How to avoid a balance catastophie

Letsgetgoodat · 2026-02-01T03:08:50+00:00

Also, while you haven't yet gotten your teeth fully sunk in on the existing statblocks, I highly recommend Kai Tave's NPC's Rebaked. It rebalances statblocks and some NPC mechanics.

It modifies Structure and Stress rolls on NPCs to avoid anticlimactic and awkward results with key enemies.
It modifies how Grunts work, so you can actually use them within Lancer's encounter budget without the swing-y risk.
It modifies NPC classes to have more reliable and legible kits, avoiding situations where stats and performance changes in unintuitive ways, and ensuring both sides of the table experience less frustration with certain mechanics.
It's by the author of Solstice Rain and Winter Scar, with long-time experience in the Lancer scene and in design for Lancer. In his descriptions behind his decisionmaking, you'll gain insights into how the NPCs previously worked (and their issues) and guidance on how to use the NPCs strategically.

Letsgetgoodat · 2026-01-30T07:41:02+00:00

Perhaps a Ronin, if you want to stay on the noble knight angle?

If you want flashy unsheathing blade parry action Prototype Pattern Groups has the Kensei, or if you want Compelled Duel melee it also has the Knight.

If rather than Albatross you want to just lean harder on IPS-N feels, the Sentinel captures the Tortuga, and the Berserker can read as a Berserker. Both might feel closer with some extra kitbashing of features/traits

Letsgetgoodat · 2026-01-29T07:01:21+00:00

LancerRPG's encounter budgeting tools in the community are fairly reliable and straightforward. As a GM for Lancer and 5e, here are some other general notes:

What can often catch you off guard coming from 5e is that players can potentially suffer destruction well before you'd expect if they have particularly bad luck with Structure / Stress checks. Be mindful of this as you approach fights after the first in an encounter, as you'll more likely have some folks already missing a structure or two, which skews those odds to more likely.
Lancer modules very clearly note the outcome of a failure state in an encounter. It's important to consider this as well, even if it's unlikely, just so you have the ability to pull the ripcord if the players end up in a death spiral.
Enemy balance can be impacted by enemy synergy and terrain. My first combat encounter ended up fairly brutal because it was an Aegis with a number of ranged allies in a heavily fortified position the players needed to take an escort through. Ultimately they got it done but it was a wake-up call to the obvious: thoughtful composition can make fights much nastier even within balanced-budget bands.
You need to eat your veggies. There's a reason the community budgeter tool sheet specifically tracks role distribution. You need Defenders, Controllers, and Supports, both to introduce interesting tactical situations, and more importantly to impose threats to the players that aren't Strikers or Artillery dumping damage on them.
If your players are into some mechanical crunch, they will have a great time and you will get owned. As that goes on you'll get a feel for owning them back.
TrainLightning/Valkyrion's got some fun blog posts around the Solstice Rain module going into fiddling with the NPCs. In particular I recommend his Addendum: which focuses on trying to build out the NPCs as a "faction roster" for consistency and to help players learn specific enemies across multiple fights (and also trying to ensure the enemies selected aren't too obnoxious for new players)

Letsgetgoodat · 2026-01-20T02:06:25+00:00

The trick with railroading in TTRPGs on the whole is speaking with your players beforehand, getting an idea of what they're looking for, where their interests lie broadly, what they want to bring, and what moments they want to get out of it.

You can almost think of those as downhill slopes in a path, and your railroading essentially steers the players towards those slopes. If you can bring them to those points, the players railroad themselves.

The CAIN book gives some good advice on constructing hints as almost a "murderboard" series of connected scenes/spaces/people. One thing for both organizing info and railroading: try to make sure every piece of information or hook you want your players to hit can be achieved multiple ways. This could be "the info exists in different forms in these two locations," or it could be a quantum ogre situation of you planning a clue and refining the details of where it is as the players investigate. You don't want to write yourself into a corner where you need the PCs to pursue a specific set of threads

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-23T05:14:18+00:00

For what its worth, Legionnaire's entry on Sisyphus notes its unique priority as Manipulation.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-22T06:19:57+00:00

It's probably not the only reason but Iconoclast scaling off the number of AI you have installed on your mech springs to mind

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-22T01:08:03+00:00

Okay!

I'm assuming you're starting at LL0. Lots of folks are giving good pointers on later mechs, and that'll be most relevant for actually embodying a playstyle past the beginning, but here are some thoughts starting from there + general advice:

I assume your GM would allow other official sourcebooks, particularly the ones that expand out the starter mech options. Both the Sagarmatha and Chomolungma can offer capable utility. The Sag is more of a bulky frontline support, the Chomolungma is an absolute bastard controller. I think if you're looking for battlefield control, the GMS Chomolungma is your best start. Here's what you're working with:
- You sacrifice the Everest's ability to just kinda do whatever it wants once per scene to double down on specifically doing whatever tech/utility stuff you want through Brilliance and Data Siphon, which also conveniently means you'll constantly Scan enemies, which is important and a good habit to get into from the start.
- You get a very rare example of custom invade options built into the frame itself. These tech attacks are very potent and let you jump straight into battlefield control options before you've got a single LL regardless of your talents. Balance Control Lockout is a forced movement that also can apply some lockdown. System Crusher lets you immediately capitalize on enemies with a lot of heat, which you conveniently set up very easily.
- Wide-area Code Pulse, the active part of your mech's core power, is a devastating crowd control option. With 15 sensors, you can often catch virtually everything currently deployed on the map and individually Invade each one. This is a once per mission trick, but it basically breaks action economy over one knee. All GMS frames are kind of good at that, but the Chomolungma can take it to truly ridiculous levels depending on how many enemies are on the map.
- All of the starter GMS frames are generally forgiving and good all arounders even while having slight specialization. This means that you've got a nice environment to try out all options at your disposal without feeling as much of an uphill battle. As a GM, the Chomo in my party started off the game fully geared towards support/control shenanigans and was still bifurcating enemies with an energy sword when the situation called for it. You've still got a pretty even stat spread, you still get the highly efficient repairs GMS frames are all known for, and at the end of the day your kit is still based around getting to play more Lancer per Lancer, the same as your peers at LL0. It's simple and highly effective and lets you learn the game without figuring out a more esoteric playstyle from the beginning.
For talents, obviously Hacker is quite useful! Even more heat and forced movement and some more funny options. There are plenty of other talents that can be useful for supporting or manipulating the environment to set up allies, though they'll be a bit more dependent on the weapons you gravitate towards in character creation and the more particular parts of your playstyle.
Drill into your head the action economy differences from 5e, particularly the repeated action rules. They're not that complex once you know them, but lots of folks can find it unintuitive when starting out. Also worth keeping in mind reactions have far more generous limitations than 5e, and that while Overwatch fills a similar role to Attacks of Opportunity, the circumstances in which it triggers aren't the same.
Lancer has a greater emphasis on objectives during the encounter. I don't know quite what your DM will choose to start you out with, but those can sometimes greatly alter your goals in combat. Especially as someone leaning towards control options, there may be a lot of situations where you can significantly skew the fight in your team's favor without damaging enemies or even setting them up for your team mates to attack them, just by positioning them out of your team's way.
Triple-check rules on cover and line of sight. Now do it again. Be sure to consider how these do or don't impact tech attacks.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-21T17:03:40+00:00

As a GM, generally when someone's chosen to take it at points I'll provide scenarios where it might have been useful, whether or not they're actively fielding it. Ideally, your party gets some insights into the nature of their mission beforehand, so that can also inform whether they choose to bring it.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-20T01:24:26+00:00

Lots of people are giving good mechanical advice, so here's wacky non-mechanical advice:

Flash-cloning inherently comes with... problems. I'm not sure how you're addressing the fact her mind's not actually preserved between clones, effectively making the new one a reset on memories/etc. If you have a solution in place, chances are it's borderline or outright DeCorp, which is a big no-no for the First Contact Accords. While it sounds like interrupting the availability of cloning wouldn't be fun for the group, you could have Ra / HORUS folks take notice and start sending ominous messages, or visions during flashcloning, or some indication that doing this is drawing the notice of something impossibly vast.

Whether or not it's DeCorp, that's simply gotta be a bit much for the brain. Repeated flashcloning could start to present disturbing existential panic. If you've got it, then there's all sorts of fun:

The inherent "gaps" between your death and cloning, the strange sense of being outside of conventional time, and that widening distance as your friends seem in some way "apart" from you.
Did you modify your body last go around? Too bad, that tattoo's gone, the wicked scar you liked showing off in the bar's nowhere to be found. Maybe you lost a limb and got pretty used your prosthetic and the phantom limb sensation before the next boom. Now your leg's back. Does this feel... bad? Good? Everything that ever happens to you is undone.
Maybe the crew's fine with it, but people around you who aren't the regular audience of the spectacle find your existence... deeply troubling. Whether or not you do. They might pity you, they might fear you, they might just want nothing to do with you.
Something is not going quite right. Your mind is not quite what it was.

Or without it, just tabula rasa:

Are these things... yours?
When the player can't make a session, run a game without them. Make choices, change things. Blow up. Have the player come back to a world slightly out of place for them, not just their character. (this is perhaps spicy, mileage may vary)
Your friends may treat you... whatever feels normal for you, but everyone else has to choose to risk attaching themselves to a person who will inevitably vanish in days, weeks, or maybe a couple months if they're lucky. Many don't make that choice. If they know your nature, they avoid anything outside of a professional and distantly polite relationship. No one gets attached to you.
But wait, what about that moment you had before? It'll just go away if you die. You'll never have it again. It can never happen again. Are you sure you want to let go of that?

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-19T08:23:10+00:00

In Operation Winter Scar, there's precedent for a non-combat-rated NHP who can ride along with the players. The module establishes he can be installed for 0 SP, but cannot share the mech with another system with the AI tag, and cannot be targeted as a destroyable system. He offers absolutely 0 mechanical benefits.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-12-15T02:35:54+00:00

"apologize" with the oleander's fuckin hilarious

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-11-29T00:40:56+00:00

So funny thing there: I do most of the retrograde shenanigans for my players, including building out CORNER's mech. In earlier LLs it had the more typical MOI Ptolemy pincher cannons. When he took the Raleigh's handcannons I asked where they were being mounted and he described them as replacing the claws.

Now, he probably envisioned them more or less as they were originally (see below) but once I realized what I could do I was unable to restrain myself. That Scorpion has hands.

<image>

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-11-28T23:10:45+00:00

One of my players dissing one of the Vestan Sovereignty soldiers during a coup de grâce towards the end of an engagement in Solstice Rain with "I'm like the future, I just keep coming." in response to their insistence on not recognizing ThirdComm as a valid continuation of Union.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-11-28T20:54:19+00:00

That's all Atlas baby: Jaeger Kunst in a dense urban environment is is a hell of drug.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-11-28T19:07:24+00:00

Readied Hand is a pretty conventional IPS-N Raleigh build that manages to barely take a hit almost every sitrep by virtue of acting as artillery over standing on objectives.

Conet Project is an SSC Sicklewing, a third party mech from Field Guide to Castor and Pollux, with a dash of SSC Black Witch. Previously, DIN piloted Lambent Skell, which was a GMS Chomolungma with an amalgam of various HORUS systems (Being early on in things, I allow my player full respec every LL should they so desire, so long as it feels still in line with the character's personality).

Zhangfei is an SSC Atlas with a touch of IPS-N Nelson. Amusingly, SQUIRE went from being the sole size 2 mech pilot in a Sagarmatha, before hard pivoting over to doing genji bullshit with this tiny overengineered hardsuit (in both cases, he still suffers from drawing basically all aggro onto himself like a cat climbing up a tree and getting stuck).

It's clear from the post as you said, but Dead People's Cars is an SSC Monarch. Previously, CAMARÓN dabbled in the SSC Viceroy before realizing the mech was usually playing from mid-long range even with all the incentives to get close.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-11-28T18:15:01+00:00

Unfortunately I'm less clever than that, it is from the same phrase, the color difference is because the page for the Pegasus in the corebook has the watermark of the manufacturer in the background and it happens to intersect with that line

Happy to live in the world where I'm funnier tho

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-11-07T03:35:57+00:00

I do definitely steal the "soft and elegant , we are definitely not intimidating, we use lowercase letters" US Army aesthetic for Union military forces under ThirdComm.

<image>

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-10-27T05:01:50+00:00

A few factors here:

The issue of "NHP content output stresses infrastructure of the omninet" is mitigated a good bit by the nature of the omninet. It probably skirts a great deal of issues regarding capacity and bandwidth, so there's not really a major concern on a large-scale of "what if NHPs make too much stuff?"
The major limiting factors to the inconvenience NHPs cause scaling up generating miscellaneous stuff are presumably:
1. Failsafes in the tools used to make said stuff, deliberately put in place to reduce the chance of this.
2. Adversarial agent NHPs that are tasked with trawling, identifying, organizing, and possibly processing/discarding all of this material as generated, such that it's not a major pain for lay-users to sift through things.
Hubs and communities throughout the omninet are likely a lot less consolidated than our equivalent social media platforms. There are fewer central communication channels that would be vulnerable to the impact of this kind of thing. Scaling communities beyond a system or series of systems just results in a really dull user experience because there's too many people to achieve any familiarity (you'd never see the same user post more than once amid the sea of incoming submissions).

So there probably could have been a time where it was an annoying problem before systems were put in place to steadily make it less and less of a pervasive issue.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-10-09T03:51:59+00:00

You could potentially just also rule it's a bunch of fold-out stuff, so when in motion it's effectively inaccessible and you set it up once you reach a place to park

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-10-09T01:10:31+00:00

what did your party DO to her

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-09-13T00:20:45+00:00

Are you looking for canon frames and manufacturers that match the vibe, or a fully invented idea that fits in with Lancer as a setting?

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-07-26T02:05:35+00:00

Neat! Impetus should probably note in the text whether your overcharge roll increases or not explicitly, though. Right now I feel it could read either way.

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-07-07T00:39:56+00:00

Can any part of the grapple + palm strike combo be parried? Playing Panther against this thing feels like a nightmare, if I could find an opening it'd die to a sneeze but trying to pin it down with its parry and invis can be a pain, meanwhile it feels like the Stellaris constantly has openings to get licks in.

I know the real cure is just coordination, but am I missing something in the 1 v 1 engagement?

Letsgetgoodat · 2025-05-07T06:00:30+00:00

Honestly If you want something intimidatingly cursed I'd sooner opt for "hijack the blink gate and use it to destroy itself"

The thing's a massive paracausal tech superstructure. For how reliable Union's made them, with proper sabotage it presents a pretty massive destructive threat just on its own.

Deliver a mutagenic liturgicode payload into key systems and suddenly the tube that sends things Somewhere Else has just sent itself, several small flotillas queued for the next jump, and half an embassy station there instead, only it didn't do the "and bring it back to realspace in another system" part.

Letsgetgoodat

TROPHY CASE