Ace in the reinforcements. Pick which one to use when the time comes” or something like that.

[meager kestrel]

I think ideally you probably have a few binary choices instead or the whole pool. (Demo OR Demolisher) + (Specter OR Bombard) for example

Ah, jinx

[indigo oasis]

Wait aren’t demo and Demolisher the same?

[meager kestrel]

I just mistyped. Meant for the alt to be ronin

[brisk flax]

sitreps do use "may" or "up to" type language, but "should you bring in units or not" is a hard one to give advice for

I am personally of the opinion that lancer is at its best when the players feel somewhat pressured

not in a stressy way but, like

xcom stops being fun when it's just you mopping up a couple sectoid stragglers

I also think there's kind of tacit pressure for GMs to use all the reinforcements they have available because "what if the sitrep ends and I have reinforcements left unused, did I pull my punches? Will the players think I'm sandbagging?" etc

[drowsy bison]

it's delightful to watch players panic and freak out as to how unfair and bullshit the encounter is before they promptly proceed to win handily.

[brisk flax]

the hill I will die on is that this is the dynamic every tactical combat game should strive for

the "it's so over" to "we're so back" pipeline is, imo, the ideal form of combat in a TRPG context, where the GM's goal is to challenge but not the same way a PvP player would challenge their opponent

I've had GMs relay stories to me about how their group hated this or that fight, they felt it was so bullshit, they all wanted to just quit, and then it ends with "anyway they won"

and it's like WHY ARE THEY UPSET?

they WON THE FIGHT

they BEAT THE ODDS

have they never seen DIE HARD?

[trail pivot]

at some point in my experience with playing i think that a looot of players are just way more averse to actually feeling any kind of challenge than they'd let on,

I remember once playing along side a guy who bragged about how he had this really sick ll9 build (we were ll2 or 3 at the time i dotn remember which) and he was going on about how well he knew the game and was ready to take on the challenges, and then in our first fight with him his lich gets in a bad spot and fumbles something and he didnt have soul vessel to recover and he just went on a 30 minute rant about how bullshit it all was

[brisk flax]

Generously, I think some of it is down to a lot of RPGs (I'm talking D&D here, but also some others) not really having a lot of "bounceback" in them

like, as someone who has spent time in the shadowrun mines, shadowrun can be very "you either kill the bear or it kills you, with little in-between"

[trail pivot]

and not that i think all players are like that, but i've seen a lot of players that just like, express open frustration very quickly when they struggle

[brisk flax]

D&D can, at various levels, also be similarly tuned to "we either win gloriously or eat shit and there's no wiggle room"

[trail pivot]

yeah i vaugely remember dnd being like that at times (it has been i wanna say 6 or 7 years since i have played a dnd)

but the last time i was running it i was at a stage where i was putting in raid boss mechanics and things of that nature to the game

[brisk flax]

lancer has, for all its foibles (structure tables with stun etc) more directly baked in leeway to get beat up some and then go on to keep fighting and winning

[trail pivot]

yeah,

[brisk flax]

but players newer to the system may not always be familiar with that and so they see the control sitrep go 3-0 in favor of the NPCs and two people have been structured and they go welp, it's so over

[trail pivot]

i do also think players in lancer are comparitively not quite so good at understanding how actually threatened they are by a given npc than usual

like one of the biggest things i'll always notice is how people will freak out about an artillery npc being close to them, but like

somehow they dont have that same feeling when its 15 to 20 spaces away

and in my head imlike "what, no why are you running away from the sniper it wants you to do that, that thing can't wrestle to save its life there's only one artillery that can actualyl handle a fist fight"

[austere mulch]

You reminded me of a match I was GM, but it was also partly my fault.

You see, the "Boss" had the "echo Cloak" From the sagittarius, only it was used on their allies rather than on players.

But basically they were afraid of a Bombard all the time because they thought it was the boss in disguise instead of that mysterious Berserker who wasn't going head-to-head with the nearest one

(The "boss" was a Ronnin with the Commander template)

[meager kestrel]

This I just don't understand at all. My brother in christ, you took the frame whose only defense is a broken reaction you can only use 1/turn. If you're playing lich you need to be prepared to occasionally eat shit and die

[sour mist]

one of my players gets very frustrated about bad dice rolls. Thankfully she has been very happy with the solution of A Build That Never Rolls Anything

[meager kestrel]

I love support builds for this reason among others

[sour mist]

yeah. they're a Lancaster with Orator and System Analyst and Fomorian Frame and the drake shield (for carrying around the Iskander). The only reason they don't have Leadership is somebody else already has that

[fossil fulcrum]

I've been exploring forms of dynamic difficulty alot in my campaign, partly because I'm new enough to running Lancer that I was far from confident on my ability to balance fights in advance.

Feels like it can be tricky because Lancer has... I want to say a strong unwritten social contract on hidden information? You don't want to move the goalposts mid-battle, or at least not do so lightly.

(Also sorry, what/where are the Opfor Files?)

[minor tundra]

Check pinned 👈 😎 👈

[trail pivot]

I think another aspect of dynamic difficulty is location of deployment

[brisk flax]

I talk about this in the opfor files sort of orthogonally, but reinforcements ARE nominally hidden info in lancer, there's no real official method of "scanning" for them

[fossil fulcrum]

Yeah, very much so

[brisk flax]

This means one way of doing reinforcements is, essentially, fudging them, and there's no REAL way the players could know

[fossil fulcrum]

One of the most kosher forms of hidden info

Quantity and makeup

[brisk flax]

I'm normally pretty anti-fudging, but at the same time, I think reinforcements are a place it doesn't actually matter unlike fudging dice rolls as long as you stick to the budget guidelines

Like, suddenly deciding "this assault is actually a cataphact shhhh" isn't the same as suddenly declaring a 1 was actually a 20

[fossil fulcrum]

oh sure

For me, dynamic difficulty has been more...

Well, did one sitrep where they walked into a slum and fought the petty tyrant ruler, who constantly tried to project strength when they should have been fighting smarter.

Inbuilt difficulty increase option was players scaring them badly enough that they actually stopped trying to aura farm and used smarter tactics.

OTOH, planned difficulty decrease would have been local populace taking this chance to revolt- they would have started spilling into the streets as friendly half-strength squads.

[spring sorrel]

Pretty new to encounter design, and reworking Wallflower's combats using the Rebakes. Does this look reasonable for 5 players? It's pretty close to the core OPFOR makeup:

Enemy Forces:
1x Veteran Elite Strider (Survival Knife, Weathering, Ranger Training)
2x Veteran Scout (Expose Weakness, Tactical Reposition)
1x Squad (Ambushers, Disciplined)
1x Support (Remote Reboot)
1x Specter (Ghostwalk)```
I'm not sure if I should swap the extra Scout for something else, like another Support or even a sixth class

[vale crescent]

So it's about 50/50 DPS and Supports

A defender or controller would be nice, probs controller considering it's HUC on a more skirmisher adjacent sniper support squad

I don't think two Vet scouts are necessary

[spring sorrel]

I could probably do either Barricade or Archer. The party has already faced an Archer before, but IDK if it would be too much to throw a high-damage Controller at them

[brisk flax]

Honestly, it's very hard to go wrong with a hive

"I need a controller" just slap a hive in there

Barricade though can also be quite good, especially in conjunction with the Strider's Weathering trait

I actually do a Strider comp for the OPFOR files that leans into this

Recommended Sitreps: Escort, Gauntlet, Recon
Enemy Forces: 
For 3 PCs:    
1x Barricade (Hunger/Pursuit Limpets)
1x Sentinel
1x Elite Veteran Strider (Siege Loadout, Recon Loadout, Weathering, Ranger Training)
1x Support (Remote Cloud, Remote Reboot)
For 4 PCs:     
+1x Hornet
For 5 PCs:    
+1x Sentinel
Strider: Add Commander template```

Hunger/Pursuit Limpets and Sealant Gun both create difficult terrain which the Strider can ignore

[young turtle]

https://tenor.com/view/true-feel-that-thats-true-gif-7410050725709839510

In need of a controller? Add a hive

You need a support of some kind? Add a hive

Feeling like the encounter is lacking in strikers? Believe it or not, also add a hive

[carmine pendant]

Tragically when they were making mechs, they perfected them with the hive and barricade

[solemn hornet]

Im 100% taking the GMS weapons and buffed Centimane from the maria rework

[brittle shore]

Okay so I've been running some custom missions using the OPFOR files as either a basic template for encounters or as recommendations and it's been a blast
For an upcoming encounter, I wanna run a group that's got some weird paracausal fuckshit™ going on, so I'll be adding some exotic and horror templates to the mix, and I'm wondering: What do y'all think would be a thematically fun OPFOR to use as the base for that?

Sitrep wise the goal is to reacquire a mcguffin, so gauntlet or straight up fight makes sense to me for sitrep

[brisk flax]

Out of curiosity, which of the opfors have you been using?

[brittle shore]

So far I've used The Tom Special as my new defacto "tutorial fight" (I find that the rebake version is even better for that than the original) and Tip of the Spear (with a few Suldan NPCs thrown in). Planning on using Hammer & Tongs and Bad Code in upcoming encounters as well

[brisk flax]

Nice, lemme know how it goes

[cunning glen]

Do the grunt classes from NPC rebake have the same "don't take damage on successful saves" clause that base game grunt template has?

[brisk flax]

Yes

Rebake grunts keep that and a number of them also have various forms of mitigation. The Defender type has overshield, the Striker type has a point of armor, the Controller type ignores the first instance of heat they take, etc

[fathom root]

supports ain got shit cus they the bomb!!!!

[fathom quiver]

Supports defense is "Eh, they're not actively harming us"

[tulip hawk]

Feedback For Opfor 'World On Fire' (assassins instead of scourers)

Sitrep: Gauntlet

Party Comp: LL2

Raleigh, Goblin, White Witch, Caliban, Enkidu, Swallowtail

This opfor is genuinely one of "There are many ways to end me, and they all involve you taking 10+ burn" opfor of all time

I've run this twice now, once with Scourers instead of assassins in a party of five, and now a party of six vs assassins. There is something so uniquely hellish, so genuinely horrifying, as a Pyro that can force voluntary movement with HorOS and punish players with grind maniple in case he's shredded and needs to dissuade attackers from capitalizing. From rounds 2-6, the Pyro had several, if not all of its turns, to light 3 or more players up with its flamethrower, because players tend to gravitate closer to address it's siege armor, but also horOS let's the pyro at reposition at least one person for the skirmish, if not several across the round on good rolls.

This opfor is a certain dealer of death, two players demeched and several others were riding into their last 1-2 structure/stress between everything else.

The Hive served as an excellent controller here for obvious reasons, but the real play is getting a nanite swarm behind the party or to the sides of them to corral them into the Pyros cone of death. The hive is certain burn, the Pyro is not guaranteed, so players tend to do anything they can to get away from the hive, no longer prioritizing the scorching horror tank slowly waddling up to them.

Mirage works excellently for the listed reasons in the doc, being a surefire way to scoot the Pyro along the map with little interference, combined with the Pyros seige armor and 3 base armor, means the mirage has little incentive to lend its invis. This makes the mirage a pain in the ass that's guaranteed to hang out for a while if it hangs out in the back away from the fight the Pyro and the hives are steering.

Fun stats:

Record Burn for first party: 24 on Drake

Record Burn for 2nd party: 16 on White Witch

[brisk flax]

I appreciate the feedback but I want to clarify something, is the overall thrust of this positive or "needs work?"

I can read it either way and I just want to make sure

[tulip hawk]

Sorry, positive, big fan. The opfor has enough meaningful friction where players really have to choose between four equally shitty options to get in close enough to crack the pyros shell, or shred it at range later in the encounter when they can time it to shred at the end of his last turn, then light the guy up.

I don't think it needs work because, again, at the end of a 3 combat mission it's responsible only for demeching two pilots, but I guess that's what I expect out of the combat exchange that late into a mission. I think the scourers are largely more dangerous than the assassins but I wanted to try both sets of strikers to see how they went.

[brisk flax]

In terms of raw hitting potential I do think Scourers probably have that over Assassins, yeah

I view Assassins as kind of existing in a more "striker with controller elements" sort of place, they're good harassers and pursuers while the scourer is just "lots of big number damage focusing on someone repeatedly"

[royal spoke]

hey, maybe silly question, but there is no revised elite template, right?

just use the normal elite template when i want to?

[proud night]

Elite is a cheaty template because it just says "Get another from something else" outside of more activations of course

[royal spoke]

yeaaah that makes sense haha

[ebon trench]

Elite more or less is fairly simple and makes no further assumptions about what it needs to do besides putting two mechs into one body

Fluffypaws, The Fluffy Pawed ↩️

[Reply to:](#1334655875679260692 message) hey, maybe silly question, but there is no revised elite template, right?

[royal spoke]

yeeee

i was worried for just a sec lol

[ancient forge]

I happen to be looking at adjusting World on Fire for the enhanced combat gauntlet sitrep (which has a x1.5 budget). I’ve mostly adjusted it by bringing more of what’s already suggested (extra hive, both support options). I need to fill out one more point of structure budget though. I thought grunts at first, but this is kind of a bonus combat they’ll get an extra downtime action out of for winning, so I want it to be a good challenge. And this is the same party I’ve mentioned before that likes using Celestial Reordering with the Iskander core power, which they have available and is plenty strong without popping 4 of my npc activations round one.

Instead I’m thinking something that might prefer to be more stationary, just so I can park it in places that make it how to use Celestial Reordering a little less of a no brainer. Rainmaker has some forced movement options, good range, and is less dependent on line of sight, so it should fit the bill there. Does that sound reasonable?

The thought of how the hound missile optional might interact with the player’s forced movement stuff did also cross my mind but that might be juggling a lot when there’s already an ultra

[crude trail]

possible error in the NPC LCP file (1.20.1): the Evasive and Legion traits (Ultra template) give +5 evasion and e-def respectively instead of +4; the description text in both the PDF and the LCP agree it should be +4

i am playing around with a version of the Bad Code OPFOR where the witch is an ultra (for narrative reasons), and it came up when considering ultra features

(i've created a corrected copy of the LCP locally, for personal expediency)

[brisk flax]

@carmine idol @subtle nacelle might be something to note

[carmine idol]

Thanks for the note, correct that o7