Tabletop, video games, sports and maybe someday some other things if I get the ambition to learn.
Started reading the NPC archetypes in LANCER and immediately had a laugh on the Ace. Being able to dodge at least 1 hit per combat (more if the ability recharges) is hilarious.
I also need to brush up on my icons and stat blocks. Gotta get back into that D&D 4e mindset. I like the stat blocks though.
LANCERPosting will continue until Shadowrun Morale improves.
I really like the idea of Lancer. It's a game I'm eager to try, but have only had one opportunity that fell apart.
Hey, I've also been in the Lancer headspace so feel free to hit me up if you need someone to talk about this bullshit!
But I got stuck on the Hornet tonight. Give them Hex Missiles and their first round they can potentially do 6 heat to a mech- which will stress out the majority of frames. And you can make them Grunts and just swarm the players. The idea of having them step onto the board and immediately take a reactor stress is just SO funny to me because players often neglect heat management and e-defense. So this is a fun tutorial lesson on why those matter.
This actually highlights the thing I like about Lancer- which is a similar thing to why I dug Pathfinder back in the day- was finding your enemy's weakness. There is no perfect build. Their defence is too high? Grapple them, disarm them, throw an area attack.
And it worked both ways. Players are trying to find these points and if they are smart, building characters who can hit different defense types. And as the GM you are going- okay how can I hit this character and make it really bad for them.
You have not seen a player break until you've seen an Archer get disarmed by a Monk who then flees 80 feet, and they realize there is no way they can get it back.
as a guy who's run an entire campaign and started another, i have to say, i really don't actually like grunts very much. i use them very sparingly. see, the solution to 6 heat hornet grunts? is to carry a bunch of pistols on aux-aux slots. one player can knock out four grunts in a single barrage if they've got four pistols, with no chance of failure. so it becomes a "who brought the pistol" check that your players can't really reasonably see coming unless warned.
my point isn't "don't do this," it's that Lancer gives you, the GM, a truly unreal number of RAW-legal ways to make players miserable (try tossing perma invisible on a lot of normal ranged enemies) and you have to be very judicious. it's absolutely fair game to hit people on their weak points (one of my current players is running an LL3 Atlas with ~18 Evasion, so i hit em with a single Hive and that put the fear of god back into her) but you definitely gotta be... reserved.
...plus, reliable is already very useful against Hornets, so a regular HP hornet that's harder to take down but still not that tough, and can put out that heat but over more turns, is just kind of a more interesting challenge, imo.
Thanks for the perspective! I'm still in the "casually reading the book" phase of pre-pre-prep so this sort of thing is helpful.
Ah see I constantly have seen people not use auxillary or reliable weapons. If I did then yeah a bigger version would work. Personally I think an Ultra Hornet with Siege Armor would be funny against players with that play style
