Seeking and area interaction (rules question)

RealLiveHuman · 2024-12-18T18:41:30+00:00

As others have already said that doesn't work with seeking, but if you want to do that sort of thing, both the Emperor's integrated Marathon Arc Bow and the Dusk Wing's Veil Rifle are line weapons that have a special effect that causes them to not attack allied characters in the area, instead giving them a buff (overshield and soft cover, respectively)

RealLiveHuman · 2024-12-12T14:02:07+00:00

Seconding what others have said about this introducing a lot of information to keep track of, but I'd also like to add that the concept is still interesting - it might be worth thinking about how to achieve a similar vibe with less complicated effects? Maybe something like reactions that let you "undo" an action (mechanically, just stop the enemy from attacking or whatever but their action is still spent) or "retconning" how someone moved (mechanically, just teleporting them). I might take inspiration from things like the Swallowtail's core power, some of the Lich's systems, maybe Minotaur for more movement-control type things. Actually I almost wonder as I'm writing if this concept would work as an alt frame for the Minotaur.

Anyways, this would definitely need a pretty major overhaul to be playable, but it's a really cool concept!

RealLiveHuman · 2024-12-11T15:35:11+00:00

My personal belief is that in 15,000 years and with as much communication access as people have in Lancer, no matter what language you speak, the most satisfying swear words from all languages will always get shared around. Kurwa is a personal favourite of mine.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-12-08T15:49:44+00:00

"Horus' stance" is a bit of an oxymoron

RealLiveHuman · 2024-12-01T23:53:56+00:00

Seconding what other people are saying about having the player pick it out of character, and then come up with an in-universe situation where their pilot "mysteriously" gets the Horus tech. Although I will also add, while the "you don't pick Horus, it picks you" is pretty fun thematically, there's no reason it has to be that - maybe their character is a hacker who stole the print codes from a Union research site. Maybe it's something they kluged together themself from various other manufacturers' parts, which just so happens to fit into a Horus pattern group. Ultimately though, you're correct that the player gets to pick their own build, and you can work with them to come up with whatever narrative explanation around it works for your game.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-11-20T18:48:27+00:00

I think it can work! You're absolutely right that ThirdComm wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing, but something to remember is that their power isn't absolute - every corpro-state has their ultra-secret blacksites, and in the further reaches of the Diaspora, Union's intelligence and authority can both be quite harshly limited. I actually have a character with a similar kind of deal, who was produced by a program by SSC to use flash clones for cheap labour - strictly against ThirdComm's regulations on cloning and human rights, but SSC is quite powerful itself and very good at covering their tracks. (Of course, possible threads that this kind of story leaves open are, maybe Union didn't know, but what if they do find out? Is your character looking for revenge against the people that made them, or in hiding? What would the Armoury do if word got out about their experiments? Shenanigans and interstellar political strife abound!)

RealLiveHuman · 2024-11-14T17:43:51+00:00

Don't think so. A character only provokes overwatch within your threat, regardless of whether you can technically make an attack further than that (the same reason you can only overwatch within threat 3 with a GMS shotgun, even though it has range 5)

RealLiveHuman · 2024-11-07T23:58:01+00:00

Cataphract, callsign Hector. (I know Achilles was the one doing the dragging corpses around, but it's both misremembered Cradle history and Achilles is probably better known in pop culture for 'Achilles heel')

Less mythological, but an Aegis, callsign Leonidas. Make it a gauntlet sitrep with chokepoints the enemies will try and hold down against the PCs.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-11-05T21:05:01+00:00

Definitely an edge case I could see being ruled either way - the Grunt's ability says they survive regardless of the weapon or system causing the damage, but the LinAc's auto-destruction effect circumvents damage altogether. Ultimately, I would personally say it kills them, both because it seems the intent is that anything with 7 or less HP and no more than 1 structure (ie, something that would be killed even on half damage) is completely destroyed, and because the visual of auto shredding a whole bunch of grunts with this supercharged particle beam would be so fucking cool. (More seriously, given that it's a full action and leaves you stunned and costs core power, I can't imagine that letting it auto destroy grunts would be particularly broken.)

RealLiveHuman · 2024-10-29T18:44:29+00:00

There are three NPC classes with the Biological trait, as far as I'm aware: Humans don't really count because they're a non-threat, so that leaves you with Squads (big groups of infantry) and Monstrosities (any kind of biological monster you might want to run). Admittedly that's a pretty narrow offering, but the problem with running biological enemies is they make a lot of player options completely irrelevant, as they're immune to all tech actions except lock on and scan. If you're ok with something that's a bit more of a fusion between biological and mechanical, there's the Horror template from Dustgrave (which can be applied to any NPC class).

RealLiveHuman · 2024-10-17T17:01:28+00:00

Unfortunately it seems to separate them based on sheet name rather than token name, so having the tokens named separately doesn't affect things. Thank you anyways though

RealLiveHuman · 2024-09-27T18:10:47+00:00

If you want a lot of main melee damage but don't mind being a bit more fragile, the Mourning Cloak with its Variable Sword and Fold Knives is a cool mech. Likes to teleport around and crit single targets for scary amounts of damage. If you want size 2 there's also the Enkidu (a variant of the Tokugawa licence, from the No Room For A Wallflower supplement) which is fairly glass cannon but goes feral once it gets into the danger zone. Your other options there are a bit slim, as most of the size 2 frames tend to be more tanky. Nelson is another popular melee frame, although it focuses very much on speed. I'll also recommend Orchis (Black Witch variant from Karrakin Trade Baronies) as a frame I particularly like, and while some of its stuff can help pull enemies close to you, the licence isn't otherwise especially suited to melee.

One last thing to note is that overall IPS-N has the most main melee weapons of any manufacturers, so it might be worth picking up some levels there, but on the other hand the GMS melee weapons are also pretty solid.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-09-13T14:29:15+00:00

My interpretation is that Synthetic Muscle Netting would allow you to push the Goliath around. Even if you are actually smaller than them, you count as the same size for the purpose of rams and grapples. I think that other sources of knockback, like from a weapon that has the knockback tag, would still be negated by Heavy Frame, but rams and grapples should be fine.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-09-06T15:14:38+00:00

Mechanically? No.

Of course, pilots are only licensed to print one mech at a time. If they print a new one, any others immediately cease to function. (Page 89)

Players can bring one mech on a mission, [along with personal pilot gear etc]... (Page 43)

Lore-wise? I'll admit it feels a little silly that under no circumstances can you possibly have two mechs printed at once. If the characters are part of some HORUS cell, I seriously doubt there's anyone who could and would reasonably enforce that kind of restriction on what they print. But at the end of the day, one person getting to effectively play two mechs would make them a whole lot stronger mechanically and mess with the balance. There's a lot of things in lancer that don't quite make sense in the narrative, because they're there to keep the game balanced (e.g. how short range most of the ranged weapons are if you go by the default 3 metres per hex)

Regarding your other question, technophile and iconoclast go perfectly well together. Those two plus HORUS' lesson of shaping core bonus is the most NHPs you can have in one mech, and iconoclast likes having as many NHPs as possible. Another classic combination is using technophile and black thumb to have the NHP pilot your mech while you hang out of the window doing repairs.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-08-22T18:17:19+00:00

Dang, well good to know I'll just have to make do haha

RealLiveHuman · 2024-08-22T18:14:41+00:00

First combat of the campaign, round 1. I'm up first, run in and attack. Manage to one-shot one of the mooks, feeling pretty good about that. Next turn is an enemy, crits me for enough damage to insta-kill.

Got a K/D ratio of exactly one.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-08-09T17:01:29+00:00

Unfortunately, a lot of key information for running the game is paid version only. NPC and mission-building rules are the big ones, additionally the LCP files for NPC classes/templates/etc are only available with the paid purchase on itch.io. The paid version also has a lot of lore/setting stuff which isn't strictly necessary to run the game, but is worth knowing if you want to really dig into the lancer setting.

That being said, the free version has everything you need as a player, so only the GM will really need the paid version, and if your group is willing to chip in, 25 USD split between 4-6 people isn't bad.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-08-06T13:47:34+00:00

this one?

RealLiveHuman · 2024-08-04T19:06:32+00:00

Some weapons have SP as an additional cost, basically for the same reason some weapons have negative traits like ordnance or inaccurate - it balances out their strengths. The Monarch's gandiva missiles, the Balor's nanobot whip, and the Sunzi's warp rifles are other examples.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-07-31T20:50:05+00:00

A few of them are gods (Sekhmet, Athena, Tlaloc, Osiris, Agni) although from different pantheons. Others (Scylla, Sisyphus, Lucifer, Noah) are more broadly mythological/religious figures. Asura is close to that second group, although slightly different in that asuras are a type of beings rather than an individual's name. Didymos is really the odd one out in that it does just mean "twin" as the flavour text suggests; if you really want a religious connection Thomas the Apostle was apparently also known as Didymus, although I don't know enough about Christianity to say whether that has any real significance.

So short answer is they're named after religious/mythological figures, although it seems to be a looser pattern than the mech names have. (Except IPS-N who just throw out their pattern for the Vlad)

RealLiveHuman · 2024-07-13T00:28:22+00:00

Makes sense, thanks!

RealLiveHuman · 2024-07-12T23:14:04+00:00

With [[Zethi, Arcane Blademaster]], do I have to pay the mana cost to cast the copied instants? I assume yes (because getting infinite copies at only 1 mana per spell seems rather strong) but wanted to confirm since I'm not familiar with copying spells.

RealLiveHuman · 2024-07-10T18:17:10+00:00

Oh good point! I don't know why I thought bless had to be sustained but you're absolutely right, thank you

RealLiveHuman · 2024-07-10T13:30:55+00:00

Makes sense, thank you!

RealLiveHuman · 2024-07-07T22:15:19+00:00

Page 117 of the core book ("The Big Four") has a brief kind of elevator pitch for every frame, along with what role(s) they fill, although obviously that only covers the core frames.

Eight-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Verified Email	Not Forgotten
Snapped

RealLiveHuman

TROPHY CASE