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Mecha Rules for Starfinder?
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<blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 7215347" data-attributes="member: 1879"><p>While the Starship building rules are a sensible format for mecha construction rules (also look at the classic battletech), my intuition is that the vehicle rules are probably the right section of the rules to run them under. </p><p></p><p>Although really it depends on what sort of mechs we're talking about. The lowest end of the mecha spectrum (including your APUs GFreak) already exist in the rules as powered armour. This is sufficient to cover the APU/Bubblegum Crisis/Starship Troopers level of personal armour sized mech. Something like the Tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell are also covered by the existing Drone rules.</p><p></p><p>Larger mechs in the 10-20 foot range (Covering the Large and Huge size categories in the person/vehicle scale) probably still belong in the vehicle scale of operations. They should be vulnerable to human scale weapons, so this seem about right. If we care about the cube-square law level of realism then this is where mechs should really top out. This aligns roughly to AT-STs/Locust mechs.</p><p></p><p>Growing past 20' we leave the realm of plausible physics, but hell this is a science fantasy game anyway. At this point shifting into the Starship scale may be appropriate. Conveniently enough the "Tiny" Starship category starts at 20' so sure, let's run with that.</p><p></p><p>From here you have to look at what fiction you want to represent in your games. Battletech gritty mech combat? Pacific Rim Kaiju punching action? Warhammer 40K city killers? Robotech/Transformers shape-shifting Mechs? </p><p></p><p>I'd probably set up my own scale for mechs that overlapped the personal vehicle scale on the lower end and up into the starship scale on the upper end. I can't imagine mechs needing to go past medium or at most large on the starship scale however.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Andor, post: 7215347, member: 1879"] While the Starship building rules are a sensible format for mecha construction rules (also look at the classic battletech), my intuition is that the vehicle rules are probably the right section of the rules to run them under. Although really it depends on what sort of mechs we're talking about. The lowest end of the mecha spectrum (including your APUs GFreak) already exist in the rules as powered armour. This is sufficient to cover the APU/Bubblegum Crisis/Starship Troopers level of personal armour sized mech. Something like the Tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell are also covered by the existing Drone rules. Larger mechs in the 10-20 foot range (Covering the Large and Huge size categories in the person/vehicle scale) probably still belong in the vehicle scale of operations. They should be vulnerable to human scale weapons, so this seem about right. If we care about the cube-square law level of realism then this is where mechs should really top out. This aligns roughly to AT-STs/Locust mechs. Growing past 20' we leave the realm of plausible physics, but hell this is a science fantasy game anyway. At this point shifting into the Starship scale may be appropriate. Conveniently enough the "Tiny" Starship category starts at 20' so sure, let's run with that. From here you have to look at what fiction you want to represent in your games. Battletech gritty mech combat? Pacific Rim Kaiju punching action? Warhammer 40K city killers? Robotech/Transformers shape-shifting Mechs? I'd probably set up my own scale for mechs that overlapped the personal vehicle scale on the lower end and up into the starship scale on the upper end. I can't imagine mechs needing to go past medium or at most large on the starship scale however. [/QUOTE]
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