Kung Fu Giant Robots

[m.mavnn]

I'm idly considering a campaign that might include a lot of large characters and vehicles (think Macross/Rifts/Undocumented Features). If it happens it will be a reasonably high powered and gonzo campaign, so strict balance isn't the goal here but I was noticing that the normal size rules don't quite cut it in this type of game.

 

Because they operate by giving large characters a DCV penalty (in effect) it becomes very hard to represent the kind of agile, highly skilled hand to hand combat between mecha/large creatures that you often see in the source material - both parties will tend to have a much higher effective OCV than DCV, skewing the effectiveness of combat towards blocks and high defenses for large characters and making them feel "big and lumbering" even when fighting each other.

 

As an alternative, I'm considering making size give the normal penalty to: OCV, DCV, Stealth and Perception rolls but a matching bonus in Range PSLs. This would mean two large opponents would fight against each other exactly the same way and with the same modifiers as two human sized opponents, just that they can fight effectively at longer range. When fighting against much smaller opponents they will find them hard to spot and hit at close range as they "get within reach" but at longer ranges size will become less and less of a factor. Although I'm not planning to use a strict "rule of X" I'd then let larger characters up their suggested attack and defence levels by 1 DC/3 defense per size category to compensate for their lower effective combat skills.

 

Has anyone tried anything like this? Can you see any immediate issues I've missed?

[Marcus]

That’s really quite clever.  I don't see an immediate problem, but Ill certainly think on it.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I would sign up for this game at a con in a heartbeat

 

Something worth considering is that you could have two scales of CV: vs other giant robots and vs people.  People should have no problem hitting a skyscraper-sized robot.  But the robot vs robot combat should be a bit more tricky, as its at their scale

[unclevlad]

Palladium/Robotech used SDC/MDC.  SDC...standard damage.  MDC...mega damage.  If you have MDC armor, then no SDC attack could hurt you...even if nominally it was big enough.  (1 MDC was 1000 SDC, IIRC.)  Similarly, SDC armor was useless against an MDC attack...the SDC target is just plain annihilated when hit.  People fight people, mechs fight mechs, and battle tanks, and the like.

 

At that point, you can simply define "1 meter" as perhaps 10 meters, or the like...for mechas.  It's similar to saying that starships don't necessarily have to pay for the HIGH level of Megascale, for their sensors and movement.   

[LoneWolf]

The old Robot Warrior rules did not take size modifiers on robots that were the same size.   This is basically the same thing  

[m.mavnn]

5 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Palladium/Robotech used SDC/MDC.  SDC...standard damage.  MDC...mega damage.  If you have MDC armor, then no SDC attack could hurt you...even if nominally it was big enough.  (1 MDC was 1000 SDC, IIRC.)  Similarly, SDC armor was useless against an MDC attack...the SDC target is just plain annihilated when hit.  People fight people, mechs fight mechs, and battle tanks, and the like.

 

At that point, you can simply define "1 meter" as perhaps 10 meters, or the like...for mechas.  It's similar to saying that starships don't necessarily have to pay for the HIGH level of Megascale, for their sensors and movement.   

 

I'm actually deliberately avoiding that kind of sharp divide. I used Rifts as an example because more gamers know it but the main inspiration is more UF, a universe where many fictional universes meet with histories tweaked enough to make them coherent. The kind of universe where the Norse God of Mecha (son of Skuld) teams up with the Avatar (Korra edition) to take down a sith trained Babylon 5 psi-cop who's recreating the 3m tall dark troopers from the first Jedi Knight game needs a sliding scale of power rather than 'mega/not mega'.

 

(So does Rifts for that matter - the lore brilliant Pantheons of the Megaverse resorts to giving characters tens of thousands of MDC points to try and scale relative powers...)

 

16 minutes ago, LoneWolf said:

The old Robot Warrior rules did not take size modifiers on robots that were the same size.   This is basically the same thing  

Interesting! I started with 4th and so missed Robot Warriors. How did it deal with multiple sized combatents in the same fight?

[LoneWolf]

It’s been a while and I only played it a couple of times so did not pick up the book.  From  what I remember they had a scale of sizes and if two different sizes where used you took the one with most of the robots and adjusted the DCV of the others up or down deepening on if they were larger or smaller. So, two robots of the same size used the normal rules.  Anything larger or smaller where then adjusted.     

[mattingly]

When I run Monumental Battle (all the giant statues in the world beating each other up, from Lady Liberty to Colossus of Rhodes), I just treat them all as "normal size." The standard everyman just becomes 50x taller than usual. Hexes grow to an equivalent size.

[tombrown803]

you might want to make those penalties size based. So a Mech would take a DCV bonus against peoples attacks, but have their normal DCV against other Mechs

[Chris Goodwin]

On 10/15/2023 at 1:35 PM, m.mavnn said:

Interesting! I started with 4th and so missed Robot Warriors. How did it deal with multiple sized combatents in the same fight?

 

I'm sort of the Robot Warriors expert.  🙂

 

Robot Warriors used two concepts: Size Class, which wasn't quite the same as a vehicle's Size stat, and Ground Scale.  Ground Scale was used for setting the size of one hex on the map, and the Ground Scale of a map was suggested to be set to be equal to the Size Class of the majority of the combatants. 

 

For reference, a standard human is considered to be Size Class 1, and Ground Scale 1 uses 2 meter hexes.  Every three doublings of mass (or three levels of vehicle Size) is +1 Size Class, while every +1 Ground Scale doubles the size of one hex. 

 

To use it in play, set the initial Range Modifier increment in meters based on the target's Size Class, and convert it to hexes at the Ground Scale you're using.  If you're in the same hex (regardless of Ground Scale) as your target, you're at -0 to RMod regardless of size difference. 

 

As an example, if you're using "standard" Robot Warriors mecha (25 to 199.9 ton), Size Class would be 4, with a first range increment of 64 meters.  At Ground Scale 4 hexes (16 meters), the initial range increment becomes 4 hexes.  If the mecha is shooting at a human (Size Class 1, initial range increment 8m) on the Ground Scale 4 battlefield, the mecha has to be in the same 16m hex in order to not be at a range penalty at all.  If the human is shooting back at the mecha (Size Class 4, initial range increment 64m), they're shooting with a -0 RMod out to four Ground Scale 4 16m hexes. 

 

I hope my explanation makes sense.  Here is a document I've written setting out all of the above with nicely formatted tables.  I hope it's helpful!

[m.mavnn]

That... actually sounds not far off what I'm suggesting for characters of the same size (modulo some minor version maths tweaks). Which is encouraging 😀. I am planning to keep the element of large characters being easy to hit for small characters though.

 

I did forget one other aspect of the house rule though, which is that large characters ignore the area effect advantage if it doesn't exceed the area covered by their own "hands". (This applies regardless of actual body configuration / hand size, use the default value from the size templates).

 

Let's say that Eva-1, Solid Snake and a troll end up in a fight.

 

Eva-1 is approximately 80m tall making it gargantuan. This gives a -10 penalty to OCV/DCV, a +10 RSL, and it treats area attacks hitting 4m of less as normal attacks (can be blocked or dodged, etc) unless the special effect makes that silly.

 

At 1m range Snake can stab the Eva with an effective +10 to hit, and would be hard for Eva to hit except Eva's feet stomping on him count as a 4m AoE attack. The troll? Same but with +8.

 

At 32m, Snake now has a -4 range penalty to hit Eva while the Eva unit is still slapping down on him with 4m radius hand to hand attacks. The troll is the throwing rocks with a -2 range mod. Against a human opponent they would be 1m area effect attacks but the Eva swats them aside with its 4m wide hands (a block).

 

At 250m Snake's -10 range mod completely counters the +10 size bonus he's receiving for shooting at Eva. Unfortunately for him, the Eva still has no range penalty at all, and its weapons probably do around 5DC more damage. It does still have the -10 size mod to hit.

 

At 1km Eva has a -14 penalty to hit Snake (-10 from size, -4 from range), but Snake only has a -4 penalty to reply due to the Eva's size (note that from 250m onwards this is exactly the same total modifiers as raw - within that distance the Eva is disadvantaged compared to raw).

 

If two Eva's get into a fight, they can both use unmodified OCV/DCV and the standard range modifiers without changing any of the maths at all if each hex is assumed to be 32m across. Which conveniently is almost exactly the scale Battletech maps are drawn at, just retaining the ability to zoom in...

 

It does leave one question though: is it disadvantageous enough compared to raw to change the values of Growth and the large size limitations?

 

[Gauntlet]

You might want to think about picking up the original Robot Warriors for 3rd Edition along with the upgrade they put out for Robot Warriors for the 6th edition called Robot Warriors to HERO System Current Editions that is on DriveThruRPG.

[Chris Goodwin]

20 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

You might want to think about picking up the original Robot Warriors for 3rd Edition along with the upgrade they put out for Robot Warriors for the 6th edition called Robot Warriors to HERO System Current Editions that is on DriveThruRPG.

 

As the guy who wrote the update I encourage you to pick up both of these.  🙂

[Gauntlet]

I, and my players, always have always thought that Robot Warriors was the best way to do Mech Combat. Much better than using the standard vehicle rules. Only problem is that it does not fit out well with standard point values so it will only work if you are doing a Mech game, not in a standard Champions Superheroic game. I was able to make a Mech on 0-point base, with only disadvantages and it would easily destroy most starting and mid-level Superheroic characters.

[dmjalund]

i keep reading the title as Kung Fu Giant Panda Robots

[Gauntlet]

Those are the most fearful of the group. You never want to have to go against them. They would definitely mean your death!!!